Category: Political Science Notes

After reading this article you will learn about the political thought in the 14th and 15th centuries.

Fourteenth and fifteenth centuries are regarded as the last phases of the Middle Ages. Historians and scholars have noticed that during these two centuries political thought underwent spectacular changes.

In the opinion of Hearnshaw—”To the period of an assured institutional church, sitting in calm sovereignty, and regulating human life by a careful accommodation between ideal principle and actual ten­dency, there succeeds a period of sects and of revolution, a period of Spirituals and Lollards and Hussites, a period marked by a conciliar movement against papal sovereignty. To the period of an assured and static society, in which nobility rose high and proud above dependents and serfs, there succeeded a period of villains risings in the country, and turbulent movements of artisans in the towns.”

Radical changes in various aspects of political thought became prominent. Slavery and private property were challenged. Many liberal minded Christians during these two centuries openly revolted against the institution of slavery and private property.

Some of them even went further by saying “private property is a mortal sin”. Rebels refused to accept any compromise on these two institutions. They attacked the church as the initiator of compromise. They said that true Christianity was above any compromise. The genius of Christianity was much wider than the church.

In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the state, which was an emasculated one in the previous centuries, began to gather more and more power. The authority of the church was in the declining condition because of people’s loss of faith on church fathers and their activities and emergence of the state as a new force.

Loss of church’s power changed the entire political scenario of these two centuries. The theory of the fourteenth century was anti-clerical and pro-state. The impressive rise in the power of the state was particularly discernible in France, where the monarch was the undisputed and unchallenged authority in the Christian world and, since he had no intention to be an imperial power, he was the sovereign in the real sense within his own kingdom.

The gradual increase in the power of French kings was strongly supported by all classes and sections of French society. In France a strong and centralized government under the sovereign authority of a powerful king was established auguring the advent of a new age of absolute monarchy. Power of the state far exceeded that of the church. Nation-state assumed a particular shape.

The storm which gathered in the past over the right to impose taxes considerably subsided in the last two centuries of the middle Ages. The king announced that the power to impose taxes fell within the jurisdiction of secular authority and the church had nothing to do with it.

Royal supporters began to increase day-by-day and this strengthened the position of the king. Even a belief which arose was that the Pope could not be regarded as the owner of the church property but simply a steward. This drastically eroded both the prestige and power of the Pope. He remained no longer an unassailable authority in both the temporal and spiritual words.

In the fourteenth century, the church itself was raged by a controversy. Many church people attacked the Pope and other top clergymen for their unreligious activities and attitudes. The ecclesiastical writers also did not hesitate to attack the church authorities.

Moreover, the luxurious living standard and accumulation of wealth were strongly resented by people and ultimately the church was alienated from the rest of the society. This caused the alleviation of the influence which the church exercised in earlier centuries. People’s apathy towards the church became most spectacular towards the end of the.

Fifteenth century and this betokened the advent of a new era and attitude.

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After reading this article you will learn about the classification of rights.

There are three principles, or pro­cedural rules, which regulate the distribution of rights among the members of an organized community: the principle of Liberty, the principle of Equality, and the principle of Frater­nity or Co-operation.

They preside together, and in common, over the whole of the distribution of rights; but we may none the less regard each of the three as having a particular connexion with a particular set or cluster of rights, and as regulating particularly the distribution of rights in that set or cluster.

We may accordingly seek to classify rights under the three heads of Liberty, Equality, and Co-operation. In doing so we shall not only be concerned with the full legal rights which are already recognized and guaranteed by law: we shall also extend our view to include the nascent rights which are being convassed in the process of social thought, and which, as they become a part of the common conviction of the political community, and come to be formally endorsed by the organs of that com­munity, are ultimately turned into legal rights in the full sense of the term.

The reason for this extension of view is that it is necessary to an understanding of that growth of the functions of government which is a feature of our times. It is the growing- pains of rights which cause the growing labours of government.

We may begin our classification under the head of Fraternity or Co-operation, reserving to the end the rights which come under the head of Liberty. The French jurist Duguit, using the term ‘solidarity’ or ‘mutuality’ in lieu of the older term, enumerates three particular rights with which the principle of fraternity is particularly connected— the right of education, the right of public assistance, and the right of employment—and that on this basis he would impose corresponding duties on ‘governing persons’ to provide these rights.

The view of Duguit is suggestive, but it is also extreme. It is too narrowly economic—and too closely connected, at that, with a particular brand of economics—to offer any safe guidance. We shall do better to interpret fraternity in the sense of a general co-operation, which is not merely economic, but as wide as the general life of society; and on this basis we may pro­ceed to argue, that there are two main rights which fall under this head, and two cor­responding functions of government.

The essence of both of the rights is that men need, and ought to enjoy, a common or public equipment of services and resources, which goes beyond the equipment that individual effort and the effort of voluntary groups are able to provide, and which can be provided only by the common co-operation of all.

We may regard this equipment as twofold, or as being both material and mental; and this is why we may hold that it issues in two different rights. The one is the right of persons to enjoy collectively a common or public equipment of material necessities unattainable except by the co-operation of all, and ranging from means of public transport and methods of public sanitation to schemes of national insurance and plans for the national development of national economic resources.

