The Comparative Politics of Eric Voegelin (Part IV)
Voegelin’s Concepts for Political Science
From these essays we see Voegelin recognized the importance of the industrial society in comparative politics and why it was most compatible with constitutional democracy. Critical to industrial society was the diffusion of the entrepreneurial function–seizing social initiative in the economy–among various parties (e.g., politicians, labor leaders, industrial capitalists) that not only made everyone interdependent in their social and economic activity but also responsible for common interest of society. The entrepreneur was crucial for industrial society because it made the economy more productive, thereby averting class antagonism in society by raising the wages for members of society.
For the entrepreneur to succeed in industrial society, a “clarity of awareness” was required: the willingness of its members to participate in rational discussion and assume responsibility for the public good. This civic responsibility was cultivated in citizens by society’s educational, social, and political institutions that have preserved the classical and Christian traditions of power, reason, and revelation. Although all members potentially can participate in transcendent reason, only a few do so and thus society was hierarchically organized and elite-driven. These leaders were to make the life of reason as socially effective as possible so society could resist the various anti-complexes.
Given this model, Voegelin addressed the contemporary political questions that confronted him while in Germany: 1) how can Germany be an industrial society and a democratic one, the so-called “good society,” like the United States?; 2) how can Europe be an industrial society that competes internationally with countries like the United States and the Soviet Union?; and 3) how can different civilizations communicate with one another in the life of noetic reason? Implicit in these questions are the problems of size; the relationships between elites and the masses; the cultural and historical compatibility with certain political institutions and economic processes; the challenges of socialization and preservation of ideas and habits among a people; and the question whether certain aspects of a society–cultural, economic, political–can be exported or modeled for other countries. Although he does not directly address the literature of comparative politics in these essays, Voegelin’s concerns were similar to those of comparative political scientists, even though he employed the language and ideas of philosophy rather than positivism to answer them.[i]
Voegelin’s answers to these questions also revealed his normative positions on these issues.[ii] For instance, Germany can be a “good society” like the United States if its elites assume public responsibility, be entrepreneurial, and make the life of noetic reason socially effective so that society would be receptive to reasonable debate and solutions. For the Europe to be match the scale and power of the United States and the Soviet Union, European states must be willing to cooperate among themselves to pool their industrial and technological resources for optimal utilization. For Voegelin, this sharing of resources would preferably occur as a constitutional democracy where Europeans would have freedom of movement, thought, and education to participate in democratic life. However, this transformation of Europe would only transpire if 1) they were willing to close unproductive sectors of the economy and tolerate the accompanying unemployment while, at the same time, provide retraining for these workers; and 2) provide a civic education to the younger generation about democratic ideals of limited government, intolerance towards anti-democratic factions, and the economic skills of mobility and adaptability (i.e., entrepreneurship).
The last question–how can different civilizations communicate with one another in the life of noetic reason?–was left unanswered by Voegelin. Was it possible, or even desirable, for countries like China and India to extricate their life of reason from cosmological myth? How did one communicate with non-western leaders who have been educated in western ideology? How did one address non-western masses who still live in the world of myth? Voegelin’s silence on these questions may reflect a humility about the limits of his western-centric science at this time. As he said, even with the best intentions, westerners may create more “harm than good” when attempting to export their ideas, institutions, and culture to non-western civilizations.
Voegelin’s concepts for political science from these essays therefore were limited to the study of the West, which included the Soviet Union.[iii] In the future Voegelin will study non-western civilizations, such as the Chinese ecumene in Order and History IV, but by that time he had developed new technical concepts and theories to make such an analysis. In this period of 1959-64, Voegelin’s concepts were western-derived and consequently western-applied. In this sense, Voegelin’s self-awareness of the limitations of his concepts anticipated the present debate about the applicability of western political science and theory to non-western civilizations. He recognized during this period that western theory and concepts should best stay in the West.[iv]
So what are the critical concepts from these essays that could be employed in comparative political science? First is the life of reason, both noetic and pragmatic, as ways to organize a society both politically and economically.[v] Noetic reason is human participation in logos or transcendent nous that provides existential meaning to a society, while pragmatic reason is the organization and coordination of means to ends for the administrative governance and economic processes. These two types of reason are relatively independent of one another (e.g., a society could be pragmatically rational and noetically irrational). The opposite of noetic reason is ideology and the various anti-complexes.
Two other critical concepts are “viability” or “clarity of awareness”: the life of noetic reason is socially effective when the classical and Christian traditions are preserved in the ideas, habits, and institutions of society.[vi] This “viable” condition allows the public to possess a “clarity of awareness” where they assume responsibility for the common good and are receptive and able to partake in reasonable debates about societal issues. Clarity of awareness is only possible if a robust civic education exists to teach each new generation the insights of the classical and Christian traditions.
A fourth critical concept is the problem of size for the nation-state with respect to its industrial capacity and international power.[vii] If smaller nation-states wish to have international influence, they need to increase their industrial capacity by enlarging the size of their territory and population either through conquest or cooperation. The problem of size, in turn, raises the question about the compatibility of industrial society with constitutional democracy and what prerequisites are needed for both features to coexist.
