Category: Political Science Notes

Since individuals constitute society, they form the units of society. As a member (or unit) of society or the state a man must behave in a way which is good for all and which is helpful in promoting the welfare of society. Society calls upon the individuals to follow certain norms. These are obligations or duties.

A duty is an obligation. As a member of society or state, the individual has to observe these obligations of society. Rights and duties are related to each other. They are the two sides of the same coins. They are the same conditions seen from different angles.

The rights of one are the duties of the other and vice versa. In the absence of duties rights become insignificant and duties are fruitless in the absence of rights. If we have right to enjoy our rights, it is our cardinal duty to perform our duties.

If the state guarantees the enjoyment of certain rights to us, the state, at the same time, wants us to perform certain duties also. Otherwise, we are punished. We have certain moral duties to perform and certain legal duties which we are bound to perform.

Moral Duties:

Moral duties are those obligations which we should observe but we are not legally bound to observe them. It is our moral duty that we should serve our parents, teachers, brothers and sisters and the relatives. It is the moral duty of every one that he should lend a helping hand to the poor and down-trodden.

It is the moral duty of every individual that he should look after his family and earn money by fair means. It is our moral duty that we should serve our village, our province, nation and the world to all possible extents. China committed an aggression on India on 20th October, 1962 and emergency was declared in the country. In 1965 and 1971 Pakistan committed an aggression on India. At that time it was our moral duty to serve our country to our best abilities.

Legal Duties:

There is a marked difference between legal duties and moral duties. It depends entirely on the conscience of the individual to perform moral duties or not to perform them. But an individual is legally bound to perform legal duties. If he does not perform them, he will be punished by the state. It is the legal duty of every citizen to show obedience to the constitution, commands of law and pay taxes regularly and honestly. It is our legal duty to remain loyal to our country.

Traitors are tried by the Judiciary and are punished by the state. If the state recruits us in army compulsorily at the time of emergency, it is our duty to join the army and make our best possible efforts to defend the country.

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The last one hundred fifty years till the Second World War have witnessed a steady decline, decay, and death of political theory. On account of several factors, it could not remain an innovative, integrative and invigorating enterprise. It stood as a passive or spineless spectator to the two world wars and failed to save humanity from senseless devastation.

These crises did not create any flutter in the hearts and minds of traditional political thinkers. Perhaps they were unable to react because of their old and anachronistic ideas or love of philosophic virtues to be realised in cloistered seclusion. It even did not cry against large-scale fratricide and senseless killings. They are still simply witnessing the events leading to a global war by nuclear weapons.

(1) Easton has fervently analysed the causes behind this sad state of affairs and has subsumed them under the concept of’ historicism’. The latter term means a tendency to show that values and ideas are by-product of their milieu or prevailing circumstances. The writers adopt the role of historians and trace out history of values or institutions still surviving.

They vividly describe the conditions which produced a particular set of ideas. A ‘historicist’ political writer is little concerned with the problems of his times or finding out solutions or suggesting formu­lation of new values. He is, in brief, a prisoner of past, unable to peep into present or opine for a better future.

As described by Easton, the contemporary writers were:

(i) Living parasitically on century-old ideas, and

(ii) Remained unable to develop a new political synthesis.

They loved and believed in speculation which again was found to a be product of history. They concentrated their minds in analysing the meaning, logical consistency, and historical development of prevailing ideas. Easton puts them into four groups:

(a) Institutionalists,

(b) Interactionists,

(c) Materialists, and

(d) Value-writers.

Institutionalists, like Mclllwain, go into the history of ideas for past rationalisation or justification of particular political interests and insti­tutions. Interactionists, like Allen and sometimes Carlyle, analyse the interaction between ideas and institutions, and its impact on the process of social change. The materialists, such as Easton, Sabine and others look into cultural and historical milieu which produced the particular political thinking. The last group represented by Lindsay, take up specific values, say, democracy, nationalism or justice and trace out their genesis so as to provide a strong support.

(2) In fact, Easton wants a political theory containing also reformulation of values suitable to the present age; and theorisation about political behaviour and institutions. Apart from historicism, forces of moral relativism, hyper-factualism and lack of renovation have frustrated this goal. Moral relativism indicates one’s faith in the absence of universal principles of morality and believing in morality related to prevailing milieu. Hume, Max Weber, Comte, Marx and others had advocated its tenets. They detached values from facts, and regarded them merely as individual or group preferences.

These preferences were related, not with certain metaphysical or moral realities, but to one’s own life experiences. Europe had evolved a common set of values like, capitalism, nationalism, and democracy, during the period of 1848-1918, and could afford ‘moral relativism’. It continued to bask in the dreamland oblivious of the rise of a new value system in Russia, Fascism in Italy, and Nazism in Germany.

The concept of ‘sociology of knowledge’ also brought forward the view that ideas in man are products of his social milieu, and related to his times. In this manner knowledge could not have a purpose or goal. The question of ‘knowledge for what?’ was raised, but remained futile in view of prevailing notion of value-free Political Science. Few cared for the problems of society, still less led knowledge to political goals or values. Lack of a proper value theory, historicism, and neglect of causal or empirical theory led to this decline. Excessive concentration on the Study of facts, structures, processes, motives, attitudes etc., increased knowledge of is but not of ought, that is, destination and goals. Hyper-factualism or crude empiricism led to an avalanche of facts which was swaying away the whole discipline.

(3) Alfred Cobban found the contemporary conditions similar to those prevailed during the Roman Empire. He looked at expansion of state power, bureaucracy, and huge military establishments as danger to the growth of political theory. The Communist world suffered from concen­tration of power and the party-machine, whereas the western world failed to reform its democracy as ‘a living tool’. Abstraction of state as an engine of power keeps moral values away from politics. All this has resulted in the consequential decline of political theory.

(4) From the internal view of the discipline, Cobban opines that political thinking itself has become directionless, and lacks purpose. In the past, all great thinkers were passionately worried about the fate of society, and seriously wanted to reform it through their creative ideas. They had full conviction in what they wrote or said. Now that passionate commitment, he complains, has been substituted by the teaching of historical approach and the scientific attitude. Historical approach led to power as standard of success. Blind adoption of scientific method, borrowed from natural sciences, resulted in the loss of criteria of judgement, and merely produced cold-blooded passionless scholars.

(5) Dante Germino discovers ‘ideological reductionism’ as the cause of decline of political theory. By this he means reducing political theory to merely an ideology, such as, Marxism. The intellectual and political movements during the last one hundred and fifty years have contributed to its eclipse. Positivisation of social science or a mad rat-race to become ‘science’ and political upheavals of democracy, nationalism, imperialism etc., have destroyed the environment necessary for the growth of political theory.

Destutt de Tracy the inventor of the term ‘ideology’, propounded it as ‘science of deter­mining the origin of ideas’. As usual, sense experience was the basis of his ‘ideology” or ‘science of ideas’. Positivism of Auguste Comte gave birth to a ‘science of society’ or sociology by discovering laws governing human behaviour. It was patterned on natural sciences. Marx went a step further. He claimed that he had discovered the laws of human development. With such laws in hand or with Marxist ideology of society, the existing class could be transformed into a classless and stateless society. There is no other alternative. Theory, to him, is but a weapon in the hands of the working class. All that evaporated with the collapses of Soviet Union in 1990.

(6) Another cause of decline found by Germino in the separation of is and ought or fact and value or being (reality) and meaning, brought about by Linguistic Philosophy and Logical Positivism. The trend is best represented by Max Weber who made a sharp distinction between empirical knowledge and value judgements. On the basis of this separation, he challenged the Marxian view.

