POLITICS AND POLICIES

Fbio Wanderley Reis I The study of public policies is one of the areas in which political scientists have found reasons for hoping that they might be able to emulate economists with regard to rigor and precision. Accustomed to dealing with rather fuzzy issues inherited from an old tradition of political philosophy, many specialists in political science have tended to see in the focus on public policy a promising turn that might lead their discipline to approach the long sought scientific status. The fact that the field of public policy appears readily amenable to the application of such seemingly "hard" techniques as systems analysis, cost-benefit analysis, program budgeting, and so on, would seem congenial to such views. From another point of view, the surge of public policy studies may be linked to the objective of achieving a new balance in the amount of effort devoted either to the input or the output side of the political process. Though the distinction between such sides is phrased in different ways (input vs. output, processes vs. policies, policy-processes vs. policycontents), it is sometimes argued that political science has traditionally been chiefly concerned with the input aspects of political life, and that time has now come for a shift in emphasis in favor of its output aspects. The expectation of scientific rigor in the study of public policy is to some extent based precisely on the view that outputs are more directly susceptible to
Presented to the International Seminar in Public Policy Analysis, Rio de Janeiro, Escola Brasileira de Administrao Pblica, May 1975, as a contribution to the topic Public policies, social stratification and patterns of development.

rational evaluation than the struggles and stressful interactions of "demands" and "supports" that make up the input side of the political system. Whatever the accuracy of the above as a description of the views and expectations of those who work in the field of public policy (and I am aware that it does not do justice to much of what is done in this field), it does point to what I am inclined to see as the basic problem to be faced by those who wish to approach the study of public policy as political scientists. Is there a special character to the public policy approach that may be seen as compatible with the distinctive concerns of political science? Does the emphasis on the outputs warrant the expectation, for political science as such, of significant gains either in the understanding of important dimensions of the political process or in rigor and precision? Or would the success itself of the study of public policy by political science require that any pretense of distinctiveness be abandoned, and that the facts of the area be examined in the very light of the old and "fuzzy" issues of political science? Moreover, would there be any way of doing precisely that in a rigorous manner? Such questions seem clearly in order in a discussion topic which links problems of public policy to such themes as social stratification and development. They seem all the more appropriate in view of the growing interest for the study of problems of public policy in Brazil and generally in Latin America of which this seminar and the one recently held in Buenos Aires are expressions and of the political context within which this interest arises. The wave of political authoritarianism in the continent, whose peculiarities with regard to a previous authoritarian tradition are perhaps paradigmatically exemplified by the sophistication and endurance
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of the Brazilian "model", brings to the foreground of political discussions some of the old and fundamental problems that have been dealt with by political philosophers and analysts. Can we expect from the incipient surge of public policy studies in our countries significant contributions to the understanding of the important political issues that confront us? II The social sciences are presently involved in a search for new ways that is of crucial interest for political science and for its relationships with the study of pxiblic policy. I refer to some recent attempts at redefinition of the relationships between economics and the other social sciences, particularly political science. The puzzling aspect of the corresponding developments is revealed by the fact that the very same label, "new political economy", is claimed by two distinct movements which, in a sense, run in opposite directions. In one of them, which has to do with the efforts of specialists associated with the so called "new left", the use of that label is meant to suggest the "politicization of economics".1 Despite the heterogeneity of the movement and the diversity of themes that may be related to it, as far as its position with regard to the study of econornic problems is concerned the basic thrust of the argument can be described as a movement away from the abstractions of "traditional" or neo-classical economics and as an effort to incorporate social and political variables into the analysis. The position involves a certain aversion to theoretical concerns as such, and a
1

For a convenient critical presentation of the economic views of the new left, see Assar Lindbeck, The Political Economy of the New Left: An Outsiders View (New York: Harper & Row, 1971).

