Category: Political Science Notes

Inequality between countries constitutes one of the principal bases of dominance and subordination in contemporary globalisation. Governments of subordinated countries have fewer opportunities for involvement and influence in global regulatory processes.

One of the inescapable consequences of globalisation is a massive concen­tration of wealth and power in the remote bodies beyond the reach of political accountability, making it problematic for nation-states and local communities to shape their economic, social, and environmental developments. Effective operation of democracy requires suitable education, institu­tions and social structure.

Its education relates to citizen awareness and mobilization, institutions permit public participation and accountability, and social structure admits equal opportunity of involvement for everyone. All the three are closely interconnected and mutually determining. The former two depend on social structures of equality. Social inequalities present a major barrier to full democracy. They all throw major challenges to democracy in globalisation.

North America and Western Europe have greater say in the governance of global affairs. In comparison to G8, the Southern groups of G24, or G77 exercise negligible influence. Only five states have the arbitrary privilege of permanent membership and veto power in the UN Security Council. Innumerable proposals for more democratisation of the UN have not gone beyond the commission report.

Besides WTO and IMF, structural inequality of countries also extends to civil society activities. Even the best resourced civil society actors of the South do not match the North based academic, business, labour, NGO professional and religious bodies.

Northern elements generally hold positions in trans-world civil society organisations. Critics dismiss so-called ‘global civil society’ as neocolonial affair. Class inequalities also place major structural impediments in the way of democratic governance of global relations. Financiers, industrialists, professionals and people with inherited wealth have more chances to shape the governance of globalisation than their fellow citizens.

There is ‘corporate rule’: rule by the elite or the business people. Small number of trans-border enterprises dominate most sectors of global economy. There is no market-democracy. Only a minority has the opportunity to own big shares. The main shareholders have been large trusts, pension funds and insurance companies who usually have little contact with the everyday lives of the common man.

Even governance agencies are more concerned about business interests and investor confi­dence many states happen to reduce the capacities of organised labour to promote worker interests. Large majorities of elected officeholders and top bureaucrats come from advantaged classes who, adept in English, dominate global and regional civil services. This managerial class moves within closed social networks of education, recreation, status, past background and aspiration.

Civil society associations too involve only university-educated, computer-literate and propertied persons. Many NGOs draw their personnel and members from elite quarters. In poor countries, NGO jobs are highly coveted where only the privileged people obtain large share of the NGO funds. The underclass people lack the funds, language frequency and organi­sational capacities required for effective participation in global civil society. Opportunities for them are severely limited.

Many other cultural, gender and age inequalities also prevail to obstruct democratic working in the global governance. Most of the rules of global governance reflect norms of the dominant civilisation. They are secularism, anthropocentrism, instrumentalism, and techno-scientist rationalism.

No place is given to non-Western, non-modern and native ways of being and believing. Regulators of contemporary globalisation have neither understood nor have time to understand them. Usually aboriginals and indigenous peoples are sidelined. No non-Western religion or civilisation, Hindu, Sikh, Islam, or Bauddha, their spirituality or appeal to transcendent forces, is given opportunity to influence or guide globalisation.

Native peoples have only marginal involvement in global civil society activities. As trans-planetary and supra-territorial connections threaten their values, they look for ways to express their concerns and protect their way of life. Contemporary globalisation leaves very limited possibilities for cultural pluralism and intercultural negotiation. Hierarchies also prevail on gender lines. Globalisation has largely a masculine agenda.

A large number of women is participating in the ranks of NGOs and social movements. Males at the top often dominate them. Women provide the bulk of administrative support. Social hierarchies based on age, race, urbanniral location, disability and the aged also prevail. Structural inequalities have produced far more dominance than democracy. Contemporary globalisation has no time or mood to deal with them.

In sum, contemporary globalisation has very weak democratic creden­tials. Its polycentric governance of global affairs has very low level of participation from and accountability to the people at large. The people on the whole have been uninformed and uinvolved, particularly, when it comes to life and death questions like global climatic change, global financial crises, global militarisation, or global terrorism. Global governance has come down to a kind of minority rule without rights to majority.

Regulation of trans-planetary and supra-territorial connectivity lacks democratic legitimacy. Its authority can be legitimate only when the governed acknowledge that the reign holders of global governance have a right to rule over them. They conduct global affairs more on the basis of ignorance, apathy, neglect, exploitation, and coercion of the large proportions of the global population, and less and less on consent. To render globalisation more humane, Scholte has proposed to enhance human security, social equality, and democracy by exploiting all the available possibilities.