Although, he accepted the role and importance of values but put it beyond the purview of scientific treatment. As a social scientist, he stood for ethical neutrality which makes a political (value) theory difficult to grow. Therefore, Germino is convinced that, ‘a full recovery of critical political theory within the positivist universe of discourse cannot be achieved’. He regards Easton, Cobban and Waldo as axiological positivists who unsuccess­fully tried to unite values with factual studies, and visualise the making of political theory.

(7) Consensus of opinion regarding values and objectives of society in t
he West and success in achieving them in practice have also weakened the desire to have any new political theory. People have got everything. Patridge observes, ‘If classical political theory has died, perhaps it has been killed by the triumph of democracy’.

People in USA, UK and France, after settling down everything about ends are concerned mainly with means which is again a technical and scientific problem. Now, the West defends the status quo and is conservative, interested only in ‘incrementalism’, or ‘piecemeal engineering’ or accommodation and adjustment. Lipset, Dahl, Schumpeter and Berlin find little controversy over the goals.

Still, there is another view that political theory even in the traditional sense was never dead and continuity can be traced out. Plamenatz, Weldon and others do not accept that it has even declined or dwindled.’ It has merely changed its form. Even speculative theories, except spurious or Utopian ones, are important as they have effected thinking, events and happenings. Formerly, political theories were embedded in philosophy, ethics or religion. Now, they are carving out their own fields, rather looking at the whole array of problems from their own perspective.

Germino finds resurgence of traditional political theory, particularly, in the writings of Michael Oakeshott, Hannah Arendt, Bertrand de Jouvenal, Leo Strauss, Eric Voegelin and others. Similarly, Isaiah Berun observes that without some general outlook or philosophy, there can be no human activity: political theory of some kind is never dead. It is flourishing in newer forms with newer engagements.

With the advancement of society, they say, people will need more theory to organise, justify and rationalise their actions. If there is no theory, they will invent it: beg, borrow or even steal. Man will always advocate some theory for himself and others. Apart from these views, there are some passionate ancients who claim that Plato and Aristotle are enough, for them. The world of theory has not gone beyond.

Revival of traditional theory has appeared in many forms. There are classical political theorists like Leo Strauss, Michael Oakshott, Hannah Arendt Bertrand de Jouvenel and Eric Voegelin. John Rawls in his Theory of Justice (1971) revolutionised political thinking in the United States and outside. Besides liberals like Karl R. Popper arid Isaiah Berlin, there are libertarians like F.A. Hayek, Miltan Friedman, Robert Nozic.

On the other side stand communitarian political thinkers such as, Alasdair Maclntyre, Michael Walzer, Charles Taylor, Benjamin Barber and Michael Sandel. Neo-Marxism has appeared in form of postmodernism or critical theory. Originating from Frankfurt School (1923), it appears in the writings of Antonio Gramsci, George Lukacs, Jheodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Louis Althusser, Eric Fromm, Jean-Paul Sartre, Che Guevara, Herbert Marcuse and Jurgen Hebarmas. Most of these political philosophers are rather concerned with philosophical issues than political crises and problems of today. One can regard their theories as non-political, even anti-political. They appear to reject basic and applied aspects of modern political theory.

Critical theory often challenges our common sense assumptions about the world and poses controversial questions. It is a way of thinking that encourages us to critically approach our assumptions about ourselves and the world. The Frankfurt School version of critical theory from the beginning focused on the role of false consciousness and ideology in the perpetuation of capitalism, and analysed works of culture, including liter­ature, music, art, both ‘high culture’ and ‘popular culture’ or ‘mass culture’.

In the late 1960s Jurgen Habermas of the Frankfurt School, redefined critical theory in a way that freed it from a tie in with Marxism or the prior work of the School. In Habermas’ epistemology, critical knowledge was conceptualised as knowledge that enabled human beings to emancipate themselves from forms of domination through self-reflection and took psychoanalysis as the paradigm of critical knowledge. Within social sciences, it included such approaches as world systems theory, feminist theory, postcolonial theory, critical race theory, and queer theory, social ecology, the theory of communicative action, structuration theory, and neo-Marxian theory.

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For using Gandhian Political Technologies (GPTs), the operation of the power process of Gandhian non-violence should be understood in a comprehensive manner.

The power-process of non-violence consists of four stages or forms:

1. Spiritual Power or Soul-force (SP):

When a person realizes soul, God, Truth, Brahma etc., he, as proclaimed by the Shastras, attains real spiritual power. Gandhi aspired to have that power. This power enables one to change the heart of his adversary even without self-suffering. But the satyagrahi, as part of Universal Spirit through self-suffering invokes the souls or spirits of all human beings, including the adversary, and gains sympathy for his cause.

As the people believe in the goals and values of their leader gather together on his call, they feel that the leader has the power of non-violence of the brave. In fact, it is the organisation and number of followers gathered around him that makes him look powerful.

Spiritual or soul-force alone cannot be considered as power in the sense of interpersonal influence. Soul-force remains confined to the ‘person’ of the individual concerned. It attains attributes (not real) when that individual considers himself to be in possession of that mystic, abstruse or enigmatic power, or the people alike him or those who are under his influence, credu­lously believe that he holds power of non-violence in his person. In this manner, he becomes the source of power. This power is lost when followers leave him alone.

2. Initial Formative Power (IFP):

Soul-force, whatever be the number of admirers or followers, remains confined to the leader. When the latter attracts and gathers a large number of people for a purpose on the basis of faith in some ‘common moral values/principles’, power begins to generate. This moral power has no political goal. Common values initiate or generate ‘corporate’ power. It can be named as Initial Formative Power, which resides in that spiritual or saintly person and also his followers.

When that person takes up some public or political cause, and organises a large number of people, his Initial Formative Power (IFP) is converted into ‘direct physical power’. Issues of morality and conscience are converted into concrete ‘formative’ power. Both soul-force and formative power of moral principles take shape around some issue, demand or claim of a large number of people.

3. Actual Physical Power of the People (APPP):

The man-of-religion or a leader like Gandhi employs various tools and techniques like hartal, picketing, demonstration etc. The followers usually remain peaceful till they remain behind their non-violent leader. But under the leadership of a man of non-violence, they are expected to be peaceful.

In his absence, they may be organised or un-organised, violent or non-violent and constitutional or unconstitutional. Direct or actual physical power appears in the form of a large number of people organised by the leader making a claim or demand.

It is this concrete reality which stands before the adversary or the government. In this way, Initial Formative Power (IFP) is translated into Actual Physical Power of the People (APPP). It is actual operating power of the agitating people. The number of agitators increases when the leader is put under greater and greater suffering like beating, imprisonment, confiscation of property, fast unto death, and other threats to life.

4. Probable Potential Power of the People (PPPP):

This power rests with the people who do not take part in the movement. They live in the countryside, away from the scene of the struggle, and may remain apathetic, dormant and inactive. This dormant power does not operate in accordance with the wishes or directives of the non-violent leader.

Their power is probable but irresistible. When it is active, it can compel the adversary to relent and concede the demands. Every large group, community or organisation invariably possesses probable potential power even without displaying its actual physical power. It is a condition precedent of all sorts of power including assumed or actual power.

