Category: Political Science Notes

There are four different principles or bases on which a department is organised. These principles are: 1. Functional Principle 2. Process Principle 3. Clientele Principle 4. Geographical Principle.

1. Functional Principle:

Where the department is organised on the basis of the nature of function or purpose, it is said to have been organised on functional principle. Examples of such departments are: Health, Human Resource Development, Labour and Employment, Transport and Information and Broad­casting, Community Development, Defence, Commerce and Industry, etc.

Advantages of Functional Basis:

The Haldane Committee Report 1919 in Britain summed up the advantages of functional basis in the following words:

“Upon what principles are the functions of the Departments to be determined and allo­cated? There appear to be only two alternatives which may be briefly described as distribution according to persons or classes to be dealt with, and distribution according to the services to be performed. Under the former method each minister…would be responsible to Parliament for those activities of the government which would affect the sectional interests of the particular class of persons, and there might be, for example, a ministry for paupers, or a ministry for the unemployed. Now, the inevitable outcome of this method of organization is a tendency to Lilliputian administration. It is impossible that the specialized services which each department has to render to the community can be of as high a standard when its work is at the same time limited to a particular class of persons and extended to every variety of provision for them, as when the department concentrates itself on the provision of one particular service only by whom­soever required, and looks beyond the interests of comparatively small class.”

“The other method, and the one we recommend for adoption is that of defining of the field of activity in case of each department according to the particular service it renders to the community as a whole….The method, of course, cannot be applied with absolute rigidity. The work of the education department, for example, may incidentally trench upon the sphere of health as in the arrangement of school houses and care for the health of scholars. Such incidental overlapping is inevitable and any difficulties to which it may give rise must be met by systematic arrangements for the collaboration of departments jointly interested. But notwithstanding such necessary qualifications, we think that much would be gained if the distribution of departmental duties was guided by a general principle and we have come to the conclusion that distribution according to the nature of the service to be rendered to the community as a whole is the principle which is likely to lead to the minimum amount of confusing and overlapping.”

Thus to briefly summarize, the advantages of the-functional principle are:

Advantages of the Principle:

(i) It will facilitate the performance of the given task because all the administrative units concerned with the job are within the same department and under the same direction.

(ii) It will eliminate the waste of time and energy which would occur if the relevant units were scattered. It will thus be economical.

(iii) Responsibility for failure can be fixed, e.g., if there is no peace and order in the country the Home Affairs Department can be held responsible for it

(iv) It reduces overlapping and duplication of work the minimum.

(v) It ensures better discipline because the personnel will be required to work as a unit under the direction and control of one chief officer.

(vi) It makes the administrative organisation easily intelligible to the citizen who can understand the broad purposes of the government. It simplifies his dealing with the administra­tion, for he can know easily to which department to go if he has a complaint or a representa­tion to make about some service.

Keeping in view these advantages, Hoover Commission commended organisation by ma­jor purpose. It remarked, “The numerous agencies of the executive branch must be grouped into departments as nearly as possible by major purposes in order to give a coherent mission to each department.”

The Study Team of Administrative Reforms Commission (1966-1970) called this principle as principle of rationality. According to the Commission’s Report “…The criterion of rationality is not applicable everywhere but where it is the grouping of subjects according to this principle can lead to the most effective type of coordination…”

Its Defects:

The defects of the functional principle are:

(i) Function is an elastic term and can be interpreted too narrowly or too broadly and the problem of striking the correct balance between the two extremes becomes often difficult. Should health, education, public welfare be treated as separate functions and organized into separate departments, or should they be integrated into one Department of Public Welfare?

If the term function be interpreted too broadly, perhaps the whole work of the government would appear to be a single function, or if too narrow interpretation were placed on it, every bureau or division might be given departmental status.

(ii) Subordinate type of work may be neglected or ignored, e.g., the education department may not give the same importance to the health of the children as the health department would.

(iii) It may lead to departmentalization. The departments exaggerate the importance of their own work and are unable to see their department as a part of the larger whole.

(iv) There occurs some overlapping and duplication of work. Generally these are the incidental services which have to be duplicated.

2. Process Principle:

The word ‘Process’ means a technique or primary skill more or less specialized in nature, e.g., engineering, accounting, stenography, legal advice etc. Departments may be created on the basis of technical skill involved in the performance of the work.