” These possibilities pertain to enabling technological and organisational development, greater public awareness of global problems, larger trans-world solidarities among people, popular mobilisation on global issues, and increased receptiveness among elites to reform policies on globalisation. All this has to be done in view of challenges posed by intensely rising globalisation.

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Democracies should now venture to renovate themselves. It should learn to operate in the context of IT revolution, global village, and emergence of post-industrial societies, mass automation, nuclear families, concentration of wealth, energy and power. Man’s ideas on time, space, reason and causality have basically changed.

It has been rightly observed that nation-states of the twenty-first century, owing to the prevalence of Liberalisation, Privatisation and Globalisation (LPG), are fast passing from transitia to industria and post-industria. But the most of the political institutions, structures and theories are built upon the experiences of nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. All political institutions and systems have grown out-of-date and wasteful. The old pattern of political leadership, which was attractive and useful in the past, is proving a failure to understand and solve the problems of the twenty-first century.

Many of the political leaders do have control over nuclear weapons supersonic warplanes, super-computers and the fastest means of transportation and communication. But they too stop and wait for at several levels and seek divergent consultation from different leaders. There is little room for unity of command, hierarchy, authoritarianism or monopoly. Neither a saint nor a hero or a supreme works. The leader is confined to the boundaries of nation-state.

National economies are becoming part and parcel of world-economy. It is beyond the control of any one particular nation to solve the problems of inflation, shortage of petrol, nuclear waste, environmental degradation, global warming and the like. Ambit and knowledge of these problems are indivisible but governments, their ministries, departments and corporate bodies operate in a divided, split and competitive manner.

Till prime ministers and presidents through their inter-departmental bodies arrive at decisions, it is often too late in dealing with the problems, which demand immediate attention and decision. The procedures are old and out-of-date. Change is so fast that the leaders and governments are taken aback. Even within a single constit­uency, it is difficult to deal with different groups, local leaders and varying patterns of problems. Making of rules, sub-rules, issuing immediate order, staging flag-march, imposition of 144 under Cr .P.C., distribution of loans and other concessions do not work.

In fact, legislatures in general have turned useless, incapacitated, delaying, war-mongering and helpless. They are hardly built up on the majority of electorate. The majority is a misnomer as it carries only 25 to 30 per cent voters with it. In the absence of a full and adequate discussion, they operate through committees and sub-committees.

A large part of budget is passed without any discussion. Government may be of any political party, or a coalition or a national one, plight of the people continues. Bureaucrats go on taking decisions and action in their own apathetic manner. Legislatures are losing legitimacy or people’s faith in them. Groups and organisations bank upon their own armies, security arrangements, monetary resources and private connections with the high ups.

People at large, are so past-oriented that they do not like any change or reform in their constitution, governmental structures and working proce­dures. Their leaders appear ready to commit harakiri. All appear ready to stick to the status quo. Their past decides the formation of their present as well as future. Most people worship their leaders on the basis of their past acts and expect them to repeat them in identical manner, forgetting that by now they have turned out-of-date, anachronistic, corrupt, inefficient and untrustworthy.

Democracies should now venture to renovate themselves. It should learn to operate in the context of IT revolution, global village, and emergence of post-industrial societies, mass automation, nuclear families, concentration of wealth, energy and power. Man’s ideas on time, space, reason and causality have basically changed.

Economics and morality have joined hands. This is a quantum jump in History. Workers, consumers and citizens are crying for direct participation. They want on spot and at once decisions leading to more and more decentralisation and devolution of power. The world is adopting the culture of electronics, computers, internet, e-commerce, and highly efficient calculators.

Progress of technology has crossed all limits creating wonders of genetic engineering and parenthood. Ethnicity and fanaticism would become a thing of the past. World Bank, IMF, WTO and ADB have taken over state-market and other local economies. Computer-conferencing, mobiles, video screens, fax etc. have reduced distances of time, place and direct contact.

The basic unit of democracy, the man or individual is now living in a totally new environment. Meaning of child, young, adult, old and woman is changing. Individual requires more respect, multi-centric attention, privacy and special care. Hardly anyone wants old, anachronistic, chaotic and time and energy consuming representative institutions. Most of the legislators are ignorant, selfish, inefficient, corrupt and money spent on them is a waste.