When the government with the help of the police and army tries to crush their non-violent movement, a large number of people join it. As these people are not trained and initiated in the methods and techniques of non-violence, they act and operate as insurgents and rebels. All of them together release or make up this ‘probable potential power’ of the people. It is this power which a government keeps in mind.

By its neglect, the government might be facing riots, rebellion, anarchy and armed struggle. Potential power of the people remains dormant, silent and apathetic till their basic values and interests are not at stake. When some leader of their liking calls on them or puts his life in danger, the whole community stands up in defense.

Gandhi or Gandhi-like leadership, on the basis of moral values like non-violence, initiates power by gathering people around those values. But those values only do not make up power. Power consists in the number, organisation and goals of those people. This has been labeled as their Actual Physical Power of the People.

It becomes much more effective when if is supported by Probable Potential Power of the People. Devoid of APPP and PPPP no non-violence can prove to be effective. Even fasting by a satyagrahi leader appears effective only when they are propped up by APPP and PPPP. But neglecting the real source of power behind this fasting, a leader may make moves, which happen to not be relevant to the situation.

Influence of the votary of non-violence of the brave dwindles if the bond of common values and goals existing between the leader and his followers disappears. Non-violence of a leader turns powerless when it is supported neither by Actual Physical Power (APPP) nor by Probable Potential Power (PPPP). When larger issues are involved, more and more people come out to join the satyagraha movement. However, the Probable Potential Power of the People (PPPP) has to face the Power of Counter-Forces (PCF), and, sometimes, is rendered into Non-Power (NP) if the Probable Potential Power is split and weakens.

Of course, invoking some other common values, a leader belonging to some form of Counter-Force (PCF) can simultaneously seek help from both APPP and PPPP of his community. It was so done by M.A. Jinnah of the Muslim League. It can also be successful if supported by the powerful Adversary. The British Raj had helped the Muslim League against the Indian National Congress and granted partition. In a way, it was more successful than the non-violence of Gandhi at all the three levels.

There can be more than two or three such leaders. If one group, under Gandhian type of leadership, sticks to non-violence without the support of APPP or PPPP, and the other does not resort to non-violence of any type, the former has have to surrender to the demands of the latter. If the Gandhian movement too comes down to the latter level, there could be anarchy, insurgency or rebellion.

Thus, the operational process of non-violence moves normally from:

(a) Assumed power of spirit or soul of a Gandhi-like leader to

(b) Initial formative power of a few followers to

(c) Actual physical power of the people taking part in the movement, but they also carry with them

(d) Potential physical power of the whole people or community which may burst out when the adversary appears to cross all limits.

However, owing to close moral bonds between the saint-leader and the people at large, the former while sacrificing his life for them through ‘fast unto death’
or otherwise, also can directly invoke the probable potential power of the people. A government can always invoke the power of other counter-forces like minorities, caste and class groups, unions and other vested interests to transform of the power of a movement into non-power.

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All theories of globalization have been put hereunder in eight categories: liberalism, political realism, Marxism, constructivism, postmodernism, feminism , Trans-formationalism and eclecticism. Each one of them carries several variations.

1. Theory of Liberalism:

Liberalism sees the process of globalisation as market-led extension of modernisation. At the most elementary level, it is a result of ‘natural’ human desires for economic welfare and political liberty. As such, transplanetary connectivity is derived from human drives to maximise material well-being and to exercise basic freedoms. These forces eventually interlink humanity across the planet.

They fructify in the form of:

(a) Technological advances, particularly in the areas of transport, communications and information processing, and,

(b) Suitable legal and institutional arrangement to enable markets and liberal democracy to spread on a trans world scale.

Such expla­nations come mostly from Business Studies, Economics, International Political Economy, Law and Politics. Liberalists stress the necessity of constructing institutional infrastructure to support globalisation. All this has led to technical standardisation, administrative harmonisation, trans­lation arrangement between languages, laws of contract, and guarantees of property rights.

But its supporters neglect the social forces that lie behind the creation of technological and institutional underpinnings. It is not satis­fying to attribute these developments to ‘natural’ human drives for economic growth and political liberty. They are culture blind and tend to overlook historically situated life-worlds and knowledge structures which have promoted their emergence.

All people cannot be assumed to be equally amenable to and desirous of increased globality in their lives. Similarly, they overlook the phenomenon of power. There are structural power inequalities in promoting globalisation and shaping its course. Often they do not care for the entrenched power hierarchies between states, classes, cultures, sexes, races and resources.

2. Theory of Political Realism:

Advocates of this theory are interested in questions of state power, the pursuit of national interest, and conflict between states. According to them states are inherently acquisitive and self-serving, and heading for inevitable competition of power. Some of the scholars stand for a balance of power, where any attempt by one state to achieve world dominance is countered by collective resistance from other states.

Another group suggests that a dominant state can bring stability to world order. The ‘hegemon’ state (presently the US or G7/8) maintains and defines international rules and institutions that both advance its own interests and at the same time contain conflicts between other states. Globalisation has also been explained as a strategy in the contest for power between several major states in contem­porary world politics.

They concentrate on the activities of Great Britain, China, France, Japan, the USA and some other large states. Thus, the political realists highlight the issues of power and power struggles and the role of states in generating global relations.

At some levels, globalisation is considered as antithetical to territorial states. States, they say, are not equal in globalisation, some being dominant and others subordinate in the process. But they fail to understand that everything in globalisation does not come down to the acquisition, distribution and exercise of power.

Globalisation has also cultural, ecological, economic and psychological dimensions that are not reducible to power politics. It is also about the production and consumption of resources, about the discovery and affir­mation of identity, about the construction and communication of meaning, and about humanity shaping and being shaped by nature. Most of these are apolitical.

Power theorists also neglect the importance and role of other actors in generating globalisation. These are sub-state authorities, macro-regional institutions, global agencies, and private-sector bodies. Additional types of power-relations on lines of class, culture and gender also affect the course of globalisation. Some other structural inequalities cannot be adequately explained as an outcome of interstate competition. After all, class inequality, cultural hierarchy, and patriarchy predate the modern states.

3. Theory of Marxism:

Marxism is principally concerned with modes of production, social exploi­tation through unjust distribution, and social emancipation through the transcendence of capitalism. Marx himself anticipated the growth of globality that ‘capital by its nature drives beyond every spatial barrier to conquer the whole earth for its market’. Accordingly, to Marxists, globalisation happens because trans-world connectivity enhances opportu­nities of profit-making and surplus accumulation.

Marxists reject both liberalist and political realist explanations of globalisation. It is the outcome of historically specific impulses of capitalist development. Its legal and insti­tutional infrastructures serve the logic of surplus accumulation of a global scale. Liberal talk of freedom and democracy make up a legitimating ideology for exploitative global capitalist class relations.

The neo-Marxists in dependency and world-system theories examine capitalist accumulation on a global scale on lines of core and peripheral countries. Neo-Gramscians highlight the significance of underclass struggles to resist globalising capitalism not only by traditional labour unions, but also by new social movements of consumer advocates, environmentalists, peace activists, peasants, and women. However, Marxists give an overly restricted account of power.

There are other relations of dominance and subordination which relate to state, culture, gender, race, sex, and more. Presence of US hegemony, the West-centric cultural domination, masculinism, racism etc. are not reducible to class dynamics within capitalism. Class is a key axis of power in globalisation, but it is not the only one. It is too simplistic to see globalisation solely as a result of drives for surplus accumulation.

