ABSTRACT
In terms of the analysis proposed in Chapter 1, the Liberal state and Fascist regime in their different ways can be seen as exercises in state-building which retained the structures of the regulatory state and had only very limited success in developing more sophisticated ways of resolving the state-civil society relationship. The more complex forms which I have typified as issue networks and policy communities only began to develop with the post-war Republican system. But they did so in ways which inherited some of the weaknesses of the past, particularly the anachronistic state apparatus and the divisive representative relationships associated with clientelism. To these, the post-war system brought universal suffrage, a complex party structure, and rapid socio-economic growth, but the impact of these potentially positive innovations was limited by the exclusion of the second largest party from government and by the development of further informal but rigid controls on participation in policy-making. Hence formal politics in and outside Parliament remain expressions of confrontation. This has impeded balanced political growth, and has distorted the ways the state responds to political and civil society. The political system has circumvented this ‘roadblock’ only by dint of some potentially hazardous manoeuvres.