willingness to substitute for them the effort at accurately rendering the "concrete" social and political environment, conditions and consequences of economic activities. The distributive and redistributive aspects of the behavior of economic actors and variables, as well as problems of power and its interference with the operation of the economy, are brought into the central focus of research. But the same label is also used by a different group of professional economists to indicate rather what might be termed the "economicization of political science". Distrustful of the long term products of the numerous "frameworks" and "conceptual schemes", of a rather definitional nature, which have so far resulted from the theoretical work of political scientists themselves, this group is committed to the creation, in the words of Gordon Tullock, of a strict theory of politics of an affirmative and propositional nature.2 In trying to build such a theory, the characteristic outlook and instruments of economics more precisely, of micro-economics are resorted to. The chief assumption is that economics as a scientific discipline does not concern itself with a particular kind of goods or transactions distinguished by reference to their intrinsic nature, but rather with any kind of situation or process where a problem of scarcity is involved, which makes economic theory tantamount to a theory of rational behavior as such, applicable to whatever arena (whether it be conventionally called "economic", "political", "social") where we have a problem of employing scarce means for the attainment of any objective whatsoever. Accordingly, this group of "new political economists" have based their theoretical work in the field of politics on a conception of
2

Gordon Tullock, "Theoretical Forerunners", Appendix 2 to James M. Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1962).

political actors that reproduces in the political arena the homo economicus of neo-classical economists, characterized by the efficient handling of the conditions offered by his environment so as to maximize the fulfillment of his own interests. For convenience, let us refer to these two movements as "political economy I" and "political economy II". My point in relating the public policy approach to such different ways of of conceiving the relationships between economics and political science is to stress certain ambiguities in the appreciation of recent developments that are of relevance to the study of public policy and to my central concerns in this paper. From a certain standpoint, which has to do with considerations of efficiency and rationality, the public policy approach would seem to exhibit greater affinity with the latter, theoreticolly oriented political economists (political economy II) than with the political economy of the new left (political economy I). It is suggestive to observe, for instance, that in a paper of a few years ago by William Mitchell, which seeks to contrast "conventional" political science or political sociology with political economy II, the basic questions to be dealt with by the latter are largely phrased in terms of precisely those issues that specialists in public policy have been studying, including the volume and composition of the public budget, the magnitude of public goods and services produced, and so on.3 Moreover, this affinity would also seem underscored by the stress on efficiency and rationality that marks the "hard" techniques mentioned above, of frequent use by policy students.

William G. Mitchell, "A Forma da Teoria Poltica Vindoura: Da Sociologia Poltica Economia Poltica", in Seymour M. Lipset (ed.), Poltica e Cincias Sociais (Rio de Janeiro: Zahar Editores, 1972), p. 153.

An important overtone of this approximation of public policy to political economy II can be shown to have two aspects. First, there is a tendency to look at the problems that have traditionally been dealt with by conventional political science or political sociology as the locus of irrationality in social and political life, as the site where non-rational forces and behaviors manifest themselves. Second, this trait of irrationality tends to be linked to the stressful and conflict-laden elements of political life that have frequently been emphasized by the representatives of a long and important tradition of political thought, whereas a correspondence is established between rationality, on the one hand, and the elements of cohesion and consensus in society, on the other. This is clearly seen, for instance, in the above mentioned paper by Mitchell, who explicitly sees a bridge between political sociology and political economy II, with its stress on rationality, in the fact that "more recently, political sociology has followed the leadership of Lipset, Parsons and Kornhauser in the emphasis laid on consensus", as against the view of politics as a product of "nonrational forces" to be found in the stress (on the part of such authors as "Mosca, Marx, Pareto, Weber and Michels") on the aspects of inequality, struggle, super- and subordination, divergence of interests and the like.4 Within a context of more direct concern with public policy, this tendency can also be illustrated by reference to a paper by Vernon Van Dyke, where, after reviewing a number of attempts at grasping "the nature of the political", the author arrives at the following definition: ...we call a policy or decision nonpolitical when it is reached (or at least we think it is reached) by the rational application of relevant knowledge on the basis of agreed values or principles; and we call a