Thus there are Department of Law, Department of Electronics, Department of Space and Department of Ocean Development.’ Departmentalization according to process brings together in a Department all those who have had similar professional training or who make use of the same or similar skill or equipment.

Advantages:

The advantages of Process Principle are:

(i) It facilitates the maximum amount of specialization and the best utilization of the up- to-date technical skill.

(ii) It secures economy by avoiding unnecessary duplication of personnel and equipment which would result if every department would maintain its technical services. Economy also results from the extensive use of labour-saving machinery which can be used with advantage only if there is adequate volume of work. Small and widely scattered units cannot afford such costly equipment.

(iii) It facilitates uniformity and coordination, e.g., if all engineering services are grouped together under one department, this would bring about uniformity in budgeting, operational plans, coordination and control.

(iv) It makes cost analysis and calculation of unit costs easier, and thus furnishes neces­sary data for budgeting and accounting.

(v) The process system is most advantageous for the development of career service.

Defects:

The defects of the process principle are:

(i) It would make coordination difficult to achieve. Gulick has said that failure in one process department affects the whole enterprise and a failure to coordinate one process division may destroy the effectiveness of all of the work that is being done.

(ii) Good administration is not simply a matter of skill in the various technical processes. The government is co
ncerned with the general welfare of the community, and for that purpose, it has to look after the economic, social and cultural interests.

Much of the work of the govern­ment has to be done, therefore, in the Social Welfare, Economic, and Educational, Home depart­ment than in the Engineering or Legal departments.

(iii) It attaches more importance to the means than to the ends. The object of public welfare gets lost in the process principle.

(iv) It may lead to financial extravagance than to economy.

(v) It may create the attitude of professional arrogance and lead to inter-departmental conflicts and rivalries.

(vi) Lastly, under the process principle the administration would lose the services of the generalist administrators. The heads of the departments would be technical people and there would be no place for generalists. The vision of a specialist is narrow and limited. At the top managerial posts we require people with breadth of vision and capacity for generalization.

3. Clientele Principle:

Sometimes some social groups have some special problems which require the particular attention of the government. When a department is established to meet the special problems of a section of community, the basis of such department is said to be clientele or persons served.

The department so constituted deals with all the problems of that particular section. Thus the Department for Scheduled Castes and Tribes is a department organised on clientele basis. In the U.S.A., the Veterans’ Administration, the Office of Indian Affairs and the Children’s Bureau are three good examples of clientele departments.

Advantages:

The main advantages of clientele organisation are:

(i) It greatly simplifies relationship of the groups concerned with the administration, e.g., if there be a farmers’ department, the farmer has to go to only one department to get any of his problems solved. He will not have to go to different departments for seeds, fertilizers, loan, cement, tube-wells, and tractors. All his needs will be looked after by one department.

(ii) It facilitates the coordination of several services provided for the beneficiary groups because such services are under the same department.

(iii) The staff of a clientele department develop the capacity to understand and solve whole problems instead of dealing with them in a fragmentary way.

(iv) It would develop behind the departments the support of the pressure groups because all the people who derive benefit from that department will belong to the same pressure group.

Defects:

The defects of the clientele principle are:

(i) It is incapable of universal application. The number of people served is vast and it will be difficult to divide them into groups or it may create thousands of groups. This will produce a multiplicity of departments. Haldane Committee therefore termed it ‘Lilliputian ad­ministration’.

(ii) It would be a difficult job to clearly demarcate the jurisdiction of the various depart­ments because the interests of one group may overlap those of others.

(iii) It militates against the principle of specialization. Being multi-functional each depart­ment will deal with heterogeneous problems of a group.

(iv) The pressure groups may make the department serve their own demands at the cost of the interests of the other groups. The vested interests may make the administrative reform difficult.

4. Geographical Principle:

Where territory or geographical area serves as the basis for the organisation of a depart­ment, it is called the geographical principle of departmental organisation. Thus the basis of Foreign Affairs Department is geographical. Then, within the Foreign Affairs department there are different territorial divisions, e.g., the European Division, the American Division, the South East Division, Near Eastern Affairs, Far Eastern Affairs.

Likewise the Ministry of Railways in India has over ten territorial zones viz. Eastern, North Eastern, North East Frontier, South Eastern, South Central Northern, Western Central and Southern. Even the Zonal Councils were organised on the basis of this principle.

