Political Development: A Critical Perspective
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION 2
1. THE SEARCH FOR CRITERIA 9
THE CRITERION AS PARTICIPATION 9
2 THE CRITERION AS 42
DIFFERENTIATION
3 THE CRITERION AS CAPABILITIES 67
4 THE CRITERION AS CONVERSION 85
5 The Concept of Development 180
Political Development: A Critical Perspective
By Daya Krishna,
Delhi , Oxford University Press, 1979.
LBSNAA 320.011kri.
INTRODUCTION
There can be little doubt that the concept of political develop-
ment has Become the central pivot around which most of the
recent thought in political science tends to organize itself.
This may bespeak a certain development in the field of political
science itself or in that with which the study of political
science is concerned, viz. the realm of politics itself Both
seem to be the case. The imperial responsibilities of the United
States after the Second World War, coupled with its competitive
role on a global scale against a country with a different
political system, led American political scientists almost
inevitably to view their field in comparative perspective. And
once things begin to be viewed in that way, specially from the
vantage point of a superpower with global responsibilities for
client and protégée states, the distinction between the
'developed' we and the 'underdeveloped' they gets built into the
way issues are seen, questions are asked, and theories
formulated. The political scientist almost inevitably identifies
himself with the polity of which he happens to be a member, and
that to some extent
determines the way he sees the phenomena he wants to study
-scientifically, that is, with detachment and objectivity. The
epistemological problems raised by this determination of the
social perception of social scientists in general and poli-
tical scientists in particular have seldom been the subject of
focal attention by these scientists themselves or by philosophers
concerned with the social sciences. To some extent,'anthro-
pologists in their study of so-called primitive, non-literate
cul- tures have been aware of these problems, along with
historians who have studied literate cultures other than their
own. And it is generally amongst practitioners of anthropology
and history that the concept of development as it was applied to
their fields came to be,seriously questioned. The sociologist
and the poli-
2 Political Development
tical scientist, however, generally look on the study of man and
society as embodied in history and anthropology as not being
scientific in the sense that they are not concerned with the
discovery of laws of the phenomena they study, but only with
their description which at best is sought to be, made
intelligible in terms of meanings which they embody or purposes
they
fulfil. The historian and the anthropologist are supposed merely
to provide the data against which the social scientist may test
his theories. And, if they do attempt to formulate laws, they
quickly become oriented to the same type of concerns and
perspectives which the sociologist or the political scientist
enter- tains.
The early search for comparative methodology had some
such purpose in mind. It was to do what lack of experimentation
precluded or appeared to preclude in the social sciences. The
diversity of cultures and civilizations was supposed to provide
that variety of conditions and combinations which the theorist
in the social sciences would re-quire to test his hypotheses. The
Human Relations Area Files attempt to provide such data, and the
early work of Malinowski, Roheim, Margaret Mead, and
Herskovits tries to do something like this for psychoanalytic
and economic theories. The work of Whiting and Child on
child-training and personality development is another good
example of this type of use of cross-cultural material.
However, comparative studies do not remain confined for long
to what may be called the testing of hypotheses, and they begin
to ask whether the same functions are being performed well or
ill in different settings and thus to judge societies com-
paratively and find whether one is better than the other, at
least in those respects in which they are being compared. The
cognitive enterprise thus subtly turns into an evaluative enter-
prise, without explicitly declaring itself to be such. One reason
for the subterfuge n-iay possibly lie in the fear that the
effective- ness of the evaluation may be jeopardized if it were
to be ex- plicitly declared as such. Another, and perhaps more
subtle, reason may lie in the feeling that the cognitive and the
evalua- tive elements are so intermixed in the situation that to
test a hypothesis is inevitably to make an evaluative judgement
also. The two directions of the cognitive interest, however,
are not merely different but also opposed to each other. The
search
Introduction 3
for laws which have universal validity goes counter
to the idea that there are better or worse ways of exemplifying
those laws. It would be strange to hear someone say that the law
of gravitation is better exemplified by one phenomenon than by
another. Such a statement may be true in some educational context
where the task is to make somebody understand what exactly is
meant by the law concerned. But there are no intrinsic
differences in exemplification, and once one has understood what
a law means, one also understands that the example used by the
teacher exemplifies it in no special, pre-eminent sense. Also,
the law, in so far as it is a law, cannot but be exemplified, and
thus in the purely cognitive perspective, the distinctions of
better and worse can only be treated as something illusory or the
result of the intrusion of non-cognitive interests in a field
where they do not belong.
On the other hand, the intrusion of the category of 'function'
with its correlate notion of 'efficient performance' brings the
idea of 'purpose' into the heart of the social sciences-an idea
whose banishment from nature was supposed to have been
responsible for the triumph of the natural sciences. But once we
begin to talk in terms of 'functions' and their more or less
'efficient' fulfilment, we generally assume that everything that
we are comparing is trying to fulfil the same function and that
the notion of efficiency that we employ happens to be the same
everywhere. But once diversity in functions and differences
amongst criteria of efficiency are admitted, the whole purpose
for which the comparative approach was being used fails to make
sense.
It may be urged that the developmental perspective can be
relevantly built into the strictly cognitive enterprise, if
reality is seen as dynamic rather than static in nature. The
opening of the evolutionary perspective in biology has taught us
to do just that. Everything in the world, and the world itself,
may be un- derstood only when seen in the perspective of time and
in the context of the question 'how has it come to be what it is
today?' But this assumes that 'temporal', 'changing', 'dynamic',
'evolu- tionary', 'developmental' all mean the same thing, which
they obviously do not. To change is not necessarily to evolve,
and to evolve is not necessarily to develop. Change, for example,
may be mere fluctuation or even mere movement, a change of posi-
page 4 Political Development
tion with respect to certain other co-ordinates. And evolution
mayjust be a patterning of change in a particular direction, as,
for example, when we talk of the evolution of the solar system.
Also, to talk of reality as dynamic does not solve the problem
posed by the so-called static perspective, as it is usually
thought to do. If there is a law that governs the dynamics of
change or, in less anthropomorphic language, if the change is in
accordance with a law that can be discerned, then the change is
only apparent, since it is already known what the situation is
going to change into or ' in other words, what change is
going to occur. If the trouble with a static system was that the
laws could not but be exemplified by whatever happened to be,
the situation remains the same even when we make our system
dynamic. Only now laws are exemplified not so much by
whatever is but rather by whatever occurs. The shift from things
to processes does not change the situation in any essential
respect.
Neither the functional nor the dynamic perspective, thus,
seems to necessitate a developmental perspective such as came
into favour in the political sciences in the United States in the
sixties. Nor does the comparative method require it in any
significant way. What could then he the possible reasons for its
emergence and almost uncontested doninance for more than two
decades amongst intellectual circles in that country? @ The
reasons given are of many kinds. But the two most often found in
literature concerned with this subject relate to the desire to
escape the parochial limitations of the earlier state of
political science in the United States which was, by and large,
confined to the American political experience alone, and, to the
failure of U.S. economic aid in fostering economic development
in countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The latter
reason is, perhaps, more important as it continues to be
repeated in almost every work on political development, while
the former has almost dropped out of sight.
However, it is not easy to determine the exact role of the
failure of economic development in countries of Asia, Afdca, and
Latin America in the elaboration of the concept of political
development by political scientists in the United States. One
wonders to what extent it was a part of or, for that matter,
implication or even a cause of political, interventionism, which
introduction 5 ,
nay be considered to be some sort of political aid on
the analogy of economic aid., In any case, if political
development is a precondition of economic development, it
needs to be arti- culated and studied in its own right. But if
it is treated only in the context of economic development,
then wherever there is economic development we would be
justified in assuming that political development has also
occurred.
It is not always made clear in discussions whether political
development is treated as both a necessary and a sufficient con-
dition of economic development or merely as a necessary condi-
tion. As the lament is that economic development is not oc-
curring for political reasons, it may be taken that it is un-
doubtedly considered a necessary condition and perhaps both a
sufficient and a necessary condition of economic development.
The phenomenon of economic development is, however, it- self
varied and diverse in character. It not only continuously
fluctuates even in the so-called developed economics but even
has sharp and prolonged periods of depression in many of them.
Also, the relative economic growth rates of different countries
vary over different perio 'ds of time, as do the growth rates of
the countries themselves. But if changes in the political
sphere were to be theoretically required as necessary
preconditions for change in the econon-iic sphere, we would
have to assume cor- relate precedent changes in the political
sphere without which the changes in the economic sphere would
become unintelli- gible. It would be, so to say, the
fluctuation or decline in political growth rate which would be
shown in the fluctuation or decline in, the economic growth
rate. This would, however, bring into question the autonomy of
the economic realm and the immanent causality which may be
said to obtain therein. This interpretation might appear to
some readers to be a gross misunderstanding of the relations
between the political and the economic realms as argued by the
writers on poli- tical development. It may be argued that what
was actually suggested is that there are certain political
prerequisites to economic development without which no
economic develop- ment can take place. But this is precisely
what is meant by calling political development a necessary
condition and nothing is gained by calling it a prerequisite,
for both mean the same thing and raise the same problem.
2
6 Political Development
If, on the other hand, both the political and economic realms
are treated as relatively autonomous and independent of each
other with the possiblity that either may grow and develop
independently of the other, then the question of independent
criteria for the growth of both may be raised and investigated.
But, then, the failure of the so-called underdeveloped countries
of Asia, Africa, and Latin America to make good economically,
even if true, could not be taken as a sign of their political under-
development. Nor, for that matter, could the economic develop-
ment of the so-called developed countries of North America
and Western Europe be taken as a sign of their political devel-
opment. The two could vary independently and thus would
have to be judged and established independently also.
The search for independent criteria for political development
has taken place, though not in a clear-cut way. Hardly anyone
has faced the question what it would mean for a polity to be
developed even if its economy were stagnating or declining. On
the other hand, the, problem of a developing economy with an
underdeveloped polity has been discussed to a certain extent,
especially in the context of totalitarian societies. To consider or
not to consider the Soviet Union as a developed polity has been
the perennial dilemma of Western writers on political develop-
ment. Those who are inclined to treat the achievement of
democracy as a criterion of political developjnent tend to deny
the Soviet Union the claim of being a developed polity. On the
other hand, those who think in terms of power or in terms of
industrialization tend to treat it as highly developed.
The situation becomes even more complicated because of the
persistent tendency to bring in notions of modernization and
social development which themselves are neither clearly defined
nor demarcated from what is usually regarded as economic or
political development. One is not quite clear whether 'modern-
ization' is the same as 'social development' and 'social develop-
ment' the same as 'economic and political development', as-
suniing the two to be diff@rent. It is surprising that sociologists
who continuously talk of 'modernization' and 'social develop-
ment' do not make their distinctiveness from economic and
political development fairly clear. Perhaps they too feel that if a
society is achieving economic development then it must also be
achieving social development. But, if so, we would have the
introduction 7
same problems as we had earlier with political development.
To cap all this, the notion of 'social evolution' has been
brought in to buttress the concept,of development in all these
fields, as if it could not be sustained by itself. It is interesting in
this respect to note that the notion of evolution has not been
much applied to the domain of economics where the idea of
development is perhaps most securely entrenched. In fact, one
hardly hears of 'economic evolution' though 'social evolution'
is a fairly common term these days and 'political evolution'
is slowly coining into its own. It is tacitly assumed that, 'to he
evolved' is 'to be developed' and 'to be developed' is 'to be
better' and 'what is better' is one's own society. Along with this
is the belief that there is something in evolution which neces-
sitates it to be so. But if it were really so, then, first, there would
not be much virtue in being what one is and, secondly, there
would be no point in lamenting that others have not made good.
What the idea of evolution perhaps does for its proponents is to
ensure that there will be no sliding back for those who have
arrived. But even this could not ensure that they themselves
would be the bearers of the next evolutionary thrust, unless
they chose to believe that evolution had stopped with them. In
fact, if past experience is to be believed, the greater likelihood
is that it would be some other group which would break into
the next phase of evolution, if any. But, as evolution is supposed
to be both inevitable and involuntary, there does not seem
much point in lamenting or lauding it either way.
The questions with respect to political development, thus,
have on the one hand to be separated from the larger questions
of development in general and, on the other hand, to be dis,
tinguished from development in other domains. We propose to
do this by examining in detail the proposed explications of the
concept of political development and the criteria suggested for
assessing and measuring it in diverse ways. Along with this, we
also propose to discuss the larger question regarding what
exactly is meant by the concept of development and what are
the conditions of its relevant applicability to a domain.
1. THE SEARCH FOR CRITERIA
THE CRITERION AS PARTICIPATION
If one is to discuss political development and compare different
politics to find which are developed and which are not, then
obviously one has to find some criterion or set of criteria in
terms of which one can make the comparison. Many have been
the criteria offered, and as the concept itself has been elaborated
primarily in the United States, it would be natural to expect
most of these criteria to be idealized versions of what prevails
or is supposed to prevail in the political system of that country.
The criteria, in order to serve the purpose for which they are
intended, must be measurable directly or indirectly. Also, they
should, to a large extent, be quantitatively variable, as other-
wise a characteristic would either be present or absent and
thus show a country to be either completely undeveloped or
completely'developed politically. Quantitative variability, on
the other hand, would make it a matter of 'more or less', that
is, a matter of relative degree. Also, if the criteria are multiple
in character. they would have to be given relative weightage
with respect to each other so that some generalized judgement
might be reached in cases where they diverge from one another.
The criteria, it should be remembered, are for purposes of
determining the degree of political development that a parti-
cular society may be said to have achieved, especially when
compared with other societies or even with past stages of its
own history. Further, if the concept of political development
is to be treated as even relatively autonomous, then the criteria
for it should at least to some extent be different from those that
are supposed to measure, say, economic or social or cultural
The Criterion as Participation 9
development. This would raise the question of the relationship
between these different realms and whether development in any
of them presupposes at least some development in the others
also. If, however, the concept of 'autonomous realms' itself he
questioned, then we would either have one set of criteria for
measuring all development or development in one sector would
be taken as indicating development in other domains as it is
treated as determining them. The attempt to understand 'social
development', for example, poses this problem. Is 'social devel-
opment' merely a sumination of development in all other fields,
or does it have any distinctive characteristics of its own? If the
former, then obviously to talk of 'social development' is also to
talk of all the other kinds of development which are cncom-
passed in it. On the other hand, if it is something over and
above all of them, then either it has to be treated as itself
sectoral in character or as something emergent from the inter-
relationships between what may be called parts or subsectors
of itself.
Many of these questions have not been faced by writers on
political development. In fact, the relation of sociology to other
disciplines which deal with specific sectors of society has never
been clearly articulated. Besides the Marxists who have been
the most prominent and influential amongst those who have
signalled one particular substructure as foundational and ulti-
mately determining for all the rest, Parsons is perhaps the only
person who has systematically, tried to articulate these relation-
ships. Within the fourfold task of adaptation, goal attainment,
latent tension management, and pattern maintenance and in-
tegration, the political system is primarily supposed to be con-
cerned with goal attainment only, while the economic system
is supposed to be concerned with adaptation and the cultural
system with pattern maintenance and latent tension manage-
ment. The task of integrating all of these is supposed to be the
speciality of the social system, but what exactly the social system
is, apart from the political, cultural, and economic systems, is
not clearly indicated. Also, it is not quite clear as to who sets
the goals which the political system is supposed to try to attain.
And why could adaptation not be treated as some sort of goal
in itself? Similarly, it is difficult to see why pattern maintenance
and tension management do not perform the integrative fune-
10 Political Development
tion which the social system alone is specifically supposed to do.
It may be said that these are just analytic categories which
characterize any action and the so-called concrete subsystems
are differentiated by the predominance of one category rather
than another. But even if this were granted, it does not blunt
the edge of the objections raised. For analytic categories them-
selves should be kept distinct, and it would be difficult for
Parsons to maintain that pattern maintenance and tension
management could be separated, even analytically, from inte-
grative or even adaptive functions.
In considering the problem of any subsector development,
therefore, one has inevitably to face the question as to how it is
related to developments in other sectors. To the extent that the
sector has autonomy, it is bound to have some immanent goals
of its own in terms of which development or lack of development
may be said to occur. Also, as the very concept of autonomy
implies some sort of immanent dletern-tination of the system, the
development or lack of development has to a large extent to be
explicated and understood in its own terms. However, as the
system is actually a subsystem, the autonomy is boun to c
relative in character, and thus determination from the outside,
at least at the margins, has always to be taken into account. Yet,
exactly what the immanent goal of the political system is and
what the immanent causality which operates therein seems to be
nowhere explicitly stated by most writers who are concerned
pre-eminently with the notion of political development. Or, if
it is suspected or even explicitly recognized that there is perhaps
more than one goal immanent to the system, then what the
relationship is between the goals themselves is hardly ever ex-
plicated by these writers.
The trouble, therefore, with the concept of political develop@-
ment is that we do not quite know what is supposed to develop
or whose development we are supposed to discern. Unless this
fundamental point is clarified, the search for criteria is bound
to he diffused and vague, as one would not know what one was
looking for. In a certain sense, we would find this true of most
of the criteria that have been offered by writers in this field.
They are usually so general as to have hardly anything to do
specifically or exclusively with the realm of politics. Perhaps
they are general descriptions of what these writers consider
The Criterion as Participation 11
desirable in their society or even in any society. This reaction is
understandable, as the concern with political development
arose primarily in the context of the failure of many of the new
nations which emerged after the Second World War to achieve
political stability and economic growth.
11
The political system, though a subsystem of the society, is sup-
posed to perform the overall and overriding function of looking
after the society and managing it to the extent that this can be
done at a conscious, corporate level. The first criterion that
comes to mind is, therefore, the extent to which members of any
society participate in the exercise of this function. Certain
groups may be legally or actually deprived of the right to
participate in this process, while even many who have the right
to participate may not choose to do so unless it be made
mandatory for them. The extent of the formal right of participa-
tion in the political process which is concerned with the total
whole, the actual facilitation of the exercise of such a right, and
the actual exercise of the right, then, may be taken as deter-
mining the degree of political development which a society has
achieved when compared to other societies or to itself in a
former stage. In fact, most writers on political development
have used participation as a basic criterion for judging and
measuring political development. But exactly what participa-
tion in the political process is, is. seldom directly discussed. Per-
haps it is assumed that the relevant discussion has already oc-
curred in the debate about democratic and representative poli-
tical institutions. But if that is the end of the matter, there
should be no uneasiness about the populist type of participation
in the political process. Nor, for that matter, should the un-
believably large turnouts in the $ovict and Nazi-style patterns
of election cause such dismay among the democratic theorists of
Western countries.
Deeper than this, however, are the questions relating to the
fact that if the criterion of participation were to be accepted,
then most politics in human history would have to be character-
ized as undeveloped for the simple reason that not only has it
always been a minority which actually participated in the
12 Political Development
political process, but also because the majority generally were
not supposed to participate in it. As most of the existent politics
in the world have been, so to say, non-democratic in the past,
it would be impossible to judge them on the basis of this
criterion and say which is more and which is less developed
even among themselves. They are lumped together and thrown
into the limbo of development where nothing relevant can be
said about them as far as political development is concerned.
In a certain perspective, this may not be considered some-
thing to be deeply worried about, as in the process of socio-
political evolution fundamental breakthroughs may naturally
be expected to occur. And, in fact, as we shall see later on, it
has actually been argued that modernity is such a break-
through in the process of social evolution. But whatever may be
meant by evolution in this field-and we will have occasion to
examine this in detail later on-this would tend to show that
participation' is hardly something immanent to the field of
politics, since otherwise it would have been its central concern
wherever it obtained. Rather, it becomes such a concern only
when a certain level of development is achieved, and this is
perhaps more a result of certain technological breakthroughs,
if 'modernization' is seen as integrally related to 'industrializa-
tion' even if not identical with it.
There are other problems in treating 'participation' as a
criterion of political development. The first and foremost
relates to the fact that it is doubtful whether a majority of the
people can ever actually participate in the political process
except in a marginal or symbolic manner. Any society, in
order to function, has to perform functions other than the
political one. And most of these functions are fairly time-
consuming. The Greek polis, where the male citizens lived what
Hannah Arendt has called 'the public life', had women and
slaves to perform the other functions. Today when we do not
believe that there ought to be slaves in a society, the question is
whether all can live 'the public life' lived by a minority in the
Greek polis and described so eloquently in Arendt's book On
Revolution.' Perhaps automation will permit the slaves and free
human beings to engage in the full-time public activity about
which she writes. But even then, there may be economic pre-
requisites of political activity which everyone mayuot possess,
The Criterion as Participation 13
and there may be large numbers of people who may not want
to devote all or even most of their time to political activity.
This point has seldom been seriously discussed by those
political scientists who have treated 'increasing participation in
the political process' as a criterion of political developme .nt.
They seem to write as if there were no economic costs to politics,
as if all the obstacles to people's participation lay either in legal
disabilities or obstruction by those who did not want any
effective participation by certain groups, ethnic or otherwise.
Also, there seems to be the unstated assumption that if people
had the legal right, the actual facilities, and perhaps the eco-
nomic resources, then they would engage in political activity,
even to the exclusion of other activity if a choice had to be
made.2 But these assumptions are not true. There are sub-
stantial economic costs to political activity and, automation or
no automation, people both have to and prefer to engage in
other activities. Full-time political activity can be engaged in
only by those who either have independent means, or are sup-
ported by somebody else, or are provided for by the party of
which they are members and for which they work. In the last
case, the party itself must have control over economic resources,
and this can come only by having direct command of them or
by serving, to some extent at least, 'the interests of those who
have such command. In the former case, there is bound to be an
erosion of distinction- between party and government and a
tendency towards some sort of one-party totalitarian control of
the state.
The second point is equally important. Most people, at
least in non-crisis situations, have little interest in political
activity. And this for the simple reason that time is a scarce
commodity and if one engages in something, then one cannot
engage in something else as fully. The whole idea of an engaged
or committed consciousness does not merely absolutize the
moral perspective but, what is perhaps even more important,
politicizes it also. The assumption is that moral action is
nothing but political action and that the moral point of view
is itself nothing but a political point of view which, if genuine,
must result in political action. The total politicization of life,
thus, is7 the demand not merely of populist totalitarians, as has
generally been thought, but also of all those who have identified
14 Political Development
the moral with the political and, at least implicitly, of those
who urge 'participation in the political process' as a criterion of
(political development'.
There is still another implication of the 'participation'
criterion hardly noticed by those who have propounded it so
often. And that is the non-differentiation or at least the non-
professionalization of political activity as against most other
activities in the system. Obviously, if everyone can participate
and in fact is expected to participate in political activity, then
there could hardly be any prerequisites required for engaging
,in that activity. This is anomalous, especially in the light of the
fact that most thinkers who treat 'participation in the political
process' as a sign of 'political development' also treat 'differen-
tiation' as a sign of development in general. Yet, if it is a sign of
social development that the realm of politics becomes different-
iated from other realms, then it would also obviously follow
that everybody cannot engage in it to the same extent, unless,
of course, 'differentiation' were. merely to mean 'differentiation'
in the time devoted to it and not the specialized cultivation of
skills for the pursuit of that activity. There is, so to say, a denial
of the need for 'professionalization' for the achievement of
efficiency or expertise in political activity. Yet, the virtues of
'differentiation', as we shall see later, are supposed to lie in its
contribution to greater efficiency. But if this is not true for any
one domain, then one wonders why 'differentiation' per se
should be regarded as desirable or necessary.
The objection is bound to be made that we are misinterpret-
ing the notion of 'participation' as used in the current dis-
cussion about political development. 'Participation', in this
context, does not mean actual participation in the decision-
making processes of the polity. This would be almost impossible
in any large community, as not everybody can be a legislator or
a member of a group that collectively legislates. And if execu-
tive and judicial functions are also regarded as political func-
tions, then it is perhaps even more obvious that everyone,
whether the society be large or small, cannot be involved in a
participatory manner in the performance of political functions.
It is at least theoretically conceivable that technology could
permit the participation of all members of a society in the
discussion and decision on any issue that came before them for
The Criterion as Participation 15
collective consideration. But it would he difficult to think of
ways in which all could he involved in the discharge of execu-
tive and judicial functions. That perhaps is the reason why the
political function is so pre-eminently identified with the enact-
ment of laws and the authority to do so. Even those who have
tried to argue that there is an inalienable political element in
both the executive and the judiciary have generally done so on
the ground that there is an element of rule-making involved in
the exercise of their functions. Cardozo's is one of the best-
known discussions with respect to the judiciary in this con-
teXt.3
'Participation', then, should not be taken to mean actual
participation in the 'law adjudicating' and 'law enforcing'
processes which are generally thought to be important elements
of the total political process. As for the 'law formulating'
process, the thinkers writing on 'political development' have
seldom seriously considered actual participation as a criterion
for its determination, even though there now seems no intrinsic
reason why, in the light of new technological innovations in
communication and computerized calculation, this should not
be regarded as feasible. Perhaps their framework of thought is
still determined by the older situation where the practice of
direct democracy was thought to be intrinsically impossible
because of the large numbers involved, and have not yet caught
up with the possibilities offered by new technological break-
throughs.
There may, however, be another reason for this neglect. The
'participation' envisaged may not be so much for the purpose of
ensuring that everybody has a say in the decision-making pro-
cesses which concern the group as a whole but to ensure that
those who make such decisions do not do so to their own special
or sectional advantage. The right to vote is, so to say, the right
to refuse to re-elect those who have exercised the function of
making the laws and done so poorly in the opinion of those who
are choosing to cast the adverse vote. It is the right to say 'no'
and, by doing so in sufficiently large numbers, to remove from
office those who presumably misused the mandate to rule wisely
and in the interest of the whole. Thus, it should be seen mor 1e in
negative than in positive, forms. It is in insuring against the
possibility of tyranny in the system that the real significance of
16 Political Developinent
'participation' through the right to vote lies'. The primary
purpose of 'participation', thus, consists of ensuring and
strengthening 'political liberty' which may be regarded as a
value immanent to the political realm.
But, surprising as it may seem, the concept of 'political
liberty' plays hardly any role in discussions about political
development. Ludan Pye, who has made a supposedly exhaus-
tive survey of all the definitions offered for political develop-
ment in his well-known work Aspects of Political Development,
barely mentions it. The closest that he comes to it is perhaps in
the definition of political development as the building of
democracy. But that democracy in this context is hardly con-
cerned directly with the issue of 'political liberty' is revealed by
the fact that neither the words 'freedom' or 'liberty' nor the
phrases 'political freedom' or 'political liberty' are to be found
in the index to this book. The whole notion of 'public liberties'
around which the great debate between totalitarianism and
democracy raged seems to have lost all interest for students of
political science concerned with questions of political develop-
ment. In fact, even those who have tried to develop some
measurable criteria of what may be called indicators for poli-
tical development have hardly concerned themselves with the
issue of 'public liberties' in devising their indicators.
The suspicion that 'participation' is not being used by these
thinkers in what we have called the negative or 'public liberties'
sense of the term is confirmed by Pye's statement that 'parti-
cipation may be either democratic or a form of totalitarian
mobilization.'4 But if it can take either of the forms, then
obviously it cannot be linked in any essential way to the notion
of 'political liberty', for the contrast between democracy and
totalitarianism is supposed to lie in this very domain. However,
as already pointed out, as far as Pye is concerned, the differen-
tiation of democracy does not seem to lie in the realm of what
may be called institutional safeguards against the possibility of
tyranny. Rather, he, along with many others, seems to be con-
cerned with what has come to be called in the recent literature
of political science, 'interest articulation' and 'interest aggrega-
tion'. Perhaps it is in the open and almost unlimited oppor-
tunity for 'interest articulation' that the distinguishing charac-
teristic of democracy lies in this framework. It is hopefully
The Criterion as Participation 17
assumed that this unlimited opportunity would facilitate the
achievement of 'interest aggregation' also.
That 'participation' is used in the positive sense can further
be gathered from the fact that many writers have considered it,
to some extent, to be antagonistic to the achievement of effective
capacity or capabilities on the part of the political system. Riggs
has developed a whole thesis out of the supposed dialectical
conflict between participation and capacity and sees in it the
clue to the immanent force determining the development of any
political system.5 And Huntington has seen in the tension
between participation and what he calls 'political institutional-
ization' the clue to both political order and political decay.6
We will have occasion later to discuss in detail the conten-
tions of these thinkers, but it should be of interest here to note
that, even though the relation is supposed to be antagonistic,
participation' is still treated as a criterion of political develop-
ment per se. But if there is a negative correlation between
participation and capacity, and if development is regarded as
enhancement of capacity, then how can participation be
regarded as a criterion of development? Presumably, as in
Riggs, it may be regarded as such because it provides that
negative source of tension which results, at least sometimes, in
a higher stage of development. But then it could not be regarded
by itself as a sign of development. Rather, what is a sign of
development is enhanced capacity, and 'participation' in the
political process becomes one only by virtue of the fact that it
produces tensions which may result in even greater enhancement
of capacity. Thus, in this perspective, it has only an instru-
mental value as far as political development is concerned. And
in case it fails to achieve this enhancement of capacity or, as is
even more likely if Huntington's analysis is to be believed,
results in a decline in capacity, then it can only be treated
either as neutral or as counter-development, depending on
which of the alternatives actually takes place.
The criterion in terms of 'capacities' or 'capabilities' will be
the subject of detailed discussion later on in this work. Here,
however, we would like only to point out the incompatibility
between holding 'participation' as an independent criterion of
'political development' on the one hand, and simultaneously
'dering it as a key factor obstructing 'political develop-
consi
18 Political Development
me-at', on the other. If it is one, then it cannot be the other also.
Yet, most writers tend to argue as if it were both at the same
time, without in any significant way trying to bridge the
apparent incompatibility between the two.
The positive interpretation of the notion of 'participation',
then, may be accepted in the context of its discussion as a
criterion for 'political development'. Yet 'participation', even
in the positive sense, can be of different types, as has recently
been argued by Verba, Ahmed, and Bhatt in their book Caste,
Race, and Polities." According to them, 'participation is, in our
view, not a single, undifferentiated entity. There are alternative
modes of participation that differ significantly in the ways in
which they relate the citizen to his government."' Besides voting,
which is accepted almost without exception as the standard
political act, they mention three other modes: 'Campaign
activity', 'co-operative activity', and 'citizen-initiated con-
tacts'.9 'Campaign activity' obviously refers 'to activity in
political campaigns beyond the act of voting',"0 or, rather,
before the act of voting. Both voting and campaign activity are,
in a sense, direct political acts, assuming a political system
which requires at least some sort of electoral process for the
legitimation of those who wield political authority in the
system.
The other two modes, however, seem basically different in
character. The first, that is, 'co-operative activity', is defined as
activity 'in which the individual works with others-either
informal groups or formal organizations-to deal with the
problems of his community'." The term '.his community' in this
definition is perhaps not meant to be interpreted too strictly,
for otherwise it would exclude activity concerned with causes
which relate to a community that is abstract in character. On
the other hand, if it is loosely interpreted, it would include
activity which transcends national boundaries and thus is, to
that extent, transpolitical in character. Perhaps, therefore, such
exclusion is implied in the definition and only the community of
which one is directly and immediately a member is meant. In
fact, the questions asked to ascertain the respondents' participa-
tion in co-operative activities, as given in appendices B and C of
Caste, Race, and Politics, tend to confirm this interpretational
Yet, whatever be specifically meant by the term 'community'
The Criterion as Participation 19
in this context, it tends to blur the distinction between social
and political activity.
The fourth form of 'political participation' which the authors
have discussed relates to what they call 'citizen-initiated con-
tacts'. By these they mean 'contacts with government officials
initiated by individuals'.13 This category is supposed to provide
an index of 'participation' in the sense that the citizens show by
their actions not only an awareness of the political system and
their expectations from it, but also their initiative in realizing
those expectations from the system. The authors have not made
any relevant distinction between 'citizen-initiated contacts' at a
group level and those at an individual level. Nor have they
considered differences in the content of the citizen's needs in
the context of which the contact with government officials is
made. Nor have they made any distinction between the
legitimacy or illegitimacy of the purposes for the fulfilment of
which the contact is made. The emphasis presumably is on
individual needs as the question is asked in the context of a
person's apprehension of the government as the solver of per-
sonal problems. This is related to some extent to the focus of
the study, which is concerned 'with the way in which deprived
groups use politics to attempt to overcome their deprivation'.14
But however natural in the context of the authors' study, it is
obvious that 'citizen-initiated contact' by a group or its repre-
sentative for the amelioration of collective needs is far more a
political act than an individual initiating a contact on his own
for the fulfilment of his own needs. If the earlier category of
gco-operative activity' tends to blur the line between the poli-
tical and the social, the present one tends to do so between the
political and the personal.
The category of 'citizen-initiated contacts' can, conceivably,
be regarded as an instance of what in the literature of political
science has come to be called 'politicization'. It would be
difficult, however, for 'co-operative activity' to be regarded as
such. It would be such only if its purpose was either to make
demands on the political system or to play some effective role
in the selection of its personnel. In the latter case, it would be
something like 'campaign activity', though far, far wider than
what Verba, Ahmed, and Bhatt mean by the term. In the
former case, on the other hand, it would be very much akin to
20 1 Political Development
what is called 'interest articulation' in the literature of political
science.
Even in the positive sense, then, the concept of 'participation'
can be treated in a wide variety of ways. In fact, the use of the
term 'politicization' has opened the doors wide to almost any
type of relationship with the system being regarded as sqme
sort of 'participation'. Any awareness of the polity in the
cognitive domain and any active relationship with it, whether of
a positive or negative character, can then be interpreted as
some sort of 'politicization' and, thus, some sort of 'participa-
tion' also. It is in this sense that reading newspapers, watching
TV and listening to radio, become as much indices of 'participa-
tion' as membership in political parties, turnout at political
rallies, the percentage of people voting, etc. But through this
extension, the term loses its direct, specific sense of participa-
tion for positive effectiveness in the decision-making process of
a polity. However, even in this specific sense there is some sort
of implicit assumption of legitimacy which makes it seem odd
to say that people taking part in violent or non-violent demon-
strations against the system and going to prison or dying in the
process are 'participating' in the political processes of the
system. Yet there is a large class of political scientists who
treat all evidence of activity which is concerned in any way
with politics as evidence of 'politicization'. In fact, many of
them have a special name for it-'inverse 'articulation by
anomic groups'.",
The term.'interest articulation' is in many of its uses very
close to what in certain other contexts is denoted by 'politiciza-
tion' and in still other contexts by 'participation'. It has itself
been used as a criterion of 'political development', and we will
have occasion to discuss it in that context. But, as far as 1 am
aware, there has been little systematic attempt to differentiate
participation', 'politicization' and 'interest articulation', and
2
delineate the interrelationships between them. Most authors
tend to use these terms interchangeably, depending upon the
context they are emphasizing. Yet it would be useful if the
differences between them are kept in mind. There seems little
point in taking 'interest articulation' as 'participation' in the
political process unless it happens to be what may be called
'structured articulation' required by the system itself. Similarly,
The Criterion as Participa ption 21
all 'structured participation' need not be treated as 'politiciza-
tion'. It may be better if the term 'politicization' is reserved for
areas in which the category of the 'Political' dominates all
others in social life, thought, and action.
But whatever be one's feelings about the way these terms are
or Ought to be used, there should be little dispute over the fact
that if they are treated as criteria of 'political development', then
an increase or decrease in each category should be taken as an
increase or decrease in political development also. Yet an
awareness of this point seems to be absent from the writings of
most of those who show a concern for the problems of political
development. Most of the so-called new nations which emerged
after the Second World War, and in whose context the dis-
cussions about political development originated, started with
universal franchise and have given effect to it in large measure
in their countries. Yet this has seldom been treated as a reason
for considering these countries politically developed. In fact,
the consensus, if any, seems to be that such an enlarged political
participation is one of the root causes of many of the problems
these countries face with respect to their political development.
Huntington goes so far as to relate political instability directly
to political participation and inversely to what he calls 'poli-
tical institutionalization'.16 Assuming that political instability
is a sign of political decay, it would follow that the less there is
of political participation, the less chance there will be for poli-
tical instability in a country. Of course, Huntington treats
political instability as a ratio between political participation
and political institutionalization, but as in most cases institu-
tionalization may be expected to take a far longer time than it
ever takes for political participation to occur, it may be taken as
axiomatic that if a polity seeks both, it would be far easier for
it to achieve the latter rather than the former and thus ensure
the impossibility of its own political development.
A detailed discussion of Huntington's thesis along with a
consideration of stability as a criterion of 'political development'
will be undertaken later on. Here we only want to note that if
an increase in 'political participation' results in political decay,
then it obviously cannot he taken, at least not without any ifs
and buts, as a criterion of political development. But if
$participation' is considered as a value per se which immanently
22 Political Development
belongs to the realm of politics, then its increase should be
regarded as a sign of political development even if it is
considered undesirable on other grounds. And this should
be true even when one extends the notion of 'participation'
to mean 'politicization' in the sense in which violent protests
are supposed to imply some sort of 'participation' in politics on
the part of citizens. Perhaps the only relevant distinction on this
count will be the one between 'structured' and 'unstructured'
participation, and political development will then consist of
the conversion of the latter into the former. Different politics,
then, could be compared on the basis of the extent, range,
intensity, and quality of this participation, and be determined
to be politically more or less developed. Perhaps a participation
index could be developed and the politics ranked in its terms.
But it would not be reasonable then to express dissatisfaction
with a polity on political grounds even when it was doing well
on the basis of the criterion for determining whether it was
politically developed or not.
The objection may be made that we are taking the term
'political development' in too evaluative a sense of the word.
Basically, the term is value-neutral in the sense in which it is
usually employed in the literature dealing with the field.
Almond and Powell, for example, suggest the possibility of
'negative development' when they write that a 'decline in the
magnitude or a significant change in the content of the flow
of inputs may result in "development" in the negative or re-
gressive sense. The capabilities of the political system may
decline or be overloaded; roles and structures may atrophy; the
culture may regress to a more traditional pattern of orienta-
tion.117Similarly, talking even more explicitly concerning 'hang-
ups about evaluation', Almond writes, 'It is symptomatic of the
primitive state of theoretical work in the field that we should be
so anxious about the words we use and the definitions of our
concepts. Biologists and psychologists speak of the growth and
development of organisms, of human growth and development,
assuming that the concept of development includes break-
downs, decay, decline, even the death of the organism. The
literature on economic growth and development is not em-
barrassed by the fact that economics fluctuate in national pro-
duct, that some stagnate, and some decline. We are not bound
The Criterion as Participation 23
by the connotations of the words we use to label our concepts.
These should be viewed as open terms which acquire content
as we use them to order and explain reality."8
Now it is not very clear what Almond is trying to say through
all this. If he means that any characteristic or set of character-
istics which is considered as a criterion of political development
is capable of increase or decrease and thus includes in itself
indications both of political growth and political decay, then
obviously one can have little quarrel with what he is saying.
Any theory of political development would obviously be also a
theory of political decline or decay. But, equally obviously, a
theory is different from the criterion or criteria of development.
True, economists are not embarrassed by facts of fluctuation,
stagnation, and decline in national product; nor are biologists
by the decay and death of organisms. But it is equally true that
they are not in much doubt as to whether an economy is
growing or declining or remaining static or whether an or-
ganism is ill or healthy. The same, unfortunately, can hardly he
said about political scientists and the political development
about which they write so continuously and voluminously. The
day Almond or anybody else achieves this, the controversy
about the concept would cease. However, the situation with
respect to the concept of political development is that nobody
seems to know what constitutes 'political development'. Does,
for example, an increase in 'political participation' constitute
positive political development? Suppo@ing somebody answers
'yes', then he would not be justified in holding any polity to be
undergoing negative political development if 'political parti-
cipation' is increasing in that polity. Also, if there is more
political participation' in one polity than in another, then the
first would necessarily have to be considered politically more
developed than the other. There could also be differing rates of
growth in 'political participation' in different countries, and
these would determine the rates of political development also.
The same obviously would be true of any other criteria which
may he offered for political development.
Yet almost all the criteria which political scientists offer for
'political development' suffer from the defect that their presence
or absence or increase or decrease is seldom uniquely correlated
with what is considered to be either 'positive' or 'negative'
24 Political Development
development. Let this situation be clarified and then we will
know where a country stands with respect to what the author
considers a 'positive' or 'negative' political development. Yet
this is what one seldom finds. Almond talks of economic devel-
opment and suggests that the concept of political development
is equally viable. Yet, if this were so, why is it that we have no
quarterly, half-yearly, or yearly reports on the rate of 'positive'
or 'negative' political development, say, of the United States?
Has any political scientist concerned with political development
tried, for example, to determine whether the 1960-70 decade
was a period of 'negative', 'positive', or 'static' growth in rela-
tion to political development for the United States or, for that
matter, any other Western country? Even if the conclusion be
thought so self-evident as not to require any investigation, the
rates of growth may still'decline or vary between di&rent
countries. There seems something pathological in the almost
exclusive concentration of attention on the countries of Asia,
Africa, and Latin America among thinkers concerned with
political development. Would it not be strange if economists
concerned with economic development had nothing to say
about the econon-iic growth in their own countries?
Almond compares the concept of political development not
only to that of economic development, but also to that of bio-
logical and psychological growth, ignoring the important
differences between the two. One wonders what biological
growth could mean, outside the evolutionary context, except
what is generally known as maturation on the one hand and
health on the other. Maturation, to a great extent, is an almost
inevitable process inherently determined and containing in it
the future seeds of decline and death also. 1 hope Almond does
not mean anything analogous with respect to the concept of
political development. We will have occasion later to examine
the biological analogy in greater detail in connection with the
notion of evolution as applied to social and political fields. But
even here it seems clear that 'political development' is not
being seen on the model of an almost inevitable maturation im-
manently determined, as the complaint usually seems to be that
so many societies fail to make good politically. It is not that
they are stillborn or that they die when young, but that they
do survive and yet somehow fail to mature, which in the bio-
The Criterion as Participation 25
logical realm would be regarded as almost an impossibility.
@ The analogy with health, on the other hand, creates problems
of a different kind. One surely does not get healthier and
healthier and healthier, just as one may get richer and richer
and richer. And, while there are hundreds of ways of getting
ill, there is only,one way in which one may be healthy. It is not
that the phrase 'one is getting healthier' has no application, but
that it has relevance only in the context of recovering from
illness. It would be odd to say 'I am getting healthier' when 1
had not felt ill or weak earlier. Health is not the same kind of
thing as wealth, and Almond does not make clear whether he
conceives of political development on the model of one or the
other. The very fact that he refers to both health and wealth
without showing any awareness of the significant differences
between them may be taken as a sign that he has not reflected
upon the kind of development which 'political development' is.
The same criticism, of course, may be made of all the others who
have written on the subject. They have not even asked whether
'political development'is the sort of development that is capable
of indefinite, incremental growth. Sometimes they seem to ask
this question or something analogous to it. Yet the fact that
they do not stop and seek an answer before moving forward
suggests that. though the question appears to have been asked,
its significance was not perceived at all. Lucian Pye, for
example, asks, '-What is the meaning of "political development"
and what characterizes "modernization" in the realm of poli-
tics? In politics is there the same distinction as in economics
between "developed" and "underdeveloped"? Are there cer-
tain forms and conditions of politics that are necessary to
support, or at least not inhibit other forms of social and eco-
nomic development?"9 Yet, as far as 1 know, he has nowhere
tried to come to terms with these questions. In fact, he does not
seem to have even reflected upon the implications of the ques-
tions asked.
The:first question, for example, involves a distinction between
'political modernization' and 'political development' which
seems to have hardly ever been clarified by Pye or anybody else.,
Similarly, the second question raises in a crucial way the fun-
damental problem of whether the concept of 'political devel-
opment' is analogous in essential respects to that of 'economic
26 Political Development
development' or radically different from it. And, if the latter,
then what is the nature of this radical difference? Are- there,
then, different kinds of development, with almost typal differ-
ences between them? If so, the first task should have been the
analysis, delineation, and classification of different kinds of
development, 'since only then could it be detern-iined to which
type 'political development' belonged. Yet there is nothing of
the kind in Pye or any of the other political scientists who have
written on 'political development'.
