Six intellectual companions united at a Committee on Political Sociology conference at Villa Serbelloni, Lake Como, Italy, about 1970. From left to right, Giovanni Sartori, Juan Linz, Mattei Dogan, Karl Deutsch, Richard Rose and Stein Rokkan
Learning About Politics in Time and Space
Richard Rose
University of Strathclyde Glasgow
Only connect
E. M. Forster, Howards End
Richard Rose 2014
First published by the ECPR Press in 2014
The ECPR Press is the publishing imprint of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR), a scholarly association, which supports and encourages the training, research and cross-national co-operation of political scientists in institutions throughout Europe and beyond.
ECPR Press
University of Essex
Wivenhoe Park
Colchester
CO4 3SQ
UK
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Photograph permissions
The Old Court House, page 25, by TJR (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.
The Vienna Staatsoper Opera House page 41 courtesy of Archiv Wiener Staatsoper.
The Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama page 98 courtesy of John OHagan
Reform Club, page 186, by M. T. Walters.
Typeset by ECPR Press
Printed and bound by Lightning Source
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-907-3014-7-6
e-PDF ISBN: 978-1-907-3011-2-4
ePub ISBN: 978-1-9102591-2-2
Mobi ISBN: 978-1-9073018-0-3
www.ecpr.eu/ecprpress
Dedicated to
ROSEMARY
Thig crioch air an t-saoghal ach mairidh gaol agus ceol
Though the world shall end, music and love will endure
Series Editors:
Dario Castiglione (University of Exeter)
Peter Kennealy (European University Institute)
Alexandra Segerberg (Stockholm University)
Peter Triantafillou (Roskilde University)
ECPR Essays:
Croce, Gramsci, Bobbio and the Italian Political Tradition (ISBN: 9781907301995) Richard Bellamy
From Deliberation to Demonstration: Political Rallies in France, 18681939 (ISBN: 9781907301469) Paula Cossart
Hans Kelsen and the Case for Democracy (ISBN: 9781907301247) Sandrine Baume
Is Democracy a Lost Cause? Paradoxes of an Imperfect Invention (ISBN: 9781907301247) Alfio Mastropaolo
Just Democracy (ISBN: 9781907301148) Philippe Van Parijs
Maestri of Political Science (ISBN: 9781907301193) Donatella Campus, Gianfranco Pasquino, and Martin Bull
Masters of Political Science (ISBN: 9780955820335) Donatella Campus, and Gianfranco Pasquino
The Modern State Subverted: Risk and the Deconstruction of Solidarity (ISBN: 9781907301636) Giuseppe Di Palma
ECPR Classics:
Beyond the Nation State: (ISBN: 9780955248870) Ernst Haas
Comparative Politics: The Problem of Equivalence (ISBN: 9781907301414) Jan W. van Deth
Citizens, Elections, Parties: Approaches to the Comparative Study of the Processes of Development (ISBN: 9780955248887) Stein Rokkan
Electoral Change: Responses to Evolving Social and Attitudinal Structures in Western Countries (ISBN: 9780955820311) Mark Franklin, Thomas Mackie, and Henry Valen
Elite and Specialized Interviewing (ISBN: 9780954796679) Lewis Anthony Dexter
Identity, Competition and Electoral Availability: The Stabilisation of European Electorates 18851985 (ISBN: 9780955248832) Peter Mair and Stefano Bartolini
Modern Social Policies in Britain and Sweden: From Relief to Income Maintenance (ISBN: 9781907301001) Hugh Heclo
Parties and Party Systems: A Framework for Analysis (ISBN: 9780954796617) Giovanni Sartori
Party Identification and Beyond: Representations of Voting and Party Competition (ISBN: 9780955820342) Ian Budge, Ivor Crewe, and Dennis Farlie
People, States and Fear: An Agenda for International Security Studies in the Post-Cold War Era (ISBN: 9780955248818) Barry Buzan
State Formation, Parties and Democracy (ISBN: 9781907301179) Hans Daalder
The State Tradition in Western Europe: A Study of an Idea and Institution (ISBN: 9780955820359) Kenneth Dyson
Please visit www.ecpr.eu/ecprpress for up-to-date information about new publications.
List of Photographs
Introduction
Reflections From Experience
Everyone is supposed to be able to write one interesting book: the story of his or her own life. This implies that for the past half century I have been writing more than 40 books that are uninteresting because they are impersonal. Social scientists are expected to emulate natural scientists, setting aside personal experiences rooted in a particular time and place, and concentrating on timeless and universally applicable phenomena. Yet the sociology of knowledge emphasizes that what we write reflects who we are and what, if anything, we have experienced outside as well as inside the walls of academe. In practice, much of the best political science is written by people who combine a broad experience of life, a passion about what they do, and a willingness to take intellectual risks (see Munck and Snyder 2007: 3).
History imposed a broad experience of life on anyone like myself, born in 1933, the year that Adolf Hitler and Franklin D. Roosevelt each came to power. My first political memory is listening to a radio broadcast of Hitler accepting the surrender of France by Marshal Ptain in June, 1940. I was fortunate in being American, and thus having an ocean between my home and Europes battleground. That saved me from the scourge of an occupying army demonstrating that even if you are not interested in politics, it is interested in you. Before I was old enough to vote, I was on a boat to experience Europe. Since then research has led me to experience what politics is about in places as different as England and Russia, Western and Eastern Europe and the United States.
I have always been passionate about writing. Initially, the question was: What to write about? At the age of eight I taught myself to type in order to write about baseball. The newspapers that reported baseball games also reported politics, which in those days was more than a game. I wanted to become a reporter on the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, a Pulitzer-Prize winning newspaper in the city in which I was born. In 1955 I succeeded in doing so. But after two years I decided to combine my passion for writing with my passion for study by getting a PhD. Since then I have written many books and articles about dozens of countries and given talks in 45 countries on six continents.
Because I care about what governments do and do not do, I have spent more than 60 years writing about politics as it exists in the streets as well as in books. I did not learn about racial and religious discrimination from being taught about democracy in school but from living with it in my youth. I did not learn about the importance of freedom from political theorists but by talking to people who had suffered or fled from Nazi and Communist dictatorships. I have been teargassed by police at the 1968 Democratic Party convention and a year later at the Bogside Rising in Londonderry. Seeing the gun re-enter Northern Ireland politics when researching there, I put a proposal to act to a Labour minister. She said with surprise, Why Richard, you care. I was surprised that she did not seem to care.
