The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics (202 page)

Group of eighteenth-century French economists who believed that the land is the ultimate source of all wealth, and also in free trade in grain. The latter belief, but not the former, influenced Adam Smith's development of classical economics. See also
Enlightenment, French
;
political economy
.

 
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Deep social cleavages (e.g. between Catholics and Protestants) are recognized and legitimized by providing institutional autonomy to organized social groups in areas such as education and broadcasting. The Netherlands provides the most developed example of pillarization, the word being coined there, with official recognition provided to religious, secular, and territorial pillars (
Zuilen
).
WG 

 
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In its political usages, the term refers to any attempt to achieve a goal (such as economic well-being or a particular pattern of land use) by central direction. The most important question about planning is whether a distinction can be made between planning and other forms of policy-making. For the most part, strong belief in a clear distinction is associated with belief in planning in the other sense, that is, favouring planning as a form of policy-making over all other forms. In the mid-twentieth century there was a widespread faith in forms of planning, including economic and urban planning. The success of the Soviet Union's ‘five year plans’ and the effectiveness in wartime Britain of comprehensive planning of production and the distribution of resources appeared to have given the future to the planners. A Conservative Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan , commented, ‘Planning has become a rather emotive word; I myself have always rather liked it’.
Since the early 1970s, however, there has been a widespread perception that the best known forms of planning—economic and town planning—have failed in their objectives. The revival of arguments for
laissez-faire
policies and the development of
public choice
theories, which suggest that real planners cannot have the objectivity or length of vision which successful planning would require of them, have added theoretical justification to this perception. In particular, an essay by Aaron Wildavsky , ‘If Planning is Everything, Maybe it's Nothing’ (published in
Policy Sciences
in 1973) stimulated a vigorous debate and an attempt to redefine planning.
The redefinition and justification of planning are naturally close, because the stipulated defining conditions tend to make planning sound a superior form of decision-making: planning is rational; it is uniquely comprehensive in the factors it takes into account; it co-ordinates a multiplicity of effects; it considers a longer period of time. (Looked at from another angle, all of these features make planning sound distinctly incompatible with either individual freedom or democracy.) The paradigm version of a plan is what an architect does in first drawing a building and then bringing the drawing to life. In good conditions, the architect will have something relatively close to total control over the labour, materials, and so on, involved in building. The planning of an economy or a city can never remotely approach this level of control, but it must have at least the idea of a control mechanism in order to be planning, as opposed to normal muddling, at all. Thus Keynesian economic planners sought to develop economic planning by control of the money supply, as did monetarists, with a more limited range of objectives. An early generation of town planners believed in environmental determinism, the crucial influence of design on social behaviour, and so believed they could plan communities by using that mechanism. Wartime conditions, especially in Britain, encouraged a general faith in planning because they allowed the highest possible level of the control of society by government, including effective systems for rationing and the direction of labour.
In the absence of effective mechanisms of control, something called ‘planning’ may continue, but it can assume very different political roles. Planners can become arbiters, as when national park planners in England see their job as reconciling the conflicting demands of farmers, tourists, residents, and conservationists. Planning can become the arena in which people compete to influence policy or it can be one rival among others for influence in a wider framework. If planners lack what Sir Patrick Abercrombie called a ‘suzerain role’ in policy they are, properly, not really planners at all, though we usually continue to call them planners and may continue to blame them for disasters for which they cannot be responsible.
The distinction between planning and other types of policy is a dubious one. Even those who believe in a clear distinction would have to confess that very little of what happens in the world is actually the consequence of planning.
LA 

 
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(
c
.427–347 BC)
Greek philosopher. Born into an aristocratic Athenian family, he was expected to take up a political career, but circumstances and inclination persuaded him to turn to philosophy instead. The most significant factor in his disillusionment with contemporary politics was the execution in 399 of his close friend and teacher Socrates at the hands of the Athenian democracy; he remained profoundly critical of democratic institutions and liberalism all his life. He did, however, make one foray into the world of
realpolitik
, when in middle age he attempted—entirely unsuccessfully—to put some of his political theories into practice in the Greek city-state of Syracuse.
