 | |
| Author | Seymour Martin Lipset |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Political science |
| Publisher | Doubleday & Company |
Publication date | 1960 |
| Media type | Hardback/paperback |
| Pages | 477 |
| ISBN | 0-8018-2522-9 |
| OCLC | 7275560 |
| 306/.2 19 | |
| LC Class | JC423 .L58 1981 |
Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics is a political science book from 1960 by Seymour Martin Lipset.[1]
The book is an influential analysis of the bases of democracy across the world. One of the important sections is Chapter 2: "Economic Development and Democracy." Larry Diamond and Gary Marks argue that "Lipset's assertion of a direct relationship between economic development and democracy has been subjected to extensive empirical examination, both quantitative and qualitative, in the past 30 years. And the evidence shows, with striking clarity and consistency, a strong causal relationship between economic development and democracy."[2] In Chapter V, Lipset analyzed "Fascism"—Left, Right, and Center, and explained that the study of the social bases of different modern mass movements suggests that each major social stratum has both democratic and extremist political expressions. He explained the mistakes of identifying extremism as a right wing phenomenon, and Communism with the left wing phenomenon. He underlined that extremist ideologies and groups can be classified and analyzed in the same terms as democratic groups, i.e., right, left, and center.
The book sold more than 400,000 copies and was translated into 20 languages, including: Vietnamese, Bengali, and Serbo-Croatian.[3]