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The French Experience of Modernization

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Bernard E. Brown
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Extract

Few theorists today admit to a belief in the “idea of progress.” But, if the literature in comparative politics in the past several years is any guide, virtually all political scientists now believe in the concept of “modernization.” Modernization theory is being invoked to compare traditional and modern societies, to analyze the evolution of individual political systems, and to appraise the effectiveness of political institutions in one or several political systems. All of the problems and subjects of political science are now being reexamined in terms of some concept of modernization.

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Type
Research Article
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World Politics , Volume 21 , Issue 3 , April 1969, pp. 366 - 391
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1969

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References

1 The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899). Veblen's essay on the “discipline of the machine,” in The Theory of Business Enterprise (1904) is an excellent statement of the influence of technology upon social and political values. One major exception to the general view that the above defined factors are correlated in any social system is Moore, Wilbert S., Social Change (Englewood Cliffs, N.J. 1963)Google Scholar, in which the looseness of social structure is stressed.

2 Black, C. E., The Dynamics of Modernization: A Study in Comparative History (New York 1966)Google Scholar; Huntington, Samuel P., “Political Modernization: America vs. Europe,” World Politics xvii (April 1966), 378–414CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Hoffmann, Stanley, “Paradoxes of the French Political Community,” in , Hoffmann, ed., In Search of France (Cambridge, Mass. 1963), 1–117Google Scholar.

3 Black, 67–68.

4 Ibid., 109.

5 de Tocqueville, Alexis, The Old Regime and the French Revolution (Garden City, N.Y. 1955), 20Google Scholar.

6 For example, Jean Meynaud describes the governmental universe in France as a system of power centers negotiating and bargaining with one another, Nouvelles études sur les groupes de pression en France (Paris 1962), 249–50Google Scholar, 279. Among the case studies that point up the pluralistic nature of decision-making in France: Aline Coutrot, “La loi de décembre 1959,” Revue française de science politique (June 1963), 352–88; and Gaston Rimareix and Yves Tavernier, “L'élaboration et le vote de la loi complé-mentaire à la loi d'orientation agricole,” Ibid., 389–425. Also Brown, B. E., “France,” in Christoph, J. B., ed., Cases in Comparative Politics (Boston 1965), 129–206Google Scholar.

7 Huntington, 379.

8 Ibid., 384, 386.

9 Hoffmann, 12.

10 Ibid., 16.

11 Strayer, Joseph R., “Feudalism in Western Europe,” in Coulborn, Rushton, ed., Feudalism in History (Princeton 1956), 16Google Scholar. On feudalism in France see also Bloch, Marc, Feudal Society (Chicago 1961)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tilley, A., ed., Medieval France (New York 1964)Google Scholar; and for an excellent synthesis, Touchard, J. et al., Histoire des idées politiques (Paris 1959). 1Google Scholar, 155–63.

12 See the seminal work by Ferdinand Lot with the collaboration of Fawtier, Robert, Histoire des institutions françaises au moyen âge (Paris 1957)Google Scholar, 1, viii; and 11, p. 9 for the comment, “the only political regime France had in the Middle Ages was the monarchy.” Vol. 11 is an extraordinarily complete analysis of the rise of the royal power.

13 On urbanization in the Middle Ages: Mousnier, Roland, Les XVI et XVII siècles (Paris 1965)Google Scholar, especially chap. 3; Van Werveke, H., “The Rise of Towns,” in The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, iii, edited by Postan, M. M., Rich, E. E., and Miller, E. (Cambridge 1963), 3–40Google Scholar; L. Halphen, “Industry and Commerce,” in A. Tilley, ed., Medieval France, 183–92; and J. Touchard and others, 1, 169–79. On the bourgeois support for monarchy, Fawtier, Robert, The Capetian Kings of France (London 1964), 199–215Google Scholar.

14 For an excellent social and political analysis of this period, see Dupeux, Georges, La société française, 1789–1960 (Paris 1964), 59–102Google Scholar, and Wright, Gordon, France in Modern Times (Chicago 1960)Google Scholar, chaps. 1 and 2.

15 Gordon Wright, 18.

16 Georges Dupeux, 72–73.

17 Citations are from Cobban, Alfred, “The Decline of Divine Right Monarchy in France,” New Cambridge Modern History (Cambridge 1957)Google Scholar, vii, 235, and Palmer, R. R., The Age of the Democratic Revolution (Princeton 1959), 68Google Scholar.

18 Huntington, 384.

19 On the principle of election and religious consecration in the feudal period, see Ch. Dutaillis, Petit, The Feudal Monarchy in France and England (London 1936), 28Google Scholar; Robert Fawtier, The Capetian Kings of France, 48–49; and Duverger, Maurice, Les constitutions de la France (Paris 1950), 11–17Google Scholar.

20 Trevor-Roper, H. R., “The General Crisis of the Seventeenth Century,” in Aston, T., ed., Crisis in Europe, 1560–1660 (New York 1965), 95Google Scholar. See also the dissent by Roland Mousnier, arguing that the monarchy was a progressive force, Ibid., 102. The thesis that modernization of French society took place through the crown is also presented by Moore, Barrington Jr., in Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (Boston 1967)Google Scholar. But note the strong statement by Alfred Cobban on the inherent incapacity of the French monarchy, as early as the reign of Louis XIV, to deal with changing conditions, in “The Decline of Divine Right Monarchy in France,” 239.

21 Rushton Coulborn, ed., 311–12. On the fundamental laws under the Old Regime and social contract theory, see M. Duverger, 31–37.

22 Gordon Wright, 31.

23 On the clash between the king and the Parlements, see Palmer, 86–99, and Rémond, René, La vie politique en France, 1789–1848 (Paris 1965), 31–40Google Scholar. On the Enlightenment, see notably Gordon Wright, 28–39; and the fine synthesis in Jean Touchard and others, ii, 383–449.

24 Table based on Georges Dupeux, 33 and Tableaux de l'économie française (Paris 1966)Google Scholar, 48a; and Atlas historique de la France contemporaine (Paris 1966), 45Google Scholar.

25 All figures are from Tableaux, 48a.

26 Figures on urbanization from Dupeux, 20–21, 23–26.

27 Citations from David S. Landes, “Technological Change and Development in Western Europe, 1750–1914,” in H. J. Habakkuk and M. Postan, The Industrial Revolution and After, iv of The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, 298, 463. On early industrialization in France, see Clapham, J. H., The Economic Development of France and Germany, 1815–1914 (Cambridge 1955)Google Scholar; Georges Dupeux, 35–48; and Gordon Wright, 196–209, 343–53.

28 Clapham, 233.

29 On late industrialization in France, Gordon Wright, 453–63, 548–67. Also, Kindleberger, Charles P., Economic Growth in France and Britain (Cambridge, Mass. 1964)Google Scholar. Kindleberger identifies the periods of economic expansion as 1851–68, 1879–82, 1896–1913, 1919–29, and since 1949.

30 The entry of major social groups into the political system is dealt with by Gordon Wright, 210–26, 354–65; and in especially suggestive fashion by Georges Dupeux, 104–64, 171–218, 240–78. Shepard B. Clough stresses the importance of the timing of political and social conflict in “Social Structure, Social Values and Economic Growth,” Acomb, E. M. and Brown, M. L. Jr., eds., French Society and Culture Since the Old Regime (New York 1966), 66–84Google Scholar.