Category: Political Science Notes

Considering the development of an all-inclusive and universal or abstract theory as unattainable by empirical methods, political scientists have adopted the limited perspective of ‘ systems theory’. Several disciplines have contributed to its making and development. It represents interdisciplinary nature of modern Political Science. ‘Systems’ concept makes empirical and comparative study possible even of those political institutions, apart from the state, such as, international political system, city, political party, etc.

The concept is helpful in studying changes like transformation, feedback, exchange, tension, conflict and development. Besides Easton, Gabriel Almond, Talcott Parsons, Karl Deutsch, Morton Kaplan and others have made such studies. Systems theory analyses interactions, structures, institutions, and processes pertaining to politics. Politics involves power, authority, physical coercion, and allocation of values for society.

In all shades of politics, political processes, and structures are enmeshed with several other elements, factors, and considerations. As such, a ‘political system’ cannot be physically separated from its non-political aspects, and is, therefore, usually understood and studied in an analytical manner. Society as a whole makes up the general social system, which contains many subsystems.

Political system is one of these subsystems. When the political system is to be studied as a whole along with its intra-subsystems, then, it is treated as a ‘system’. Besides that, ‘system’ can be considered as a part of environment. Thus, the concept of ‘system’ both in interlocking micro and macro forms saves us from the error of considering ‘systems’ as isolated, separate, or independent entities.

Besides throwing light on their interconnections, one can examine their discrete nature, and separate empirical existence. According to Almond, the political system in a society, is ‘legitimate, order maintaining’ or transforming system’. Wiseman maintains that every political system involves political structures, actors, or roles performed by their agents, interaction-patterns existing between individuals or collectivities, and political processes. In the ‘political system’ of Kaplan also, there are recog­nisable multivariate interests.

Instead of always being opposite, sometimes they are complementary to each other. There are regular structures and channels to reach the decisions and judgments related to particular interests. General rules are prescribed to govern the actors and activities relating to particular decisions and judgments. Easton, therefore, regards the political system engaged in decision-making and implementing the authoritative allocation of values for society.

A political system, according to Michels, has the following features:

(a) It is a permanent entity, existing amidst a broader environment and includes many other units;

(b) It consists of an identifiable and measurable set of interdependent elements or variables;

(c) It has boundaries which keep it separate from general environment;

(d) It is constituted around certain problems, objectives or goals, and builds up certain structures;

(e) Along with the increase of specific problems and evolution of goals, it develops specific structures and processes, leading to more and more differentiation.

Still political scientists, sociologists, and political sociologists have analysed political systems with varying frames of references and different goals. More important among them are Talcott Parsons, David Easton, Gabriel Almond, and Morton Kaplan. Perspectives of Parsons and Easton are more conceptual. Almond and Kaplan have gone towards empirical research and theory making. Thus there are many variations among them.

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The word ‘value’ is used in two but interrelated senses. In the first sense, it is used by political actors for desirable or undesirable things such as, democracy, justice, freedom, power, etc. Easton mostly uses it in this sense. In the second sense, it is a criterion or basis of evaluation which an individual, group or society uses it to accept or reject some goals, means to achieve them, procedures, ideals, etc. In the latter sense, values influence political behaviour.

As such, origin, relevance, and interrelation among various values must be studied and analysed. Various values when put together make up the ‘value system’. An individual carries them within himself either as a whole or in part. The value system can be consistent, cohesive, specific, latent or manifest.

It can take the form of an ideology, policies, goals, laws, rules, ideals, and moral precepts. All of them can be directly stated as in a party manifesto. Otherwise, the values or value system can be known by studying behaviour patterns, value statements, culture-symbols or works, literary or artistic expressions, institutional presentation, or language formulations.

A value judgement involves a statement which connects a trans-empirical value with an individual, thing or abstraction. As it is non-empirical, it cannot, therefore, be easily refuted by objective means. Most of the value judgements are the formalised expres­sions of sentiments and emotions derived from culture and invoke men to action. One can also reach values through observation of action or one’s culture leading to value judgements. Values are major determinants of human behaviour. They become, thus, major areas of study for Political Science.