The other right is a similar, right of persons to enjoy collectively a common or public equipment of what may be called mental necessities, ranging from schools and places of learning to galleries, museums, libraries, and the like, and thus including not only the facilities needed for public education but also those that are needed for the general national enjoyment of the accumulated treasures of culture.

Under the head of Equality the jurists and thinkers of France, basing themselves on the Declarations of 1789 and afterwards, have enumerated four rights—the right to be treated equally with others, and on the same footing as others, in the eye of the law and in all legislative acts; the right to be treated equally with others in matters of justice and in courts of law; the right to be treated equally with others in matters of taxation, so that each man pays the same proportion of his means as is paid by others; and, finally, the right to be treated as equally admissible with others to public honours and offices of employment.

These four rights are all rights of the citizen in respect of the exercise of governing authority: they are claims, acknowledged and recognized by law or general custom, that governing authority should deal equally with all, alike in its legislation and its jurisdiction, its imposition of taxes and its distribution of honours and offices. But the progress of social thought has given a wider sweep to the notion of equality and to the nature of the rights which it involves.

We have learned to think not only of what may be called political equality, in relation to the action of governing authority, but also of economic and cultural equality, in relation to the general life of the whole of the organized community; and we have accordingly come to believe that there are further rights which ought to be added to the rights of political equality.

These further rights are still, as it were, in process of construction: they are emerging from social thought, and beginning to pass into the common con­viction of the political community; but the proper nature of their form, and the exact extent of their dimension, have still to be determined by the continuing process of social thought and by the method of tentative experiment.

They are rights which men are beginning to claim, not in relation to governing authority and the distribution of its incidence, but in relation to one another: they are rights to a greater measure of general equality between man and man, partly in economic status and the distribution of economic possessions, and partly in educa­tional opportunity and enjoyment of the general treasures of culture.

These new and nascent rights of equality are obviously linked with the similar rights under the head of co-operation. The greater the provision of material and mental necessities in the form of a common or public equipment in which all alike can share, the greater will be the achievement of equality on both the material and the mental plane.

But in addition to common and equal sharing in the stock of common or public equipment there is also needed a greater measure of equality in the enjoyment of individual status, in the possession of individual equipment (or ‘private property’), and in the opportunity of individual access to the benefits of education and general cultural development.

The rights which came under the head of Liberty are all the greater, and the more numerous, because Liberty is a multiple principle. Within the State, and apart from the area of Society (which has also a social liberty of its own), there are, it has been suggested, three divisions or regions of liberty. These three divisions are the political, the civil, and the economic. We may accordingly classify the rights which come under the head of Liberty according to these three divisions.

The rights of political liberty generally include the right of the citizen to participate in the election of the legislature, and thereby, indirectly, to share in the choice of the government.When the jury system exists, along with a system of unpaid magistrates drawn in large numbers from the general public, the rights of political liberty also include the right of the citizen to participate in the administration of justice and to form, in a sense, a part of the judicature.

The right to form political parties, and the right of such parties, when formed, to play a part in the election of the legislature and thereby in the choice of the government, is a sort of border-land right, essentially connected with political liberty but formally a part of civil liberty and a product of the civil rights of freedom of the expres­sion of opinion and freedom of associati
on and meeting.

The rights of civil liberty have been divided by French thinkers into two different groups, distinguished from one another by the historical fact that the one group is earlier than the other. The first and earlier of these groups, already evident in the Declaration of 1789, includes the three rights of personal freedom, personal security, and personal or private property.

The second group, gradually developed in the thought and ex­pressed in the legislation of the century which followed the Revolution, includes some half-dozen rights; liberty in the choice and conditions of employment, and in the conduct of trade and industry; liberty of the press; liberty of assembly; liberty of association; liberty of teaching; and liberty of con­science and worship.

This historical division of the rights of civil liberty into two different groups may square with the facts of French history, but it does not suit the history of England, where no such distinction can be traced, and it cannot be gener­ally applied. Abandoning, therefore, any chronological scheme of division, we may suggest a logical classification of the rights of civil liberty into three different groups, based on the nature and character of the activity concerned.

The first group will consist of the rights which come under the head of freedom of physical activity; it will include rights such as personal security (whether from arbitrary arrest and detention, or from torture and inhuman punishment, or from arbitrary interfer­ence with the privacy of home and domicile), and such, again, as freedom of movement and residence inside a country, along with the right to seek and enjoy an asylum in other countries.

The second group will consist of rights which come under the head of freedom of the activity of the mind: this will include rights such as the right to freedom of conscience and religion, the right to freedom of opinion and its expression, and the right to freedom of meeting and association.

The third group will con­sist of rights which come under the head of freedom of practical activity, or, freedom for the exercise of will and choice in the general field of contractual action; this group will include the right to the acquisition and disposal of property, the right to marry and found a family on the basis of full and free consent, and similar rights of that order.

It may also be made to include a number of rights connected with the choice and conditions of employment and the conduct of trade and industry; but rights of this order, are best treated as belonging to a separate class, and are most properly classified under the head of the rights of economic liberty.

The rights of economic liberty were already expressed in some detail in the part of the German Constitution of 1919 which dealt with ‘Economic Life’, and they have recently found their place in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. If we seek to formulate them broadly, in terms of contemporary life and the growing demands of social thought, we may suggest that they fall into three main groups.