They hardly get any majority over any particular issue. All govern­ments are in practice minority governments. People have lost respect for them. Society now, is made of innumerable interest groups. These groups meet in changing size, manner and style. So should the legislatures be constituted accordingly. Leaders and representatives should be selected, nominated and elected on different grounds and for different purposes. Now governance would be ‘a minority based twenty-first century democracy’.

New political set-up of democracy has to evolve hundreds of instru­mental bodies to bring about constant contact and links of negotiation between the rulers and the ruled. Through them the people can easily share responsibility of governance – executive, legislative and judicial. People, including their different groups formed on the basis of varying interests, have a right to send their deputies to the legislature.

This can be done on a short-term basis and for specific purposes. Present representative govern­ments or their legislature have to be replaced by direct contact, consultation or opinion of the voters through mobile or fixed phones, thus, making it a ‘direct democracy’. This would reduce arrogance of political leaders, party bosses, ministers and senior bureaucrats. Democratic government would operate at several levels further divided segmentally, horizontally and verti­cally.

They would have to constitute new institutions to become part of transnational, interstate and global systems. Growth of multinational corpo­rations (MNCs) has taken place everywhere. Hardly would there remain any important matters lying with the states to deal within their exclusive sovereign areas. All their leaders would have to be adept in the use of infor­mation technologies.

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Almond and Coleman have studied the developing countries in accordance with their conceptual schemes of seven functional requisites essential for maintaining a political system. In their seven functional categories, they have resorted to the Western model, based on British, American, and French political systems, as their ‘ideal type’, consid­ering them as successful in maintaining their equilibrium. They have used these seven functional categories to make a comparative analysis of the politics of the Third World. They have studied them from the view of maintaining equilibrium.

For this purpose, they have analysed:

(1) Whether functions, required under seven categories to maintain a political system, are being performed, or not? Which categories of functions are playing what part to maintain the equilibrium? Equilibrium is the focus for analysing the functions.

(2) What structures are performing these functions? Are there some specialised structures for performing these functions?

(3) What is the style of their functioning? That style is depicted in the Parsonian language of pattern-variables, on the basis of available data and information.

(4) In view of performance of functions – its efficiency and autonomy, availability of specialised structures, and style or orientation towards equilibrium-political systems have been categorised in accordance with their patterns or stages of development.

They have put the Western model at the top of developmental scale. Edward Shils has pointed out that no non-Western political system has been able to follow it completely. As such, every one of them remains in the transi­tional or developing stage.

Shils has evolved six patterns or models, but Almond and Coleroan have adopted, by the year 1960, only five of them:

1. Political Democracy:

These countries – Japan, Israel, India, etc. have all seven-category-functions and specialised structures too. But their style of working and values have non-democratic orientation.

2. Tutelary Democracy:

Formally, their ‘political systems perform all functions and have structures. But the structures of rule application dominate the rest of outputs, assuming the role of conducting democracy. That time (1960) Ghana and Nigeria were put under this category.

3. Modernising Oligarchy:

Under this pattern, the elite as a class or coterie rules to modernise the country so that democracy in the long run may win over. Democratic constitution is either postponed or suspended. Army or bureaucracy or both dominate the political scene controlling operations of functions for their own purposes. Actual style of their working is anti-equilibrium. Pakistan, Burma, Turkey, Sudan, etc., had been categorised in this manner.

4. Totalitarian Oligarchy:

An oligarchy grabs power and operates the whole system on the basis of coercion. The distinction between society and polity is obliterated. The ruling coterie controls and conducts all inputs, as well as outputs. Almond and Coleman have quoted North Korea, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy in this context.

5. Traditional Oligarchy:

There is no evidence of democracy or moderni­sation. Most of them are traditional monarchies which rule in the name of God, Religion, or Tradition. Political rules depend on status and ethnicity. Functions concentrate in the hands of its rulers, and the level of their efficiency and autonomy is very low. Saudi Arabia, former Nepal under monarchy, etc., come under this category.

In the present context, except India, Japan, Ceylon and Israel, most of the developing countries belong to second, third, and fourth categories. Several other scholars, such as, Cohen, Lasswell, Finer etc., have also advanced their own classificatory schemes. But none is exhaustive. Even Almond and Coleman were not satisfied with this typology, and had attempted to improve it further.