It also seeks to explore identities and investigate meanings. People develop global weapons and pursue global military campaigns not only for capitalist ends, but also due to interstate competition and militarist culture that predate emergence of capitalism. Ideational aspects of social relations also are not outcome of the modes of production. They have, like nationalism, their autonomy.

4. Theory of Constructivism:

Globalisation has also arisen because of the way that people have mentally constructed the social world with particular symbols, language, images and interpretation. It is the result of particular forms and dynamics of consciousness. Patterns of production and governance are second-order structures that derive from deeper cultural and socio-psychological forces. Such accounts of globalisation have come from the fields of Anthropology, Humanities, Media of Studies and Sociology.

Constructivists concentrate on the ways that social actors ‘construct’ their world: both within their own minds and through inter-subjective communication with others. Conver­sation and symbolic exchanges lead people to construct ideas of the world, the rules for social interaction, and ways of being and belonging in that world. Social geography is a mental experience as well as a physical fact. They form ‘in’ or ‘out’ as well as ‘us’ and they’ groups.

They conceive of themselves as inhabitants of a particular global world. National, class, religious and other identities respond in
part to material conditions but they also depend on inter-subjective construction and communication of shared self-understanding. However, when they go too far, they present a case of social-psychological reductionism ignoring the significance of economic and ecological forces in shaping mental experience. This theory neglects issues of structural inequalities and power hierarchies in social relations. It has a built-in apolitical tendency.

5. Theory of Postmodernism:

Some other ideational perspectives of globalisation highlight the signifi­cance of structural power in the construction of identities, norms and knowledge. They all are grouped under the label of ‘postmodernism’. They too, as Michel Foucault does strive to understand society in terms of knowledge power: power structures shape knowledge. Certain knowledge structures support certain power hierarchies.

The reigning structures of understanding determine what can and cannot be known in a given socio-historical context. This dominant structure of knowledge in modern society is ‘rationalism’. It puts emphasis on the empirical world, the subordi­nation of nature to human control, objectivist science, and instrumentalist efficiency. Modern rationalism produces a society overwhelmed with economic growth, technological control, bureaucratic organisation, and disciplining desires.

This mode of knowledge has authoritarian and expan­sionary logic that leads to a kind of cultural imperialism subordinating all other epistemologies. It does not focus on the problem of globalisation per se. In this way, western rationalism overawes indigenous cultures and other non-modem life-worlds.

Postmodernism, like Marxism, helps to go beyond the relatively superficial accounts of liberalist and political realist theories and expose social conditions that have favoured globalisation. Obviously, postmodernism suffers from its own methodological idealism. All material forces, though come under impact of ideas, cannot be reduced to modes of consciousness. For a valid explanation, interconnection between ideational and material forces is not enough.

6. Theory of Feminism:

It puts emphasis on social construction of masculinity and femininity. All other theories have identified the dynamics behind the rise of trans-planetary and supra-territorial connectivity in technology, state, capital, identity and the like.

Biological sex is held to mould the overall social order and shape significantly the course of history, presently globality. Their main concern lies behind the status of women, particularly their structural subordination to men. Women have tended to be marginalised, silenced and violated in global communication.

7. Theory of Trans-formationalism:

This theory has been expounded by David Held and his colleagues. Accord­ingly, the term ‘globalisation’ reflects increased interconnectedness in political, economic and cultural matters across the world creating a “shared social space”. Given this interconnectedness, globalisation may be defined as “a process (or set of processes) which embodies a transformation in the spatial organisation of social relations and transactions, expressed in trans­continental or interregional flows and networks of activity, interaction and power.”

While there are many definitions of globalisation, such a definition seeks to bring together the many and seemingly contradictory theories of globalisation into a “rigorous analytical framework” and “proffer a coherent historical narrative”. Held and McGrew’s analytical framework is constructed by developing a three part typology of theories of globalisation consisting of “hyper-globalist,” “sceptic,” and “transformationalist” categories.

The Hyperglobalists purportedly argue that “contemporary globalisation defines a new era in which people everywhere are increasingly subject to the disciplines of the global marketplace”. Given the importance of the global marketplace, multi-national enterprises (MNEs) and intergov­ernmental organisations (IGOs) which regulate their activity are key political actors. Sceptics, such as Hirst and Thompson (1996) ostensibly argue that “globalisation is a myth which conceals the reality of an interna­tional economy increasingly segmented into three major regional blocs in which national governments remain very powerful.” Finally, transformationalists such as Rosenau (1997) or Giddens (1990) argue that globalisation occurs as “states and societies across the globe are experi­encing a process of profound change as they try to adapt to a more interconnected but highly uncertain world”.

Developing the transformationalist category of globalisation theories. Held and McGrew present a rather complicated typology of globalisation based on globalization’s spread, depth, speed, and impact, as well as its impacts on infrastructure, institutions, hierarchical structures and the unevenness of development.

They imply that the “politics of globalisation” have been “transformed” (using their word from the definition of globalisation) along all of these dimensions because of the emergence of a new system of “political globalisation.” They define “political globalisation” as the “shifting reach of political power, authority and forms of rule” based on new organisa­tional interests which are “transnational” and “multi-layered.”

These organisational interests combine actors identified under the hyper-globalist category (namely IGOs and MNEs) with those of the sceptics (trading blocs and powerful states) into a new system where each of these actors exercises their political power, authority and forms of rule.

Thus, the “politics of globalisation” is equivalent to “political globalisation” for Held and McGrew. However, Biyane Michael criticises them. He deconstructs their argument, if a is defined as “globalisation” (as defined above), b as the organisational interests such as MNEs, IGOs, trading blocs, and powerful states, and c as “political globalisation” (also as defined above), then their argument reduces to a. b. c. In this way, their discussion of globalisation is trivial.

Held and others present a definition of globalisation, and then simply restates various elements of the definition. Their definition, “globalisation can be conceived as a process (or set of processes) which embodies a transformation in the spatial organisation of social relations” allows every change to be an impact of globalisation. Thus, by their own definition, all the theorists they critique would be considered as “transformationalists.” Held and McGrew also fail to show how globalisation affects organisational interests.

8. Theory of Eclecticism:

Each one of the above six ideal-type of social theories of globalisation highlights certain forces that contribute to its growth. They put emphasis on technology and institution building, national interest and inter-state compe­tition, capital accumulation and class struggle, identity and knowledge construction, rationalism and cultural imperialism, and masculinize and subordination of women. Jan Art Scholte synthesises them as forces of production, governance, identity, and knowledge.

Accordingly, capitalists attempt to amass ever-greater resources in excess of their survival needs: accumulation of surplus. The capitalist economy is thoroughly monetised. Money facilitates accumulation. It offers abundant opportunities to transfer surplus, especially from the weak to the powerful. This mode of production involves perpetual and pervasive contests over the distribution of surplus. Such competition occurs both between individual, firms, etc. and along structural lines of class, gender, race etc.

Their contests can be o
vert or latent. Surplus accumulation has had transpired in one way or another for many centuries, but capitalism is a comparatively recent phenomenon. It has turned into a structural power, and is accepted as a ‘natural’ circumstance, with no alternative mode of production. It has spurred globalisation in four ways: market expansion, accounting practices, asset mobility and enlarged arenas of commodification. Its technological innovation appears in communication, transport and data processing as well as in global organisation and management. It concentrates profits at points of low taxation. Information, communication, finance and consumer sectors offer vast potentials to capital making it ‘hyper-capitalism’.