The third question raises doubts about the autonomy of
'political development'. If political forms are to be judged as
'developed' or 'undeveloped' only by the fact that they are or
are not conducive to 'social and economic development', then
there is no such thing as 'political development'per se. Rather,
it is to be understood in purely instrumental terms. But then,
many different kinds of instrumentalities may achieve the same
goal, particularly if the goal itself is not too precisely defined.
Also, it is not quite clear as to what exactly is meant by 'social
development' as distinct from 'economic development'. Is it
implied that the two may occur independently of each other, or
that one is a precondition of the other, or that there is some
sort of an inverse relation between them ?
To ask these questions and try to find answers to them is to
become aware that the literature on political development is
silent about them. Lucian Pye raises them, but does not even
attempt any answer. Almond tries to escape these questions by
calling the concepts used in the discussion of 'political develop-
ment' 'open terms which acquire content as we use them to
order and explain reality'. But does this solve any problem?
Fuzziness, ambiguity, lack of clear thought, imprecision in the
formulation of questions cannot be brushed away merely by
calling the terms 'open'. In a sense, all terms having empirical
referents are 'open', but that does not mean that all objections
against any of their specific formulations can be brushed aside
merely by saying that they are 'open'.
The term 'development', then, may be 'open' as Almond
contends, and may even he treated as value-neutral as he wants
us to treat it. But, even then, none of the troubling questions
that we have been raising would cease to exist. After all, if
'development' is treated as a neutral term-and Almond is at
The Criterion as Participation 27
liberty to do so--it becomes something like 'change'. But would
not the same problems arise with respect to 'positive develop-
ment' and 'negative development'? The search for criteria for
'political development' obviously does not relate merely to
finding out whether something labelled 'political' has changed.
This presumably would not be very difficult to do. The
problems basically relate to what is to count as positive 'poli-
tical development' and what as negative. Usually, the term
'development' itself was assumed to have the term 'positive'
implied in it, and almost all the literature on 'political develop-
ment' testifies to this. But even if it were to be disinfected and
made value-neutral as Almond wants, the problems would
reappear with respect to what he himself chooses to call, 'pgsi-
tive' or 'negative' 'political development'.
The same is true with respect to Huntington's claim to have
given up the concept of 'political development'. He writes, 'In
my 1968 book, Political Order in Changing Societies, which other-
wise builds extensively on the 1965 article, the concept of
political development was quietly dropped. 1 focus instead on
what 1 conceive to be the critical relationship between political
participation and political institutionalization without worrying
about the issue of which should be labelled "political. develop-
ment".120 Now, one may not worry about what is to be called
'political development', just as one may choose to cut out the
positive implication involved in the term 'development', but
the obligation to spell out what one considers the positive direc-
tion of change in the realm of politics can hardly be given up so
easily. Though Huntington may not talk of 'political develop-
ment', he talks of 'political decay' all right. In fact, the first
chapter of his 1968 book is entitled 'Political Order and Poli-
tical Decay' in contrast to the 1965 article which was entitled,
'Political Development and Political Decay'. The only change,
thus, is in the replacement of the term 'order' for the term
'development', which presumably provides only a more specific
content to what was meant more generally in the earlier title.
He almost admits as much when he observes in the Preface,
'Economists who write about economic development presum-
ably favor it, and this book originates in parallel concern which
1 have for political stability.'21 Political stability, then, is per-
haps the same as political order, and provides for Huntington
28 Political Development
the criterion for what he considers 'political development'. In
his 1971 article, he says, 'The concept of political development
thus serves in effect as a sign of scholarly preferences rather
than as a tool for analytical purposes.'22 His own preference for
order is fairly clear as he chooses to call the reverse 'political
decay'.
Some of Huntington's arguments against the notion of
'political development' are important and, to some extent,
we ourselves will use them in various parts of our discussion in
this work. But the impression which he tries to create of having
given up the concept of 'political development' is not quite
accurate. Only it is now conceived of as a relationship between
two variables. rather than being singly determined by either of
them. He himself has given the basic equation as
Political Participation
Political Institutionalization' = zull[lcal 'Lnsx:a Dility..
Assuming that political instability is the opposite of political
order, it would follow that
- -. . - - . Political. Institutionalization
Fohtical Urder Political Participation
Further, if 'political decay' is the same as 'political instability',
then it is obvious that for Huntington 'political institutionaliza-
tion' is positively and directly correlated with whatever is the
opposite of 'political decay'. The correlation of 'political parti-
cipation', on the other hand, is negative, and thus he was not
very wrong in titling his 1965 article 'Political Development and
Political Decay'. Only now the dynamic thrust is seen as coming
from the negative factor, that is, 'political participation', and
whether it results in political decay or political order depends
upon the capacity of political institutions to absorb it and, in the
process, adapt to each other. Riggs has developed a slightly
more sophisticated and generalized theory out of this, but at
least he has admitted that what he is talking about is 'develop-
mental conffiet'.24 There seems no reason to think that Hunt-
ington is talking about something which is different in any
essential respect from what Riggs is talking about. We will have
occasion later to discuss in detail the contentions of both with
respect to what they regard as 'political development', but
The Criterion as Participation 29
there seems no reason to think that Huntington does not believe
in something which others call 'political development' and
which he seems afraid to designate as such.
'Participation', then, has been regarded as a criterion of
positive political development by most political scientists.
However, there are some like Huntington who regard it
primarily as a negative factor, while others like Riggs regard it
as that negative element in the dialectics of development which
makes it possible to reach higher levels of political synthesis. But
whether positive or negative, and whether creatively negative
or just negative, it has always played a key role in all thought
concerned with political development. Yet if there is such
diversity in the ways in which it can be understood as a
criterion, ranging from the purely positive to the purely nega-
tive, it is obvious that, apart from the purely subjective idio-
syncrasies of the authors, there must be something besides
participation itself which tends to make some relate it positively
and others negatively to what they regard as 'polit@cal develop-
ment'.
The reason why 'participation' is regarded as a positive
sign relates to the fact that it is only through participation that
one can make known what one thinks or feels or wants with
respect to the system, and that one can play some part in
shaping it nearer not only to the desire of one's heart but also to
the judgement of one's head. But for this reason, it is also felt-
to use a phrase of Almond-that 'the capabilities of a system
may be overloaded', and that the proverbial too many cooks
can indeed spoil the broth. The point obviously is that if
participation' is seen in terms of 'demands' upon the system,
then too many demands may break the system. On the other
hand, if it is seen in terms of 'counselling and taking part in the
decision-making process', then too many counsels and too many
decision-makers may frustrate the process itself. The former is
usually known in the literature as 'interest articulation', while
the latter has been given no specific, distinctive name, though
'interest aggregation' and 'capabilities' refer to some of its
aspects. We will discuss each of these in detail later on.
The notion of 'participation' has recently been modified by
some thinkers. Brunner and Brewer, for example, suggest that a
more useful conceptualization of political participation may be
30 Political Development
found in 'the capacity of a group or section to respond to
changes in its life situation by giving or withholding support for
the government'. And, 'more generally, participation i@ the
extent to which stimuli or felt needs can be converted into
meaningful responses at the aggregate ICVCII.2,1 This is close to
what Almond calls 'interest articulation'. But it seems a little
strange to define 'participation' in terms of 'capacity' which is
basically something dispositional rather than actual. Also it
seems odd that the definition, if taken literally, would exclude
any political concern or response that was related not to changes
in the group's own life situation but to issues of concern to other
groups in the same polity or even in other countries. This would
make all idealistic involvement in politics non-participatory by
definition. The authors, further, fail to see that if 'political
participation' is defined in terms of the capacity to give or
withhold support to the government, then it is only a
minority which can ever, even potentially, participate in the
political process, as it is only a minority which possesses this
capaci@y in any significant or substantial degree. Not only this, it
would, on this analysis, be in the interest of each group to see
that others do not get this capacity. This may occur. But if, in
such a circumstance, 'participation' is still treated as a criterion
of 'positive political development', then the latter can only be
achieved by an egalitarian distribution of all that contributes to
such a capacity. Yet, as such distribution would not be to the
interest of any specific group, and as unselfish participation is
,ruled out by definition, it would follow that positive political
development in the sense of enlargement of participation would
happen only rarely and then too by accident. The hope in such
a situation may perhaps be seen to lie in the possible conflict
amongst those who have this capacity and in their attempts to
augment their capacity by trying to win over those with little
or no capacity of their own except numbers.
It is interesting, however, to see why the authors consider it
necessary to view the notion of 'participation' in this manner.
The reason lies in the f@ct that they found voting turnout rates
in Turkey and the Philippines too high for their taste. These
countries, after all, have to be regarded as politically under-
developed, and if they show high levels of political participation
as measured by voting turnout, then either 'participation' is not
The Criterion as Participation 31
a criterion of 'political development' or voting turnout is not a
measure of 'participation'. The authors chose the latter alterna-
tive. They write, 'In man' countries that are still considered
y
relatively underdeveloped there are already very high levels of
voting turnout. In Turkey, for example, the turnout rates were
39%, 89%, and 77% of the eligible electorate in the general
elections of 1950, 1954, and 1957, respectively. The Philippine
presidential elections of 1946, 1949, 1953, 1957 and 1961 had
turnout rates of 89.6%, 67.7%, 77.2%, 75.5% and 79.4% of
the registered electorate. If the phenomenon called participa-
tion is increasing in the less developed countries, then turnout
rates are not an accurate measure of it. 121 But why not? They
may not be an accurate measure, but they certainly are some
measure of it.
The trouble with most criteria of political deve pnient, as we
shall see later on, is that they either turn countries which are
presumably 'politically developed' into being politically under-
developed or vice versa or both. The only criterion which seems
an exception to this is the criterion of economic growth. But if
that criterion be accepted, then there remains no real need for
thinking about 'political development' in any specific, separate
sense of the term. 'Participation' is a case in point. If voting
turnout, especially in democratic countries, is accepted as at
least one of the key measures of 'political participation', then
the United States appears woefully underdeveloped politically.
'The number of eligible Americans who have actually voted in
presidential elections since World War 11 has ranged from 51.5
per cent in 1948 to 63.8 per cent.in 1960.'27 If one compares
these figures with those for Turkey and the Philippines given
earlier, one sees the degree of 'political underdevelopment'
which the United States suffers in contemporary times. Unfor-
tunately, this conclusion is not very acceptable to writers on
political development' as not only do most of them happen to
3
be U.S.'citizens but also, if they were to accept it, they would
find little to make a country such as Turkey or the Philippines
interesting as examples of emulation for'political development'.
But it is not only the so-called 'underdeveloped' countries
which have a higher voter turnout than the U.S.A. Most
Western European countries seem to enjoy the same advantage.
For example, 'Turnout in Italy and Belgium in the years since
32 Political Develo pment
World War 11 has approximated 90 per cent; in Denmark,
West Gerniany, and Great Britain, 80-85 per cent; and in
Canada, Norway, Finland, and japan, 70-80 per cent.'28 Yet,
it seems diflicult for any political scientist to conclude on the
basis of these figures that the U.S. is far, far more 'politically
underdeveloped' than these countries. The writer, of course,
goes on to say that 'The few cross-national studies conducted
so far indicate, however, that despite the low turnout, other
indexes of participation-political interest and awareness, ex-
pressed party afffilation, sense of political competence, etc.-
tend to, be higher in the United States than in many other
countries, such as France and Italy."" He does not give any
judgement as to the relative weightage of all these factors vis-a-
vis voter turnout, nor does he give any explanation as to why
politics which @core high on other indices should he low on
voter turnout, when perhaps that is the area where citizens can
be most effective in the political system.
The deeper problem with respect to 'participation', however,
relates to the fact that so few people who can participate in the
political process actually do so to any great extent. As Bryce
observed, 'only a small group gives constant attention to
politics, a slightly larger group is interested but comparatively
passive, while the mass of men are largely indifferent'.30 The
only alternative in such a situation seems to be to force people
to 'participate' in politics, to make participation involuntary
rather than voluntary-not a matter of choice, but of com-
pulsion. This, to a great extent, has been the tendency o f
totalitarian politics. Yet there are very few persons who would
consider such 'enforced participation' a sign of 'political devel-
opment'. The very fact that participation has to be forced
shows that it is not desired and that if the enforcement were to
be removed, in all likelihood non-participation would increase
tremendously.
It may be that large-scale participation in the political pro-
cess is a sign not of health but of disease in the body politic.
When the polity is healthy, people can take it for granted and
pursue other interests which they regard as worthwhile. It is
only when they find it impossible to take it for granted, as it
becomes increasingly difficult for them to pursue ends which
they regard as worthwhile, that they begin more and more to
The Criterion as Participation 33
concern themselves with politics. The body politic may be some-
thing like the human body, in that the less you are aware of
it as a problem, the healthier you are. There are obvious ex-
ceptions to this, but on the whole it is a fair description of the
situation.
The 'participation' criterion of political development, thus,
appears to run into difliculties for which there seem no very
adequate answers in the literature' concerning the subject.
First, it is not quite clear whether it is a sign of positive or
negative political development. Though generally it is treated
as a positive indicator, many of the political problems that
plague the so-called developing countries are usually attributed
to it also. Second, it is not quite clear whether 'participation'
is to be voluntary or involuntary in order to be counted a
criterion of 'political development'. If voluntary, it is not quite
clear whether an increase indicates the sorry state of affairs in
the polity or just a growing sense of responsibility and a desire
for self-determination in the populace. If involuntary, on the
other hand, it is not very clear whether it is only formal parti-
cipation which is to be obligatory or whether even the direction
which one's participation is to take is to be prescribed. At an
even more fundamental level, it is seldom made clear what
exactly is meant by 'participation'. Also, as there is a limit to
participation, there would have to be one to political develop-
ment also. The voting age, for example, can be reduced, but
not indefinitely. The franchise can be extended and legal
disabilities removed. But obviously there is a point beyond
which one cannot go. There is such a thing as universal
franchise, and it is not difficult of achievement either. The
obstructions in the w@@ of the exercise of franchise could also
be removed, and thus complete political development could be
achieved on the basis of this criterion.
Is 'political development', then, a sort of development which
can be completely achieved? If 'participation' be the criterion
and if it be understood in the usual sense, then there seems no
reason why this should not be so. But then, 'political develop-
ment' would not he the indefinitely incremental sort of thing
we usually tend to think all 'development' to be. Perhaps that
is the reason why most thinking concerning 'political develop-
ment' tends to concentrate on the countries of Asia, Africa, and
34 Political Development
Latin America, as the U.S. and most countries of Western
Europe may be assumed to have reached the goal already.
Development, of course, need not be conceived of as just
incremental in character. Instead, it may be conceived of as
involving radical breaks between one level and another. The
movement from one- level to another and the relationship
between the levels may be thought of in dialectical terms, but
this is not necessary. Yet, whether it is conceived of dialectically
or not, the idea of development in terms of radical breaks
does not escape the, problem raised by the denial of the possibi-
lity of indefinite incremental growth with respect to 'political
development'. The advocates of socialist or communist notions
of 'political development' find themselves in the same dilemma
as those who espouse what are usually called democratic con-
ceptions. One's ideal paradigm may be the Soviet Union or
Maoist China, just as the paradigm of democratic political
development may be the United States of America or Great
Britain or any other country of Western Europe. But the issue
as to what ''political development' means for such a country
remains the same. The advocates-of each pattern could easily
spell out what it would mean for a polity of the other type to,
develop politically. But what development would mean in
their own case they could hardly tell. To admit the possibility
of 'political development', except in a very, very marginal
sense, is to admit that one. has not achieved the polity one
wanted to achieve. What would it mean for revolution to occur;
say, in the Soviet Union or Maoist China? The question when
posed in terms of 'revolution' brings the dilemma into the open.
But 'revolution' is merely another name for 'political develop-
ment' in this context. What can occur, for those who accept
these nations as paradigms of communist politics, is only
'counter-revolution'. The situation is the same on the other side,
though few appear to regard it as such. But that is primarily
because most writers on such matters tend to accept com-
munist countries as paradigmatic examples of developed poli-
tics. It is, however, not difficult to find explicit statements on the
other side. Euge-ne Kamenka writes, for example. 'The conc@pt
of universality has been exhausted for all practical purposes,
in the attaining of representative government and reasonable
economic affluence. The revolution of the future in advanced.
The Criterion as Participation 35
democratic, industrialized society could only be counter-
revolution, a seizure of power by a group intent on re-establish-
ing despotic rule and a status society.'311
The term 'development', in fact, is used in many senses and
does not always connote the possibility of indefinite growth.
Perhaps 'political development' is a development of the sort
where this connotation is not made. But if this is so, then this is
-the first thing to he clarified..Nornially, it is discussed, debated,
and written about on the analogy of economic development.
But if it does not permit of indefinite growth in principle, it is
different from economic development in certain fundamental
and essential respects, and the analogy then becomes very
misleading.
On the other hand, if it is treated as an ideal which societies
only asymptotically approximate and which they may approach
but never completely realize, and if 'participation' is conceived
of as dchning what this development consists in, then 'parti-
cipation' itself has to be thought of in such a way that it could
be indefinitely approximated to but never completely actual-
ized. ln,such a situation, it obviously has to go beyond voter
turnout and even beyond the other so-called indices such as
political interest and awareness, expressed party affiliation,
sense of political competence, etc., which McClos@y mentions
in his article, cited earlier. But if the sense of 'participation' is
extended beyond what is involved in the notion of 'representa-
tive' government based on universal suffrage, we run up
against what we have earlier called the difficulty of 'involuntary
vs. voluntary participation', and, at a deeper level still, against
the basic asymmetry involved in all power relations themselves.
It may be correct, as Dahl observes, that 'even today what
one ordinarily calls democracies are, as we all know, a very
long way from being fully democratized political systems..'32
But if 'the plateau on which the democracies repose is ... a
long way from what a reasonable observer might regard as the
summit of political democracy', because 'it is obvious that
political influence is distributed with great unevenness',33 then
iparticipation' in the sense of 'democratization' would seem to
mean equal distribution of political influence or, in other words,
equal distribution of political power. But can power be equally
distributed? And even if, by some miracle, someone were to
36 Political Development
distribute it equally@whatever may be meant by that term-
would it remain so distributed for long?
The basic asymmetry which is involved in all power rela-
tionships has seldom been the object of sustained reflection on
the part of those who have conceived of 'political development'
in terms of equality of political power. But if political power is
distinguished from other kinds of power by its ultimate com-
mand over instruments of physical coercion, then equal dis-
tribution becomes even more difficult in its case. The relation
between different kinds of power has seldom been clarified,
but if the political realm claims a certain foundational primacy
because of its control over means of legitimate coercion, then
it is obvious that such a control could not be distributed equally.
Further, if a certain positive relationship be accepted between
other kinds of power and political power in the sense of exercise
of political influence, then it is intrinsically impossible that
political influence could ever be evenly distributed amongst all
members of a polity. The- situation could perhaps be retrieved
theoretically if we- were to postulate that each individual has
supremacy in one particular type of power and if all types of
power were to be treated as equivalent in strength or influence.
This, however, would run against the primacy of political power
over all other powers and against the possibility of some people
combining and thus forming a more powerful combination
against others. The latter possibility is presumably taken care of
by the democratic principle of majority rule, but it reinstates
to some extent the asymmetry between those who command the
majority and those who do not.
Yet, however intractable may be the problem raised by the
asymmetrical character of power relationships, the hoped-for
amelioration through extension of participation in the political
process reveals at least one of its essential purposes. It mitigates
to some extent the unevenness in the distribution of political
influence. And, to the extent that the capacity for political
influence is itself a function of other kinds of inequalities, it
works for their amelioration also. But the type of inequalities
whose amelioration may be sought has to be such that mitiga-,
tion is possible. In other words, they have to be man-made, that
is, social or institutional in origin. Yet this very origin suggests
the difficulties in the way of their removal. There are vested
The Criterion as Participation 37
interests in the perpetuation of existing inequalities, and it is
the task of those who want to remove them to articulate and
attempt to secure their counter-interests. Political development,
then, may be seen as an increase in 'interest articulation', and
the latter may he treated as another criterion in terms of which
political development may be articulated andjudged.
The concept of 'participant citizenship' has been articulated
by Inkeles in terms of freedom from traditional authority,
interest in public affairs, and political rationality. He suggests
that-there is a participant citizenship syndrome which consists
of five factors. It 'includes identification with an allegiance to
supra-local and non-parochial public authority; interest in
civic affairs; information about political figures; participation
in public organizations; and adherence to rational organiza-
tional rules as a basis for running government affairs' .34 Itis not
quite clear whether he would take an increase in this syndrome
as a sign of political development, but as he takes it as almost a
sine qua non of modernity an 'd as, presumably, to be modern is
to be politically developed, it may be assumed that he would
take it as such also. Yet, whether the so-called syndrome be an
empirical fact or not, it is fairly obvious that he has not even
raised the questions we have been concerned with, let alone
made any attempt to answer them. In fact, the continuous con-
fusion between 'modernization' and 'development' seldom
permits most writers on the subject to come clearly to grips
with the problem and to tackle the fundamental issues related
to it.
Inkeles' study, for example, is concerned with the empirical
establishment of what he calls the 'participant citizenship
syndrome' and its specific relation to what may be considered
some sort of 'modernity scale' on which various politics may
ranked. The notion of 'modernity' is generally tied up with
temporal considerations in such a way as to make it impossible
for any country or civilization in the past to be considered
'modern'. On the other hand, it is identified with certain
characteristics which were supposed to be first exhibited in
countries of Western Europe and then taken over elsewhere by
other countries also. It is not made quite clear whether these
characteristics, once acquired either by some process of creative
innovation or by imitation, would last forever, or whether they
4
38 Political Development
could possibly slip away onc 1c again. Is the possession of
'modernity', in other words, a permanent possession? Or can
it be got hold of and lost, like other things in life? Or is it the
sort of thing with respect to which possession may fluctuate?
There, can always be, so to say, 'more' or 'less' modernity, and
there are no reasons why a particular polity may not move
forward or slide back, as the case may be. But to adn-iit the
possibility of sliding back is to admit that time is not the essence
of the matter, for a country which is not 'modern' today could
very well have been so in the past. Yet once this'is admitted
there seems no intrinsic reason why politics in ancient times
could not have been 'modern' in comparison to many that
exist today. Also, by the same logic, those that are modern
today could cease to be so tomorrow.35
In fact, it is a little strange to find someone seriously implying
that the five factors constituting 'participant citizenship' can
only be found in the so-called 'modern societies' in modern
times. It is difficult to believe that someone could be seriously
contending that interest in civic affairs, or identification with
supra-local, non-parochial public authority, or participation
in public organizations, or adherence to rational organizational
rules as a basis for running government affairs, or information
about political figures could individually or collectively be
significantly absent from any large, complex polity at any time,
whether present or past. If it is suggested that it is all a matter
of quantitative mix and significant proportions, then the author
concerned should make clear what he considers to -be the exact
critical minimum which would constitute 'modernity'. Yet this
is seldom even attempted. As we have already pointed out, the
voter turnout proportions for the United States, for example,
would make it relatively undeveloped in relation to many so-
called undeveloped countries.
Inkeles' study, thus, suffers from the basic defect of not even
having raised certain crucial questions, and it is therefore
mostly irrelevant to the issue we are discussing. Even on the
empirical plane, one must conclude that something is seriously
wrong with the study, as at least one of its findings seems com-
pletely mistaken in the light of later developments. According
tolhim, 'only in East Pakistan does the observed pattern support
the unitary conception of the modern political man. There,
The Criterion as Participation 39
those who are active citizens are also consistently more benevolent
toward other groups and more satisfied with the government's
performances'' One wonders what is meant by 'active citizens'
in this context. Everyone who had anything to do with East
Pakistan knew of the deep dissatisfaction felt by the people
there against a government which was controlled mainly by
people in West Pakistan-a dissatisfaction so widespread and
deep-rooted that it later resulted in a civil war leading to the
dismemberment of Pakistan and the establishment of an inde-
pendent country, Bangla Desh, out of what was formerly known
as East Pakistan. Yet this empirical study, scientifically con-
ducted with liberal funds, technical expertise, and sophisticated
methodology, came to an opposite conclusion which, if true,
would have rendered impossible what is already a fact of
history. If such studies can go so far wrong in understanding
present societies, one wonders how far they can be relied upon
for characterizations 'of societies that are past. One should,
perhaps, take what they say not merely with a pinch, but
rather, a ton of salt.*'
* Professor Inkeles in a personal discussion pointed out that my criticism was
misplaced as in the study mentioned he was 'not making generalizations to the
national populations' (p. 1120). But then we may legitimately wonder what is the
significance of his findings regarding the exemplification of 'the unitary conception
of modern political man' in East Pakistan or of those relating to the 'active citizens'
in that country. The reader may judge the matter for hirwelf, as presumably the
presence of these findings would. not only suggest the relative modernity of East
Pakistan in the light of the criteria mentioned but also be regarded as favourable
for the chances of political stability in that country.
NOTES
1. Hannah Arendt, On Revolution (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1973).
2. For an interesting discussion of this, see Robert A. Dahl, After the Revolution?
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970).
3. Benjaniin N. Cardozo, The ivature of the 7udkial Process (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 192 1).
4. Lucian W. Pye, Aspects of Political Development (Boston: Little, Brown & Co.,
1966), p. 45.
5. Fred W. Riggs, 'The Dialectics of Developmental Conffict', Comparative
Political Studies, 1 (July 1968).
40 Political Development
6. Samuel P. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1968).
7. Sydney Verba, Bashiruddin Ahmed, and Anil Bhatt, Caste, Race, and Politic.%
(Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1971).
8. Ibid., p. 29.
9. Ibid., pp. 29-32.
10. Ibid., p. 29.
11. Ibid.,
12. Ibid., pp. 255, 262.
13. Ibid., p. 32.
14. Ibid., p. 2 1.
15. Arthur S. Banks and Robert B. Textor, A Cross-Poli@y Survey (Boston: M.I.T.
Press, 1963).
16. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies, p. 55. Also, 'The Change to
Change', Comparative Politics, April 1971, p. 314.
17. Gabriel A. Almond and G. Bingham Powell, Jr., Comparative Politks: A
Developmental Approach (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1966), p. 34.
18. Gabriel A. Almond, 'Political Development: Analytical and Normative per-
spectives', in Comparative Political Studies, 1969, p. 458.
19. Lucian Pye and Sidney Verba (eds), Political Culture and Political Development
(Princeton: Prinecton University Press, 1965), p. 4.
-20. Huntington, 'The Change to Change', pp. 304-5.
21. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies, p. vii.
22. Huntington, 'The Change to Change', p. 304.
23. Ibid., p. 314.
24. Riggs, 'The Dialectics of Developmental Conflict', p. 197.
25. Ronald D. Brunner and Garry D. Brewer, Organized Complexi@y (New York:
Free Press, 197 1), p. 1 1.
26. Ibid., pp. 10-1 1.
27. U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1965, p. 384, quoted by I-Ierbert MeClosky in the
article 'Political Participation', in International ~clopedia of the Social Sciences,
vol. 12, p. 254.
28. MeClosky, p. 255.
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid., p. 254.
31. Eugene Kamenka, 'The Concept of a Political Revolution', in Revolution, ed.
Cari T. Friedrich (Nomos VIII, New York: Atherton Press, 1966), p. 134.
32. Dahl, AM the Revolution @', pp. 4-5.
33. Ibid., p. 6.
34. Alex Inkeles, 'Participant Citizenship in Six Developing Countries', The
American Political Science Review, 63 (Dec. 1969), p. 1 1 39.
35. Tome of the issues raised here are closely rel@ated to the question whether there
is any such thing as political evolution. We will discuss this in detail later
in connection (see pp@ 47-65) with the so-called evolutionistic perspective in
the discussion on political development.
36. Inkeles, 'Participant Citizenship in Six Developing Countries', p. 1129.
Italics mine.,
2
THE CRITERION AS
DIFFERENTIATION
(1) Differentiation
'Participation' may be said to be immanently embedded in the
domain of the political itself. And, though we have pointed out
the intrinsic conflict caused by the asymmetrical character of
power, which also belongs inalienably to the domain of the
political, one may yet concede participation to be a moral
demand that arises from and belongs to the realm itself. The
same, however, can hardly be said of the other criterion most
commonly offered by writers in this field. 'Differentiation' is so
often offered as a criterion of 'political development', and by
writers of such different persuasions, that it will not be amiss to
exan-iine it in some detail at this stage. And the first thing to
note about differentiation is that it has nothing to do specifically
with political development. Rather, it is regarded as a criterion
of development in general, and therefore political development,
as a type of development, may be expected to show this
characteristic also. The political character of development,
then, may be considered as detern-iining the fact that differen-
tiation in this domain lies in the realm of institutions and func-
tions which are specifically political in character.
Normally, differentiation is taken as a sign of development
(and by 'development' from now on we will always mean
'positive development') because it is supposed to contribute to
the efficient functioning of the system. But it may also be
implied that unless differentiation has occurred, an entity will
not have come into being, and without this one could not even
talk of development or non-development or underdevelopment.
Differentiation, in this perspective, would be a precondition for
42 Political Development
the emergence of a separate, distinctive entity. But by the same
logic it would not be a sign of development unless it be the
development of the undifferentiated entity from which or
within which it has been differentiated. Yet if the latter alterna-
tive is accepted, the differentiated entity would still be seen in
terms of that within which it has been differentiated and not
in terms of its own separate, distinctive identity. The function
which differentiation was supposed to perform, thus, gets
nullified in this perspective. Further, if differentiation is sup-
posed to be a development of the, undifferentiated, then the
differentiated, in order to develop itself, must become further
differentiated, and so on ad infinitum. Also, in the undiffer-
entiated stage- the differentiations must, to some extent, have
been implicit. Riggs has used the terms 'fused' and 'refracted'
for these notions.
These two dimensions in the notion of 'differentiation' as a
criterion of political development are themselves fused in the
writings of most political scientists on the subject. The separa-
tion of the 'political realm' itself is taken as a sign of social
development, and the further differentiation of the political
realm into specialized institutions concerned with specific func-
tions is taken as a sign of political development. It is not clearly-
indicated whether a further differentiation of these specialized
institutions with t4eir specific functions would be regarded as
development and, if so, of what. Presumably@ on the previous
analogy, it would be a development directly of these institutions
and their functions, and indirectly of the political realm, and
still more- indirectly, of society as a whole. Following this logic,
it may and perhaps will be said that ultimately it is a develop-
ment of the whole human race, and, in fact, of the whole cosmos
itself.
The presupposition that structures and functions are capable,
of infinite analysis is writ large on this way of conceiving the
notion of development. The analysis is not to he merely con-
ceptual in nature. Rather, it is an actual process of subdivision
which perhaps can be carried on ad infinitum. This possibility of
unlimited subdivision is, in fact, the ground of the possibility of
infinite development which otherwise would find its necessary
limitation in the limits to the possibility of differentiation itself
Most thinkers, however, have not concerned themselves with
The Criterion as Diferentiation 43
the problems raised by this requirement of a perpetual possibi@
lity of differentiation as a precondition for the existence of a
permanent possibility of development. If, for any reason, fur-
ther differentiation could not be conceived, or, if conceived,
were not actually feasible, then, in this perspective, develop-
ment would not be possible either.
Differentiation, thus, may be seen either as the coming into
being of something distinctive with an independent separate
being of its own, or as a process which, when it takes place
within an entity; provides for a more effident performance of
the function attributed to that entity. In the former case, the
notion of development does not make sense unless interpreted
in the purely quantitative sense of an increase in the number of
entities in the world. In the second sense, however, one would
have to integrate the function of the.differentiated structure to
that of the one within which the differentiation has taken place.
This integration may presumably be effected by some other
differentiated structure which specifically performs the integra-
tive function, or it may be brought about by the interrelation
between different structures which, occurs, perhaps,. automatic-
ally. The first alternative would probably be regarded as an
example of greater development by those who accep't the idea of
differentiation per se as a criterion of development. But in what-
ever manner the integrative function be performed, the neces-
sity for it -arises because of the fact that differentiation has taken
place. On the other hand, if the so-called integrated differentia-
tion is to succeed, then the function of both entities or structures
have to be in balance with each other. But, in that case, there
seems little reason to call one rather than another a criterion of
development.
There are other difficulties in the notion which have hardly
engaged the attention of those who have sought to find in it a
clue to the secret of what development really consists in. If, for
example, integration is necessitated by the fact of differential
tion, then differentiation per se could not be a criterion of devel-
opment, political or otherwise. Rather, it would be a sort of
negative indication, for whatever it brings into being has some-
how to be balanced by integrative forces or mechanisms which
must be able to cope with it. If this is not done, then differen-
tiation may be just another name for dissolution. Yet, once the
44 Political Develo ,pment
possibility of there being too much differentiation is admitted,
it would follow that differentiation per se could not be taken as
a criterion of development. Rather, the criterion would be some
sort of a ratio between integration and@ differentiation, where
each tends to be balanced by the other. But, as everybody
knows, a ratio is a function of two numbers and the more we
would have of differentiation, the more we would need of
integration, and even though the two numbers may change the
ratio could still be the same. There is no difference, for example,
between 214 and 418. Therefore, if development be treated as a
ratio between integration and differentiation, then, even though
there may be an ostensible increase in both, it would be illusory
to think that there has been any real development.*
The notion of integration, if brought into a discussion of the
problem of development, raises problems of its own. If it is
supposed to occur automatically, it raises the question whether
there can be any such thing as disintegration. The relevance of
the question may be seen if we ask what it would mean for the
universe, meaning by that the totality of all that is. to lack
integration. In a fundamental sense, whatever is, must by that
very fact be assumed to be integrated, since if it were not so
integrated, it would just not be. In the context of a larger
totality, then, there would always be integration, whether there
occurs any differentiation or not.
On the other hand, if integration itself is the function of the
differentiated structure, then the .@hole co-ordinated system
with its differentiated structures along with their differentiated
functions would be a sign of development. But if one asks
'development of what ?'then one would have difficulty in finding
an answer. It could not be a development of itself, for 'develop-
ment' is a comparative term, and the whole differentiated
system is a'sign of the development of something which was
undeveloped before. But if the whole system, including the
integrating structure, has differentiated itself into an autonom-
ous entity, then how can it be considered a development of
anything else ?
The issue may perhaps gain a little more clarity if we ask
* The problenu related to development conceived as a relationship betwee:
two or more factors wW be discussed in Chapter 4, section (8), pp. 160-78.
The Criterion as Differ..ntiation 45
ourselves whether the coming into being of any entity is in
itself a sign of development. This could only be so when it is
taken as a sign of something else, whether quantitatively or
qualitatively or both. In itself, it could not be considered in a
developmental perspective, though development could be con-
ceived of with respect to it or even in relation to entities other
than itself. Thus, the concept of development may be said to be
applied to an entity either in relation to its own previous states
or in relation to other entities having some property or set of
properties in respect of which they may be regarded as rele-
vantly comparable.
Now, in none of these senses can differentiation per se be con-
sidered a sign of development. It may well be such a sign, but it
does not have to be such. Whether with respect to an entity's
own past or with respect to a relevant comparison with some
other entity, there seems no surety that the mere fact of
differentiation by itself would ensure development. In bureau-
cratic structures, differentiation may simply be a sign of what
has been called Parkinson's Law. In the case- of a political
entity like an empire or a nation, it may just he a sign of the
weakening of central authority, or even of an'increasing ques-
tioning of its basic legitimacy. In a social structure, it may be a
sign of alienation or even of an increase in parochial, self-
centred interests.*
The objection may be made that these are not the types of
differentiation which are meant when it is offered as a criterion
of development. But there would then be different types of
differentiation, and it would have to be specified as to what
type is to be taken as a criterion of development. Unfortunately,
the literature on the subject offers little help in this connection.
It talks only of differentiation and does not seem to distinguish
between those types that are a sign of positive development,
and those that are not.
Basicall@, differentiation is supposed to result in a more
efficient functioning of the system and is, therefore, accepted
as a sign of development. But, viewed in this manner, it would
be such a sign only indirectly. The direct sign would be the
* The criterion of political development in terms of interest articulation will be
discussed in Chapter 4, section (1), pp. W94.
46 Political Development
effidiency of the, performance itself. Yet, unless it be assumed
that differentiation always results in an increase in the efficiency
of performance, it would be difficult to hold that it is always a
sign of development. But, though this assumption seems most
difficult to establish, it is taken as almost axiomatic in most
literature on the subject. There seems hardly any attempt to
establish empirically that it.is so. The facts of evolution and the
social and economic benefits associated with the division of
labour are apparently supposed to make the exercise unneces-
sary. But even if the evidence were as decisive as it is usually
thought to be, this would still not settle the issue. It is quite
possible that, the functions we expect from a living organism or
from an economic system are of such a type that they are best
accomplished by a differentiating process wherein each sub-
system performs its own specialized function. But it does not
follow from this that all functions need necessarily be of this
type. Or, even that these functions provide some pre-eminent
paradigm which ought to be accepted till the case for a radical
distinction with respect to some other functions is securely
established. One does not find the functions which a political
system is supposed to perform delineated very clearly in the
literature on the subject.* Nor does there seem to be any
attempt to establish that they would be, better performed if
there were to be a differentiation of structures and functions
And, it does not seem even to be asked whether there is such a
thing as an unlimited possibility of differentiation of both
structures and functions. Further, the ideal of a one-to-one
correlation between structure and function tends to be im-
plicitly assumed, even though according to many of the same
writers the two :@re almost invariably mixed up in actually
existing institutions. Yet, if there are such mix-ups, and if it is
true that even when institutions are specially set up to perform
a particular function they tend to take on other functions also,
then it should be a matter for reflection as to why this happens
to be so. If, in fact, the distinction between manifest and latent
functions is taken seriously, and it is also accepted that these
two kinds of functions are found everywhere and are usually
' Those which have been suggested will be discussed at length in Chapters 3
and 4.
The Criterion as Differentiation . 47
different, then the very notion of a one-to-one correlation
between structure and function is jeopardized at its very core.
For it would then be impossible in principle to have a structure
perform just one function, since besides carrying out the so-called
manifest function, it would also be performing a latent function
which is different from the first.
The criterion of differentiation, then, to say the least, is an
ill-thought-out notion. Yet, as its strength is derived from its
base in evolutionary theory, and as the concept of development
itself is supposed to be grounded in evolution, it will not be
amiss to examine this foundation itself.
1
(2) The Theory of Evolution as a Groundfor
the Criterion as Differentiation
Evolution means many things to many people. For some, it
takes the place of religion in that it provides a grounding for
the belief that there is something inherent in the universe which
makes for progressive development. Darwin himself tried to
make evolution do what was supposed to be a function of the
biblical god, that is, the creation of species. Since then, many
other people with great reputations have tried to discover all
the divine functions in evolution. We need hardly refer to
Teilhard de Chardin's Phenomenon of Man or Sri Aurobindo's
The Life Divine, when we have a supreme example in Sir julian
Huxley, the eminent biologist, who is surcharged with a lyrical
passion for what he himself has called 'the evolutionary vision5. 1
According to Huxley, 'the evolutionary vision ... illuminates
our existence in a simple, but almost overwhelming, way. It
exemplifies the truth that truth is great and will prevail, and
the greater truth that truth will set us free. Evolutionary truth
frees us from subservient fear of the unknown and supernatural
and exhorts us to face this new freedom with courage tempered
with wisdom and hope tempered with knowledge. It shows us
our destiny and our duty. It shows mind enthroned above
matter, quantity subordinate to quality.'?
Now anything that can do all this must be miraculous indeed.
And perhaps Sir julian intends it to be taken in just'that way.
After all, he is an eminent scientist and would not use his words
in too loose a fashion. Yet, it was he who insisted all through
48 Political Development
the Chicago Conference on 'Evolution After Darwin' to
celebrate the Centennial of the Origin of Species that evolution
was 'no longer a theory, but a faet'.3 But if something which is a
fact involves all the value components which he ascribes to it in the
above statement, then it is a very odd kind of fact indeed. It
does not merely involve the identity of the factual and the
valuational, but also a guarantee that there is something in the
nature of reality which ensures the triumph of value over
disvalue or, in more traditional language, of good over evil. But
this, as most students of philosophy would recognize, is usually
regarded as a fallacy. G. E. Moore christened it'the Naturalistic
Fallacy'4 at the beginning of the century and since then it has
generally been referred to by that name. Not all philosophers
are in agreement about it (they hardly agree on anything), but
anyone who does not subscribe to this view usually feels it
incumbent on himself to come to terms with it. Not so Sir
julian, or any of the other luminaries gathered together to
celebrate the Darwin Centennial.
In fact, as one looks through the roster of celebrities who
participated in the conference, one is struck by the fact that
hardly any philosophers were listed. Perhaps philosophy was
not supposed to be relevant to any of the discussions that were
to be held. But if the sort of ideas Sir julian propounded were
considered relevant to the issue of the conference, then it is
difficult to see how the contributions of philosophers who have
concerned themselves with the notion of evolution could have
been considered irrelevant to it. One is struck, in fact, by the
paucity of critical attitudes throughout the conference as
reported in the commemorative volumes. It was as if the
Centennial were a celebration not so much in honour of Darwin
as of evolution itself. To be critical in such an atmosphere
would have appeared a sign of bad manners, if not downright
heresy. It was a meeting of the faithful, and the doubting
Thomases had perhaps been deliberately excluded.
All this may seem unfair to the organizers and participants
in the conference. The reason why everything was discussed
except the notion of evolution itself, we may he told, lay in the
situation itself. Within the scientific community, there is no
dispute about the fact of evolution. As Huxicy said at the very
beginning, in television previews called 'At Random', 'the
The Criterion as Differentiation 49
first point to make about Darwin's theory is that it is no longer
a theory, but a fact. No serious scientist would deny the fact
that evolution has occurred, just as he would not deny the fact
that the earth goes round the sun'. 6 And, slightly later on, 'But
all scientists agree that evolution is a fact. There.are two
problems involved here. First whether evolution has happened
-and there is absolutely no disagreement among scientists that
it has. The second problem is how evolution takes place, and
here there has been argument, although we have made enor-
mous progress in understanding the process of evolution and
the role of natural selection in it.'6
But do all serious scientists understand the same thing by
evolution? Would, for example, everybody" agree with what
Sir julian has written in The Evolutionary Vision from which we
quoted certain passages earlier? And if anyone disagreed,
would he, in Huxley's view, not be a scientist at all, or at least
not a serious scientist? Presumably, Hermann J. Miiller and
Sir Charles Galton Darwin are serious scientists. They were
participants in the Centennial celebration and each presented
a paper there. Miiller's paper was entitled 'The Guidance of
Human Evolution' and Sir Charles Darwin's, 'Can Man Con-
trol His Numbers?' These were later published in Volume 11
of the Centennial proceedings. Yet, any reader of these two
articles 'will find the evolutionary vision of Sir julian absent
from their pages. There is no feeling that 'truth will necessarily
prevail' or that it will 'set us free', whatever may be meant by
these phrases. Darwin's is a frankly pessimistic conclusion, and
he is aware that it is such. He writes, 'I am very fully conscious
that the views 1 have expressed run entirely counter to many of
the optimistic hopes of the present age."' Miiller tries to sound
optimistic, but basically he makes his favourable prognosis
dependent on genetic control and improvement of population,
which is even more difficult than the mere control of population
about which Sir Charles, amongst others, is so pessimistic.
Miiller concludes by saying 'from now on, evolution is what we
make it, provided that we @-hoose the true and the good. Otherwise, we
shall sink back into oblivion."' His words sound almost theological.
And, if everything depends on man's choice of the true and
the good, the situation is hopeless indeed.
It may be said that the diiterence we are pointing to may
Political Development
better be understood as a difference in temperament rather
than a difference in'the substantive positions held about evolu-
tion. It is a difference between pessimism and optimism, even
though the facts discerned and the possibilities envisaged ;ire
the same. After all, Huxicy is as much aware of the alarming
pitfalls on the evolutionary path as anyone else. And though
his list of dangers contains such oddities as 'the rise and appeal
of communist ideology especially in the underprivileged sectors
of the world's people', and such generalities as 'our general
preoccupation with means rather than ends, with technology
and quantity rather than creativity and quality',10 it still shows
an awareness at least of the threat of overpopulation with which
Darwin is concerned, if not of the problem of genetic control
which Miiller deals with in his article. Yet, even if this be true,
it is fairly obvious that Huxley is f@ir less self-critical in ap-
praising what he is writing than are the other two scientists
referred to. It is basically not merely a question of temperament,
but of how much one wants to read into the idea of evolution,
and whether one is prepared to examine critically what is thus
included. The difference, for example, between Huxley's
assessment of Teilhard de Chardin's ideas on evolution and that
of P. B. Medawar can hardly be understood in terms of
differences in temperament between the two authors, but
rather, must be viewed as a consequence of differences in their
ideas about what evolution means."