We may regard them as extensions and expansions, into the economic sphere, of the old three rights of civil liberty already declared by Blackstone in England and by the revolutionary thinkers of France in the latter half of the eighteenth century—the right of personal free­dom, the right of personal security, and the right of personal property.

They are extensions and expansions entailed by the flood of economic development (often termed the ‘industrial revolution’, though the term is hardly adequate) which began to flow about 1750, and is still flowing swift and deep.

The group of rights which is an extension of the old civil right of personal security includes the rights of workers under Factory Acts (the first of the fights of economic liberty to be formally acknowledged), their rights under Workmen’s Compensation Acts, and their rights, under various acts, to insurance against the risks of sickness and unemployment and age.

The group of rights which may be regarded as an extension of the old civil right of personal freedom includes already the right of workers freely to form trade unions and to bargain freely through such unions about the conditions and remuneration of their work: it may also come to include the further right, now beginning to be claimed, to the enjoyment of the status of free partners in the general control and conduct of industry.

Finally, the group of rights which may be regarded as an extension of the old civil right of personal property may be held to include the right of workers to some share in the capital of the particular industry in which they are engaged.

This means their right to acquire, by virtue of the rendering of permanent service, some permanent property in the undertaking for which they work, over and above their weekly remuneration: it means, again, the right to partici­pate in a diffusion of ownership which makes personal property as general in its scope as personal freedom or personal security.

This attempt at a classification of rights may seem to be little more than an academic exercise. But it is, something more than that. It is the necessary preliminary to any study of the functions of government, which are services owed to rights and can only be understood in the light of the rights they serve.

On the other hand, classification is also the creation of compartments; and the creation of compart­ments, if it may be a help to clear thinking, can also be a danger to the breadth and sweep of thought which not only apprehends but can also comprehend. For one thing we have to remember that the movement of human life does not proceed in compart­ments.

The same general problem recurs, if in different forms, under the different heads of our classification. The future of industry and the development of a fair system of economic rights is at one and the same time a matter of the rights which come under the head of liberty, of those which come under the head of equality, and of those which come under the head of fraternity or co-operation.

We cannot think of the problem properly in the limits of one compartment; and we are driven back, in the issue, on that general and comprehensive idea of justice which seeks to reconcile the principle of liberty with that of equality, and both with the principle of co-operation, and which thus controls and co-ordinates the rights belonging to each.

There is another thing also to be remembered; or rather there is another aspect of the same general truth. No right is absolute and inviolable, or entrenched by itself in its own inex­pugnable iron compartment. The right of personal property is indeed a right; but it is a right which has to make terms, and to enter into combination, with a variety of other rights.

Not only has my right to acquire property, as a condition of the develop­ment of the capacities of my personality, to be reconciled with the right of others to acquire it, as a condition of the develop­ment of the capacities of their personality: the right of each person to such acquisition has also to be reconciled with other rights in other spheres, such as the right of workers to enjoy the status of free partners in the general conduct and control of industry, a right which cannot be simply defeated or abro­gated by the right of the owner of property to the free use and disposal of his acquisitions. Once more we are driven back on the general idea of justice by which one sort of right is ‘mortised and adjoined’ to another.

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After reading this article you will learn about the idea of a social parliament.

The State is the one and only form of legal organization, and the only vehicle of legal action. The State is only the agent of law, but it is also the only agent of law; and whenever a legal question arises in any field whatsoever, or a legal rule has to be made on anything whatsoever, it is the State alone which acts and which alone can make the rule.

A question, however, has been raised whether there ought not to be some central organization of Society: some social parlia­ment, or even some general system of social parliaments, which might be added to the political parliament of the State, and might stand by its side in some sort of relation, whether sub­ordinate and advisory or co-ordinate and concurrent.

Hitherto (so the argument runs) there has been only a single mirror—the political mirror—the political parliament which reflects, or as we say ‘represents’, the legal association as such: ought we not also to have another mirror, or even a set of other mirrors, reflecting some one great aspect of Society as such, or even several of its different aspects?

The suggestion most commonly made is of a single social mirror, an economic council (or economic ‘parliament’, or economic ‘sub-parliament’) reflecting the one great aspect of Society implied in the adjective ‘economic’. That suggestion acquired vogue, and even seemed likely to be translated into fact, at the close of the war of 1914-18.

In Great Britain an indus­trial conference, convened by the Prime Minister in 1919, pro­posed the institution of a National Industrial Council, to be elected by the workers and employers in each industry sepa­rately, and to be vested with the general power of advising the Government on industrial legislation.

The proposal, however, was left in abeyance and Great Britain has remained content with a single political parliament. On the Continent more was attempted, but little, in the issue, achieved. Germany in­stituted in 1920 a National Economic Council, by the side of the Reichstag, for the purpose of advising the Government on social and economic legislation; but the Council soon dissolved into committees which advised the Government directly, and eventually even the committees ceased to be asked for advice.

France instituted in 1926 a National Economic Council, which (after 1936) included 173 members representing economic groups and interests, to study economic problems, to report on them to the Government, and to advise the Government on all economic measures proposed in Parliament.

In a different setting the French Economic Council still remains, and its powers have been confirmed and expanded by the new French Constitution of 1946; but it is not clear that it plays any role of importance, or that it has relieved the political Parliament of any part of its burden.

Italy, under its Fascist regime, in­stituted from 1930 onwards a National Council of Corporations, containing representatives of employers and employed and empowered ‘to formulate rules for the general co-ordination of the national economy’.