Merits:

Its merits are as follows:

(i) It facilitates the greater adaptation of policies to the needs of the areas concerned.

(ii) It is conducive to a better expression of the needs and aspirations of the people of various regions than any other.

(iii) It is the most suitable basis where long distance and the difficulties of communica­tion are involved, e.g., in the administration of colonies by Imperial powers. The British Gov­ernment had India Office to deal with all the problems of Indian administration.

(iv) In large countries having vast stretch of land and difficult communication, the terri­torial principle can be adopted for domestic administrative organisation. It leads to better coor­dination and more effective control over the services provided within the geographical area.

T.V.A. in USA and D.V.C. in India are the illustrations based on the recognition of this advan­tage. However, they are Corporations and not Departments.

Demerits:

Its disadvantages are:

(i) It stands in the way of uniformity of administration of national policies. Different policies may have to be adopted for different areas.

(ii) It encourages localism at the cost of nationalism.

(iii) It sets up multifunctional departments and thus militates against the principle of spe­cialization and division of labour.

(iv) It is likely to give birth to regional interests and pressure groups to the detriment of the national interest.

(v) The area requirements of the various services are different. India is, for instance, divided into four vast regions or commands for military administration and ten for railways. These administrative areas and their headquarters vary.

Adoption of geographical principle would mean that the same area or region irrespective of its adequacy or otherwise, would have to be adopted for all the services concentrated within such departments. This would result in ineffi­cient arrangement, detrimental to administrative efficiency. To carry this to its logical conclu­sion could be to recreate Heptarchy.

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Here is an essay on the ‘Public Choice Theory’ especially written for school and college students.

Public Choice theory is the application of economics to the study of public administration. Public choice is defined by Dennis Mueller as “the economic study of non-market decision making or simply the application of economics to political science”.

This theory challenges the traditionally established public interest theory of democratic government which holds that deci­sion making in government is motivated by selfish benevolence by elected representatives or government employees. In other words, public interest theory presumes that public servants are motivated by a desire to maximize society’s welfare.

The public choice theory repudiates this view and takes a poor view of bureaucracy William A. Niskanen, the prominent advocate of public choice theory opines that the career bureaucracy is self-aggrandizing and shows indefi­nite capacity for its expansion. He has made brilliant analysis of bureaucratic functioning. An economist by profession he has studied bureaucracy with the methods of economics.

He has criticized bureaucracy on many counts.

Firstly, civil servants attitude towards the consumer of their service is different from the attitude of private sector producer to his customers.

Secondly, producer’s revenue comes from his customers, but in bureaucracy there is no clear correlation between public revenue and expenditure, the revenue comes from the finance minister.

Thirdly, the civil servant unlike private entrepreneur has little interest to minimize the costs and maximize the profits as he gains nothing financially from such efforts.

Fourthly, in bureaucracy there is no incentive to save tax payer’s money, rather the bureaucrat is interested to get maximum budget allocations for his bureau. This leads to higher cost of production per unit. In short, disillusionment with bureaucracy is universal.

The question therefore, arises ‘Can the efficiency of the bureau be increased improved?

Can some public services be efficiently supplied by other forms of organization?

William Niskanen holds that to raise the performance of public bureaucracy, the remedy has to be sought more and more in terms of private markets where the structure and incentive system exist for the supply of public services. The monopoly of the bureaucracy must be reduced by exploring private sources of supply of public services.

Thus public choice theory commits itself to market values and criticizes the government monopolies. The market system, it may be mentioned, as based on a competitive principle a customer has the opportunity of choosing between competitive service providers.

As under the public choice theory, public bureaus will have to compete with the private suppliers, there will be a continual search for improvement in the quality of public services and their supply to the service seekers expeditiously. This will promote decentralization also.

From the above elucidation of Public Choice Theory, its main features may be mentioned as below:

(i) It is an anti-bureaucratic approach.

(ii) It is a critique of the bureaucratic model of administration.

(iii) It encourages institutional pluralism in the provision of public services.

(iv) Plurality of governments and public agencies is supported on the ground of consumer’s preferences.

(v) It applies economic logic to the problems of public services distribution.

(vi) It stands for diverse decision making centres.

(vii) More competition in the delivery of public services.

(viii) Privatization or contracting out to reduce wastage.

