8/12/2019 Paper 2083134

1/3

Westminister's World: Understanding Political Roles by Donald D. SearingReview by: Graham K. WilsonThe American Political Science Review, Vol. 89, No. 1 (Mar., 1995), pp. 236-237Published by: American Political Science AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2083134.

Accessed: 16/06/2014 06:23

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at.http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of

content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

American Political Science Associationis collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to

The American Political Science Review.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 87.195.137.178 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 06:23:29 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=apsahttp://www.jstor.org/stable/2083134?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/2083134?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=apsa

8/12/2019 Paper 2083134

2/3

Book Reviews: COMPARATIVE POLITICS March 1995

abroad and borrowed-and adapted-selectively andshrewdly.) Today, in Western Europe, public policyspecialists may be more knowledgeable about the pro-grams in neighboring European nations than Americanstate officials (or public policy graduates) are about therange of policies and outcomes in different Americanstates.It is one of the strengths of the book that the au-thor-an American who has built the comparative studyof public policy from a European base at the Universityof Strathclyde, with extensive first-hand experience-illustrates his discussion with numerous examples. It isan enlightening discussion and makes clear that formajor portions of the world (especially the former SovietUnion and Eastern Europe), the process of assessingpotential lessons from other national cases (and gettingthe imported adaptations either right or wrong) is at theurgent forefront of professional policy analysis.Of the seven key guidelines, the author believes threedesiderata will not usually flag barriers to potentiallessons from other locations in the advanced industrialworld. These are the absence of unique elements, theability to use different types of institutions to implementa program, and the equivalence of resources.The critical examinations, his reading of history sug-gests, should take place in four areas: (1) whether thereare simple cause-effect links, (2) a relatively small scaleof change to the results, (3) an established interdepen-dence with other programs (as in borrowing a packageof policies to convert a planned economy to a marketeconomy), and (4) a congruity of values. It is easier-andmore likely to succeed-if one imports a Russian-lan-guage version of a standard word-processing programlike WordPerfect to run on existing Russian-made per-sonal computer clones, rather than seeking to change allRussian institutions.If any of the four guidelines register a warning, aneasy transfer is problematic, and additional thought(at least) must be given to adaptations-as, for example,when the Japanese adapted the perfect competitionmarket economy of the West to shape relations betweenfirms while maintaining more traditional social solidaritywithin firms.The motivation to search for lessons-and key barri-ers-are, of course, political variables. Rose recognizesthat technocratic improvements are easier than import-ing lessons that also change status and power relationsand the distribution of income. But, he would argue,there is a consequential intellectual component to mod-ern public policy. Where there is dissatisfaction, evenpolitically consequential lessons may be adopted, as thefate of communism attests.And there are important new changes (e.g., the rise ofnetworks and professional identities) in who does thesearching and how. (Of the most important sources ofideas reported by recipients of the Council of Govern-ments' Innovation Transfer Program, the top five wereinformal communications and other professional activi-ties, not traditional political actors.) Indeed, the bookincludes references to growing data bases that alsoreflect new, active, professional players in the creation,identification, and diffusion of new ideas: the Council ofGovernments' Program and the nominees and winnersfor the Ford Foundation's Innovations Award programadministered through the Kennedy School at Harvard.Are there policy lessons that governments should butdo not learn?And is the N largeor small?We do not yet