Ibid., pp. 156-7.

policy or decision political when it results from bargaining or struggle or arbitrary desire or judgement...5 One can easily grasp the reasons for this tendency to link the rational with the consensual from the point of view of the specialist in public policy. Dealing with the idea of efficacy or rationality of a certain behavior or policy requires that the point of view of a certain actor be adopted, so that one may be able clearly to establish the objectives of the policy in question and then to discuss those problems concerning the conditions for their adequate implementation within a given environment. The characteristic outlook of public policy studies tends inevitably to emphasize the global or overall efficacy of policies or decisions, even as one keeps in mind the diversity of social agents, categories or interest foci to which such decisions may be of relevance. If, then, one has to consider problems of rationality from the point of view of society as a whole, one is naturally led to stress those factors that permit looking at the relationships between those different agents or interest foci as being relationships of a variable sum type, in which all stand to gain if only the correct (rational) decisions are made. One is thus led to choose the point of view of that actor which may be taken to express the common objective of general maximization. The state, or some particular agency of the latter as the case may be, is the obvious candidate, and there naturally emerges the tendency to favor those dimensions of the structure and behavior of the state by reference to which it can be seen as the instrument of shared objectives, to the detriment of the traits in which it appears rather as the result or expression of the struggle between opposed interests.

Vernon Van Dyke, "Process and Policy as Focal Concepts in Political Research", in Austin Ranney (ed.), Political Science and Public Policy (Chicago: Markham Publishing Co., 1968), pp. 33-4.

What we have, thus, is that much of what is done in the study of public policy can be directly linked to a utilitarian tradition of thought, to which one is most naturally led, as suggested by John Rawls in a recent book, by adopting "for society as a whole the principie of rational choice for one man.6 The state, duely assisted by the policy analyst, assumes the place of the irnpartial spectator capable of sympathetic identification in "carrying out the required organization of the desires of all persons into one coherent system of desire".7 On this conception of society, says Rawls, separate individuals are thought as so many different lines along which rights and duties are to be assigned and scarce means of satisfaction allocated in accordance with rules so as to give the greatest fulfillment of wants. The nature of the decision made by the ideal legislator is not, therefore, materially different from that of an entrepreneur deciding how to maximize his profit by producing this or that commodity, or that of a consumer deciding how to maximize his satisfactions by the purchase of this or that collection of goods. In each case there is a single person whose system of desires determines the best allocation of limited means, The correct decision is essentially a question of efficient administration.8 It may well be that utilitarianism and the perspective of global efficiency are precisely what is needed for ensuring the distinctiveness of public policy analysis as a field of study, and we can find in the literature explicit attempts to define the basic features of the latter which clearly suggest that. This is the case, for instance, with Yehezkel Dror's approach to policy analysis, where this term explicitly
6

John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), pp. 26-7. Ibid., p. 27. Ibid., p. 27.

acquires the sense of "a prescriptive and heuristic aid for the Identification of preferable policy alternatives".9 The price to be paid for this, however, is clearly the depoliticization of the study of public policy, in which case the choice becomes one between doing policy analysis or doing political science. III Does this position amount to claiming the rights of the irrational, or to accepting the above illustrated view which sees irrationality as the distinctive mark of the political? This is by no means so. For, despite Mitchells suggestions, there is no special affinity between favoring consensus, on the one hand, and resorting to the assumption of rationality in trying to build an abstract and propositional theory of politics, such as is the case with political economy II, on the other. On the contrary, the assumptions on which are based the theoretical efforts of political economy II nave their roots precisely in the contractualist tradition of political thought, which posits the divergence of interests among individual agents capable of rationality as its point of departure.10 The aim of preserving or recovering the properly political dimension, therefore, does not in any way entail the proposition that we should stick to the old ond loose conceptual schemes of political science or political sociology and give up the attempt
9

