This course material is designed and developed by Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), New Delhi and Krishna Kanta Handiqui State Open University (KKHSOU), Guwahati.

Bachelor of Arts POLITICAL SCIENCES (BAPS)

BAPS-1 Understanding Political Theory

Block-3 POLITICAL THEORYAND PRACTICE & THE GRAMMAR OF DEMOCRACY

UNIT-10 DEMOCRACY: LIBERAL & MARXIST

UNIT-11 PROCEDURAL DEMOCRACY AND ITS CRITIQUE

UNIT-12 DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY

UNIT-13 PARTICIPATION UNIT-14 REPRESENTATION

UNIT-10 DEMOCRACY: LIBERAL AND MARXIST

Structure 10.1 Objective 10.2 Introduction 10.3 Meaning of Democracy 10.4 Types of Democracy 10.4.1 Liberal Democracy 10.4.2 Marxist Democracy 10.5 Practice of Democracy 10.6 Summary 10.7 Exercises 10.8 References

10.1 OBJECTIVE

This Unit would enable you to understand  The meaning of the term „democracy‟  The types of democracy: Liberal & Marxist  The practices and problems in democracy.

10.2 INTRODUCTION

The idea of Democracy can be traced to antiquity while its actualisation is more in the recent past, in particular, in the post Second World War period. It is with the emergence of mass democracies, made possible by the extension of universal adult franchise since the second half of the twentieth century, that democracy has become an acceptable and preferred form of government. Churchill considered it as a bad form of government but the others, even worse. Today, it is seen as the best practicable and the best possible form of government which is in contrast to the earlier perceived view of it being unworkable and unjust.

Democracy is a composite word of two Greek words, demos meaning people and kratia meaning rule. It is the people, who are both rulers and ruled, unlike other systems like monarchy, dictatorship or oligarchy where there exists a distinction between the ruler and the ruled. In a democracy there are no permanent rulers and all people have equal powers and are equal under the rule of law. While in ancient times,

1 democracy meant the rule of people, its modern version coalesces rule of people with notions of individual rights and limited state power.

10.3 MEANING OF DEMOCRACY

There is considerable ambiguity about the meaning of people though the overriding meaning of demos is community assembled in the Ecclesia (Assembly). Sartori (1987, p.22) points out that people means: a great many, lower class, an organic whole, absolute majority and limited majority. In ancient Athens, the cradle of democracy, people meant the adult male citizens of Greek parentage. But with the extension of franchise since the middle of the nineteenth century, the electorate of today consists of all adult men and women. Initially, franchise was restricted to the educated and propertied men. But with the extension of franchise came democratisation of society. This resulted in active citizenry and brought about a sense of equality that undermined old customs of deference and subordination, and thus established a link between democracy and equality. Along with universal suffrage came public education and reforms of electoral systems in the West. Subsequently, these sentiments spread to the colonial world with its people demanding rights of self- determination rather than mere self-government. People mean the electorate, the voting population indicating the presence of a single cohesive body with common interests. This perception was the basis of the classical theory of democracy from Locke to J.S. Mill. However, this perception is challenged by the modern pluralists. Elections, public opinion and Gallup polls are the different techniques through which the opinion of the people is mirrored. According to Sartori, democracy is the system in which none enjoy unconditional and unlimited power. Limiting and restricting power and making it accountable are the key to democracy. Historically, in the West, liberal constitutionalism precedes democracy. According to Zakaria (2003), the focus is on the protection of individual‟s autonomy by providing a bulwark against any form of coercion perpetrated by the state, society or church.

Democracy also means government by consent that is elicited through periodic competitive elections that register voters‟ decision in a free and fair manner. Election is the key mechanical process through which democracy functions but what is more important is the condition under which a citizen gets the information, for „the opinion of the governed is the real foundation of all government‟ (Dicey, 1905, p.3). Easton (1965) refers to three levels of consensus: (a) consensus at the community level or basic consensus; (b) consensus at the regime level or procedural consensus and (c) consensus at the policy level or policy consensus. The first refers to the same value beliefs and value goals that are shared by a given society. This is a facilitating condition of democracy. The second with the rules of the game of which the most important is the way conflicts are resolved. Usually in a democracy, conflicts are resolved through majority rule but if that is not acceptable then there has to be an agreement (a) on the rules for disagreeing and for processing disagreements and (b) 2 disagreements within such rules are those that democracy protects and extends. The level of consensus over policies emerges through discussion, which, according to Barker (1942, p.67) is the „basis and essence of all democracy‟. The second and the third are necessary conditions of democracy and its presence indicates the beginning of democracy. In defining democracy one has to also take into account two aspects: procedural and substantive. The former refers to mechanisms of free, fair and competitive elections by which governments are held accountable and a constitutional framework that guarantees and protects rights and liberties. The substantive aspect pertains to socially based value judgements such as equitable income distribution. Dahl (1989, p.5) points out that the substantive aspect of democracy gets strengthened only if desirable results can be obtained through „collective decision-making processes‟.

The notion of human equality is the foundation of democracy. Equality means equal intrinsic worth of all human beings in making collective decisions and „the good or interests of each person should be given equal consideration‟. It also implies the need to rationally justify discrimination and preferential treatment. The idea of equality before law was an established feature of Athenian democracy. Its modern variant is underlined by the assertion that all individuals have equal and inalienable rights. Equality before the law means equal rights and equal laws, and after Napoleonic period and the Restoration, the liberal democratic demand for equality came to include three specific demands: (1) equal universal suffrage to every adult; (2) social equality understood as equality of status; of not giving much importance to class and wealth distinction; and (3) equality of opportunity, of giving achievement and talent as the basis of access to institutions. The notion of career open to talent is an important consequence of the American and French Revolutions and set aside ascribed status and favoured acquired status, of opening administrative and political positions to talent, aptitude and merit rather than birth and status.

Modern day democracy is representative or indirect in nature as people elect their candidates through a process of elections for a constitutionally stipulated period of time and the representatives in turn mirror the views of their constituency and act as link between the people and the government. Representative democracy is most suited for present day mass democracies. The idea of representative democracy, in its embryonic form, exists in the writings of Locke but its full-fledged meaning becomes clear, as a result of spread of franchise and institutionalisation of democracy procedures and practices in the nineteenth century, in the works of later liberals like Bentham, James and John Stuart Mill. Representation is through various means, from proportional representation followed in many European and Scandinavian countries to the first-pastthe- post-system that exists in Britain and India. Representation is secured through an effective and viable two or multi-party system. It is the acceptance of the party system and with it, the plurality among individuals that distinguishes modern liberals from the classical liberals for whom factions and parties represented

3 divisions. Political parties became important with the extension of franchise to the larger sections of the population.

Parties as mediators between the people and the state offer direction to government and steer the ship of the state. It functions as agents of elite recruitment of candidates for public office, serve as agents of interest aggregation by transforming a multitude of specific demands into more manageable ones as proposals. It filters various demands and decides which one should go through.

Ancient democracy was direct or participatory with citizens participating, unmediated continually and directly, in the tasks of the government. Direct democracy does not distinguish between civil society and state. Its modern variant is participatory democracy with a subtle difference that participation need not necessarily carry the implication of ultimate decision-making power. Techniques such as referendum/plebiscite are frequently used to elicit people‟s views and opinion on some political questions directly. Switzerland follows this practice (since the sixteenth century).

10.4 TYPES OF DEMOCRACY

Modern representative democracy began as liberal democracy. Historically, the establishment of the liberal state that emerged from the ashes of absolutism in the late 17th century paved the way for a secular and national system of power with fixed territory, control of the means of violence, impersonal power structure and legitimacy as its characteristics. The transition from absolutist to modern state systems with governments deriving their legitimacy and consent from people was brought about by the two revolutions, the English (1640-88) and the French (1789).

10.4.1 Liberal Democracy

Liberal Democracy consists of two interdependent ideas: liberal component signifying limits to political power and democratic component for people‟s rule, participation and representative institutions. As Sartori (1995, p.102) puts it succinctly, liberalism stands for „freeing the people‟ and democracy for „empowering people; demos-protection meaning safeguarding people from tyranny and arbitrariness, and demos-power meaning the implementation of popular rule. The liberal state started as a constitutional and limited state before it became a democratic one. There could be formal democratic states like the post Revolutionary Iran, according to Fukuyama (1992, p.44) without being liberal. Liberal democracy, in course of its evolution, developed from protective to developmental notions democracy (Held, 1987).

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Locke furnishes the bases of a liberal state with the concepts of limited state, consent direct and tacit- as the basis of government, legislative supremacy, individual rights as prior to and independent of government and the principle of majority rule. Montesquieu elaborates on Locke‟s suggestion of separation of powers and makes it the institutional requirement of government to curtail the highly centralised authority and ensure virtuous government through checks and balances. The American Constitution of 1789 is the first liberal constitution that created a republic based on representative institutions. The early liberal vision, in course of time fused with democratic elements of participation and representation through the widening of franchise, establishment and growth of political parties and interest groups paved the way for a liberal democratic state. Individual rights till the early part of the 19th century meant rights of the propertied male individuals making franchise and participation oligarchic and patriarchal. In Britain, only six percent of men had the right to vote prior to 1832 Reform Act bringing about a wide gulf between theory and practice of democracy.

The English Utilitarians- Bentham and James Mill- played an instrumental role in pleading for making suffrage universal as that would make governments accountable and less whimsical. Bentham specifically points out that good government is possible only with „democratic ascendancy‟, by granting people the power to select and dismiss their rulers. He drafts a complete scheme of parliamentary democracy pleading for secret ballot, annual elections, equal electoral districts, annual parliaments, a scheme for elementary, secondary and technical public education, election of the Prime Minister by the parliament, abolition of Monarchy and the British House of Lords, unicameralism, checks on legislative authority and rejection of plural voting. The Utilitarians defend representation of people, for each individual has to be represented and therefore should have the right to vote. Bentham defends women‟s right to vote but tactically rejects it subsequently so as to not jeopardise the cause. James Mill defends representative government as the best option. John Stuart Mill, taking a cue from Tocqueville, insists on the need to defend minority rights and specifies and limits the powers of legally elected majorities. Mill defends representative democracies but believes these would work successfully in small and homogenous states. Post J.S. Mill liberals, like Green, revise liberalism by making common good and positive freedom rather than private gain as the chief function of the state and that the latter must intervene to ensure the wellbeing for all, an essential precondition for a liberal society. Keynes advocates state intervention to ensure full employment and control of trade cycles. The acceptance of Keynesianism was first reflected in the New Deal in the US in the 1930s and then in the Beveridge Report of 1942 in Britain that inaugurated the welfare state at the end of the Second World War. Public opinion was for state regulation of the markets but some swam against the current and the most noteworthy was Hayek.

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Classical liberal democratic theory is criticised by the Marxists and the Elitists. The latter point out that in every society it is the elite rather than the people who rule. The strength of the elite varies: psychological reasons for Pareto, organisational abilities for Mosca and Michels and technological expertise according to Burnham. Schumpeter tries to make democracy and elitism compatible. He points out that classical theory sets impossible high standards by stating that it knows the will of the people assuming people to be homogenous whereas in all societies there is multiplicity of conflicting wills. Another fallacy is the assumption that it depends on a high level of rationality. Schumpeter defines democracy as a political method to arrive at political, legislative and administrative decisions. Democracy is competition among governing elites and establishes an analogy between political behaviour and market behaviour. Pluralists accept diversity and contend that the modern liberal state is too complex for any single group, class or organisation to dominate society. Politics is the arena for resolving conflicts between different groups who represent the divergent dominant interests of society. Pluralist democracy or polyarchy, according to Dahl, does not establish the sovereignty of the majority but a rule by „multiple minority oppositions‟. Dismissing the concerns of Madison, Mill and Tocqueville about the tyranny of the majority is misplaced for a tyrannous majority is impossible because elections express the preferences of different competitive groups rather than the wishes of a strong majority. Democracy is different from dictatorship which is a government by minority. The preconditions for a functioning polyarchy are consensus on the rules of procedure, consensus on the range of policy options and consensus on the legitimate scope of political activity which act as a bugger against oppressive rule.

10.4.2 Marxist Democracy

Marxist Democracy offers a critique and an alternative to liberal democracy. It criticizes the formal conception of equality offered by liberal democracy on the grounds that political equality would be farcical in the absence of economic equality, the latter existing as a result of the institution of private property. For democracy to become a reality, a rule by the people, the non-propertied, there is a need to abolish private property and capitalism. This would be possible when the working class, the true creators of wealth overthrow capitalism and create an alternative, the socialist democracy. Marx and Engels envision a majoritarian socialist revolution led by the working class wherein the proletariat is raised “to the position of ruling class, to win the battle of democracy”.

Socialist democracy would be a true one since for the first time, the proletarian majority would rule whereas, all along states have been ruled by a minority, representing the interests of the small but dominant and powerful possessing class. The proletarian revolution will destroy the capitalist state machinery and in doing so, the state ceases as an organised power of one class oppressing another. In 1850s, Marx and Engels invoke the Babouvist-Blanquist conception of educational

6 dictatorship by an enlightened minority as a tactical compromise slogan against the Anarchists and the reformists justifying the need for dictatorship to fill the vacuum as a result of the destruction of the old order and till the creation of the new order. The 1871 Paris Commune is described as „the glorious harbinger of the new society‟ that Marx and Engels portray and subsequently, Engels identifies the Commune as the prototype of the dictatorship of the proletariat, a controversial and ambiguous phrase in Marxism. In 1872, Marx and Engels also point that in countries like England, Holland and the US which has witnessed steady progress of democracy and the widening of suffrage socialism could be attained through peaceful means but this thesis never moved to the centre-stage of their analyses, and they continue to maintain that socialism would be attained only through a revolution.

However, Marx failed to provide for institutional safeguards against arbitrariness and misuse of power. Bakunin, the chief theoretician of anarchism prophetically points out that the Marxist utopia- the dictatorship of the proletariat could become dictatorship on the proletariat.

Lenin reiterates Marx‟s core arguments on the need for revolutionary violence and the rationale for the dictatorship of the proletariat and the two-phased development to communism but introduces the idea of the vanguard of the proletariat, the revolutionary party, as he too like Bernstein came to view the proletariat as having lost its revolutionary zeal. While Bernstein uses it to formulate the credo of democratic socialism, Lenin reaffirms the Marxist vision that revolution is the only way to realise socialism. The Leninist vision is criticised by Kautsky, Luxemburg and Trotsky. For Kautsky, socialism and democracy as inter-dependent and any attempt to introduce socialism minus democracy would degenerate into a dictatorship. He describes the Bolshevik revolution as a coup d‟ etat as it was a minority revolution. Luxemburg too was worried that elimination of representative institutions like the Constituent Assembly in USSR would paralyse public life as “freedom is always and exclusively the freedom for the one who thinks differently”. Both Luxemburg and Trotsky feared that the dictatorship of the proletariat would eventually become dictatorship of the party, and within the party eventually of a coterie and one single person. This became true with the rise of Stalin to power.

Social Democracy accepts the capitalist free market as the most efficient system but insists on the need for wise stewardship of public agencies to ensure common good. As articulated by the 1959 Bad Godsberg Programme, it includes political liberalism, mixed economy, welfare state, Keynesian economics and equitable and free society. It rejects the idea of revolutionary transformation of capitalism and believes in the simultaneous realisation of both socialism and democracy as capitalism had undergone substantive structural changes since the late 19th century with the rise of the middle class of salaried persons and technocrats. Lassalle and subsequently, Bernstein were its main theoreticians. Social democracy builds on the institutions of

7 liberal democracy constitutionalism, rule of law, free market, property rights and civil liberties with human visage with the aim of ensuring growth, efficiency, competitiveness, equity and just reward within a democratic framework.

10.5 PRACTICE OF DEMOCRACY

In the last quarter of the twentieth century democracy has triumphed over different shades of authoritarianism, both of the right and of the left. This development was made possible by the defeat and collapse of the two important rivals to liberal democracy fascism and communism. Fascism, with its anti-theory stance, had no democratic principle and its objections to democracy were total. However, the claim of communism was different as it proclaimed that its version of democracy would be truer and fuller than liberal democracy. This claim turned out to be false. The core idea of the communist variant of democracy was the idea of collective equality and not individual freedom. It was first established in Russia in 1917 and was then extended to Eastern Europe, China, Cuba, Vietnam and few other countries over a period of time in the post Second World War with stress on full employment, universal state-sponsored education, elimination of a privileged economic class which is inevitable in capitalism and people‟s democracy with only non-antagonistic contradictions surviving. However, in this idealised version, three crucial elements constitutes the essence of democracy: (1) participation that is free and not coerced; (2) competition between different political parties for power within a framework of a constitution with the victors not in a position of enjoying total power and the defeated not obliterated altogether and (3) enjoyment of liberty that includes rights of free association, free speech and to own property. In the evolution of constitutional democracy three different inputs, each with its own distinctiveness have surfaced providing three models of democracy as it is practiced today and these are (1) liberal democracy as it originated in Britain and practised in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the US (2) social democracy and (3) mercantilism.

Within liberal democracies there are variations. Britain has witnessed two opposite frameworks of libertarianism and collectivism providing two alternative models of good political and social order. Libertarianism has emphasised the existence of natural harmony in society without any need for state mediation, and advocates self- regarding action. It cautions against dangers of concentration of power and points out the importance of the rule of law. In contrast, collectivism has denied this emphasis on individuality by propounding a social philosophy that highlights the importance of public good, need for social justice and of proper organisation of society. The US is committed to free market but did see in the 1930s the beginning of state regulation in the form of the New Deal and then in the mid 1960s, the Great Society Programme to tackle poverty, and provide for social security. Despite these measures, regulations are much weaker and social expenditure and taxation is much lower in the US than in other industrialised democracies. This is because most Americans believe in the 8 virtues of capitalism and are sceptical of state power. The ethical support to capitalism emerges out of puritan ethics, which means acceptance of competitiveness, hard work, thrift and charity. The working of American capitalism teaches us that unbridled economic power of capitalism can be controlled by the will and force of legal and political institutions and by a societal sanction of capitalism. In the 1980s, in both Britain and the US, the welfare measures were reversed in the wake of the rise of the New Right.

Liberal democracy is inseparable from free market and property rights. However there are instances where the economy could be the freest but with restrictive democratic rights as in Singapore. Interestingly modern Singapore‟s architect and the first Prime Minister and now a senior Minister, Lee Kuan Yew dismisses the British welfare state model as entailing unlimited liability with devastating economic consequences. Singapore has a system of health, education, housing and welfare organised around compulsory savings and the principle of personal responsibility. Critics do point to the asymmetry about the co-existence of free market with political repression. In real world capitalism and economic development do co-exist with authoritarianism but the question is for how long, as there is a belief that the former will undermine the latter. The failures of capitalism also led to rise of authoritarianism as it happened in Germany in the 1930s. In the wake of galloping inflation, which wiped out savings the middle class‟ concern was economic security as that threatened their wealth rather than who wielded political power. To sustain political democracy the majority must “feel a concern for their rights and the rights of others and are ready to defend them” (Grenville, 1980, p.247) and this was not the case in Germany that time. This led them to support authoritarian rule. The post-war consensual basis of politics in all the four democratic countries with a strong liberal heritage proves that well-established democracies can create their own safety valves to blunt the edges of major contradictions in society and politics.

Social Democracy with its commitment to private property and the market along with state intervention, as unregulated capitalism leads to inequality and concentration of wealth. To maintain social equilibrium the state intervenes to create positive social rights. Individual initiative is balanced within a framework of collective equality. Though public ownership is inevitable in any kind of economic management, the social democracy state ownership is more extensive as compared to liberal democracies and (3) mercantilism (Mercantilism refers to policies designed to keep the state prosperous through economic regulation and that national trade is best served by increasing exports and collecting precious metals in return. It was a policy that most European states followed between 1600 and 1800). or the developmental states or the late industrialising nations in non-Western democracies. It is a statist philosophy for which the domestic economy is built around the requirements of the state rather than service to the people. Wealth generation is linked to national identity and pride, power and sovereignty as the entire structure of political power is directed

9 for national consolidation and economic weakness is perceived as a manifestation of national weakness. In the context of national consolidation most European nations were mercantilist and even colonial expansion was an extension of this philosophy of extending protectionism overseas. Even in the modern context, mercantilism is an important economic system, which is followed by a number of nations. A mercantilist nation achieves economic power through a great deal of state initiative with priorities fixed on key industries and accompanied by policies pertaining to taxation and subsidies. Like social democracy it advocates total or partial state ownership of specific industries but with a key difference as mercantilist state spends much less on welfare as compared to a social democratic one. Both private property and markets play an important role but the administration of the state in a mercantilist state.

Mercantilism, in the modern context, is a necessity for the late industrialising countries, which because of colonial interlude missed the first modernising revolution, the Industrial Revolution. This is the primary reason as to why mercantilism is important for democracies like Japan, South Korea and India in the non-European world. There are many critics of mercantilism including the capacity of the state to set proper priorities and achieve the target. Limited competition also creates a fertile ground for waste, corruption, red-tapism and bureaucratisation resulting in what C. Rajagopalachari, the leader of the Swantantra party and the first governor general of free India, aptly called „permit-licencequota- Raj‟. However, the critics fail to provide an alternative to mercantilism where capitalism is inherently weak and as such without state intervention the basic infrastructure for capitalist expansion and productivity becomes impossible to conceive.

The successful mercantilism of Japan and South Korea vindicate the correctness of such a policy, whereas its relative failure in India is a reminder that it need not be fully successful everywhere. The present day mercantilism is not the extreme form of yesteryears, which was linked to colonialism and fascism though mercantilism had an authoritarian connotation; but within the specificities of the newly emerging nations after the Second World War and post-war transformation in Japan, the mercantilist interlude has led to successful consolidation of democracy.

It means the consolidation of democracy is possible with a wide variety of economic and social systems except for the communist model of management of modern societies. The communist philosophy rejects in Toto the twin institutions of free market and private property for human liberation and in providing a true basis of egalitarian democratic order. Private property leads to domination of a few over the vast property-less multitude and an increase in their gap would lead to a revolutionary situation resulting in the abolition of property which, in reality, means state control of property. Similarly market is eliminated as all kinds of private transactions are banned. It is a total negation of Smith‟s formulation of the invisible hand of the market and an acceptance of a highly centralised decision-making process which was

10 expected to rationalise economic decision-making process that would benefit the entire society and doing away with the problems of a market economy. Lenin with his utmost conviction about the highly centralised decision-making process as the defining characteristic of communism distinguishes Marxism from Anarchism on the grounds that the former believes in centralisation, while the latter in decentralisation. However, this highly centralized decision-making process could not compete with the decentralised market either with regard to efficiency or innovation reminding us Popper‟s succinct observation: „who plans the planners‟. Inefficiency and highly lopsided and wasteful decisions ultimately led to the crumbling of a system that rejects all the important components of liberal democracy. Kennan pointed out in 1946 that the „Marxist dogma‟ was the fig leaf covering the brutal realities of the Soviet policy, the origin of that brutality could be traced back to the originators themselves. As such this one clear alternative to liberal democracy after the Second World War failed to provide a credible option to liberal democratic economic and social arrangement. In sharp contrast to this rigid and monolithic model, in the present context liberal democracy, social democracy and mercantilism represent three different models of democratic governance in the contemporary world.

Today constitutional democracy has become universally acceptable and preferred form of government and common to all its three variants are four essential pre- requisites: (1) property as it provides a sense of ownership and responsibility, (2) voting, (3) ruleadministration and (4) the law. All the four provide bulwark against both anarchy and despotism and even if one is removed the whole edifice begins to erode (Usher, 2003). The strength of democracy is derived from the desire of freedom, one of the strongest and the most enduring desire of all human beings as identified by Aron. The universal and liberating force of constitutional democracy has dwarfed all its opponents with manoeuvrability limited to the fringe and has come to occupy the centre-stage and this will continue to be the case in the near future also. Rather, the choice is no longer between capitalism and socialism but between authoritarianism and constitutionalism, the rule of law and independence of judiciary (Ash, 1990, p.21). It is about the ability of democratic regimes to manage their economies so as to provide for growth, protect their environments, safeguard the welfare of the disadvantaged and help other struggling countries to feed their people and find some viable path of development (Bell, 1990, p. 187). In the present age of quick change marked by continuous technological innovations individual choice has expanded in practically all areas of human endeavour and this makes a democracy a necessity for the complex modern societies that we live in. Medvedev (1982) captures this succinctly when he asserts that democracy today has become as much a necessity for economics as it is for politics and implies that governments have to ensure economic productivity, rough economic parity, and civil and political rights. The experience of last five decades in the developing world also demonstrates that an acceptance of constitutional democratic order is a priori to both development and social justice (Kothari, 1971 and 1988). It is in providing proper machinery for

11 governing complex mass societies of our times that democracy has become more and more universalised, to the extent that the other variants have become exceptions and transient. Critics of constitutional democracy have been unable to provide a better working formula to the one that constitutional democracy provides, with its commitment to the rule of law, accountability, and limited authority with a flourishing civil society.

10.6 SUMMARY

The idea of Democracy can be traced to antiquity while its practice is more in the recent past, in particular, the post Second World War period. It is with the emergence of mass democracies made possible by the extension of universal adult franchise since the second half of the twentieth century that democracy has become an acceptable and preferred form of government. It is the people, who are both rulers and ruled, unlike other systems like monarchy, dictatorship or oligarchy where there exists a distinction between ruler and ruled. Modern representative democracy began as liberal democracy. Historically, the establishment of the liberal state that emerged from the ashes of absolutism in the late 17th century paved the way for a secular and national system of power with fixed territory, control of the means of violence, impersonal power structure and legitimacy as its characteristics. Liberal democracy was criticised by the Marxists as being formal and unequal. Other variants of democracy were Marxist democracy, social democracy and democratic elitism. With the defeat of fascism and the collapse of communism, constitutional democracy has triumphed. There is no just one variant of constitutional democracy but many. Broadly, three variants exist in today‟s world and these are: liberal democracy, social democracy and mercantilism.

10.7 EXERCISES

1. Define Democracy and distinguish between the different types of democracy. 2. What is liberal democracy? 3. What is Marxist democracy? 4. Distinguish between Marxist and social democracy. 5. Explain the Practice of Democracy.

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10.8 REFERENCES

1. Ash, T. G., „Eastern Europe: The Year of Truth‟, New York Review of Books, 10th February, pp. 17-22, 1990. 2. Barber, B., Strong Democracy, University of California Press, Berkeley CA, 1984. 3. Barker, E. , Reflections on Government, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1942. 4. Barry, B., Democracy, Power and Justice, The Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1989 5. Beetham, D., (ed.) Defining and Measuring Democracy, Sage, London, 1994.

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UNIT-11 PROCEDURAL DEMOCRACY & ITS CRITIQUES

Structure

11.1 Objectives 11.2 Introduction 11.3 Procedural Democracy 11.4 Aims and Objective of Procedural Democracy 11.5 Substantive Democracy: A Critique of Procedural Democracy 11.6 Summary 11.7 Exercises 11.8 References

11.1 OBJECTIVES

This Unit would enable you to understand  The form of Indian Government  The types of democracy : Procedural & Substantive  Meaning and nature of Procedural & Substantive democracy.  The critique of procedural democracy

11.2 INTRODUCTION

Following Independence India adopted a democratic system of governance. Institutions of democracy in India infact began to grow during the colonial rule. They evolved through various Acts of the British India Government and as a result of the demand within India and a section in England. The provisions of democracy found their place in the Government of India Acts of 1909, 1919 and 1935. Following the deliberations within the Constituent Assembly, democracy was introduced in the post-independence India in 1950 with coming into effect India's Republican Constitution.

India opted for the parliamentary form of government in order to make the nation- state (modernity) based on the principles of universal adult franchise and periodic election in contrast to the village-level government in the light of Gandhian principles.

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The assessment of democracy depends on the indices used to indicate or measure it. There are mainly two models of indices regarding democracy - one related to the institutional minimal, procedural democracy; two related to the substantive or effective democracy. That former views democracy in terms of the presence of the institutions of democracy, political parties and other associations or organizations, periodic elections, universal adult franchise, leadership, etc. The latter does not consider the institutional/procedural/electoral democracy as comprehensive indicator of the democracy. The electoral democracy, in fact, is minimalist, which is also marked by a large number of factors which are inimical substantive to democracy. It is rarely concerned with what happens beyond elections, in the social space. Alternatively, the substantive democracy views the phenomenon of democracy in the light of its desegregation and diffusions, redistributive justice, lawman capabilities and entitlements (education, health, infrastructure, etc.), social capital/associated factors (trust, values, norms), civil society, human rights and dignities, governance (participation, accountability, efficacy, transparency, etc.) These are contingent on development as development in turn is contingent upon democracy. The impetus of the debate on the democracy in India has been on the transition, consolidation and deepening of democracy. The first two issues dominated the debate during the first two decades of democracy in the post-Independence period and the deepening of democracy because an issue of focus in the recent period. The assertion of various identities/hew social movements the process of democratization have contributed to the project of deepening democracy. But it is dependent on the participation of various communities cutting across the cleavages.

11.3 PROCEDURAL DEMOCRACY

The observers of the procedural democracy largely believe that democracy in India has been successful. The criteria for this assessment are - participation and competition. These are indicated by the frequency of the elections in India and competition a long political parties to contest elections. The percentage of turn out and the percentage of votes polled by parties are indicators of participation. The advocates of this approach are buoyant about the success of the electoral politics in India, which is taken as .the general pattern of success of democracy. Those who see success of democracy in terms of elections- participation and competition follow survey methods to measure democracy. They infer the dominant trends in the election in terms of the turn out and the percentage of vote or use of statistical method correlation, coefficient or the regression analysis. They see the multivariable relationship of the turnout percentage and participation with the socio-economic data in particular constituencies. On the grounds that this analysis is based on survey, and takes into account the socio-economic and political factors of a particular region, it is also called the ecological analysis. However, some of the scholars who follow survey- based analysis feel that survey analysis are full of errors, are not backed by the qualitative data and also do not provide data for the period between elections. During 15 the first fifteen years following Independence, scholars like Rajni Kothari, M. Franda, Paul R Brass, Field and Myron Wiener used the survey method to conduct election studies. All kinds of factors crime, caste, religion, etc., become effective in elections. The survey method has been carried forward by several scholars, and during the past two decades the psychologists have also used it.

Procedural democracy was meant to contribute to the nation-building in India. The focus of studies on democracy in India in the earlier decades following independence had been to examine as to how it helped in the nation-building through the introduction of the universal adult franchise and periodic elections. It was known as the modernisation theory; the modernisation theory claimed that the developing countries underwent a process of modernization whose ultimate aim would be stable democracy: it would be accompanied with the socio-economic modernisation urbanisation spread of mass media, education, wealth and equality.

It was believed that the development in India would strengthen democracy and the divisions based on caste, religions, etc., would disappear. However, these hopes were belied in the following period. Salig Harrison, apprehended a dangerous decade in India in the 1960s in the face of recurrent linguistic and ethnic violence. The violence which started in the 1950s itself, was further escalated in the 1960s and 1970s; the defeat of the Congress in several states in the 1967 assembly elections and the imposition of emergency in the country during 1975-1 977 were examples of people's discontentment of emergency. Unable to meet the challenge democratically, the political executive responded to these by authoritarianism, personalisation of the institutions and imposition. Scholars responded to emergency as an aberration. Some scholars are critical of the modernisation thesis. The predominance of the nod ern is at ion approach cast in the behaviouralist/structural-functional analysis accorded priority to the question whether India would survive as a nation-state or not,

11.4 AIMS AND OBJECTIVE OF PROCEDURAL DEMOCRACY

Procedural democracy is a democracy in which the people or citizens of the state have less influence than in traditional liberal democracies. This type of democracy is characterized by voters choosing to elect representatives in free elections. Procedural democracy assumes that the electoral process is at the core of the authority placed in elected officials and ensures that all procedures of elections are duly complied with (or at least appear so). It could be described as a republic (i.e., people voting for representatives) wherein only the basic structures and institutions are in place. Commonly, the previously elected representatives use electoral procedures to maintain themselves in power against the common wish of the people (to some varying extent), thus thwarting the establishment of a full-fledged democracy.

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Procedural democracy is quite different from substantive democracy, which is manifested by equal participation of all groups in society in the political process. Certain southern African countries such as Namibia, Angola, and Mozambique, where procedural elections are conducted through international assistance, are possible examples of procedural democracies. For procedural democrats, the aim of democracy is to embody certain procedural virtue. Procedural democrats are divided among themselves over what those virtues might be, as well as over which procedures best embody them. But all procedural democrats agree on the one central point: for procedural democrats, there is no "independent truth of the matter" which outcomes ought track; instead, the goodness or rightness of an outcome is wholly constituted by the fact of its having emerged in some procedurally correct manner.

11.5 SUBSTANTIVE DEMOCRACY: A CRITIQUE OF PROCEDURAL DEMOCRACY

The critique of procedural democracy is provided by the scholars who study the substantive democracy. In their opinion, it views democracy in a limited way. Electoral democracy is minimal democracy Free and fair elections, universal adult franchise, political parties, pressure groups and avail1ability of constitution etc. are not sufficient conditions for democracy, though they are necessary. Democracy has to be located in the society and taken out of the institutional mode. This alternative view of democracy can be termed as the substantive democracy. Beentham argued for a "social agenda of democratisation". Democracy has to be grounded in the reality of society, apart from the participation and competition in.tl1e elections. Fareed Zakaria, however, criticises the substantive democracy in that it views democracy in the normative terminology as "good governance", with a wide range of rights; it does not consider the descriptive democracy.

In the past two decades, in India, substantive democracy has also found a significant place in the discourse on democracy. The assessment of substantive democracy is sought to be made in relation to the role of the state (with democracy) on the issues concerning the nationstate - secularism, welfarisin and development in India; and also the role of the state regarding these issues in the context of globalisation. Niraja Jayal argues that there are two types of arguments regarding the relationship between the state and democracy: one, there can be no democracy without an effective state which can exist when there is a strong civil society to counter the authoritarianism of the state. Jayal argues that both state and society are complimentary to each other in relation to the setting up of democracy. But in the absence of the universal criteria of citizenship, the pasticularistic interests can hijack the project of democracy In her opinion Indian state is an interventionist state whose thrust has been developmental rather than welfare state. 17

Civil Society is also an essential ingredient of substantive democracy. In India there are two viewpoints on the civil society. One, it considers all associations and collective actions as civil society, irrespective of the issues they take up; two, only those associations which take up two issues of universal significance, not sectarian, and whose foundation is secular/universal are considered civil society. Recently a new debate has got momentum in our country: the debate between the comrnunitarians and the liberal, the relatioilship between the individuals add the communities; within and between them. The rise of identity politics dalits, OBCs, women, tribal‟s, ethnicity, environmental issues, etc, - the new social movements - and the inability of the discourse which privileges democracy , with the elections have necessitated the focus on substantive democracy. This has been viewed both as a challenge to the nation-state and as an increase in the democratic content of the country with the understanding that India is becoming more democratic, a position which Ashutosh Varslley opted. The most ardent critique of the nation-state perspective is provided in the writings of tile scholars representing the peripheries of the country like North-East India. This perspective proposes the alternative in the form of the "province - state". Sanjib Baruah's book Indian against Itself 'is a representative of this perspective. This all has happened with the simultaneous rise of the large number of issues governance, civil society, social capital, Hunan rights, etc. The existence of all these factors is taken as an indicator of the existence of democracy in the country. Even here there are opposite views which suggest both the absence and presence of these factors.

With the introduction of the 73rd and the 74th Constitutional Amendments, the decentralization has been democratised and the scope of democracy has expanded to include the women, OBCs and dalits at the grass root level. Prior to this the dominant social groups exclusively dominated the institution of the local self-governance. This defeated the very purpose of democracy. The transfer of 29 subjects to the local bodies has added to the democratic decentralisation, however, democratic decentralisation gets impeded in the light of the fact that in several cases women members of the PRIs (Panchayati Raj Institutions) are proxies of the male members of their families. The increasing role of crime, money, etc., has further eroded tile creditability of local level democracy. Nevertheless, wherever the public action has coexisted with institution of local self government, the institutions of local self government have functioned democratically.

Usually the assessment of democracy in India has been done at the national, state or district level and the functioning of the democracy at these levels has been independent of each other. There has been the "top-bottom", not the "bottom-up" approach to democracy in India. Atul Kohli, however, has covered three levels - nation, state and district in his book, Democracy and Discontent: India’s Crisis of Governability.

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Scholars like O'donnel have underlined the need to see the differences within democracy (citizenship). Following this tradition, patrick Heller has "disaggregated" democracy in order to view the "its degrees" in India. Comparing Kerala with rest o f the country, he opines that there is more democracy in Kerala than the rest of the country. It is possible due to-the existence of the "robust civil society" and an "effective state" there unlike in rest of the country; here the effective/substantive democracy is indicated by the progress in the areas of education, health and distributive justice, their extension to the subaltern groups.

In Rajni Kothari's opinion the Indian state played significant role in building democracy in the first two decades following Independence. It implemented welfare schemes and development programmes. Though it was a moderate state then, Indian democracy, during this phase, was marked by the accommodation of all interests and building consensus. But since the 1970s, especially with the promulgation of emergency in India, the executive concentrated power in its hands. This eroded the moderateness of the state. As a result, the executive resorted to populism, undermining the democratic institutions and personalising institutions. The state virtually started acting against democracy.

Atul Kohli argues that the Indian democracy is facing a crisis of governability. It is indicated by tile growing disjuncture between weakening institutions and multiplying demands. Erosion in the credibility of political parties, leaders, and the indiscipline political mobilisation of various social groups, and class conflicts within the society has caused the crisis of governability in India. The state elite 11as played a crucial role in the politics of political disorder crisis of favorability.

L.I. and S.H. Rudolphs have attempted to comprehend the relationship of Indian state political economy with the democracy in India. They analyse the mobilisation of people in terms of demand polity and the role of the state in terms of command polity. But there is no necessary correlation between the type of regime democratic or authoritarian and type of polity command or demand. The nature of polity whether it is demand or command, depends on the nature of economy and not the nature of the regime.

The survival of Indian democracy has baffled some observers, for whom it is a "puzzle" or "exception" of the third world political systems; it has survived diversities on the basis of caste, religion, language, etc., which often result in violence. Arend Liljphart explains this 'puzzle' by providing a consociational interpretation. The theory of consociationalism based on the premise that in a multi-ethnic society, power is shared among different groups of the society. The consociationalism is a society is contingent upon four conditions: (1) government of coalition in which all ethnic groups are represented (2) cultural autonomy of groups of consociation (3) their proportional representation in politics and civil services and (4) minority veto on the

19 issues concerning the minority rights and autonomy. Lijphart argues that the success of the Congress system, coalition government‟s federalism, principles of protective discrimination, and constitutional provisions of the religious and cultural rights of minorities, and minority veto through political pressure are indication of the success of Indian democracy, in a consociational way. Indian democracy has survived on the principles of "power-sharing system" - as it prevails in Austria, Netherlands, Switzerland, Lebanon and some other countries. In this system all major groups shared power in a consociational way. This system prevailed during the first two decades following Independence. Lijphart, however, concedes that during the past few years with the decline of the Congress system, and attack on the minorities and the rise of the BJP, the trends have been in contravention to the consociational theory. Paul R Brass criticises the consociational model as not applicable to India at all. This is so bath in the context of modem history and contemporary politics. Though different groups might come together to form a consociation or alliances, their internal squibblings always pose a threat to consociation.

11.6 SUMMARY

Substantive democracy is a form of democracy in which the outcome of elections is representative of the people. In other words, substantive democracy is a form of democracy that functions in the interest of the governed. Although a country may allow all citizens of age to vote, this characteristic does not necessarily qualify it as a substantive democracy.

In a substantive democracy, the general population plays a real role in carrying out its political affairs, i.e., the state is not merely set up as a democracy but it functions as one as well. This type of democracy can also be referred to as a functional democracy. There is no good example of an objectively substantive democracy.

The opposite of a substantive democracy is a formal democracy, which is where the relevant forms of democracy exist but are not actually managed democratically. The former Soviet Union can be characterized in as such, since its constitution was essentially democratic but in actuality the state was managed by a bureaucratic.

11.7 EXERCISES

1. What is democracy? 2. Explain procedural democracy. 3. What are the aims and objective of procedural democracy? 4. What is substantive democracy? 5. Explain the difference between procedural democracy and substantive democracy.

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11.8 REFERENCES

1. Barber, B., Strong Democracy, University of California Press, Berkeley CA, 1984.

2. Barker, E. , Reflections on Government, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1942.

3. Barry, B., Democracy, Power and Justice, The Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1989

4. Beetham, D., (ed.) Defining and Measuring Democracy, Sage, London, 1994.

5. Bell, D., „On the Fate of Communism‟, Dissent, Spring, pp. 186-88, 1990

6. Benn, T. Arguments for Democracy, Cape, London, 1981.

7. Birch, A.H., Concepts and Theories of Modern Democracy, Routledge, London, 2001

9. Dahl, R. A., Democracy and its Critics, New Haven, Yale University Press, Connecticut, 1989.

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UNIT-12 DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY

Structure 12.1 Objective 12.2 Introduction 12.3 Overview 12.4 Characteristics 12.5 Joshua Cohen's Outline of Deliberative Democracy 12.6 Gutmann and Thompson's Model 12.7 Strengths and Weaknesses of Deliberative Democracy 12.8 History 12.9 Association with Political Movements 12.10 Summary 12.11 Exercises 12.12 References

12.1 OBJECTIVE

After going through this unit, you should be able to:  Explain what is deliberative democracy;  Explain the characteristics of deliberative democracy ;  Describe and explain the different models of deliberative democracy; and  Explain different political movement in deliberative democracy.

12.2 INTRODUCTION

Deliberative democracy or discursive democracy is a form of democracy in which deliberation is central to decision-making. It adopts elements of both consensus decision-making and majority rule. Deliberative democracy differs from traditional democratic theory in that authentic deliberation, not mere voting, is the primary source of legitimacy for the law.

While deliberative democracy is generally seen as some form of an amalgam of representative democracy and direct democracy, the actual relationship is usually open to dispute. Some practitioners and theorists use the term to encompass representative bodies whose members authentically and practically deliberate on legislation without unequal distributions of power, while others use the term exclusively to refer to decision-making directly by lay citizens, as in direct democracy.

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The term "deliberative democracy" was originally coined by Joseph M. Bessette in his 1980 work Deliberative Democracy: The Majority Principle in Republican Government.

12.3 OVERVIEW

Deliberative democracy holds that, for a democratic decision to be legitimate, it must be preceded by authentic deliberation, not merely the aggregation of preferences that occurs in voting. Authentic deliberation is deliberation among decision-makers that is free from distortions of unequal political power, such as power a decision-maker obtained through economic wealth or the support of interest groups. If the decision- makers cannot reach consensus after authentically deliberating on a proposal, then they vote on the proposal using a form of majority rule.

The roots of deliberative democracy can be traced back to Aristotle and his notion of politics; however, the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas' work on communicative rationality and the public sphere is often identified as a major work in this area.

Deliberative democracy can be practiced by decision-makers in both representative democracies and direct democracies. In elitist deliberative democracy, principles of deliberative democracy apply to elite societal decision-making bodies, such as legislatures and courts; in populist deliberative democracy, principles of deliberative democracy apply to groups of lay citizens who are empowered to make decisions. One purpose of populist deliberative democracy can be to use deliberation among a group of lay citizens to distill a more authentic public opinion about societal issues but not directly create binding law; devices such as the deliberative opinion poll have been designed to achieve this goal. Another purpose of populist deliberative democracy can be to serve as a form of direct democracy, where deliberation among a group of lay citizens forms a "public will" and directly creates binding law. If political decisions are made by deliberation but not by the people themselves or their elected representatives, then there is no democratic element; this deliberative process is called elite deliberation. According to Fishkin, this process attempts to indirectly filter the mass public opinion because representatives are better equipped with the knowledge of the common good than ordinary citizens.

12.4 CHARACTERISTICS

Fishkin's model of deliberation

James Fishkin, who has designed practical implementations of deliberative democracy for over 15 years in various countries, describes five characteristics essential for legitimate deliberation:

Information: The extent to which participants are given access to reasonably accurate information that they believe to be relevant to the issue

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Substantive balance: The extent to which arguments offered by one side or from one perspective are answered by considerations offered by those who hold other perspectives

Diversity: The extent to which the major position in the public are represented by participants in the discussion

Conscientiousness: The extent to which participants sincerely weigh the merits of the arguments

Equal consideration: The extent to which arguments offered by all participants are considered on the merits regardless of which participants offer them

In Fishkin's definition of deliberative democracy, lay citizens must participate in the decision-making process, thus making it a subtype of direct democracy.

James Fishkin and Robert Luskin suggest that deliberative discussion should be:

Informed (and thus informative). Arguments should be supported by appropriate and reasonably accurate factual claims.

Balanced: Arguments should be met by contrary arguments.

Conscientious: The participants should be willing to talk and listen, with civility and respect.

Substantive: Arguments should be considered sincerely on their merits, not on how they are made or by who is making them.

Comprehensive: All points of view held by significant portions of the population should receive attention.

12.5 JOSHUA COHEN'S OUTLINE OF DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY

Joshua Cohen, a student of John Rawls, outlined conditions that he thinks constitute the root principles of the theory of deliberative democracy, in the article "Deliberation and Democratic Legitimacy" in the 1989 book The Good Polity. He outlines five main features of deliberative democracy, which include:

 An ongoing independent association with expected continuation.  The citizens in the democracy structure their institutions such that deliberation is the deciding factor in the creation of the institutions and the institutions allow deliberation to continue.  A commitment to the respect of a pluralism of values and aims within the polity.  The citizens consider deliberative procedure as the source of legitimacy, and prefer the causal history of legitimation for each law to be transparent and easily traceable to the deliberative process. 24

 Each member recognizes and respects other members' deliberative capacity.

This can be construed as the idea that in the legislative process, we "owe" one another reasons for our proposals.

Cohen presents deliberative democracy as more than a theory of legitimacy, and forms a body of substantive rights around it based on achieving "ideal deliberation": It is free in two ways:

The participants consider themselves bound solely by the results and preconditions of the deliberation. They are free from any authority of prior norms or requirements.

The participants suppose that they can act on the decision made; the deliberative process is a sufficient reason to comply with the decision reached.

Parties to deliberation are required to state reasons for their proposals, and proposals are accepted or rejected based on the reasons given, as the content of the very deliberation taking place.

Participants are equal in two ways:

Formal: anyone can put forth proposals, criticize, and support measures. There is no substantive hierarchy.

Substantive: The participants are not limited or bound by certain distributions of power, resources, or pre-existing norms. "The participants…do not regard themselves as bound by the existing system of rights, except insofar as that system establishes the framework of free deliberation among equals."

Deliberation aims at a rationally motivated consensus: it aims to find reasons acceptable to all who are committed to such a system of decision-making. When consensus or something near enough is not possible, majoritarian decision making is used.

In Democracy and Liberty, an essay published in 1998, Cohen reiterated many of these points, also emphasizing the concept of "reasonable pluralism" – the acceptance of different, incompatible worldviews and the importance of good faith deliberative efforts to ensure that as far as possible the holders of these views can live together on terms acceptable to all.

12.6 GUTMANN AND THOMPSON'S MODEL

Amy Gutmann and Dennis F. Thompson's definition captures the elements that are found in most conceptions of deliberative democracy. They define it as "a form of government in which free and equal citizens and their representatives justify decisions in a process in which they give one another reasons that are mutually

25 acceptable and generally accessible, with the aim of reaching decisions that are binding on all at present but open to challenge in the future".

They state that deliberative democracy has four requirements, which refer to the kind of reasons that citizens and their representatives are expected to give to one another:

 Reciprocal. The reasons should be acceptable to free and equal persons seeking fair terms of cooperation.  Accessible. The reasons must be given in public and the content must be understandable to the relevant audience.  Binding. The reason-giving process leads to a decision or law that is enforced for some period of time. The participants do not deliberate just for the sake of deliberation or for individual enlightenment.  Dynamic or Provisional. The participants must keep open the possibility of changing their minds, and continuing a reason-giving dialogue that can challenge previous decisions and laws.

12.7 STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES OF DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY

A claimed strength of deliberative democratic models is that they are more easily able to incorporate scientific opinion and base policy on outputs of ongoing research, because:

Time is given for all participants to understand and discuss the science

Scientific peer review, adversarial presentation of competing arguments, refereed journals, even betting markets, is also deliberative processes.

The technology used to record dissent and document opinions opposed to the majority is also useful to notarize bets, predictions and claims.

According to proponents such as James Fearon, strength of deliberative democratic models is that they tend, more than any other model, to generate ideal conditions of impartiality, rationality and knowledge of the relevant facts. The more these conditions are fulfilled, the greater the likelihood that the decisions reached are morally correct. Deliberative democracy takes on the role of an "epistemic democracy" in this way, as it thus has an epistemic value: it allows participants to deduce what is morally correct. This view has been prominently held by Carlos Nino.

Studies by James Fishkin and others have found that deliberative democracy tends to produce outcomes which are superior to those in other forms of democracy. Deliberative democracy produces less partisanship and more sympathy with opposing views; more respect for evidence-based reasoning rather than opinion; a greater commitment to the decisions taken by those involved; and a greater chance for widely shared consensus to emerge, thus promoting social cohesion between people from different backgrounds. Fishkin cites extensive empirical support for the increase in

26 public spiritedness that is often caused by participation in deliberation, and says theoretical support can be traced back to foundational democratic thinkers such as John Stuart Mill and Alexis de Tocqueville. Former diplomat Carne Ross writes that in 2011 that the debates arising from deliberative democracy are also much more civil, collaborative, and evidence-based than the debates in traditional town hall meetings or in internet forums. For Ross, the key reason for this is that in deliberative democracy citizens are empowered by knowledge that their debates will have a measurable impact on society.

Efforts to promote public participation have been widely critiqued. There is particular concern regarding the potential capture of the public into the sphere of influence of governance stakeholders, leaving communities frustrated by public participation initiatives, marginalized and ignored.

A claimed failure of most theories of deliberative democracy is that they do not address the problems of voting. James Fishkin's 1991 work, "Democracy and Deliberation", introduced a way to apply the theory of deliberative democracy to real- world decision making, by way of what he calls the deliberative opinion poll. In the deliberative opinion poll, a statistically representative sample of the nation or a community is gathered to discuss an issue in conditions that further deliberation. The group is then polled, and the results of the poll and the actual deliberation can be used both as a recommending force and in certain circumstances, to replace a vote. Dozens of deliberative opinion polls have been conducted across the United States since his book was published.

The political philosopher Charles Blattberg has criticized deliberative democracy on four grounds: (i) the rules for deliberation that deliberative theorists affirm interfere with, rather than facilitate, good practical reasoning; (ii) deliberative democracy is ideologically biased in favor of liberalism as well as republican over parliamentary democratic systems; (iii) deliberative democrats assert a too-sharp division between just and rational deliberation on the one hand and self-interested and coercive bargaining or negotiation on the other; and (iv) deliberative democrats encourage an adversarial relationship between state and society, one that undermines solidarity between citizens.

A criticism of deliberation is that potentially it allows those most skilled in rhetoric to sway the decision in their favour. This criticism has been made since deliberative democracy first arose in Ancient Athens.

12.8 HISTORY

Consensus-based decision making similar to deliberative democracy is characteristic of the hunter gather band societies thought to predominate in pre-historical times. As some of these societies became more complex with developments like division of labour, community-based decision making was displaced by various forms of

27 authoritarian rule. The first example of democracy arose in Greece as Athenian democracy during the sixth century BC. Athenian democracy was both deliberative and largely direct: some decisions were made by representatives but most were made by ″the people″ directly. Athenian democracy came to an end in 322BC. When democracy was revived as a political system about 2000 years later, decisions were made by representatives rather than directly by the people. In a sense, this revived version was deliberative from its beginnings; for example, in 1774 Edmund Burke made a famous speech where he called Great Britain's parliament a deliberative assembly. Similarly, the Founding Fathers of the United States considered deliberation an essential part of the government they created in the late 18th century.

The deliberative element of democracy was not widely studied by academics until the late 20th century. Although some of the seminal work was done in the 1970s and 80s, it was only in 1990 that deliberative democracy began to attract substantial attention from political scientists. According to Professor John Dryzek, early work on Deliberative Democracy was part of efforts to develop a theory of Democratic legitimacy. Theorists such as Carne Ross advocate deliberative democracy as a complete alternative to representative democracy. The more common view, held by contributors such as James Fishkin, is that direct deliberative democracy can be complementary to traditional representative democracy. Since 1994, hundreds of implementations of direct deliberative democracy have taken place throughout the world. For example, lay citizens have used deliberative democracy to determine local budget allocations in various cities and to undertake major public projects, such as the rebuilding of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

12.9 ASSOCIATION WITH POLITICAL MOVEMENTS

Deliberative democracy recognizes a conflict of interest between the citizen participating, those affected or victimized by the process being undertaken, and the group-entity that organizes the decision. Thus it usually involves an extensive outreach effort to include marginalized, isolated, ignored groups in decisions, and to extensively document dissent, grounds for dissent, and future predictions of consequences of actions. It focuses as much on the process as the results. In this form it is a complete theory of civics.

On the other hand, many practitioners of deliberative democracy attempt to be as neutral and open-ended as possible, inviting (or even randomly selecting) people who represent a wide range of views and providing them with balanced materials to guide their discussions. Examples include National Issues Forums, Choices for the 21st Century, study circles, deliberative opinion polls, the Citizens' Initiative Review, and the 21st-century town meetings convened by America Speaks, among others. In these cases, deliberative democracy is not connected to left-wing politics but is intended to create a conversation among people of different philosophies and beliefs.

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In Canada, there have been two prominent applications of deliberative democratic models. In 2004, the British Columbia Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform convened a policy jury to consider alternatives to the first-past-the-post electoral systems. In 2007, the Ontario Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform convened to consider alternative electoral systems in that province. Similarly, three of Ontario's Local Health Integration Networks (LHIN) has referred their budget priorities to a policy jury for advice and refinement.

The Green Party of the United States refers to its particular proposals for grassroots democracy and electoral reform by this name. Although not always the case, participation in deliberation has often been found to shift participants opinions in favour of Green positions, and can even cause a favourable change of voting intention. For example, with Europolis 2009, at the time one of the largest deliberative assemblies ever held, which set out to assess the public's view on a wide range of issues and included representatives from all 27 EU member nations, the share of citizens intending to vote for the Greens increased from 8% to 18%

12.10 SUMMARY

Deliberative democracy values open and public deliberation on Issues of common concern. It starts from the assumption of individuals as autonomous persons, but does not view the social relationships between these autonomous persons as relationships of conflict or interest. Rather, it sees people as relating to each other and seeking to influence each other through reasoned argument and persuasion. For advocates of deliberative democracy, persuasion is the best basis for political power, because it alone respects the autonomy of individuals and values their capacity for self- government. It also gives individuals control over an important aspect of their lives, and makes for greater and continuous accountability of political power. Unlike participatory democracy, which requires individuals to be constantly engaged in making decisions, deliberative democracy allows for a political division of labour between citizens and professional politicians, though citizens are involved in deliberation about public issues.

12.11 EXERCISES

1. What is deliberative democracy? 2. Explain the characteristics of deliberative democracy. 3. Explain Joshua Cohen model of deliberative democracy. 4. Explain Gutmann & Thompson model of deliberative democracy 5. Describe the Strengths and Weaknesses Of Deliberative Democracy.

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12.12 REFERENCES

1. Chakrabarty Bidyut and Mohit Bhattacharya (ed), 2003, Public Administration: A Reader, Oxford University Press, New Delhi. 2. Joshil. R. P. and G.S. Narwani, 2002, Panchayat Raj in India: Emerging Trends Across the states, Rawat Publications, Jaipur, New Delhi. 3. Bhattacharya Mohit, 1999, Restructing Public Administration: Essays in Rehabilitation, Jawahar Publishers & Distributors, New Delhi. 4. Arora Ramesh K. (ed). 2001, Management in Government: Concerns and Priorities, Aalekha Publishers, Jaipur. 5. Arora Ramesh K. (ed), 2004, Public Administration: Fresh Perspectives, Aalekha Publishers, Jaipur. 6. Siva Subrahmanyam K. & R.C. Chowdhury, 2002, Functional and Financial Devolution on Panchayats in India, NIRD, Hyderabad. 7. Sivarama Krishna K.C., 2003, Power to the People: The Politics and Progress of Decentralisation, Konark Publishers, , New Delhi.

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UNIT-13 THE GRAMMAR OF DEMOCRACY: POLITICAL PARTICIPATION

Structure 13.1 Objective 1 3.2 Introduction 13.3 The concept of Political Participation 13.4 Forms of Political Participation 13.5 Political Participation, Democracy and Political Party 13.5.1 Theoretical Debate and Practical Variations 13.6 Political Participation and Political Parties in India 13.6.1 Political Participation through an increasingly competitive party system 13.7 Social nature of the party-led political participation 13.8 Non-Party Institutions and Political participation 13.9 Political Participation and Indian Democracy 13.10 Summary 13.11 Exercises 13.12 References

13.1 OBJECTIVES

After going through this unit, you should be able to:  Explain what is political parties and what is political participation  Explain the concept and forms of political participation  Describe and explain political participation in India ; and  Explain different political participation in Indian democracy

13.2 INTRODUCTION

Participation is both an activity and an attitude. As an activity it is a social activity. Someone taking a morning walk is not participating in anything. Someone taking part in a 100-meter race does. Someone staying in a neighborhood for a long time without knowing any of one's neighbors is not having a participant attitude. What then is political participation? Of course, we mean a kind of political activity and a kind of political attitude. Since the 50's however it has attracted widespread attention and there seems to be a general agreement among the Political Scientists on the value and necessity of further political participation. But this apparent agreement conceals 31 major disputes both at the levels of political theory and practical politics. Before we explore these we should begin with the concept of political participation itself.

13.3 THE CONCEPT OF POLITICAL PARTICIPATION

The concept of political participation has been popularised in Political Science by the Behaviouralists. Of course arguments in favor of greater political participation had been advanced by republican and democratic theorists from Rousseau onwards and are still in use by contemporary political theorists. The behaviouralist paradigm rides on a liberal view of politics. Classically, such a view draws a distinction between state and individual on the one hand and public and private on the other; it also leans on the side of the latter categories. Accordingly, when participation is seen as an attitude, it is taken as an individual's favourable orientation to the state or government. That was the basis use of culture and political culture as social science concepts dates only from 1950s.

Here the political culture is seen as a shorthand expression to denote the set of values within which a political system operates. It is something between the state of public opinion and an individual's personality characteristics. According to Gabriel Almond, it is the 'particular pattern of orientations' to political objects in which a political system is embedded. Orientations are predisposition to political action and are determined by such factors as tradition, historical memories, motives, norms, emotions and symbol: the culture, therefore, represents a set of propensities. These orientations may be broken down into cognitive orientations (knowledge and awareness of the political effects), affective orientations (emotions and feelings about the objects) and evaluative orientations (judgment about them). Almond (with Verba) later developed a typology of ideal political cultures or citizen types .Where most people are oriented to the input processes and see themselves as able to make demands and help to shape policies, the political culture is participant; the British, American and Scandinavian political systems best represent this ideal. Similarly, government as the point of reference of individual's activity becomes the feature of political participation as an activity. Thus writes Birch : ' political participation is participation in the process of government, and the case for political participation is essentially a case for substantial number of private citizens (as distinct from public officials or elected politicians) to play a part in the process by which leaders are chosen and/or government policies are shaped and implemented.'

The Communitarians find problem with this Liberal concept of participation because of its 'individualism' and government as the locus of participation .They argue that more important than participation in the process of government through the 'politics of right' is participation at community level for 'politics of common good'. They argue that more important than participation in the process of government is exercise of autonomy which can be developed and exercised in a certain kind of social 32 environment, an autonomy-supporting community, not a government. Thus, Political participation can, then be seen broadly as participation in the political life of the community or civil society with different agents and levels of participation such as running a community health club by a religious group or participating in a N.G.0.- sponsored campaign for literacy. Following the same logic political participation may be for serving political obligation of a democratic citizen to lead a participatory social life and just not for the civil obligation to the government on the question of law and order. Wider political participation must include some degree of democratic control either over or within large-scale economic enterprises, decentralisation of government to smaller units, such as region or locality, considerable use of referenda etc.

13.4 FORMS OF POLITICAL PARTICIPATION

The concept of political participation accommodates the following main forms of political participation: 1) voting in local or national elections; 2) voting in referendums; 3) canvassing or otherwise campaigning in elections; 4) active membership of a political party; 5) active membership of a pressure group; 6) taking part in political demonstrations, industrial strikes with political objectives, rent strikes in public housing, and similar activities aimed at changing public policy; 7) various forms of civil disobedience, such as refusing to pay taxes or obey a conscription order; 8) membership of government advisory committees; 9) membership of consumers' councils for publicly owned industries; 10) client involvement in the implementation of social policies; 11) various forms of community action, such as those concerned with housing or environmental issues in the locality.

If we take into account the broad concept of political participation, we can probably increase the list by adding such forms as:

1) Performing social duties such as jury service and military duties; 2) Town/ village meetings and public debate on controversial issues; 3) Various forms of codetermination, such as student-faculty committees in the universities and government advisory committees; 4) Shared project management involving full-scale partnership, delegation or empowerment such as benefit-sharing arrangements or developmental projects;

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5) New social movements seeking and promoting personal and collective identity, such as women's movement and movements for ethno-cultural identities.

On the whole there are several levels and forms at which and through which people may participate politically, as involved objects of a process of economic and political transformation set in motion by someone else, as expected beneficiaries of a programme with pre-set parameters, as politically co-opted legitimisers of a policy or as people trying to determine their own choices and direction independent of the state.

13.5 POLITICAL PARTICIPATION DEMOCRACY AND POLITICAL PARTY

Howsoever the forms of political participation are conceived, political participation represents a political action and naturally involves many social agents that act within definite structural parameters. The structures may be conceived as embedded structures, relational structures and institutional structures. Political party is only one of so many social agents associated with or responsible for political participation. There are other agents such as voluntary organisations, institutional groups and socio- cultural communities. The roles of these agents for political participation are influenced by the nature of variations in the structural arrangements. The relative significance of political party as an agent in relation to other agents is also influenced by such structural arrangements, as is the nature of political participation through the agency of political party. That historically embedded structures affect the form and nature of political participation is obvious. For instance, the emergence of such parties as Jan Sangh or Muslim League in modern India could easily be linked with the concretisation of fuzzy communal consciousness during the British colonial rule, which, for the first time, introduced census and mapping in India. As examples of the influence of relational structures on political parties one may refer to the caste conflict in Indian society or agrarian relations, the former explaining rise of caste based parties like Justice party or B.S.P. and the latter, party like the Lok Dal. From this angle the political parties ensure participation of different structurally articulated interests and ideologies. How the political parties ensure political participation also depends on the nature of the institutional structure. The nature of participation through political parties, for example, varies according to the nature of the political system. In a few modern dictatorships, such as Hitler's Germany, mass membership in a ruling party was encouraged as a way of mobilising support for government policies. Again, the institutional arrangements such as the electoral systems in a democracy influence the participating role of political parties. The world of electoral systems has been divided into three main families; Plurality-majority systems, Proportional representation (PR) systems, and semi-PR systems. First- Past- the -post (FPTP) system under which candidates are chosen from single member districts, tends to handicap third parties, and by doing this it helps to produce two-party 34 system. It tends to do this if the support of the winning party spreads evenly across the electoral districts. For example a party with 52 percent of votes may win 60 percent of the seats. Naturally in such a situation, the political parties become limited agents of political participation. The usual outcome of PR is a multi-party system and therefore offers the voters greater freedom of choice but tends to make the government less effective as the majority coalitions, in the absence of amplified majority of FPTP become highly unstable. However it would be wrong to suppose that the nature of the party-system is rigidly determined by the nature of the electoral systems. The embedded structures and relational structures have significant effect on the institutional structure in general. Take the case of India. Here we have had regular elections every five years both at national and state levels. If we want to judge the level and nature of political participation in purely institutional terms, we would count number of parties, voters' turnout, election results, number of candidates and so on with the idea that more the number, greater is the participation. However we would miss out the massive level of political participation by party workers and non- voters to the extent we fail to recognize that elections in India is a political festival where participation is more a peaceful demonstration of public will than an exercise of individual's rational calculation that involves every stage of election: getting a ticket, the campaign, and marking the ballot.

Here we have a FPTP system. But there have been wide social and regional variations in India. When the support for the 1ndian National Congress evenly spread across the country, the Party got the benefit of amplified seats. But whenever the social and regional variations were mobilised by new parties, inter-district variations in electoral support reduced that benefit and made way for a somewhat multi-party system. The federal structure with its system of state level elections aided that process. We would discuss the significance of this change for political participation in subsequent section. But before that it may be of interest 1,) have some idea about the value of political participation in a democracy.

13.5.1 Theoretical Debate and Practical Variations

In theory participation is not only a behavioural concept but also a normative concept. Most people think that participation is a good thing but many actually differ regarding the levels of participation desired or relative importance of this or that form of political participation. Participation is often justified in terms of the functional requirements of the political system as leading to better communication or greater compliance on the part of the citizen; Participation is often considered beneficial for the individual while the benefits may be perceived as profit minus cost, non-material rewards or meeting the psychological needs. Some consider participation itself as valuable, participation in one sphere enhancing participation in other spheres. Most of those who are in favour of restricted participation in democracy tend to adopt a conservative position and doubt the ability of the average citizen but some express

35 reservation against it because participation provides the authorities the opportunity to legitimise their decisions. Some doubt the efficacy of political participation in the area of electoral democracy and favour participation through various forms of community self-government. In practice also we note wide variations about the nature, levels and forms of political participation. In some countries like Australia, Belgium and Italy voting has been made compulsory. The sanctions or penal measures are very mild. But in these cases voter turnout in national elections is very high, involving almost over 90 per cent of the electorate. By contrast the turnout figures for national elections in the United States are very low. However the low voter turnout in the United States is also accompanied by an increase in the number and vitality of single-issue pressure groups. Organisationally, many European parties have developed mass memberships with branches in every town and intensive programmes of local meetings and social activities. Examples of this type of parties may be the British Conservative Party and the German Social Democratic party. The American parties are Lilliputs by comparison. In terms of activity also, the American parties are pale shadows of many of their European counterparts. For instance both the British Conservative party and the Labour Party are heavily into publishing business, have discussion groups, and youth movements.

Both in the United States and Europe however there has been a marked rise in the use of referendums. In the former the campaign for the initiative and referendum began in the Populist Movement of the 1880's and the 1890's. In 1978 the most dramatic change in state laws occurred through the adoption in California of proposition 13, a proposal to cut property tax by more than half. This tendency proved widespread and between 1970 and 1986 there were 158 statewide initiatives passed by voters in 22 states and the District of Columbia. In Switzerland, the voters have decided that their country should join the IMF and the World Bank but not the UN and the European Union. In 1992, Denmark and France held referendums on whether they should ratify the Maastricht Treaty. If we take into account the broad view of political participation, then we may note some recent forms of non-party oriented political participation both in Europe and the United States. In Britain, client-participation has developed many forms like local community health councils, 'patients' participation groups association of tenants, parents and pupils in school's governing bodies. In the USA, the anti-nuclear groups have been very active, while in Germany it is the environmental groups.

13.6 POLITICAL PARTICIPATION AND POLITICAL PARTIES IN INDIA

The above discussion cannot provide an immediate basis of a comparative understanding of the nature and extent of political participation in India or the role of political parties in that regard. For that we must note the specificity of Indian politics and party politics in India. Indian politics are distinctive among contemporary developing societies in having had democratic durability for about fifty years- 36 excepting the brief emergency period-with many paradoxical features like high voter turnout amid high rate of illiteracy and agrarian population, multilevel electoral process with many electoral areas not yet fully dominated and controlled by organised political parties, coexistence of various organised interest associations with intermediaries between people and bureaucracy, non-party movements. Specifically Indian types of interest associations, including religious and caste groups. The Indian party system is also distinctive, showing major differences with its European and American counterparts. Paul Brass writes: 'Party politics in India display numerous paradoxical features, which reveal the blending of Western and modern forms of bureaucratic organisation and participatory politics with indigenous practices and institutions. India's leading political party, the Indian National Congress, is one of the oldest in the world, yet it has not succeeded in providing the nucleus for an institutionalised party system which can be fitted easily into any one of the conventional categories of party system in the west. The social heterogeneity of India has added to the complexity of the Indian party system. This has increasingly made it impossible for a single set of parties to emerge across the country. Major transformations have taken place since Independence in India's party system. At the center of change in the party system is the rise of the BJP. Irrespective of the nature of changes in the party system, parties have continued to remain in the centre of Indian politics. Opinion polls in India have repeatedly shown that people generally vote more for the party than for the candidate. In some cases parties have been solid, creating deep loyalties that continue from generations to generations, giving ele tion symbols of parties‟ tremendous psychological significance. After the 73rd and 74th Amendments, parties have found a new level of operation in the Panchayat and Nagarpalika institutions. This has widened the reach of election machinery and made political parties even more significant as agents of political participation. Keeping these points in mind let us now note the role of the Indian political paities as agents of political participation.

13.6.1 Political Participation through an Increasingly Competitive Party System

Any observer of Indian political scene would not miss the tremendous growth of po1itical parties in power. This growth has taken place both at the national and state levels. This growth has been fuelled by fragmentation of existing parties in terms of vote share, seat share and evolution of electoral alliances at both the national and state levels; the emergence of new political parties like BJP, BSP etc. and new coalitions of parties like NDA.

A long range overview of the Congress Party reveals an increasingly narrowing scope of political participation at within-party level as well as widening political participation outside. Before the transfer of power, the Congress was synonymous with the nationalist movement and represented a mass wave by including within its fold different political groups such as the Communists and the Socialists. This

37 ensured a truly broad based political participation by the Indian masses because the objective of the nationalist movement was an abstract one of Independence. Some restriction of the participatory role of the Congress party took place between 1946- 1950 when the party changed from the earlier one that fought for independence. With the knowledge that after the Second World War, independence was forthcoming certain realignments started taking place within Congress. Several secessions took place from the congress involving the Communists, Muslim separatists and the socialists as a result of which within-party participation got somewhat restricted. The most influential account of congress organisation after independence was given by Rajni Kothari in his Politics in India (1970). He presented it as a differentiated system in which the different levels of party organisation were linked with „the parallel structure of government, allowing for the dominance of a political centre as well as dissent from the peripheries, with opposition functioning as dissident congress groups. Kothari gave it the simple name 'Congress system'. This ensured political participations mainly through factional conflicts. On this, Brass writes:

Factions contested for control of the important committees at each level through formal elections preceded by membership drives in which competing faction leaders attempted to enroll, even if only on paper, as many member-supporters as possible. Although the factional conflicts which developed often became intense and bitter and were accompanied by frequent charges of" bogus enrolments," they also served to keep the party organisation alive and to compel party leaders to build support in the districts and localities throughout the country.

The 1967 elections marked the trend of political fragmentation sharply. The Congress vote was dropped by almost 5 per cent. It had managed to win only 54 per cent of the seats. Earlier in the previous parliament it had 74 per cent of the seats. In many states it failed to win a majority. In as many as nine states- Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Orissa, Madras and Kerala-there came non- Congress governments. Within the party also conflict grew between the Syndicate and Indira Gandhi leading to a split in 1969. The newly formed Congress derived its identity from its leader in real terms. Elections within the party were stopped. Chief Ministers were appointed by the central high command. The massive electoral victory of the party in 1971 further increased political centralization that culminated into the Emergency in 1975. The popular reaction against this was a landmark in terms of political participation. It brought for the first time a non-Congress coalition government, the Janata government, at the centre. The Congress took the opportunity of coming back to power in 1980 against a divided opposition. The eighth general election took place in December 1984 in the shadow of Indira Gandhi's assassination and brought Rajeev Gandhi into power as the leader of the Congress (I). This did not alter the trend of political centralization within the party. Growing political dissention in the country and controversies of Bofors kickback formed the background of 1989 general elections. The Congress (I) was defeated, securing only 197 seats in the Lok

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Sabha. The National Front, though it could not win support of the BJP and the Left parties. That government lasted only a year and paved the way for the Chandrasekhar government with Congress-I support that was quickly withdrawn and the ninth Lok Sabha was dissolved less than a year and a half after its formation. Halfway through the general elections, Rajeev Gandhi was assassinated and Congress (1) recovered its position somewhat due to sympathetic and favourable electoral support. Even then it failed to win a majority and became the single largest party with 232 seats. P. V. Narasimha Rao, elected leader of the party was appointed Prime Minister. The Rao regime eventually secured majority by winning over the Ajit Singh faction of the Janata Dal. But the party failed to regain its organisational strength and was set in a path of steady decline which culminated in its removal from power after 1996 elections; when BJP emerged as the single largest party but short of majority, and various regional parties like Telugu Desarn Party, the DMK, the AGP and Janata Dal the breakway Congress group in Tamil Nadu, led by G. K. Moopanar and the left parties came together to form a bloc-NF-LF bloc, later called the United Front. However with President S. D. Sharma deciding to invite A. B. Vajpayee of the BJP to form government despite Congress (I) support to the United Front, he formed the government but only for seven days. H. D. Deve Gowda of the Janata Dal next formed the United Front government with Congress(1) support where for the first time in history a left party-the CPI-- joined a government at the centre. In 1996 itself BJP forged alliances with Shiv Sena.

In 1998 it strengthened its alliances by a soft Hindutva image and became attractive as a partner for a regional or state based party opposed to the Congress or congress- allied regional rival( Punjub, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Haryana, Orissa) or to a Congress faction (Trinamool congress) versus major regional party(West Bengal). It managed to adopt a national agenda and win post election allies (Chautala's Haryana Lok Dal) and external supporters (TDP, NC) for coalition government at the centre. The Congress failed to return to power as the BJP managed to sustain and expand the same coalition, now formally called the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) adding the TDP, Goa's MGP, and the Pate1 faction of the Karnataka Janata Dal, switching partners in Tamil Nadu and Haryana. The above trends showing the decline of the Congress and rise of new contenders for power at the central level make it clear that a pattern of fragmentation of the party system has been taking place together with electoral alliances, adding to competitiveness of the party system and participation of increasing number of parties in power, may be towards a loose bipolarity at the national level.

The above trend has not been limited to the national level only, but has also affected the states for the general elections between 1967- 1989. The phenomena of consoled action of non-Congress vote (Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh etc.), Congress led alliances of state based minor parties (Kerala, Tripura), a left-front coalition versus Congress (West Bengal) and so on could be seen. The same could be

39 seen for State Assembly elections. Here the Congress party's position eroded even more than for parliamentary elections, and the consolidation of principal challenger parties or alliances at the state level was marked. The process of alliance formation has been complex and multidimensional at state level but it could be noted that they were driven 1ess by ideological considerations or social divisions and more by the imperative to aggregate votes. On the whole, it could be argued that as agents, political parties in India have not only multiplied, but also have also been participating more effectively in the sharing and management of powers.

13.7 SOCIAL NATURE OF THE PARTY-LED POLITICAL PARTICIPATION

In a sense the increasingly competitive party system is a product of the rise and assertion of regional and state based parties. However to overstretch this point would mean ail uncritical acceptance of the social cleavage theory of party systems. In a study oil Congress some alignments of party organisations were found to be associated with acute social divisions. Congress was found not to be a heterogeneous national party but a coalition of state (and ultimately local) groups whose political rationale are the divisions and conflicts of the state and community in question. However, equally important is the geographical specificity of inter group conflicts. The political significance of group conflicts varies from state to state, to the extent there is variation in the strength of the link between, social groups and the parties. In different ways the characterizations of Indian democracy as 'consociational', and 'adversarial' admit that through political party competition, the social divisioils of a deeply divided society get expressed. A case to the point is the political assertion of the historically disadvantaged castes in the 1990's. Almost together with the acceptance of the Mandal Commission's recommendations, recent years have witnessed the emergence of the Dalit-Bahujan castes, often trying to encompass the Muslim minority in its fold. The political parties representing these social groups are identified as the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), the Samajwadi Party, and sections of the Janata Dal-a phenomenal increase in caste based parties since the old Justice Party, to the point that social pluralism in India gets increasingly reflected in the competitive party system which serves as the agent of political participation. That is to say, a given political party while acting as the agent of political participation often shows internal pluralism in its organisation. In a recent study of Dravidian parties, Narendra Subrarnanian demonstrates that the internal pluralism of parties, and not simply social pluralism, promotes greater representation and participation of emergent groups, the reconstruction of public culture and tolerance. This does not of course mean that in India all parties show equal amount of organizational or internal pluralism.

The social nature of the increased voter's turnout has not followed many clear patterns. The turnout among men has always been higher than women but the 40 participation rate has improved faster among women than among men. Female turnout increased 20 percentage points from 38.8 per cent in 1975 to 57.3 per cent in 1980. However, it has been noted that the involvement of women in politics is still largely separate from men. Both the number of women contestants and of representatives show a declining trend in parliamentary and assembly elections, though at local level, due to reservations, women's participation has increased. Since the 1980's there has been a proliferation of autonomous women's groups in most parts of the country and this has added a new social dimension to political participation in India. Voter turnout in urban areas was higher than in rural areas. The state-wise turnout figures broadly indicate that turnout tends to be higher in the southern states, Kerala, in particular, and West Bengal Yadav, however, notes that one' of the characteristics of the new democratic upsurge has been that practically everywhere rural constituencies report a higher turnout. While Muslim turnout in Muslim concentrated constituencies and turnout in reserved (SC) constituencies were not higher than the past, the reserved (ST) constituencies recorded higher than average turnout in Andhra, Gujarat and Maharashtra. So did some backward regions like Vidarbha and Marathwada in Maharashtra, east Delhi and Bundelkhand in UP. If the theory of new social constituency participating in Indian elections is not fully borne out at least there is hardly any doubt that such a constituency is now more intensively mobilised by political parties wherever possible.

13.8 NON-PARTY INSTITUTIONS AND POLITICAL PARTICIPATION

It would certainly be wrong to completely detach such institutions as trade unions, affiliations with these and have even today. But many have noted a growing inefficacy on the part of these institutions as agents of political participation and as controlling; influences over the political parties. From the 1980s the change has become perceptible. One consequence of the Green revolution was to localise and disparate existing peasant movements. The globalising forces on the other hand have made the trade unions weak and this in turn reduced their influences on the party organisations, a fact reflected in the lack of importance attached by the parties, even left parties, in naming the trade union leaders among their sponsored candidates for election. The rise in the number of universities and their falling standards has also limited their influences as participating institutions in civil society. Of course several new actors, sometimes called NGOs, have emerged as agents of political participation mainly in regard to the implementation of official programmes or sponsored developmental projects. Their combined volume i:; not insignificant but it is still too early to assess their significance for popular participation.

There has however been somewhat rising political participation through what have come to be known as 'new social movements'-movements that have arisen as a response to, among other things, the violations of civil liberties and human rights, violence on or gender bias to women , the degradation of environment, destruction of 41 tribal culture: or way of life. Some have described these movements as 'counter hegemonic' and noted the following major categories: Women's Movements, Forest Struggles, Anti-Big-dam movements. Usually each of these movements develops independently of the other and keeps itself detached from traditional political parties. There have also been increasing cases of identity assertions and 'autonomy movements', some employing violent means, which represent non-party based channels of political participation in contemporary India.

13.9 POLITICAL PARTICIPATION AND INDIAN DEMOCRACY

There has indeed been an upsurge in political participation in India with increasing competitiveness of the political parties, increased voter turnout, emergence of new forms of participation such as new social movements, institutions of grassroots politics, local level democracy and political assertions of the historically disadvantaged castes and ethno-regional groups. Apparently this represents a healthy trend towards further deepening of Indian democracy. Do we have a participant culture now in India? Though higher political mobilisation and higher electoral participation do not by themselves contribute to a participant culture, there has been a significant change of popular orientation form dependence on regular administration and traditional authority-symbols of society to people's representatives in everyday life, whether for certificates, aids or arbitration. But this upsurge in participation needs to be understood in the complexity of Indian process of democratisation. It is doubtful as to how much space has been created for a rational individual who exercises his/her sovereign power of citizenship in the electoral arena. This doubt arises not from the non fulfillment of the basic requirements of procedural democracy like Universal Adult Franchise, rule of law and fundamental rights but from constraints on meaningful rational participation of the individual in democratic process. First, with numerous small parties that are not properly institutionalized and under total control of charismatic leaders, and some big parties showing no interest in promoting institutionalization, the individuals participate with severe constraints because parties are still in the centre of Indian democratic process.

Second, several developments tend to constrain voters' right in recent years, such as the aborted attempt to make the qualifications and holdings of the election-candidates transparent, increasing use of electronic voting machines which make it impossible for a voter to 'waste' his or her vote and thereby express disapproval about the candidates.

Third, instead of social cleavages being neutralised by political cleavages the latter tend to be grafted on the former in India due to unprincipled mobilisation leading to a 'crisis of governability'. This type of mobilisation and politicisation of masses by parties may have made Indian democracy not more deepening but 'more inclusive'. But the trouble with this inclusiveness is that the terms of inclusion are not always 42 inclusive or modern but often exclusive and promote a step furthering the 'effective creolisation of the modern ideas, ideals and institutions of democratic politics in a non-European setting' (Yadav, 1998,p. 187). Finally, the institutional space for non- electoral modes of efficacious political activity has not grown to a degree found in European settings. On the whole however political parties have proved to be the most effective agents of political participation in India. Indian democratic experience has witnessed new forms of political participation in recent years and a rise in the quantity of political participation- though the exact nature and significance of that for Indian democracy can be disputed.

13.10 SUMMARY

The concept of political participation has assumed a new significance in the Indian democratic process. The credit goes to the Behaviouralists for espousing this concept as an essential aspect for the democratic process. Various forms of political participation include voting in referendums, membership in political parties and pressure groups, government advisory committees, involvement in the implementation of social policies etc. The proliferation of political parties in an increasingly competitive system also contributed to the widening political participation across various sections of society. The non- party institutions like the NGOs have also been addressing the concerns of the people in the form of women's movements, anti-big dam movements etc. Other major factors of political participation include increased voter turnout, political assertions of the caste and religious groups and also disadvantaged groups. The final assessment of an effective participation and its impact on the Indian democratic process is subject to various interpreiations and disputes.

13.11 EXERCISES

1) Summarise the behaviouralists concept of political participation. 2) Analyse the impact of the political participation on the political parties in India. 3) Write a short note on the social nature of party- led political participation. 4) What are the non-party institutions of participation? How do they complement the democratic process? 5) "Political participation has made the Indian democracy more inclusive". Justify this statement.

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13.12 REFERENCES

1. Robert A. Dahl, Democracy and its Critics,: Orient Longman, New Delhi, 2. Jon Elster (editor) (1998). Deliberative Democracy (Cambridge Studies in the Theory of Democracy). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-59696-3. 3. James S. Fishkin (2011). When the People Speak. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-960443-2. 4. Roger Osborne (2006). Civilization: A New History of the Western World. Jonathan Cape Ltd. ISBN 0-224-06241-7. 5. Carne Ross (2011). The Leaderless Revolution: How Ordinary People Can Take Power and Change Politics in the 21st Century. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-1-84737-534-6.

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UNIT-14 THE GRAMMAR OF DEMOCRACY: REPRESENTATION

Structure 14.1 Objectives 14.2 Introduction 14.3 Meaning of Political Representation 14.4 Types of Representation 14.5 Summary 14.6 Exercises 14.7 References

14.1 OBJECTIVES

After going through this unit, you should be able to:

 Analyze the significance of representation in a democratic set up.  Understand the functions of a representative in a democracy.  Formulate the theories regarding the non-representation of marginalised sections.  Understand the views of various thinkers on the Representative system.  Offer some remedies to the limitations of the present representative system.

14.2 INTRODUCTION

The word “representation”, in ordinary language means portray or to make present for instance we would say an author‟s book represents‟ certain values. Or the painters picture represents‟ a school of painting here what we mean is that by studying that 182 book or looking at that picture we can understand the values the writer want to project, get an idea of the historical significance of a particular period. When we say Moghul painting, we tend to identify that picture as pertaining i.e. culture of Moghul timings. In a way it is a miniature of larger thing. However in politics the term has a different meaning. It means an individual or group stands on behalf of a larger group. For instance it has been said that Gandhiji “represented” India at the Round table conference. By this statement we mean the hopes, aspirations and desires of vast „population of the country were being reflected by Gandhi. When Gandhi spoke, he spoke for entire country. Through Gandhi people saw India so he represented India. Similarly a lawyer represents his client. Since client has no legal knowledge he entrusts his case to a lawyer who for all practical purposes represents his client. The

45 examples could multiply. As with the case of client who has no legal knowledge or time, so is a modern citizen in a democracy. He is too preoccupied with his day to day problems to effectively participate in public affairs. This work is assigned to professional politicians. They would win his confidence and become his representatives and will participate on his behalf. They are his delegates, representatives but not masters. The real meter is the citizen. Since the days of direct democracy are no longer possible, most of the democracies have opted for the representative model.

14.3 MEANING OF POLITICAL REPRESENTATION

In the common view, political representation is assumed to refer only to the political activities undertaken, in representative democracies, by citizens elected to political office on behalf of their fellow citizens who do not hold political office. However, the lack of consensus in the political literature on political representation belies this common view. Theorists of representation differ not only in their definition of representation but also, among other things, on what the duties of a representative are, who can be called representative and how one becomes a representative.In her seminal work on political representation (The Concept of Representation), Hanna Pitkin defined political representation as, "a way to make [the represented] present again" and identified four views of political representation which, since her book's publication, have shaped contemporary debates on political representation. Recently, Jane Mansbridge has identified four other views of specifically democratic political representation which, although they are distinct, share some similarities with Pitkin's. On the other hand, Andrew Rehfeld has critiqued the failure of theorists like Pitkin and Mansbridge to articulate a purely descriptive view of political representation and has proposed a general theory of representation that recognizes that political representation can be and often is undemocratic.

14.4 TYPES OF REPRESENTATION

Modern democracies based on the system of representation is called representative democracy. Here citizens rule through their delegates. Delegates have a minimum tenure of 5 years or less. Citizen can either renew it or terminate the contract depending upon the performance. In some cases a mandatory provision would prevent a delegate from seeking reelection. For instance in USA, no president can seek the office for more than two terms. This mandatory provision is to prevent misuse of office by perpetuating it.

Representation broadly is of two types‟ territorial representation and functional representation. In the territorial representation the country is divided into geographical areas of nearly equal population. They are known as constituencies. Voters in these constituencies will exercise their franchise and elect their 46 representative. Normally each citizen has a single vote. Equality of voting rights is an institutional guarantee. In democracy all citizens have equal share in the running of administration But we find some traditional liberals like J. S. Mill, while arguing for extending franchise rights to working class and women, was not prepared to give same weightage to the opinion of workers to that of educated 183 class. In particular he believed the opinion of educated class is superior to that of the uneducated or illiterate. So he suggested “plural voting” system. The scheme envisaged four or five votes to holders of learned diplomas or degrees two or three to the skilled or managerial workers, a single vote to ordinary workers and none at all to those who are illiterate. Such a policy of discrimination would not be accepted in modern democracies. Though each country prescribes certain minimum qualifications regarding age residential necessity and a clean record with police to get voting rights. It so happens that sometimes the boundaries of a constituency may be redrawn, like creating a new district, or there may be influx of population and the area may have to be divided for administrative efficiency. Under these eventualities, all care should be taken that such redrawing of boundaries does not result in undue advantage or disadvantage to any political party. For instance in India, if a separate district is carved out where a majority of people belong to one particular caste or creed, a party that speaks for that particular caste can easily get elected. That is not good for democracy, where representation believes in equal opportunity for all. The people who argue for the system of territorial representation, argue that this system provides a rapport between people and the representative. He can nurture his constituency by constantly touring it. He will know their problems by firsthand. People also know their representative more closely. But the critics point out, that a society consists of many interest groups-like farmers, merchants, labourers who cannot be represented by a single person. So they argue for functional representation. Under this scheme people belonging to different occupations or functions, will elect their representative on the basis of profession. For instance doctors will be elect doctor to represent their case and so on. The voting would be on the basis of the interest of the profession. A labour representative would participate in the deliberations of labour policies and would vote as a representative of labour. Such a system would really, represent the interest. Moreover in the geographical/territorial representation some strong leaders will virtually take over the constituency and no alternative leader would emerge. The way Nehru family nurtured Raibareli is a classic example. It becomes monopoly of a clan and certainly not conducive to democracy. There is also a problem that in territorial representation, the local issues may dominate national issues and compel the representative to take a narrow view. But the critics of professional representation point out the system is too narrow to cater the general interests of a community. Most of the issues are inter-related and could at best be represented by a general candidate. Although in Britain the Guild Socialists compaigned for functional representation, this system actually is not being practiced in any democratic country. It was in the fascist countries around 1930-40 that such types of functional representation was practiced. They were called corporations. The corporation was not democratic, the

47 fascist dictators would 184 nominate experts in each field to frame polices. It was a functional division but no representation by people. People had no say in the nomination of such representatives. These representatives were far removed from people and their aspiration. They were elite whose main function was to make be rulers happy. Efficiency and quick results rather than peoples sentiments and ambitions were the sole guiding factors of this corporation. Since people have not elected them, cannot question their actions they cannot remove them. These corporations may represent a particular section in a society – mostly economic and business groups but in no way can be called as representatives of masses.

There is another aspect of representation known as communal representation. In this system people belonging to one particular community will elect a representative form their community. Other members have no right to vote. The idea behind this system is only a community member can represent the community interests. Since other members of a different community may not have either interest or sympathy for the problems of the community being represented, their power to elect a representative is denied. During British rule this system was introduced by MacDonald and came to be known as “Communal representation”. Under this scheme in those areas where Muslims were in majority, only a Muslim could stand for elections and all the voters will be Muslims only. Similar communal electorates were made available to the Sikhs, Indian Christians, Anglo-Indians and the Dalits. However, because of the stiff opposition of Gandhiji the separate electorates were surrendered by Dr. B. R. Ambedkar under the provisions of Poona Pact. While some areas were called general areas where a mixed population would vote. The policy was a design by the imperialist powers to weaken the forces of Indian Nationalism and has implications of creating deep divisions in the country. The demand for a separate state for Muslims in the name of Pakistan had its seeds sown in the separate electorate system.

There was also a similar demand for separate electorate system for lower caste Hindus, but Gandhi successfully prevented that demand and suggested a policy of “Reservation”, under which certain percentage of seats will be reserved for backward sections of Hindu society. While the candidate should be from that caste, voters will have a composite entity. This is a method of pro active policy to provide political power to the marginalized and weaker sections. As a matter of policy the reserved constituencies will be rotated after some period to prevent them from being monopoly of a few sections. There are critics of this reservation policy. Their argument is it is against natural polity of equality. A person may be political activist and quite popular in an area. For him it is the easiest thing to get elected. But it that area is reserved for a particular caste and he not belonging to that caste would lose an opportunity of winning elections Some cynics also claim that the 185 representatives elected under reservation are dummy. The real power is exercised by big landlords who control them. These types of criticisms will only point out certain shortcomings. In principle reservation is a policy of giving political empowerment to disorganized and

48 marginalised sections. In the spirit of democracy and social Justice such policy of Reservation in Representation is required. There is a policy of nomination in representation. The executive nominates certain people representing a particular section or group. In India president nominates two members from Anglo-Indian communally to Lok Sabha and some artists Sports persons to Rajya Sabha. These nominated representatives safeguard particular group interests. We can say while the elected representatives represent a broad general view, the nominated one would speak for a specific field. It is same as corporatism but with a democratic touch. A lot of consultation, debates goes on before a decision is taken on nomination.

All types of representative methods have their advantages and limitations. But the need for representative system is inevitable because of large scale democratic systems. The method of Reservation is a safeguard against monopolization of political power by powerful sections. But reservation itself cannot guarantee political empowerment. It is only a means. It gives an opportunity for marginalised sections to be politically more active and to create second line leadership. Using these methods they should create a mass based political structure, so that in future they could capture political power out of their own efforts without reservations. Ultimately the honesty, integrity and hard work of a political leader will make political empowerment of a community possible. If the leaders are selfish and use the reservation of representation to perpetuate their family rule we will return back to feudal system. In democracy equality of opportunity is necessary.

14.5 SUMMARY

Political representation is at the heart of democracy. Whether democracy is understood as popular rule or as effective fate control by the people, representation is the means to realize the democratic idea of giving people a voice in large states. Thus, from a normative point of view, there should be a causal relationship between citizens‟ interests and policy decisions of representatives. Elections are the major link establishing causality between the wishes of the people and acts of governance. However, how and whom citizens elect varies considerably across democracies. The two ideal types or “two visions of democracy”. In a proportional electoral system, citizens elect parties voting for lists and parties determine by candidate selection how those lists are composed. The causal link between citizens and representatives differs clearly between the two kinds of elections. The mandate in the majoritarian model is given to a person, and this person is held accountable in the next elections for her performance. In the proportional model, the mandate is given to a party, and the party is held accountable in the next elections. Thus, different actors have the duty to deliver representation in different electoral systems: individual deputies in the majoritarian, political parties in the proportional model. This implies that representatives should have different roles and foci of representation depending on the mode of their election. The two visions of democracy embedded in the two

49 electoral systems carry distinct normative ideals about good representation. Looking at political representation in democracies from a comparative perspective, electoral systems seem to induce the respective orientation toward the mandate and whom to represent by different incentives for candidates running in single-member districts or on party lists. The role of a party delegate is more frequent in proportional, the delegate and trustee roles more frequent in majoritarian systems. In majoritarian systems, representatives are very much inclined to represent the median voter of the district; in proportional systems, representatives rather tend to represent their party voters.

14.6 EXERCISES

1. What is representation? 2. What is political representation? 3. What is communal representation? 4. What is territorial representation? 5. Describe different types of representation. 6. Explain the role of representation in a democratic country like India.

14.7 REFERENCES

1. Dovi, Suzanne. "Political Representation". The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2017 Edition). Retrieved 21 March 2018. 2. Pitkin, Hanna (1967). The Concept of Representation. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. 3. Rehfeld, Andrew (2006). "Toward a General Theory of Political Representation". The Journal of Politics. 68: 1–21. 4. Political Representation - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 5. Pitkin, Hanna (1967). The Concept of Representation. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

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