Corruption, Machine Politics, and Political Change*

James C. Scott

American Political Science Review, 1969, vol. 63, issue 4, 1142-1158

Abstract: The study of political influence in the West has for the most part focused on the process by which interest groups affect the content of legislation; hence, the input process has occupied the center of attention. Students of politics in the new states of Africa and Asia who have adopted this perspective, however, have been struck by the relative weakness both of interest structures to organize demands and of institutionalized channels through which such demands, once organized, might be communicated to decisionmakers. The open clash of organized interests is often conspicuously absent during the formulation of legislation in these nations. To conclude from this, however, that the public has little or no effect on the eventual “output” of government would be completely unwarranted. Between the passage of legislation and its actual implementation lies an entirely different political arena that, in spite of its informality and particularism, has a great effect on the execution of policy. Much of the expression of political interests in the new states has been disregarded because Western scholars, accustomed to their own politics, have been looking in the wrong place. A large portion of individual demands, and even group demands, in developing nations reach the political system, not before laws are passed, but rather at the enforcement stage.

Date: 1969
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