ABSTRACT
This chapter assesses the processes and prospects of reactionary versus revolutionary change in Zimbabwe-Rhodesia in an analysis of the state of the goal attainment system of that society, including its legitimation, integrative, adaptive, and goal attainment subsystems. It focuses on an assessment of the forces operative in each subsystem and interchange for and against a system dominated and directed by three types of governing coalitions: settler dominant, Zimbabwean neo-colonial, and Zimbabwean revolutionary and the Rhodesian Front's failure to secure racial supremacy. The United Federal Party lost European and African support because of weaknesses endemic in its established elitist mechanisms of political integration. The political or goal attainment system is analytically divided into four internal functional subsystems: pattern socialization and control, adaptive, integrative, and goal attainment. Legitimation by the pattern socialization and control subsystem within the political system is achieved either through the operation of institutionalized decision making rules for politically relevant actors, or in more tenuous ways through charismatic leadership.