Any mode of production cannot operate in the absence of an enabling regulatory apparatus. There are some kind of governance mechanisms. Governance relates processes whereby people formulate, implement, enforce and review rules to guide their common affairs.” It entails more than government. It can extend beyond state and sub-state institutions including supra-state regimes as well. It covers the full scope of societal regulation.

In the growth of contemporary globalisation, besides political and economic forces, there are material and ideational elements. In expanding social relations, people explore their class, their gender, their nationality, their race, their religious faith and other aspects of their being. Constructions of identity provide collective solidarity against oppression. Identity provides frameworks for community, democracy, citizenship and resistance. It also leads from nationalism to greater pluralism and hybridity.

Earlier nationalism promoted territorialism, capitalism, and statism, now these plural identities are feeding more and more globality, hyper-capitalism and polycentrism. These identities have many international qualities visualised in global diasporas and other group affiliations based on age, class, gender, race, religious faith and sexual orientations. Many forms of supra-territorial solidarities are appearing through globalisation.

In the area of knowledge, the way that the people know their world has significant implications for the concrete circumstances of that world. Powerful patterns of social consciousness cause globalisation. Knowledge frameworks cannot be reduced to forces of production, governance or identity.

Mindsets encourage or discourage the rise of globality. Modern rationalism is a general configuration of knowledge. It is secular as it defines reality in terms of the tangible world of experience. It understands reality primarily in terms of human interests, activities and conditions. It holds that phenomena can be understood in terms of single incontrovertible truths that are discoverable by rigorous application of objective research methods.

Ratio­nalism is instrumentalist. It assigns greatest value to insights that enable people efficiently to solve immediate problems. It subordinates all other ways of understanding and acting upon the world. Its knowledge could then be applied to harness natural and social forces for human purposes. It enables people to conquer disease, hunger, poverty, war, etc., and maximise the potentials of human life. It looks like a secular faith, a knowledge framework for capitalist production and a cult of economic efficiency. Scientism and instrumentalism of rationalism is conducive to globalisation. Scientific knowledge is non-territorial.

The truths revealed by ‘objective’ method are valid for anyone, anywhere, and anytime on earth. Certain production processes, regulations, technologies and art forms are applicable across the planet. Martin Albrow rightly says that reason knows no terri­torial limits. The growth of globalisation is unlikely to reverse in the foreseeable future.

However, Scholte is aware of insecurity, inequality and marginalisation caused by the present process of globalisation. Others reject secularist character of the theory, its manifestation of the imperialism of westernist-modernist-rationalist knowledge. Anarchists challenge the oppressive nature of states and other bureaucratic governance frameworks. Globalisation neglects environmental degradation and equitable gender relations.

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1. Classical democracy has had a long tradition. Some of its features are:

(a) Equal participation by all freemen in the common affairs of the polity;

(b) Participation as an essential instrument of good life;

(c) Public decisions in an atmosphere of free discussion;

(d) General respect for law and for the established procedures;

(e) Majority opinion determines legis­lation (Dicey: Law and Opinion in England, 1905);

(f) People expressed their sovereign will through majority votes;

(g) Test of government is the welfare of the people; and

(h) Participation is the ‘essence’ of democracy (Bryce: Modern Democracies, 1921).

2. Liberal democracy:

Until the 19th century, was not at all democratic. Much of it was antidemocratic. The individual has the right to unlimited acquisition of property and to the capitalist market economy. It implied inequality in the political spheres also. It insisted on property qualifications for the right-to-vote. This was contrary to the democratic principles. This classical liberalism fostered capitalism responsible for large-scale indus­trialisation and urbanisation. There was concentration of workers in large industrial cities.

They were forced to live under sub-human conditions created by competitive economy. This class became conscious of its strength and insisted on its rights. In this way the liberal state was forced to accom­modate democratic principles in order to save its own existence. A combination of free-market economy with universal adult franchise came up. Conflicting claims of the capitalists and the masses were accommodated under the ideology of ‘welfare state’.

Procedures and institutional arrange­ments stood by the new principles (C.B. Macpherson: Democratic Theory: Essays in Retrieval, 1973).

Principles of liberal democracy include:

(a) Government by consent,

(b) Public accountability,

(c) Majority rule,

(d) Recognition of minority rights, and,

(e) Constitutional government.

Mechanism includes institutions and procedures. Accordingly, there should be more than one political party freely competing for political power. Political offices should not be confined to any privileged class. Periodic elections based on universal adult franchise should be held regularly. Civil liberties should be protected and granted to all citizens. Independence of judiciary is a must to maintain them.

3. Elitist democracy:

Elitist democracy relates to elitist theories which come from sociology. Gaetano Mosca (The Ruling Class, 1896) and Robert Michels (Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy, 1911) found the society divided into two groups: the rulers and the ruled. The former control most of the wealth, power and prestige.

The ruled remain to replace them. Vilfredo Pareto (The Mind and Society, 1915-19) used the terms ‘elite’ and ‘masses’ which are respectively superior and inferior groups of a society. Michel observed ‘iron law of oligarchy’ in every organisation, which is rule of the chosen few. The ‘elite’ show highest ability in every field while masses feel safe in following the direction of the elite. Karl Mannheim (Ideology and Utopia: An Intro­duction to the Sociology of Knowledge, 1929) reconciled elite theory with democratic theory.

According to him, society does not cease to be democratic by entrusting the shaping and making of policy to the elites. The masses cannot directly participate in the government. They can only make their aspirations felt at certain intervals. This is sufficient for democracy. The people can always act to remove their leaders and force them to take decisions in their interests. Selection of leaders is made on merit. Joseph A. Schumpeter (Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, 1942) stood for market-theory of democracy.

According to him democracy is ‘an institu­tional arrangement by which individuals acquire power of decision-making on the basis of competitive struggle for people’s votes’. He insists on methods of appointment and dismissing the makers of law and policy. Political decisions are taken by the ‘leadership’ and there is a free compe­tition among the leaders for winning people’s votes. Rulers are different from the common people. The people choose their leaders from the competing elites. This arrangement does not allow the leaders to grab absolute power. Political leaders have to earn larger support of the voters than their opponents.

The initiative remains in the hand of the leaders while the people simply respond to policies offered by them. Raymond Aron (Social Structure and the Ruling Class, 1950) draws attention on the general system of checks and balances and plurality of the elites. The elites are divided in a liberal democracy. Plurality of the elite makes government a business of compromise. This makes them sensitive to public opinion and conscious of the opposition. They have to change seats with the opponents in due course of time. Initiative remains in the hands of the elite.

Masses keep limited to choosing the ruling elite and to put pressure on them in their functioning. Giovanni Sartori (Democratic Theory, 1958) is more realistic. His views on democracy are similar to Schumpeter. Sartori finds most definitions of democracy half-truths and misleading. They limit democracy to ‘government’ only. Sartori makes a distinction between democracy as (i) an ideal, (ii) an illusion, and, (iii) a reality. One should keep these three aspects of democracy separate, though the first and the third interact. The three ideals of democracy: (i) popular sovereignty, (ii) equality, and (iii) self-government contradict each other, and make democracy an illusion.

One has to be realistic. Everyone likes to have the ‘ideals’ of democracy. This is so till democracy is accepted as ideal. After its acceptance, when we begin to execute the ideal, it turns into an ‘illusion.’ In countries, having several crores of people, there cannot be ‘rule by the whole people.’ Any self-government by them is impossible.

If a few are to be governor, and the rest are governed, then the aspect of ‘equality’ suffers. If self-government is extensive, it cannot be intensive, and vice versa. Excessive democracy ultimately tends to kill itself. Power to all means power to none, or some charismatic leader (later dictator) would take over, leading it to dictatorial form of government.