Many things contribute to the making of values – intellect, will, senti­ments, religion, ego, superstition, ignorance, tradition, etc. On the basis of values, a man regards a thing or activity as ‘good’ or ‘bad’, and may act accordingly. The individual may express them in form of his ideas, desire, act, will, goal, or opposition. It is difficult to validate the bases or sources of those values, but the latter, to a large extent, determine his attitudes, choices, activities, and aspirations. Therefore, the problem of values has to be studied, at least from the view of developing a science of politics.

Normally, the term ‘value’ is used in the following sense:

(1) All the economic or physical means helpful to achieve some immediate cause or purpose. They are mostly called as instrumental values.

(2) Some express purpose or objective as aid to fulfill some other tacit or indirect purpose.

(3) Humans, things or tangibles for which there is clash, conflict, rivalry or competition to own.

(4) Pleasure-giving things, activities, ideas, purposes, or desires expressed to have them.

(5) Ultimate goals or ends which cannot be expressed through other aims, actions or purposes.

(6) Dispassionate actions involving no self-interest, such as making sacrifice for a general cause.

It may here be pointed out that all values do not influence an individual or group equally. The same value may have varying influence. There is lack of consensus among scholars about what place should be accorded to values.

The problem is discussed below:

Study of Values:

Early behaviouralists, with a view to developing a ‘science of politics’ by adopting the scientific method, stood for a ‘value-free’ Political Science. The traditionalists, on the other side, always talked of ubiquitous role of values and value preferences. They had them from religion, nature, philosophical meditation, axiomatic postulates, introspection, history, law and morality. The relationship of values with the individuals was based on faith, belief, confidence, intuition, superstition or ignorance. As such, few could claim to know them or understand their implications.

The rulers could easily sustain themselves in power in the name of those mystic ideas or esoteric values. Against them, there arose a sharp reaction banishing all values from scien­tific studies. The latter group of behaviouralists tried to eliminate all emotional attitudes, particularistic fallacies, false idols, bias and prejudice, ethnocentrism, vested interests, moral values, and even ideals. They wanted to mould Political Science in the form of physics and chemistry.

Very soon, they began to face difficulties in developing a value-free Political Science. They confined themselves to mere description and classifi­cation of facts in the hope to realize a descriptive, empirical, operational and causal political theory. But their hopes withered within no time. It was pointed out that these adventures too had their own hidden values, ideals, and prejudices, which influenced their choices of problem, methods and findings.

Thus, the whole discipline was split into two warring camps, and stood on a cross-road. Felix Kaufmann in 1944 had found that in social sciences, controversy relating to values was greatest among all the method­ological problems. Values have a role to play before and after every research venture. No scholar can afford to avoid it.

From the viewpoint of values, scholars of Political Studies can be divided into three categories:

1. Social scientists who keep their studies completely away from values. They can be named as ‘value-neutralists’.

2. Scholars who stand for values and regard safeguarding certain values as their main objective, are known as ‘traditionalists or classicists’.

3. Scholars who, while keeping themselves as value-neutral, regard study of values as possible and desirable. Brecht calls them as ‘scientific value relativists’.

Position of first and third categories is relevant to the discussion of values and making of a scientific political theory.

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The concept of ‘political technology’ contains seven clusters of variables and each cluster contains many variables or attributes:

1. Traits of Political Leader:

In the cluster, the Personality of the Political Leader plays the key-role.

Its traits can further be divided in two groups:

(a) Knowledge of mass psychology, specialization in anticipating public responses, skill in maintaining public relations, and timely use of political technologies; and,

(b) Political personality: Charisma, spirit of making self-sacrifice, attributes of divinity, high social status, strong will-power, willingness to tolerate/adjust with others, attitude towards opponents and the like.”

2. Values and Goals:

These include temporal as well as other worldly objectives, identification with some god, religion, sub-religion, nation, nationality, race or ethnicity, caste, colour, norms and mores, ideology, hero or superman;

3. Type of Instruments and Tools:

Solidarity among members of associ­ation or relationship, socialisation and training of followers, discipline, number, span of discretion and direction, speed and style, use of non-coercive, coercive or Gandhian technologies;

4. Issues, Demands and Problems:

Their nature, impact, quantum of pressure – immediate and distant, situation, coverage – national, regional or local;

5. Patterned or Repeatable Use:

Political technology should be a repeatable or patterned affair;

6. Power-sharing:

Those who are part of a political technology should have a feel of some power-sharing; and,

7. Resources at Hand (on either side of input and output-ends):

These can briefly be stated as:

(a) Material goods: Sociability and size of the collectivity, status, property (land, money, building, business, industry etc.),

(b) Leadership, type and quality of organisation, management skills, including communication and control over media; legitimacy,

(c) Friends and allies: Open, secret, links with bureaucrats, mafia, middlemen and contractors, and

(d) Closeness to potential resources and chance factor.