We have emphasized the Darwin Centennial discussions,,as
they provided the occasion for the largest concentration in
recent times of eminent scientists who had concerned them-
selves with issues relating to evolution. Yet, it would not be unfair
to say that they hardly touched the central core of the notion
itself. Rather, they tended to imply not only that there was
nothing problematic about it, but almost that it was axioma-
tically true. It would not be amiss, therefore, to inquire as to
how far the idea of evolution necessarily involves the concepts
of development and differentiation as many political scientists,
amongst others, have supposed it to do.
Normally, the idea of evolution is supposed to relate pri-
marily to the realm of living organisms and the way they dif-
ferentiated into species over a period of time. The pre-eminent
association of the idea with the name. of Darwin and the title
The Criterion as Differentiation 5 1
of the book in which he propounded the idea are evidence of
this. Yet, no one hesitates to talk about the evolution of the
earth or the solar system or even of the cosmos. On the other
hand, there is equally little hesitation in talking about social and
cultural evolution, or even the evolution of an idea or art form,
or thought system. There should perhaps he little objection to
the use of the word in a loose, popular sense provided this does
not lead to, any serious confusions. Also, it may be legitimate
to extend by analogy a notion that has arisen in a certain field
to other areas where its application helps in understanding
them. Yet, there is always an extension where the analogy is
superficial or even misleading. And, equally, there is looseness
of usage which only confuses thought. Is the extension of the
term 'evolution', then, an example of either of the latter types?
It is well known that the idea of a systematic sequence of
changes appeared earlier in relation to geology and was fairly
firmly established in that field long before Darwin appeared on
the scene. But a mere systematic sequence of changes is not
evolution, for it is 'ust another name for what is usually known
as causality. Within the Darwinian perspective, the systematic
sequence of changes has to be brought about in a certain manner and
has to result in certain consequences in order to be called evolution.
These stipulations relate, on the one hand, to what is known as
natural selection and, on the other, to what is usually called
origin of species. If there were no such things as species, there
would remain nothing to explain, thus rendering the hypothesis
of evolution (pace Sirjulian) unnecessary. Equally, if there were
no such thing as natural selection, then W atever we m ght
postulate to account for the fact of there being species, it would
never be of the nature of what Darwin meant by evolution. It
is only the distinctive linkage of the two which makes for the
distinctive notion of evolution. If even one is absent in a situa-
tion, the concept can hardly be applied to it.
But, however obvious this conclusion may appear, it has been
continuously ignored in the writings on the subject. It never
seems to have been asked by those who have written about
cosmological, geological, or chemical evolution, what it would
mean for there to be species of inorganic matter or for natural
selection to take place with respect to them. Perhaps the
chemical elements could be thought of as species of inor
,game
52 Political Development
matter, or even the ultimate particles of matter, such as elec-
trons, protons, neutrons, and the diverse types of mesons. But
what would be gained by calling them 'species' is difficult to
understand. The basic point is that it does not make sense to
talk about natural selection with respect to non-living matter.
A complex structure may dissolve and we may say that it has
been pronounced unfit to exist by the environment or that it
has failed to meet the challenge of the environment. But this is
only a manner of speaking, and everyone knows it to he so.
Further, there is none of the replication and variation which is
needed before natural selection can play its role. But supposing
there is replication and variation in non-living matter, as some
have argued,n there would even then remain the question as to
which factor is supposed to do the selection, or with reference
to which the process of selection is said to take place. Is non-
living matter itself evolving? And if it is, with respect to what ?113
There are, however, not only complex structures of non-
living matter, but also those that are not complex, but rather
most elementary in nature. Shall we say that there is evolution
with respect to these also? But they are supposed to be the very
stuff out of which the universe is made, and if this is so, how
can they be said to evolve? Many scientists objected in the
conference to Gaffron's use of the term 'chemical selection'
which, according to him, started 'with the solubility of mole-
cules in water'.114 But in order to talk of evolution at this level
we would perhaps have to talk in terms of 'physical selection',
which, if anything, would be still more monstrous. If, as
Dobzhansky has said, 'the term chemical selection' was a
misnomer then there is still more reason to think -that 'physical
selection is such.
.If, on the other hand, we think in terms of energy rather than
particles, it becomes even more difficult to think in terms of a
struggle for survival or natural selection. There are supposed
to be conservation laws which ensure that the amount of
energy in the universe, whatever may be meant by the word,
remains constant. As there is, therefore, neither an increase nor
decrease of energy, there could not possibly be any talk of
evolution with respect to it. One may, of course, amuse oneself
by thinking of the transformation of potential into kinetic
energy as evolutionary in character, or perhaps even of the
The Criterion as Differentiation 53
counter-tendency to the second law of thermodynamics as
having this nature. Many biologists do seem to believe, in the
words of Medawar, 'that evolution flouts or foils the second
law of thermodynamics', even though in his opinion this is a
misconception arising from 'a confusion of thought'.",' But
whether evolution flouts it or not, no one disputes that in the
realm of non-living matter, the second law of thermodynamics
reigns supreme. However, if this is so, it would equally obviously
follow, at least for those who argue for the distinction, that
there can be no evolution as far as non-living matter is con-
cerned. Yet, many scientists hold both positions without seeing
the contradiction involved therein.
One may, in fact, amuse oneself further if one wants to
-think of the various types of energy as species of energy. But as
most types of energy are transformable into one another, this
would destroy the notion of species at its very core. This, in the
eyes of many, would be sufficient to dispose of the application
of the notion of evolution to the realm of non-living matter.
But exactly the same situation obtains in sociocultural evolu-
tion. Even those who are aware that something different is
meant when we talk of sociocultural evolution tend to slur
over the problems involved. Sol Tax, for example, points out
that, 'the term "evolution" is applied to both socially transmitted cul-
ture and gene transmitted biology because neither can establish an
exclusive claim. However ' there is no identity between the two
usages. The cultural processes of continuity and change are
different, and it is only by analogy, if at all, that one can speak
of "natural selection". for example, in the development of
cultures.'-"'
But if there is no identity between the two usages, then why
use the same word to connote two different things? At least 'in
the context of scientific discussion where clarity of thought and
precision are considered so important in expression, it would
presumably be best to avoid such a practice altogether. The
only reason Tax gives for the continued use in both biology and
cultural anthropology of the term 'evolution', even when the
meanings differ, is that 'neither can establish an exclusive
claim' to it. But this is too legalistic a view of the matter and, in
any case, can hardly be considered a sufficient reason for the
retention of a practice that facilitates confusion in thought, if it
54 Political Development
does not actually create and perpetuate it. The term 'evolution'
is so closely associated with the biological realm that its exten-
sion backward into the realm of noii-living matter or forward
into the realm of society and culture cannot but lead to serious
confusions in thought. It is on the basis of these ambiguities that
the thought of a Chardin or a Huxicy thrives. The inclusion of
everything under the rubric of 'evolution' becomes possible, and
we can have statements like the following from the pen of an
eminent scientist without their arousing any debate or disagree-
ment. In talking about the Centennial, Huxley said that 'this is
one of the first public occasions on which it has been frankly
faced that all aspects of reality are subject to evolution, from
atoms and stars to fish and flowers, from fish and flowers to
human societies and values-indeed, that all reality is a single
process of evolution."" But does this mean anything more than
that everything changes? And hasn't this always been known
to man?
On the other hand, if it is contended that evolution is some-
thing more than change, then what the 'more' is has to be
specified. Does this 'more' consist in the specific mechanism
through which-change is brought about, and has it anything to
do with the direction in which change takes place? Normally,
the mechanism is supposed to be 'natural selection', and the
result is supposed to be 'speciation'. But in order that 'natural
selection' may operate, it is necessary that there should exist
what Mililer has characterized as 'the property of replica-
tion of mutations-that is, self-copying and self-copying of
changes','.8 or even 'the ability for continuous mutation' which,
according to Evans, 'seems to be an inherent characteristic of
living cells',19 or what Miiller calls the level 'where an un-
limited number of changes in pattern are possible, each of
which is self-replicating' .20 1-lowever expressed, the point is that
gnatural selection' should have something to play upon or to
select from if such anthropomorphic expressions are to be
permitted
But, whether anthropomorphically stated or not, what is
gnatural selection' supposed to do? It is supposed to eliminate
those mutations or changes which make an organism unfit to
survive and thus leave only those to reproduce which are
relatively better able to survive. This explanation, however,
The Criterion as Differentiation 55
would account only for the origin of species and their elimina-
tion, but not for the simultaneous existence of diverse kinds of
species. For, if many kinds of species may simultaneously exist
in any environment, then it can only be presumed that the
environment is neutral with respect to them. Or that, as far as
the environment is concerned, they are all equally fit and none
may be regarded as better than the, other. It may be suggested
that one possible explanation for the simultaneous existence of
different species is not that the environment is neutral between
them, but that there are different kinds of environments and
that each of the species is fitted to its own environment. This
corresponds ' to some extent, to the notion of 'niche' in the
literature on biological and even cultural evolution. But this
would imply that there is a one-to-one correlation between
each species and its environment and that no two species can
exist in the same environment. This may seem to be logically
very neatbut, unfortunately, the diversity in environment is
generally inferred from the diversity in species, and no indepen-
dent criteria are ever given for determining what is to count as
diversity in environment. The whole contention, thus, becomes
merely tautological in character.
In fact, what constitutes an 'environment' is not clearly
specified in the literature. If, for example, 'environment' in-
cludes other species also, then all the species play a role in the
gnatural selection' of each one of them. In such a situation each
species is exercising a selection role in relation to all the other
species. The simultaneous existence of all the diverse species
may, then, be considered the result of a checkmated position
in which none can win over the others. The equilibrium can be
disturbed only by some relatively favourable mutations within
some species or by some sudden change in the physical environ-
ment which renders some species more favourably situated than
others. But mutations are going on all the time and so are
sudden chan es in the environment. It seems surprising, there--
9
fore, that the orchestrated equilibrium of the simultaneous
existence of so many diverse species should have continued for
millennia-as seems to have been the case in biological history.
On the other hand, it might be asserted that any of the
changes that happen to be severely disequilibrating, whether
changes in species or physical environment or both. tend to set
56 Political Development
the selective activity in motion once more, with the result that
the equilibrium would once again he restored with all the
species at a higher level of survival capacity than before. This,
however, would make the disappearance of species a very rare
phenomenon-far rarer, perhaps, than what we have observed
in biological history.
If, on the other hand, we turn to the question of physical
environment, we find the situation still more baffling. Normally,
we find a great many different species within the same environ-
ment. Certainly, it is true that there are different environmental
regions and that different species are found settled there. But
the converse of this does not seem true, unless it is made to
appear so by a definitional transformation. Within any homo-
geneous climatic or environmental zone, one can find as much
diversity amongst species inhabiting it as one wishes.
But whatever the solution to these problems may be, there
can be little doubt that the exercise of 'natural selection' is con-
cerned only with survival, and this too in the simple biological
sense of the term. There is, and can be, nothing more in the
strict scientific view of the matter. The 'survival of the fittest'
merely means the survival of those who have been fittest to
survive and this, though true, is almost tautological. Perhaps
it is saved from being a complete, tautology by the fact that
survival of any living organism, whether as an individual or as
a species, is not necessary at all. To put it in other words, all
life is an accident and nothing in the physical world ensures
that it is not so. As G. E. Moore pointed out long ago, 'the
survival of the fittest does not mean, as one might suppose, the
survival of what is fittest to fulfil a good purpose-best adapted
to a good end; at the last, it means merely the survival of the
fittest to survive. . . .'21 It is no part of Darwin's theory, he
points out, that 'more evolved' is necessarily equivalent to
'higher', as many have thought and propagated. According to
him, 'that theory will explain, equally well, how by an altera-
tion in the environment (the gradual cooling of the earth, for
example) quite a different species from man, a species which we
think infinitely lower, might survive USI.22
This is the hub of the problem. Is there anything in the theory
of evolution as developed by Darwin to suggest that anything
more than survival is ensured by 'natural selection', or that if
The Criterion as Differentiation 57
something survives, it shows any other fitness besides that
which enabled it to survive? All who have tried to develop a
world-view based on evolution have tended to imply that some-
thing more than mere survival is involved. But they have
seldom given open expression to this assumption, or tried to
defend it by arguments or evidence. Why should that which
survives be necessarily better in the moral, aesthetic, or spiritual
senses of the term? And why should any quality or qualities be
considered indispensable to survival, when what survives is not
so much a fi@nction of itself as of that which performs the select-
ing function, that is, the environment? Environments may
change, and this change may render superfluous or even harm-
ful qualities that were earlier helpful in survival. Further, if the
struggle is for survival, and if surviving species were all selected
on the basis of their possessing qualities essential to survival,
then it is difficult to see what exactly could be meant by calling
one species 'more evolved' than another, if the species which
are being compared are both surviving and, in fact, have
survived for a long time.
This, 1 think, is an important question. If 'survival' alone
matters, and in the evolutionary perspective 'natural selection'
means just that, then there is no point in talking about species
that have not yet been eliminated from the biological scene in
terms of 'more evolved' or 'less evolved'. The only relevant
criterion in that situation would perhaps be the length of
survival andlor the diversity of environments in which a species
survives. Man has had a very short span of biological survival
as compared with many other species, and though his capacity
to survive in many different kinds of environment is well
attested, this may be taken only as enhancing his potentiality
for survival rather than as assuring survival itself.
The point may be clarified in a different way. The capacity
to survive in different enviroifinents only shows that, if any of
the specific environments were to change but remain within the
range where survival has already been shown to be possible,
man would still be able to survive. This only gives a greater
range within which a species can survive. But if there is a
particular environment suited to a particular species, and if
that environment persists somewhere or other and the species
continues to live in-it, then there seems no intrinsic reason to
58 Political Development
think of it as evolutionally 'more evolved' than another. Certain
types of bacteria can survive very high and very low tem-
peratures, and yet this fact alone hardly makes anyone think
of them as more evolved. It may be thought that, by virtue of
the variety of environments in which one species can survive, it
would have the potentiality for existing in larger numbers than
other species that cannot live in several environments. Yet,
however attractive this argument may seem, many of the
species restricted to a specific environment exist in far larger
numbers than man can even dream of himself having.
It appears, therefore, that there is little to choose between
man and other species on the basis of survival. And, if a choice
had to be made, most other species would win in the com-
parison. There is, however, one respect in which man may be
thought to be 'more evolved', in the strictly evolutionistic sense
of the word, and that relates to his capaci@y to destroy other
species or to use them for his own purposes, including that of
survival. If this is correct, such a capacity also provides the
criteria for judging between any species, as to which is 'more
evolved' than another. These criteria would be 'the capacity to
destroy other species', and 'the capacity to use other species for
purposes of one's own survival'.* But, in spite of the persuasive-
ness of these criteria, it does not seem quite clear whether any
species, including man, actually has the first capacity or even
whether it could exercise such a capacity, if it had it, without
destroying itself in the process. As Gregory Bateson remarked in
the Nineteenth Annual Korzybski Memorial Lecture, 'if the
organism ends up destroying its environment, it has in fact
destroyeditSelfl.23Bateson, of course, was referring more to the
natural environment, but his remark is equally apt for the
biological environment. The more we understand the ecological
balance, the more we discover a symbiotic interdependence of
species rather than a competitive fight-to-the-finish between
* There is a slight difference in the two formulations with respect to the capacity
to use others. The one referring to man designates the capacity to use others as
'the capacity to use theni, for his own purposes, including that of survival', while
the generalized formulation restricts use of others to 'purposes of one's own
survival'. The difference derives from the distinctive nature of man which is
different from those of all other species. But in the evolutionistic context it is only
the perspective of survival which is relevant.
The Criterion as Diferentiation 59
them. And, while the elimination of some isolated species might
be practised with success, it is difficult to think of the elimina-
tion of all species.
The symbiotic relation of interdependence, to the extent
that it exists, also disposes of the second criterion ('the capacity
to use other species for purposes of one's own survival'), as the
relationship of 'use' may be considered mutual in character.
The trouble, basically, is that thinkers who offer such criteria
generally forget that in the evolutionary perspective there
cannot be any other value except that of sheer biological
survival. And hence the fact that a certain species flourishes or
survives because it is of 'use' to some other species is irrelevant
to the fact that it survives. 'Being of use' is useful to it, for it
ensures its survival. One might object that if it ceased to be of
guse' in such a situation it would cease to survive. But this is
5
fallacious, for it is very likely that the species would find some
other means for survival. In fact, in such a situation, 'natural
selection' would favour those that are relatively less dependent
for their survival on their being of use to some other species,
and these would then reproduce and survive.
It may be said that the suggested criteria were meant to be
understood in terms of capacity rather than the exercise of
capacity. But even if it be so, 'capacity' has to be conceived of
in such a way that the conception makes coherent sense. In the
evolutionary perspective, 1 suggest that the capacities which
are being offered as criteria for considering one species as 'more
evolved' than another do not make sense. Take, for example,
the capacity to destroy another species or even all the other
species, which is being suggested as a possible criterion of
evolutionary development. Now-, unless we assume the simul-
taneous, sudden destruction of all the members of the species at
once, the evolutionary hypothesis suggests that those who will
survive would develop an immunity to our method of destruc-
tion. And this is what we have found with respect to so many
species we have attempted to destroy. After some time the
surviving members and their progeny over successive genera-
tions develop increasing immunity against the particular
method that was so effective against their members several
generations earlier. But how can anybody ever be sure that all
the members of a species, not to talk of all the members of all
60 Political Development
the species, have been eliminated or destroyed? Evolution, if
we may say so, has and can have no favourites. It has no pre-
ferences between man and any other species. To think it has, is
tG negate the theory of evolution and it is strange to find
eminent biologists doing this and, that too, in the name of
evolution itsel£ The egocentric or rather species-centric illusion
could go no farther.
This may seem to confine the meaning of the term 'evolution'
too much to what Sahlins has called 'specific evolution', and to
ignore what he has called 'general evolution'.24 General evolu-
tion, according to him, consists of the emergence of 'higher
forms of life', which are 'higher' absolutely. It has got nothing
to do with the origination of species which, according to him,
is what 'specific' evolution is concerned with. In his own words,
'it is accurate to say that specific evolution is the production of
diverse species, general evolution the production of higher
forms.'2,5 And, 'the fundamental difference between specific and
general evolution appears in this: the former is a connected,
historic sequence of forms, the latter a sequence of stages
exemplified by forms of a given order of development.'211
Specific evolution is primarily concerned with adaptive special-
ization and accounts for the origination and diversification of
species. In Sahlins' words 'specific evolution is the phylogene-
tie, adaptive, diversifying, specialising, raniifying aspect of
total evolution.127 General evolution, on the other hand, 'is the
emergence of higher forms of life, regardless of particular lines
of descent or historical sequences of adaptive modification'.28
And while 'in the specific perspective advance is character;s-
tically relative-relative to the environmental circumstances',29
'to embrace general evolution is to abandon relativism'.30 For,
'the study of all-round progress requires criteria that are
absolute, that are relevant to all organisms regardless of parti-
cular environments.'31. And the absolute criteria for deciding
which is higher on the evolutionary scale, and which is lower,
may 'be conceived in functional, energy-capturing terms', for
'higher forms harness more energy than lower'.32 Or. 'the
criteria of general progress may be structural, the achievement
of higher organization'.33 'Thermodynamic achievement', Sahlins
writes, 'is the ability to concentrate energy in the organism, to
put energy to work building and maintaining structure.... It
The Criterion as Differentiation 61
is the amount (of energy) so trapped (corrected for gross size
of the form) and the degree to which it is raised to a higher state that
would seem to be evolutionary measure of life.134 Further,
'thermodynamic accomplishment has its structural concom-
itant, greater organization. The relation between energy-
harnessing and organization is reciprocal: the more energy con-
centrated the greater the structure, and the more complicated
the structure the more energy that can be harnessed.'3,1
These diverse ideas are summed up in Sahlins' notion of
'level of integration'. He argues that 'the idea of level of integra-
tion can be broken down into three aspects. An organism is
at a higher level of integration than another when it has more
parts and sub-parts (a higher order of segmentation); when its
parts are more specialized; and when the whole is more effec-
tively integrated.'36 To sum up, in Sahlins' own words, 'Specific
evolution is "descent with modification", the adaptive variation
of life along its many lines; general evolution is the progressive
emergence of higher life "stage by stage". 137Thus, 'the advance
or improvement we see in specific evolution is relative to the
adaptive problem', while 'the progress of general evolution is,
in contrast, absolute, it is passage from less to greater energy
exploitation, lower to higher levels of integration, and less to
greater all-round adaptability'.311
These exhaustive quotations may be expected hopefully to
make clear the difference between the two types of evolution
which Sahlins is trying to distinguish and which, according to
him, have generally been confused in most writings on the
subject. But the distinction itself is overlapping to a significant
extent. Sahlins himself treats 'adaptability' as a common feature
both of specific and general evolution. In fact, general evolution
is supposed to be a movement in absolute terms from 'less to
greater all-round adaptability'. True, it is also supposed to be a
movement from 'less to greater energy exploitation', and 'less to
higher levels of integration', but it is not quite clear whether
these are to be treated as independent of each other or not.
Could we have, for example, 'greater energy exploitation'
without achieving a 'higher level of integration', or vice versa?
The more crucial question, however, is whether one could have
both or any of them without ensuring 'greater all-round adapt-
ability', and if so, would such a species survive for long? To ask
62 Political Development
the question is to answer it. The evolutionary perspective
permits no other value except that of survival to don-iinate the
scene of life, and Sahlins' attempt to get out of the tight noose
of survival succeeds no better than that of others.
Sahlins does not discuss the relationship between the three
criteria he gives for general evolution. But it is fairly obvious
that the first two are basically instrumental for achieving the
third. Yet, if this were accepted, it would make general evolu-
tion as relative as specific evolution, since for Sahlins adapt-
ability is primarily a characteristic of specific evolution and is
essentially relative in nature. On the other hand, if we treat
them as independent of adaptability, it should he possible to
conceive of an increase in them at the cost of adaptability. But
in that case the requirements of competitive survival would
work against those who overshot the mark and forgot that
their basic task was to survive and reproduce, and reproduce
and survive and nothing more.
Even if we forget the essential underpinning and primacy of
survival values, as Sahlins tries to do in his notion of general
evolution, it is not clear what exactly is meant by 'greater
energy exploitation' which is advanced by him as the key
criterion in the new formulation. 'Thermodynamic achieve-
ment or accomplishment' is supposed to be the objectively
measurable distinguishing feature of general evolution as con-
trasted with specific evolution. But if it is a quantitative notion,
it could be measured on@y in terms of some input-output ratio
where the efficiency of the transforming structure would be
reflected in either cutting down the loss involved in the trans-
formation, or in its relative ability of translating potential
energy into actual energy, or in transforming it into a more
serviceable form. This is necessitated by the principle- of con-
se,rvation of energy which implies, in principle, the quantitative
equivalence between input and output. In real terms, therefore,
there can be no gain or loss. It only appears to be so because of
our desires, interests and purposes. The, deeper point, however,
relates to the fact that the criterion of energy-exploitation
cannot but be purely quantitative, in nature. There is little
reason to think. that great qualitative achievements also involve
great expenditure of energy. A person running a race obviously
uses a greater amount of energy than, say, one who composes a
The Criterion as Diferentiation 63
poem or solves a mathematical problem or cogitates about a
philosophical issue. Not only this, one could not even distinguish
between a good or bad poem or between elegant and inelegant
solutions to a mathematical problem or between a profound and
trivial cogitation on a philosophical issue on the basis of the
amount of energy spent on them. In fact, one could not even
distinguish between absolute failure and relative success on any
such ground. Yet, this is what Sahlins requires the criterion to
do. But it is obvious that it is impossible, in principle, for the
criterion to achieve this. One cannot wring out quality from
quantity, however hard one may try. But without this, Sahlins'
criterion is as useless as any other.
Sahlins fails to see the problem as he smuggles in the notion
of 'higher' levels or states without specifying what he means by
'higher' or 'lower' in this context. He argues, 'it is the amount
(of energy) so trapped (corrected for gross size of the form) and
the degree to which it is raised to a higher state that would seem to be
evolutionary measure- of life.'39 Now, not only does he not give
any detailed measurements of the energy so trapped by various
species determining their absolute ranking in general evolution,
but he also fails to specify what it means for the energy to be
raised to a 'higher state', and how it is to be measured.
The utterly unoperationalized use of concepts to demarcate
a fundamental distinction in one of the major areas of biological
theory suggests not only the theoretical naivet6 of the author,
but also reflects on those, who have hailed it as a major achieve-
ment concerning the theory of evolution. As far as energy is
concerned, there can only be 'more' or 'less', but not 'higher'
or 'lower'. Perhaps, Sahlins does mean by 'higher', what is
usually meant by 'more', for there is a usage in which it just
means that. But then it is doubtful if he could establish his
thesis at all, as mos 't of the major achievements of man which
enable him to exploit larger amounts of energy than any other
species on this planet are themselves not the result of the
possession of any greater energy on his part or of its greater
utilization in quantitative terms.
The same may be said With respect to Sahlins' attempt to
correlate 'thermodynamic accomplishment' with what he calls
its 'structural concomitant', that is, 'greater organization'. It
may be so in some cases but there equally are cases where it is
64 Political Develo
,pment
not so. Otherwise, the movement towards simplifying structures
would always mean a depletion of energy, which it does not,
either in theory or practice. As we have already pointed out,
there can be such a thing as 'over-organization' and 'too much
structure'. And, on a purely qualitative level, it would be
equally difficult for anyone to maintain that Baroque is the
highest form of architecture merely because it is more com-
plexly organized than others; or, that the attempt of many
modern artists to achieve almost ideal simplicity of structure is
bound to be self-defeating, as it violates the criterion derived
from a study of what Sahlins calls 'general evolution'.
Thus, Sahlins' attempt to link the notions of diitcrentiated
and complex structures to those of development in the absolute
sense of the term via his notion of general evolution'fails as much
as the attempts of other evolutionists who do not make any
such distinction. All the considerations urged earlier against
the position on evolution typified by a thinker such as Huxicy,
apply equally to Sahlins. And if evolution can provide no
grounding to the criterion of development as 'differentiation,'
it is difficult to believe that anything else could. It was perhaps
natural for political scientists to accept the authority of biology
which had in their eyes the status and prestige of a natural
science. But a more critical attitude would have revealed that
everything which is propagated in the name of 'natural science'
is not 'scientific'. The resurgence of neo-evolutionism in the
social sciences, then, is the revival of a superstition which was
thought to have been banished long ago. Political science can
hardly gain anything by basing its notion of 'political develop-
ment' on such a weak foundation.
NOTES
1. See Sol Tax, Evolution After Darwin, vol. 111 (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1960), pp. 249-61.
2. Ibid., pp. 260-1.
3. Ibid., p. 7 1.
4. G. E. Moore, Principia Ethira (Cambridge. Cambridge University Press, 1903).
5. Tax, p. 41.
6. Ibid., pp. 42-3.
The Criterion as Diferentiation 65
7. 'Everybody', meaning every 'serious scientist', whatever may be incant by
that term.
8. Tax, vol. 11, p. 473.
9. Ibid., vol. 11, p. 460, italics mine.
10. Ibid., vol. Ill, p. 255.
11. See in this connection Sir julian 1-luxley's Introduction to Teilhard de
Chardin's 77m Phenomenon of Man, and the review of the same book by P. B.
Medawar, included in his work, The Art of & Soluble (London.. Methuen,
1967).
12. See in this connection the interesting discussion between Gerard, who ask,
'Why is not the replication of the architecture of a crystal or the replication ol
a branching polymer from monomers, which depends on the preexisting
polymer, life?' and others, in Tax, vol. Ill, pp. 80-4.
13. For a discussion of this question, see p. 41 ff.
14. Tax, vol. Ill, p. 562.
15. Medawar, p. 77.
16. Tax, vol. Ill, p. 280, italics author's.
17. Ibid., p. 249.
18. Ibid., p. 79.
19. Ibid., p. 81, italics author's.
20. Ibid., p. 81.
21. Moore, p. 28, italics author's.
22. Ibid., pp. 47A.
23. Gregory Bateson, Steps k an &ology of Mind (New York: Ballantine Books,
1972), p. 451.
24. Marshall D. Sahlins and Elman R. Service, Evolution and Culture (Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 1968).
25. Ibid., p. 19.
26. Ibid., p. 33.
27. Ibid., p. 16.
23. Ibid.
29. Ibid., p. 14.
30. Ibid., p. 20.
31. Ibid.
32. Ibid.
33. Ibid.
34. Ibid., p. 21, italics mine.
35. Ibid., p. 2 1.
36. Ibid., pp. 21-2.
37 Ibid., p. 22.
38. Ibid., pp. 22-3, italics mine.
39. Ibid., p. 2 1, italics mine.
3
THE CRITERION AS CAPABILITIES
If 'participation' seemed to emerge naturally as a criterion of
development immanent to the realm of the polity itself, and
'differentiation' as relating to the structure which all politics
,must have, the criterion in terms of 'capabilities' may be said to
belong to the functions which every political system is expected
to perform. And, as any system may work well or ill, better or
worse, we may determine the degree to which it performs its
functions. Also, as presumably all political systems are expected
to perform the same functions, they may be compared with
one another in respect of the way they discharge these functions.
Development in this context would perhaps mean the elabora-
tion of such new political structures as raise the very level of
performance itself. The 'raising of the level' would perhaps
mean a rise in both the floor and the ceiling of the performance
concerned.
The term 'capabilities', on the other hand, has another
dimension which relates it primarily to a polity's relations with
other politics. There certainly are relati 'ons which a polity has
with members and groups belonging to itself, but, in a world
where other politics exist, its 'capabilities' are measured with
respect to what it can do to use, exploit, overcome and even
conquer other politics for its own benefit. In former times,
there was little hypocrisy about all this. It was regarded as the
first duty of a ruler to enlarge his domains, conquer other king-
doms, capture booty and slaves, force them to pay tribute and
accept his suzerainty or sovereignty over them. Until compara-
tively recently, the great rulers in history have always been
those who founded or extended or consolidated great empires.
The art of war, in a certain sense, presupposed 'high capability'
in all fields and was perhaps its ultimate test also. Yet, few thinkers
The Criterion as Capabilities 67
in modern times would be prepared to accept this in its naked
formulation. It is difficult for them to believe that Tamerlane
or Genghis Khan had created a more developed political struc-
ture than the civilizations they destroyed. And if war were to be
accepted as an arbiter of 'political development', then political
scientists would have to welcome it as the ultimatejustifier of all
their hypotheses about which polity happened to he more
'politically developed' on the basis of their measurements.
It may seem a little far-fetched to bring in 'success in war'
as the operational criterion for judging the relative 'capabili-
ties' of different politics. But, basically, there could he no
other criterion, unless we accept that a polity defeated in war
could still be regarded as 'politically developed' in the sense
that it had greater 'capabilities' than the one that defeated it.
As this would seem to many to be almost a contradiction in
terms, there appears no escape to accepting the consequences of
admitting 'capabilities' as the criterion of 'political develop-
ment', unless we are prepared to give up the criterion itself. It
may not he amiss here to note that this is also one of the con-
sequences of the so-called evolutionary perspective in the study
of political development. To be defeated in the struggle for
survival is the ultimate test of evolutionary inferiority. The
business of war is superior to the business of peace which, in this
perspective, is nothing but the continuation of war by other
means. The phrase is that of Clausewitz, but the truth of the
contention is merely a function of the perspective in which it is
embedded.
The existence of politics other than one's own is, however,
logically contingent in the sense that they are not necessarily
presupposed by the existence of one's own polity. To put it in
other words, there is no necessity for there to be politics rather
than just one polity. And, in case there were to be only one
polity, there will he no problem of its proving its superiority in
political development over others through victory in war. But
though a polity may be one, yet even in its case, there is the
problem of its relationship with its own members. And these
relationships can be of various kinds. Also, over a period of time
the relationships may change and thus raise the problem of
political development or decay in a diachronic perspective.
What sort of relationships, then, are to be taken as signs of
68 Political Development
9political development', and of 'political decay'? Considered in
the perspective of 'capabilities' as the criterion of 'political
development', there could be little doubt about the answer.
Only a polity which extracts the utmost out of its members
could be regarded as 'politically developed'. It will be the
degree of exploitation or extraction achieved that would deter-
mine the degree of development attained by a polity. But this
would be to underwrite totalitarian dictatorship as the most
developed form of political system, as presumably it is the most
efficient organizational instrument for the extraction of what-
ever is sought to be extracted by the ruling 6lite of a polity.
Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia would be the most devel-
oped politics according to this criterion.
In a certain sense, the very notion of the state as the embodi-
ment of supreme coercive power may be said to underwrite the
primacy of the coercive function which a polity is supposed to
perform. It is a short step from this to regard an increase in the
coercive capabilities of any polity as a sign of its political devel-
opment. And once this step is taken, there is little to stop it
from being regarded as a desirable goal in the direction of
which every polity should try to develop. There is, in fact, a
fundamental ambivalence in the notion of the state as embody-
ing the unity of society in itself and also as being the ultimate
scat of coercive power. The notion of coercion divides the polity
into those who are coerced and those who coerce, while the
notion of unity tries to suggest the common interest of the whole
which is supposed to be embodied in the state. The bridge
between the two conflicting aspects is built by the pernicious
doctrine enshrined in Marxist apologetics that coercion is ex-
ercised in the interest of those who are coerced. There is,
however, the complementary truth in the deeper thought of
Marx that till the actuality of coercion exists, no state can claim
to embody the unity which it ideally wishes to be. This, of
course, is coupled with the Marxist illusion that the continuing
technological miracle of capitalism when combined with the
organizational, institutional structure of a socialist society would
result in the elimination of conflicting class interests which
necessitate the coercive character of the state. But even if the
utopian vision of a society to which the science of economics
would have become irrelevant (because of the non-scarcity of
The Criterion as Capabilities 69
goods and services) were to be accepted as factually possible, it
is difficult to.sce how the essential asymmetry of power-relations
could be avoided without giving up the notion of polity alto-
gether. Perhaps it is felt that the asymmetry of power-relations
is itself a consequence of the existent scarcity of goods and
services, and the abolition of the latter would also mean the
abolition of the former. But in that case a polity would no more
remain a polity. Rather, it would lapse into society from which
all political scientists have tried to distinguish it. Yet, to the
extent that the necessity of the distinction remains, a polity's
claim to represent or articulate the so-called unity of society
would be suspect.
It may be urged, on the other hand, that the functions of the
state may be conceived better in a different way. After all, no
state has ever been valued just for its victories over others or for
its coercive control over its own people. It is the ideas and ideals
embodied in the notion of the welfare state that point to the
way the concept of 'capabilities' should be understood and
articulated. -But this would lead to the question of choosing
between diverse notions of welfare and of exploring the inter-
relations between them. 'Welfare', obviously, is not such a
homogeneous category as many seem to think, nor is the rela-
tion between its different conceptions so positively correlated
as many appear to imply. Even the question of weightage
between different conceptions is not easy to handle, and the
ultimate choice between a laissez-faire notion of the state, which
allows the issue between different weightages to he settled by
the market-mechanism whether of the economic or political
variety, or the @lite decision of a dominant minority, which is
supposed somehow to know the real interests of the people, is
difficult to make. Perhaps, at least on the intellectual plane, the
honest solution may be said to lie in articulating with clarity as
many concepts of 'welfare' as one can think of, provide diverse
weightages in different models. and work out the possible co-
herence and incoherence between them.
But, however honest such a solution may seem, it would
introduce a plurality into the very heart of 'welfare', and thus
jeopardize the idea of 'political development' in terms of which
different politics were sought to be measured and compared. It
'nay be objected that, theoretical subtleties and logical possibili-
6
70 Political Development
ties apart, the notion of 'welfare' belongs primarily to the realm
of material goods and public services with special emphasis on
their just or equitable distribution between groups and classes
of people. Yet, even if this were- to be accepted there would
remain a formidable difficulty in conceiving of 'capabilities' in
terms of 'welfare' alone in total exclusion of all other notions of
'capabilities', specially those that concern the relation of a
polity to other politics. It is possible that a high rate of per
capita consumption of goods and services in a particular polity
is itself a direct consequence of its direct or indirect exploitation
of other politics, making it impossible for the exploited politics
to achieve higher rates of 'welfare' for their citizens. This
situation is not likely to be affected in any substantial manner
by the extent of distributive justice obtaining in a particular
polity. For it is highly probable that a substantially high level
of distributive justice in a particular society is itself ensured by
the fact that it is able to exploit others to a significant degree.
The role of colonial exploitation in the development of indus-
trial societies.of the West is well known. But what is not so well
known is the fact that the ideal of the welfare state with the
corresponding notion of distributive justice might not have
featured in the practical programme of hard-headed politicians
except for the fact that a situation of relative abundance had
been created by that very exploitation of colonial peoples.
The so-called socialist countries are in this respect no different
from those that are called capitalists. The relations of the Soviet
Union to countries of Eastern Europe which it had conquered
niilitarily from Hitler's Germany did not show any marked
difference from those between Western countries and the
territories they had conquered earlier in Asia and Africa.
Marxist thought has always pointed out the crucial importance
of the accumulation of capital. But the need and the necessity
of this accumulation has got nothing to do with either the
socialist or the capitalist character of a polity. It has to do only
with the economic factors involved in the situation. Marx was
saved from this terrible realization by the fact that in his own
thought he relegated this necessary but unpleasant task to
capitalism which was supposed to have completed the process
by the time socialism appeared on the scene. Unfortunately, the
countries in which the communist movement succeeded did not
The Criterion as Capabilities 7 1
have their work of capital accumulation completed by the
capitalists and thus it had to be undertaken by the communists
themselves. In doing so, they not only put the capitalist ex-
ploiters to shame- by showing how the whole thing could be done
more efficiently, but also, incidentally, proved the utter ir-
relevance of the capitalist-communist dichotomy to the issue
concerned.
The deeper assumption of Marx, however, consists in his
belief that there is some sort of upper limit beyond which
further accumulation of capital in significant quantities is not
needed. But this could only be true on the basis of a static
economy which would involve not only a static population and
a static technology, but also a static structure of wants. On the
other hand, one could perhaps assume a moving equilibrium
between the three to give the same result also. But, whether the
situation is conceived of in terms of a moving equilibrium or a
static economy, the assumed conditions seem too unrealistic to
be taken seriously. Even if they were to be realized, it could
only be by accident and for short periods. The need for savings
and capital accumulation for faster rates of economic growth
may, therefore, be assumed to obtain in most societies niost of
the time. And if savings and capital accumulation involve the
postponement of current consumption, necessitating painful
sacrifice on the part of the populace, it would always seem
preferable to impose this on other people or peoples of other
countries, if possible. It is usually done on both the fronts, and
that too simultaneously. But the rigours of internal exploitation
of one's own people can be niitigated to a large extent by the
external exploitation of other peoples. It thus serves in the
economic self-interest of a people to turn a blind eye to, if not
actively connive at and even welcome, the direct or indirect ex-
ploitation of other people. In fact, it is easier in respect of other
peoples as not only are aliens considered barbarians in almost
all cultures, but also because they are too distant for their
sufferings to be visibly registered on the sensitivities of those who
benefit from the exploitation. Of course, the same mechanism
is used for safeguarding one's own psyche against the intrusion
of the fact of exploitation of others even within one's own society
or country. But as there is at least some identification specially
in the context of societies which have become nation-states with
72 Political Development
universal franchise and citizenship, it becomes a little more
difficult to continue to do so than in the case of peoples with
whom one has little, if any, identification.
The notion of distributive justice in the context of material
goods and services in terms of which a polity's 'capabilities' are
supposed to be measured thus makes sense only if the whole
world were to be a unified political system. Yet, if that were to
be the case, the only assessment of comparative 'capabilities'
would be with respect to the world polity's own past, as there
would be no other polity with which it could be compared. This
might be taken as rendering the whole enterprise of finding a
measurable criterion of political development meaningless.
What purpose would it serve to formulate a criterion if there
are no politics to compare? Yet, if multiple politics are to be
necessarily postulated so that criteria for purposes of comparison
may be significantly employed, it is very likely that the so-
called 'political development' of a particular polity may imply
as a necessary precondition the lack of such development in
other politics. And this, not only in the logical sense that 'more
developed' implies the 'less developed', but in the causal sense
that one becomes more developed' by making some other
people or country 'less developed'.
The objection may be raised that we are taking too seriously
the Marxist analysis which predicates economic development
on the necessary exploitation of the producers of their surplus
value, and its utilization as investment for further production.
The term 'exploitation' in Marx is both a technical and a moral
term, the two senses of which are conflated together to produce
the scientific revolutionary ardour which most communists
claim for themselves. But, as psychologists have pointed out,
most violent emotions thrive on confused thought, and the
Marxist revolutionary seems no exception to this. To the extent
that the notion of 'exploitation' is the result of a technical
definition it can have no moral connotation. It may give a
scientific aura, but that is another matter.
The hard core of Marx's definition of exploitation lies in its
being derivative from the more fundamental notion of 'value-
creation' in his system. 'Exploitation' is, on the one hand, a
function of the notion of 'value-creation' in his system and, on
the other, of the fact as to whether the surplus value so created
The Criterion as Capabilities 73
is appropriated by the creator himself or by somebody else. As
Marx does not concede the value-creating function to the
entrepreneur, all collective value-creation is bound, by defini-
tion, to be exploitative in character. Similarly, because Marx
does not accord any value-creating function to the socio-
political functionaries who ensure the existence of conditions
without which no productive activity can occur for long, any
complex society is bound to be 'exploitative' by definition. The
only way to get out of this definitional impasse is to give- up the
definition, and see society as a co-operative enterprise in which
each is necessary for the other. This also could take us out of
the necessity of seeing a polity as an exploitative mechanism.
The functional perspective in the social sciences tries to do just
this; but in doing so, it unwittingly underwrites the, justification
of all existing institutions, whatever may be their complexion
or character. It excludes the idea of 'institutionalized exploita-
tion' by definition andjustifies the status quo, whatever may be
its nature. This, in fact, is the critique from the radical camp
of the structural-functional perspective in sociology. The con-
cept of 'dysfunctionality' tries to take care of this, but in doing
so it takes the heart out of functionalism itself.
The Marxian and the non-Marxian frameworks, thus, suffer
from an identical defect. They make it impossible for a so-
ciety or polity to be both 'exploitative' and 'co-operative' in
character. What is needed, therefore, is a conceptual framework
which, without making all social relations necessarily exploita-
tive, does not gloss over the fact of exploitation itself. This,
however, is not exactly our task here, and may, therefore,
merely be taken as a criterion of the adequacy of any con-
ceptual framework in this field.
The thinking of 'capabilities' in terms of 'social justice',
specially in its economic form, thus, encounters basic problems
which appear difficult to avoid, at least as presented in the
usual form. The other direction which comparison of 'capabili-
ties' in terms of the amount of 'social justice' achieved in
different politics may take, is what has usually been called the
observance of 'due process of law'. Law, in fact, is supposed to
ensure justice, and to the extent a polity is able to ensure that
no discrin-iination is practised in the application of the law to
different classes or castes or categories of persons, it may be
74 Political Development
said to have actualized or achieved a just state of affairs within
its boundaries. The laws themselves, however, may be con-
sidered discriminatory or even unjust in a deeper sense. The
usual Marxist critique tends to emphasize this aspect of the
matter. But, then, it is obvious that the critique of any positive
law can only be undertaken in terms of some ideal notion of
justice which the usual thinking about law designates as 'natural
law'. The critique may, of course, be undertaken from different
viewpoints. But, then, the natural laws implicit in them would
also be diverse, and though there will be a natural tendency to
decide between the different ideals or seek some overarching
coherence or transcending synthesis between them, the result
can hardly be expected to be acceptable to all or even taken as
final by any particular group for all times.