Even functions and structures operating in the developed and the developing countries are different. In developed countries, informal and primary structures are acculturated and penetrated by secondary and formal structures. But, the case is reverse in the devel­oping countries, when even ‘political’ functions are sometimes performed by governmental structures.

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A method usually means the logical process or a systematic procedure used in discovering or demonstrating the truth. From a broader view, the scien­tific method also represents a particular attitude and a perspective to look at the world in order to obtain verifiable knowledge. It represents a philosophy, a theory and a programme to see the world in a definite, exact and precise manner.

Underlying the scientific method, there are certain assumptions:

(i) Know ability:

One can know man, group, society, institu­tions and the interrelations and processes operating among them.

(ii) Con-subjectivity:

We get impression or image of a thing or event almost similar through our senses like any other man.

(iii) Regularities:

There are regularities in the forces of Nature. One can find succession, association or interconnection between various events.

(iv) Man more or less enjoys freedom in understanding a phenomenon as true or false. The validity of this understanding cannot be demonstrated by scientific method.

(v) A scientist investigates factual or empirical truth, which is different from moral, spiritual or philosophical truth.

The form and contents of scientific truths change on availability of new facts. Some of the scholars regard these assumptions as values of science, but the word ‘value’ connotes subjectivity, choice or will which is not applicable in case of these assumptions. They are not ultimate, secret or subjective truths, but are merely instrumental in knowing the reality. By rejecting them or discarding the means, one cannot realise the end. These assumptions are objective and neutral in the sense that they do not influence the findings or conclusions.

Still, the scientists commonly believe in pursuing the truth. They do have certain values. As such, they have faith that the universe is cosmos and not a chaos. Various events, units, persons, and their behaviour can be subsumed under certain patterns. The aim of science is to discover these patterns. This work is done by science in open and public view. There are no secret processes, no predetermined diagnosis, no personal understanding and no bargaining. Everything is put before the public eye so that the whole world may see it and challenge its presentation.

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Facts, values and theory are closely interre­lated in the study of research of politics. They all make up the structure of political or policy analysis which itself is built of behaviouralism, scientific method, and scientific value relativism. A dynamic theory is based on that structure. A political actor or scholar analyses political decisioning or policy-making in a scientific manner.

Diagram 2. below displays the whole process of analysis. Decision-making (or policy-making) process is shown by triangles.

Every triangle consists of three arms:

(i) Multiplicity of alterna­tives,

(ii) Factual analysis of these alternatives under given constraints, and

(iii) Choice or determination of one alternative.

The final decision taken by political actors or groups has been shown by number ‘1’ put on the top of triangles. This decision-point, besides available facts, pertains to their values.

The decision-point of every lower triangle is taken under the decision-point of higher and bigger triangle. Lower decision-values follow higher decision-values. Sometimes, lower decision-points are taken directly on the basis of next higher decision-points. This non-hierarchical relationship is shown by triangles demarcated by broken lines. In the analysis of all political decisions, finding and observation of available facts through Scientific Method make up the basis. Every value-laden decision or event is analysed in the context of values upheld at the higher level.

As a political theory ascends higher, it tends to enlarge its scope or generality. But its attachment with the facts observed by scientific method leads it to validity. Those who want to maintain a balance between generality and validity stand in the middle. The choice concerns with the value-judgement of a political actor or a theorist interested in policy-analysis.

Scientific method along with scientific value relativism can help the politicians and administrators in taking value-decisions based on relevant facts. It can also enlighten them on the choice of ultimate values or higher policy matters by analysing their various facets, and implications for them and the milieu. The political theory guides a decision-maker, if the political actors seek its help in understanding the facts, and anticipating and controlling the coming events. The diagram depicts internal political decision-making by triangles, and the political theory by outer enveloping triangle.

Absorption of scientific method and scientific value relativism in modern political theory has enabled scholars to analyse values to a limitless level. They can now study threadbare the historical, personal, real and possible aspects of various values. Empirical research can do a lot in finding out some universal elements underlying the values of justice, liberty and equality.