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One of the greatest contributions of Lenin was that he adapted Marxism to Russia. Lenin was a Russian and being an arch revolutionary very soon realised that revolution was possible in Russia only under certain circumstances. The Czar must be defeated in war and there must be a group of highly disciplined and professional revolutionaries who must be in a position to take over the Government of the country.

Before the outbreak of the First Great War, Lenin was convinced that there would be world war and Russia would be defeated but the real problem before Lenin was how to train revolutionaries who could take over the government in the event of the defeat of Russia.

However, Lenin had to face great difficulty because Marx predicted that a revolution could take place only in a country where there was full-fledged capitalism. There were no short-cuts to revolution. However, Russia was essentially an agricultural country and there was no full-fledged capitalism there.

Therefore, the philosophy of Marx could not be applied to Russia. In spite of this difficulty, Lenin came to the firm conclusion that the revolution could take place in Russia if Czar, Nicholas II was defeated in the war and a most disciplined and secret cadre of the Communist Party was ready to take the reigns of the government.

Lenin on the role of professional revolutionaries:

According to William Ebenstein, “Lenin’s most important single contribution to the theory of Marxism is his concept of the professed revolutionary. Marx thought that class-consciousness would develop in the working class spontaneously due to economic misery and the leadership would come from their ranks. Lenin on the other hand, considered that a disciplined Communist Party could only arouse political consciousness amongst the workers and lead Russia to revolution.

For that purpose Lenin believed that first workers were to form labour organisations with primarily economic objectives, operating openly, legally and as publicly as conditions allow. Side by side with such organisations, there are to be small groups of professional revolutionaries, patterned after the army and the police, highly select and entirely secret.

Lenin said that the professional revolutionaries should guide and supervise the open communist-led economic associations-the trade unions, the co-operatives and the rest. Lenin advised these professional revolutionaries to form cells and infiltrate in social, economic and political bodies of the societies whether they are schools, churches, labour unions or political parties.

But Lenin especially emphasised the active role of the professional revolutionaries when he advocated them to infiltrate into armed forces, the police and the government. It should be particularly noted that with the help of these professional revolutionaries Lenin brought about the revolution and was able to throw off the most autocratic regime of the Czar (Russian Emperor).

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The system theorists point out that on political system is distinguished from another not only by its structure but also by the political culture in which the structures are embedded. That the working of the political system is very much affected by the political culture in which it functions can be illustrated by this fact that some developing countries like India, Ceylon, Burma, Pakistan etc. adopts certain political institutions like democracy, party-system and judicial system from the developed countries like England, France and U.S.A. but they soon discovered that these institutions did not function in the safe way as they worked in those countries from where they had been taken.

The question arises why the political system of the developing countries works differently from the developed countries, walk of life, we have to study the political culture of each country. Now we realise that the political culture of one country differs from other countries.

“Every political system”, writes Almond, “is embedded in a particular pattern of orientation to political actions”.’ Political Culture, according to Sidney Verba, “consists of the system of empirical beliefs, expressive symbols and values which defines the situation in which political action takes place”. It should be noted that political culture of a country is very close to its general culture. Just as the culture of one country differs from the culture of another country, so the political culture of a country also differs from another country.

The political sphere is also provided with political .structures and meanings in the same manner as consistency and integration is provided to the social life by general culture. It relates to rational considerations, emotions and ethical values, just like culture, it is hard to define political culture but still the political scientists have tried to define it.

In the words of Pye, “Political culture can be found only in men’s minds, in the pattern of action, feeling and reflection which they have internalised and made part of their very existence”. Every generation inherits attitudes and beliefs towards politics, partly from the earlier generation and partly it is formulated as a reaction to the on-going politics. Consequently, political culture is a product of the learning process.

General elections, party-politics, working of pressure-groups, changing social basis of the elites, governmental performance influence the political culture. Group-behaviour also largely determines the political culture of a country. In simpler words, political culture studies the interaction between the beliefs, events and structure.