The National Council of Corporations stood by the side of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies (with the latter of which it was eventually merged in 1938), but like so much else in Italian Fascism it served rather as a theatri­cal property than as an actual institution.

If, as has just been said, Great Britain has in practice remained content with a political Parliament, the idea of a social parlia­ment has continued to be mooted among us in theory. The Guild Socialists, in the early years of the century, advocated the institution of two parliaments—an economic parliament, based on guilds, for economic affairs, and a political parliament, based on local constituencies, for the business of the State.

In 1920 the Webbs, in a work entitled A Constitution for the Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain, similarly advocated a plurality of parliaments. Pleading the hypertrophy of a single parliament and—even more—its ‘vicious mixture’ of functions separate in their nature, they suggested that the old political parliament should henceforth be confined to its proper and original func­tions of the conduct of external relations and the maintenance of internal law and order.

A new social parliament, they pro­posed, should then be instituted by its side to take over the more modern functions of the management of social policy and the general development of a ‘way of life’ or ‘type of civiliza­tion’. In their ingenious and carefully constructed scheme of parliamentary dyarchy both of these parliaments were to be elected (though not simultaneously, or by the same method) on the basis of geographical constituencies.

Both were to co­operate by a system of joint committees; and in the event of a clash a joint session of both was to make the final decision. But as the control of the budget and the power of the purse were to be vested in the social parliament, it would appear that the social parliament was to be the greater of the two.

This was an extreme and dubious plan—the more so as it was never made clear how the maintenance of law, entrusted to the political parliament, could be divided from the management of social policy (and from all the making and maintenance of law involved in that management) which was assigned to the social parliament.

Dr. Temple, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, was at once more moderate and more extreme in the proposals he made in 1928 in a work on Christianity and the State. Pleading the example of the National Assembly of the Church of England (an ecclesiastical parliament competent, under its enabling act of 1919, to deliberate on and make provision for all matters con­cerning the Church, subject to the consent of both Houses of Parliament in such matters as by the law of the land require parliamentary sanction), he proposed, in addition, (1) an in­dustrial parliament, based on voluntary associations, which should legislate in its own department subject to the veto of the political parliament, and (2) an educational parliament, based on voluntary bodies of teachers and also on local educa­tion authorities, which should legislate in its own sphere ‘subject’, as he wrote, ‘in one way or another to parliamentary veto’.

This was consequently a proposal for what may be called a set of social parliaments—an ecclesiastical, an industrial, and an educational parliament. In that sense it went beyond the pro­posal of the Webbs. But Dr. Temple also suggested that the political parliament should impose a limit or veto on the acts of these several social parliaments, and in this respect his pro­posal was more moderate than that of the Webbs.

Mr. Churchill, in a Romanes lecture delivered at Oxford in 1930, confined himself to industry, and followed in the track of the policy proposed by the industrial conference of 1919. He suggested a House of Industry (but a House on a different level of power from the two existing Houses of Parliament) em­powered to prepare and recommend solutions of industrial problems.

This would be an advisory body—parallel, let us say, to the French advisory Economic Council. Of late Mr. Amery, in his Thoughts on the Constitution of the year 1947, has adopted and expanded Mr. Churchill’s suggestion. Pleading, like Dr. Temple, the analogy of the functions and powers of the National Assembly of the Church of England, he proposes a third ‘House’, or ‘sub-parliament’, which might frame measures altering or amplifying Acts of Parliament, subject to the consent of the two existing Houses.

This third House would be based on trade unions and employers’ associations, “possibly with the addition of representatives of consumers nominated by the Government. It would have the advantage, he argues, of enabling the new principle of ‘functional’ representation to be tried without dest
roying the existing geographical principle.

There is here a variety of counselors, and a multiplicity of counsels. In structure, most of the counselors suggest a social par­liament of a new type, based on the functional principle, and representing vocations: the Webbs are perhaps alone in arguing for a social parliament based, like the political, on the principle of local or geographical constituencies.

In function, some would vest the social parliament only with the power of advising the political parliament or, alternatively, the executive government: the Webbs, however, would make it a concurrent or even a superior legislature; others, again, would attempt a via media and give to the social parliament the position of a subordinate legislature, competent indeed to enact laws but only with the assent of the political parliament.

On one issue all would seem to be agreed. They would all institute the social parliament— whatever the basis of its composition, or whatever the extent of its function—by an act of State and by way of a formal amend­ment of the constitution.

They do not consider the possibility that a social parliament may possibly be evolved by an act of Society; that it may, as it were, grow of itself; that it may begin and end in Society, as a purely social organ, simply and solely expressive of social opinions and aspirations.

Nothing need here be said, at any rate for the moment, about the composition of a social parliament. There is a prior question of greater importance—that of its powers. Should it have the powers of a concurrent parliament, or should it have only ad­visory powers? The first alternative has commended itself to a succession of thinkers, which began with the Guild Socialists, was continued by the Webbs, and may still be traced in the theories and suggestions of Dr. Temple and Mr. Amery.

The basis of this first alternative is the policy of functional devolution: the policy of sorting out and separating functions at pre­sent combined (or, as the argument goes, ‘viciously mixed’) in a single parliament, and of remitting some of the functions so sorted out and separated to a new body or bodies. Such a policy raises a grave but also simple issue.