In reality, the people themselves do not rule. They do condition the democratic system or create environment for it. The people elect, influence and control the group of governors. This group is often a political party or some parties. There are many such groups or parties. Thus, democracy, instead of being a self-government, is a polyarchy. A political party selects its leaders. But the people select political party or parties to govern. This selection is an election by the people. It has to be done in a fair, free and independent manner. In practice, democracy is the government only by and of the people.

In democracy, power remains with ‘active demos,’ who actually are minorities or small groups. Their dominance in this system is treated as ‘democratic’ because entry in them is ‘open’ or un-restricted. All are free to participate or not to participate. None is coerced for doing so. Therefore, only active citizens have power in democracy. Democracy is rule of the leading elite: or leading minorities.

This is the reality of democracy. However, the use of the word ‘democracy’ must be retained as it represents an ideal or a set of popular aspirations. It opposes the very idea that democratic government can ever be the rule of one person or group. The role of the elite does not suggest any imperfection of democracy. It is the core of the democratic system. Governance is the business of competent leaders. The peop
le exercise their right to govern only at elections.

Danger to democracy emanates not from the existence of leaders but from the absence of leadership. In that case masses would be exploited by anti-democratic counter-elites. Leaders also educate public opinion. Sartori says that, ‘Actually, I am taking sides for, but against the inconsistency of the many who refuse with one hand what they demand with the other, who refuse the means and yet want the ends.’

4. Pluralist democracy:

Pluralist democracy appears in two forms: (i) the elitist-democratic, and (ii) the group theories. The former regards, on lines of Karl Mannheim and Raymond Aron, plurality of the elites as the foundation of modern liberal democracy. The latter finds democracy as a process of bargaining among autonomous groups. These groups form the character of the polity pluralistic. A.F. Bentley (The Process of Government, 1908) and David Truman (The Governmental Process, 1951) find the game of democracy played by a great variety of groups.

The task of government is to make policies which reflect the highest common group demand. It is the focal point for public pressure groups. A democratic society is a pluralist or differ­entiated society. The management of public affairs is shared by a number of groups. Robert A. Dahl (A Preface to Democratic Theory, 1956) developed a model of polyarchy. It is similar to the models of Bentley, Truman and Latham {The Group Basis of Politics, 1952). Their analysis of the nature of democratic society is pluralistic.

It is done in the sociological sense. It is sociological explanation of the political process. They find it as different from the elitists in that the bargaining process among the relatively auton­omous groups is highly decentralised. There is interaction among all such groups in claiming upon or showing interest in a particular issue. A group will get its way on the basis of its strength and the intensity of participation.

The pluralist theory stands apart from the liberal theory as well as the elitist theory. In it law and policy making is the product of group interaction. It does away with the role of the representatives or a coherent majority or of the autonomous and unrepresentative elite. In this way the form of government becomes redundant. Public policy reflects only the interests of the more organised and vocal groups. Interests of producers dominate over the interests of consumers.

The former are usually more organised than the latter. The pluralists repudiate the authoritarian basis of policy-making in a democracy. However, both elitist and pluralist theories favour maintenance of the status quo. They justify the phenomenon of domination either on grounds of certain outstanding inborn qualities of persons or on better organisation of certain interests.’

5. Participatory democracy:

Participatory democracy maintains that the ultimate authority of governance rests with the people themselves. Bachrach, Bay, Hayden, Lynd, Kariel, Kenniston, Pateman and others stand for it. In representative democracy people become inactive and passive after electing their represen­tatives. In big countries, democracy expands geographically. Distance between the people and their representatives widens. Few citizens are able to contact with their representatives.

According to the elitist theorists citizen participation is not a necessary condition of democracy. Citizens only vote for their leaders at the time of periodic elections. Polyarchy of Robert Dahl reconciles democracy with a low level of citizen participation. Both Schumpeter and Dahl treat democracy as a mechanism to maintain equilibrium. They consider it as a competition between two or more elite groups for gaining power. They desire only a low level of citizen partici­pation.

Participatory theory regards political participation as the basic principle of democracy. Individuals and groups actively take part in the governmental processes affecting their lives. They play an active role in the process of formulation and implementation of policies and decisions. Political participation includes voting, contesting elections, campaigning, canvassing, celebrating national festivals and functions and the like.

Political participation also includes opposition – signing petitions, peaceful demonstrations, organising protest marches, passive resistance, satyagraha and the like. Jean Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract, 1762) was pioneer of participatory democracy. He claimed that sovereignty originates in the people. It is retained by them even after the transition from the state of nature to civil society. It can neither be represented nor alienated. Repre­sentatives are mere agents of the people. Government is only an instrument to execute the instructions of the general will.

The latter is the real will of all members of a community. It. reflects the true interest of each individual as well as the common interest of the whole community. The people constantly deliberate on public issues and issue instructions to the government. The government cannot depart from these instructions. If it fails to implement, it can be revoked and replaced forthwith by another set of executives.

Presently, the people have little knowledge and understanding of political problems. Majority of them do not vote and do not discuss. Repre­sentatives avoid public accountability. There is rampant corruption and abuse of power. Political participation can remove most of these problems. This can be realised through a decentralisation of administration, b. use of referendum on a wider scale. In this manner, it can prove useful on (i) instrumental, (ii) educational, and, (iii) communitarian grounds.

Many socialist countries had also adopted political participation as a counter- measure to elitism and dominance of capitalism. They call their governments as ‘people’s democracy’ or ‘people’s democratic republic’. But in practice, their attempts merely hide reality. In fact, advocates of partici­patory democracy are overoptimistic. Excessive political participation may prove harmful. Ordinary people cannot make correct assessment of the situation and concerning issues. They may exaggerate their grievances and demands and resort to streets demonstrations, indiscipline and anarchy.

6. Marxian democracy:

Marxian democracy stands on totally different grounds. Marx found matter, productive forces, or modes of production as the basic material. His materialism is scientific and dynamic which grants no place to soul, God or Creator. It is matter-in-motion that operates in a dialectical process – thesis, anti-thesis and synthesis. Modes of production or social existence makes up the basic economic structure, the rest is the political superstructure. Political power or state is a handmaid of economic power. In order to derive legitimacy, political institutions of liberal democracy elections, voting etc. pay only lip-service to the principle of ‘sovereignty of the people’.

Represen­tative institutions, equal political rights etc. are only ideological misconceptions. Liberal democracy grants only formal equality. The workers who have right to vote with other dominant classes are led to believe that they have an equal share in governance. This type of political system simply lends legitimacy to the prevailing property relations. Liberal institutions do not provide an effective mechanism for transforming the property relations to serve the common interests, particularly, of the workers. Marxian democracy stands for a violent revolution by forcibly taking over the means of production through organisation of workers.

It establishes the dictatorship of the proletariat. It implies a stage where there is complete ‘socialisation of the major means of production’, and planning of all the material production to serve the social needs, and grant rights to work, education, health and housing for the masses. There is fuller devel­opment of science a
nd technology to multiply material production to realise greater social satisfaction.

The dictatorship of the proletariat is ‘concrete democracy. It is coercive power of the majority over the minority. Exercise of domination and coercion is necessary to contain the forces of capitalism and of counter-revolution. Lenin called it ‘democratic decentralisation’. This democratic dictatorship was to remain in force for a transitional period. All property or the means of production will be socially owned. Along with classes, the state would gradually wither away. The power of the state will be ‘transformed into simple administrative functions’ (Karl Marx: Capital, Vol. 3).

