Sources of Administrative Behavior: Some Soviet and Western European Comparisons

It is hardly surprising that most investigations of Soviet bureaucracy have emphasized the unique aspects of that system rather than its relation to broader problems of administration. Yet the importance of Soviet experience makes a beginning in comparative analysis highly desirable. The purpose of this article is to identify some (by no means all) of the ways in which Soviet administrative behavior resembles or differs from administrative behavior in Western Europe, which is assumed here to be the norm of administration in a politically and economically modernized society. Where Soviet and Western European administrative behavior coincide, it is assumed that the behavior arises from requirements of the economically modernized societies which prevail in both the USSR and Western Europe at present. Where administrative behavior differs in the two areas, tentative explanations are sought in (1) the circumstance that the Soviet economy has become modernized more recently and more rapidly than the economy in Western Europe; and (2) the difference between the Communist political system and the pluralistic systems prevailing in Western Europe.