What would be left to the old ‘political’ parliament, if a system were adopted of functional devolution upon another ‘social’ parliament or set of ‘social’ parliaments? It is possible to answer that question by saying that law would remain: that though economics and education (the general management of social policy and the general de­velopment of a ‘way of life’ or ‘type of civilization’) would be lost to the political parliament, the maintenance of law (along with the conduct of external relations and the control of a sys­tem of defence) would be left. But what is law?

Law is not a separate or separable set of things in an isolated compartment. It is, a general mode of action. It is a mode of dealing, by uniform rules, with things in general—with things economic and educational, and with all other sorts and sets of things which are capable of being brought under and regulated by a uniform rule or system of rules.

Law, in a word, is a general mode of action which ranges over all places where a uniform rule is possible, and which touches, as it ranges, every sort of thing; but if it is general it is also single, and must proceed from a single source. Being general, and ranging everywhere, it ranges over the field of economics. One cannot distinguish law from economics, or say that law belongs to one sort of parliament and economics to another.

Being, on the other hand, a single mode, law has a single organ for its making or declaration. The State, in the shape of the political parliament through which it acts, is the only organ and maker of law. The State, on the theory here assumed, is only a legal association; but, by the same token, it is also the only legal association. Because it is that, its political parliament is the one adjustment-centre.

There cannot be a plurality of adjustment-centres. If there were, they would themselves need to be adjusted. There must be someone, single, final adjustment- centre; and that adjustment-centre is necessarily compelled by its nature not only to adjust finally all sovereign issues (issues, that is to say, which demand the exercise of sovereignty), but also to take the initiative in formulating their adjustment.

A magnetic attraction draws such issues directly to the one final authority. Men will always seek to go straight to it, and the institution of other instances will not defeat or deflect the attraction. That attraction will be especially strong in the field of economics. Economic issues, in these troubled days, are the issues which specially demand adjustment.

They are swept particularly, and swept directly, to the final adjustment-centre; and that centre is accordingly compelled, both by its own nature and by their urgency, to take the initiative in their adjustment, and to act with an original efficiency as well as a formal finality.

The powers of a social parliament will not therefore be powers of legislation. They will, at the most, be powers of advice to the one and only legislative authority—or, more exactly, for even ‘advice’ is too strong a term, they will be powers of expressing social opinion and formulating social aspiration at the bar of that authority.

Now a State-created body, acting in the frame­work and as a part of the State, is not the natural or logical vehicle for the exercise of those powers. Society is something different from the State, and the formulation of social opinion is something different from the formulation of legal rules.

If Society is the area of voluntary formations and voluntary action, we should naturally expect a social parliament (or a complex of social parliaments, corresponding to the complexity of society) to form itself voluntarily, and not to be formed by an act of State-creation.

We should also expect it, when it is formed, to move in the area of Society and to proceed by the method of social action: to express social opinion and aspiration, and to serve as an indication of the trend of thought in general Society.

It will thus be a new form (and yet, perhaps, by no means so new as its advocates think) of that play of national or public opinion which, is always at work behind the political parliament, and which is always affecting and qualify­ing the action of that parliament.

We must not exaggerate the peculiarity or the novelty of the idea of a social parliament. It is an idea which is neither so peculiar nor so novel as many are inclined to think. There already exists, and has long existed among us, a whole complex of what may be called ‘social parliaments’.

There are the ‘social parliaments’ of the organized professions (though there is as yet no federal parliament of all the professions); there is the ‘social parliament’ of the occupations, in the shape of the Trades Union Congress; there are the ‘social parliaments’ of the employers in the shape of their federations and unions; there are the ‘social parliaments’ of the different churches; there are a number of ‘social parliaments’ (partly professional, but some of a wider scope) in the field of education.

The novelty of the idea of a social parliament, in the form in which it has become recently current, consists in the suggestion of a new joint social parliament in the field of industrial production, representing both workers and employers, and drawing together the separate ‘social parliaments’ in which the two sides have hitherto acted.

This would, indeed, be something new, though there have been tentative movements towards it during the last thirty years. But the question is whether such a new joint social parliament cannot form itself, and is not likely to form itself, by the method of voluntary action.

We may safely answer that the fertility of social invention is not exhausted; that the idea of the volunta
ry formation of such a new joint body has already been mooted between workers and employers; and that in the new conditions of production and the new social temper of our time the idea may thrive to fruition.

We have already formed a number of specialized social parliaments for ourselves by the method of voluntary action. There is no reason, in the nature of things, why we should not form for ourselves, by the same voluntary method, a new social parliament, of a greater scope and of wider dimensions, in the shape of a joint industrial parlia­ment.

But such a new social parliament, so formed, will be a parlia­ment of Society (otherwise it will not be a ‘social parliament’): it will not be a parliament of the State, or a ‘third House’, or anything else which is in pari materia with the organs and organi­zation of the legal community.

It will be simply an organ, larger and more catholic in its scope than the previous organs, but not different from them in its nature, for the expression of social opinions and social aspirations.

We must beware of im­porting into our thought about social parliaments any idea of a policy of devolution; any idea that the State should remit to social organs its own specific and inalienable political function of preparing, formulating, and enunciating all the rules of law. Devolution is a current word.