It will be “people’s democracy” and a classless society. The state will represent uniform interests of all the workers. Marx anticipated that bourgeois democracy would be replace by ‘commune system’. In communes, the members own everything in common, including the product of their labour. They would manage their own affairs, elect their delegates for the larger administrative units.

The larger units would elect their delegates for the still larger administrative areas, such as, national administration. This system is described as ‘pyramidal structure of direct democracy’. All delegates would be bound by the instructions given by their electorates or their committees.

In case of violation, they would be removed or recalled. Both Soviet Union (1917) and China (1949) tried this model in their own ways but failed miserably. In fact, in the usage of “people’s democracy”, the term “people’s” is tautological, because democracy means ‘the rule of the people’. However, Marxian democracy rules out the existence of democracy itself. It does not include middle and upper classes. It is committed to a particular set of interests. After the ushering of the ‘communist’ revolution, social conflicts do not end as was witnessed in Soviet Russia and China.

Still competition for power, sharp political rivalries and suppression of political opponents broke out. Abolition of classes was negated by occupational grading forming a ruthless pyramid of power. Antonio Gramsci (Prison Notebooks) has pointed out that the ruling class in capitalist society now rules not only by force, but also through the consent of the ruled and derives its legitimacy from the cultural and intellectual orientations of the people. The dominant economic class does not exercise its coercive power through the state and governmental apparatus alone.

7. Gandhian democracy:

Gandhian democracy claims to be the best of all democracies. Whereas all other democracies stand only for welfare relating to this world, it caters to the needs of man living here and hereafter. It means man at all levels, local, regional, national and global, and in all matters, moral, social, personal, religious, economic and political. All it does on the basis of its metaphysical and religious ethos. Accordingly, there is all-pervading Reality of God or Truth. Spiritual freedom finds God or Truth everywhere. The Gandhians ask human beings to look beyond, and rise above temporal present.

The goal of life is realisation of ‘moksha’ or God. This can be attained through faith, meditation, prayers, ascetic life, good will and self-suffering. One has to live by doing disinterested performance of duties and obligations. As God is everywhere and in all living beings there is no room for violence anywhere and in any form. Practice of non-violence, being related to faith in God, generates power.

There is power of creed-based non-violence which they regard it as invincible and unfailing. Another is power of policy or expediency based non-violence. If one is not able to obtain first form, as Gandhi himself could not, they would like to employ the second form. It emerges out of organisation, discipline, demands and vast number of protesting satyagrahis. The Gandhians claim to bring about any political, social, economic and moral change by using power of non-violence.

Both of them are ultimately based on self-suffering. But their goal remains the same: realisation of ‘moksha’ or God. According to them, if that goal is adopted by men, women and communities world over, there would not be any cut throat competition, conflict, hatred, war and violence.

They believe in freedom of soul, and want to fight against all forms of authoritarianism, coercion and violence. To obtain this goal they adopt means and methods of satyagraha. To them only the individual has soul. The state has no soul. Individual is at the root of all progress. Individual, State and society are separate. For men of non-violence, there is no need of sate.

Till the individuals reach that ideal stage or ‘Ram Rajya’, they are not in favour of eliminating the state. Presently, state and political power both are necessary. However, the scope of state activities could gradually be reduced to minimum. In the Gandhian state, everybody is to have ‘swaraj’ that is to be his own ruler. There would be no need of army, navy, air force, police, courts and laws. It would be a democracy based on non-violence.

They would launch election and representative system on the basis of unanimity and consent. The candidates contesting elections must be unselfish, able, and have self-control. They oppose Western form of parlia­mentary democracy and repose their faith in statements of the Hind Swaraj. The basis of right to vote must be physical labour, and not the possession of property or social status. The Gandhians, preferring ‘Gram Swaraj’ want to conduct all social construction and welfare activities on voluntary basis.

They want to restructure the present world order on principles of Gandhian economy, such as, (a) non-possessions; (b) opposition to industri­alisation; (c) support to cottage and rural industries; (d) trusteeship and personal property for moral upliftment and ending economic exploitation; and (e) class co-operation. They say adoption of these principles would lead to solution of all current problems. They are totally against the prevailing global economic order.

Their ethos of religion usher a new social revolution. They adoption does not permit any kind of racialism, casteism, gender discrimination, untouchability etc. They Gandhians propose to take up many programmes of uplift, social reform and reconstruction as part of their treading on the path of dispassionate performance of duties to realise goal of attaining ‘moksha’.

8. Radical democracy:

Radical democracy has been advocated by C.B. Macpherson (1911-87) in his Democratic Theory: Essays in Retrieval, 1973- In 1966 {The Real World of Democracy) he made clear that only universal suffrage, plurality of political parties and civil liberties do make democracy. Democracy can be existing even when there is intraparty democracy and an open bureaucratic system.

Prevalence of mass-enthusiasm in developing countries also makes them democratic. For the classical theorists democracy was founded upon moral foundations to emancipate humanity. For the elitist-plural theorists it was a mechanism to maintain market equilibrium. Radical democracy wants to emancipate human beings from the constraints of prevailing competitive capitalist order. It believes in ‘creative freedom’.

Western democratic theory operates on (a) the principle of utility-maximisation, and (b) the principle of power-maximisation advocated respectively by Bentham and J.S. Mill. In the latter sense, man is a doer and creator as well. However, Macpherson makes a distinction between two types of power: developmental power and extractive power. First is man’s ability to use his own capacities creatively to realise his own goals, and, the second is his power over others to extract benefit for himself. In capitalism non-owners of property enjoy negligible amount of develop­mental power.

Extractive power remains the sole preserve of the owners of land and capital. In a simple exchange
economy an individual is the owner of the means of production as well as the means of labour. In capitalist economy the means of labour are detached from the means of production. Labour is regarded as a commodity which can be bought and sold in an open market. The means of production are owned by the capitalists. They operate them solely for earning profit, having no regard for human values. They indulge in possessive individualism.

9. Cosmopolitan democracy:

There is rise of the new elites in the global order. These elites include experts and specialists, senior administrative personnel, and transnational business executives, politicians and intellec­tuals. They constitute a distinct minority whom Held calls ‘cosmopolitans’. According to Held, unlike political nationalism, cosmopolitanism registers and reflects the multiplicity of issues, questions, processes and problems that affect and bind people together, irrespective of where they were born or reside.

Cosmopolitanism discloses the cultural, legal and ethical basis of political order in a world where political communities and states matter, but not only and exclusively. But cosmopolitanism is multidimensional. Cosmopolitanism grows on three principles: one, the ultimate units of moral concern are individual human beings, not state or collectivities; two, individuals carry the status of equal worth with reciprocal recognition; and, three, each person enjoys impartial treatment of their claims. Cosmopoli­tanism endures only when it leads to a cosmopolitan democracy. Held stands for cosmopolitan democracy at global level.

For the first time its principles found expression in the legal and insti­tutional initiatives taken after World War II. These can be seen in the UN Declaration of Human Rights and the subsequent 1966 Covenants of Rights. Acceptance of the equal worth of all human beings is found in the laws of war and weapons diffusion.’” Recognition of democracy is found in the International Bill of Human Rights, new codes of conduct for IGOs and INGOs and the many other regional treaties. Existing international laws generate a new structure of cosmopolitan accountability and regulation. The ‘sovereign rights of states’ are affirmed alongside more and more cosmo­politan leanings.