Thus political culture makes a critical evaluation of the standards of political conduct. The way in which the political activities of a particular country are organised besides public statements, myths and legends, speeches and writings are the norms for the foundation of a political culture of that country.

Study of a political culture is also a study in political dynamics. The process of interaction between the political system and the political actors is one of techniques to understand the change in political culture that happens through time.

The social processes influence the individual at all stages of life. These individuals in return inter-act with the political system and introducing changes in the character of the political system, whereas the changing character of the political system influences the channels of political socialisation, on the one side and the individual behaviour on the other side. These things collectively form political culture can be treated as valuable method for the study of the behaviour of the individual in the context of the political system in which he is operating.

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Recall means that the sovereign power lies with the people and they have the right to recall their representatives, whether the representatives are legislators or high officials, if they fail to perform their functions in a proper manner.

Foreman writes, “Where the recall is in use, the voters upon the complaint or petition of a certain number of citizens, vote upon the question whether a certain officer shall be deprived of (recalled from) his office before his term expires and if the vote is in favour of the officer’s removal, he must give up his office before the end of his term”.

According to Leacock, “The system means that all persons who hold office must do so only as long as their tenure of office is sanctioned by the will of the people. At any time when a majority of the voters desire it, the office-holder is removed from his office”.

Prevalence of this System:

This system is prevalent in some of the American States like Arkansas, Kikhoma, Montana. North Dakota, Oregon, Arezona, Louisiana, Nevada, California and Washington. In Washington, judges cannot be removed in this manner but in Oregon even the judges are recalled. In six states of America both the judges and the officials can be recalled and in ten states only officials can be recalled.

This system is also seen in Communist China. In China, Deputies to the Local People’s Congress are elected by the people of the age of 18 years or above. The voters can recall the members of the Local People’s Congress at will. This system is not in practice in India and there is no mention of it in the Constitution.

Advantages of the System of Recall:

(1) Real Control of the masses over the officials and representatives:

The people can exercise their sovereign power only when they are given the right to recall their elected representatives or the official, if they fail to perform their responsibilities in a proper manner. If the people are not given the right to recall their representatives, they are apt to act arbitrarily and the people will have no control whatsoever over their elected representatives.

(2) An important method to end bribery and corruption:

The officials will not indulge in corrupt practices because of the fear of recall.

(3) This system is a symbol of direct democracy:

Recall is the best system of the preservation of direct democracy. If the people have no control over their elected representatives or officials, democracy will become meaningless and the representatives and the officials will act arbitrarily.

(4) A good method to root out political corruption:

In democracy it is generally seen that the ministers become corrupt and they favour their relatives and friends. Through the system of recall, they will be under the control of the people. For fear of recall, they will hesitate to do any undesirable thing. The ministers indulge in corrupt practices because the people have no control over them.

Disadvantages of the Recall System:

(1) There is possibility of a wrong judgment:

In the system of recall there is a possibility of a big leader indulging in creating a misunderstanding among the minds of the people against any official, with whom the leader is not on good terms. Mostly the people are not aware of the diplomatic tactics of the political leaders and sometimes wrong decisions are given against honest and sincere officials.

(2) The whole atmosphere is vitiated by the recall of the officers and the representatives:

When an official or a representative is recalled, charges are leveled against him. The official or the representative against whom charges are leveled tries to level counter-charges against his complainants. With charges and counter­charges the entire atmosphere is poisoned.

(3) Independence of the officers is curtailed:

Because of the fear of charges and counter-charges, sometimes intelligent able and honest persons hesitate to accept high positions. This is quite harmful for the administration.

(4) Independence of the officers is curtailed:

Because of t he fears of recall, the officers do not take such decisions as may not be liked by the political leaders. If they take any such decisions, they face a severe criticism and adverse propaganda. Thus, the officers sometimes try to flatter the political leaders. This curtails their freedom of action.

(5) Serious consequences may occur if the judges are recalled:

The system of the recall of the Judges destroy, the liberty of the judiciary, the judges will not be able to take any decision independently and fearlessly because of the fear of being recalled.

(6) Independence of the judgement of the representatives is lost:

Because of the fear of recall, the representatives do not do any unpopular but right thing. This mars their independence.

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