It is the reverse side of the word ‘congestion’, which is often applied to the parliament and the general government of the State. It is possible that there is con­gestion of the State; but if there is the remedy has to be found within the State.

Devolution of the legal powers of the territorial State, if it should be attempted, will naturally be territorial devolution—devolution, that is to say, on the territorial sub­divisions of the State, which are of the same nature as itself.

It will be devolution on national areas, if such areas are contained in the State. It will be devolution on provincial, regional, and local areas of one order or other—in a word, on areas of neigh­bourhood. (Neighbourhood is the great bond of men, uniting people of all sorts, for purposes of all sorts, in common areas of residence which are the areas of those general contacts and general relations that really need adjustment.)

But even devolu­tion of this order, devolution of the territorial order, logical as it may seem, may not be practicable in a country such as Great Britain. Here a large population is massed together, upon a small soil, in a system of relations so inextricably interwoven, from one end of the country to the other, that any legal rule must always be a rule which also runs from end to end. It is difficult, after all, to think even of a system of provincial or regional sub-legislatures in the conditions of such a texture.

How much more difficult, then, will it be to think of a system of social sub-legislatures, or to advocate a policy of functional devolution—devolution, that is to say, on social-economic groups pursuing social and economic aims in the area of Society. Here we cannot even plead the claims of logic in our favour, as we can for territorial devolution.

On the contrary, we are in­volved in a confusion of ideas. Social groups belong to the area of Society; they are not subdivisions of the State. No social group, and no assembly representing such a group or a number of such groups, is fitted by its nature to act as an organ of the legal and rule-making association which we call the State.

It is true that the opinion of a social group, or of an assembly representing such a group, may properly affect the State, because it is a part and a form of that encompassing body of general social opinion which is always playing upon, always affecting, and always qualifying the action of the legal associa­tion.

But it is also true that a social group in itself, and any assembly representing such a group or a number of such groups, is not, and is not by its nature fitted to be, a law-making, or even a law-formulating, or indeed in any sense a legal body, as all organs of the legal association must be.

There is not only a confusion of ideas, and a defect of logic, in the idea of functional devolution of the powers of the State. There are also grave practical difficulties. One of these practical difficulties is the difficulty of space. The members of social groups (doctors, miners, teachers, transport-workers, lawyers, agricultural workers) are necessarily scattered in space, and separated by interstices. But the State, and each division of the State, is by its nature a territorial continuum.

It is based on con­tiguity in space, and on the fact and feeling of neighbourhood. To combine in a single scheme the functional and the territorial would be to mix and confound the discrete and the continuous. There is a second and greater difficulty—a difficulty not of material space, but of mental sentiment and moral solidarity.

Functions, when they are complementary and are consciously felt to be complementary, may serve to draw men together in the sense of a common need and the feeling of mutual dependence. But it is also true, and even more true, that they also serve to divide, and that each industry, trade, occupation, and profes­sion develops its own special interest, its own peculiar bias, and its own exclusive group-interest.

It would be far from easy for the State to devolve upon such bodies the performance of any of the common duties which it owes to the whole territorial community. The essence of the State, and equally of the divisions of the State, is a common territorial citizenship, which unites the residents in a common area for the common handling of the common questions that concern them all in their common capacity as neighbours.

But while there is reason to doubt the idea that the State should devolve any part of its powers upon social groups, there is little reason for doubting that the modern State owes a large and generous measure of respect to such group in the exercise of their own intrinsic and native powers. It would not show that respect—indeed it would do the opposite—if it sought to incor­porate social groups in its own organization, and to make them part of its own legal system.

There are other and more generous methods which the State can adopt. In the first place, it can recognize frankly that there is a whole area of social action parallel to, if different from, its own area of legal action: an area of voluntary action, of tentative non-official effort, of many-sided initiative and manifold experiment.

In other words, it can recognize that it is not only concerned with individuals (‘the State and the Individual’ is not the whole of the matter), but also with societies: it can admit that it is in its nature not only an association composed of individuals, but also an asso­ciation composed of associations (consociatio consociationum).

Ac­cordingly it can respect and protect the liberty and the rights of groups, as well as the liberty and the rights of individuals. In the second place, and as a part of such respect and protection, it can develop a general law of associations and their rights, side by side with its private law of persons and the rights of persons.

It can construct, as a modern jurist has said, a system of ‘public law on the lines of a comprehensive treatment of the rights and duties of various social organizations— .. .ecclesiasti­cal, professional, educational, literary—that have stepped in between the individual and the State and are daily growing in importance in their task of organizing scattered individuals into conscious and powerful groups’.

In the third place, and as a still farther extension of its respect for and its protection of the life of voluntary societies, it may even give positive aid and encouragement to their activities. Just as the modern State increasingly aids and encourages the development of indi­viduals by the provision of what are called public social services, so it can also aid a
nd encourage the development of societies, when they are doing good work for the benefit of the general community, by fostering their expansion and even by giving them financial aid.

The policy of financial subsidies adopted by the British Government during the last thirty years towards the societies, called universities, that serve the advancement of learning and the general promotion of higher education, may be cited as a notable example of the respect which the modern State can show, and the encouragement it can give, to societies which render voluntary service, in their own way, for the benefit of the general community.

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This article throws light upon the two methods of amendment of the Swiss constitution. The two methods are: 1. Process of Total Revision of the Constitution 2. Process of Partial Revision or Amendment of the Constitution.