Yehezkel Dror, Design for Policy Sciences (New York: American Elsevier Publishing Co.,

1971), p. 55 fn.
10

For an explicit elaboration of the contractualist roots of political economy II in one of the major works in this field, as well as an explicit rejection of the organic (utilitarian) view of the state, see Buchanan and Tullock, The Calculus of Consent, op. cit., pp. 11 ff., and especially Appendix 1 to the same volume, under the title "Marginal Notes on Reading Political Philosophy", by James M. Buchanan, pp. 317 ff. For the contrast between contractualism and utilitarianism with regard to their implications for conceptions of social justice, see Rawls, A Theory of Justice, op. cit.

to build a more assertive and propositional theory of politics, which seems to require the assumption of rationality so that it may be able to achieve a logical form permitting rigorous theoretical predictions. More bluntly, my personal inclination is wholly sympathetical to the economic approach to political theory, despite the flavor of "imperialism" on the part of economists, since I feel that the reference to scarcity and hence to rationality does provide a unifying clue to social science in general. The point to be stressed, however, is that what is characteristic of politics as distinct from the subject-matter of econornics (or from the general field of economics, to be consequent with regard to the above) is that political scarcity, or that form of scarcity that is relevant politically, has to do with the interference of the objectives (or preferences or interests) of a plurality of people or groups of people with one another. Thus, whereas we can properly speak of an economic aspect to the behavior of the lonely Robinson Crusoe on his island, we only have a political problem when Friday appears on the scene, and to the extent that Crusoe's goals or preferences have now somehow to take account of Friday's ones. To use the words of a recent attempt at consolidating and systematizing the theory that has lately been developed in the field of political economy II, We start with people, who, for our purposes, are bundles of opinions about nature and of preferences about the alternatives nature offers them. (...) Some of the preferences in each bundle concern essentially private things (...). Such private preferences are typically of small relevance to politics, though of primary relevance to economics. (...) Other preferences in the bundles, however, are essentially public in the sense that the realization of them concerns not only their holders but also other people. In this event, the realization of ones preference may depend crucially on the denial of another's chance to realize his. (...) The preferences that involve other people in their realization, and especially the preferences that are realized only by cooperating with

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others or by denying the chances of others to achieve their preferences, are the raw material of politics.11 As the reference to cooperation in this quotation suggests, this approach, which leads to questions concerning the implications for the (rational) implementation of the goals of a certain actor deriving from the existence of other actors with possibly incompatible goals (questions, that is, on what might be termed "the economy of coexistence", i, e., politics), does point to a problem of coordination or organization if one may assume that the actors in question will choose not to live in a state of "war of all against all". In other words, there is always a constitutional problem (a problem of minimizing the externalities that accrue for some from the behavior of others and of achieving, at least ih this sense, the collective good) to be faced, at several levels, by any set of "bundles of preferences" that have to coexist or, what is crucial, by any set of such sets. But this is an important problem in fact, the basic problem of politics and of political science precisely because, to use a perhaps suggestive tautology, the existence and pervasiveness of dissent and of divergent interests makes it something essentially problematic, a problem whose solution is not "naturally" or "spontaneously" forthcoming. If one intends to do political science, therefore and that is the point of this elaboration of notions that may seem trivial to many it would be wholly improper to solve this problem by hypothesis, that is, by simply adopting what we have previously characterized as the utilitarian approach to the study of public policy. If we now turn again to the contrast between the two projects of establishing a "new political economy", the point of the reference to this
11

William H. Riker and Peter C. Ordeshook, An Introduction to Positive Political Theory (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1973), pp. 1-2.