He wrote a number of dialogues on a very wide range of issues; and the positions taken on various topics can vary considerably between works. The main character is almost always Socrates and it is often hard to know whether the views this ‘Socrates’ expresses are those of the historical Socrates or are original to Plato himself. It is generally agreed that the influence of the historical Socrates is particularly in evidence in the early dialogues, while the middle and late works articulate—constantly developing—positions original to Plato (though many of these still have clear Socratic roots).
Thus, while several early dialogues raise key political issues (cf. e.g. the
Apology
,
Crito
, and particularly
Gorgias
, the last being a remarkable exploration of the nature of power and the philosophy of ‘might is right’ which influenced Nietzsche considerably), it is the
Republic
that is usually considered to be Plato's first big contribution to political theory. In the first of its ten books, the sophist Thrasymachus issues a challenge to conventional views of justice. Justice, he claims, is simply the interest of whatever person or party is in power: all rulers make the laws to their own advantage and it is these laws that are called ‘justice’. The shrewd and resourceful subject, therefore, will disobey the laws whenever he can escape detection and further his own interests instead. Being ‘just’ simply does not pay.
The rest of the
Republic
consists of an attempt by Plato to prove that, on the contrary, it does pay to be just. To show this, however, we first need to define justice. Given that justice is, Plato thinks, the same in both individual and state, it will be easier if we begin our search by examining the broader canvas of the just state and then see if our findings are applicable to the individual.
Plato locates the origin of all states, just or otherwise, in economic need. Such economic associations are best organized if each person performs the job for which they are naturally most suited: this will result in an efficient and harmonious state in which sufficient leisure is possible to allow for civilized life. Over time this minimal state will become more complex, until eventually it divides into three classes, corresponding to three natural types: the Producers, who supply all the economic needs of the state; the Auxiliaries, who act as a combined military, executive, and police force (the state is only ideally just, not ideal
simpliciter
, and war will still be a feature of life); and the Philosopher-Rulers, whose rule is sanctioned by the fact that only they have knowledge of an abstract and transcendent metaphysical entity called the Form of the Good, which alone enables one to act for the good of the whole. Most children will naturally be of the same type as their parents, and thus will form part of the same class; if they are of a different natural type, however, then the state must remove them to the appropriate class. Justice in the state consists in each member fulfilling the class function to which he or she is naturally fitted.
It is argued that these three classes correspond to three divisions within the psyche of the individual: the reasoning element, in virtue of which the individual is wise; the spirited element, in virtue of which he or she is courageous, and the appetitive element, the task of which is to obey. As in the state, justice in the individual consists in each part performing its own proper function. Furthermore it becomes clear that except in rare cases this internal harmony of the just individual can only fully develop in the harmony of the ideally just state. Plato claims that in the case of both individual and state this internal harmony will equal health and happiness; and—even more controversially—in being ruled by wisdom rather than by the tyrannical appetites, both just individual and just state will also be free. The interdependence in general of state and individual is illustrated by portraits of what Plato sees as the four degenerate types of individual and state: the timocratic, the oligarchic, the democratic, and the tyrannical, and their respective goals of glory, wealth, liberty, and an unspecified obsessive appetite.
The cornerstone of the just state is the government of the Philosopher- Rulers, supported by the Auxiliaries; the education of these two classes (collectively termed ‘Guardians’) is consequently of paramount importance, and its principal aim is to train the Auxiliaries to obey the Rulers and the Rulers to act for the good of the state as a whole. Plato describes the Guardians' training in great detail, and several times refers to it as the element which holds the entire state together. Until the age of 18 all future Guardians receive an identical education in literature, music, and athletics. There follow two years of military training, and then some are selected for further studies in mathematics and philosophy, followed by a period of practical administrative experience. Finally, when these select few are 50, they will be directed towards that knowledge of the Form of the Good which alone both legitimates and necessitates their becoming the Rulers of the state.
Plato also prescribes for the two Guardian classes an austere and communistic way of life, so that they may devote all their time and loyalties to the state. They are forbidden to possess private property or money, all their material needs being supplied by the Producers. The family unit is to be abolished, and both Rulers and Auxiliaries are to live together in common halls; children are to be conceived according to an organized breeding programme and brought up in state nurseries, having been removed from their natural mothers at birth. No one will know who their parents, siblings, or children are, and consequently everyone, Plato believes, will regard everyone else as a possible relative and be bonded accordingly. Amongst these two Guardian classes, too, women are to receive exactly the same education and perform exactly the same tasks as men, including ruling the state and going to war.