(xi) Dissemination of more information for public benefit about the availability of alterna­tives to public services offered on a competitive basis and at competitive costs. Thus, Public Choice Theory questions the hegemony of bureaucracy and criticizes the hierarchical administration.

Bureaucracy should be pruned by downsizing government and passing on many functions to the private agencies. By breaking the monopoly of the monolithic state as the provider and by introducing choice and participation the public choice theory seeks to rede­fine power equations between the citizen and the state.

Under the impact of Public Choice Theory, it may be noted the role of private sector has expanded and the state sector has shrunk both in direct administration and through privatisation of public enterprises.

In several fields like communication and transport, airlines, television, energy production and distribution, oil exploration and its marketing, a number of private agen­cies have come up to provide public services. The individuals now enjoys greater freedom make their choice of the service provider.

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The below mentioned article provides a paragraph on administrative behaviour in Hindi language.

प्रशासनिक व्यवहार से तात्पर्य उन क्रियाओं एवं प्रक्रियाओं आदि से है जिनके माध्यम से प्रशासन अपने निर्धारित लक्ष्यों की प्राप्ति हेतु प्रयासरत रहता है । ये प्रयास वैयक्तिक या सामूहिक या संगठनात्मक- किसी भी स्तर पर किये जा सकते हैं ।

जब प्रशासन एक संगठन के रूप में लक्ष्य प्राप्ति की ओर उन्मुख होता है तो उसे विभिन्न प्रकार की प्रक्रियाओं से गुजरना पड़ता है । यथा- प्रशासनिक लक्ष्यों का निर्धारण, लक्ष्यों के लिये उचित प्रबन्ध, प्रबन्ध के संचालन हेतु सक्षम नेतृत्व, अन्य आवश्यक मानवीय संसाधनों की व्यवस्था, विभिन्न स्तरों पर निर्णय-प्रक्रिया, निर्णय व आदेश के सम्प्रेषण हेतु संचार व्यवस्था, जवाबदेही आदि । ये सभी तत्व मिलकर प्रशासकीय व्यवहार का निर्धारण करते हैं । यहाँ कुछ अत्यन्त महत्वपूर्ण तत्वों की ही विवेचना की जायेगी ।

जब प्रशासन एक संगठन के रूप में उभरकर सामने आता है तो उसका सर्वप्रथम दायित्व होता है कि वह प्रशासनिक लक्ष्यों का निर्धारण करें तथा उसके पश्चात् उनकी प्राप्ति हेतु उचित प्रबन्ध करें ।

प्रशासनिक संगठनों के लक्ष्यों को दो वर्गों में विभक्त किया जा सकता है:

(1) आधिकारिक लक्ष्य,

(2) संचालन लक्ष्य ।

(1) आधिकारिक लक्ष्य (Official or Authoritative Objectives):

ये लक्ष्य राज्य के स्थापित कानून के अन्तर्गत निहित होते हैं या नये कानूनों, नियमों व नीतियों के रूप में राजनीतिक सत्ता द्वारा निर्मित किये जाते हैं । ये लोक प्रशासन के ‘आधिकारिक लक्ष्य’ हैं ।

(2) संचालन लक्ष्य (Executive or Running Objectives):

आधिकारिक लक्ष्यों के आधार पर ही संचालन लक्ष्यों का निर्माण किया जाता है । इन संचालन लक्ष्यों के आधार पर ही वास्तविक प्रशासनिक नीतियों या संचालन नीतियों का निर्माण किया जाता है तथा उन्हें कार्यान्वित किया जाता है ।

आधिकारिक एवं संचालन दोनों ही प्रकार के लक्ष्य बाह्य तत्वों से प्रभावित होते हैं । ये बाह्य तत्व सामाजिक, आर्थिक, राजनीतिक आदि किसी भी रूप में हो सकते हैं । इसके अतिरिक्त प्रौद्योगिकी एवं जन आन्दोलन जैसे तत्व भी लक्ष्यों पर प्रभाव डालते हैं । प्रशासनिक स्तर पर लक्ष्यों की स्थापना एक अत्यधिक जटिल प्रक्रिया है ।