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contrast within the context of a discussion of different ways in which political scientists may approach the study of public policy can perhaps be made clear. To start with, the aversion to theory on the part of political economy I in the interest of getting to the realities of power and social structure is clearly misled. There is no reason to suppose that abstract theorization on the basis of the general assumptions of economic theory (and I mean by this, let it daringly be explicitly said, micro-economics and its neo-classical foundations) cannot, in principle, lead to the adequate treatment of the problems that concern political economy I. But these problems are important ones, and it would be ironic for political scientists to move away from them in the search for rigor through the emphasis on public policy at the very moment in which large numbers of specialists in economics start posing questions that have traditionally been crucial to political science or political sociology. The proposal here advanced of politicizing the study of public policy is thus clearly akin, from a substantive point of view, to the basic concerns of political economy I. The depoliticization of the work of political scientists in the field of public policy would be particularly odd, moreover, to the extent that it might claim being inspired by the aim of resorting to the comparatively powerful instruments of economic analysis. For this claim would be based on a wrong appreciation of the purport of the latter, and another growing number of economists have precisely heen trying to show how strictly political problems might be properly posed and rigorously analysed with the resources of "economic" theory. The recipe, then, would consist in the fusion of the theoretical concerns of political economy II with substantive questions of the sort of those posed by political economy I.

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Looked at from the point of view of the relationships between problems of public decision-making, on the one hand, and of social stratification and patterns of development, on the other, the above views with regard to the proper definition of the subject-matter of political science permit some general statements that may provide adequate guidelines. To phrase them in a lexicon whose kinship to the dialectic between the divergence of interests and the problem of cooperation will perhaps be clear, the problem of the production of power for the attainment of collective goals, which may be seen as the chief problem of "technical" public policy analysis if "power" is given wide enough a meaning, only acquires significance from the point of view of political science because it is related in a complex way to the question of the distribution of power. This proposition is relevant to issues concerning social stratification not only because any "solution" to the problem of production of power at the level of the whole society or polity is at once conditioned by and likely to have important consequences for the distribution of power, which clearly leads to questions of social stratification. Another related aspect has to do with the fact that the problem of production of power itself arises not only at the level of the polity as a whole, but also at the level of collective subsets, among which those corresponding to social classes as potential foci of collective action are especially important. This, of course, has obvious points of contact with the notion of interest aggregation, and leads to the question of the ways in which structural and socio-psychological constraints placed upon interest aggregation at the level of classes either favor or hinder certain decision-making and public-policy patterns, which in turn react upon the power-production potential of different social classes. Strictly in these terms, this is an area of problems that has not received much attention in the theoretical works of political economy II, though much of what has been done with regard to problems phrased in different
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ways is certainly pertinent and might probably be developed so as to take account of those aspects that are peculiar to the area (such as, for instance, some of the propositions of William Riker's The Teory of Political Coalitions).12 My chief concern here, however, is not the question of how to develop an adequate theory of politics by means of an economic approach, which has been brought up only with the aim of trying to disentangle some confusions in the attempt to link the study of public policy to this approach. From the point of view of how to deal, in a political vein, with the study of public policy proper, the above formulation seems to me to have some consequences to which I now turn, referring the problem specifically to the contemporary Brazilian context. IV In a language familiar to public policy specialists, the basic proposition might perhaps be stated by saying that the study of public policy by political scientists within the present Brazilian context should be chiefly oriented toward what Robert Salisbury has termed "constitutional" policies, that is, those having to do with "the structural characteristics of the authoritative decisional system, i. e., government".13 The reference specifically to this definition might be a bit misleading, though, for my emphasis, as is the case also with Salisbury's own elaboration of the possible lines along which to orient the study of constitutional policies, is rather on the complex linkages between government and to make it short "society", or the linkages between the input and output sides of the
12

William H. Riker, The Theory of Political Coalitions (New Haven: Yale University Press,

1967).
13

Robert H. Salisbury, "The Analysis of Public Policy: A Search for Theory and Roles", in Ranney (ed.), Political Science and Public Policy, op. cit., p. 154.