Method # 1. Process of Total Revision of the Constitution:

A total revision of the constitution means the adoption of a new or totally revised constitution.

Total revision can be affected in any of the following three possible ways:

(i) If the Federal Parliament, by an approval of each of its two Houses, passes a new draft for a total revision of the Constitution, a referendum is held.

If the new draft gets the approval of the majority of voters as well as of the Cantons, it comes into operation. Rejection in the referendum by the voters or by the Cantons or by both, finally rejects the new draft and the old constitution continues to operate.

(ii) If one House of the Federal Parliament approves a draft for the total revision of the constitution but the other House rejects it, the issue is submitted to the people in a referendum. If the majority of the Swiss voters approve the proposal, the Federal Parliament is dissolved. Fresh elections are held.

Thereafter, a new Federal Parliament is constituted. It prepares and approves the draft of a revised (new) constitution. The same is then submitted to a referendum. If in this second referendum the new constitution is approved by both the majority of the Swiss voters as well as the Cantons, the old constitution ceases to operate and the new constitution comes into operation.

(iii) The proposal for a total revision of the constitution can also come through an Initiative. If 1,00,000 of the Swiss voters submit a proposal for a total revision of the constitution, the proposal is submitted to the people in a referendum. In case the proposal is supported by the majority of voters, the Federal Parliament then prepares a new constitution and it is put before the people in a referendum. If the new constitution is approved both by the majority of voters as well as of the Cantons, it becomes operative and replaces the old constitution.

After the successful total revision of the 1848 Constitution in 1874, three unsuccessful attempts at total revision of the constitution were made in 1880, 1935 and 1975. However, the attempt made in 1998-99 proved to be successful.

Draft of a total revision of the constitution was adopted by the Federal Parliament on 18 December 1998, it was adopted by a majority of the people and the Cantons in a referendum on 18 April, 1999, The Federal Parliament issued a decree for its enforcement on 28 September 1999 and the New Constitution (Totally revised Constitution) came into operation w. e .f. 1 January 2000.

Method # 2. Process of Partial Revision or Amendment of the Constitution:

A Partial Revision or an amendment of the Constitution can be initiated and adopted in two ways:

(1) A proposal for a partial revision of the constitution can be made by the two Houses of the Federal Parliament. Thereafter, the proposal is submitted to the people in a referendum. If the majority of the people as well as of the Cantons approves the proposal, the amendment gets incorporated in the Constitution.

(2) The proposal for a partial revision of the constitution can also come from the people. If 1, 00,000 of the Swiss voters submit a general proposal for a partial amendment of the constitution, the same is put before the people in a referendum. If it gets the approval of the majority of voters, the Federal Parliament drafts the amendment on the basis of the general proposal made by the people through an initiative.

This draft is then submitted to the people in a referendum. If the majority of both the Swiss voters and the Cantons approve it, the amendment gets incorporated in the constitution. However, if the initiative for a partial revision, as made by 1, 00,000 Swiss voters, is made in the form of a complete draft, the draft is discussed by the Federal Parliament.

The Federal Parliament gives its verdict either in its favour or against the proposed partial revision, in either case, the draft is submitted to the people in a referendum. If it is approved by a majority of both the people and the Cantons, the amendment gets incorporated in the constitution.

From the above account, it is clear that the process of amendment of the Swiss constitution is difficult, cumbersome and complicated. It gets completed in two stages: Proposal Stage and Approval Stage. The proposal can come either from the Federal Parliament or through a popular Initiative by 1, 00,000 Swiss voters.

At the approval stage the amendment proposal has to get the approval of the majority of both the Swiss Voters as well as of the Swiss Cantons. However in actual practice, the process has proved to be neither very rigid nor very complicated. Some eighty partial amendments were successfully incorporated in the constitution between 1874-1999.

In 1999, the Swiss Constitution was totally revised and consolidated by incorporating all the amendments made during 1874-1999 as well as by adding a bill of rights, social goals, more detailed description of the powers of the Federation and the principles governing relations between the Federation and the Cantons.

The Swiss Constitution has now 196 Articles, while before this total revision it had only 123 Articles. The maturity of the Swiss voters and the convention of working through a general consensus has softened in actual practice the rigidity of the formal process of amendment of the Constitution.

The most salient feature that makes the amendment process very distinctive the fact is that no amendment, total or partial, can be made in the constitution without the approval of the majority of the people as well as of the Cantons. A Canton is deemed to have approved the amendment if the majority of the people of that Canton approves the amendment.

In other words, popular sovereignty is really in operation in the sphere of the amendment- making process of the Swiss Constitution.

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This article throws light upon the seven major difficulties faced in the study of comparative politics analysed by Jean Blondel. Some of the difficulties are: 1. Inter-Connection between Norms, Institutions and Behaviour 2. Range of Variables 3. Paucity of Information 4. Problems in the Way of Using Scientific Method are also Problems of Comparative Politics and Others.

Difficulty # 1. Inter-Connection between Norms, Institutions and Behaviour:

In the first instance, there are difficulties arising from the inter-connection between norms, institutions and behaviour which stem from the fact that some governments exist naturally and others are imposed. Traditionally, this question was examined through the study of gap between constitution and ‘real’ political life, this gap is important, as no constitution will ever be fully implemented.

