GABOR TAMAS RITTERSPORN rests could represent to the stability of the system, even if it is precisely this exclusion which sets up permanent tensions between them and the ruling class and brings about the dissident actions of some of their members. The activity of these intermediary layers takes place in a contradictory context: on the one hand, the unavoidable need to develop techniques and institutions; on the other, that of combatting simultaneously not only the aspects of this development which are likely to provoke or facilitate the defence and rivalry of particular interests but also a frequently very efficient opposition to all attemps at technical and institutional development. Although they constitute a structurally and fonctionally coherent ensemble, the development of industrial, agricultural and administrative techniques and of economic, social, scientific, cultural and political institutions, as well as the evolution of methods and theories of their application, improvement and popularisation, do not fit harmoniously into a coherent, long term social and political programme. These developments and evolutions are fonctions of changes in power relations which result from permanent and practically institutionalised interna! conflicts within the ruling class. Since they are excluded from fondamental political decisions, the middle layers do not have direct access to the institutions in which these conflicts are resolved, but given the crucial importance of their active and skilled co-operation for the execution of strategic decisions, the opposed factions within the ruling class are obliged to win their support. For certain tendencies within the ruling class and for their associates in the middle layers techniques and institutions are only of use for the preservation and consolidation of the social and political positions they have already acquired. These positions can be threatened by the failure of a line of experiment or by the strengthening of their positions by directors and speciaiists who are better versed in new techniques or more capable of controlling new institutions. This is why many directors and specialists are only inclined to experiment when innovation seems to provide the only opportunity of preserving or consolidating their positions. In attempts to widen their local, regional, institutional, sectoral of factional prerogatives or, on the contrary, to reinforce central control and restrain these prerogatives, other tendencies in the ruling class and their associates become proponents of particular technical and institutional innovations. 32
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