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political process as they affect the structural characteristics of government mentioned in the definition. To resort to the sense in which the term "constitutional" was used in the above attempt to define the subject-matter of political science, emphasis is here laid on the stressful search by political actors for a solution to the constitutional problem such as it poses itself at the level of the polity as a whole, as well as on the "rules of the game" that prevail in any given moment both from the point of view of their role as an expression of power relationships and of their implications with regard to the chances that different groups or classes are afforded of fulfilling their respective interests. If one is particularly interested in problems of social stratification, such a focus seems clearly necessary. I would suggest it, however, as a focus destined to guide the study of public policy in Brazil in a much more general way. This proposal, as I see it, is wholly in agreement with the view advanced in a recent paper by Guillermo O'Donnell and Philippe Schmitter (where, moreover, it is presented as expressing a clear consensus of the recent Buenos Aires conference on public policy mentioned above), to wit, that public policy should be seen from the point of view of "the state in action".14 This perspective, in my view, implies that specific policies or sets of policies that may be taken for study be considered as so many different indicators in an effort at achieving a diagnosis of the Brazilian state. A further consequence is that the study of public policy is not worth the while of political scientists if it does not at least aim at adding in rigor and precision to the general sort of knowledge we now have of the specifically political aspects of the

14

Guillermo O'Donnell and Philippe C. Schmitter, "Work Plan for the Study of Public Policy in Latin America" (mimeo), p. 2.

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authoritarian experiment now going on, its efforts and hesitations with regard to its own "institutionalization", and its prospects of evolution. A preliminary step to be taken in preparation for such an undertaking would be to set up a map or taxonomy of dimensions or areas of public policy, or of the forms by which the state relates itself to society. A convenient attempt in this direction can already be found in the paper by O'Donnell and Schmitter mentioned above. Such an attempt is largely parallel, as far as the chief categories resorted to are concemed, to several previous theoretical efforts in the study of patterns of development of the modern nation-state, of which Dankwart Rustow's distinction between the problems of authority, identity and equality is an example that might do just as well as a guiding general framework if the conditicns required for the "solution" of each of these "problems" and the implications of the relationships among the several dimensions are fully explored.15 However that may be, something that may need correction if one chooses to start from O'Donnell and Schmitter's framework is the comparatively little emphasis it lays on those aspects that correspond to Rustows problem of equality, which concerns basically the degrees and forms in which the "popular sectors" come to participate in the socioeconomic and political system. Having in mind that the "new" authoritarian Brazilian state represents above all a reaction to the problem posed by the emergence of the popular sectors to social and political participation, this dimension is an obviously crucial one, quite apart from its centrality to the discussion topic to which this paper is
15

See Dankwart A. Rustow, A World of Nations: Problems of Political Modernization (Washington, U.C-. : The Brookings Institution, 19/).