know. But Rose cites comparative data to suggest that,as the late Aaron Wildavsky came to believe, ideologicaldoor slamming remains a far more powerful barrier topolicy learning than earlier generations of policy ana-lysts (and designers of graduate curricula) believed (pp.102-3).This observation may point to an extraordinary oppor-tunity. The issue deserves comment because Rose treatsideologies primarily as value differences, rather thanalso an opportunity for learning (i.e., as testable empir-ical propositions). Thus, in the 1980s, key truth claims ofReaganomics were never evaluated by American politicsspecialists; and an extraordinary, decade-long experi-ment to change the modal personality of the Americanpeople to foster economic growth (reduce dependencyand increase self-confidence by altering hierarchical re-lations to government) may have been based upon anhallucination. (That is, there is no scientific evidence,one way or another, that the linkage of individualpersonality systems in the American polity is sufficientlystrong to allow such consequential effects). More les-sons, perhaps, can be learned than political systemsrecognize. And students may be interested to discusswhy no science-based American politics textbook yetevaluates the truth claims of such consequential ideasfrom the political Right.For teaching purposes (and this book can be highlyrecommended for classroom use), another interestingdiscussion question arises from economists' beliefs inuniversal laws and the total fungibility of their ownpolicy recommendations (pp. 36-38). From specialists incomparative public policy, there are major disagree-ments about this empirical stance-and thus lessonsaplenty that can be learned in the academic world.YaleUniversity LLOYD S. ETHEREDGEWestminster's World: Understanding Political Roles.By Donald D. Searing. Cambridge: Harvard Univer-sity Press, 1994. 498p. $49.95.

Donald Searing has written a splendid book, a bookthat can be produced by his fellow political scientists asan example to refute many of the allegations against ourprofession. In an era when we are accused of rushingout works for spurious topicality or to bloat a profes-sional activities report, Searing has produced a long andcarefully nurtured work that has taken 20 years to cometo fruition. His book is fully informed by major theoret-ical debates without being in the slightest loaded withjargon. Indeed, the book is delightfully easy to read,partly because it is spiced with unforced references toplays and novels, challenging the widespread belief thatall social scientists are philistines. Contrary to the prej-udices of journalists about our profession, Searingshows that there are indeed misperceptions and over-sights in the conventional picture of how political insti-tutions operate that it takes political scientists to correct.Above all, Searing has written a thoroughly researchedbook that is a major contribution to understanding bothBritish politics and political institutions more generally.

Although it is common today to evaluate scholarshiplargely in terms of its theoretical implications, it isworth dwelling briefly on the quality of Searing's schol-arship. Searing accomplished the astonishing feat (andthose who have attempted more modest tasks will

236

This content downloaded from 87.195.137.178 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 06:23:29 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

8/12/2019 Paper 2083134

3/3

American Political Science Review Vol. 89, No. 1

appreciate just how astonishing was his feat) of inter-viewing four-fifths of the membership of the House ofCommons at the time of his field work (1972 and 1973.)The interviews generated some thirty thousand pages oftranscripts. Yet it is not only the quantity but the qualityof the Searing's field work that impresses. Searing hasthe skill, surprisingly rare in interviewers, of listeningand watching carefully in his interviews-of under-standing more about his interviewees than perhaps theyintended to reveal. We are used to noticing such skills intelevision interviewers; they are just as desirable in apolitical scientist.As noted, Searing's intellectual contributions are toboth the study of Britain and to the study of politicalinstitutions more generally. Searing's contribution to thestudy of Britain is clear. He provides the best and mostcomplete picture of how members of the House ofCommons in the modem era understand and definetheir place in their nation's life. Searing documents theexistence and relative importance of the roles that bothbackbenchers and leaders adopt. Backbenchers, for ex-ample, fall into four major categories: (1) policy advo-cates; (2) ministerial aspirants; (3) those who emphasizeservice to the constituency; and (4) Parliament men, whofocus on the institution itself. Leaders fall into fourcategories (parliamentary private secretaries, whips,junior ministers, and ministers) more (but by no meanscompletely) institutionally defined than backbenchroles. This picture contains surprises. For example, theproportion of MPs eager for ministerial office is muchlower than is suggested in popular and journalisticaccounts. The chapter that describes the work of thewhips is the best (because most closely observed) ac-count of their work available. Searing's emphasis on theparliamentary life of ministers is a useful complement tothose studies (such as Heady's) that have emphasizedtheir life in Whitehall, in ministries not Parliament. Andthrough the words of Searing's interviewees, the readeris given fascinating vignettes of Britain's varied (andchanging) political cultures.Searing's contribution to the study of political institu-tions more generally is his attempt to show that theactivities of members of Parliament can be understoodby an approach that combines attention to the rules andincentives of their institution with careful attention totheir individual goals. Members of Parliament are bothconstrained and enabled by the institution; they areenabled to pursue goals that are not mere products ofinstitutional incentives but are rooted in the thinking,experiences, or circumstances of the individual MP.Members of Parliament, to an important degree, choosewhich institutionally constrained role they wish to play.Searing's larger purpose in this book, then, is to save thenew institutionalism from a tunnel-visioned use of arational choice perspective, discarding so much of whatis interesting about politics in a quest for theoreticalelegance. Searing succeeds brilliantly in this larger pur-pose. He thereby provides those who sense the inade-quacies of the rational choice forms of the new institu-tionalism with an example to use against those whopretend that the only alternative to rational choice isincoherent description.