But the problem is more general. Constitutions are only one type of normative arrangement under which countries can be organized. Constitution-makers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries attempted to modify societies in a certain way, generally in order in increase the liberal content of government.

To that extent, they tried to impose rules Constitutional rule is therefore, a form of imposed system of government. But other types of impositions also occur, though by different means and in the name of different principles. The distinction between natural and imposed arrangements is thus a problem for all political systems.

Difficulty # 2. Range of Variables:

The analysis can become precise only when it is possible to list and weigh the numerous variables which enter into the ‘definition’ of a political system. The list of variables is impressive and the task in impossible to calculate as many of these variables lack quantitative formalization.

Economic conditions, social conditions, the climate, physical geography and some others, all seem to be a part of the ‘explanation’ of political system and all have been used at one period or another by political scientists anxious to explain’ the norms, institutions and behaviours of nations. Since the range of variables of politics is very large it is not possible to empirically and comprehensively analyse all these.

Difficulty # 3. Paucity of Information:

Cross-national analysis is made particularly difficult because in several countries, particularly where the system is ‘imposed’, information is often lacking. Totalitarian countries refuse access to much information. Admittedly, even the most ‘open’ country does operate limited and indirect censorship on numerous processes.

In many circumstances, lack of information poses a serious hindrance in the way of comparative politics. Many governments are not willing to let the political scientists have a look into their records and files.

Difficulty # 4. Problems in the Way of Using Scientific Method are also Problems of Comparative Politics:

Hindrances in the way of application of Scientific Methods to Social Science Research are also hindrances in the way of Comparative Politics.

These are:

(a) The problem resulting from complexity of social data.

(b) The problem of using empirical methods in the study of human political relations and interactions.

(c) The problem of verification and prediction making in politics.

(d) The issue of explanation and prediction in politics.

(e) The problem arising from dynamic nature of the social phenomena.

(f) The problem of applying the scientific method to a highly complex and dynamic political phenomena.

All these hindrances combine to create a big hindrance in the use of the scientific method in Comparative Politics studies. However, gradually political scientists have been overcoming these difficulties. Comparative Politics studies are now becoming quite well- organised and systematic.

Difficulty # 5. Problem of Empirical Study:

Comparative Politics stands for scientific and empirical study of all phenomena of polities. It gives rise to the problems associated with the observation and collection of facts. In particular, this problem becomes bigger when one is to collect facts about the operation of authoritarian and totalitarian political systems.

Difficulty # 6. Dynamic Nature of Politics:

Politics is an aspect of human behaviour and like all other aspects of human behaviour, it is also highly dynamic. Further, a big gap is always present in the theory and practice of all political systems. This always acts as a big hindrance in the way of every realistic study of politics.

Difficulty # 7. The Problem of Objectivity:

Scientific and empirical study of Politics demands objectivity in the observation, collection and analyse of the facts of the processes under study. It demands an ability to keep ones values and biases away from the universe of the study. For this, the researcher has to maintain a high level of alertness and commitment to maintain, objectivity.

This requirement also acts as a source of big hindrance in the way of Comparative Politics studies.

Thus there have been present several problems and hindrances in the way of Comparative Politics studies. However, these are being gradually overcome through conscious efforts on the part of modern political scientists.

To conclude, we may say, as M. Curtis has observed, “the study of Comparative Politics is at the heart of contemporary political science. It has undergone several meaningful developments in recent years. Its nature has been becoming more and more systematic and its scope has been becoming comprehensive. However, it is still developing.”

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The upcoming discussion will update you about the difference between confederation and federation. 

A confederation is a loose union of some sovereign states who do not surrender or shed their sovereign powers. They carry on their national flag and currency. They get together under the umbrella of an organisation for some specific and temporary purpose. The union is of a temporary nature. The resolutions passed by the central organisation are addressed to the states forming the confederation.

This need not be followed by the citizens of the states. The confederating states evolve some common defence and foreign policy or some other issues of common interest. It is not a new state. It retains its own flag, currency and citizenship. This type of association of sovereign states was very popular in ancient Greece. In the medieval period we find confederations like the Lambared League, the Hanseatic League and the Rhenish League.

There is a gulf of difference between a confederation and a federation. We shall now point out these differences.

First, a confederation is a temporary association of the sovereign states. They retain their sovereign power even after the formation of the confederation. In a federation which is of a permanent nature, the federating states cease to have their sovereign character on the formation of the federation. The confederation does not create any new state. But federation is a creation of a new state.

Secondly, the resolutions passed by the central organisation of the confederation are not of the status of law. These are academic in nature and are not enforceable in a court of law. But laws made by the federal government are binding on all. The federal authority, the units and the citizens are all to obey these laws.

Thirdly, a confederation does not create a new state. It is a loose union. But the federation is the creation of a new state. In a federation the units are under the canopy of a protecting tree. That tree is the central authority or the federal authority.

Fourthly, the degree of association in a confederation is not so deep as in a federation. Federation is a rigid union, but a confederation is a loose union. A member-state of a confederation can break away from the union. But a member state in the federation cannot leave the federation.

Lastly, there is double citizenship in a federation. An individual residing in a federation is the citizen of the federal or central state and he is at the same time the citizen of the province of his domicile. Thus a person living in the province of Virginia is a citizen of the USA and also a citizen of Virginia. A confederation cannot have any citizen. All its citizens belong to the confederating states.

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