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supposed to contribute. Along this vein, one would be led to emphasize the study of those policies directly related to maintaining and assuring viability to the authoritarian and exclusive features themselves of the regime: those having to do with its coercive and intelligence apparatuses; with the control of organs of representation of classes or social categories; with the relationship between the military and civilian groups (politicians, parties, trade-unions, entrepreneurs); with the relationships between resorting to instruments of direct coercion and to instruments of propagandistic and symbolic manipulation and legitimation; and so on. Particularly interesting, perhaps, within the sphere of problems of legitimation of the authoritarian regime, would be to explore the actual occurrence of some possibly implausible patterns of relationships between purposes and effects of alternative policies: as electoral results and some other evidence suggest, the regime seemingly enjoyed greater acquiescence while it self-righteously asserted its authoritarian face than when it started concerning itself with such things as economic redistribution and political opening. Rather than trying to set up lists of specific problems that might be dealt with, however, I shall conclude by elaborating a little on an aspect which exemplifies the kind of questions that should orient the study of concrete forms or types of public policy, providing as it does a particularly neat access to the problem of the way in which the state apparatus connects itself with society. Being related to the legitimation problem suggested above, the basic questions might be phrased as follows: How come that the innermost circles themselves of an authoritarian regime like the one we have in Brazil are led to bring up the theme of political opening? Once the latter is proposed as an explicit objective of the "system" itself, which factors explain the
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specific forms assumed by subsequent developments, characterized by a mixture of specific decisions or policies that both favor and contradict that objective? What can we expect to have as a probable outcome of the process thus set up? With due reservations to account for the role of factors of a circumstantial or even personal nature with regard to the saliency achieved by the theme of political opening under Geisel, one way of tackling the problem that might be rewarding as a research guide would be to look at the dilemmas faced by the military corporation as its role in the political process of the country shifts from that of a sort of "moderating" power to full governmental responsibility. Inter alia, a way of conceptualizing these dilemmas is provided by Alessandro Pizzornos statement of the dialectic between systems of solidarity and systems of interests".16 The very success of the military in excluding "civil society" from access to the crucial political decisions and in restricting the ambit of participation in such decisions largely to the military corporation tends to change the latter, from the cohesive body it was while it represented one relevant actor among others in the previously open political game (a "solidarity system" ), into a "system of interests" where strong incentives to internal competition and risks of dissension are present. As a consequence, any project of institutionalization or regularization of the political process within the context of indisputable predominance of the military becomes problematic, which is illustrated by the crisis potential to be found in every presidential change, even many years after the 1964 take-over.

16

Alessandro Pizzorno, "Introduzione Allo Studio della Partecipazione Politica", Quaderni di Sociologia, 15, 3-4 (JuIy-December, 1966), 235-288.

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The way out of the problem would thus seem to be the expansion of the sphere within which the political process takes place or of the number and diversity of relevant political actors, which would both help enhance internal cohesion by providing the element of contrast and lower the stakes of internal competition. This involves, however, the obvious risk that certain factions to be found within the interest system of the military corporation may seek to get support from sectors of civil society and thus to strengthen themselves to the detriment of others, which tends to be seen as a serious danger to be avoided. (It is suggestive to observe in this regard, as recently noted by Carlos Castello Branco in his newspaper column of Jornal do Brasil, that President Geisel, for all his alleged concern with political opening, has not undertaken any actual articulation with civilian sectors or forces that might help achieve the goal.) The crux of the dilemma, therefore, lies in the fact that any attempt at achieving the positive element involved in the project of political opening is likely to arise powerful reactions occasioned by the fear of the risks contained in it. Adding to the complexity of the problem there is the fact that, whereas the basic feature of the authoritarian system is a certain constitutional option concerning the way in which is to take place the incorporation of the popular sectors (or the restrictions to be placed on such an incorporation), the latter cannot but have an important role to fulfill in any strategy of expanding the ambit of the political process, and the above mentioned fear is justified from the point of view of the "system". For the expansive strategy, if it is allowed to follow its "natural" course, will fatally tend to result in a profound redefinition of the present political scene and probably to end up in some form of populism.
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If this is correct, the prospects for the short and medium runs would seem to be either the continuity of the scenery of political rigidity through the interplay of the tendencies described (careful search for political opening as a way out of the difficulties of the "system" as an interest system, followed by "hard" re-making of cohesion); or perhaps some form of single-party system severely controlled from above, which may seem to represent a escape from the horns of the dilemrna by affording the possibility of balancing the fulfillment of the need for both expansion and restriction. Unless, of course, unpredictable circumstances lead to the exasperation of internal competition within the military corporation in such a way that it may result in a deadlock between competing tendencies and thus produce the recourse to external forces and the corresponding expansion of the political process. Admittedly, there is no automatic transition from the level of the above speculations to the selection of specific ways to approach the study of state policies. I submit, however, that the aim of being able to say something non-trivial about interrogations like the ones that are thus posed should define the framework for such a study.

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