The comparative estimate of 'social justice', then, may per-
haps best be undertaken by finding on the one hand the extent
to which 'due process of law' is observed in a particular polity
and, on the other hand, to discover the extent to which its
positive law departs from the natural law as conceived of or
determined by a particular group of thinkers. The other dimen-
sion which should perhaps equally be taken into account relates
to the actuali@y of discrimination in the application of law to
persons of different economic, social, political or racial status in
a polity. This obviously is different from the degree of actual
observance of 'due process of law' as demanded by the legal
system itself. The former concerns itself with the distortion or
even perversion of the positive legal system by forces extraneous
to it, while- the latter concerns itself with the 'manner' rather
than the 'matter' of justice as ensured by law. The- idea, of
course, is that the observance of due procedure is as important
as the final .udgment reached or delivered in any case. It is
an emphasis on the formal aspect of the matter, a counterpart
of the notion of 'formal truth' in Western logic.
'Social justice', however, forms only one part of the total
spectrum of values which a society tries to realize for itself, and
the 'capabilities' of a polity may be judged by finding the
extent to which it is able to achieve their realization for its
citizens, both individually and collectively. The 'values' whose
realization is to be assessed may be those professed by the
society itself, or those by the thinker concerned. But, whatever
The Criterion as Capabilities 75
the case, they have to be specifically articulated so that the
assessment may be made as openly and concretely as possible.
However, even then the distinction between 'manifest' and
'latent' values, 'verbalized' and 'behavioural' values, and
between 'individual' and 'collective' values would have to be
keptin mind.
On the other hand, the notion of 'capabilities' may be seen
in predominantly 'instrumental' terms, that is, as essentially
neutral between the realization of diverse kinds of value. It
would be like 'wealth' or 'power' which, it is generally ad-,
mitted, may be used for the achievement of different ends,
depending upon what one desires to achieve. And, even though
it may be true that there are many things intrinsically valuable
which cannot be achieved by these generalized instrumental-
ities, it can hardly he disputed that, in certain amounts, they
are the necessary precondition for the realization of any value
whatsoever. This perhaps follows from the fact that our exis-
tence is an embodied existence, and that the notion of the
%realization' of values involves their concrete embodiment in
spatio-temporal reality where it achieves a public visibility
which is different from mere imaginative projection.
Such an 'instrumental-neutral' sense of 'capabilities' has been
worked out in detail by Almond in his 'Input-Output' model
of a political system in which the relationship between the two
is mediated by what he calls 'conversion-functions'. It is the
best-thought-out framework for the understanding of political
systems in a comparative developmental perspective yet to be
offered by any political thinker who has devoted himself to the
task. It therefore deserves the serious and sustained attention
of anyone concerned with the notion of 'political development'
and its availability for a comparative assessment of different
political systems in a cognitively significant and meaningful
way.
The 'Input-Output' model of Almond has been developed
over a long period and adumbrated in a number of books and
articles published at different times. However, it would perhaps
not be wrong to concentrate on only a few focal expressions of
his ideas which seem sufficient for our purposes. These are
found in his book Comparative Politics: A Developmental -4pproach'
and two articles, entitled 'A Developmental Approach to
76 ' Political Development
Political Systems'2 and 'Political Development-Analytical and
Normative, Perspectives'.3
He takes from David Easton the distinction between two
classes of inputs into the political system, viz. demands - and
supports. Demands are further classified under four headings:
(1) demands for goods and services such as wage and hour laws,
educational opportunities, recreational facilities, roads and trans-
portation;
(2) demands for the regulation of behaviour, such as provision of
public safety, control over markets and labour relations, rules
pertaining to marriage and the family;
(3) demands for participation in the political system, for the right to
vote, hold office, petition govermnental bodies and officials,
organize political associations and the like; and
(4) symbolic inputs, such as demands for the display of the majesty
and power of the political system in periods of threat or on
ceremonial occasions, or demands for the affirmation of norms or
the communication of the policy intent from political 61iteS.4
Support inputs also may be classified under four headings:
(1) material supports, such as the payment of taxes or other levies,
and the provision of services; such as labour contributions or
military services;
(2) obedience to.laws and regulations;
(3) participation, such as voting, joining organizations, and com-
municating about politics; and
(4) manifestation of deference to public authority, symbols and
ceremonials."
The output side is also classified into four types of transac-
tions initiated by the political system. These are:
(1) extractions, which may take the form of tribute, booty, taxes, or
personal services; (2) regulation of behaviour, which may take a
variety of forms and affect some subset of the whole gamut of human
behaviour and relations; (3) allocations or distributions of goods and
services, opportunities, honors, statuses, and the like; and (4) symbolic
outputs, including affirmation of values, displays and political sym-
bols, statements of policies and intent."
The inputs consisting of demands and supports are converted
by the political system into 'extractive, regulative, distributive
and symbolic outputs'.7 The political system, so to say, 'pro-
The Criterion as Capabilities 77
cesses inputs, and converts them into outputs'." 'The demands
entering the political system are articulated, aggregated, or
combined; converted into policies, rules, regulations; applied,
enforced, adjudicated."a The conversion-functions of the politi-
cal system, thus, may be divided into.
(1) the articulation of interests or demands; (2) the integration or
combination of interests into policy proposals; (3) the conversion of
policy proposals into authoritative rules; (4) the application of general
rules to particular cases; (5) the adjudication of rules in individual
cases; and (6) -the transmission of information about these events
within the political system from structure to structure and between
the political system and its social and .international environrnents.10
These, in other words, are the well-known conversion-functions
of Interest Articulation, Interest Aggregation, Rule-Making,
Rule-Application, Rule-Adjudication and Political Commu-
nication. The Rule-Making, Rule-Application and Rule-
Adjudication are merely new names for the legislative, execu-
tive and judicial functions of traditional political theory. The
other three, however, have perhaps not been so explicitly for-
mulated before.
This rather detailed delineation of Almond's classificatory
terminology of Input-Output factors in his own words was
necessary in order to get as clear a grasp of his contention as
possible. It all seems very neat, clear-cut and precise till one
begins to examine it closely and ask some pertinent questions.
There is, first, a radical difference on the Input side between
Demands and Supports, and to treat the two together as though
they were of the same type is to confuse the issue at the very
beginning of the analysis. The two may, and actually do, vary
independently of each other and may even be opposed to each
other. Supports, in fact, are treated as almost the same as Output,
except for the fact that there is a difference in the point of view
from which the phenomenon is viewed. For example, the same
taxes or levies which are paid count as support-inputs when
regarded from the viewpoint of the taxpayer or the citizen who
has to pay the taxes or perform the services, and as an output
when viewed as extraction on the part of the political system
from its citizens. One wonders if the enforced collection of booty
and tribute on the part of an exploiting political 6lite would be
78 Political Development
called a Support-Input by Almond. The term' 'support', how-
ever, may not imply that what is given for the system is being
given,voluntarily and willingly, but only that it is being actually
given, whether willingly or not.
The same is true about all the other sub-divisions of the so-
called classification of Support-Inputs and Outputs quoted
earlier. One may, in fact, arrange them in tabular form facing
each other and see the point we are trying to make. The classi-
ficatory schema may be presented in the following way:
Supports (Inputs) output
1. Material supports, such as 1. Extractions, such as tribute,
payment of taxes or other booty, taxes, personal
levies, and the provision services, etc.
of services, etc.
2. Obedience to laws and 2. Regulation of behaviour
regulations
3. Participation, such as voting, 3. Allocation or distribution of
joining organizations, etc. goods and services, honours,
statuses, etc.
4. Symbolic output, such as
affirmation of values,
statement of policies, etc.
4. Manifestation of deference to
public authority, symbols and
ceremonies
The first, second and fourth items are obviously the same,
seen from two different sides. Only item 3 shows a discrepancy
which perhaps is mediated by the unstated assumption that
allocation or distribution is related in some direct or indirect
way to the actual fact of 'participation' in the system. But the
term 'participation' includes so many things that it is difficult to
consider all as Support-Inputs into the political system. In fact,
a closer scrutiny may reveal that it is difficult to distinguish in
many cases between the so-called Support-Inputs and Outputs
of the system. For example, it is not clear why the extractions
effected by a political system should be treated as its output,
when that is what it effectively gets from its subjects or other
politics in the environment for itself. Similarly, one wonders if
the output entitled 'Regulation of behaviour' refers to the actual
enforcement of law or merely to the making of laws which
hopefully will be obeyed by most of the people for whom they
are made. In the former case, they are completely identical with
The Criterion as Capabilities 79
the so-called Support-Input entitled 'Obedience to laws and
regulations'. 'In the latter, they would be identical with the
rule-making function which is supposed to be not an Output at
all but a conversion-function in Almond's system.
The role of conversion-functions will be analysed in Chapter
4, but here it may be pointed out that there seems to be little
consistency in the different Support-Inputs and Outputs that
are given in the table. Thus, while the first cannot be different
even in principle in the two columns, the second can be so only
if it is identified with a conversion-function. The fourth, on the
other hand, may he interpreted either as identical or different
depending upon the treatment of symbolic output, as that
which evokes a manifestation of deference whenever it is dis-
played, or as such whether it does so or not. The third, on the
other hand, bears hardly any relation unless it be assumed that
the distributive allocation of goods and services is in proportion
to one's participatory input into the political system. This
obviously is not the case, specially if we remember all the
ambiguities involved in the notion of 'participation' and the
related discussion concerning it in the first chapter.
The Input-Output model has been borrowed from economics
where it has been a relatively successful tool in assessing the
comparative efficiency of different economic systems. Yet, un-
less certain basic conditions are fulfilled, the model is not
meaningfully applicable, as it may make no sense to talk of
inputs and outputs in the situation. One such condition is the
existence of what may be called a common measure in terms of
which the so-called inputs and outputs may be aggregated,
computed and compared. The other, and perhaps even more
fundamental condition, is the existence of a fairly clear-cut
demarcation between what is to count as input and what as
Output. In other words, there should be fairly determinate
criteria on the basis of which we should be able to judge, at
least in most cases, which is to be regarded as input, and which,
output. The former condition is fulfilled in the field of eco-
nomics by money which functions as the common measure in
terms of which the value of everything may be expressed. The
second condition is also fulfilled almost completely in the case
of individual units, though in the case of large aggregates cer-
tain problems arise. What is input for one unit can be output
80 Political Development
for another, and thus the computation for the total economy
would obviously have to be different in character. Marx saw
this as the key issue with respect to the problem of profit, for
while one- could understand one man's profit as another person's
loss, how could one understand the profit in a total economy
where all the individual profits and losses would cancel out?
An analogous problem in the field of physics may be, said to
arise with respect to the conservation laws,which postulate a
complete constancy of mass orland energy in the total system.
The- problems arising out of the concept of a 'total system',
however, are so purely theoretical that none of the empirical
sciences concern themselves with them in great detail. Also,
at the purely theoretical level, the question always arises
whether the universe can be treated as a 'closed system',
specially when it has to be treated as essentially 'open' with
respect to time. But on the other hand, if it is not a closed
system, how can it be called a 'universe', or considered as a
'total system' ?
Time is essential to any Input-Output analysis. The purpose
of the undertaking is to know what amounts of input of a
particular kind would result in what amounts of output that
we want. For the basic purpose of the exercise is to be able to
control the phenomena to some extent at least'@The investment-
output ratio, for example, is a key factor in the planning of
economic development in any country. One would have to
know what rate of investment is needed to achieve a particular
growth rate in the economy. Similarly, one would have to,know
how much of the investment required is to come out of savings,
whether enforced or voluntary, and how much out of deficit
financing. Similarly, one has to have some idea of the direction
of investment and the so-called gestation period when the out-
put may be- expected.
These are all elementary examples, as every student of eco-
nomics knows. They can, however, he made as complicated
and sophisticated as one likes. The basic point, however, would
remain the same :An Input-Output analysis makes sense only
if we can determine what types of inputs determine what types
of outputs, and in what quantity. Also, we should be able to
control the inputs into the system to some extent so that we may
get the desired outputs. If these two conditions are missing, the
The Criterion as Capabilities 8 1
Input-Output analysis is a futile exercise which may provide
aesthetic satisfaction to those who undertake it, but is utterly
irrelevant for the understanding or the control of empirical
phenomena.
But these conditions are not found in the Input-Output
analysis offered for political systems by Almond. There is not
oni y no common measure in terms of which all the so-called
political inputs and outputs could be expressed, but also no
idea as to what types and quantities of inputs would result in
what types and quantities of outputs. Similarly, it is obvious
that the so-called inputs into the system cannot be controlled
in any significant sense of the term.
Almond, of course, has argued that amongst the possible
inputs in the system, the most important are those put in by
the political 6lites themselves. As he writes.. 'We do not wish
to leave the impression that inputs necessarily come only from
the society of Which the political system is a part, and that the
political system must be viewed only in "conversion" terms.
It is typical of political systems that inputs are generated
internally by political @lites-kings, presidents, ministers, legis-
lators'and judges."' It may, therefore, be legitimately held that
to the extent the inputs are generated by the political @lites
themselves, they can also be controlled by them. And if they
also form the most important part of the inputs, the control
exercised by them would become crucial also.
Unfortunately for Almond's analysis, his contention not only
cuts at the root of the Input-Output analysis, but also ignores
the fundamental difference between the inputs generated by
the political 6lites and those generated by all the rest for the
system. There seems to be a built-in structural conflict between
the inputs originating from the political 6lites and those ori-
ginating from others who do not occupy the position occupied
by the political @lites in the system. This arises mainly from the
fact that, while the major interest of the political 6lites is to
continue to occupy, strengthen and improve the positions they
already hold, the interest of those outside is to oust them from
the positions they are in. The so-called interest-aggregation
function about which we shall have more to say later on, finds
its essential limitation in the natural self-interest of the political
@lite to strengthen and perpetuate itself. This is perhaps a part
82 Political Development
of what are called the 'system maintenance and adaptation
functions', but it is clear that the terminology adopted merely
glosses over the essential conffict involved in the situation.
A deeper question arises with respect to the contention that
the political 6lites themselves generate demand-inputs into the
political system. Normally, a system does not have demands of
its own, except perhaps for its maintenance and perpetuation,
which mostly happen to be fairly conservative in character. The
Input-Output analysis takes the system for granted and works
only on the assumption that no arbitrary inputs shall be
generated by the system itsel£ The system's neutrality and
instrumentality is an essential prerequisite for any Input-
Output analysis to be successfully applicable also. The conten-
tion, therefore, that the most important inputs into the political
system arise from the political 6lites themselves renders the
whole Input-Output model irrelevant for purposes of political
analysis, unless we treat the political 6lites in this role as out-
siders to the system. This, however, would save the model at
the expense of making it almost impossible for empirical appli-
cation. If the political @lites occupying positions of power are
analytically treated as outsiders making demands on the
system, then the system would become almost metaphysical in
character. Or, alternatively, the system would become an
elaborate game where the same set of persons are alternatively
seen in their role of making demands on the system and then
in the role of fulfilling the dem -ands. made on them by the
system. This may be welcome to protagonists of the Theatre of
the Absurd, but presumably not to those who claim to be
political scientists.
The measurement of the 'capabilities' of a political system
in terms of Input-Output ratios on the model of economic
theory thus runs against some basic and fundamental difficulties
which do not appear easy to overcome. Perhaps it may be said
that the heart of the political system lies in what Almond has
called the 'conversion-functions', as it is primarily through them
that 'output' is realized by the political system. It may, then,
be in the performance of the 'conversion-functions', that the
concept of political development might find its sure footing and
in terms of which different politics could be compared. 4
detailed consideration of 'conversion-functions' is therefore.
The Criterion as Capabilities 83
required to find out whether they could adequately fulfil the
task of serving as possible criteria for judging political develop-
ment.
NOTES
1. Almond and Powell, Comparative Politks: A Developmental Approach (Boston:
Little, Brown & Co., 1966).
2. Almond, 'A Developmental Approach to Political Systems', World Politics,
vol. XVII, no. 2, January, 1965.
3. Almond, 'Political Development: Analytical' and Normative Perspectives',
Comparative Political Studies, vol. 1.
4. Almond, 'A Developmental Approach to Political Systems', World Politics,
vol. XVII, no. 2, January 1965, p. 193.
5. Ibid., pp. 193-4.
6. Ibid., p. 194.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid., p. 195.
9. Ibid.
10. pp. 196-7.
11. Ibid., pp. 194-5.
4
THE CRITERION AS CONVERSION
FUNCTIONS
The 'conversion-functions' are divided by Almond into six
separate functions which, though interrelated, are yet regarded
as relatively autonomous in character. They are designated as
Interest Articulation, Interest Aggregation, Political Commu-
nication, Rule-Making, Rule-Application and Rule-Adjudica-
tion. The last three are the well-known functions of government,
traditionally designated as the legislative, executive and judi-
cial functions. Interest Aggregation is perhaps nearest to what
in traditional political theory is known as justice. Interest
Articulation is perhaps a new function explicitly ascribed to or
expected of a political system. On the other hand, political
communication is presupposed by all the other functions as
without it they could not be performed at all.
The conversion-functions may legitimately be regarded as
the heart of the political system, and thus it is reasonable to
expect that the criteria of political development may be found
there. The conversion-functions, however, happen to be both
relatively autonomous and interrelated in significant ways with
one another. Ii would therefore be desirable to consider them
both individually and in interrelationship with each other.
(1) The C@iterion as Interest Articulation
Interest articulation is regarded by Almond as 'particularly
important because it marks the boundary between the society
and the political system'.' He defines it as 'the process by which
individuals and groups make demands upon the political deci-
sion makers'.2 Even the differences between di&rent types of
political systems may be understood in terms of 'the forms which
The Criterion as Conversion Functions 85
interest articulation takes, the degree to which interest articula-
tion structures are specialized and autonomous and the style of
interest articulation' .3 Almond has divided his discussion of the
matter into four parts, viz. (1) the kinds of structures which
perform the interest articulation function; (2) the variety of
channels through which demands are articulated; (3) the
styles of interest articulation; and (4) the effects of moderniza-
tion on articulations
It is obvious, therefore, that to the extent interest articulation
is to be treated as a criterion of political development, it would
have to be considered in these dimensions. However, while one
is fairly clear that the degree of specialization and autonomy in
the structures that perform the function of interest articulation
and the varieties of channels through which the demands are
articulated would usually he accepted as indicating political
development, it is difficult to see what forms or styles of interest
articulation would be regarded as indicators of political devel-
opment.
The interest articulation structures have been classified
according to two major components: 'the type ofgroup initiating
the articulation, and the type of access channel through which it
passes the message'.5 Besides the generalized fact that indivi-
duals are 'articulators of their own interests'," and that there
are 'anomic interest groups'," the major division is between what
have been called 'nonassociational interest groups"' and 'institu-
tional interest grou
.ps'.9 Now, it may he taken for granted that,
given the perspective of the current writings on political devel-
opment, an increase in interest articulation would he taken as
a positive indicator of political development. But it is not quite
clear whether equal weightage is to be given to all the forms of
interest articulation. For example, should an increase in the
nonassociational interest group in relation to the institutional
interest groups be taken as indicating political development or
not? Similarly, if the reverse tendency is observed, how are we
to interpret it? Also, is an increase in the anomic interest groups
to be taken as an indicator of political development or political
decay? This is important, as the interest articulation of anoriiic
interest groups consists of 'riots, demonstrations, assassinations
,and the like''10 If treated as positive indicators along with all
other forms of interest articulation, we would have the problem
7
86 Political Development
of treating its absence as a counter indicator of political devel-
opment in many societies. In fact, riots, demonstrations,
assassinations, would have to be welcomed and even planned,
given such a positive interpretation of interest articulation of
anomic interest groups. On the other hand, if we treat it as a
negative indicator we would have the added problem of
balancing the weight of the negative indicators against the
positive. Further, if we have to distinguish 'between (a) spon-
taneous violence by anoniic interest groups, and (b) violence
and demonstrations as a means of access, which any group
may use'," we would have to face the added problem of either
regarding both as negative indicators or only one, and, if so,
which.
The problem gets more complicated if it is accepted, as
Almond and Powell do, that 'demonstrations and mass vio-
lence' may be 'an integral part of the system itself'.12 One
wonders what such a statement means. The reference to Peru
is not of much help as it is confined to the labour groups which
use it as a means 'to bring pressure to bear upon the centralized
executive'."3 Also, if 'violence always has the possibility of
passing beyond the control of its promoters',14 and if such a
'passing beyond' is accepted as undesirable, it is difficult to see
how violence could be treated as an integral part of the system
unless there are structural mechanisms to see that it does not
pass beyond some permissible lin-tit specified by the system
itsel£
The problem of associational interest groups and their
relative weightage vis-a-vis non-associational groups on the one
hand and institutional groups on the other, would also have to
be satisfactorily resolved if interest articulation is to be treated
as a criterion of political developments
Besides the problems posed by the diversity in structures
through which the conversion-function of interest articulation
is performed, it may be presumed to become even more com-
plicated if we are also expected to take into account the diversity
of access channels and the styles of interest articulation. Both
are supposed to be important in the classificatory scheme
elaborated by Almond and Powell, and if interest articulation
is to be treated as a criterion of political development, they
too must be taken into account.
The Criterion as Conversion Fun,@tions 87
The question of channels and means of access is, as Almond
and Powell urge, 'largely @x question of political communica-
tion'.'.5 But if so, it overlaps with another conversion-function
which is supposed to be independent and autonomous in
character. The interrelations between different conversion-
functions will he the subject of detailed discussion in section
(8) of this chapter, but the fact of significant overlapping
between them raises problems of its own. Political communica-
tion and channels of interest articulation are merely two names
for the same reality, just as style of interest articulation is the
same as designated by the term 'political culture'. Political
culture, of course, is wider than the style of interest articulation
as it includes patterns of political behaviour in other realms also.
But 'channels' of interest articulation are not a sub-sector of
political communication; they are identical with it. Such an
identification will become untenable if the 'communication'
of interests that are aggregated is also considered as political
communication. But, then, the so-called rule-making, rule-
application and rule-adjudication activities would also be seen
as performing the function of political communication and,
thus, fall under it.
The concept of 'communication channels' is wider in fact
than those which are supposed to subserve only the function of
political communication, or even just that of interest articula-
tion. It is doubtful if communication channels are ever so
specialized as to subserve only one function, he it political or
any other. Normally, the channels are neutral with respect to
the messages conveyed through them. However, when the
channels primarily consist of persons, there may be substantial
selectivity and systematic distortion in the messages that are
conveyed. Perhaps the distinctive nature of political commu-
nication may lie in the fact that it consists primarily of persons
who try to bring various matters to the notice of those who are
in a position to take effective decisions with respect to those
matters. There would then be the spedfic problems relating to
selectivity and distortion which are peculiar to human agents
of communication. But whatever be the problems, they would
hardly affect the basic identity of 'channels' of interest articula-
tion and political communication, as pointed out earlier.
The channels described by the authors range from physical
88 Political Development
demonstrations and violence to the formal and institutional
channels such as established political parties, legislatures,
bureaucracies and mass media. In between these two extremes
comes what they have called 'personal connection'. and '61ite
representation'. Similarly, in the discussion of political com-
munication, they have designated the major types of commu-
nication structures as '(1) informal face-to-face contacts, which
spring up more or less independently of other social structures;
(2) traditional social structures, such as family or religious
group relationships; (3) political "output" structures, such as
legislatures and bureaucracies; (4) political "input" structures,
including trade unions and similar interest groups, and political
parties; and (5) the mass media'.16
If we compare the two lists given above, one in the context
of interest articulation and the other in the context of political
communication, it is obvious that they are the same. The
channel designated as 'personal connection' in the context of
interest articulation has merely been bifurcated into two in the
context of political communication and designated 'informal
face-to-face contacts' and 'traditional social structures'. One
significant omission in the list of political communication
structures is the lack of any mention of physical demonstrations
and violence, which is supposed to play such an important role
in the channels of interest articulation that the authors have
gone out of their way to point out that it may be treated in at
least some cases as an integral part of the system itself. In fact,
the footnote on page 82 in connection with james L. Payne's
book Labour and Politics in Peru goes on to suggest that the 'views
of possible roles of violence long held by Western political
scientists"'7may just be ethnocentric. But if this is so, violence
would have to be taken as a positive indicator of political devel-
opment for, presumably, the ethnocentricity of western political
scientists lay in regarding it as negative in character. The still
more significant feature of the quotation designating the types
of communication structures, however' is its explicit admission
of political 'input' and 'output' structures. The signfficance of
this admission, particularly in relation to the conversion func-
tions and our earlier discussion on construing political develop-
ment in terms of input-output ratios, will be discussed later on.
Besides the diversity in the structures of interest articulation
The Criterion as Conversion Functions 89
and the channels through which they make themselves felt,
there is diversity in the styles of interest articulation. As
Almond and Powell write, 'The performance of the interest
articulation function may be manifest or latent, specific or
diffuse, general or particular, instrumental or affective in
style.'.18 Besides these, there is 'the distinction between a
pragmatic, instrumental style and an ideological one', which
'is particularly important in interest articulations The dimen-
sions in which the distinctions of style have been articulated by
the authors are too ivell known to students of political science
to need explication here. They are fairly close to the pattern-
variables of Parsons discussed earlier. The onl '
y important
departure from the Parsonian scheme lies in the admission of
the dichotomy, pragmatic vs. ideological. The use of the term
'instrumental' in the quotation is not very happy as it had
already been used by the authors as a contrast to 'affective'
and it does not exactly connote the contrast to the 'ideological'
which is sought to be conveyed by the term.
Further, it is diflicult to see how the contrast 'ideological-
pragmatic' could refer to s@yles of interest articulation. The
reference to catholic and communist groups in France and
Italy is hardly illuminating, as they are distinguished by the
content of their demands and their views about the nature and
function of political systems. It is not a question, therefore, of
style at all, but rather of a fundamental difference in the way
one conceives of the nature of a polity. In a sense, the other
contrasts also refer more to the content rather than the style
of interest articulation. However, perhaps the more relevant
point in the context of any discussion of political development
is to discover as to which of them are to be regarded as positive
or negative indicators of such development.
The Parsonian variables have been closely linked to the
dichotomy of tradition and modernity with which most socio-
logists and political scientists approach social and political
phenomena. As modernity is almost always treated as the
equivalent of development, the criteria characterizing modern-
ity are also treated as indicators of development. Thus it
is that manifestness, specificity, generality, and instrumentality
are usually treated as indicators of modernity and thus of
development also. There are certainly those who talk of the
90 Political Development
modernity of tradition and even question the identification of
Weberian 'rationality' with development.211 But such voices
are few and far between. The dominant majority still interprets
the notion of development in Parsonian and Weberian terms.
As Almond and Powell point out; 'The more latent and diffuse
the style of interest articulation, the more difficult it is to
aggregate interests and translate them into a public policy
which will alleviate sources of discontent.'21 And they write
further, 'rigid ideological perspectives, highly particularistic
demands, and emotionally charged expressions of desires also
make reconciliation of diverse interests more difficult than
when the style of these interests is more pragmatic and ins-
trumental'.22
The above interpretation of the styles of interest articulation
in the context of political development sees them primarily in
terms of their facilitating or hindering interest aggregation. But
if this be the case, then interest articulation per se cannot he an
index of political development in any significant sense of the
term. Rather, it would be the aggregation of interests which
would be central to the matter. But before we turn to a dis-
cussion of interest aggregation, it would be advisable to con-
sider the three dimensions of interest articulation together.
The predominant structures through which interests are
articulated, the type of access channels that are habitually
used and the styles which are most frequently adopted are the
three major dimensions in which the phenomenon of interest
articulation is to be assessed in relation to political development..
Normally, it may be assumed that an increase in institutional
and associational groups increasingly making use of political
parties, representatives in the legislature, bureaucracies and
the mass media for articulation of their interests in a pragmatic
manner and formulated with clarity, specificity and generality,
is a sign of political development in a society. On the other
hand, if non associational or anomic groups increasingly emerge
on the scene utilizing violence, demonstrations and riots for
the articulation of demands which are diffuse, particular, emo-
tional and ideological in nature, it would presumably indicate
political decay rather than political development in a society.
However, for those who opt for a dialectical view of develop-
ment such phenomena would have to be interpreted differently.
The Criterion as Conversion Functions 9 1
They would he seen as providing that dialectical tension which
would most probably result in a synthesis of conflicting interests
at a higher level. Also they would be seen as evidence of either
the absence, insufliciency or breakdown of the usual access
channels for the articulation of interests in a political system.
In other contexts, it might merely be evidence of extra pressure
generated by organized interests which are also using the
legitimate access channels for pressing their demands.
The problem posed by the diverse and conflicting interpreta-
tions of the same phenomenon depending upon the context in
which it is seen, the values in terms of which it is evaluated and
the understanding of the dynamics of the situation in terms of
what it is supposed to develop into, creates insuperable difficul-
ties in the way of any straightforward interpretation of any
phenomenon as an indicator of political development. Perhaps
the solution would lie in the explicit articulation of the values
in terms of which the evaluation is being done, the context in
which the phenomenon is being placed and the dynamic inter-
relationships on the basis of which the future is being pro-
jected. But the moment.this is done, alternative contexts, values
and dynamic interrelationships would come into the picture
and thejudgementaboutpolitical development begins to depend
upon the choices one makes regarding them. Also, the moment
all these factors are taken into account, the judgement would
become so subtly qualitative in nature as to lose all relevance
for purposes of quantitative measurement and comparison. It
would become more like the judgement of historians, and the
whole attempt to render the study of political science 'scientific'
would relapse into the situation from which it was sought to
be retrieved.
The deeper problem, however, relates to the assumption that
the articulation of any and every interest is desirable in a
polity, and that the task of a political system is to reconcile and
aggregate all interests so that they may be satisfied to the
maximum. The assumption, it is generally forgotten, pre-
supposes not only the primacy of politics but also its totaliy vis-
a-vis the social system. Such a totalitarian view of the function
of politics may be natural and perhaps even welcome to
practising politicians, but that it should be so to political
scientists also is surprising indeed. For, it should be obvious to
92 Political Development
them that if freedom is one of the central values to be preserved,
safeguarded and enhanced by the political system, it is essential
that freedom from politics itself be seen as one of its essential
components. It is not exactly a happy situation if people con-
tinuously think in terms of their interests, articulating them and
presenting them as demands to be fulfilled by the political
system. Political scientists hardly realize how much their view
of what may be called'political welfare'is built on the economic
model. Instead of 'wants', they talk of 'interests', and as 'wants'
for the economist are and ought to be unlimited, so also for the
political scientist 'interests' are and ought to be unlimited. But
as economists are discovering that 'unlirnitedness' of wants is
essentially suicidal when confronted with the essential 'limited-
ness' of non-renewable resources, so also political scientists
might discover increasing articulation of interests to c a
menace to the health and stability of a political system.
: The other assumption of those who write of interest articula-
tion in the context of political development appears to be that
the- 'interests' of various groups are ultimately harmonious in
character. For if this were not so, the more the interests were
articulated the more would they tear the polity apart by the
essential impossibility of the resolution of their conflict. The
Marxists, -along with all who have a dialectical view of devel-
opment, take just such a view of class interests. They treat them
as essentially irreconcilable and thus as the ultimate motive
force for the revolution through which alone antagonisms will
be resolved. But while the revolution reverses the position of
those who hold power, it does not abolish the conflict of interests
amongst the various groups, which is a result of that relative
scarcity of goods and services which renders, in principle, their
equal distribution impossible. The only recourse in such a situa-
tion is to suppress the articulation of interests as much as
possible, and to replace the notion of 'wants' with 'needs' in
the economic sphere and of 'interests' with 'values' in the
political sphere. The term 'values' refers to something for the
sake of which the 'interests' of individuals and groups, however
large, are sacrificed in a deliberate, self-conscious manner. The
use of brute, total and naked force for the achievement of these
objectives is well known to students of recent political history.
But what is not so well known is the fact that any society which
The Criterion as Conversion Functions 93
conceives of itself in terms of egocentric interests cannot but
lead to the development of an increasingly anarchic situation
which can be retrieved only by a dictatorship of some sort or
other. That this has not yet occurred in many western democra-
cies where the view of society as a field of competing interests
is propounded is merely due- to the fact that some- overarching
value system beyond the competing interests still obtains in
those societies and that, fortunately, many of them do not
practise what they preach.
The situation in the so-called developing countries, how-
ever, is radically different in that they seem to take the 'interest
articulation' view of a democratic polity too seriously and thus
consider it obligatory to encourage as much interest articula-
tion by as many groups as possible. This, however, leads only
to a situation of continuously increasing anarchy which is then
sought to be stopped by one form of totalitarian control or
other. The counterpart of Adam Smith's 'hidden hand', though
not explicitly formulated in democratic political theory, has
yet to be postulated to make it function. But as the 'hidden
hand' is provided only by cultural and motivational con-
straints, it may not he available at hand to counteract the drive
towards anarchy inherent in the 'interest' view of politics pro-
pounded by many political scientists who have recently written
on the subject.
There is, however, a deeper distinction from the realm of
economics which, if not noticed, may lead to even greater
disasters for political thought and consequently for political
practice also. Economic theory at least ensures that if the con-
ditions of perfect competition were realized, prices would
stabilize at a point maximally advantageous to everyone con-
cerned. It may be true that the existence of quasi-monopolistic
institutions on the one hand and the differential distribution of
income on the other perpetually stand in the way of the achieve-
ment of conditions of perfect competition in any society what-
soever. But at least the theory assures us that if it were to be
achieved, maximal satisfaction and utilization of resources
would be ensured. Unfortunately for political theory, it can
ensure nothing of the kind. Even if each person were to arti-
culate all the interests he has, there is nothing in the theory to
show that they must reach an equilibrium point where maxi-
94 Political Development
mum satisfaction will be ensured for all the interests of all the
people.
It may be urged that the articulation of interests may range
from the mere expression of a demand to a sustained and con-
certed action for its achievement even at the cost of staking
one's life for the fulfilment of the demand. The genuine intensity
of the demand could thus be weighed on a graded scale deter-
mined by the actual sacrifice one is willing to make for its
fulfilment. The sacrifice would thus be the cost that one is
willing to incur for the fulfilment of one's interest and the
equilibrium point reached when one of the parties to the con-
flict of interests decides that it is not in its interest to make any
more sacrifices for the fulfilment of its demands. The limiting
case would be reached, as in the case of war, when one or both
the parties decide to fight to the finish till one or the other is
completely subjugated or annihilated. This would be the
analogue of the price-theory in economics, where the effective-
ness of demand is measured by what one is prepared to pay for
it. But to judge the effectiveness of an interest in terms of the
'force' that one is prepared to exercise for its achievement is to
revert back to a view of politics propounded by Thrasymachus
in Plato's Republic and Hobbes in his Leviathan. There is, of
course, no intellectual harm in this provided it is done openly
and with full consciousness of all the consequences. The
equilibrium point on such a view, it should be clearly under-
stood, has nothing to do with the so-called 'maximal fulfilment
of diverse interests'. Rather, it is a situation where those who
have the utmost power rule, and those who have lost the battle
for power have either already lost their lives or preferred to live
in subjugation or slavery.
'Interest articulation', then, can hardly serve by itself as an
indicator of political development. In different contexts an
increase in it either in terms of extent or intensity or both may
mean a growth in the political awareness of a people or just an
overloading of the political system leading to its breakdown
and decay. In fact, as in most cases the demands on the political
system would tend to outrun its capacity to meet them, the only
likely result would be increasing revelation of the incapacity of
the system to meet the demands made upon it, resulting in its
replacement by a system which does not permit the freedom of
The Criterion as Conversion Functions 95
'interest articulation' by the citizens, or restricts it severely. It
may be suggested, therefore, that the heart of the problem of
political development should be sought in 'interest aggregation',
rather than in 'interest articulation', since whether the interests
are articulated or not the task of a polity is to aggregate the
diverse interests to the utmost possible extent.
(2) The Criterion as Interest Aggregation
To turn from interest articulation to interest aggregation as
a criterion of political development is to turn from what is
demanded of a political system to what it actually delivers to its
members for whom it is supposed to function. And there can
perhaps be little doubt that a political system should ultimately
be judged by what it does for its citizens. However, if what is
done is seen in terms of 'interests' and that too of those who are
able to articulate them most effectively, there would be an
in-built distortion in the criterion itself. For the interests of
even those who are not able to articulate themselves ought to
be of paramount concern to the polity. And, at a still deeper
level, what should engage the attention of a polity is not so
much the satisfaction of interests as the facilitation of the
realization of value or values for its people.
The term 'interest aggregation', however, is unfortunate in
another respect. Even if we talk in terms of 'interests', what
is sought to be achieved is not so much an aggregation as a
reconciliation of diverse and opposing interests. The term 'ag-
gregation' is too summative in nature to convey the difficulty
and complexity of the task involved. Further, in the specific
technical sense in which it is used by Almond and Powell, it
connotes only the intermediate stage of aggregation rather than
the final stage where what is aggregated takes the form of
positive enactment as law. It is related more to the phase where
policy alternatives are formulated rather than to that where a
final choice with respect to policy alternatives is made. Accord-
ing to Almond and Powell, 'The function of converting de-
mands into general policy alternatives is called interest aggrega-
tion.'23 Also, it is made explicitly clear that the term 'interest
aggregation' is reserved 'for the more inclusive levels of the
combinatory process-the structuring of major policy alterna-
96 Political Development
tives and also distinguish it from the final process of authorita-
tive rule making'.24
It is of course conceded that every articulation of interest
involves an 'interest aggregation' of some sort, and that com-
plete aggregation is made only at the level when an authorita-
tive rule is finally formulated. As the authors write, 'interest
aggregation can occur at many points in the political system',
and that even 'a single individual may take into account a
variety of claims and considerations before articulating his own
demands' .25 In fact, 'some degree of aggregation is almost
inevitably carried out at all levels from individual interest
articulation to the final decision-making' .26 But if this is the
situation, what is the point of treating it as a separate category,
completely dissociated from interest articulation, on the one
hand, and rule-making, on the other? The only justification
offered is that unless there are some such midway institutions
specializing in the task of aggregating diverse and different
interests that have been articulated at various levels in the
system, the final decision-maker will be overwhelmed by the
indefinite multiplicity of interests pressing for his attention and
be either completely immobilized from taking any decision or
forced into erratic or impulsive decisions.
But 'immobilism' or 'impulsive decisions' are not exactly a
function of the 'non-aggregation' of interests in a polity because
of the absence of specific, differentiated structures devoted to
the performance of that task. The first usually results from the
fact that the conflicting interests seem so balanced against one
another that it is difficult to favour one or the other without
disturbing the unity and peace of the polity in a substantial
manner. On the other hand, it may also be a result of the
psychological inability of the political elite to take difficult and
unpleasant decisions which may disturb the status quo in a sub-
stantial manner. But whether the reason for 'immobilism' lies
in the first or the second or a blend of both, it can hardly be
said to be due to the fact that a polity has not evolved dif-
ferentiated structures to perform the task of 'interest aggrega-
tion'. Similarly, it is difficult to believe that 'impulsive' or
'erratic' decisions have anything to do with the fact that the
articulated interests have reached the decision-makers in an
'unaggregated' manner. Rather, more often, they are the
The Criterion as Conversion Functions 97
result of a crisis situation which makes unexpected demands on
the decision-makers who also happen to be temperamentally
incapable of reacting coolly to a crisis situation.
The authors recognize, that, in certain circumstances, 'im-
mobilism' may be the only sound policy for the decision-
making @lite as the status quo represents the best compromise
between warring interests in the situation. They write, 'the
possibility must be kept in mind, however, that in systems
with high levels of conflict and disagreement over policy direc-
tion, the maintenance of the status quo may be as satisfying to as
many groups and individuals as any single possible pattern of
change.12" But it is not made clear how the creation of dif-
ferentiated, interest-aggregating institutions would be of any
special help in achieving this. The so-called 'immobilism' in the
sense of maintaining the status quo derives not from the presence
or absence of these institutions, but from the internal social,
economic and cultural structure of the society in which the
decision-maker is situated and of which he is also an integral
part. The decision-maker, of course, need not be a single person,
and, in fact, seldom is. But that would scarcely affect the situa-
tion except in making it more complicated, as the plurality of
decision-makers may represent a diversity of interests amongst
themselves.
However, this diversity and plurality of interests does not
disappear even after their supposed aggregation by the dif-
ferentiated structures evolved by the so-called 'politically more
developed' societies. For, according to the authors themselves,
interest aggregation is only concerned with 'converting demands
into generalpolicy alternatives'.211 But assuming that the alternatives
are real alternatives in the sense that the adoption of one leads
to consequences which are diametrically opposed to those which
would follow from the adoption of the other, it is diffieu t to
discover what advantage the decision-maker gets by the crea-
tion of differentiated structures for aggregating interests. The
aggregated policy alternatives would be so contradictory in
nature that the dilemma of the decision-maker faced with the
perennial task of reconciling the irreconcilables would, if any-
thing, be more aggravated. He would certainly gain a clearer
consciousness of the choices involved and the relative costs that
each choice entailed in the circumstances concerned. But this
98 Political Development
task is in no way dependent on the existence of differentiated
aggregating structures. Rather, it is a function of the knowledge
of causal interrelationships that obtain in the relevant fields
and, in fact, are generally available to the decision-maker
whether such differentiated institutions for interest aggregation
exist or not. On the other hand, the sharpness in the formulation
of policy alternatives which happen to be mutually exclusive
and dichotomous in character, would only render the task of
the decision-maker more difficult, as he does not have to adopt
one of the contradictory alternatives formulated by the dif-
ferentiated structures devoted to the task of interest aggregation,
but, rather, to evolve a new alternative which maximizes the
interest-satisfaction of all concerned.
The above view of the decision-maker's function assumes
that he himself does not represent any specific interest or
interests in the society concerned. For, if he were to do so, he
would have to adopt the policy alternative which maximally
aggregates the interests he represents, and ignore completely
the interests which are conflicting or antagonistic to his own.
Many theories of political life tend to argue that such is actually
the case, and that the whole discussion of the decision-maker
serving some overarching public interest which somehow
transcends and reconciles conflicting private and group interests
is just a fagade which deceives nobody. The Marxist theory of
state is honest enough to propound this view of political life
explicitly, but somehow forgets to apply the truth to its own
case, thus indirectly justifying the necessiy of the fagade in all
cases. Yet, the very fact that such a necessity is felt by all
holders of public office is indicative of the fact that the essence
of the notion of functioning in a public capacity is always
conceived of in such a manner, and only that exercise of the
function is considered legitimate which is exercised with such an
end in view. But if it is impossible to exercise the function in
such a-way then the purpose of the polity is defeated at its
foundations, and both liberal and radical solutions are doomed
to failure from the very start.
The in-built hopelessness of the situation is masked by the
fact that theoreticians tend to postulate a freedom for them-
selves which they consider impossible for others and which
their theory rules out in principle, or a society in which there
The Criterion as Conversion Functions 99
are no incompatible interests at all and to which perhaps the
notion of 'incompatible interests' does not apply in principle.
Usually the two tend to go together. The theoretician blithely
assumes that not only is he free from all the determinations
which others are subject to, but that out of a society where it
is impossible for any decision-maker to transcend his particular
class interests and to think and act in terms of the interest of the
whole, would emerge another where there being no classes,
the decision-makers would think and act only in terms of the
interest of the whole. There is, of course, the further point
whether in a class society there could he any such thing as 'the
interest of the whole'. But then the paradox would become
deeper, as what we are asked to believe is the possibility of the
emergence of a society where there would not only be no
incompatible interests to reconcile, but also no possibility for
any such incompatibility to ever arise in future from a society
where this was impossible in principle.
For once, the possibility of competing interests is admitted in
a polity, the decision-maker would either have to be given the
task and the capability of reconciling these interests or the
polity would have to continue to subdivide till it reaches
autonomous units with homogeneous interests or accept a per-
petual alternation between diverse interests or groups which
dominate- each other either by force or fraud or both.