वर्तमान परिस्थितियों में राजनीतिक अस्थायित्व की प्रवृत्ति में निरन्तर वृद्धि हो रही है । साथ ही राजनेता प्रशिक्षित प्रबन्धक भी नहीं होते हैं । अत: नवीन प्रवृत्ति के अनुसार उच्च स्तर पर लक्ष्य व नीतियाँ राजनीतिज्ञों एवं प्रशासकों के द्वारा मिलकर पारस्परिक सहयोग के आधार पर निर्मित की जाती हैं ।

राजनीतिज्ञ जनमत को दृष्टिगत रखते हुए ही नीति-निर्माण करता है तथा प्रशासक व्यावहारिक संचालन या नीतियों के कार्यान्वयन हेतु कार्य करता है । दोनों प्रक्रियाएँ परस्पर इस प्रकार मिश्रित होती हैं कि उन्हें पृथक् किया जाना सम्भव नहीं है ।

इस प्रकार लक्ष्य निर्धारण या नीति निर्धारण ही प्रशासनिक व्यवहार का प्रमुख आधार है ।

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Liberty is of the following kinds:

(1) Natural Liberty.

(2) Civil Liberty.

(3) Personal Liberty.

(4) Political Liberty.

(5) Economic Liberty.

(6) National Liberty.

(1) Natural Liberty:

First or all, we have the concept of natural liberty which indicates unrestrained freedom to do whatever one likes. Professor R.N. Gilchrist calls it unscientific use of liberty. He defines natural liberty thus; “Everyone has a vague notion of liberty of some kind and a desire for it, but among ten people using the word, perhaps no two will be able to say exactly what they mean, or if they do so say it, will agree with each other in their definitions. This general unscientific use of the word we may call Natural Liberty”.

While analysing his theory of Social Contract, he defined natural liberty as “What a man loses by the social contract he defined natural liberty and an unlimited right to anything that tempts him, which he can obtain”.

Thus, natural liberty seems to be a license rather than a liberty. Natural liberty means absence of all restraints an unrestrained freedom to do whatever one likes. Just a lion is free to do whatever it likes in the jungle, so a man should have unrestrained freedom to do whatever he likes in society.

Thus, it is quite clear that natural liberty is based on sheer force. John Locke maintained that in the state of nature people enjoyed the right to life, liberty and property. But it is absolutely incorrect because it is only the state that guarantees the enjoyment of these rights.

In the absence of the state, the question of the enjoyment of human rights does not arise. In the state of nature people possessed animal powers and not the rights. Rousseau, an ardent advocate of the state of nature, maintained, “Man was born free, but everywhere he is in chains”. This statement of Rousseau does not appear sound because the development of human personality is not possible in the absence of society.

And only in society the individual cannot enjoy unrestrained freedom. He cannot act according to his will in society. If he is allowed to do whatever he likes, there will be chaos in society and people will generate into the state of nature as described by Hobbes.

(2) Civil Liberty:

Secondly, we have the concept of Civil Liberty which means the Rule of Law. “Civil Liberty”, according to Barker, “consists in three differently expressed articles; physical freedom from injury or threat to the life, health and movement of the body; intellectual freedom for the expression of thought and belief, and practical freedom for the play of will and the exercise of choice in the general field of contractual action and relations with other persons”.

Civil liberty indicates that absence of those restraints which are not reasonable and legitimate. It refers to liberty enjoyed by man in society. It prevails in the state. It denotes the enjoyment of our rights within the limits of law.

The protection of civil liberty is guaranteed by the law. The protection of civil liberty is guaranteed by the laws of the state. Gettell has very aptly remarked in this connection, “Definite law, sure enforcement and equality before law marked the advance of civil liberty of man to man”.

(3) Political Liberty:

Thirdly, we have the concept of Political liberty which means liberty of citizens to participate in the political life and affairs of the state. By Political Liberty Laski means the freedom of the individual to participate in the affairs of the state. He says, “I can let my mind play freely about the substance of public business. I must be able without let or hindrance to add my special experience to the general barriers in the way of access to position of authority. I must be able to announce my opinion and to concert with others in the announcement of opinion”.

Leacock calls Political Liberty as “constitutional liberty”, and Gilchrist regards Political Liberty as “practically synonymous with democracy”. Political Liberty includes minimum rights. These rights are: the right to vote; the right to contest elections; the right hold public office; the right to express political views and criticize the government; and the right to petition etc.