All this is proposed to be done by transforming a club-driven and executive-led multilateralism to a more transparent, accountable and just form of governance. Held calls it as ‘cosmopolitan multilateralism’.”

The proposed cosmopolitan polity would have a division of powers and competences at various levels of political action and interconnectedness. It would embrace diverse and distinct domains of authority, linked recipro­cally in both vertical and horizontal manners. States and agencies would be committed to cosmopolitan principles and rules.

The UN system has to live up to the UN Charter. This would ensure enforcement of prohibition on the discretionary right of states to use force. There must be a basis for the UN system to generate political resources of its own with an autonomous decision-making centre. Cosmopolitanism involves the development of administrative capacity and independent political resources at regional and global levels as a necessary complement to those in local and national politics.

Therefore, it has to create, on lines given below, an effective, and accountable adminis­trative, legislative and executive capacity both at regional and global levels:

(a) Creation of regional parliaments and governance structures to meet with problems and challenges which states alone cannot resolve;

(b) Establishment of an authoritative assembly of all democratic states and agencies as a reformed General Assembly of the United Nations or stand as a complement to it. It would work out rules, standards and institutions to realise cosmopolitan values and priorities;

(c) Opening of important international organisations to public exami­nation and agenda setting. They would be open and accessible to public scrutiny;

(d) Arrangement of general referenda concerning contested cosmopolitan priorities and their implementation. There can be many kinds of referenda involving a cross-section of the public, and of targeted groups in particular policy areas; and

(e) Development of a cosmopolitan law-enforcement and coercive capability, including peacekeeping as well as peacemaking. There would be provisional deputation of a proportion of a nation-state’s military to the new regional or global authorities. These authorities could also establish a permanent independent force recruited directly from among individuals belonging to all countries. The use of force would always be the last resort. A cosmopolitan polity does not call for a diminution per se of state power and capacity across the globe. It wants to develop new institutions as a necessary complement to those at the level of the state.

10. Tele-democracy:

‘Tele-democracy’ (literally “democracy at a distance”), is attracting a lot of attention of the democratic elite. It makes use of new communications technologies. Its advocates and contends that innovative forms of electronic discourse can remedy many of the short­comings of representative democracy of contemporary mass society. The prevailing form of deliberative democracy is mainly founded on the principles of reasoned dialogue and deliberation.

The rationale for tele-democracy is consistent with an approach to political theory variously termed as “rational choice”, “negative liberalism”, or “the logic of collective action”. It is founded on a marketplace conception of the political world in which interests conflict and compete. By contrast, deliberative democracy is rooted in the ideal of self-governance in which political truths emerge not from the clash of pre-established interests and preferences but from reasoned discussion about issues involving the common good. This model is known as “collective rationality”, “unitary democracy”, or simply “deliber­ative democracy”.

Political thinkers, dating back to ancient Athens, have stressed the importance of public discourse and debate. In the fourth century BC, Pericles, the orator and statesman recognised discussion among the citizens of the polis as an “indispensable preliminary” to political action. In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle articulated an extensive philosophical rationale for the importance of this process, noting that “the art of legis­lation” was impossible without reasoned dialogue and deliberation.

Modern philosophers, such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and John Stuart Mill, have reflected on the importance of public discourse. Rousseau deemed it essential to the formation of a “general will”. In his work On Liberty, Mill outlined a philosophical rationale for something he called “government by discussion.” The US Supreme Court Justice, Louis D. Brandeis also observed,

Those who won our independence believed that the final end of the state was to make men free to develop their faculties; and that in its government the deliberative forces should prevail over the arbitrary. They believed that… the greatest menace to freedom is an inert people; that public discussion is a political duty; and that this should be a fundamental principle of American government.

The advent of new technologies such as the telephone, mobile, radio, and television, has radically changed the nature of public discourse in the twentieth and present century. Today political communication has mutated into something the ancient, and even, modern scholars, could scarcely have foreseen. The voluntary associations, public spaces, local newspapers, and neighbourhood assemblies of their day have given way to computer bulletin boards, satellite television, tele-conference and radio call-in programmes.

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Almond (with Coleman) was not satisfied with his structural-functional approach as propounded in The Politics of the Developing Area, 1960. He found the concept of equilibrium, harmony or maintenance as static and conservative. The developing countries do not opt for the status quo, but seek change, even rapid and radical transformation of their societies.

He realised that their scheme of seven-functional requisites, was enough for describing systems, but does not explain ‘how and ‘why’ systems change. The approach paid little or no attention to conversion processes or within puts. It was unaware of the interaction of a political system with its international environment. Treating Western political systems as ‘ideals’ or ‘models’, they kept themselves away from ground realities.

Objectives:

As usual, Almond, along with Powell, aims at developing a comprehensive and empirical theory of political systems explaining how and why do they change. For this purpose, Almond with his co-author improved upon his previous approach incorporating concepts from Easton’s systems theory, Deutsch’s communication theory, and the perspectives of other develop­ment-theorists. Their new or modified framework can be called as systemic-structural-functional approach.

Almond and Powell’ have desig­nated it as ‘developmental approach’ and also called it ‘probabilistic functionalism’. Their purpose is broader as they realise that fuller under­standing of political change requires to know its ‘how’ and ‘why’. Simple knowledge of ‘what’, is not enough. In his new perspective, Almond replaces ‘equilibrium’ by the concept of ‘interdependence’ or ‘interactional functions’.

He analyses political systems from three directions:

(a) Inside,

(b) Outside and

(c) Adjustment and Maintenance.

In other words:

(i) How are conversion functions being performed?

(ii) What is the capability of a political system, as an ‘individual’ and its environment? and

(iii) How is the system adapting and maintaining itself amidst various pressures for bringing about change?

The ground basis is the transformation process-conversion of inputs into outputs. Its operation involves the capacity to do so, enabling it to survive as an ‘entity’ or ‘individual’ amidst changing environment. This is what the system does by performing adaptation and maintenance functions. The first explains ‘what’ and ‘how’, and, the second and third processes ‘why’ of political change. These questions are separate but related to each other. The focus of approach, therefore, is on ‘interdependence’ of the various parts of the system.”

Concepts:

As usual, the concept of ‘political system’ is associated with the use or threat of use of legitimate physical force in society. Their central theme is the inter­dependence of structures and parts, and a boundary between the system and its environments. Interdependence involves change in the characteristics of a system and its parts when there is change in one of its parts.

Boundary is the line where the system starts or stops. Boundaries of political systems go on changing. Functions of political systems operate at three stages: inputs, conversion, and outputs. In his re-formulated conceptual scheme. Almond has given more importance to ‘structures’ and ‘culture’. Structures consist of roles, institutions, subsystems, etc.

Structures are analysed on the basis of specialisation and differentiation. Recruitment and socialisation functions provide roles to operate the structures. Socialisation functions involve incul­cation of political culture. Political culture provides values, faith, motivation, cognition, emotions, criteria, attitudes towards participation or apathy, etc., to the individual. Political culture can be rational or traditional. Rational political culture imbues secularisation or secularism. Secularis­ation or rational culture is directly related to specialisation and differentiation of structures.

Reason or intellect demand specialisation for efficiency and differentiation for better division of labour in the functioning of structures. Individuals assimilate political culture through socialisation process. Thus, political culture, through socialisation of the individuals and their roles, influences all the structures and the functions of a political system.

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