Marxists, for example, make an exception in their own case
and think they can transcend the, determination, which nor-
mally should be their fate, of working to realize the interests
of the class into which they happen to have been born by a bio-
logical accident. Equally, they tend to postulate the existence
of a society in which the-re will be no conflict of interests at all,
or, if there is conflict, that there will be no doubt as to which
are the legitimate interests that ought to prevail. The former is
the well-known notion of the classless society towards which
all history moves and which alonejustifies all history, as without
it, it would be a tale of senseless injustice and irredeemable
horror. The latter is the well-known dictatorship of the pro-
letariat which is a necessary instrument for the, realization of
the former. There is also perhaps the assumption that the
proletariat constitutes the majority of the people, and that in
some metaphysical sense its interests represent the interests of
100 Political Development
the whole. The majority, of course, may range from 51 to 99
per cent and to the extent it approximates to the latter, the
metaphysical sense also tends to coincide with the empirical.
But as in most countries where Marxist revolutions have taken
place, the peasantry formed a major part of the population and
as, according to most Marxist thinkers, the peasantry is not
only no part of the proletariat but has interests that conflict
with those of the latter, the interests which the dictatorship
pursues in the name of history on behalf of the proletariat tend
to be more and more metaphysical in character and the
divergence between the empirical and the metaphysical tends
to widen. On the other hand, the advanced industrial countries
where at one time the proletariat really constituted the majority
and in which Marx thought the socialist revolution would take
place, have shown a disquieting decline in the proportion of
the proletariat in their post-industrial phases. It is not only the
white-collar worker who begins to outnumber those engaged in
the industrial field, but also those who work in what has come
to be. called 'the knowledge industry' who begin to outnumber
both .29 The decline in the proportion of persons engaged in
agriculture, which was such a marked characteristic of western
countries in their first phase of industrialization, is followed by
a second and a third phase when the proportion of people
engaged in industrial production first declines relatively to
those engaged in the service industries and then to those
engaged in the knowledge industries. The dictatorship of the
proletariat in these countries, therefore, would represent the
actual interests of a minority which only by some metaphysical
sleight of hand could be made out to represent not only the
interests of the whole but of the future also.
The importance of the notion of the decision-maker as a
person who tries to reconcile conflicting interests is that if his
function is conceived of in this way the 'interest aggregation'
performed by the so-called intermediate structures of Almond
and Powell, instead of helping him, would make his task even
more difficult. For, according to them, the task of the interest
aggregating structures is not to reconcile divergent interests
but to aggregate 'the articulated interests into major policy
alternatives' .30 Now, though the authors have not clearly spelled
out what they mean by 'policy alternatives', it may reasonably
The Criterion as Conversion Functions 101
be assumed that the alternatives so formulated are exclusive in
the sense that if one of the policy alternatives for implementa-
tion is accepted one necessarily excludes the satisfaction of all
those interests which are presumably aggregated in the other
policy alternative. Not only this, the alternatives so formulated
are presumably exhaustive in character. If so, the decision-
maker is left in an impossible position where he can hardly
exercise his function, for he can only choose out of the policy
alternatives which aggregate opposing interests into sharp,
clear-cut dichotomies and, in doing so, become the instrument
for the realization of one set of interests against others. The
close relation of the interest-aggregation function to the struc-
ture of political parties in Almond's presentation strengthens
this interpretation even more, as the so-called 'policy alterna-
tives' can only be formulated by different parties which
presumably represent opposed and conflicting interests.
It is true that bureaucratic structures are also supposed to
perform the function of interest aggregation and, presumably,
they would be concerned with what we have called the recon-
ciliation of diverse interests rather than their formulation in
sharply opposed and exclusive alternatives, which political
parties are supposed to do. But then it is difficult to see why
bureaucracy should formulate alternative policy proposals
except in the sense that there may be alternative ways of
reconciling the interests. Yet, even if it be conceded that it is
tenable to speak of alternatives in such a context, it is clear that
the bureaucracy itself would have to work out the cost-benefit
ratios of the different strategies of reconciliation, and re-
commend the strategy which does so in the best possible
manner.
It is, of course, true that the bureaucracy, like political
parties, might have its own particular interests to foster' But,
in that case, it would not be performing the function specific to
itself. On the other hand, the very raison d'@tre of political parties
is supposed to be the articulation, propagation and fulfilment
of someparticular interests against others. In fact, the unawareness
of the radical distinction between the sort of interest aggrega-
tion that is demanded from bureaucracy and that.which is
supposed to be performed by political parties is perhaps the
central weakness of the authors' discussion regarding this issue.
102 Political Development
But the moment such a distinction is made, one is bound to ask
what is gained by the sort of interest aggregation which political
parties are required to perform in the Almond-Powell model?
The authors are aware of the dangers which a divided, frag-
mented polity faces if its members articulate their diverse
interests in irreconcilable terms. But they forget that the
function they ascribe, or rather prescribe, for political parties
does just that.
Their plea, of course, is that the bureaucracy cannot exercise.
its function effectively unless there are other agencies which
perform the same function in an autonomous, independent
fashion. They contend that 'in order for the bureaucracy to
aggregate effectively, a system with a strong and effective
decision-making center outside of the bureaucracy itself is
generally necessary. Without such a center the bureaucracy
may not he able to maintain its autonomy and coherence.131
But, first, this refers only to the independence and autonomy
of the decision-making centres from those that perform
the interest-aggregating function. And, secondly, it says noth-
ing about the necessity of a plurality of interest-aggregat-
ing institutions functioning independently of each other.
Even if such a necessity be admitted for the reason that sep-
arate agencies working independently of each other might
arrive at solutions which a single agency working on its own
may not possibly envisage, it by no means follows that such a
function tan only be discharged most effectively by political
parties, as the authors seem to think. Nor does it follow that it
will be facilitated if some institutions aggregate interests not
in the sense of reconciliation of conflicting interests but in the
sense of formulation of policies devoted to the achievement of
one set of interests against others. For, this is usually what
political parties do and also what they are s 1upposed to do in
the model set for them by Almond and Powell. It may be noted
in passing that a political party does not and cannot sugge 1st
policy alternatives, as the authors seem to think. Rather, each
political party can only suggest one policy alternative which is
such as to maximize, if followed, the interests it represents. The
other alternatives can only be formulated by other political
parties or by the bureaucracy or other institutions concerned
with the task. The alternatives so formulated are supposed to
The Criterion as Conversion Functions 103
he considered by the decision-making authority, which may
choose any one out of them or formulate a new one on its own.
The relation of the decision-making authority to the various
agencies which formulate the policy proposals for its considera-
tion is, however, not the same. The policy alternative proposed
by the political party which happens also to be the ruling
party is in a totally different position than all the other alterna-
tives proposed by other institutions. It occupies a pre-eminent
position in the sense tha 't the ruling wing of a political party is
supposed to implement the policies formulated by the party,
and if it deviates from thein, it does so only marginally.
Thus, if a political party is conceived of as the representative
of only a certain group of interests, it is almost inevitable that
its ruling wing does nothing else but cater to those interests. On
the other hand, if a political party is conceived of as a specific
viewpoint for the reconciliation of conflicting interests or as a
particular manner of reconciling these interests, it becomes the
bounden duty of the ruling wing to take note of all the alterna-
tive proposals for reconciliation and try to adopt the one which '
in its judgement, has the possibilities of achieving it to the
maximum extent.
It is a well-known fact that whenever a political party comes
to power, its ruling wing feels constraints and obligations which
it had not even suspected earlier, and of which the non-ruling
wing generally remains unaware. This has often created ten-
sions between the two wings, specially in cases where the party
comes to power for the first time and, even more so, when the
party conceives of itself in ideological terms. Perhaps we could
distinguish between parties that conceive of themselves as the
representative of some particular interests only, and those that
do not conceive of themselves in such a manner. The particular
interests may he those of a class or caste or race Or region or
religion or linguistic group. But in all such and similar cases,
the political parties ought to be regarded as performing only
the function of interest articulation and not of interest aggrega-
tion, except in the trivial sense in which the articulation of any
interest already involves some sort of aggregation or other. It
is only when a political party conceives of itself;is representing
not this or that interest but rather the interest of the whole that
it may he said to be perforn-iing the function of interest aggrega-
104 Political Development
tion primarily. However, it is difficult for any political party to
perform this function with great effectiveness unless it comes
to power, and even then it is only its ruling wing which ap-
prehends the problems and difficulties of reconciliation in their
totality.
Political parties, thus, do not seem to be such efficient
instruments of interest aggregation as Almond and Powell seem
to think. Nor is it clear, as they seem to imply, that a political
party's interest-aggregating function frees the decision-maker
in carrying out his task more effectively. Rather, it should be
seen as a constraint on the decision-maker, as a continuous
pressure on him to subordinate interest aggregation in terms of
the polity and society as a whole, for which he feels responsible,
to the interests of the political party which he represents and
which seldom, if ever, coincide with the interests of the totality.
The authors are, of course, aware of the problem of fragmenta-
tion in aggregation patterns, but they do not quite see that the
way they conceive the role of political parties in the function of
interest aggregation, cannot but lead to the augmentation of
such a situation. And, though it may he accepted that 'the
emergence of fragmented policy alternatives in the aggregation
process is "caused" by basic cultural and economic features of
the society, it,,tan be alleviated or exacerbated by the way in
which mediating interest aggregation is performed"32 it is
difficult to believe that political parties are the institutions par
excellence for achieving such alleviation, or that they invariably
or predominantly do so.
In fact, there is an inverse relation between interest articula-
tion and interest aggregation in the sense that the task of
aggregation becomes increasingly difficult as the number of
articulated interests increases. But as increase in interest arti-
culation is itself seen as a sign of political development, it is
obvious that if aggregative processes do not keep pace with it,
the polity would become increasingly fragmented, which would
be a sign not of political development but of political decay.
And, as articulation is always easier to achieve than aggrega-
tion, it is bound to run ahead of the latter and make its task
increasingly difficult, if not impossible. Such an inverse relation-
ship between the criteria offered by the authors for political
.development is not confined merely to interest articulation and
The Criterion as Conversion Functions 105
interest aggregation. Rather, as we shall see in section (8), it
is a feature of other criteria also.
Besides the so-called structures of interest aggregation,
Almond and Powell regard the style of interest aggregation as
equally important for indicating whether a polity may be
regarded as politically developed or not. By style, the authors
refer to 'the way in which the structure performs the function.
the general operating rules it manifests'.33 They distinguish
between 'three ditterent styles of interest aggregation, cor-
responding roughly to increasingly secularized political sub-
cultures of the interest aggregation structures'.34 These styles
are characterized as 'pragmatic bargaining, absolute-value
oriented, and traditionalistie'.35 The third. that is the tradi-
tionalistic style, is presumably supposed to characterize all past
societies, while the first two are supposed to differentiate the
totalitarian regimes of the fascist and communist varieties from
the democratic. At the heart of the pragmatic-bargaining style is
supposed to be 'the accommodation of diverse interests', and
Compromise and the atmosphere of the market place are
supposed to dominate the process of interest aggregation'.36 On
the other hand,.in the absolute-value oriented style of interest
aggregation, 'a rigid framework is imposed upon the expression
and aggregation of all group interests'.37 Also, 'such a style
often results in the systematic exclusion of the demands and
interests of major groups in the population'.311 Thus it is not only
that the articulation of interests is rigidly controlled in the
absolute-value oriented style of interest aggregation, but that,
though the interests pursued are supposed to represent the real
or true interests of all, in fact they are only the interests con-
ceived of by a minority in the name of the totality, even when
most of the actual groups constituting the population reject
the formulation.
The. distinction between the 'apparent' and the 'real' interests
is, thus, at the heart of the absolute-value oriented style of interest
aggregation, it being assumed that the so-called 'real' interests
are unknown to all except the privileged few, or rather the
privileged one, who alone may know what they are. But, then,
there seems little point in calling it interest aggregation, as it
is not diverse interests which are aggregated in this style;
instead, the very notion of diversity of interests is denied and
106 Political Development
relegated to the realm of the 'apparent' rather than the 'real'.
It belongs, in Plato's terminology, to the realm of opinion rather
than knowledge. But in this sense it would be wrong to say that
the so-called traditional societies of the past have not been
characterized by this style of interest aggregation. Most theo-
cratic states, particularly those belonging to the judaic tradi-
tion, have always thought of themselves as defenders of the
Faith and in possession of Truth, as against the false knowledge
of the heretics and infidels. In this respect, there is little to
choosf-vetween these states of the past and the fascist and com-
munist states of today.
The objection may be raised that the ideological posture of a
society only affects the rhetoric used and, perhaps to a lesser
extent, the style adopted for purposes of interest aggregation
rather than the fact that there remain diverse and conflicting
interests demanding such aggregation. That such interests are
deemed as 'apparent' rather than 'real' does not affect the fact
that they have either to be extirpated completely or placated to
some extent. As it is usually not possible to achieve the former
totally, the latter has to he attempted even when not approved
or liked. Not all the heretics can be killed, or all the profit- or
power-seekers eliminated. And if this cannot be done, then
these persistent and conflicting interests will have to be defused
in some manner or other. The actual practice of openly ideo-
logical r6gimes, whether of the religious or the secular variety,
seems to confirm this. Most religious @@gimes have to come to
terms with the existence of heretic minorities or even of heretic
majorities within their own midst. A classic case of the latter
was Islamic rule in India where a religious ruling minority had
to come to terms with a ruled majority belonging to a different
religion. The Mughal Empire sought to solve the problem by
inducting first the Rajput nobility and later the antagonistic
Marathas into their administrative system. Later, the British
Empire adopted the same policy, though in a more openly
secular framework than that of the Mughals. The secular
dictatorships of Hitler and Mussolini, specially in their imperial
phase, did not last long enough for this truth to he perceived.
But the Soviet variant of the pattern has shown, specially in its
relations with East European countries, an evolution which
may he regarded as analogous.
The Criterion as Conversion Functions 107
Yet, even if it is conceded that the task of interest aggregation
remains to a great extent the same under ideologies of different
persuasions, it may be accepted that they can make a significant
difference at some stages in the development of a polity. This
will be specially true of the early stages when ideological
passions are high, the search for ideological purity absolute
and the urge for implementation of the ideal imperative. But
even at other times, the Mullahs and the Pandits, or, to use more
sophisticated terminology, the ideologues of the party, have to
be placated, for they and their rhetoric provide legitimacy to
the 6lite in power. In fact, it may be hazarded as a hypothesis
that, in the later stages of a polity' the strength of the ideo-
logues would be a function of the weakness of the ruling i61ite
and the difficulties it may be facing at home or abroad.
Thus, as the absolute-value oriented style of interest aggrega-
tion is found in large parts of human history, the attempt to
distinguish it from the traditionalistic style does not seem very
happy. Further, Almond and Powell's definition of the tradi-
tionalistic style is such that it will be found in most politics,
except at the moments of'their revolutionary beginnings.
'Traditionalistic styles of aggregation', write the authors, 'rely
upon the patterns of the past in suggesting policy alternatives
for the future.'39 But this is not an unusual phenomenon at all,
and the policies of all the politics most of the time may be
characterized in some such terms. It is surprising to find authors
who have written so much about'political socialization' treating
as 'traditionalistic' a reliance on patterns of the past even for
suggesting policy alternatives for the future.
It may be true, as Toynbee has pointed out, that this is the
bane of all politics and the fundamental cause of their decline
and decay. The idolization of an ephemeral self or technique or
institution may be the cause, as Toynbee contends, of the fact
that societies, nations and individuals tend to fall in love with
that which once was successful in meeting a challenge or over-
coming a difficulty in the past. But this is only another name for
the learning process through which we assimilate the present
into the past; if sometimes the assimilation is unwarranted be-
cause the present happens to be sharply dissimilar from the past,
the action based on the assimilation might prove disastrous for
the actor concerned. But this is a risk inherent in the situation,
108 Political Development
and unless the actor is sensitive to both the similarities and the
differences in the situation, he is unlikely to respond cre-
atively to the changing situation. This is as true of the field of
knowledge, as that of action. Significant breakthroughs in the
former are as much the result of getting away from the accepted
paradigms of explanation as the revolutionary breakaway from
the traditional patterns of response in the case of the latter. But
neither knowledge nor action will be possible, if new paradigms
are set up each day and new revolutions proclaimed each hour.
Continuity is at the heart of civilization and consists in nothing
else except the reliance on patterns of the past for acting in the
present so that some determinate, desirable future may be
realized.
As for the pragmatic-bargaining style, it not only assumes an
actual diversity of interests, but also of their social legitimacy.
To the extent that actual diversity of interests may be said to
characterize all societies, such a style of interest aggregation
may also be expected to be found there on almost a priori
grounds. However, as pointed out in our discussion of the
absolute-value oriented style of interest aggregation, unless this
actual diversity is provided an ideological legitimacy in the
political system, there will be a continuous tension and strain
between what the ideology demands and what the actual
exigencies dictate in the situation. The Hindu world-view
legitimizes such a plurality and diversity at the empirico-
religious level, while the liberal-democratic view seeks to do the
same at the sociopolitical level. In a certain sense, the legitim-
ization of interest articulation already entails the legitin-tization
of the plurality and diversity of interests. And once the plural-
ity and diversity of interests is accepted as legitimate, the
pragmatic-bargaining style of aggregating these interests will
also be accepted and adopted openly. But accepting the
legitimacy of plural and diverse interests may also lead to the
increasing fragmentation of a polity, making the task of integra-
tion more and more difficult.
Fragmentation, in fact, is the third parameter in terms of
which the discussion about interest aggregation has been
carried on by Almond and Powell. But the context in which
they consider the problem of fragmentation relates primarily
to patterns of interest aggregation. The focus of attention is on
The Criterion as Conversion Functions 109
whether the structures performing the interest-aggregation
function do it in such a way as to reduce the fragmentation or
sharpen it even further. That a certain amount of fragmenta-
tion exists in the polity is assumed; the only relevant question
in this context is supposed to be whether the specialized and
differentiated structures designed to aggregate these interests
do so to lessen the antagonisms and the differences amongst the
various -interests, or to increase them to breaking point. But if
the task of the differentiated structures is to aggregate the
various interests, it is difficult to see why they should do it in
such a manner as to aggravate the divisions and cleavages
amongst the various interest groups. Perhaps the clue to this
seeming anomaly lies in the fact that the interest-aggregating
structures are supposed to convert demands into poli@y alterna-
tives which, because they are conceived of as mutually exclusive
in character, sharpen and intensify the implicit differences and
oppositions between the interests of the various groups. Further,
hs these policy alternatives are supposed to be formulated
primarily by political parties opposed to each other, the likeli-
hood of their formulating the policies in such a manner as to
be sharply opposed to each other is perhaps greater than it
would otherwise have been. On the other hand, it should also
not be forgotten that the parties have to seek the widest electoral
support to come into power and thus have to formulate their
policies in such a way as to aggregate the interests of the largest
number of groups as far as possible. This perhaps is the reason
why in most countries where democratic parties function, they
tend, to approximate to each other at least in their verbal
pronouncements over a period of time. On the whole, the
aggregating function is perhaps better performed by the
bureaucracy than political parties, even though this is contrary
to what the authors think.
1 It may, therefore, be safely said that it would only be in
extraordinary circumstances that aggregating structures would
help increase the fragmentation of a polity. On the other hand,
the emphasis on interest articulation can certainly lead to a
fragmentation of the polity, as each interest so articulated
would clamour for its satisfaction at the expense of others. Not
only this, the very fact of thinking in terms of interests tends to
fragment a polity. It may, of course, be contended that all
L.-B. S. National Acadeiny
of Administration, Mussoorie A@C
Ace. NO ..............
Dath ................ . ............ ~........
1 10 Political Development
politics are in fact fragmented and that the articulation merely
brings this fact out into the open. But there can be little doubt
that the fact of articulation itself makes the interests far
sharper and more defined than they would otherwise have been.
Also, the fact of articulation makes one far more identified with
the interest than one would otherwise have been. All dictator-
ships know this so well that they do not allow free articulation
of interests, except sometimes as a ruse to tempt the differences
to come into the open so that their proponents may be elim-
inated from the body politic. The classic case of such a
strategy was Mao's call in China 'to let a hundred flowers
bloom, to let a thousand thoughts contend', resulting in the
rolling of heads of all those, who were innocent enough to
believe him. Thus, if fragmentation has to be avoided on the
ground that it is a negative indicator of political development,
one would have to throttle not only all unlicensed articulation
of interests but also all thinking in terms of 'interests'. And
this is what all totalitarian systems attempt to do. Yet, it is
difficult to believe that they would be regarded as paradigmatic
examples of political development by anybody, including
Almond and Powell themselves.
The authors are, of course, aware of the difficulties created
by interest articulation for modernization and political devel-
opment. As Almond and Powell point out, 'clearly the tendency
of social and economic modernization to expand communica-
tion levels, to increase inclinations toward participation, to
widen the gap between rich and poor (at least in the short run
in many cases), and generally to increase the number of autonomous
demands arising from the socie@y, places growing stress upon the
aggregation structures.'40 The, stresses are relieved by many
modernizing systems through the creation of 'a controlled form
of participation and a hierarchical and unified aggregation'.41
But how can this authoritarian solution be characterized as
'development' when it seeks to negate the very features sup-
posed to constitute the core of political development? There is
little consolation in being told that 'even in cases of "authori-
tarian" solutions, the divisions and conflict often reappear in
new form within the ruling party or the elite itself'.42 Factions
or divisions in such a situation do not represent the interests of
those outside the system who constitute the majority, but only
The Criterion as Conversion Functions 111
of the various sectors of bureaucracy and the military which
alone have, access to the decision-makers in case they happen to
be different from them.
Interest aggregation, then, as a criterion of political develop-
ment seems to be full of so many holes as to be hardly capable
of holding any water, at least in the form in which the authors
have presented it in their work. According to them, the
existence of differentiated structures dedicated to the task of
interest aggregation is a sign of political development, provided
the whole task is performed in a pragmatic-bargaining style
and with a view to alleviating and bridging the differences
that obtain between diverse and conflicting interests of various
groups and classes constituting the polity. The aggregation
structures, it should be remembered, must not only he dif-
ferentiated from the major interest. articulation structures, but
also from the central decision-makingx, structures. The love of
differentiation and the market-place is writ large on such a
contention, but it is difficult to see how the so-called pragmatic-
bargaining style of interest aggregation becomes relevant to an
institution which is specifically differentiated to perform only this
task. In case it is really differentiated, it cannot enter into a
dialogue- or a process of give-and-take with other interest
groups' for it has no interests of its own and thus can only try to
reconcile the diverse and conflicting interests of others to the
best of its ability. Also, as it has been made mandatory for such
an institution to propose policy alternatives for the consideration
of decision-makers, it can devise different valuational criteria
in terms of which the alternative reconciliations could possibly
be attempted. The public debate could perhaps then be
focussed on the justiflability of the criteria themselves in terms
of which the reconciliation ought to be attempted.
Almond and Powell have not only felt no necessity to for-
mulate any such criteria, but they appear to be 'Completely
unaware of the problem itself. Further, they do not seem to have
noted the contradiction in saying that 'some degree of aggrega-
tion is almost inevitably carried out at all levels from individual
interest articulation to the final decision-making'43 and the
demand that 'aggregation structures must be differentiated
from the central decision-making structures' and that 'they
must also be differentiated from the major interest articulation
112 Political Development
structures'.44 Also, that if this demand for differentiation is
made essential for considering a polity developed, then at least
the presence of political parties cannot be regarded as such,
for they not only are, 'major structures for performing the
function of interest aggregation', but also play an important
role 'as institutional interest articulators'.4.1 Further, while
pragmatic-bargaining style may possibly prevail within a politi-
cal party, it can do so only because it also performs the role of
interest articulation. Otherwise, there would be little meaning
in talking about pragmatic-bargaining between different in-
terest groups, as in a developed polity they are supposed to
articulate only their own interests and not enter into any
bargaining with each other in order to place their aggregated
demand before decision-makers. It may be suggested that this
is just the task which the differentiated interest aggregation
structures should undertake. In other words, they should help
the various interest groups to come together and enter into a
meaningful dialogue so that they could bridge their differences
and reach an agreed solution. But then there would be no
poli@y alternatives for them to present to the decision-makers, only
the agreed decision which would be presented by the parties
themselves without the intermediacy of the differentiated
aggregation structures. In fact, within this perspective, these
structures would become increasingly redundant as the interest
groups would begin to enter into direct negotiations with each
other and thus begin performing the function of interest ag-
gregation themselves.
The specific criteria of interest aggregation offered by the
authors are thus of little help in understanding the notion of
political development. Besides the difliculties we have already
pointed out, there is the added difficulty that they do not seem
capable of quantitative measurement. For purposes of com-
parison, therefore, they can hardly be of much use. But if they
cannot do this job, they are irrelevant to any discussion of
political development, as the comparison between different
politics and of the same polity at different times is the very
purpose for which the concept was formulated. It may he added
that the concept of interest aggregation gains credence as a
Prima facie criterion of political development because of its
generalized sense of reconciliation of diverse and conflicting
The Criterion as Conversion Functions 113
interests, which is one, of the primary tasks of any polity. But it
is not clear whether the specific technical sense in which
Almond and Powell use the term achieves this end necessarily,
or even in a pre-eminent manner. In fact, they themselves
fluctuate between the technical and the general use of the, term.
In the technical sense, for example, such a statement as 'some
degree of aggregation is almost inevitably carried out at all
levels from individual interest articulation to the final decision-
making',41 is meaningless, for neither the individual nor the
final decision-maker 'convert demands into general policy
alternatives'47 in terms of which the function of interest ag-
gregation is defined at the very beginning of the discussion.
(3) The Criterion as Rule-Making
The policy alternatives proposed by the differentiated struc-
tures of interest aggregation have ultimately to be placed before
the decision-maker or decision-makers, who have to make the
final decision. The choice may be made between the alternatives
proposed or some further alternative that may be formulated
and opted for by the decision-makers. But whatever the choice,
it has ultimately to issue in an authoritative pronouncement
embodying the final decision in a rule which gives the verdict
on the diverse and conflicting interests clamouring for satisfac-
tion. It may thus be regarded as the crucial place in which the
criterion of political development may be found. And, in fact,
it does occupy such a place in the so-called conversion-functions
of Almond's list. After the interests have been articulated and
aggregated, the laws have to be formulated which try to satisfy
the interests to the extent it is feasible and desirable to do so.
The rule-making function, then. may be regarded as the politi-
cal function par excellence and those who are after the holy grail
of political development presumably hope to find it there.
But assuming that we can find it there, it would be relevant
to ask where exactly we shall seek to find it. Shall it be in the
number of rules made or in their contents or in their relation-
ship to the interests that have been articulated and aggregated?
One looks in vain in Almond and Powell for an answer to
this question. Rather, their interest centres only on whether
or not differentiated rule-making structures have emerged in
114 Political Development
the political system, and whether or not 'the legitimacy of a
process whereby new rules are made by secular political
institutions'48 is acknowledged. Besides these, perhaps, the
authors' only other,focus is on whether there has been a 'shift
from the traditional to constitutional restraints on political
actions'.49 Their emphasis is thus primarily on distinguishing
between traditional and modern political systems, assuming as
a matter of course that what is modern is bound to he 'more
developed' also. But, as we have already pointed out a number
of times, a differentiated structure does not ensure anything by
virtue of its 'differentiation', except perhaps the clear-cut loca-
tion of responsibility for the functions performed or not per-
formed.
As for 'the legitimacy of a process whereby new rules are
made by secular political institutions', the contrast between
the sacred immobilism of traditional societies and the secular
dynamism of modern ones is perhaps too overdrawn. The myth
of keeping the revealed rules intact by a process of continuous
reinterpretation in the light of changing needs imposed by a
changing environment, is paralleled by the continuous amend-
ments to the constitutions of modern states, resulting in changes
affecting the very fundamentals of the constitutions under the
camouflage of keeping their sacred constitutionality intact.
Constitutions, in fact, perform the same function as the revealed
rules of ancient times and are treated in the same way. They
are not as 'secular' as is usually made out by writers on political
theory. Perhaps, the very concept of a 'constitution' is un-
secular. How can something unchangingserve as a standard
for processes and situations which are essentially changing in
character? Even the distinction between those parts of a con-
stitution which cannot be changed and those which can, along
with the due processes of changing them, is not unknown to
traditional societies with their revealed rules that they are
supposed to follow. The, distinction between Sruti and Snkrti
in Hinduism and that between Sunna and Sharia in Islam are
only the most conspicuous examples of this.
The obsession with the contrast between tradition and mod-
ernity appears to have blinded many political scientists to the
fact that traditional societies were never as unchanging as is
usually made out, or that modern societies are not as changing
The Criterion as Conversion Functions 115
as many have unquestioningly assumed them to be. The so-
called substitution of traditional restraints on political action
by constitutional ones is doubly spurious for, as everyone- knows,
all law is given content by a process of continuous interpretation
on the part of the judiciary and is subject to subversion by
political pressures of the most diverse kinds which can only
be resisted, if at all, by the traditions of the polity that have
become so ingrained in all the various segments of the political
6lite that they are restrained from violating the constraints, not
from any outside authority, but from within. This is usually
called 'political culture' in recent writings on political science,
but, in fact, it is merely another name for tradition which is
anathema to the protagonists of political modernization. Basi-
cally, all constraints are rooted either in the internalized pro-
cesses of socialization, which is merely another name for
tradition, or in mere- brute and naked fear of violence, which is
a denial of all culture and civilization. When the former are
absent, constitutional restraints are of little avail as the history
of most constitutional governments in the Third World so
graphically shows. In such situations, anyone who can mobilize
the organs of violence may nullify the constitutional con-
straints with such case that one wonders if they were ever there
at all.
The differentiation of institutions devoted to the task of
law-making and the replacement of traditional restraints on
political action by constitutional ones could, then, hardly be
regarded as criteria of political development. In fact, Almond
and Powell themselves appear doubtful whether such dif-
ferentiated, clear-cut structures can be located. Their very
reason for preferring the use of the term 'rule-making' for
'legislation' relates to the fact that 'the term "legislation" seems
to connote some specialized structure and explicit process, whereas in
many political systems the rule-making function is a diffuse
process, difficult to untangle and specify.'50 Lest it be thought
that such a diffuseness is characteristic of only traditional politi-
cal systems, the authors warn that 'in most political systems,
but particularly in modern democratic ones, the performance of
rule-making, like that of articulation and aggregation, will be
dispersed and delegated.'." According to them, not only this
but the whole problem of identifying the rule-making structures
116 Political Development
in political systems is 'one of specifying the whole set of agencies
and institutions involved in the process, determining the kind of
things they do, the way they do them, and how they interact to
produce general ruies.',12 But if this is the situation not only
with respect to rule-making but also regarding interest articula-
tion and aggregation, what happens to the contention that
'political development has been defined as the increased dif-
ferentiation and specialization of political structures and the
increased secularization of political CUltUrel ?53 Perhaps, like
politicians, political scientists are not expected to be consistent '
or perhaps their left Viand forgets what their right hand has
written. In any case, the two statements read together would
make the realization of 'political development' almost im-
possible in principle. This would be true not only in
respect of 'the differentiation and specialization of political
structures', but also of the 'secularization of political culture'.
It is debatable whether the concept of culture can be under-
stood in purely secular terms, if culture is taken to mean not
only the style and pattern of behaviour in any particular
domain, but also the values one tries to realize and actualize
therein. The ideals ofjustice, equality and freedom even in the
sociopolitical realm can hardly be understood in purely posi-
tivistic and behaviouristic terms. But even if the possibility is
admitted at the purely theoretical level, it is difficult to see how
any actual empirical society could be characterized as such.
The whole mythology of constitutions, courts and legislatures,
with their sacred oaths and solemn rituals, rnilitates against
this secularization. The non-secular character of all this is
hidden from the political scientist because of the language he
uses to describe the phenomenon. The deeper reason, however,
lies in the parochial culture-centredness of the western psyche
which equates sacredness, with theocentricity and thus treats
all thought which does not accept the existence and authority
of God as secular in character.
The emergence of differentiated rule-making structures, the
legitimation of rule-making by secular structures and con-
stitutional restraints on political action, thus, are not of much
help as criteria of political development. Can the thinking in
terms of quantity or content be of more help in the matter? An
increase in the amount of rule-making can be taken as an index
The Criterion as Conversion Functions 117
of political development only if rule-making per se is regarded
as a criterion of political development. Some people, of course,
might treat it as such, particularly as traditional politics are
not supposed to make any rules and modern politics perhaps
do nothing else. But an increase in the quantity of rule-making
may be taken to indicate that the society is facing increasing
problems which it is trying to solve through legislation. Yet,
if this is the interpretation, a relative decline in rule-making
after such an increase would alone indicate that it has been
successful in solving the problems for which it was undertaken.
On the other hand, it may he urged that the increasing com-
plexity of societies demands increasing legislation for their
regulation and that the latter always lags behind the former. It
can even be urged that the rules themselves may give rise to
new and more complex problems whose solutions require the
enactment of fresh rules, and that this cycle may go on ad
infinitum. There is, thus, the possibility of a completely im-
manent necessity for a continuous increase in the rule-making
function without influence from any external factor.
Yet, whatever the reasons behind the quantitative inter-
pretation of rules as an indicator of political development, it
will hardly be disputed that it is the easiest to fulfil and that,
in fact, most so-called underdeveloped countries would rank
quite high on that count. On the other hand, if we choose to
take the content of the rules into account and base our criterion
of political development on that, we would open the whole
issue of criteria once again. For, unless we decide what ends the
rule-making function is to subserve or achieve, it would be
futile to look into the contents of those rules when judging the
political development of the polity concerned. The question of
ends, however, is seldom directly raised in most discussions of
political development. It is assumed that if there is the widest
possible participation in the political process and institutional
mechanisms for the articulation of as many interests as pos-
sible, it would somehow be ensured that the rules made by the
decision-making authorities would satisfy the largest interests
of the greatest number of citizens of the polity. The deeper as-
sumption, perhaps, is that there can be no a priori determination
of ends which the rules ought to fulfil. Rather, each person is
the best judge of his or her own interests, and the task of the
9
118 Political Development
political authorities is only to ensure their reconciliation and
satisfaction to the greatest extent possible. However, even in
such a situation the authorities cannot escape the responsibi-
lity of ascribing differential weightage to the diverse interests
that have been articulated and brought to their attention by
those who have tried to aggregate them. All interests cannot
be given equal weightage, letting only the number of persons
who share an interest count in the final calculation. Perhaps
the notion of the 'greatest good of the greatest number' does
just this. But even there one has to decide whether the interests
of the underprivileged, even if they be in a minority, should
or should not be given more weightage than others. The dis-
abilities resulting in deprivation could arise either from natural
or social factors, but in either case the dilemma of choice would
remain the same. The only difference would perhaps be in a
feeling of guilt arising from a sense of responsibility in the case
of the latter which will be absent in the former. Still, as man's
capacity to modify and improve upon the resources of nature
increases, the distinction tends to get increasingly blurred. On
the other hand, social constraints may be felt to be more
difficult to overcome as they are not only man's own creation
but are internalized within his being to such an extent that
he begins to define himself in those terms. To fight against
them is to fight against oneself, and that is not only a difficult
thing to undertake but almost impossible to succeed in.
It is, thus, the relation of rules to interest articulation and
aggregation that may be said to provide the criterion by which
we may judge whether the content of the rules that are for-
mulated by the decision-making authority or authorities con-
note political development or otherwise. The amount of
interests satisfied and the amount of differences reconciled in
proportion to those that have been articulated and aggregated
could be the measure of political development of a polity. It is
not, of course, very clear whether the proportion should be
calculated in terms of the interests articulated or in terms of the
interests aggregated by the differentiated structures which are
entrusted with the performance of that task. Almond and
Powell themselves have not made it clear whether, in their
view, the decision-making authorities are supposed to take into
consideration only those interests which are presented to them
The Criterion as Conversion Functions 119
by the aggregating structures, or whether they want them to be
free to take into account even those that might have been left
out completely by the aggregating institutions for one reason
or another. In the former case, the proportion would have to be
calculated on the basis of the aggregated interests alone, while
in the latter, the aggregated interests might even be completely
ignored and the proportion calculated only on the basis of the
articulated interests. As the authors fear that unless there are
intermediate aggregating structures, the decision-makers will
be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of demands and thus be
rendered helpless to construct effective and consistent policy, 5 4
it may he taken that they would opt for the alternative that only
the aggregated interests should engage the attention of the
decision-maker. But in that case one would also have to develop
a measure of the relationship between the interests articulated
and the interests aggregated, for it would be naive to assume
that the aggregating structures would have taken into account
the largest possible number of articulated interests and recon-
ciled them in the most efficient manner possible. For, if it were
really so, one wonders what would remain for the final decision-
making authority to do except perhaps to look after its own
vested interests which it might have considered impolitic to
articulate publicly. But if those occupying the decision-making
position can have a vested interest of their own, so can those
who are given the task of interest aggregation. Besides this,
they occupy a strategic situation where they may accentuate
or underplay any interest or group of interests in such a way as
to brin them to the attention of the decision-maker or to keep
1 9
them away from it. It would become imperative, therefore, for
the decision-making authorities to keep a critical watch on the
aggregating authorities and to judge their performance in rela-
tion to the interests that have been articulated. But if they have to
be aware of the articulated interests, there seems no reason why
they should not directly take them into account in their rule-
making function and let it therefore bejudged in relation to that.
Perhaps the only reasons why they may try to avoid doing
this may lie in their desire to have all the possible alterna-
tive ways of aggregating the articulated interests spelt out
for them along with their respective costs and benefits so that
they may be able to make some sort of rational choice between
120 Political Development
them. But in that case it is difficult to see how political parties
and the usual type of bureaucratic structures could perform
the task of aggregation, as the authors appear to think. Perhaps,
the government would have to establish independent, autono-
mous structures specifically entrusted with the task of aggregat-.
ing the articulated interests in as many diverse ways as possible.
But even then the problem of unarticulated interests would
remain, and there seems little reason to justify the ignoring of
an interest on the ground that it has not been articulated. The
capacity to articulate is itself a function of many factors which
may not be available to large masses of people in a society. In
most underdeveloped societies illiteracy and poverty combine
to render a vast majority of people inarticulate. It would be an
act of utter irresponsibility on the part of decision-makers in
these societies, therefore, to pay attention only to those interests
that have been articulated and to ignore the rest. If they are to
take into account the unarticulated interests, they would have
first to face the problem of how to locate them. An articulated
interest may at least be presumed to be the interest of those who
have articulated it, but the same can hardly be said of interests
that have not even been articulated They are ascribed to
people in the conviction that in case they were able to articulate
their interests, they would do so in that manner.
The problem of unarticulated interests which are ascribed
to people by the decision-making authority raises not only the
question of the correctness of such an ascription and the possible
weightage that it should be given in relation to the interests
that have been articulated, but also the whole issue of what may
be called the apparent vs. real interests. If decision-makers can
decide about these interests, this can only be because they have
some criteria for judging the matter. But if some criteria are
available for deciding about the real interests of the people,
there seems little reason for not applying them in those cases
where some group or groups have articulated their own
interests. The criteria claim a universality and objectivity
which makes it irrelevant whether people have articulated their
interests or not, and makes equally irrelevant the content of
what they have articulated, in case they have done so.
However. if this be adn-dtted, the whole attempt at articula-
tion and aggregation of interests would be an exercise in futility,
The Criterion as Conversion Functions 121
and it would be meaningless to judge of the contents of the rules
that have been made in the context of the interests that have
been articulated or aggregated. Rather, the rules would have
to be judged in the light of criteria on the basis of which the
needs of the people are determined. It would, then, be the
extent to which the ideal structure of needs, as determined by
the criteria, is embodied in the rules made by the decision-
makers that would determine how far a polity can be considered
politically developed or not. The extent of embodiment would
be an index of political development and the dispute, if any,
would relate only to the criteria on the basis of which the real
interests of the people are calculated and determined. Even here
it is possible to argue that any a priori determination of interests
is not necessary, as the type of interests that rule-making can
fulfil may belong only to groups and not to any particular
individual, and hence are capable of extrapolation to analogous
groups which have not been able to articulate their interests
for some reason or other. Along with this, a persistent attempt
could be undertaken to provide opportunities for articulation
to all those who have been deprived of them, and to elicit
their opinion on those which have been ascribed to them, not
on any a priori grounds, but on the ground of their presumed
similarity to groups which have articulated their interests.
The rules, it should be remembered, are not made once and
for all; nor, for that matter, are the interests so articulated.
There is a continuous interaction between the articulated and
aggregated interests, on the one hand, and the rules that are
made to satisfy them, on the other. The interests themselves
may change o-ver*a period of time or the rules made to satisfy a
particular set of interests at one time may result in the creation
of new problems which demand rectification by new rules. It
would he difficult, therefore, in such a situation to judge
whether the contents of a particular set of rules are designed to
satisfy a new set of interests, which have emerged because of a
change in the situation, or to meet problems created by the
promulgation of rules in the past, or because of an inadequacy
in the past rules revealed by the way they have been found to
work in practice.
The disentanglin - of these three factors is necessary for both
9
theoretical and practical purposes, as the concept of political
122 Political Develo
.pment
development is essentially comparative in character and thus
requires for its application the comparability of the present
situation with the past in relevant respects. In case, therefore,
the interests which are sought to be satisfied by rule-enactment
in the present have themselves arisen because of changed cir-
cumstances, the rule-content cannot be relevantly compared
with the rules in the past to determine whether any develop-
ment has occurred in the political field or not. All the rules, for
example. that have had to be enacted because of the introduc-
tion of the automobile and the aeroplane can hardly bear
comparison with the laws, or their absence, relating to vehicles
in the past. Similarly, if the laws enacted merely try to rectify
the problems created by the laws made in the past, they cannot
be treated as a sign of political development in the same way as
those that try to fulfil the same interests in a more comprehen-
sive and better manner. In fact, the problems created by the
enactment of a law should be placed on the debit side of the
evaluation of that law. However, as this can only be known after
the enacted law has functioned for some time, the evaluation of
all rules in terms of their content would have an in-built error
difficult to compute at the time of their promulgation or even
soon after.
The comparative assessment of political development in
terms of rule-making seems, thus, a most hazardous undertak-
ing unlikely to achieve definite results in any meaningful sense
of the term. If it is the number of rules enacted that are taken
as a measure of the political development of a country, it
would be the easiest thing for a polity to score on this count as
there is nothing easier than the enactment of rules by any
authority empowered to make them. On the other hand, if
content is to be taken into account, the criteria in terms of which
the judgement about the content has to be made have to be
spelt out andjustified. In case the criteria are treated as trans-
temporal in character, in terms of which each polity at any
time of its existence can be measured and compared with
every other, the essential time-bound-character of rules which
are formulated in specific situations to meet particular problems
would be lost sight of. On the other hand, if they are judged in
respect of the articulated and aggregated interests of a parti-
cular people, there will not only be all the difficulties we have
The Criterion as Conversion Functions 123
mentioned earlier, but also those relating to a comparative
assessment of political development between different politics
and between different stages of the same polity.
The difficulties in the latter case emanate from the fact that
the amount and diversity of articulated interests would hardly
be the same in any two cases, thus vitiating the comparison at
its very foundations. In fact, wherever the relationship com-
puted is a ratio between two quantities, the larger the de-
nominator, the larger the numerator has also to be. But, in
terms of ratios, the relationship may remain the same, even
though the two quantities may increase enormously, and thus
hardly show any development. Further, if political moderniza-
tion entails an increase in interest articulation, as is usually
thought by most thinkers, it would put an increasingly greater
strain on the rule-making function and, in_ most cases, it can
be said with fair confidence that it is likely to lag behind. But
if this is true, then a decline in political development would be
almost in-built into the criteria of political modernization, a
consequence that would scarcely be welcome to those who have
thought and written on the subject.
A deeper objection to taking rule-making as an index of
political development consists in the contention that the exact
content of the rules cannot be determined without reference to
the way the rules have been given a concrete interpretation by
the courts. As courts are the final adjudicators with respect
to what the,law means, it is meaningless to judge them without
reference to it. Cardozo"5 argued the point forcefully a long
time back. But as judicial interpretation never ends, we would,
on this view, he left with nothing but provisional interpretations
of the rules for purposes of comparative evaluation. However,
as a detailed discussion of rule-adjudication as a criterion of
political development is to be undertaken in section (5) , as
also the relationship between the different conversion-functions
in section (8), it would be best to discuss the point in those
contexts.
