Background
Moisey Ostrogorski was born in 1854 in Grodno Governate, Russian Empire (now Belarus). His father Yakov Moiseevich Ostrogorsky was a director of the Grodno Jewish female school.
(Democracy and the Organization of Political Parties, orig...)
Democracy and the Organization of Political Parties, originally published in 1902, represented the first serious attempt to analyze the consequences of democratic suffrage by a comparative analysis of political systems. As such, Ostrogorski's two-volume study of the party system in Britain and the United States exerted profound influence on the subsequent writings of Max Weber and Robert Michels. A descriptive analyst of the party system in these two countries, Ostrogorski developed concepts and methods that anticipated by nearly half a century those later used by American and British political scientists. The core of Ostrogorski's analysis is a detailed history of the rise of and changes within the party system in Britain and the United States, the first nations to introduce mass suffrage. While the emphasis of Democracy and the Organization of Political Parties is on the similar trends in the political parties of both countries, Ostrogorski also showed concern with the sources of differences between them. Seeking to explain these variations, he suggested a number of fundamental hypotheses about these two societies that continue to be of relevance today. Lipset's substantial introduction places Ostrogorski's work within its historical context and assesses Ostrogorski's impact and influence on both his contemporaries and on later political scientists.
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1902
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Moisei Ostrogorsky
historian jurist political scientist sociologist
Moisey Ostrogorski was born in 1854 in Grodno Governate, Russian Empire (now Belarus). His father Yakov Moiseevich Ostrogorsky was a director of the Grodno Jewish female school.
Ostrogorsky studied law at Saint Petersburg State University. In the 1880s, he went to Paris and studied at the Free school of Political Sciences (Ecole libre de sciences politiques) until 1885, where he wrote his dissertation “The origins of universal suffrage” (1885). A distinguished student, his interest in Politics soon become clear and he integrated the Working Group on Public and Private Law where he could improve his studies on the organization of the American political parties. In 1887 he presented three conferences on this subject, which were published in the Annales de l'École Libre des Sciences Politiques. He produced histories of Russia that were used in schools and, as a result of his studies in Paris, wrote in French a treatise on the rights of women in public law in 1892.
While staying in Saint Petersburg, Ostrogorsky worked for the Russian justice ministry. In the 1880s he went to Paris, and whilst in France Ostrogorsky imbibed French political thought, which was distrustful of an all-powerful State, from thinkers such as Comte, Durkheim, Tocqueville, Saint Simon and Proudhon.
He traveled to the United States and Great Britain, where he spent many years. He studied political parties there, which became his major scholarly concern. In 1902, he published “Democracy and the Organization of Political Parties” (originally in French), which compared the political system of the two nations. Having returned to Russia, Ostrogorsky was elected to the first Duma in 1906 and played a major role in the caucus of the Constitutional Democratic Party, representing Grodno province. At the plenary session he delivered a speech on the Bialystok outrages.
As a political activist, he organized in Grodno the first "primaries" in the Russian Empire, which then included not only Belarus, but also Poland, Finland and the Baltic countries. "Primaries" were held on January 6, 1907, they were attended by about 1,400 people from about 2,000 people who had the right to vote.
Ostrogorsky left politics after the Duma was dissolved during the Russian Revolution. At that period, he was in London as a delegate from the Duma at an interparliamentary conference. After the dissolution of the Duma, he published a book "Activities of Ostrogorsky in the First State Duma" (1906). He did not return to politics any more, for some time he lived abroad. As a political thinker, he was first recognized in the West, then in Russia. Ostrogorsky has been quite influential on the political thought of the 20th century. After leaving politics, he taught at the Psychoneurological Institute in St. Petersburg. As a teacher, he supported the Grodno Pedagogical Society for many years. They even elected him an honorary member in 1913.
(Democracy and the Organization of Political Parties, orig...)
1902(Democracy and the Organization of Political Parties, orig...)
(This work has been selected by scholars as being cultural...)
Chronology of Russian history (1872)
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He considered himself a Liberal and was fascinated with the idea of a regime that regarded the People as the most important political actor. Ostrogorsky suggested the pathological tendencies of democratic mass parties toward bureaucratic-oligarchic organization, a theme that has been developed by his successors. He made the first major effort at a comparative analysis of political systems through his studies of the United States and Great Britain, including a detailed and authoritative account of the party systems in the two societies. Finally, he offered valuable hypotheses about electoral behaviour and the formation of opinion.
Ostrogorsky truly believed that within the Democratic System the People was the most important political actor as it would be them to have the Power in their hands as a result of the continuous extension of the universal suffrage (ballot). And, in fact, by the end of the 20th century, the political parties started to open its doors to a continuously increased number of people. Nevertheless, Ostrogorsky was forced to conclude that, in opposition to his first impressions, that same “Power of the People, by the People and for the People” was really concentrated in the hands of a minority which also had, effectively, taken that Power to assume control over the organizational machine of the political party and, as a consequence, of the future of the society as a whole.
Therefore, he found that in Democracy, the main actor was not the People but his representatives within the political machine: the bosses, the henchmen, and the boys. Through the analysis of the democratic functioning in articulation with the political parties, he was able to conclude, after long and carefully methodological explanations that there were several serious problems capable of condemn the spirit and practice of Democracy. In practical terms, Ostrogorsky’s analysis contributed to the identification of political machine elite, which had the capacity to concentrate and control the Political Power in all dimensions.
Ostrogorsky argued that much of the problem is responsibility of the individual’s irresponsibility. Each of the citizens let his sovereign power in the hands of someone that he barely knew, an intermediary who was supposed to act as a speaker and defendant of the will, interests and opinion of each and of all citizens, of the People in the end. But the truth is that such supposition gave way to the irresponsibility of each of the parts. The first because it was like as if he didn’t want to know what was being done in his name and affecting his own life with its consent and legitimating, and the former, because he betrayed the public interest and that of the majority he was supposed to represent, using the Public Goods in his own and exclusive benefit and the Spoils System to pay the political favors and to create, expand and maintain a machine which most visible contribution is the degradation of public life and Democracy.
But, the main objective seems to be the expansion of this system to the entire world. As in the big corporations, the scales economies can only be achieved if one has many ways and places where to send and role the products (influences) and services, although inside a restricted and closed circle, which will ensure that the status quo will not be endangered by an outside and unexpected effect. So − like the output in the transnational corporations−, in the supranational politics, the elite assure that outsiders will not take its place.
Ostrogorsky’s analysis provides many clues on how to assure the maintenance of the citizens’ representation. So, in that way, it contributes to minimize many of the “theory and action” disparities he was able to identify and explore in his studies. Moreover, those clues are to be used, according to Ostrogorsky’s proposal, in order to transform the practice of Democracy a better “exercise” for all. In fact, along his work, we find that he believes in Democracy although he thinks that the model based in the universal suffrage, which has been being applied since the end of the 19th century, does not assure the due representation of the People.
That is the general reason why he purpose as a general solution the existence of temporary political parties as he considered that the existence of a permanent organization, which tends to transform the political party in one institutionalized social construction, is the cause of all (or, at least, of the majority of) the negative behaviors that are associated with the role he play within society.