Similarly, as Brecht wished, constants or permanent elements of ‘human nature’ are discovered, they can make up the basic material of any political theory, law, policy or organisation. One can empirically know and analyse the ‘most preferred values’ of man throughout a country or the whole world. One can verify the findings by objective tools and techniques. In this manner, a large part of philosophical values and problems have come within the purview of modern political theory. Its scope is likely to expand still further.

Modern political theory, thus, has given up its impotence and silence over the problem of values, which was its hallmark during the two World Wars. It has arisen in an active and militant manner against the ideologies, which sell and propagate their claims and idiosyncrasies as scientific values and verified facts. It can analyse their means, causes and consequences.

The modern theorist, while remaining neutral towards values, can conduct dispassionate research and scientific analysis. He can analyse both ‘is’ and ‘ought’ separately, and also present relevant data in support of his prefer­ences derived from empirical study of human nature.

Political Science as a discipline can now tell what type of political action can give greater guarantee for ensuing human welfare. A polity can realise what it wants, and escape from the results which it does not like. Scientific value relativism is in a position to expose the actual meaning and possible results hidden behind populist slogans and vaguely-written manifestos. It can make out where would their consequences lead a people.

It can be regarded as a weapon against harmful political ideologies and for the defence of human freedom and values. Scientific value relativism and method (SVRM) does not prohibit any person or group to learn and adopt values from religion, nature, intuition, etc.

What it wants is that they should be separately indicated. SVRM will explain them, and let all know their consequences in the prevailing context. This will enable them to maintain, reject or modify them, and take adequate steps for future. It can go beyond discussing meaning and implications to adequacy of means. Ideals like equality, liberty, culture, etc., also fall under these categories.

Both protagonists of values and value relativists accept the importance of values, and accord central place to them in their studies, but with a basic difference. Value protagonists begin and end with values picking up methods and techniques useful in support of their stand. Scientific value relativists stick to the scientific method from the start to end. They reach conclusions after making investigation and analysis through scientific method.

They treat values as ‘preferences’, which are discovered on the basis of observation and objective inquiry. For them, SVRM does not and cannot advocate a particular set of ultimate values as true and valid for all human beings, except the assumptions underlying the procedure of scientific method which do not vitiate the findings arrived at or from debarring anyone to challenge, in part or whole, the venture itself. In fact, it is a weapon of truth and reason to fight against falsehood, superstition, ignorance, oppressive ideologies, and vested interests. If it is improperly used, it can disown the wielder of the weapon himself.

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Owing to the very nature of politics the calculation of the cost of ‘political technology would always be tentative.

There are four components of calculating the cost of making and applying a political technology (PT):

(i) Sources,

(ii) Handling Style,

(iii) Stake or Investment, and

(iv) Outcome.

i. Sources:

Sources make up the ground on which political fight is carried is on. One is big or small in terms of one’s storehouse of sources. But they are meaningless unless one makes use of them. Sources broadly are inputs of politics in possession or control of a political leader.

These are of three types:

(a) Personal,

(b) Formal, and,

(c) Non-formal.

Personal resources relate to the personal control of an individual political technology. They are material and political. Material resources include building, money, income, physique, stamina etc. Political resources include the number of followers, their organisation deference to him in areas that can be wide or narrow. It can again be positive when his directives are carried out, and negative when the same followers or some of them stand against him. Formal resources are available as a result of control over the state machinery.

Their abundance depends upon nature, size and form of the state. All political leaders contrive for having control over the state machinery. Non-formal resources are accumulated beyond and besides the state, i.e., caste, community, relations, voluntary organisations and so on. It may include many other factors of power accretion and its exercise.

Rest of the three components are used in actual political fight.

ii. Handling Style:

Sometimes it means a lot when a political technology is used abruptly, demonstratively or peacefully. Each type of handling brings in specific response from the concerned people.

iii. Stake or Investment:

Investment is putting the resources or a part thereof in winning over the game of politics. One may fight with totality of his resources. Spending of sources appears in the form of actual action. They are used while in confrontation with or facing opposition from the adversaries. Money, manpower, reputation, time, position etc. are put to stake. In this direction, investment has to be deducted from sources. Besides this venture, there can be wastage, loss, routine expenditure and cheating.

iv. Outcome:

Outcome or result is the output of the whole political venture. It may be satisfactory or unsatisfactory, adequate or inadequate or desirable or undesirable. In case, it is not satisfactory, it may have to be repeated or more resources have to be spent over the whole venture.

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