Another, and perhaps even more fundamental objection to
taking rule-making too seriously as a criterion of political devel-
opment, relates to the fact that rules by themselves do not indi-
cate anything except perhaps the intentions of the decision-
maker. It can be taken seriously only if they are not merely
124 Political Development
enacted and placed on the statute book, but also implemented
and enforced in actual practice,. This, however, leads directly
to the discussion of rule-application as a criterion of political
development, and hence we will discuss it in the next section.
(4) The Critedon as Rule-Application
There can be little doubt that unless the rules enacted by the
decision-making authorities are applied and actually obeyed
and observed, they remain mere ritual gestures on the part of
the ruling @lite, proclaiming at best their intentions to do some-
thing. But as 'to rule' means 'to be able to enforce one's will',
the non-implementation of a rule also pr?claims, to a certain ex-
tent, the ineffectiveness ofthe rulers to rule. The rules, of course,
may be enacted merely to proclaim the intention of the ruler
or even to deceive people into thinking that something is
intended to be done, but in most cases it may be presumed that
it is not so and that the authorities really mean to fulfil what
they have enacted.
Yet even if it be conceded that rule-application is at the heart
of the matter, it is still not quite clear how to find the extent to
which rules have been effective in fulfilling their purpose, for
this is the meaning of rule-application. But if this is the mean-
ing, then it is not merely the rules whose effective application
is to be judged, but rather the purpose which their enactment
was designed to achieve. As the rules have been made in the
context of interest articulation and interest aggregation, it is
obvious that the purposes they are intended to fulfil relate to
the satisfaction primarily of those articulated and aggregated
interests and, perhaps, secondarily, of those which have re-
mained unarticulated for some reason or other, but deserve
satisfaction in the judgement of the authorities who have to
take a decision in the matter. However, in such a situation it
is not the individual rule which would have to be judged in the
context of the interests that it is supposed to fulfil, but rather
the totality of rules in relation to the totality of interests. The
rules, then, should not be taken in an isolated, atomic manner,
but rather as constituting an interrelated whole which in its
totality tries to realize the interrelated totality of interests
which is judged to be both feasible and worth realizing. This,
The Criterion as Conversion Functions 125
it should be obvious, applies equally to rule-making and rule-
application. With rule adjudication, the presupposition is
brought into the open, as the courts in exercising their judicial
function have to treat the whole set of laws as constituting an
organic whole possessing a coherent structure. Each seeming
incoherence is smoothed out by a clever and subtle interpreta-
tion, for the presupposition always is that the existing body of
laws can never be incoherent.
We need not go further into details regarding rule-adjudica-
tion here as we propose to devote section (5) to its consideration
later in this chapter. But as far as rule-making and rule-applica-
tion are concerned, the issues raised by the proposal that it is
the totality of rules that should be taken into account and not
the individual rules alone, have to be discussed here. The first
and foremost of the issues raised by this perspective relates to
the time-span which should form the unit for consideration of
the totality of rules enacted within that period. The problem
arises because rules are continuously enacted by the decision-
making authorities, and any delimitation in such a situation is
bound to appear arbitrary, unless some criteria are given which
may reasonably be justified. The situation gets additionally
complicated by the fact that, as the totality is supposed to be
organic in character, any addition to it is bound to change its
character. This, however, would arise primarily in relation to
the rules as they are enacted by the decision-making authority.
As far as the issue of rule-application is concerned, it is further
complicated by the fact that a certain time-interval would have
to be posited between rule-enactment and rule-application so
that the latter's effectiveness could he judged. However, as all
the rules are not made simultaneously, the time-interval re-
quired for judging the efficacy of rule-application cannot but
vary for different rules that have been enacted at different
times.
The problem can perhaps be more clearly stated in the
following manner. As the rules are enacted at different times,
the time-interval after which they are to be judged in terms of
the efficacy of their application cannot be the same for all of
them, unless they are treated either atomistically or divided
into units determined by the time of their enactment. Both the
alternatives have difficulties of their own. The first not only
126 Political Development
gives up the notion of organic totality, but also flies in the face
of the fact that many laws tend to form clusters and that a law
is enacted, not in a vacuum, but in the context of other laws on
the same subject. The second alternative would make the laws
under the unit a complete jumble of disparate laws, but in that
case the choice of the unit in terms of the time when the laws
have been enacted would have only pragmatic justification in
its favour. The unit of time could perhaps be- a particular
session of the legislature and the time-interval for evaluation
could perhaps be the period during which fresh elections are
held to decide who shall be the decision-makers in a polity. But
this would confine the criterion only to those politics which
have an electoral system and hold periodic elections to decide
who shall constitute their ruling 6lite for a limited period.
Perhaps one could have different time-intervals for different
politics depending on the nature of their political systems. Not
merely this, one could also take into account the level of the
development of the communication system to decide on the
probable time-interval for judging the effectiveness of the
implementation of any enacted law or sets of laws. It is obvious
that it would be unfair to have the same time-interval for
societies at different levels of communication systems.
At a still more sophisticated level, one could distinguish
between the contents of enacted laws and place them in dif-
ferent categories so that the time-interval may be allowed to
vary with relevance to the probable time that one may regard
as necessary for the purposes embodied in the different contents
to be fulfilled. There obviously are ends which, due to their
very nature, take a longer time to fulfil than others. Anything
that tries to make a change in the sociocultural habits of a
people, for example, may be expected to take a long time to he
even moderately effective. The same may safely be hazarded
for any change that is supposed to affect the totality of the
population, or even a large majority of it. The difficulties in
the process of effective implementation in the first case are
derived from the nature of the changes that are sought to be
made, while in the case of the latter they derive, primarily from
the numbers that are supposed to be affected by the change.
There is also a third category which relates to what has come
to be called 'the vested interests' of the ruling 6lite of a country.
The Criterion as Conversion Functions 127
These 'vested interests' do not relate so much to the socio-
cultural behavioural patterns rooted in the historic past of a
people, as to the economic and power structure of a society
wlkere particular classes, individuals or groups of people enjoy
certain privileged positions which they try to defend at all
costs against attempts to oust them. Rules tending to adversely
affect their position are usually rendered ineffective by various
means at the disposal of these power groups themselves. The
nullification of these rules in the process of their implementa-
tion is derived, therefore, not from the deep-rooted psycho-
cultural habits of a people or because of the largeness of the
numbers involved, as in the- first two cases, but because of the
structural position of the rule-makers themselves.
It may appear strange that rule-makers should frustrate the,
implementation of those very rules which they themselves have
made. For, one might well ask, if they did not want the rules to
be implemented, why should they have enacted them in the
first place? Unless we- assume some masochistic perversity on
their part, there would seem little reason to believe that they
would indulge in such a fruitless exercise. But such a doubt,
however seemingly legitimate, rests on assumptions which
themselves are extremely dubitable. First, it is assumed 'that the
ruling class is unified in terms of its interests, and that, hence,
there can be no discrepancy of interests between those who
enact the laws and those who try to frustrate their effective
implementation. Secondly, it is assumed that the ruling elite
is static in its composition and structure. The third assumption
may be said to relate to the genuineness of the motives of the
rule-making authorities. It is naively believed that rules are
always made to be implemented.
All three assumptions are, in fact, highly questionable. The
ruling class is always divided within itself, and the rules are
frequently enacted to harm the interests of other sections of the
ruling class which, then, try to frustrate their actual implemen-
tation by all the overt and covert means at their disposal. On
the other hand, as new claimants are always arising to enter the
ruling class through factors over which there is little control,
there is always an attempt at accommodation and compromise
by taking the edge off their resentment and providing limited
entry at some level in the hierarchical structure of the ruling
128 Political Development
strata. Many laws can be understood in this light. However, as
the ruling @lite is always reluctant to part with power as far as
possible, it tries to deceive the clamouring claimants with the
illusion that something is being done while, in fact, it does not
really intend to do anything in the matter. Perhaps most of
the socioeconomic legislation which seeks to effect any serious
redistribution of power and resources tends to be a compromise
between these two approaches. The first attempt usually is to
create the illusion of giving with the understanding that if the
illusion does not succeed in deluding, some minimal concessions
may actually he given. Even this is usually sought to be done
at the expense of that section of the power 6lite which is opposed
to those who actually occupy the seats of power.
The problems created by a differentiated consideration of the
contents of rules for purposes of evaluating the effectiveness of
their application are, thus, enormous. It is, therefore, surprising
to find an almost complete absence of any discussion concerning
these issues in the writings of most thinkers who have addressed
themselves to the problem of political development. Even
Almond and Powell who have introduced the notion of
'conversion-functions' of which rule-application is a part, and
who have devoted a whole section to its discussion in Chapter
VI of Comparative Politics: A Developmental Approach, show hardly
any awareness of the issues involved. They seem to be primarily
concerned with the differentiation of rule-application structures
and a delineation of their major types, particularly in the
context of a bureaucracy as discussed by Weber and Fainsod in
their works. The focus of their attention, therefore, is not on
the content of rules made and how the diversity in content may
set problems for judging the effectiveness of rule-application
as required by the search for criteria of political development.
The reason for this lies in the assumption that the differentia-
tion of rule-application structures would enhance the perform-
atory capabilities of the political system. According to them
'the presence of differentiated and well'-developed structures
for rule application greatly expands the capability of a political
system to manipulate its environment'.,"
This, of course, is merely a particular application of the
generalized contention that the differentiation of structures
and functions leads inevitably to enhanced capability and
The Criterion as Conversion Functions 129
development, and has already been discussed in detail earlier.
The sinister tones of the phrase 'to manipulate its environment'
are perhaps unconscious, though shades of the biological theory
of evolution as popularly understood lie too clearly to be
entirely neglected. As the manipulative view of environment
is writ large on the predominantly technological understanding
of modern science, its acceptance by political science need not
occasion any surprise. But what should cause some concern is
the fact that political thought in countries which claim to be
devoted to the cause of political liberties is so fascinated by
considerations of efficiency and power. However, as we have
already discussed in detail the criterion in terms of 'capabi-
lities', we need not discuss the matter once again. Still, the
role that bureaucracy is supposed to play in the enhancement
of 'capabilities' and the modernization of political systems
needs some discussion. But before we do this, we shall pay some
attention to other parameters which are also regarded as
relevant to the consideration of rule-application as a criterion
of political development.
The differentiated structures created to discharge the func-
tion of rule-application may do so with varying effectiveness,
and in significantly different styles. As Almond and Powell
point out, 'Needless to say, not all the differentiated rule-
application structures which can be found in primitive and
modern political systems operate with the same style and level
Of effeCtiVeneSS'57; 'they may differ in complexity, in hierar-
chical structure, in degree of autonomy, and in impartiality of
rule enforcement'.rl" But though the authors have mentioned
these aspects in which the differentiated structures devoted to
the task of rule-application may differ, they have neither dis-
cussed them in detail nor indicated how they are to be evalu-
ated in the context of political development. Nothing, for
example, is said about the different styles in which the dif-
ferentiated rule-application structures may operate, and
which, if any, may be treated as indicators of political de-
velopment. Presumably the authors did not want to repeat
what they had already said about styles in the context of
their discussion about interest articulation and interest
aggregation. But even the enumeration of styles in these
two cases is not the same, and it is not clear which we are
130 Political Development
supposed to transpose to the case of rule-making structures. In
the case of interest articulation, the differences in style are
articulated in terms of the Parsonian pattern-variables, while
in the case of interest aggregation they are articulated primarily
in terms of the pragmatic-absolute dichotomy. Both have
already been discussed at length in the sections relating to
interest articulation and interest aggregation respectively. But
whatever the difficulties found in those contexts, the problem
in relation to rule-application is, which of the two is to be
considered relevant in this context? Should we say, for example,
following the interest articulation model, that the performance
of the rule-application function 'may be manifest or latent,
specific or diffuse, general or particular, instrumental or affec-
tive in style'?511 Or should we follow the interest aggrega-
tion model, and say that the three styles in which the rule-
application function may be performed are 'pragmatic bargain-
ing, absolute-value oriented, and traditionalistic'?60 But the two
classifications are so far apart that it is not clear which should
be chosen in the context of rule-application, and on what
grounds. The 'traditionalistic' style, of course, may be said
to be overlapping' as the pattern-variable classification itself
is supposed to he made in terms of tradition and modernity.
But it is difficult to understand what exactly could be meant
by 'traditionalism' in the context of rule-application. Further,
there seems little reason to think that differences in style would
be confined only to the classificatory types elaborated by the
authors in the context of interest articulation and interest
aggregation. However, as the authors themselves have said little
in the matter, it is difficult to judge its relevance as a criterion
in the context of our discussion on political development.
On the other hand, even though Almond and Powell have
not said much about the other differences in terms of com-
plexity, hierarchical structure, degree of autonomy and impar-
tiality of rule-enforcement, it is easy to guess how they would
treat them as indicators of political development. Perhaps the
more complex, the more hierarchical, the more autonomous,
the more impartial a differentiated structure devoted to rule-
application is, the more politically developed it is likely to he
considered by the authors. But even here the situation is not
clear. One is not quite sure if complexity and hierarchy are to
The Criterion as Conversion Functions 131
be regarded as positively correlated to political development.
Perhaps the more complex a structure is the more difficult it
is for it to discharge its functions. Also, if too pronounced a
hierarchy is considered incompatible with democratic values,
it may not be palatable to those who consider Homo Hierar-
chicus61 to he a characteristic of decadent Asian, or rather,
specifically Hindu, civilization. Not only this, an elaborate
hierarchy can interfere with the efficient functioning of any
institution, as is well known in India where almost all functions
are subdivided and correlated to a hierarchical ranking in
terms of the status of those who perform those functions. The
subdivision can be carried on almost indefinitely, as any task
can be divided in such a manner that each part is performed by
different persons, making each dependent on the other. The
so-called division'of labour, when linked to status considera-
tions on the one hand and to employment considerations on the
other, may lead to increasingly inefficient performance instead
of what was so glowingly ascribed to it by Adam Smith.
Complexity and hierarchy, thus, cannot be treated without
reservations as positive indicators of political development. As
for the autonomy and impartiality of rule-enforcement, they
are perhaps stronger candidates for being treated as positive
indicators. Yet even in their case, there seem to be some limita-
tions. Autonomy, for example, cannot be treated as unaccoun-
tability and is at least primafacie incompatible with the demand
for impartiality of rule-enforcement. For if impartiality of rule-
enforcement is itself to be enforced, there has to be a curtailment
of the autonomy of the differentiated structures entrusted with
the task of rule-application. In fact, the more differentiated and
autonomous the rule-application structures become, the more
do they develop vested interests of their own. The issue is
discussed by Almond and Powell in the context of bureaucracy,
but they have not related it to the issues of autonomy or
impartiality of rule-enforcement, nor, for that matter, to those
of hierarchy and complexity.
Bureaucracy, in fact, is a generalized name for all dif-
ferentiated structures performing the rule-application function.
The importance of bureaucracy as an indication both of
modernization and political development is well known to
students of the social sciences since Max Weber brought it to
132 Political Develo ,pment
their attention. His linking of bureaucratic structures with
formal-rational authority, as distinguished from traditional and
charisniatic authority, made it the pivotal point in all thought
about modernization which is equated with rationality on the
one hand and impersonal, rule-deterniined behaviour, on the
other. We need not discuss in detail the adequacy of Weber's
conception of bureaucracy or even of the later attempts of,
say, Simon62 and Parsons63 in this regard. The, important point
in the context of our discussion is not how bureaucracy is to be
conceived or characterized, or even whether Weber's emphasis
on formal rationality was misplaced as it 'led him to overesti-
mate the efficiency of formal rationality and to underestimate
the extent to which patrimonial features can help to overcome
bureaucratic pathologies'.114 What is of greater significance is
the fact that this differentiated structure which is given the
task of rule-application begins to have interests of its own and
to use its power for its own ends. As Almond and Powell argue,
'bureaucracies tend to monopolize outputs', as 'only bureaucrats
enforce laws, policies, or decisions'."rl But if such is the situation,
then it is difficult to see how the differentiation of structure has
really helped the situation. Rather, it has created an additional
problem of seeing that the newly created differentiated struc-
ture does not begin to subvert the purposes for which it has been
created.
The authors appear to consider this aspect of the problem to
be so important that they are even prepared to assert that
'political development subsequent to the Age of Absolutism
in Western Europe may be viewed in part as a process of
growth of agencies intended to direct, control, or limit central
bureaucracy'.66 And further that, 'the art of modern rulership
consists not only in the'prudent search for appropriate goals
and policies, but also in learning how to interact with this
massive and complex set of instrumentalities, and in knowing
how and when to press it and coerce it, how and when to
flatter it and reward it, how to teach it, and how to learn from
it.167 Yet, if this is the situation, one may legitimately wonder
who is the master and who the servant in the situation, or even
whether it is correct to say that it is a differentiated structure
devoted to the task of rule-application. In fact, if we remember
that 'in addition to having this monopoly of rule-enforcement,
The Criterion as Conversion Functions 133
bureaucracies are t , ypically of great importance in the processes
of rule-making""' and that 'the decisions made by political
6lites, whether they be executives or legislators, are also based
in considerable part on the kind of information which they are
able to get from administrative agencies',"9 then we begin to
understand why 'political scientists quail before the task of
generalizing about the importance of bureaucracy',"' which
'is a technical-instrumental monster'."" The authors do not
seem to have noticed the contradiction between the so-called
'technical-instrumental' nature of bureaucracy and its sup-
posedly essential role not merely in rule-making, but also in
interest articulation as 'interest groups, political parties, and
the public are dependent on information transmitted by ad-
ministrative officials'.72 If the role of bureaucracy is crucial at
the stage of both interest articulation and rule-making, it is
difficult to see how the institution of bureaucracy is dif-
ferentiated with respect to the performance of its function which
is supposed to be the reason for considering it an index of
political deve 'lopment.
It may be suggested that we should distinguish between the
primary and secondary functions of any institution, and that
if we do so we would discover that the primary function of
bureaucracy is still rule-application, while all the other fund-
tions happen to be merely secondary. Also, the tendency of any
differentiated institution to develop vested interests of its own
and even to usurp.functions not belonging to itself, is too
generalized to be considered a specific peculiarity of bureau-
cracy alone. Yet, even if all this be admitted it does not help
us at all in knowing whether a particular polity is developed or
not. Are we supposed to accept the fact that the development
of bureaucracy per se is a sign of political development? If this
were so, there would seem little point in the authors saying that
'the art of modern rulership consists ... in knowing how and
when topress it and coerce it, how and when to flatter it and
reward it', 73 and that 'political development ... may be viewed
in part as a process of growth of agencies intended to direct,
control, or Limit central bureaucracy'."14 This is so obviously an
obstructionist view of bureaucracy that one wonders how,
within the perspective, it could ever come to be regarded as
constituting development per se. Rather, it is apprehended as
10
134 Political Development
something that naturally tends to get out of hand, to develop
purposes of its own, to thwart and obstruct what it is asked to
do-something in the nature of a necessary evil which one
wishes one could do without, but which cannot be eliminated
because of the way the world is constituted.
Perhaps the criteria in terms of which bureaucracy may be
viewed as an indicator of political development may be found
in Fainsod's typology regarding bureaucracies, which Almond
and Powell have discussed at sonic length in their book.
According to them, 'Fainsod's classification is based upon dif-
ferent relationship patterns between bureaucracies and the
political agencies. He suggests five patterns: (1) representative
bureaucracies; (2) party-State bureaucracies; (3) military-
dominated bureaucracies; (4) ruler-dominated bureaucracies;
and (5) ruling bureaucracies.'75 The first type is characteristic
of a political system 'in which the ultimate political authority
is determined by a competitive political process',76 while the
second 'is characteristic of totalitarian r6gimes and other
one-party-dominated political systems'.77 The second type is
'characterized by the superimposition of a political bureaucracy
upon a functionally differentiated and technically competent
governmental bureaucracy'. '18 The third type 'describes systems
in which one component of the bureaucracy-members of the
officer corps-takes control over the civilian bureaucracy'.711
The fourth type coincides with Eisenstadt's' 'bureaucratic
empires'."" The reference is to classical. empires which were
maintained by autocratic rulers through the instrument of a
bureaucracy. The fifth and final category is one 'in which the
bureaucracy itself provides the ruling element in the political
,system'.$' The difference between this and the military-
dominated bureaucracy is that here a 'civil bureaucratic clique
possesses the authority', while in the former it is the military
group which dominates the scene.
Fainsod's scheme is primarily classificatory and one may
only surmise its relationship to political development. It is
obvious that the last three types can hardly be considered to be
positive indicators of political development. The ruling bureau-
cracies and military-dorainated bureaucracies destroy the
differentiated role of bureaucracy altogether, while the ruler-
dominated bureaucracies may be ruled out as royalty seems to
The Criterion as Conversion Functions 135
be out of favour with contemporary thinkers on political devel-
opment. Out of the two remaining claimants, it is obvious that
representative bureaucracies would be considered more lik 1ely
candidates than party-state bureaucracies, as the former allow
a greater competitiveness in the political process, thus permit-
ting the conflicting interests to come into the open. However,
this is basically the, perspective of interest articulation, and
intrinsically it cannot he regarded as a criterion of political
development arising immanently from the field of bureaucracy
itself. In fact, as a differentiated structure devoted to the
performance of the rule-application function, it is not clear why
party-state bureaucracies may not be considered as more
efficient, specially as the superimposition of a political bureau-
cracy an the so-called technical bureaucracy may be taken to
ensure not only that it functions effectively but also that it does
not develop any illegitimate vested interests of its own. The
necessity of some such control of governmental bureaucracies is
admitted by Almond and Powell, and they even concede that
'there are similar tendencies in democratic SySteMSI.82 They
point out, for example, that, 'in recent decades in the develop-
ment of the American political system, it has been found that
the only way in which the executive and legislative branches
can exercise relatively effective control over the bureaucracy is
through the development of their own specialized bureau-
cracies'.83 But once the necessity of political control of the
bureaucracy is accepted, it is difficult to set any limits to it
unless some reasons are given which prescribe when and
why those limits are to be drawn. The development of a poli-
tical bureaucracy to control other sectors of the bureaucracy is
analogous to niilitary-dominated bureaucracies on the one hand
and ruling bureaucracies on the other. In all three, a particular
sector of the bureaucracy controls the others, and bureaucracy
as a whole tends to monopolize all the political functions. On
the other hand, it is difficult to see why the ruler-dominated
bureaucracies should be considered less politically developed
than representative bureaucracies, unless one wants to bring
the criterion of representation into the picture. Also, if the
criterion of competitive representativeness is given up, there
would be little to differentiate between ruler-dominated
bureaucracies and party-dorninated bureaucracies, as all
136 Political Development
totalitarian parties are ruled by a single person whether he be
called a comrade or Fiihrer. Nor can the claim to represent
the real interests of the people be considered the sole privilege
of totalitarian dictators, as the same claim is made by rulers of
the traditional type aIso. Nor, for that matter, can the mode of
succession be taken as a relevant differentiating factor, as the
struggle for succession may and, in fact, did occur in the case of
traditional rulers, just as modern totalitarianisms are not
immune from attempts at hereditary succession, specially in
their Asian setting.
Fainsod's typology of various kinds of bureaucracies is, thus,
of little help in finding the criteria of political development.
Basically, there seems to have been little discussion about this
aspect of the matter. What appears to have engaged the atten-
tion of Almond and Powell is the necessity of a bureaucracy for
any political development whatsoever. But this only makes it a
necessary condition in the technical sense that, without it, no
political development impossible. However, as is well known, a
necessary condition is not a sufficient condition and hence its
presence cannot be taken as an indicator of political develop-
ment. It is merely a precondition which, by itself, cannot ensure
anything one way or the other. And, in any case, as bureau-
cracy is only a generalized name for all rule-application struc-
tures, the issues that we have raised earlier with respect to
rule-application as a criterion of political development still
remain relevant. After a rule has been made, it may be said
that the relevant thing is to determine whether it has actually
been applied in practice or not. In other words, the central
question is whether the rule or rules so formulated are obeyed
or not, and in case they are not obeyed, what is done in the
matter. However, as everybody knows, this is not the task of the
rule-application structures. Rather, it is the task of those who
adjudicate and impose sanctions in case the rules are not obeyed
and exemplified in conduct. The clue to political development
thus may be found not in rule-making or rule-application, but
rather in rule-adjudication which may be taken simultaneously
to determine what the rule specifically means and also whether
it has been observed in a particular case or not.
The Criterion as Conversion Functions
137
(5) The Criterion as Rule-Adjudication
As a rule which is enacted has to be applied in order to serve
the function of rule-making, so also is it necessary to judge whe-
ther the rule has been correctly applied or not, whether it has
been applied at all orjust ignored or even violated in actual prac-
tice. The adjudicative function thus may be regarded as the
most important and central in any consideration of rules which
have to be observed in order that they may presumably fulfil the
purpose or purposes for which they were enacted. In a formal
sense, what the rule really prescribes can only he decided by
the adjudicating authority. But if the issue is not brought before
the adjudicating authority, it is usually presumed that the way
those entrusted with the task of rule-application are interpreting
them in practice is the way in which the adjudicating authori-
ties would uphold them also. However, once the issue is brought
before the adjudicating authority and the interpretation dis-
puted, the presumption is broken and it is clear that the rule
means what thejudges hold it to mean.
On the other hand, judges can only pronounce a judgment;,
they cannot carry it out or ensure that it is carried out. In
times of political crisis, it is well known that the judiciary
tends to lose its independence and becomes increasingly an
instrument of those who wield actual power. Yet, once the
crisis has passed, one has to revert again to the restitution of
the adjudicating mechanisms and ensure that judgments enjoy
both independence and effectiveness to some extent.
The independence and effectiveness of the adjudicating
structures in a polity, thus, may be taken as a criterion of
political development. The differentiation of such structures
and the respect, autonomy and citectivity that they are granted
would thus be an indicator of the extent to which a society may
be regarded as governed by law rather than by brute and naked
force. The taming of force is a perennial task of all civil society,
and this is perhaps best achieved by developing a rule of law
which defines what is to count as a legitimate exercise of power
and what as its blatant abuse. The notion of legitimacy is
closely allied or perhaps even derived from the notion of 'lawful'
and thus shows the central importance of the adjudicating
function in a civil polity.
138 Political Development
But, however much we may accept the importance and cen-
trality of the adjudicating function, it is difficult to see
how it can be treated as an indicator of political development.
Shall we say that, if there are differentiated structures devoted
to the task of rule-adjudication, it may be taken as a sign of
the polity being developed in the positive sense of the word?
But this may be deduced from the generalized criterion of
development as differentiation of structures and functions which
we have already discussed at length elsewhere. Or, shall we
look into the form of its functioning or the contents of its
decisions to judge whether it is developed or not? The form of
its functioning is, in a sense, determined by the law of the land
along with what has come to be called the civic or political
culture of a society. A judgment on the contents of judicial
decisions, on the other hand, would raise the whole question of
values in terms of which development has to be understood or
defined.
It is perhaps advisable to turn away from these formal and
material criteria and concentrate on the sheer quantity and
volume of cases brought before the courts and adjudicated by
them within a given period of time. An increase in the number
of cases brought before the judiciary could then be taken as an
index of political development. All the sophistication which
has been developed in connection with the measurement of
quantitative indices in other fields could be transferred and
applied to this domain also. We could thus devise methods to
find out per capita litigation rates for different countries and
judge their c 'omparative political development in these terms.
It is, of course, not clear from the literature in the field whether
an increase or decrease in the litigation rates would be taken
as a sign of political development. Lucian Pye, for example,;
asserts that 'by 1900 one Bengali out of every seventy-four
was engaged in some form of litigation'. and that 'in Java after
the Western impact it appears that the rate of litigation not only@
kept pace with, but indeed exceeded, the rate of population
growth.'84 Similarly, 'in Rangoon before World War 11,
interest in the working of law took on a sporting quality. Asian
business houses customarily set aside each year surplus funds
that were invested in energetic searches for profitable law-
suits."15
The Criterion as Conversion Functions 139
Now, neither India nor Indonesia or Burma are usually con-
sidered by writers on political development to be politically
developed. Hence it is unlikely that an increase in litigation
rates is being regarded by Lucian Pye as an indicator of positive
political development. But if increasing recourse to legal
adjudication through differentiated formal structures created
for that very purpose is not treated as a sign of development, it
can only be because an increase in conflict of interests is treated
as a counter-indicator of development. But if that be the situa-
tion, it would be difficult to hold any increase in interest arti-
culation or interest aggregation as indicating political devel-
opment also. For, in most cases, interests happen to conflict and
that is why they have to be aggregated or adjudicated. The only
difference between adjudication and aggregation in this respect
is that, while the former tries to reconcile diverse interests to
the maximum possible extent, the latter tries to determine the
rightness or wrongness of the conflicting claims and pronounces
on their legitimacy or illegitimacy in terms of the prevailing
legal rights in the society to which the conflicting parties appeal.
Also, an increasing recourse to rule-adjudication may be taken
as a sign of increasing awareness on the part of the people of
their rights and of a willingness on their part to settle conflicts
through formal-legal procedures rather than resort to violence.
At a deeper level it may even be taken to indicate a faith in the
system rather than alienation from it and, if so, it would have
to be taken a's a positive indicator of development.
The ambivalence with regard to all the indices of political
development and the double standards employed in their
application is perhaps nowhere more evident than in Lucian
Pye's remarks about the quality and patterns of lawsuits in
Burma. To quote in full, he writes. 'Asian business houses
customarily set aside each year surplus funds that were invested
in energetic searches for profitable lawsuits. Young solicitors
were employed to rack their brains and dream up ingenious
suits, and older rogues with scheming minds would, for a
customary commission, assist in spotting likely targets for such
suits.""' Now, it is difficult to believe that Pye does not know
that such a situation obtains in the United States, specially in
the fields of medicine and insurance. It is well known that
claims for damages under the law of torts have been carried to
140 Political Development
such an extreme as to jeopardize the healthy functioning of
many professions in western countries. Yet, in their case it is
interpreted as an indication of the individual's consciousness
of his rights and thus a positive indicator of political develop-
ment. The absence of cases under the law of torts, on the other
hand, in a country such as India is usually taken as a counter-
indicator of civic development, for it is interpreted to mean lack
of consciousness on the part of the citizens of their rights against
others. But when a different phenomenon is observed in the case
of Burma, Pye, instead of being happy with the situation, prefers
to lapse into a satirical vein and suggest that there is something
radically wrong with Asian peoples who cannot work western
institutions as they were meant to be worked.
In fact, the contention becomes explicit when Pye writes
about the fallacious assumptions which lie behind the western
approach to law, and whose fallaciousness became explicit only
when transplanted to Asian soil. According to him,
the underlying assumption of the Westernized and codified legal
system was that all possible problems could be classified according to
categories, that the examination of the data would reveal which
category was appropriate to the particular case or issue, and that,
once category and data were so clarified, a standardized process of
reasoning and interpretation would bring anyone versed in the ways
of the law to the proper judgment. The fallacies in these Western
assumptions about the process of adjudication were readily manifest
once codified legal systems were introduced into Asian and African
societies."'
But if the assumptions are fallacious, it is difficult to see why
they should not be fallacious in western countries also. If it is
an illusion 'that all possible categories of problems could be
initially defined to prevent the need for any expostfacto judg-
ments, and that the data or facts could "speak for themselves"
in the sense that once brought to light,they would somehow
automatically inform all under what category of the law they
should be properly classified',$" then it is difficult to believe that
it would not vitiate every action based on such an illusion. One
wonders what illusions Pye entertains about the legal system as
it operates in western countries. Surely, neither in science nor
in law do facts 'speak for themselves', nor is it true that any set
of facts could be categorized in only one way. If that were so,
The Criterion as Conversion Functions 141
the legal profession would have ceased to be attractive and
lucrative long ago. It is because there is no unique category of law
under which any human action has inevitably to be considered
that legal disputes arise and that, even after all the debate and
discussion has occurred and the evidence recorded, no one knows
what the judge's decision in the case will be.
The deeper source of the trouble, however, seems to be that
the issue of political development is treated primarily as a
problem of non-western countries or even of countries other
than the United States,of America. There appears to be an
implicit a priori assumption underlying the writings of most
authors on political development that as far as western coun-
tries are concerned there is no problem of political development.
Or, in case there is, it pertains only to such countries as Italy
or France or Spain, that is, those countries of western Europe
which have not yet achieved the maturity of the U.K. or the
U.S.A. As the U.K. in any case has lostits economic supremacy,
the mantle of economic and political maturity has fallen on the
United States, and as most writers on political development
happen to belong to that country it is perhaps natural for them
to look for issues surrounding the problem of political develop-
ment in countries other than their own. But the best way to
understand a problem in the social or human sphere is to
discover an analogue in one's own experience, as that alone
can supply the clue to that inner understanding without which
external dissimilarities may lead one to posit a difference where
there may be none, or perhaps even a difference of a totally
different kind.
However, the situation is even more intriguing. Not only is
there no dearth of intellectuals in the United States who are
hypercritical of their own country, but also the normal norms
of scientific investigation demand that anyone proposing a
criterion for anything should treat it as a culture-invariant,
that is, as an indicator of the same phenomenon wherever it be
found, whether in one culture or another. A culture, of course,
may be treated as an organic whole but in that case it would
perhaps be impossible to compare different cultures in terms
of isolated elements with regard to which they may be com-
pared andjudged. The only way this could be done would be te
compare the functions which the elements perform in different
142 Political Development
cultures, but this assumes that in terms of function most cultures
would be the same or at least similar in essential respects. Most
writers on political development tend to assume this, and hence
even if they subscribe to the organic totalistic view of society or
culture, there is no reason why they should fail to see the same
phenomena in their own country which they nd in countries
they deem to be politically undeveloped.
Perhaps the difference may relate to the weightage given to a
particular factor in the total assessment of a polity. But, if so,
the problem of weightage has to be brought into the open and
it has to be shown how the indicators of a negative kind are
cancelled by the presence of other positive factors. Or, if it be
maintained that the very negativity of the factors is affected by
the contexts in which they occur, and that it is meaningless to
talk of positive and negative indicators in isolation, then it is
incumbent on those who argue this way to specify the contexts
in which an indicator would be interpreted as positive or nega-
tive in nature. Nothing of the kind has been done by any of
these thinkers. In fact, they are as far off from the organic
theory of society as anybody can be. Yet, even if they were to
he organic in their view of society-and functionalism of a sort
can perhaps lead in that direction-, they would have to face
the equally baffling problem of how to compare two societies
conceived as organic wholes except by positing a concept of
some ideal society which transcends them both and in terms
of which they may be judged.
Any comparative judgment regarding different legal struc-
tures leads straight into the baffling problem of legal positivism.
If we agree with the legal positivists that there is a radical dif-
ference between 'law as it is' and 'law as it ought to be', then
it is obvious that two existing legal structures cannot be signi-
ficantly compared as qua existing they have both to be conceded
the status of laws. It would then be only in the external context
of moral considerations that the two legal structures could be
judged. On the other hand, if we accept Fuller's concept of the
so-called 'inner morality of law', we could perhaps judge
between two existing legal structures with respect to the extent
to which they have realized this 'inner morality' which is
immanent within the notion of a 'legal system' itself. The
classic controversy on this issue between H. L. A. Hart and
The Criterion as Conv@rsion Functions 143
Lon,, L. Fuller is too well known to be repeated here.119 What
may, however, be pointed out is that the issue is at least as old
as Plato and relates, at least at the philosophical level, to all
comparisons between any two objects or sets of objects, rather
than to the specific sphere of law alone. Every entity in order
to be that entity must possess the properties that entitle it to be
considered that entity. Thus, in a sense, hardly any entity
could be compared with any other of its own class, provided it
has been correctly classified in terms of the essential properties
on the basis of which it is supposed to belong to that class. In
other words, the comparison may only be done in terms of
accidental or adventitious qualities, and never in terms of
essential qualities. On the other hand, if even the essential
qualities are supposed to be embodied more or less, as Plato
seems to hold, then it would follow that no object could be
correctly classified as none could exemplify or embody the
ideal completely. Not only this, a more difficult problem
would relate to the apprehension of the ideal in terms of which
the particular exemplifications are to bejudged. Unless some
special faculty of rational intuition be postulated or one accepts
the Platonic notion of remembering, one would have only the
concrete embodiments to intuit the ideal, and in this one
would always be on hazardous ground, as not only is there no
certainty that the concretely encountered instances would point
unmistakably to one ideal alone, but also because they would
always form an infinitely small part of what will be, encountered
in the future. The recourse to the well-known law of large
numbers in the field of statistical theory would perhaps be of
little avail; it is not only questionable on philosophical grounds,
but a significant difference may also be presumed between the
apprehension of an ideal through its concrete exemplifications
and the apprehension of a law, even if it be conceived in a
statistical manner.
On the other hand, even if we re-fuse to accept the Platonic
assimilation of the natural world to that in which values or
ideals may be said to inhere in the very apprehension of reality,
law by its very nature would seem to belong to the latter
category. Yet, even if this be admitted and the claim of Fuller
to the necessary existence of some 'inner morality of law' be
conceded, there remains the problem of the relation of the so-
144 Political Development
-5
called 'inner morality of law' to its 'outer morality'. Fuller
conceded that 'in the life of a -
moralities of law reciprocally influence one another; a deterio-
ration of the one will almost inevitably produce a deteriora-
tion in the other'.911 But the problem is not so much of a causal
influence, as whether the one can possibly be judged in terms
of the other. Can, for example, the inner morality of law he
judged at the bar of morality that is external to it? Once this
is conceded, Hart's distinction between 'law as it is' and 'law
as it ought to be' would be reinstated irrespective of the fact
whether law may be said to have an 'internal morality' of its
own or not.
But the distinction is meaningful only if the 'law as it ought
to be' is allowed to shape and influence the 'law as it is'. This
would be as true of Fuller's 'internal morality of law' as of
Hart's 'morality' which is supposed to be wholly 'other' than
law, for even Fuller's 'inner morality of law' is not completely
realized by every legal system that is known by that name. But
this itself, as is well known, is the subject of one of the most
fundamental disputes in the philosophy of law. The Hart-
Devlin controversy on the enforcement of morals is as famous
as the Hart-Fuller controversy on the separation of law and
morals."' It has been contended by Hart, amongst others, that
it is not the task of law to enforce public morality. The point
was made in the context of a debate which arose out of what
has come to be called 'Shaw's case' and Lord Devlin's Mac-
cabean lecture, entitled The Enforcement of Morals. The judges
in Shaw's case had observed that 'the courts should function
as the custos morum or the general censor and guardian of the
public manners',112, and Lord Devlin argued in his famous
lecture that 'the suppression of vice is as much the law's
business as the suppression of subversive activities'. 93
The issue, however, is a far wider one than the immediate
contexts in which it arose. It relates to the whole issue of law
and morality on the one hand, and to the function of law, on
the other. If it is not the task of law to enforce morals,
is its function? Hart has, of course, distinguished between
positive and critical morality on the one hand and
private and critical morality on the other, and has tried
argue that it is not the task of the law to enforce private
The Criterion as Conversion Functions 145
morality, even of the positive kind, that is, that which obtains
in society at any particular moment of time. But the question
is not whether there is any realm of private morality which law
should never enforce. The question rather is what role should
critical morality play with respect to positive morality, both
of the private and the public kind on the one hand, and positive
law on the other. Once it is admitted that critical morality has
a role to play and that the demand for a change in positive law
on the basis of its moral evaluation is justified, it follows that
the moral critic by virtue of the fact that he desires the laws to
be changed concedes that the enforcement of morals is at least
one of the important functions of law, even if besides it there
be many others. The separation between 'law as it is' and 'law
as it should be' would lose all meaning if 'law as it should be'
is not allowed to influence positive law at all. Similarly, Fuller's
notion of 'inner morality of law' would become infructuous if it
has no relation to either positive or critical morality. Res-
ponsiveness to both positive and critical morality is the essence
of a law that is living and alive.
Responsiveness, of course, may and ought to be creative in
character. Also, in a sense, it is inescapable, for whether the
judge wishes it or not he has to interpret and apply the law to
situations for which it was never intended. It is intrinsic to the
very nature of law that it can never, in principle, anticipate all
the situations to which and in which it may have to be applied.
Hart has felicitously called this the area of 'penumbral deci-
sions', and though he disputes that this leads to what has come
to be called, following Cardozo 114, 'judicial legislation', still
there can be little doubt that the distinction between 'clear
cases' and 'penumbras decisions' is, at best, a tenuous one. To
suggest that'thejudges are only "drawing out" of the rule what,
if it is properly understood, is "latent" within it', 115 is obviously
to stretch the notion of what is 'latent' a little too far. On the
other hand, as Fuller has shown, a judicial interpretation even
in the so-called clear cases cannot be made unless the judge
asks himself the question, 'What can this rule be for? What evil
does it seek to avert? What good is it intended to promotc?,911
Yet, even if we accept Fuller's point, it would not follow that
the distinction between 'law as it is' and 'law as it ought to be'
would cease to operate, for our notions of good and evil them-
146 Politkal Development
selves may change. And though, following Hart, one may try to
provide continuity between the old and the new notion, it may
only be a fiction postulated to provide the- illusion that things
have not changed much. Conversely, after a revolution, one
may emphasize the, break and the novelty, even when not much
might have changed.
This is not exactly the place to pursue either the Hart-Fuller
controversy or the Hart-Devlin controversy any further.97 Our
only contention is that the criterion of rule-adjudication for the
ascertainment of political development must first sort out some
of these problems before it can even stake its claim as a relevant
idea in the field. The controversy regarding the Nazi legal
system illustrates this pre-eminently. But the same could be
said of most dictatorships which make a mockery of the so-
called 'inner morality of law'. Fuller seems to have assumed
too easily that 'Coherence and goodness have more affinity than
coherence and evil'."8 It would have been difficult for him
perhaps to say this had he not confined his attention to un-
successful tyrannies like that of the Nazis, but also included the
lasting and successful tyrannies such as those of the Soviet or
Chinese dictatorships. He might then perhaps have accepted
the possibility that 'evil aims may have as much coherence and
inner logic as good ones'. 99
It is strange that these issues have hardly received an atten-
1 y
tion in the literature on political development. One can only
conclude that rule-adjudication has been included in the list
only to accommodate the traditional tripartite division of
political structures and functions into the legislative, executive
and judiciary. Basically the interest of thinkers on political
development had shifted long back from giving much weight
to formal-legal considerations in comparisons between different
politics. This perhaps was a result of the fact that formal-legal
structures had begun increasingly to be viewed as instruments
for the achievements of social ends or as the product of social
forces which lay behind them. Both the Marxist and the
structural-functional approaches tended to strengthen this way
of looking at legal reality, and those who regarded law in any
other light except as masking the real interests and forces
behind the fagade presented by the legal structure came to be
considered innocent fools, if not as agents of reactionary
The Criterion as Conversion Functions 147
forces. The concepts of civil and political liberty around which
much liberal political thought of the previou!? era revolved fell
into disuse and thus the problem of creating legal structures
which would foster and safeguard them tended to be completely
forgotten. In fact, the concept of political liberty has ceased to
be in the centre of political thought, and thus the problem of
providing legal safeguards for its preservation and growth has
also tended to fall into the background.
But, whatever be the reasons for the neglect of the criteria
in terms of which different legal structures may be compared
and adjudged, it is clear that unless this preliminary exercise
is done, there is no point in looking for the criteria of political
development in this domain. Not only this, we should be able
to offer justification for the criteria chosen and, at a deeper
level, be able to answer the question why political devel
opment is identified with legal development or whether any
distinction between them has also to be accepted. Perhaps the
latter may be accepted as a necessary condition of the former,
assuming of course that the notion of legal development is free
from the difficulties we have been countering in connection
with that of political development.
