Аннотация:This paper proposes a general theory of political witch hunts, viewing them as ritual mechanisms for the periodic rejuvenation of collective sentiments in national societies. Ultimate national purposes require not only their worshipers, but also their enemies. When these sacred forces penetrate daily reality, then their opposites-subversives-will also appear in daily institutional life. The corporateness of societies, as expressed in their political system, is theoretically linked to the penetration of transcendent reality into daily life, and a witch-hunting dispersion index is proposed to measure the extent to which subversion is ritually discovered throughout a society's social institutions. The overall rate of witch hunting is also measured. Data on rates of political it-itch hunting between 1950 and 1970 for 39 countries is presented to evaluate the general theoretical argument. The data suggest that as societies politically express more of their corporate national interest they ritually cleanse more institutional areas, as measured by the dispersion index. A long wit/ the representation of the corporate national interest, the overall rate of witch hunting is significantly affected by country size, lev el of economic development and the relative power of the state. The dispersion of uw'itch hunting, on the other hand, is unaffected by these control variables and seems to be a more purely Durkheimian phenomenon.