Finally, the concepts of an entrepreneurial economy, its relationship to constitutional democracy, and the connection between elites and the masses were important to Voegelin’s political science in these essays.[viii] The economic transformation of society into an entrepreneurial one, where economic initiatives transpired from a variety of sources, made members of society interdependent with one another but did not necessarily mean it was compatible with constitutional democracy. The life of noetic reason must exist among elites and be socially effective among the masses for constitutional democracy to exist. Voegelin believed that societies were elite-driven, although the masses did play an important role in the functioning of society and therefore could not be ignored.[ix] By using the United States as a case study in these essays, Voegelin showed how other countries, like Germany, the Soviet Union, and even the continent of Europe, could be both industrial and democratic. The “good society” was not for America alone.
[i] The problem of size has been studied by John A. Agnew, Place and Politics (London: Allen and Unwin, 1987); Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel (New York: W.W. Norton., 1997); Dedman, The Origins and Development of the European Union; Grugel and Piper, Critical Perspectives on Global Governance; Warlouzet, Governing Europe in a Globalizing World; and Stiglitz, Globalization and Its Discontents.
For the relationship between the elites and the masses, refer to Moore, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy; Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979); Gregory M. Lubbert, Liberalism, Fascism, or Social Democracy: Social Classes and the Political Origins of Regimes in Interwar Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991).
For the relationship among culture, history, institutions, and economics, refer to Seymour M. Lipset, “Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy,” American Political Science Review 53.1 (1959): 69–105; Gabriel Abraham Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963); Samuel P. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968); Robert Dahl, Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972); Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973); James G. March and Jonthan.P. Olsen, “The New Institutionalism: Organizational Factors in Political Life,” American Political Science Review, 78.3 (1984): 734-49; Guillermo O’Donnell, Philippe C. Schmitter, and Laurence Whitehead, eds. Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Comparative Perspectives (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1986); Adam Przeworski, Democracy and the Market (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Evelyne Huber Stephens, John D. Stephens, Capitalist Development and Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992); Putman, Making Democracy Work and Bowling Alone; Ronald Inglehart, Modernization and Postmodernization: Cultural, Economic, and Political Change in 43 Countries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997); Carles Boix and Susan S. Stokes, “Endogenous Democratization,” World Politics 55.4 (2003): 517-49; Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
For political socialization and the transmission of ideas, refer to Sandoz, The Roots of Liberty and A Government of Laws; Philo C. Washburn and Tawnya J. Adkins Covert, Making Citizens: Political Socialization Research and Beyond (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).
For modeling another society, refer to Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991) and Clash of Civilizations; Adam Przeworski and Fernando Liongi, “Modernization: Theories and Facts,” World Politics 49.2 (1997): 155-83; Immanuel Wallerstein, World System Analysis (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004).
[ii] Political science traditionally has been value-neutral since the behavioral revolution in the 1950s. Clifford Angell Bates Jr., The Centrality of the Regime for Political Science (Warsaw, Poland: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Waszawskiego, 2016); Lee Trepanier, “The Relevance of Political Philosophy and Political Science,” in Why the Humanities Matter Today? In Defense of Liberal Education, Lee Trepanier, ed. (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2017), 127-44.
[iii] Since Peter the Great (reign 1682-1725), Russians have asked themselves whether they are part of the West. In his own works, Voegelin himself was not clear on this question, although in these essays he did include Russia as a country to which western concepts, models, and theories could be applied. However, Voegelin wrote elsewhere that Russia was fundamentally not a western country (CW 5, 179-83). Perhaps it was only because of its proximity, historical engagement with Europe, and later adoption of western ideologies that Russia could be considered in the same civilizational unit of analysis for Voegelin. Lee Trepanier, Political Symbols in Russian History and Nicholas V. Riasanovsky and Mark D. Steinberg, A History of Russia (9th Edition) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).
[iv] For more about the debate whether western concepts, models, and theories can and should be applied to non-western civilizations, refer to Andrew F. March, “What is Comparative Political Theory?” Review of Politics 71.4 (2009): 531-65; Fred Dallmayr, ed. Comparative Political Theory (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); Farah Godrej, Cosmopolitan Political Thought: Method, Practice, Discipline (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); Jon D. Carlson and Russell Arben Fox, eds. The State of Nature in Comparative Political Thought: Western and Non-Western Perspectives (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2013); Adrian Little, “Contextualizing Concepts: The Methodology of Comparative Political Theory,” Review of Politics 80: 1 (2018): 87-113.
[v] For how this concept fits into the literature of mainstream comparative political science, refer to the twentieth footnote.
[vi] For the same as above, refer to the nineteenth and twenty-ninth footnotes.
[vii] For same as above, refer to the twelfth, thirteenth, and twenty-ninth footnotes.
[viii] For same as above, refer to the twenty-third and twenty-ninth footnotes.
[ix] For same as above, refer to the twenty-ninth footnote.