Under the circumstances, it is difficult to believe that the
recourse to rule-adjudication would be of any substantial help
in solving difficulties clustering around the concept of political
development. Law, in any case, has ramifications far beyond
the sphere of what may be considered the domain of the
political. It concerns itself with almost all aspects of society and
economy, including even those which may be regarded as
predominantly personal and private. Positive law would then
have to be treated, specially in the way as it is actually operated,
as an indicator of the positive morality of a society which, if it
is to be judged, may only be done by an appeal to some ideal
morality which would have to be justified on other grounds. On
the other hand, it has to be remembered that even the sphere
of positive morality is far, far wider than that of positive law,
and that it would hardly be desirable if the two were to coincide
or even if the distance between the two were to lessen to any
significant extent in any society or polity' The concept of
society is far more deeply related to that of culture, and culture,
as everybody knows, is far wider than law. The clue to political
148 Political Development
development then may he sought not in positive law or even in
the actual proce@s of rule-adjudication as found in a particular
society, but rather in the civil or political culture in which all
the political processes are embedded and which may be said to
give them meaning or significance.
To turn to a discussion of political or civic culture as an
indicator of political development is to leave the so-called
'conversion-functions' behind and to move on into a different
domain. Yet, our detailed discussion of each of the conversion-
functions has revealed their inadequacy for providing satis-
factory criteria for political development. It may, however,
still be objected'that in discussing each of them separately in
an isolated manner we have done violence to the, whole spirit of
the discussion on political development. For, it may be said
that it was never the intention of the proponents to offer them
in such an isolated manner for consideration as a criterion of
political development. Rather, they should be treated in their
complex interrelationship which alone could serve in a unified
manner as an indicator of political development.
The objection need not be dismissed lightly by saying that if
each criterion offered has been found to be inadequate singly,
it is highly unlikely that the same criteria when considered in
some sort of interactive unity would reveal a positive adequacy
instead of a compounding of their inadequacies into a whole,
which would be even more inadequate in character. G. E.
Moore in his Principia Ethica has warned us that the value of a
complex whole need not be a sum of the values of its parts,
and as the notion of 'adequacy' is perhaps a valuational notion
we should be well advised to take the objection seriously and
find out whether the inadequacies get compounded or cancelled
when the criteria are considered not in their isolation but
togetherness. But before embarking on this examination it
would be well if we briefly consider the claims of political cul-
ture, political communication and the System Maintenance and
Adaptation Functions as indicators of political development.
(6) Political Culture as an Indicator of Development
The concept of political culture is obviously borrowed from
anthropological studies on the one hand, and the study of
The Criterion as Conversion Functions 149
civilizations on the other. The anthropologists have tended to
view culture as the structure of meanings in terms of which the
actual observed behaviour of the people of an alien society
is interpreted in such a way as to accord with those people's
interpretation of their own actions. The student of civilizations,
on the other hand, cannot observe the behaviour of people as
they have long ceased to exist. The only things he, has to work
upon are the remnants of what has been left behind and
survived the accidents of time. These he has to interpret and,
through them, to intuit the meanings, ideals and values in
terms of which they gave sense and significance to their lives in
their brief mortal sojourn on this earth. The term 'political
culture' has perhaps more aflinity with the first orientation
than with the second. But even there it has more of a valua-
tional orientation in the sense that thinkers who undertake this
approach are not interested in interpreting the behaviour of
the participants in the political process in those terms which
make it meaningful to them but rather as it facilitates or
obstructs the realization of what they regard as 'political devel-
opment'. Thus, in a sense, political scientists who think in
terms of 'political culture' are interested in the phenomenon
neither as anthropologists nor as students of civilizations, but
rather as those who are interested primarily in the study of
comparative cultures. As the evolutionary perspective gradually
slides into the developmental perspective, cultural relativism
and pluralism give way to the notion of cultural development
conceived mostly in what may be called an 'ethnocentric' or
Cculture-centrie' manner.
This 'culture-centricism', however, has itself given way to a
thought which treats the whole of culture in an instrumental
manner. Since Marx termed the whole of culture a 'super-
structure', and Weber propounded the thesis of the protestant
ethic in the rise of capitalism, culture has come to be regarded
as an instrument for the realization of ends other than its own.
It has been treated both as a fagade that hides reality from the
consciousness of observers and participants alike, as well as that
which makes reality tolerable or liveable for man. Seen either
as a lubricating oil for the creakingjoints of the social machine
or as a compensatory dream which makes the oppressive re-
F@ression of social reality bearable or as a beautiful mask which
11
150 Political Development
hides hideous reality, it is always treated in relation to some-
thing other than itself, and an instrument therco£ The talk of
Cpolitic,al culture' is no different, and it is primarily seen in
terms of Political development'. Following Webedan studies
on the one. hand, and the failure of many new nations of Asia
and Africa to make good in the economic domain on the other,
the question began to be asked whether the traditional cultures
of these societies stood in the way of their econonuc develop-
ment. M many of these new nations failed not only in the
economic field but also in the, political in the sense th@it.they
achieved neither stability nor growth, the same questions began
to be raised with respect to the political domain also. But once something is seen instrumentally, it cannot serve as a criterion of.that in relation to which it is treated as an
instrument, except in the indirect sense that its presence or
absence would also be treated as an, indicator of the presence
or absence of the other. But, even for this, it is necessary that
independent criteria be first available for determining whether the so-called effect@ or rather that which is supposed to be
hieved by some other instrumentality, is itself developed or
not. The talk of political culture, therefore, is no substitute for
the task of determining viable criteria of development with
respect to the political domain.
It may, of course, be argued that as culture usually
the pattern of interactive behaviour in any parti
and the values that are implicit therein and gst different
;p 4,1@cen the ruling
being intuited through its continuous and prolo@ @-Ation would arise as
tion, a discussion of culture with respect to an
be considered more
domain is about the domain itself. Viewed in. this i@, 0
would be little difference between political cultu c a single uniform politi
realm which is designated as 'political'. Political de
fundamental distinction
thus, would become identical with the development ; kb' of the rulers or power holders and that of
culture itself. The discussion would, however, then 4 r.' it is obvious that the relation of political
nature of cultural development in general and of cal development, howsoever conceived, would
pertains to the realm of political culture in particul ceived in a far more complex and differentiated other hand, there would be the elated question er, if the so-called masses themselves do not have
two are.related and how developments in the one fiel homogeneous political culture of their own, as is very likely
or obstruct developments in the other. be the case, there would be little point in making the broad
The notion of 'cultural development', however, is itself otomous division between the culture of the rulers and the
problematic, and stands in need of at least as much analysis as ruled. Perhaps even the political culture of the ruling 6lite may
The Criterion as Conversion Functions 151
that of 'political development'. It has been contended that no
matter how political development is conceived of or what
particular aspect of it is emphasized, the prevalent political
culture of a society cannot but be relevant to it, as it would
facilitate or obstruct the realization of political development in
that sense in the society concerned. As Lucian Pye has written,
gclearly no matter what particular aspect is emphasized political
development strikes at the roots of people's beliefs and senti-
ments about politics, and hence the proceq. ,\development
must be profoundly affected by the cb -
t_\the -politi
cal culture of a society."00 This is
modernity syndrome transposed
if we forget the gratuitous
concept of political de,,,
roots of people's b,'
people's beliefs
such a nat,-
cal dc:,
'@l-
tb >"
1 '
0. g'
il 4@ j@
:,,, , @e,,
o, , e
~
@r-
152 Political Development
not be as homogeneous as Pye seems to think, and the relevant
distinction may lie between those who share a homogeneous
political culture, whether they belong to the ruling elite or not,
and those who do not, or rather those who share a different
culture.
The problem, in fact, is further compounded as political
culture itself is a sub-system of culture in general. Or, if it be
objected that there is no such thing as culture in general but
rather cultures as differentiated with respect to particular
domains, the problem may be reformulated and articulated in
terms of the homogeneity or heterogeneity of the culture
obtaining in the political domain with those obtaining in other
domains. Sidney Verba has suggested that 'the distinction
between political culture and the more general cultural system
of a society is an analytical one."02But if the distinction were to
be merely analytical, it would be difficult to postulate the
possibility of heterogeneity between different segments or sub-
systems of a culture. Verba is of the opinion that 'the basic
belief and value patterns of a culture-those general values that
have no reference to specific political objects-usually play a
major role in the structuring of political culture'."')3 But if this
is so, the notion of an independent political culture would
become meaningless and, in any case, whether it is so or not, is
to he established empirically for every case and not assumed
a priori. Otherwise, the relationship that would have to be
investigated would be that between culture and political devel-
opment, and not between political culture and political devel-
opment.
The distinctiveness of political culture has been emphasized
by Lucian Pye and he has suggested that there are 'four specific
values which ... are apparently related to fundamental issues
that arise in the developmental process' .104 These, according to
him, relate to the dichotomies of trust-distrust, hierarchy-
equality, liberty-coercion, and the level of loyalty and com-
mitments relating to the primary political identifications of a
people. It is obvious that attitudes of trust, equality, liberty and
a generalized level of non-parochial identification would he
conducive to a polity of a certain kind which may be called
'developed', if these are the values that are taken to characterize
er constitute political development. But even amongst these, the
The Criterion as Conversion Functions 153
liberty-coercion dimension is distinctive in the sense that very
few people would like themselves to he coerced, though they
may not mind if others are coerced for the achievement of
certain ends. In fact, the attitudes towards the desirability or
undesirability of coercion may be expected to vary significantly
between the rulers and the ruled. Yet, the amount of actual
coercion would be an indication of the gulf between the values
of the rulers and the people, and of the extent of the people's
resistance to the imposition of values by the rulers. @
The other dimensions in terms of which the value-dicho-
toniies have been spelled out seem even far less clear-cut than
the coercion-liberty dimension. Trust-distrust, for example,
depends primarily on the performance of political rulers, and if
they not only have values which are different from those over
whom they rule but also dissimulate in their articulation and
profess those which they do not even mean to realize, then it is
inevitable that the masses would have a feeling of distrust
towards all those who rule them. After all, the history of the
behaviour of the ruling @lite down the ages is not such as to
inspire trust in those who have been ruled. The betrayal of
trust is such a constant feature of human history that it would
be amazing if trusting confidence were still to be found amongst
people. But even supposing such an innocence is found amongst
a people, would it be really helpful to political development, as
Verba seems to think? Or, would it not be playing into the
hands of the ruling 6lite and making their task of political decep-
tion easier ? The trusting populace is the dream of every ruler,
so that he may take them like docile sheep wherever he wants to
lead them. Would not a discriminatingly critical populace he
better than one that blindly trusts in its rulers?
The same may be said of the hierarchy-equality and the
extent and level-of-commitment dimensions of the value-
dichotomies pertaining to political culture. The relations of
power being essentially asymmetrical, it is difficult to see how
equality can ever characterize a political or even an administra-
tive system. But even if it were to be so characterized, it is not
easy to see how or why it should give better results than a
hierarchical structure. It should be remembered in this con-
nection that the openness of access to various positions in the
structure is a different issue from the egalitarian or hierarchical
154 Political Development
nature of the structure itself. As for the extent and depth of
commitment in terms of identification, it is not easy to see the
advantages of national identifications for political development,
rather than the so-called regional identifications on the one
hand, and the global identifications on the other. If equality
and participation are the directions which political develop-
rnent should take, then it is obvious that the political units of
which one is a member should not be too large. If human
beings are not to be divided into antagonistic and warring
groups, it is obvious that too much identification with the
nation-state would only lead to a condition of permanent
belligerency where each is preparing to fight the other.
@ The four values in terms of which Pye articulates political
culture do not thus seem to be related in any determinate,
unique way to the so-called processes of political development
even at the first level of analysis. Verba, on the other hand,
focuses 'on those basic political values that represent the most
general beliefs about the ends of political activity, about the
nature of the political process. and about the place of the
individual within it'."05 Besides the fourfold values emphasized
by Lucian Pye, Verba suggests that there are 'important
political beliefs about how the polity operates-not what it is,
but what it does',"06 'in particular it is the expectations the
members of a system have as to the output of the government-
what they believe it will and ought to do for and to them-that
are relevant here'.107But, as in the case of Pye's list, Verba's
delimitation of the contents of those beliefs which may be
relevant for political development does not help in telling us
what particular types of belief would help or hinder the pro-
cess. Also, there seems to be an implicit assumption that the
beliefs are an independent variable in the situation. But this
usually is not the case. The beliefs in most cases are themselves
the result of the past political experience of a people, can
only be changed by a change in the political practice of the
ruling 6lite itself. It is, of course, true that the political elite
themselves may arouse expectancies which they may not ' be
able to fulfil. One.may think of some sort of a dialectic between
the political apathy and political over-involvement of the
masses with the political elite playing an arousing and dampen-
ing role in the process.
The Criterion as Conversion Functions 155
Yet, however interesting such speculations may be, the' do y
not answer the basic question as to how political culture can
provide a criterion or criteria of political development. In fact,
if political cultures are different, and the term 'culture' in-
cludes the values that are considered worth realizing by the
culture, it would follow that each political culture would have
its own ideas or. rather@ ideal of political development. The
multiplicity of cultures is, in fact, merely another name for the
multiplicity of ideal ways in-whicii societiesconceive of them-
selves, and if political culture is merely an aspect of culture in
general, then it is@ obvious that the diversity of political cultures
would be merely another 'name for the diversity of political
ideals.
The idea of a plurality of political ideals, however, seems
anathema to political thinkers, so much so that' they hardly
dare give it a place in their scheme of thought about political
development. And this remains true even when they use the
notion of Culture, which in its anthropological context in@
evitably,implies plurality @nd multiplicity. Basically,- the .em@
phasis in most such literature'seems to be on those aspects of
culture which are conducive to secularization and ditterentia@
tion which themselves are treated as criteria of development in
general. As Almond and Powell write, 'we have,suggested,that
there is, in general an association between structural 'dif-
ferentiation, cultural secularization, and an expansion of the
capabilities of the political system. These associated attributes
are involved in the develo S .pment of political system , although of
course, such development is neither inevitable nor irrever-
sible."("' 'Differentiation' and 'capabilities' have already
been discussed at length as criteria of political development.
As for secularization, it appears to be too conveniently identi-
fied with a pragmatic-bargaining attitude prevalent primarily
in the U 'S.A. and secondarily in England than with what it
strictly means, that is, the denial of any transcendent or other-.
worldly dimension or allowing it to have any say in man"s
spatio-temporal affairs. In@the second sense, almost all modern
politics may be regarded as secular, while in the former sense
perhaps only the U 'S.A.. and perhaps U.K. would be regarded
as secular. Perhaps even in earlier times the states were not so
non-secular as they are now usually supposed to have been.
156 Political Development Religions in the past appear to have provided the same function as the ideologies of today. In other words, they prescribed the verbal rhetoric in terms of which the states justified their policies and with whose values they had to come to terms at least to some minimal extent. - The classification of political cultures 'according to the com- bination of parochials, subjects, and participants"09 can he of little help as the distinction between these in terms of the level of awareness about, and participation in, politics relates to the criterion as participation, which we have already examined at length, and does not add anything new to the discussion. The, detour to a discussion of political culture thus does not seem to raise any new issues with respect to the problem of political development. The same may be expected to be true of political socialization and political communica- tion which are also associated with the, discussion on political development. Yet, before discussing the conversion-functions in their totality as criteria for political development, we might tarry awhile and consider the possible help, if any, which political socialization and political communication may offer in a discussion on political development. (7) Political Socialization and Political Communication as Indicators of Political Development The term 'socialization' refers to the whole range of processes through which a newborn baby gradually grows into a full- grown adult member of his society. The process depends on a subtle use of approval and disapproval, of reward and punish- ment and is based on the involuntary impulse to imitate which is found in all living beings. The imitation extends to patterns of behaviour, ways of feeling, building of attitudes, organization of perception, norms of action, etc. It is, in a sense, a 'com- munication' from one generation to the next of its specific ways of living in all realms, including those pertaining to knowing, feeling or willing. The specificity of the so-called 'socialization' process with respect to the political realm is no differnet from the way it obtains with respect to other domains. The formal and informal agencies such as the family, the school, the peer group, the mass media, along with the actual experience of the
The Criterion as Conversion Functions 157 individual of those sectors of the political system with which he comes into contact, sha c both his perception of the political system and his attitude towards it. Under the circumstances, it is obvious that one would need a prior decision with respect to the question 'what does political development consist in?' in order to be able to determine what forms of socialization may be considered conducive to it. In a sense, the issue would become relevant only when the prevalent political system in a society is judged to be 'undeveloped' or 'underdeveloped'. The reason for this is that all 'socialization' basically tends to be conservative in character, as it is con- cerned with conserving through replication and perpetuation what has been achieved in the past. There may, of course, be a form of 'socialization' which tends to institutionalize innovation and experimentation, but even in such situations there is bound to be a heavy emphasis, though unstated and unacknowledged, on'the perpetuation of a stable background in the presence of which innovation and experimentation is permitted and en- couraged. The choice with respect to forms of 'socialization' is very limited, particularly as the most fundamental agency of social- ization, the family, is not particularly amenable to voluntary control. On the other hand, it does not play a very significant role in 'political socialization', though it does inculcate attitudes which may help or hinder values which are regarded as desirable for the political system. The school, the mass media and the formal and informal peer groups, specially those con" cerned with politics, may and do play a more active role in the shaping of those explicitly political attitudes which are regarded as desirable by the e'lites in charge of the political system. Yet in both cases what is desirable for the political system has to be first determined. The resort to the notion of 'political socialization' is thus of little help in throwing any independent light on the idea of political development or in providing any criterion for it. The continuity-discontinuity criterion or the homogeneity-heterogeneity criterion may be offered as indica- tors of political development, but even then it would be difficult to determine Which is to he taken as indicating development. For discontinuity clan be taken care of by the usual mechanism of role-differentiation which provides for different norms to be
158 Political Development 3
practised in different situations and heterogeneity welcomed by
seeing it as providing that healthy tension which is the har-
binger of beneficial change. Similarly.. if it be contended that
non-hierarchical, non-authoritarian practices of socialization
in the famil would be conducive to a participate ' democratic
y ry-
way of functioning of the polity, then it would not only prejudge
participatory-democratic functioning as a criterion of political
development but also entail that citizens reared in such a way
would be unfit to work in all those organizations which cannot
but be organized on the principle of hierarchical-authoritarian
control, such as the army, etc. If it be argued, on the other
hand, that the experience with respect to the, armies of demo-
cratic politics from the Athenian republic to those of the Allies
in the Second World War is a sufficient refutation of the con-
tention, then it has to be accepted also that the whole thesis
regarding socialization has to be rejected or at least drastically
revised.
The claim of 'political communication' to provide a signi-
ficant indicator of political development is perhaps even more
untenable than that of 'political socialization'. And this for the
simple reason that.it is only an instrument for the realization
of functions which may be distinctly political, but which need
not necessarily be so. As a generalized instrumentality, it is
presupposed by all activity and thus may be regarded as a
necessary condition of political development, as of any other.
Unless, therefore, some specific forms of communication are
regarded as themselves political in character, there would not
be much meaning in searching for the criterion of political
development in the field of communication. It may be con-
tended that the larger the network of communication and the
more efficiently it functions, the greater the likelihood of
the political system covering a larger area and being more
efficiently organized in the sense of being responsive to the
people whose needs it could then more easily decipher. But,
first, it is not clear why the size of a polity should be taken as a
sign of its development and, secondly, the so-called efficiency
in communication may result as much in increase of effective
tyranny as in responsiveness to the needs and wishes of the
people.
. 1 It may be suggested, however, that certain types of com-
1
1
1
1
~
The Criterion as Conversion Functions 159
munication structures can facilitate or obstruct certain types of
political development and, if so, they could serve as indirect
indicators of the possibility of finding a particular type of
political development in a society. Almond and Powell have
distinguished five types of such structures. They are: '(1) in@-
formal face-to-face contacts, which spring up more or less
independently of other social structures; (2) traditional social
structures, such as family or religious-group relationships;
(3) political "output" structures, such as legislatures and
bureaucracies; (4) political "input'@ structures, including trade
unions and similar interest groups, and political parties. and
(5) mass media.'no The list seems to consist of disparate items,
some quite heterogeneous in nature. Most refer to structures
whose primary task is other than communication per se, though
obviously no function can be exercised without involving com-
munication as well. The structures primarily concerned with
communication are those of the mass media and the crucial
question with respect to them is whether they are autonomous
or not. And in case they are formally autonomous, do they enjoy
substantive autonomy not only with respect to political interests,
but economic interests as well ?
The specifically political structures involved in the com-
munication-function mentioned by the authors relate to puliti.@
cal 'input-output' structures which we have already discussed.
There seems little point in discussing them once again in the
context of communication. The idea, however, that develop-
ments or changes in political communication in one area tend
to influence or affect political functioning in other areas is
interesting, but unless we have a clear idea as to the type of
changes that we can regard as 'developmental', little would be
gained in terms of the elucidation of the notion of 'political
development'. The authors have written that 'the performance
of political communication in a system may lead to changes in
the performance of other political functions, or may limit and
inhibit the development of certain types and levels,of system
capability."". The statement, however, is not only too general
to be of much help but also tends to suggest that it is in terms
of their'effect on a political system's capabilities that the
changes in the communication system ought to be assessed. But
as we have already seen in our detailed discussion on capabil-
160 Political Development
ities as the criterion of political development, it can hardly
provide the pivotal point in terms of which political com-
munication can function as a safe indicator of political develop-
ment. It may be urged that, depending on one's own pre-
ferences with respect to the notion of capabilities, one could
treat the extent and efficiency of political communication as @t
positive or negative indicator of the same. But indirect indica-
tors are only required where direct indicators are not available,
and this certainly is not the case with any of the criteria of
political development that have been offered, including that of
capabilities. In fact, political communication suffers from the
same defect as many other criteria discussed earlier in that one
can have too much or too little of it, implying thereby that it
is not itself an indication of political development but functions
as such only in some particular context and relationship. This
is to suggest that the criteria cannot be understood in isolation
but only in interrelationship, and this is what we propose to
discuss next.
(8) The Criteria in Interrelationship
Any such complex phenomenon as political development is
unlikely to be understood in terms of a single variable alone. It
may he contended, therefore, that our attempt to consider each
of the criteria that have been offered singly as constituting
political development has been doomed to failure from the very
start and we should not he surprised if our detailed examination
has failed to find any of them fully satisfactory. It is time, there-
fore, to examine the criteria in their interrelationship and find
if such an approach proves more helpful. In a sense, the
approach through interrelationships has not remained com-
pletely unexamined as the notion of 'capabilities' may be
deemed to be primarily interrelational in character. In fact,
the whole notion of input-output ratios mediated by conversion-
functions is interrelational in character and has been examined
and discussed in that perspective. Still, a focussed discussion on
political development in terms of an explicit relationship between
the different variables discussed in the literature is not as
superfluous as it may appear at first sight. For, even if there be
an element of repetition in the points made, the shift in the
~
~
The Criterion as Conversion Functions 161
focus may result in some new insights regarding the problem.
The criteria we have discussed uptil now in great detail
relate to those of (1) participation, (2) differentiation and
(3) capabilities. The latter has been discussed in terms of
the relation between input and output functions as explicated
by Almond and Powell in their classic formulation on the
subject. Besides these, we have also discussed in great detail
each of the conversion-functions, such as (1) Interest articula-
tion, (2) Interest aggregation, (3) Rule-making, (4) Rule-
application, and (5) Rule-adjudication. Political communica-
tion is also sometimes treated as a part of conversion-functions,
but we have discussed it separately along with political social-
ization. The relationship between participation, differentiation
and capabilities has seldom been directly discussed in the
literature. There is a generalized assumption that differentia-
tion per se leads to an increase in capability, and that participa-
tion leads to greater system-responsiveness which may be
taken as an indicator of its increased capabilities. There is,
however, a slight difference in the assumptions, in that the
latter tends to be made primarily by those who have some sort
of commitment to democracy as a political value, while the
former is unreservedly accepted by almost everyone who has
written on the subject. In fact, there are thinkers like Hunting-
ton who consider participation an adverse indicator, specially
in the case of developing politics. As the concept of political
order or political stability is more central to his thought than
that of political development, he assesses the value of political
participation in terms of its effect on political stability or order.
An increase in political participation makes increasing demands
on the political system which it finds increasingly difficult to
fulfil, thus leading to political decay rather than political devel-
opment. In his own words, 'as political participation increases,
the complexity, autonomy, adaptability, and coherence of the
society's political institutions must also increase if political
stability is to be maintained."'? But it is obvious that it is far
easier for political participation to increase than for political
institutions to increase in autonomy, adaptability and co-
herence, thus making it increasingly impossible to maintain
political order in face of increasing political participation. As
Huntington argues, 'the stability of any given polity depends
162 Political Development
upon the relationship between the level of political participa-
tion and the level of political institutionalization.1113 And
Apolitical stability, as we have argued, depends upon the ratio
of institutionalization to participation.1114 By 'political institu-
tionalization', Huntington means 'limitations on the resources
that may be employed in politics, the procedures through
which power may be acquired, and the attitudes that power
wielders may hold'."5 But as such restraints are difficult to
establish with a sudden increase in participation, the likelihood
of the emergence of what he calls 'practorian' societies is greater
in most developing societies than those he calls 'civic'.
We are not interested here in discussing Huntington's posi-
tion in detail, but it may be pointed out that he uses the term
participation' in a somewhat unclear sense. For all 'participa-
tion' does not necessarily imply making increasing demands on
the system, or making them in such a way as to lead to a break-
down of the system. Once a polity has opted for adult franchise
and free and fair elections, it has provided the sufficient condi-
tions for 'political participation'. This, however, by no means
entails that there would be such an overloading of demands on
the system that it is more likely than not to result in its break-
down. Such an eventuality is more likely to occur if 'participa-
tilon' takes the form of 'populism'. The situation might get
further aggravated if 'participation' is conceived of in terms, of
'interest articulation'. It may, of course, be argued that even in
a situation where 'populism' does not obtain, the mere com-
petition between parties for the support of the electorate would
tend to their making tall promises which would drive the polity
to disorder and ruin. But this assumes that those who are elected
try to fulfil all the promises made during elections or that the
electorate takes all the promises that are made seriously, or that
it even remembers the promises that the ruling party made at
the last election. In normal circumstances it is the overall
performance of the party in power that is judged by the elec-
torate and not the detailed, specific promises made at the last
election.
On the other hand, it might equally be contended that a too
successful institutionalization may hamper development instead
of fostering it, for the simple reason that it may purchase
stability and order at the price of growth and change. The
g@
The Criterion as Conversion Functions 163
institution of caste in Hindu society is a classic example of such
a situation. It has become so successful as a principle of social
ordering that all attempts at radical innovation based on its
denial have been doomed to failure in Indian society. In fact,
even non-Hindus in the Indian subcontinent have had to
subn.iit to this ordering principle in their soci structure, even
though it was at variance with the basic tenets of their religion.
Islarnic and Christian communities in India have found it
difficult not to come under the influence of this ordering
principle in their social structuring. A successful institutional-
ization, then, can he as inimical to development as the lack of
it, depending on the situation and the,context we are talking
about.
The relation between 'institutionalization' and 'participa-
tion' may, of course, be seen in a more dialectical manner so
that it is the tension between the two that provides the condi-
tion for development to occur. The dialectical view, of course,
may take many forms, depending upon the conception one has
of the basic forces whose antagonism and interplay is supposed
to determine the system. The Marxian version of the dialectical
approach is too well known to be, discussed here. However,
amongst non-Marxist political thinkers, Fred Riggs may be
singled out for his dialectical view of political development. In
his well-known article 'The Dialectics of Developmental Con-
flict',"6 he sees political development as a dynamic resultant of
the dialectical conflict between differentiation and integration
on the one hand, and between capacity and equality on the other.
His notion of 'capacity', however, is different from that which
is conveyed by the term Ccapabilities' in Almond and Powell's
system, though perhaps by stretching the sense, it might be
made to coincide with it to a greater extent than may appear
primafacie to be the case. For Riggs, the notion of 'capacity' is
primarily related to the desire of the rulers to preserve their
power and perhaps increase and enhance it as well. In Pact, the
'capacity-equality dichotomy'for Riggs is merely a consequence
of the 'dlite-mass dichotomy' which itself is a result of the fact
that power is not only asymmetrical in character, but also that,
by definition, 6lites cannot but be few in number and that many
of those who are not amongst the @lites would like to join and
be counted as such. As Riggs points out, 'the !bite are defined as
164 Political Development
those who exercise power, the mass as those over whom power
is exercised'. and that the so-called pressures 'manifest them-
selves through government, in the desire of rulers to preserve
their power and in the demand of the ruled to be heard and
considered . . . the typical rationalization for preserving power
by ruling @lites takes the form of capacity, and the demands of
the ruled are expressed as a quest for more equali@y.""' It is
obvious that Riggs has not expressed himself clearly, for there
does not seem any intrinsic conflict between the demand of the
ruled 'to be heard and considered' and the desire of the rulers
'to preserve their power'. The conflict would become inevitable
only if those who are ruled want themselves to become the
rulers or share in their power. The situation is insoluble in
principle if it is conceived in terms of the dichotomy of 6lite
and mass, as Riggs has done; for, by definition, the elite cannot
but be in a minority, and that too a microscopic minority in
most cases.
The impasse is sought to be bridged by Riggs through what
he calls 'differentiation', as he argues that 'this conceptualiza-
tion ... postulates a narrowing of the zone of conflict (acute
tensions) as the degree of "differentiation" rises-at least
beyond some developmental threshold'."" The term 'dif-
ferentiation' includes in itself three concepts for which, accord-
ing to Riggs, we need different terms for purposes of clarity.
They are 'role specialization within a system, effective co-
ordination of roles, and the two combined'.ng As everyone who
is familiar with Riggs's thought can guess, we are safely on our
way to a fused-prismatic-diffracted trichotomy in terms of
which the process of development is to be understood. But it
is not clear at all how 'differentiation' solves the dilemma of
'61ite-mass dichotomy' with which Riggs started his analysis.
Riggs has many interesting things to say regarding the identi-
fication of the. relationship between 'the structure, the goals of
equality and capacity, typical forms of conflict, and degrees of
,diffraction',12( but it is difficult to see how this relates to the
other, and politically more fundamental, dichotomy between
mass and 6lite, understood in terms of the ruled and the ruler
respectively.
It is necessary, therefore, to distinguish between the dialectic
imposed by the fact of differential distribution of political power
~
The Criterion as Conversion Functions 165
amongst the members of a polity and the dialectic created by
'differentiation', meaning thereby the increasing specialization
of roles within a system and the demand for some sort of
integration between them so that the system may work effi-
ciently and harmoniously to some extent and not break
asunder.
We need not pursue our discussion of Riggs' twofold
dialectic any further, particularly as we will have occasion to
revert to it later in our concluding discussion on the concept of
development and its relevance for different domains of human
endeavour. However, it may he pointed out in passing that the
basic weakness of the first dialectic relating to mass and @lite
is the assumption that political @lites are the only 6lites, and
that political power is the only power. Unfortunately for Riggs'
model, this does not happen to he the case, and though he has
theoretically conceded the possibility that power, presumably
political, may itself be the consequence of the possession of
other valued conditions,121 he has failed to draw the con-
sequences-,pf such an admission. The deeper problem, however,
relates not only to the relations between different forms and
types of power, but of their relative autonomy and indepen-
dence as well. Otherwise, one would see all values as instru-
mental to the value one holds as primary and fundamental. The
history of sociopolitical thought is replete with such examples,
and one may choose the value one happens to like or the form
of power that in one's opinion happens to possess causal
primacy over all the others.
The dialectical notion of political development is not entirely
absent from Huntington's thought either. Only, in his case
the dialectic is more between the conflicting claims of rural
and urban centres in the process of development. The crucial
factors in the drama of political development, according to him,
are the twin conditions of what he calls 'rural majority and
urban growth'. The countryside continues to be traditional
while the city becomes the centre of modernizing activity.Thus
develops what he calls the gap between the political attitudes
and behaviour of the cities and those of the countryside. The
city, however, remains constant in its function. The variable
factor in his analysis is provided only by the countryside on
whose behaviour depends whether there would be stability or
12
166 Political Develo .pment
revolution. As Huntington says, 'the role of the city is constant:
it is the permanent source of revolution'.122 However, though
the role of the countryside is crucial for political modernization,
which, for Huntington, is identical with political development,
the source for political mobilization and differential behaviour
may be said to rest primarily with the urban political 6lite,
whether they belong to the ruling group or to the opposition.
'The basic political competition', Huntington argues, 'becomes
the competition between the government and the urban re-
volutionary intelligentsia for the support of the peasantry. If
the peasantry acquiesces in and identifies with the existing
system, it furnishes that system with a stable foundation. If
it actively opposes the system, it becomes the carrier of revolu-
tion.1123
The relationship between urban and rural areas is supposed
to show four phases according to Huntington's system. In the
first phase, the countryside dominates the city socially, eco-
nomically and politically. Both, however, enjoy stability, each
at its own level. In the second phase, urban groups develop
strength and begin to challenge the rural 6lite, thus bringing,
instability into the system. In the third phase, the urban groups
overthrow the ruling rural 6lite. @ The fourth phase consists of
the induction of the rural masses into politics, which itself can
occur in four ways depending on whether the sponsors of the
'Green uprising' are (i) nationalist intellectuals,,or (ii) a section
of the urban @lite trying to overwhelm the more narrowly based
political opponents, or (iii) a rurallyorio-nted militaryjunta, or
(iv) a clique of revolutionary urban intellectuals.'124
We are not interested here in discussing in detail the ade-
quacy of Huntington's dialectical model of political develop-
ment. It should, however, be pointed out that the very terms
of the dialectic confine the theory to primarily agrarian societies
which'are being urbanized under the impact of industrializa-
tion. The unquestioned assumptions of the theory, thus, are
twofold. First, it uncritically assumes that the process of
modernization necessarily involves a continuous decrease in the
proportion of the rural sector, both in terms of the manpower
engaged in it and its relative share in the national income. And,
seconaly, there seems to be an unconscious assumption that
once the problem of rural-urban dichotomy is solved by the
The Criterion as Conversion Functions 167
swallowing up of the rural sector, political development would
finally have been achieved, as there would be no further
significant problems for the polity to solve.
Both the assumptions are naive in the extreme. The first,
though buttressed by large incontrovertible data from the
history of industrialization uptil now, runs against the increds-
ing evidence that the pattern of economic development of
large agrarian countries such as India or China cannot take
the form followed by industrialized countries in the past. Not
only this, the increasing evidence indicates that the large-scale,
capital-intensive, centralized pattern of industrialization based
on the use of non-ren@wable resources is ultimately suicidal in
nature. In plain terms, it is alleged that there are just not
enough resources to sustain a per capita world consumption at
the level which now obtains in the U.S.A. The question
obviously is not whether or not such a possibility is attainable
in the near future, but whether, given the resource estimates of
the earth, it is logically conceivable as a problem in simple
arithmetic to think that it could ever be achieved at all. There
is, of course, the on-going debate whether the notion of a finite
resource base has any meaning at all and whether we need
confine ourselves to the resources available on earth alone to
satisfy the future needs of mankind '1125 But whatever side is
taken in the debate, one cannot uncritically assume today, as
one could perhaps ten or twenty years ago, that there was
only one road to economic betterment exemplified by the
history of western nations' including that ofjapan.
Whatever one may think of the first assumption, the second
is even more fundamental and more questionable. There seems
no reason to believe that problems of political governance
cease or that political good is completely realized the moment
the rural-urban dialectic ceases to operate because of the
practical abolition of the rural sector in the economy and
society. The development of industrial and post-industrial
societies does not lessen the tasks of political management or
make the political antagonism between different classes and
groups disappear, as is known to all the political leaders of
these societies. It is therefore surprising to find Huntington
writing as if the problem of political development were pri-
marily a problem of underdeveloped countries alone, and has
168 Political Development
little to do with the so-called 'developed' societies. He may, of
course, plead in his defence that he is only concerned with the
problem of political order in changing societies and not devel-
,x)ping a generalized theory of political processes which would
be applicable to all societies at all levels of their development.
But this would be to assume that the so-called 'developed'
societies have stopped changing or that there is no problem of
political order in them. This, however, is to be blind to the
social and political facts of these countries. Huntington's book
was published in 1968 and thus, presumably, was written in
the late sixties. Yet it shows little awareness of all the social and
political turmoil prevalent in the U.S.A. during that period.
At the social plane, the period 1958-68 had seen a hundred
per cent increase in the crime rate. The comparisons with other
nations were even more alarming.1211 The Final Report of the
National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Vio-
lence gives not only these staggering figures, but breathes an
atmosphere of hopelessness regarding the situation and wonders
if anything could really be done in the matter. The report. for
example, states, 'In the last 25 years our country has been
deluged with significant Presidential and national fact-finding
commissions, starting with President Truman's Commission to
secure these Rights in 1947.... Thus the problems of poverty,
racism and crime have been emphasized and re-emphasized,
studied and re-studied, probed and re-probed.' And, 'Surveying
the landscape littered with the unimplemented recommenda-
tions of so many previous commissions, 1 am compelled to
propose a national moratorium on any additional temporary
study commissions to probe causes of racism, or poverty. or
crime, or urban crisis. The rational response to the work of the
great commissions of recent years is not the appointment of
still more commissions to study the same problems-but rather
the prompt implementation of their many valuable recom-
mendations.11127 But even the possible hope of any such action
was remote from the minds of many persons who appeared
before the Commission. The Commission itself concluded its
Report with the following statement of Kenneth B. Clark which
may be taken as typifying the mood of the Commission: 'I
must again in candour say to you members of this commission-
it is a kind of Alice in Wonderland-with the same moving
The Criterion as Conversion Functions 169
picture reshown over and over again, the same analysis, the
same recommendations, the same inaction.11128
The political situation also was equally bad during this
period. This was the time when student protests on the cam-
puses against the Vict-Nam war increased both in intensity
and violence. Starting from the Berkeley campus of the Uni-
versity of California in 1959, they continued unabated and
spread to almost all the major campuses in the United States.
The desertions from the U.S. Army reached grave proportions,
and thousands of young men turned their draft cards over to
federal officials and announced publicly that they would not
serve.
The facts are too well known to he either repeated or docu-
mented here. What is surprising is that Huntington seems
completely unaware of them or of their relevance to what he is
writing on political order or political development in changing
societies. And he is not alone in this respect. Rather, every
writer on political development seems to be guilty of the same
amnesia. One has reluctantly to agree with Hirschmann when
he writes: 'I believe that the countries of the Third World have
become fair game for the model-builders and paradigrn-
molders to an intolerable degree."29 And, that 'Having been
proved wrong by the unfolding events in almost every instance,
the law-makers then migrated to warmer climes, that is, to the
less developed countries."30
The dialectical -model of political development, whether in
the classical version of Marx, or in that of Riggs or Huntington,
sees it primarily as a dynamic relationship between two vari-
ables alone. The moment, however, we conceive of development
as a resultant of more than two variables, the relationship
would have to be conceived in a more complex manner. One
would have to specify in detail the specific interactive linkages
between the particular values of the variables as well as the
positive and the negative feedback loops connecting them.
Basically, nothing of the sort has been attempted so far.1131 As
most thinkers in this field have tended to offer multiple criteria,
it is imperative that this aspect should not have been left
unattended to. Further, as the relationship between the criteria
that have been offered has generally been viewed inversely, it
was even more incumbent on the authors to indicate the rela-
170 Political Development
tive weightage of the values involved if a viablejudgnient about
political development were to be regarded as feasible,. Lucian
Pye, for example, has remarked that 'historically the tendency
has usually been that there are acute tensions between the
demands for equality, the requirements for capacity, and the
processes of greater differentiatioil. Pressure for greater equality
can challenge the capacity of the system, and differentiation
can reduce equality by stressing the importance of quality and
specialized knowledge."32 But if there are such acute tensions
between equality, capacity and differentiation, each of which
is regarded, severally and jointly, as the criterion of political
development, then it is necessary that the problem of propor-
tions and priorities between them be faced and settled. Yet
Lucian Pye has done nothing of the kind. One is given no
indication as to how much weightage is to be given to each.and
what exactly is to be the plus-minus equation between such
incompatible criteria. The same can be said of many of the
'conversion-functions' which also display an inverse relation-
ship, between them. Take, for example, 'interest articulation'.
and "Interest aggregation'. It is obvious that the more we have
of the former, the more difficult it would be to achieve the
latter. Any increase in the quantity and diversity of interests
would make it increasingly difficult to achieve.'aggregation' in
the sense of 'reconciliation' of divergent interests.
Sirffilarly, if we take 'rule-making, 'rule-application', and
'rffle-adjudication' together into consideration, we see that an
increase in the quantity and complexity of the first leads to
increasing difficulties at the level of both 'rule-application' and
'rule-adjudication'. The more the rules enacted, the more
difficult it becomes to see that they are properly observed and
that the conflicts between them are expeditiously adjudicated.
In fact, the possible conflicts between rules, both actual and
imagined, may be expected to increase in a geometrical ratio,
making it almost impossible for the ad udicating function to be
reasonably exercised by finite human beings. In a sense, such a
situation is already being approached in many countries where
cases demanding adjudication lie for years without proper
attention on the part of adjudicating authorities.
It may be suggested that if the relationship is of such an
inverse character, the best course to ensure efficient 'rule-
The Criterion as Conversion Functions 171
application' or 'rule-adjudication' would he to go slow on 'rule-
making'. It would then be in the direction of reduction and
simplification of rules that political development will be sought
rather than otherwise. But, however seemingly sensible this
may appear in the case of 'rule-making', it may not even appear
to be so in the case of 'interest articulation'. It will be difficult
for anyone to argue that,it is best for 'interest articulation' to
he lessened so that difficulties may not arise in the way of
'interest aggregation'. Perhaps, the difficulty may be met by
thinking of a moving equilibrium between the quantities on
the inverse side of the relationship in such a way that the
opportunities for an increase in 'interest articulation', or in
'rule-making' are only provided when there is a chance of
their being 'aggregated', or 'applied' and 'adjudicated'.
Theoretically, the idea may seem logically impeccable even
if it be conceded that in practice it is almost impossible to
realize. But besides the issue of empirical unrealizability there
is the ethical problem of the desirability of doing so. just as it
is ethically unacceptable that the opportunities for 'interest
articulation' be reduced only because the polity is not able to
aggregate the interests articulated, so also it may appear ethic-
ally unacceptable that an increase in such opportunities be
withheld just because the polity is not able to increase its
capacity to aggregate them. There may perhaps be an asym-
metry in the two situations, as a restriction of opportunities
which already exist may seem morally more reprehensible than
a failure to provide more opportunities for expression of
'interest articulation'.
The difficulties, however, may be regarded as confined not
merely to the empirical and the moral levels, but to extend to
the theoretical dimension also. The equilibrium ratio, whether
moving or not, is expected to be unity if it is to count as
indicating political development. But in such a situation there
can hardly be any development, for the indicator would always
stand at unity, provided the situation is satisfactory. The
difficulty may be avoided by treating unity as an ideal limit
which is never actualized in practice because of the empirical
limitations inherent in the situation. and treating development
as a movement towards it. Any two ratios at different moments
of time would then be compared in terms of their approxima-
172 Political Development
tiori to the ideal ratio given by unity and judged as political
decline- or development according to whether it is farther from
or nearer it. One may also think of the logical possibility that
'interest aggregation' may exceed 'interest articulation' and
that 'rule-application' and 'rule-ad udication' may exceed
'rule-making'. Such a situation may be described as 'over-
development', in case there are no intrinsic incom,patibilities'iin
the concepts of such a nature that any ratio indicating more
than unity is ruled out by the very nature of the concepts con-
cerned.
A primafacie analysis does appear to suggest this in the case
of 'interest aggregation' and 'interest articulation', for it seems
meaningless to talk about aggregating interests which have not
been articulated by any group or class of persons. The only
way out of the difficulty would perhaps be to formulate the
concept of 'anticipated interest' which, then, could allow being
aggregated even in the absence of any explicit articulation. But,
in that case, the problem would arise whether the so-called
'anticipated interest' coincides with the interest of the person
or groups if they were to articulate their interests. The notion
of 'anticipated interest' has, in fact, occurred in the classical
literature of political science under the guise of what is called
great interests', The distinction between 'real' and 'apparent'
interests, however, undercuts the notion of 'articulated interests'
as it implies that people are not the best judges of what they
really want. It is only the @lite which knows what is best for
everybody. And, in most cases, the @lite is supposed to be the
political 6ite only. The history of this notion is well known
from Plato onwards, and has been helpful to dictators of all
hues injustifying their authority which, according to them, has
always been exercised for the achievement of the public good.