Plato's radical conceptions in the
Republic
of justice, social harmony, education, and freedom are enormously rich and have informed the thought of philosophers as diverse as
Rousseau
,
Hegel
, and J. S.
Mill
; his attitudes to property, the family, and the position of women have also proved highly influential. His ideal however, has, also come in for some fierce criticism. The convenient match claimed between the division of natural talents and the class divisions required by the state has been regarded as entirely without foundation. In making the state more important than its parts, and allowing it to enter every sphere of the individual's life, Plato has been accused of totalitarianism, while charges of paternalism have been laid against the claim that the Philosopher-Rulers alone know what is best for the other classes. Nor are there any legal checks on the Rulers' behaviour. Their methods of rule are also problematic: the analogy drawn between the Producers and the unreasoning appetites raises questions about whether the Producers can really be willingly persuaded or whether they have to be forced, and Plato's language is ambivalent on this point. In any case, the means of persuasion are themselves disturbing, involving both propaganda and extreme censorship of the arts.
In the
Statesman
(
Politicus
), Plato takes a more pragmatic approach. While still maintaining that the best form of rule would be that of the true doctor-statesman, acting on the basis of trained judgement rather than formal law, he nevertheless allows that in the absence of such a statesman, a system of laws is a good second-best. Although too general and inflexible, laws at least have the merit of having been created by rational thought, and obedience to them makes for political stability. Another development is Plato's increased awareness of temporality and history and their relations to politics and political theory. The true art of statecraft weaves together opposing qualities in human nature and this can only happen over a period of time; it also requires an awareness of changing circumstances and an ability to select the fitting moment for action.
In Plato's last work, the
Laws
, laws are again promoted as a good second-best to the rule of the truly wise statesman, always providing that they are framed in the interests of the community as a whole; indeed, owing to the continuing failure of such a statesman to emerge, the rule of law is the only practicable system at all. Good (i.e. true) laws are perceived as the dispensation of divine reason, and their function is to establish and nurture the civic virtues; the most important of these for the majority of citizens is the self-control that ensures obedience, and it is self-control that the basic education system is mainly designed to promote. In a sympathetic addition to conventional education, the self-control of the young is to be tested in state-organized drinking parties.
The state envisaged by the
Laws
remains authoritarian in the extreme, and is considerably influenced by the strict regimes of Sparta and Crete. There is legislation to cover the minutest details of both public and private life, and a large number of official bodies are established, headed by the Nocturnal Council, to ensure that the laws are maintained; the Nocturnal Council may also occasionally adjust the laws to suit changing circumstances. Religious belief, largely ignored by the
Republic
, is now viewed as a crucial factor in ensuring the cohesion and stability of the state, and recalcitrant atheists are to be put to death. In general, the individual continues to be perceived simply as part of an infinitely more important whole.
Nevertheless the imaginary state of the
Laws
is both more egalitarian and, except in religious aspects, more moderate than that of the Republic. Though the officials form a temporary ruling class, they are selected mainly by election, coupled with subsequent tests, and sometimes by lot from the main citizen body: there are no longer three castes purportedly in accordance with three natural kinds, though slavery is unequivocally condoned (the
Republic
is unclear on this point). All citizens are to receive the same basic education, including all females, and the restricted communism of the
Republic
is abandoned; everyone is to live within their family unit and possess a limited amount of private property.
It is important to stress, too, that for Plato the training in the civic virtues is not just social engineering for the sake of stability, but an attempt to educate the individual to love and wish to do what is true and fine. The good life is always objective for Plato and he always believes that it is the main task of the state to promote this good life for its citizens: he certainly desires stability, but only the stability of the good regime (this is admittedly made easier for him in that he believes all bad regimes to be inherently lacking in stability). Hence in the
Laws
the dispositional training of the child is not conceived as an attempt to stifle reason, but, as in the
Republic
, it is seen as the necessary introduction to it. This is shown by the novel and extremely important requirement that each law be preceded by a lengthy attempt rationally to persuade the citizens of its goodness. The laws must undoubtedly rule, but obedience to them should ideally be voluntary and intelligent.
AH