(4) Personal Liberty:

Fourthly, we have the concept of personal liberty which means the availability of those conditions in which the individual can act as the pleases without being under any type of arbitrary and illegitimate restraint. In the opinion of F.A. Hayek, liberty is a “condition of men in which coercion of some by others is reduced as much as possible in society….The state in which a man is not subject to coercion by the arbitrary will of another or other is often also distinguished an individual or personal freedom”.

Every individual has the right not to permit any other individual to interfere in the affairs of his personal life. Every individual should have the liberty to dress, food, standard of living, marriages, education of children, etc. The state should not interfere in the personal matters of the individual. Such liberty is essential for the free development of human society.

(5) Economic Liberty:

Fourthly, we have the concept of Economic Liberty which means the liberty to earn one’s daily bread. In his book “Grammar of Politics”, while defining economic liberty, Professor Laski says, “By economic liberty, I mean security and the opportunity to find reasonable significance in the earning of one’s daily bread. I must be free from the constant fear of unemployment and insufficiency which, perhaps more than other inadequacies, sap the whole strength of personality. I must be safeguarded against the wants of tomorrow”. In simple words, we can say that every individual, regardless of the distinction of caste, colour and creed, should have liberty to earn his daily bread by fair means.

(6) National Liberty:

By national liberty we mean the liberty of the nation or the country. The following words are engraved on the building of our Central Secretariat, Delhi: “Liberty does not descend upon a person. People must raise themselves to liberty. Liberty is a blessing that must be earned in order to be enjoyed”.

Like individuals, nations also think in terms of liberty. National liberty exists where the nation or the community is independent and sovereign. As a matter of fact national liberty is another name for national sovereignty. Every state or nation wishes to remain free. And without independence the progress of the nation or the state is not possible. In a slave country people cannot enjoy the comforts of life. And whenever a country is enslaved by imperialistic forces, the slave country goes on making efforts and continues to make sacrifices till it succeeds in liberating itself from the clutches of the foreign yoke.

In order to restore and regain its independence, India made unimaginable sacrifices and continually struggled against the Turks, Mughals and British. These sacrifices are well recorded in the golden pages of Indian history Likewise, in the nineteenth century Italy struggled against Austrian yoke and ultimately succeeded in restoring its independence.

The sacrifices made by Italy and the heroic deeds done by the brave leaders of Italy are well-recorded in the golden pages of Italian history. In the nineteenth and twentieth century’s Greece and Bulgaria struggled against the yoke of Turkish Empire and ultimately succeeded in regaining their freedom. In twentieth century, African countries struggled against the yoke of foreign empires and their struggle resulted in the restoration of freedom to most of African countries.

After the attainment of freedom if any attempt to enslave that free country is made, the affected country makes all possible efforts and makes every sacrifice to safeguard its independence. For example, England made every possible sacrifice in order to safeguard the country against the aggressions committed on it by Napoleon and Hitler.

After Independence when India was attacked by China in 1962, again by Pakistan in 1965 and 1971, the Government of India made all possible efforts to defend the country and the soldiers of Indian army sacrificed their lives for the noble cause of safeguarding national freedom and glory. Indian public and all the political parties of India co-operated with the government in that hour of emergency.

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Theory offers ’Generalised descriptions or explanations of behaviour of man and political institutions’.Whenever the emphasis of one’s inquiry is placed on the understanding of what is or exists in politics in the nature of ‘if… then’ relations that can be verified regardless of the preferences and values of the observer, one can be inclined to speak of political theory-Andrew Hacker.

When seen in a simplistic manner, ‘theory’ is an essence of experience.” In this sense, everyone is a theory-builder or a theorist. Everyone himself or through others observes persons, groups, events, social phenomena, listens to their ideas and draws conclusions about them. When his findings are repeated again and again, his conclusions about them are tentatively confirmed. Thus, he is led by them to certain convictions, assumptions, propositions, rules of behaviour, or theoretical formulations.

After some time, he stops making observations as a stranger and apples his findings on similar events. On finding newer facts, he automatically modifies his findings or knowledge about social behaviour, and acts accordingly. Such personal and subjective theory-building or ‘abstraction’ is undertaken by a student about his teachers’ behaviour, by a candidate about his voters, or by a subordinate official about his boss and others. The whole society, more or less, operates on such accumulation of experience, anticipations, assump­tions or derivations.