There are, of course, criticisms that can be made ofSearing's work. The most obvious criticism (anticipatedby Searing in his conclusion) is that the 20 years thathave passed since his fieldwork make the study a poorguide to the contemporaryHouse of Commons.Searing

has a number of convincing arguments why this shouldnot be so. Yet Searing himself admits that at least therelative importance of the different roles he describeshas changed. Most commentators think that more MPsaspire to ministerial office than when he wrote. Thegeneral corrosion of self-confidence in the ranks of theBritish elite over the last 20 years that has made Britainsuch a self-critical country may well have reduced theproportion of MPs who take pride in their institution.We could assess more confidently how much haschanged since Searing's fieldwork if we could derivefrom his book a more explicit account of what deter-mines the relative importance of the roles that he de-scribes. I suspect that Searing would answer that suchan account would involve many factors such as the stateof political parties, the political sociology of each constit-uency, and the character of individual MPs. A moreexplicit statement of what determines the relative impor-tance of the roles that MPs adopt, no matter howgeneral, would have helped Searing refute critics whoargue (wrongly) that his book is a wonderful account ofthe recent past but not the present. Searing can takepride, however, in a work that should be read not onlyby those who study British politics but by all who seek tounderstand political institutions.University of Wisconsin, Madison GRAHAM K. WILSON

The Irish Constitutional Tradition: Responsible Gov-ernment and Modem Ireland, 1782-1992. By Alan J.Ward. Washington: Catholic University of AmericaPress, 1994. $19.95 paper.This is a precise elegant constitutional history ofIreland, north and south. It is an impressive, and evendefinitive, work. If there is a problem with the book, itlies in the fact that for the southern Republic, at any rate,a parliamentary democratic model of government bor-rowed largely from Britain has worked in a fairly satis-factory fashion. For many, the interesting questionsabout Irish politics relate to broader issues such as therelationship between religious and national identity. AsWard admits, when some of Eamon de Valera's personalpapers were opened to the public in 1987, this was thetheme that obsessed analysts: Largely overlooked wasthe question of whether the basic model of governmentprovided in the Irish Constitution ha[d] served the

country well. This is Ward's focus, and he provides alucid account of the evolution of the Irish constitutionwhich includes a particularly interesting analysis of theHome Rule movement, which dominated Irish Nation-alist politics from 1874 to 1916. Home rule was the policyof seeking the creation of an autonomous Irish Parlia-ment subordinate to Britain through the maintenance atWestminster of an independent Irish parliamentaryparty. As an unfulfilled possibility, home rule has pro-voked much debate. In Britain and Ireland, strongtraditions of historical scholarship have presented homerule as having been the obvious basis for a peacefulsettlement of Anglo-Irish relations, frustrated by selfishopportunism, physical force and romantic nationalism.Ward is less than sure about this and gives manyexcellent reasons to support his skepticism. Neverthe-less, he is open to criticism on two points. Alan Wardargues all too unproblematically that after home rule,which would have involved some Irish MPs staying at

237

This content downloaded from 87.195.137.178 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 06:23:29 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp