The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics (89 page)

 
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See
right to life
.

 
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One of a number of words including,
inter alia
, ‘growth’, ‘development’, and ‘change’, which imply a natural alteration of system or structure through time. ‘Evolution’, however, has been given the quite specific meaning of a gradual diversification of species over time through the action of natural selection. Yet even Darwin , the joint author of the theory of natural selection with Alfred Russel Wallace, was very reluctant to use the word evolution. For most of his life he preferred, instead, to talk of transmutation, hence the famous transmutation notebooks in which the theory of evolution by natural selection was first advanced. And, prior to the popularization of Darwinism, it was common to stick closely to classical usages deriving from the Latin verb
evolvere
, literally to unfold or disclose, the substantive form,
evolutio
, referring to the unfolding and reading of a scroll. The word evolution was not regularly and systematically used in a recognizably modern context until the debate between evolutionists and epigenists in the early eighteenth century. And, as has been suggested about
social Darwinism
, despite the immense prestige attaching to modern evolutionary theory and to the idea of species variance, the biology of natural selection entailed nothing uniform either for sociological method or for specific political doctrine. There is not a single political doctrine appropriate to natural selection and the idea of evolution itself inspired many different creeds and many different methodologies, who used the inspiration of evolution not just in contrasting but also in competing ways.
JH 

 
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Branch of sociology which sees most social interaction as exchange from which both, or all, parties benefit. The idea is derived from anthropology, and is parallel to the idea of Pareto improvement in economics; sociologists in this tradition have therefore for practical purposes become indistinguishable from
rational choice
analysts from other disciplines.

 
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A quantitative relationship which expresses the worth of one commodity in terms of another commodity. For instance, if one pair of shoes can be exchanged for two chairs then the exchange value of a pair of shoes is two chairs and the exchange value of two chairs is a pair of shoes. When these exchange ratios are expressed in a money form (2 chairs = £40) then exchange value is the price of a particular commodity. From
Aristotle
, who was the first to develop the concept, to the Classical Economists such as Smith and Ricardo, the main problem lay in trying to discover the determinants of a commodity's exchange value. Utility, scarcity, and production costs of labour and capital were some of the solutions suggested. These debates culminated with the contribution of
Marx
who argued that exchange value was not an expression of the labour time embodied in an article, as Ricardo had asserted, but rather the ‘form’ taken by ‘value’ in exchange. ‘Value’ itself is the socially necessary labour time of society expended on a commodity: that is, a portion of the labour time of society as a whole, which cannot be discovered until the commodity has been put on the market for exchange. This implied that the exchange of one commodity for another was a social relationship between people which ‘appeared’ as a quantitative relationship between things, that is, commodities. Outside of Marxism, however, orthodox theorists ignore the social basis of exchange and see exchange value simply as an expression of price which is determined by the dictates of supply and demand.
IF 

 
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The branch of government concerned with the execution of policy. Three types of executive may be distinguished.
Authoritarian executives
vary in form according to the circumstances in which they were created and developed, but are distinctive by virtue of their powers being constrained only by the limits of the will of their members and the limits of the force at their disposal to impose that will on subject peoples. The presidential executive of the United States, which has developed in spite of the United States Constitution, is composed of ministers and senior officials appointed by and headed by the President. The President has ultimate say on the policies advocated by the executive branch. However, following the separation of powers principle, presidential authority is constrained by a separately elected congress and by an independent judiciary whose duty it is to see that executive action is not contrary to the articles of the Constitution. The parliamentary executive, typified by the United Kingdom, is based upon the principle of cabinet government. In this ministers are appointed and headed by a prime minister but all executive decisions are collectively made and members of cabinet are collectively answerable to the legislature from which they are drawn and whose continued support they need to stay in office.
In practice the focus of executive decision-making both within presidential and parliamentary systems is more diverse than this would suggest. Presidential government is marked by the decentralization of decision-making within the executive branch, and by a reliance on congressional support. Analysts have observed the importance of iron triangles of executive agencies, congressional committees, and key interest groups, agreement between which is crucial to the effective formulation and implementation of policy. Such networks are highly fragmented between different policy areas, making policy co-ordination difficult if not impossible. Presidential power is greatest in the initial period of a new incumbent's tenure when public opinion may be mobilized on the back of election victory euphoria to the attainment of key election pledges. At other times presidential initiative is concentrated on the framing of the annual budget and the prosecution of foreign policy, success in which against potential opposition in Congress is again dependent upon mobilization of public opinion and successful relations with congressional leaders. Significant impediments to presidential success have been the tendency for a President to be faced with a congress dominated by the rival party and for both parties to exhibit poor cohesion in policy aims, meaning that even a Democrat President working with a Democrat-controlled Congress will find it difficult to achieve success. Of course, policy initiatives originating in Congress may also be, and frequently have been, blocked by the President. The incoherence of executive authority in practice continues to provide grounds for believing that, particularly in domestic policy, effective government has been sacrificed to the preservation of the separation of powers principle underpinning the Constitution.
Parliamentary systems of government are also marked by a considerable range of executive decision-making foci, even in the United Kingdom. Many decisions are indeed taken by the cabinet, or cabinet committees in the name of the cabinet. However, with the growth of government, considerable executive authority has also been exercised by individual ministers at departmental level, or senior officials acting in their name; ministers whose remit cover more than one department of government; two ministers, generally one from a spending department and one from the Treasury, who bilaterally agree upon policy; more than two ministers from different departments who have a common concern which need not be put up to the Cabinet; and party business managers, who may wield significant influence over the Prime Minister. Where policy is decided at departmental level by ministers or officials it is also common to find selected interest groups being invited into the decision-making process either formally or informally. The role of political advisers has increased since the 1960s. The rapid turnover in ministerial appointments, which means that few ministers occupy the same position for more than two years, contrasts with the permanence of the civil servants. Hence, it may be suggested that if executive government is not highly fragmented, then it may be highly departmentalist. Those analysts who in turn view the senior civil service as highly cohesive in its strategic aims may go further and say that in practice real executive authority lies with unelected officials,
Solutions to the problems of executive government in liberal democracies rest uneasily upon a reliance on institutional modernization from above and greater opportunities for citizen participation from below. Whilst executives work in an age of big government they will continue to face the inevitable tensions between a small group of elected individuals attempting to control executive authority in a manner accountable to citizens and the limited capacity of those individuals to carry out executive government efficiently.
JBr