Man faces his present and future on the basis of such findings. The more valid and systematic the observations are the more reliable and usable his findings will be. He selects, sees and interprets the relevant facts through the medium of his own theoretical formulations. Without such formulations, the child or a stranger in a metropolitan city remains unable to understand the on-goings of society. He is unable to describe, explain and evaluate.

According to Caiden, theory is an ‘intellectual shorthand’ or ‘the symbolic representation of the real As a tool for the progress of mankind, it enables man to communicate, saving their labour to relearn what has previ­ously been experienced and discovered. ‘From the chaos of observation and experience, man abstracts patterns of regularity, and probability, and gives these patterns symbolic expression and logical connection.’

It is a net to catch ‘fishes’ of facts. It is a ‘mix’ of our various conclusions about the ‘world’: a guide to guide us, an abstraction to make further abstractions, or an apparatus to explain and predict events. Obviously, this apparatus is analytical or a conceptual one which operates on the basis of our actual experience. Percy S. Cohen cautions us that the word ‘theory is like a blank cheque, its potential value depends on the user and his use of it. Here it has to be taken as a group of derivations or findings based on careful observation of empirical facts.

It is an achievement, and not an ascription or imposition deductively imposed from above. An empirical political theory is a set of generalisations derived from the observation of facts. According to Cohen, ‘a scientific theory is, ideally, a universal empirical statement which asserts a causal connection between two or more types of events.’ A theory is formed when facts are ‘assembled, ordered, and seen in a relationship’.

‘According to Sjoberg and Nett, theory ‘refers to a set of logically interrelated proposi­tions or statements that are empirically meaningful, as well as to the assumptions the researcher makes about his method and his data’. Jack Gibbs improves upon this view and says, A theory is a set of logically interre­lated statements in the form of empirical assertions about properties of infinite class of events or things.

Eugene J. Meehan regards it as, ‘a generalisation, or a set of generalisa­tions, that explains general statements, or explains other theories’. According to him, theory is, ‘an instrument for ordering and arranging general statements that man creates for his own purpose.’ According to Andrew Hacker, theory offers ‘generalised descriptions or explanations of behaviour of man and political institutions.’ Whenever the emphasis of one’s inquiry is placed on the understanding of what is or exists in politics in the nature of ‘if… then’ relations that can be verified regardless of the preferences and values of the observer, one can be inclined to speak of political theory.”

A scientific political theory, thus, is a system of interre­lated explanatory propositions which identifies and describes relationship among facts discovered through observation. In fact, it synthesises the results of observation, experiment and comparison, and expresses in a coordinated and coherent manner all that is known or implied by a group of phenomena or events. Arnold Brecht, finally, defines theory as ‘a propo­sition or set of propositions designed to explain something with reference to data or interrelations not directly observed or otherwise manifest.’

Most of the above mentioned definitions and explanations of advanced or empirical political theory have been subsumed under the category of modern political theory, and their chief characteristics can be enumerated below:

(i) It is based on the study of facts which can be directly or indirectly observed by human senses.

(ii) In the observation of facts, it uses accepted scientific methods and other reliable tools and techniques.

(iii) In the making of modern political theory, the researcher keeps his personal values separate from his studies, and tries to remain objective.

(iv) Often the researcher/scholar or political scientist adopts some conceptual framework or frame of reference or a perspective before actual commencement of research or observation of facts.

(v) The researcher interconnects his generalisations, findings or conclu­sions and prepares an explanatory device or apparatus, called a ‘theory’.

(vi) Terms, procedure, methods, conclusions etc., are used in a definite, clear, technical and communicable manner; and

(vii) Such knowledge obtained in the form of a theory is reliable, useful, and predictable, and can further be verified or tested by way of replication or testing the procedure.

(viii) It remains under a constant process of transformation.

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Global governance, essentially a product of liberal thinking, concerns so called global values, norms, standards and rules. The majority of values that are considered global are Western and so global governance basically facilitates and reflects Western hegemony. Western hegemony here refers to the dominance of Western institutions, interests, standards and NGOs.

The ‘global civil society’ is based on Western mores. In global governance, non-Western states and NGOs have had to redefine their interests and identities in relation to Western norms and power. Severe socio-economic problems have delivered the Third World political leaders and NGOs into the hands of the West, thereby making Western hegemony appear like an ’empire by invitation’.

The dominance of Western institutions is partly due to the function of an ‘interpretive community’ that constantly explains, promotes, advocates and justifies global governance. The ‘interpretative community’ has been extremely successful in portraying Western ideas, values and preferences as global. The term ‘interpretive community’ refers to any group of people who are committed to providing justification and legitimating principles for particular institutions, values or practices.

Members of an ‘interpretive community’ may come from different professional backgrounds, such as scholars, journalists, international civil servants and NGO workers. They may also be recruited from different countries and might not even be aware that they operate as a part of a global ‘interpretive community’. What they have in common is a conviction that they are interpreting reality, when, in fact, they may be only expressing aspirations. Sometimes the ideas of an ‘interpretive community’ may influence practice.

In the post-Cold War era, members of the global ‘interpretive community’ have converged on several themes, including a new world order, globalisation and new forms of sover­eignty and security. For example, in December 1988, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev used the phrase ‘new world order’ in his address to the UN to underline the new strategic thinking and the global restructuring which he envisaged, but the ‘world’ simply ignored it.

However, when the US President George Bush used the same phrase two years later, the ‘world’ took notice. In condemning Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, Bush talked of a new world order ‘where the rule of law supplants the rule of the jungle, a world in which nations recognise the shared responsibility for freedom and justice’. This liberal aspiration contrasted sharply with the realist logic of power politics, in which war between states is always considered a possibility.

It was no more than a wish for a different type of international system in the post-Cold War era, but other world leaders, scholars and journalists subsequently started talking of a new world order, as if it was a reality. Bush’s aspiration did not spell an end to power politics; instead it gave impetus to a re-thinking of norms in world politics, and this, in turn, energized efforts to portray Western values, standards and institu­tions as global norms.

It was in this intellectual climate that the Commission on Global Gover­nance issued a report which defined sovereignty as an institution that is ultimately derived from the people: ‘It is a power to be exercised by, for, and on behalf of the people of a state’. This report implies that sovereignty should be respected, only if the people of a state have had an opportunity to exercise their political, economic and cultural rights.

The report also argues that ‘the principle of sovereignty and the norms that derive from it must be further adapted to recognise changing realities’. Furthermore, ‘global security extends beyond the protection of borders, ruling elites and exclusive state interests to include the protection of people’.

The Commission was simply expressing aspirations that may become practice one day. At about the same time, a former Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans argued that the concept of security, ‘as it appears in the [UN] Charter, is as much about the protection of individuals as it is about the defence of the territorial integrity of states’.

Earlier in April 1991, a former UN Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar had argued that state sovereignty needed to be reassessed in response to ‘the shift in public attitudes towards the belief that the defence of the oppressed in the name of morality should prevail over frontiers and legal documents’. Similarly, his successor, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, argued that the time of absolute and exclusive sovereignty had passed.

The former UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, went further in redefining sovereignty, when he told the General Assembly in September 1999 that his interpretation of the UN charter was that it aims ‘to protect individual human beings, not to protect those who abuse them’. Annan argued, in his speech to the General Assembly in 1999, that sovereignty had been ‘redefined by the forces of globalisation and international cooperation’, and that the state was the ‘servant of its people, and not vice versa’.

The conclusions of the Commission on Global Governance and those of the UN secretaries-general and other analysts in recent years suggest that the re-thinking of norms has given rise to an interpretive community which is ready to argue for changes in the practices of sovereignty. By arguing for liberal interpretations of the UN charter, they have promoted a particular view of global governance. However, the views of an ‘interpretive commu­nity’, without changes in the practices of the majority of international actors, cannot constitute a shift in the meaning of sovereignty.

According to some analysts, it was not possible in the 1990s to see a clear-cut turn in state practices. As Adam Roberts has observed, while idealists have hoped that ‘the sovereignty of states would take second place to human rights’, humani­tarian action in the 1990s ‘owed much to political considerations that were often tinged with an element of realpolitik’. It is such interpretations that set the stage on which ‘NGOs and IGOs grope, sometimes cooperatively, sometimes competitively, sometimes in parallel towards a modicum of global governance’.

What these interpretations do not say is that global governance links together ‘global civil society’, individuals, the state and market forces. It is also about the generation of, and the response to, ‘shared’ values and institutions, which give rise to a process to identify issues, form an agenda, and arrive at outcomes and make arrangements to implement them. In this way, global governance has definite implications for interpretations of sovereignty.

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