Whatever the difficulties with respect to the possibility of
'interest aggregation' exceeding 'interest articulation', there
seem hardly any regarding the possibility of 'rule-adjudication'
exceeding 'rule-making', as the possible disputes that may arise
with respect to the rules made is always larger than the rules
themselves. Even here, however, both the number and the
wording of the rules would have a direct relationship with the
number of disputes that may arise requiring adjudication. The
larger the number of rules, the greater the possibility of the
The Criterion as Conversion Functions 173
disputes arising with respect to them. On the other hand, the
wording of the rules may be such as either to encourage or
discourage disputes about them, depending on the ambiguity
inherent in the formulation itself. But even when the rules are
formulated in as clear and precise a manner as possible, what
Hart has called 'the open texture of law' would ensure the
necessity of adjudication, as no law, in principle, can anticipate
or provide for all the complex situations that may actually
arise in life. There is, therefore,-always a likelihood of rule-
adjudication cases being larger than the rules that are made,
though it cannot be denied that the larger the number of rules
that are enacted, the more will be the occasions that would
arise requiring adjudication with respect to them.
We may conclude, therefore, that the interrelationship
between the criteria has hardly been the subject of any serious
consideration or discussion by the authors who have offered
them. Even the awareness that the relation between criteria
may be antagonistic in character has hardly resulted in any
attempt at answering the question as to how, in such a situation,
we could possibly determine whether any such thing as political
development has actually occurred or not. Whenever, for ex-
ample, a plurality of criteria are offered in any field, the first
question that has to be raised is whether they are to be treated
as independent of one another or not. Yet, even this preliminary
question has not been raised in the literature in any focal
manner, for it is obvious that in case they are not to be treated
as independent, then not only has it to be specified which of
the criteria offered are independent and which are not, but
it also has to he explained why, if some are not independent,
they have to be included in the list at all. Further, in case
more than one criteria is offered and each held as independent,
it is incumbent on the thinker who is proposing the criteria to
indicate what weightage has to be given to the various criteria
in order to reach a total assessment of the situation. For, unless
some such summation is done, no judgement will be achieved
regarding the polity as to whether development has occurred or
not. Yet, this problem of weightage has hardly been touched
upon in the literature on the subject. It could perhaps be con-
tended that no fixed weightage can be given to the criteria, as
it varies with varying situations. There are situations when
174 . Political Development
participation' may be given a greater weight as an indicator of
'political development', while in some other set of circumstances
it is 'capabilities' that may have to be given greater weight' But
then, one has to indicate the sort of circumstances which made
a difference to the weightage to be given to a. particular
criterion and the reason or reasons why it has to be so. Yet
there is little in the literature that is helpful towards answering
such questions, or which even indicates the awareness that they
have to be answered if the quest for the criteria of 'political
development' is to have any meaning at all.
The search for the understanding of 'political development'
in terms of the interrelationships between the criteria seems to
have ended as much in a blind alley as the search for the indi-
vidual criteria in earlier chapters. There seems to be something
fundamentally wrong with the whole enterprise if none of the
criteria offered, either singly or in interrelationship, can with-
stand a sustained exarm'nation of their adequacy. Perhaps some-
thing is radically wrong with the notion of 'development' itself
or with the notion as applied to the field of 'politics'. In the
former case, the troubles will lie- at the very root and make the
whole enterprise untenable in any domain whatsoever. On the
other hand, if difficulties arise from the domain of the 'political',
it would indicate limitations for the applicability of the concept
and suggest its irrelevance for all domains which shared the
characteristics of the realm of the 'political'. We will try to
explore this issue in the next chapter.
NOTES
1. Almond and Powell, Comparative Politics, p. 73
2. Ibid." p. 73.
3. Ibid., p. 74.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid. Italics author's.
@6. Ibid., p. 75.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid., p. 76.
9. Ibid., p. 77.
10. Ibid., p. 76.
11. Ibid., p. 81. Italics author's.
The Criterion as Conversion Functions
175
12. Ibid., p. 81.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid., p. 82.
15. Ibid., p. 80.
16. Ibid., p. 167
17. Ibid., p. 82.
18. Ibid., P. 86.
19. Ibid., p. 87.
20. Suzanne and Lloyd Rudolph, The Modetni@y of Tradition (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1967).
21. Almond and Powell, p. 89.
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid., p. 98. Italics mine.
24. Ibid., p. 99.
25. Ibid.
26. Ibid., p. 100. Italics mine.
27. Ibid., p. 105 '
28. Ibid., p. 98. Italics mine.
29. Daniel Bell, The Coming of Post-Industrial Sock@y (New Delhi: Arnold Heine-
inann, 1974).
30. Almond and Powell, p. 100. Italics mine.
31. Ibid'., p. 101.
32. Ibid., p. 1 1 1. -
33. Ibid., p. 108.
34. Ibid.
35. Ibid.
36. Ibid.
37. Ibid., p. 109. Italics mine.
38. Ibid. Italics mine.
39. Ibid.
40. Ibid., p. 112. Italics mine.
41. Ibid., p. 113.
.42. Ibid., p. 114.
43. Ibid., p. 1 10.
44. Ibid., p. 107.
45. Ibid., p. 114.
46. Ibid., p. 100.
47. Ibid., p. 98.
48. Ibid., p. 134.
49. Ibid., p. 136.
50. Ibid., p. 132. Italics mine.
51. Ibid., p. 138. Italics mine.
52. Ibid., p. 140. Italics mine.
53. Ibid., p. 105.
54. Ibid.
55. Benjamin N. Cardozo, The ivature of Me Judidal Process (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 192 1).
56. Ibid., p. 142.
176 Political Development
57. Ibid., pp. 143-4.
58. Ibid., p. 144.
59. Ibid., p. 86.
60. Ibid., p. 108.
61. Louis Dumont, Homo Hierarchinu (London: Weiderfeld & Nicholson Ltd.,
1970).
62. Herbert A. Simon, Administrative Behaviour (New York: Maemillan, 1957).
63. Talcott Panons, Structure and Process in Modern Societies (Glencoe, Illinois.. Free
Press, 1960).
64. Lloyd 1. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, Modern and Traditional
Administration Reexamined: A Revisionist Interpretation of Weber on Bureaucracy.
International Political Science Association IX World Congress, 31 Aug.
1973. Mirneographed copy, p. 46.
65. Almond and Powell, p. 153. Italics mine.
66. Ibid., p. 156.
67. Ibid., p. 158.
68. Ibid., p. 154.
69. Ibid., p. 155.
70. Ibid., p. 153.
71. Ibid., p. 157.
72. Ibid., p. 155.
73. Ibid., p. 158. Italics mine.
74. Ibid., p. 156. Italics mine.
75. Ibid., p. 149.
76. Ibid. I Wics mine.
77. Merle Fainsod, quoted in Almond and PowcH, P. 150
78. Almond and Powell, p. 150.
79. Ibid., p. 151.
80. Ibid., p. 152.
81. Ibid.
82. Ibid., p. 150.
83. Ibid., p. 151.
84. Lucian Pye, Aspects of Political Development (Boston: Little, Brown & Co.),
P. 118.
85. Ibid.
86. Ibid.
87. Ibid., p. 121.
88. Ibid.
89. Harvard Law Review, vol. 7 1, no. 4, Feb. 1958.
90. Lon L. Fuller, 'Positivism and Fidelity to Law. A Reply to Professor Hart',
Harvard Law Review, vol. 7 1, no. 4, Feb. 1958, p. 644.
91. H. L. A. Hart, Law, Liberty and Morality (London: Oxford University Press,
1963), and Patrick Devlin, The Enforcemmt of Morals (Oxford University
Press, 1965).
92. Hart, p. 1 1.
93. Ibid., p. 16.
94. Benjamin N. Cardozo, 7-he ivature of the _7udicial Process (New Haven . Yale
University Press, 1964).
95. Hart, p. 61 1.
96. Fuller, p. 664.
97. For Hart-Fuller controversy, see also Hart, The Concept of Law (London:
Oxford University Press, 1961), and Fuller, T7te Morality of Law (New
Haven. Yale University Press, 1964).
98. Fuller, P. 635.
99. Fuller, P. 635.
100. Lucian W. Pye and Sidney Verba (eds.), Political Culture and Political Develop-
ment (Prinecton. Prinecton University Pren, 1969), p. 13.
101. Ibid., p. 15.
102. Ibid., p. 521. Italics mine.
,103. Ibid.
104. Ibid., p. 22.
105. Sidney Verba, p. 527.
106. Ibid., p. 537. Italics author's.
107. Ibid.
108. Almond and Powell, p. 62. Italics author's.
109. Ibid., p. 53.
110. Ibid., p. 167.
Ill. Ibid., p. 172.
112. Samuel P. Huntington, Political Order In Changing Societies (New Haven - Yale
University Press, 1968), p. 79.
113. Ibid., p. 79.
114. Ibid.
115. Ibid., p. 83.
116. Fred W. Riggs, 'The Dialectics of Developmental Conflict', Comparative.
Political Studies, 1 (July 1968).
117. Ibid., pp. 202-3.
118. Ibid., p. 205
1 19. Ibid., p. 206
120. Ibid., p. 208
121. Fred W. Riggs, 'Power plays a critical role in relation to all such values, as
a possible consequence of, and as a possible means for securing, the valued
conditions', ibid., p. 203.
122. Ibid., p. 292.
123. Ibid., p. 293.
124. Lester M. Salmon, 'Comparative History and the Theory of Modernization',
World Politics, vol. XXIII, no. 1 (Oct. 1970), pp. 83-103. Contains a good
summary and discussion of the views of Black, Huntington and Moore.
125. Donella H. Meadows, Denis L. Meadows, jorgen Randers and Williain
W. Behrens Ill, The Limits to Growth (New York. Universe Books, 1972).
Also see Mesarovicetal., Mankindat the TumingPoint (New York.. E. P. Dutton
and Reader's Digest Press, 1974). See the debate in Forum (University of
Houston), vol. XIII, nos. 1 and 2, 1975. Also Hernian Kahn, Williain
Brown and Loon Martel, The ivext 200 k'ears (New York.. William Morrow
& Co., 1976).
126. The Final Report of the National Committee on the Causes and Prevention
of Violence (Bantam, U.S.A., 1970). The comparative figures for 1966 in
The Criterion as Conversion Functions
177
178 . Political Development
respect of some other countries as given in the report per 100,000 of the
population are:
1. Australia 1.5
2. Canada 1.3
3. England & Wales 0.7
4. Finland 2.3
5. Austria 1.1
6. Hungary 1.9
As against these the crime rate in U.S.A. per 100,000 of population happened
to be 3.0 in 1966.
127. Ibid., p. 99.
128. Ibid., pp. 99-100.
129. Albert 0. Hirschmann,'The Search for Paradigms as a Hindrance to Under-
standing', World Politics, April 1970, p. 335.
130. Ibid.
131. An interesting attempt in this regard is that of Ronald D. Brunner and Gary
D. Brewer, Organised Coinplexi@y (The Free Press, 197 1). But it tends to accept
the rural-urban paradigm of Huntington as the only framework of analysis
relevant for the study of political phenomena.
132. Pye, p. 147.
179
5
The Concept of Development
In the detailed examination that we have undertaken, the
failure of the criteria, both individually and in interrelation-
ship, suggests that there might he something wrong either with
the notion of 'development' itself or the field ofpolities to which
it may not be relevantly applicable. The feeling of failure, it
might be added, is not confined just to us. After more than a
decade-and-a-half of discussion by the best brains in political
science we find Charles Tilly asking in the latest volume of the
Prinecton series on the subject, 'Are these difficulties sur-
mountable?'and answering, 'For my part, 1 do not think the
difficulties are surmountable." But if the difficulties are not
surmountable, it can only be so because in principle it is
impossible to do so. But if it is impossible in principle, then the
whole enterprise is doomed to failure from the very start, and
it is no wonder that we have not been able to bind any sure
footing amongst any of the criteria 'that have been offered by
many thinkers. Yet even so, it is incumbent on someone who
argues for the impossibility to show from where the impossibi-
lity arises. And as we have observed earlier, the impossibility
may arise from two very different sources, the one relating to
the concept of development itself, the other relating to the
nature of political reality, to which the concept of development
may not be applicable.
But whatever the alternative source from which the im-
possibility may be said to arise, the primary task would require
an analysis of the concept of development without which neither
the first nor the second alternative would make any sense. The
concept of development, thus, may be said to be crucial to the
whole enterprise and unless we are clear about it, we would not
be able to know the cause of our failure in finding a viable
criterion of 'political development'.
NT
180 Political Development
'Development', it would be agreed, is essentially an evalua-
tive concept. In most contexts, its use expresses a positive
evaluation, and thus, unless otherwise stated, it should he
interpreted as such. Also, it is comparative in character. To talk
of development is to compare two stages of the same entity at
diff@rent moments of time or to compare two different entities
in respect of some characteristic which is regarded not only as
common to both but also as characterizing them in the same
essential manner. Besides t@ese, it may also be said that the
notion of 'development', to be relevantly applicable, must also
contain the possibility of indefinite extension in the sense that
there should, in principle, be no last term beyond which it is
not possible of being conceived any further. In other words,
there should be no terniinus to 'development', in the sense that
the very possibility of all further development be impossible in
principle.
Besides this, what is perhaps even more necessary is that
there should be some unambiguous way of adding the positive
indicators and subtracting the negative so that it may be clear
whether development has actually occurred or not. For this, it
is necessary that some common measure be possible in terms of
which the various indicators may he compared and evaluated.
This, however, itself requires as a logical prerequisite that there
be a clarity about the value or values that are immanent to the
domain, and in terms of which the question of development or
decay is said to arise. In case there is only a single value which
defines the realm, the situation may not give rise to any specific
difficulty. But in case there is more than one value inherent to
the domain, they may not be necessarily harmonious in them-
selves, or the means for their realization may be such as to be
antagonistic in character in the sense that the very adoption of
the means for the realization of one value makes it difficult to
adopt the means for the realization of the other value, or even
works directly against its realization.
The issues with respect to'the identity of the unit or units
which are being compared have been pointed out by Tilly in
his remarks on the formation of nation-states in Western Europe
in the book referred to above. Most writers on development
choose as their units of comparison the contemporary nation-
states as they exist at present. But, as is well known, most of the
The Concept of Development 181
present nation-states did not exist in the past or had different
boundaries from their present ones. The history of nineteenth-
century Europe is well known in this regard and the effect of
the two World Wars on the political map of the world is too
familiar to he repeated here. As Tilly remarks, 'the choice of
contemporary states as units for the long-run comparison of
"political development" causes grave difficulties'.2 He takes
Germany as a typical example, whose frontiers have been fluid
since, say, 1550 to 1950. But if the fact of changing frontiers over
periods of time is taken seriously, then Tilly suggests that 'such
a literature seems unlikely to yield statements about the condi-
tions under which a given political structure will disintegrate,
stagnate, combine with others, or transform itself into a variety
which has never been seen before'.3
Tilly's remarks have been made in the context of political
development, but it is obvious that as 'development' is a com-
parative term, the problem of the constancy of the unit of com-
parison would arise with respect to its application to any field
whatsoever. And that where the unit is primarily defined in
spatial or geographical terms which are liable to change over
a period of time, the difficulties of making a comparative
judgement may he remedied, if at all, by taking into account or
making allowances for this factor. Some may go even so far as
to treat territorial expansion as a sign of development in realms
where it is relevant, and its contraction as a sign of degeneration
or decay. The imperial expansions of states in the past through
diplomacy, conquest or matrimony were always treated as
times of growth and glory by historians of various persuasions.
There have, of course, been exceptions like Marx or Toynbee
who, in their different ways, have refused to accept the age of
expansions as a sign of development. Rather, they see it as a
sign of inherent weakness at the centre which tries to mask its
failures by aggrandizement abroad.
Yet, whether territorial expansion is treated as a sign of
development or not, it is obvious that the notion will be relevant
only in those cases to which spatial categories apply and where
they are regarded as the essence of the matter. Many realms
with respect to which questions of development arise may have
nothing to do with questions of space, and even when they
must have a location, it is not taken to define their identity.
13
182 Political Development
The problem of identity in relation to the unity of units with
reference to which comparison is made has been extensively
discussed by Toynbee and Sorokin. Toynbee has.raised the
issue in relation to the study of history and Sorokin in relation
to his study of social and cultural dynamics. Toynbee finds his
unit of comparison in what he calls a 'civilization' which has
both a spatio-temporal spread and an identity of style in its
various cultural manifestations which attempted to embody a
distinctive vision of values, rooted generally in the successful
response of a society to some supreme challenge ,,vhich meets
with such notable success that it seeks to repeat it again and
again, even when it ceases to be adequate and leads to break-
down and disintegration.
Toynbee has wavered in his conception of the criterion of
unity in terms of which one civilization may be distinguished
and demarcated from another for purposes of comparison. On
the one hand, he tries to find them in those empirical 'cut-off
points' where that which is responsible for the birth of a
civilization is simultaneously the cause of the death of some
other civilization. The relation, lie calls, 'apparentation-alnd-
affiliation'. And, its clearest example he finds in Christianity,
which simultaneously lies at the root of modern western civiliza-
tion and is one of the most important causes of the break-up of
the Greco-Roman civilization of earlier times. Christianity,
however, is not only the cause of the death of one civilization,
and the birth of another, but also one of the higher religions
which give meaning and significance not, only to human life
and history but to the world of temporality itself. In this sense,
the unity provided by Toynbee would have to be conceived in
terms of meaning, significance or value whose basic' exempli-
fications are found in the higher religions.
However, neither the relation of 'apparentation-and-affilia-
tion' nor the valuational vision embodied in the higher religions
can provide that 'cut-off' point in all cases for the simple reaso 1n
that according to Toynbee himself, there are civilizations which
are not 'apparented' or 'affiliated' or both to any other civiliza-
tion and that 'higher religions' are not found in all civilizations.
One will, therefore, have to go beyond the specificities singled
out and emphasized by, Toynbee and seek the demar@atine
principle of unity in some other causal-fanctional or valuational
The Concept of Development 183
principle in the case of those civilizations where the specificities
mentioned by him do not obtain. Sorokin, in fact, has enum-
crated the principles in terms of which different forms of
unities may be treated either as given or constructed. Besides
the unities provided by such natural demareators as space and
time which provide, so to say, only external unities, there are.
according to Sorokin, unities provided by causal-functional
and logico-mcaningful factors. The latter are obviously more
internal and intrinsic, as the principles providing them are more
integral to the objects concerned. The causal-function'al unities
are relative. to the scientific knowledge of a period, while the-
logico-mcaningful unities may be regarded as relative to the
value-apprehension of an observer. The objectivity, therefore,
An their case' is relative to the shared knowledge of a period or
@the shared value-apprehension of a people. However, the
s as we approach individual works
ophy which are regarded by Sorokin
les of logico-mcanin-eful unities, or
relatively segregated, quantitatively measurable, indefinitely
repeatable, individual causal sequences which are well known
in so many areas of science. The functional unities,in the same
way, are more clearly and unambiguously exhibited in indivi-
dual organisms which may be taken as their paradigmatic
examples. But the moment we move to larger and larger units,
the so-called unities become increasingly problematic and
relative in character. The unities of whole civilizations as
apprehended by a Toynbee, a Spengler or a Sorokin have been
the subject of great controversy, as is well known to students of
the subject.4
However, it would hardly be denied that the criteria for
unity have to be specified first so that relevant conipargtive
judgement about development could be possible. After all, the
first question is: what is it to which the characteristic of 'devel-
opment' is being predicated or applied? Similarly, though
'development' is not just 'change', it presupposes it in an
essential manner. 'To develop' is 'to have changed', though 'to
change' does not necessarily mean 'to have developed'. Hence,
it is equally necessary that we determine not only that to which
'change' is being ascribed but also the respect in which it is
supposed to have changed. 1 have discussed at length in my
184 Political Development
earlier work, Considerations Towards a Theo7 of Social Change,,5
many theoretical and conceptual issues relating to 'unity' and
'change', and hence need not repeat theni here. Suffice, it to
say that, whatever be the criterion adopted for demarcation of
the units for purposes of comparison, they should not only be
explicitly indicated, but also held constant for the duration of
the discourse. The requirement may appear elementary and even
a prerequisite for intellectual integrity and honesty, but even
a cursory glance at the literature reveals that it is conspicuous
by its absence. The complaint of Charles Tilly quoted earlier
makes sense only in such a background. He writes, 'the Europe
of 1500 included sonic five hundred more or less independent
political units, the Europe of 1900 about twenty-five. The
Gernian State did not exist in 1500, or even 1800."' If such is
the situation, there can be little surprise that 'the choice of
contemporary states as units for the long run comparison of
"political development" causes grave difficulties.'7 This is, of
course, an understatement, or rather a polite way of saying that
the whole exercise does not make any selise, as the units chosen
for comparison cannot be compared in principle.
What is even worse, however, is the persistent attempt to
compare. the performance of the newly emergent states of Asia
and Africa with those of western countries, not with what they
did at comparative stages of their emergence and growth but as
they are now in contemporary times. Further, the growth-
performance of the newly emergent nations is usually treated
as a purely autonomous function of their ruling 6lites, and not
as a complex resultant of their past colonial history combined
with the realities of the power situation in the international
world around them. The exception to this are, of course, the
so-called leftist thinkers who derive their inspiration from
Lenin's extension of Marxist thought to cover the imperialist
phase in the development of capitalism. They are quick to
point out that the political and economic development of the
new nations is both hampered and distorted by the inter-
national structures of domination and exploitation built by the
advanced capitalist countries of the world. But they. con-
veniently forget the fact that the nation-states of eastern Europe
are as much, if not more, under the thraldom of Soviet domina-
tion as the so-called direct or indirect client-states of the
The Conce .pt of Development 185
western superpowers. As Tilly specifically states in answer to
the question he himself raises, 'what, then, do we have to learn
from the literature of dependency and exploitation? First, the
recognition that the nature of the international structure of
power, and the relations of particular countries to that struc-
iure, account for a major part of the form, change, and varia-
tion of the national economic lives of poor countries; there is
no obvious reason why that should be less true of political
Besides the problems relating to the unity of the units being
compared, there is the deeper problem relating to the units
themselves. In case the comparison is merely quantitative, few
problems arise. But the moment questions of quality arise,
difficulties begin to' pile up. The usual way out. is to correlate
quality to that which can be quantitatively measured, and
thus to avoid the dilemma of making direct qualitative judge-
ments and justifying them. But where such a quantitative cor-
relation is not possible for some reason or other, one is reduced
to making comparisons based on long familiarity with the
field, the training of taste under those who have cultivated
judgement in the matter and developing a sensitive openness
to that which may emerge with creative novelty in the domain.
The history of art criticism is a standing example of this situa-
tion where all attempts to do away with the direct qualitative
judgement of the connoisseur have failed.
The notion of 'development', however, does not merely
involve a comparative judgement in terms of quality, but also
what might be called a direction of growth. Interpreted in
terms of quality, this can only mean approximation towards an
ideal which is more and more visible in its successive embodi-
ments. The ideal, of course, is itself apprehended only through
,its concrete embodiments and is, so to say, a construct out of
them. Yet, as it is never exhausted by its concrete embodi-
ments, it is difficult to understand it completely in terms of the
notion of 'logical. construction', unless logical constructions
themselves begin to be seen as acquiring independence from
those examples out of which they have been constructed. The
dilemma whether to conceive of that which has been ap@-
prel-iended through, or abstracted from, experience, as indepen-
dent of or unexhausted by it, is ia,ell known to students of
186 Political Development
philosophy since the days of Plato and Aristotle. The dilemma
was solved by Plato through formulating his famous theory of
remembrance which asserted that experience was merely the
occasion of reminding one of that of which one was already
aware in the past, when one was presumed to be directly aware
of the world of Ideas themselves. Such a way out is obviously
closed to the scientific student of phenomena, though he may
perhaps get some leeway by using the Kantlan notion of a
transcendental presupposition, or of Weber's notion of an Ideal
Type, or even the generalized idea of a heuristic device to use
it effectively for his own purposes.
The problem, however, gets a little more complicated by the
fact that we do not merely talk of the growth of a style, but of
its exhaustion also. It has repeatedly been asserted, specially
by historians of art and literature, that any particular style,
say, the renaissance, the baroque or the rococo emerges, grows
and reaches its maturity after which there is only repetition,
stagnation and decay. A master is supposed to exhaust the
potentialities of a language or the medium in at least one
dimension of its development, and after that there are only the
epigoni or the epigoni of the epigoni, till a new master arises
and blazes the trail in a fresh direction, when the same story
repeats itself once again. The@ idea has been extended to the
field of civilizations and cultures, and it has been contended
thatjust as there is a genesis and growth of civilization, so also
there is a decline and decay which can hardly'be arrested for
the simple reason that they have exhausted their potentialities
by actualizing what they were ca pable of actualizing in the
course of their history. Spengler's name is most associated with
this view, but no one who has reflected on the history of any
people has been able to escape the impression that creative
heights are achieved in only very brief periods and that too in
certain select directions. After that, there seem to be only the
valleys, stretching out in space and time, where men remember
and repeat that which was achieved for once and all by the old
masters.
The history of creativity in cultures and civilizations, thus,
shows a double facet. On the one hand, it reveals the exhaustion.
of possibilities in a particular direction after Ns@hich there is only
repetition, perhaps refinement, but no further gros@,th or devel-
The Concept of Development 187
oprnent. On the other hand, there seem breakthroughs in new
directions which achieve a different kind of perfection or ex-
cellence than the one achieved before. This may be achieved in
the same culture when there is an awareness of past achieve-
nient and of the break with it, or in a different culture at a
different place or time where no such awareness may exist, or,
even where it exists, there is no feeling of break with it as it does
not form part of the consciousness of the tradition within which
one works.
The concepts of growth and development, thus, appear to
find their natural application in the case of the former, though
they tend to be extended to apply to the latter also. Only, the
extension always appears forced and seems to demand a
justification which seldom is forthcoming and, even when
forthcoming, appears to be rarely satisfactory. The history of
art provides a classic example of such dilemmas. One may, for
example, reasonably maintain that the Parthenon is the cul-
mination of Greek architecture and its greatest achievement,
but how should it be judged in relation to the masterpieces of
renaissance architecture which were built with a feeling of
self-conscious continuity with the Greek past, however mistaken
it might have been? This remains a difficult and debated
question. The comparison of Greek or renaissance master-
pieces with those that are known as Gothic raises problems of
even a more perplexing kind. The two seem so different in
form, spirit and composition that one wonders if anything is
gained by the comparison, except the awareness of a difference
in achieved excellence or greatness. But, whatever the diffi-
culties, they still belong to a tradition whose historic continuity
with each other can be documented and traced. On the other
hand, any attempt at comparison with the masterpieces- of a
historically different tradition, say, that of India or China,
would create even greater difficulties. How shall we determine
which is greater or more developed, and in terms of what? The
simultaneous awareness of the achievements of different times
and cultures seems simultaneously to challenge one to compare
and also frustrate the attempt to do so.
The same situation obtains in the realm of religion also. How
shall t one compare , he great religions, each of which claims
both absoluteness and finality, es@en in terms of history? Who
188 - Political Developme@it
shall determine which is better or more developed, and on
what grounds? The attempt at intercultural comparison leads
to the search for transcultural criteria in terms of which a con,-
parative evaluation may be made. But to talk of transcultural
criteria is to talk of universal standards in terms of which not
only may everything be judged, but which may also be treated
as an ideal which everything is trying to approximate and
realize to some extent or other. The radical difference in the
case of historical religions in this respect is that they make the.
claim that the ideal has already been completely and finally
realized and that every religion before and after it can be
judged in terms of it. Yet, the very fact that the dream of an
oecumenical religion acceptable to all has vanished from the
minds of the most optimistic votaries of any religion has resulted
in a situation where, however deeply one might be convinced
of the superiority of one's own religion, one cannot but be
aware that others think differently and that one has to live
with these differences.
The situation is found in the field of art also, though not
perhaps to the same extent. There are persons who think that
the art they are familiar with is the only art worthy of being
called by that name, and that the art of all other civilizations
and cultures should be judged in terms of it. Greek and re-
naissance art were put on that pedestal by western art critics
at one ti,.,ne, though the parochialness of that view has long
been exposed by now. Yet, this exposure has been brought
about by that very encounter with the arts of diverse cultures
and civilizations which, in the first instance, had resulted in the
almost total rejection of everything alien as 'barbaric', 'un-
civilized', "underdeveloped'. The first impulse at. rejection
gradually gave way to the feeling of 'alternative validity', and
still later to a search for those universal excellences of form
which are the creators of real aesthetic value, apart from the
specific content which may be said to vary from one civilization
to another.
The practitioners of art, on the other hand, have perhaps
always been less parochial than the so-called connoisseurs
and critics. They have always tended to incorporate from an
alien tradition what they thought could successfully be blended
with their, own. There may appear here a certain'difference
The Concept of Development 189
with the religious practitioner who usually tends to be more
Drthodox and dogmatic in his preferences. All religions have
had the notions of 'heresy' and 'heretics, but it will be difficult
to find their counterpart amongst practitioners of art, where
creative novelty has always been prized over dull repetition.
Still, the encounter between different religions, specially those
that are regarded as 'major' or 'great', has not been without
influence because of the awareness of each on the part of the
others. The mutual interaction in India between Islam and
Hinduism on the one hand, and Hinduism and Christianity on
the other, may be seen as examples of the truth of this assertion.
The emergence of e notion of Christian Sanyasa in such
Jesuit Fathers in southern India as Father Mochanin and Le
Saux, as well as the various reforniist movements in Hinduism
under the influence of Christianity in the late eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries, starting with Ram Mohun Roy, are
all evidence of such interaction. Earlier, the interaction between
Islam and Hinduism in India had given rise to many sects in
both the religions which were frankly syncretistic in character.
Similar examples could easily be found from encounters
between other religions also. Yet, though examples can be
found of mutual modification and influence in the field of
religion, tl-iey certainly seem less numerous than in other fields
such as art or philosophy or science. And this may perhaps be
because the deepest identification of man uptil now in history
has been with his religion rather than with anything else.
However it be, it is clear that the concept of developn-ient
does not seem to be equally relevant to all domaiiis in which it
may be sought to be applied. The cases of art and religion we
have already examined to some extent. They may. however, be
regarded as relating to realms of feeling and emotion where
ultimately everything may be considered a matter of taste. But
the situation in philosophy, which at leastprimafacie is supposed
to be the rational cognitive enterprise par excellence, seems no
different. If one were, to ask oneself the question whether there
has been any development in philosophy or not, one would be
hard put to answer it either way. Whitchead's well-known
remark about all philosophy being footnotes to Plato epitomizes
this feeling. Similar is the feeling expressed by the equally well-
knowledge that in philosophy one is either a Platonist or an
190 Political Development
Aristotelian. Yet, there is also the repeated spectacle of 1
philosopher starting de novo on foundations which appear to him
not only firmer and surer,' but unassailable in principle. Also,
there have been recent. claims for showing the 'nonsensical'
character of most previous philosophy as the cognitive claims
it made were unverifiable in principle. On the other hand,
there are even more recent claims of the inalienability of
metaphysics and a revival of interest in on 'tology. But, however
different these claims and counter-claims may b.e, they all add
up to the same thing. And that is the denial' of cumulative
growth or development in philosophical knowledge. The
repeated search for absolute beginnings shows this as clearly as
anything could. Also, how could one take seriously the claims
to growth and development in a subject whose practitioners
seriously state the literally 'nonsensical' character of almost all
its achievement in the past?
.Philosophical knowledge, then, seems to share with art and
religion the dubious distinction of being resistant to the facile
application of the notion of development to its domain. The
answer to the simple question, 'what is the status of a past
achievement in the face of the present one?', may be taken as a
rough indication of the applicability ofthe notion of 'develop-
ment' relevantly to a domain. But philosophy is a domain
where, like art or religion, the latter does not necessarily sup-
plant the former. A Plato or a Kant remains as relevant to
philosophical thought as a Russell or a Wittgenstein. True, no
problem in philosophy remains the same after the shock
administered by a great thinker, but the latter never replaces
the former. The contrast with natural sciences in this context is
revealing in the extreme. A student of physics is not only not
bothered about the physics of Aristotle or even that of Newton
today, but he knows that he shall not gain anything worthwhile
with respect to the knowledge of physical phenomena by any
such knowledge. A philosopher, on the other -hand, could never
say such a thing. The history of philosophy is not an accidental
adjunct to the teaching or understanding of philosophy. Rather,
it is central to it, as was so well understood by Hegel and per-
haps, in d sense, by Aristotle also. The tradition of developing
philosophical thought by the method of writing commentaries
on an older text in India evinces perhaps the same situation.
The Concept of DeveloPment 191
The contrast between philosophy and the natural sciences in
respect of the development of knowledge is too glaring to be
missed by anybody. In fact, it has led many to doubt if philo-
sophy could legitimately be regarded as an instance of know-
ledge at all. But what about the social sciences? A nagging
doubt seems to haunt the social sciences that however much
they try to be 'scientific', they do not become 'sciences' at all.
There seems to be no feeling of cumulative growth of know-
ledge, which is a feature of the natural sciences. There are, of
course, radical differences between the various social sciences in
this regard. Economies, demography and linguistics appear to
be closer to 'the ideal of achieving some sort of cumulative
growth of knowledge in their fields. But, whatever the indivi-
dual differences in this regard between the different social
sciences, there seems little doubt that they are regarded as
belonging to the cognitive domain or as a part of the cognitive
enterprise of man.
There is a peculiarity regarding the application of the, notion
of 'development' to these fields which, unless clearly under-
stood,, may give rise to ambiguities and perplexities that are
difficult to resolve. The concept of 'development' in many
fields may be applied either to phenomena belonging to the
field itself or to the knowledge about the phenomena or both.
One may, for example, legitimately talk about economic de-vel-
opment, meaning thereby the rise in national or per capita
income, or more egalitarian distribution of income or any
other criterion or set of criteria that one may choose to adopt.
On the other hand, one may equally w@ll talk of developments
in the-field of economic theory or in the methods of collecting
economic data or in that of their interpretation. The two,
however, are independent of each other and refer to different
domains which should not be confused with each other. There
can, in fact, be advances in economic theory along with sub-
stantial retardation in economic development, judged by any
of the criteria that are usually adopted for measuring the,
phenomenon.
A similar situation obtains in almost all the social sciences
and disciplines relating to the humanities, as the phenomena
they study have themselves a qualitative aspect because of
vhich it is impossible _not to apply to. them the adjectives
192 Political bevelopment
'better' and 'worse'. Such a situation, on the other hand, does
not obtain with respect to the phenomena studied in the natural
sciences. There does not seem any sense in applying the terms
.'developed', 'undeveloped's or 'underdeveloped' to the sort of
phenomena studied in, say, physics or chemistry or astronomy.
The situation may seem a little ambiguous within the realm of
phenomena studied by the life sciences. Can the concept of
'development" be relevantly applied to the emergence of new
species, or the adjectives 'better' and 'worse'. to what we find
happening in the field of phenomena pertaining to life? The
emergence of life may be regarded as valuable in that it provides
both the precondition for the application of the value-judgment
and the actual application of its occasion as well. Still, without
the emergence of reflective self-consciousness in man, the
phenomena of life would only provide the potentiality fo@ such
occurrence, and not its actuality. And, in case the potentiality
itself is taken into account, the whole set of physical and chem-
ical preconditions necessary. for the emergence of life would
have to be treated as events to which the idea of 'development'
would be regarded as relevantly applicable. Man, in that case,
would become the measure of all things, and the process leading
to him, whether at the physical, chen-dcal or biological level,
would be treated as 'developmental'. Within humanity, one
could then choose one's own religion 'or culture or nation as
providing the measuring rod in terms of which historical devel-
opment could be traced and others placed at a suitable location
on the line of development depending on their relative distance
from that which has been taken as therneasure of development.
The ethnocentric and parochial character of the latter exer-
cise is known to most thinkers, and we have already seen its
untenability in the realm of art, religion and philosophy in our
earlier discussion of them. In the earlier discussion on evolu-
tion, we made the same point that the distinction between 'more
developed' and 'less developed' is difficult to draw amongst
different species except in terms of survival which, excluding
those that have become extinct, each species manages to
achieve. The question whether any notion of 'development'
can escape the charge of parochialism or ethnocentrism is too
difficult to be decided with finality here. But what can be said
with reasonable certainty is, (1) that.the notion of 'develop-
The Concept of Development 193
inent' is only derivatively applicable, if at all, to the, realm of
the inorganic; (2) that within the realm of 'living beings', the
application of the notion is primarily projective, in the
sense that it is the qualities regarded as desirable amongst
human beings or for the achievement of their purposes which
are projected on to the animal world in considering. them
'developed' or not; (3) that while the concepts of 'growth' and
'development' arise naturally in the context of human life in
all its myriad manifestations, it does not apply with equal
relevance to all the fields which emerge because of human
interaction and creativity. In fact, if there are to be any struc-
tural parameters of the human condition, then it may be
regarded as axiomatic that there are some constraints in the
situation in respect of which any use of the notion of develop-
ment makes no sense. But if it is so, then it becomes imperative
that such areas be clearly demarcated so that the range of
expectancy in relation to them may not go beyond bounds
and feed on impossible illusions. Even for sheer ontological
equality, it is necessary that in some respects at least not only
all individuals, but all societies be the same or rather find them-
selves in the same situation. The privilege of being the latter
should not confer advantages in all domains; just as for those
whose philosophy of history makes them see it as a continuous
decline from some golden past, it should not be seen as con-
ferring disadvantages only on those who, through no fault of
their own, happen to live in a later period. To put it in other
words, the sheer passage of time should not be treated in such
a way as to confer uniform advantages or disadvantages on all
domains of human effort and endeavour.
Robert Nisbet has discussed some of these issues in great
detail and exposes the difficulties inherent in the notion of
change when 'it is made subject to the fundamental concepts- of
developmentalism'. 9 In the last chapter entitled 'Reflections on
a Metaphor', he suggests that 'the usefulness of the metaphor
of'growth is determined by the cognitive distance of the object to
which the metaphor is applied. The larger, the more general,
abstract, and distant in experience the object of our interest,
the greater the utility of the metaphor. Conversely, the smaller,
more concrete, finite, and empirical our object, the less the
metaphor's utility."0'The relevance and utility of the metaphor
~
194 Political Development
of growth are in dire-et proportion to the cognitive distance of
the subject to which the metaphor is applied.... The less the
cognitive distance, the less the relevance and utility of the
metaphor. In other words, the more concrete, empirical, and
behavioural our subject matter, the less the applicability to
it of the theory of development and its several conceptual
elements."' And, as reality is that which is concrete and
empirical, the concepts of growth and development cannot be
applied to it. In case the attempt is made'to apply them under
the mistaken impression that they are so applicable, as many
social scientists have attempted to do, it can only lead to
disaster. Basically, it is a metaphor derived from organic pro-
cesses which, if taken seriously and applied to the social realm,
would lead to a distorted understanding of their nature. It
would be what he has called the abuse of i metaphor, for
basically it is irrelevant to the phenomena to which it is being
applied,12 In fact, even in the realm of the organic, the meta-
phor can only be relevantly applied to the individual and not
to the species, though Nisbet does not seem quite clear about it.
However, Nisbet has accepted the uses of the metaphor. He
has no doubt that it is applicable to processes in the abstract,
specially when they are supposed to cover a vast, large field
which is distant from the concerns of our immediate interests.
One wonders how Nisbet conceives of th c relation between the
abstract and the concrete in the field of knowledge. It is obvious
that he cannot bifurcate the two in such a manner as to have
absolutely no relation with each other. The purpose of the
abstract formulation is to illuminate the concrete, just as the
use of the concrete is to test the ad@'quacy or validity of the
abstract formulation. If the metaphor is irrelevant to'concrete
phenomena, it is equally irrelevant to the abstract formulation;
and if it is held to be relevantly applicable to the latter, then
it cannot be entirely irrelevant to the former. The issue is
important, for Nisbet seems to be assuming that the concrete
can be understood without the help of the abstract, which is
contrary to the history of understanding in any field. Further,
he seems to have a strange notion of the abstract, in that he
thinks that any entity that is too large to be apprehended by
some immediate intuition ether sensuous or
,@ @vh otherwise, can-
not be regarded as concrete or empirical in character. While
The Concept of Development 195
discussing Lynn Thorndike's History of Civilization, Nisbet
points out that 'we are dealing with an abstract entity given
body by attributes drawn from a score of civilizations-
technology, arts, agriculture, writing, philosophy, fine arts,
etc. and the historically concrete civilizations are used only as
periodic incarnations, as it were, of the single entity, civiliza-
tion. We are not studying, not really, despite appearances, the
Egyptians, Greeks, Chinese, Romans,' and other peoples. We
are studying Civilization in its successive and fleeting resting
places in Egypt, Greece, China and elsewhere.".' One may be
led from this to assume that Nisbet would at least grant
historical concreteness to such civilizations as the Egyptian,
the Greek, the Roman or the Chinese. But, basically, he seems
averse to such an acceptance; though, to be more accurate, it
n-iight be said that he fluctuates in his attitude and at least
positively rejects it in the sense in which an metaphor of
y '
growth or decline could be,relevantly predicated of it. He says
'we should feel lost, most of us, without the accustomed civiliza-
tion-one of Spengler's eight, one of Toynbee's twenty-one
civilizations-that came into being (genesis), that matured to
fullness (development orgrowth), that in time suffered decay
through forces endemic in Roman polity and culture, and then
withered and perished, fit consequence for Rome's never having
cured itself of the diseases to which it fell heir in middle age."4
The irony is obvious, but perhaps it is even more ironic that
the same Nisbet, who waxes so eloquent about the abuses and
irrelevance in the application of the metaphors of growth and
decay to the study of societies, himself succumbs to it in his
book Twilight of Authori@y. The adverse judgment on Spengler,
Toynbee and others for their gross misuse of metaphor is
almost reversed. It is strange to find the author asking, 'Has
the West, in each of its nations, reached by now the condition
prophesied by these and other n-tinds of the past?' and answer-
ing, 'There is much reason to believe so, and it would require
a totally closed mind to be insensitive to the increase at the
present time in forebodings of the future.".' He feels it enlighten-
ing to compare the present age with what 'Sir Gilbert.Murray
found in another of history's twilight ages, the age of social
disintegration and militarism that followed the Peloponnesian
wars in ancient Greece and the consequent breakdown of the
196 Political Development
Athe&ian Polis'.16 The 'repudiation of the political state and of
the wlhc)le Pattern of thinking that has been associated with the
state for more than two centuries' on the part of modern youth
is supposed to have an illuminating parallel in Greece where
,the , breakdown of the Ale-xendrian Empire ... was associated
with the eruption of numerous otherworldly, often frankly
irrationalist, faithsl.17 The inevitability of the use of the meta-
phors of.growtl-i, development and decay in a comparative
conte@l.t seenis thus as transparent here as it could possibly be.
Nisbef, for all his fulminations against the comparative method
and tihe abuse of the metaphor in the writings of Rostow,l"
Levy,@9 Smelser,2(1 and Parsons,21 himself appears to succumb
to the same temptations, albeit half a decade later. .
HO,@vevcr, the deeper point made by Nisbet in his earlier
book is the contention that unless some sort of an immanent
telos i@ Posited for societies or civilizations, the so-called notions
of g'ro'@ th and development or of decline and decay cannot be
applied to them. And it is his firm conviction that any impartial
look @at the evidence which history provides does not sub-
stanti@Lte any such contention. On the contrary, history, ac-
cordidg to hirn, supports just the opposite conclusion. Change
is, generally, the result of an external intrusion, something
which cannot but be treated as 'accidental' from the internal
viewpoint Of the system concerned. According to him: 'change
is, ho@vever@ not "natural," not normal, much less ubiquitous
and c(nstant. FiXity iS.122 'If we were Newtonians we could say
with lgewton that "every body continues in its state of rest, or
of uniform motion in a straight line, unless it is compelled to
change thatstate by forces impressed upon it".'2" Change is, of
course, not to be confused with 'mere motion, activity, move-
ment, interaction'.24 'These, beyond any doubt, are constant and
ubiqu@tOus.-13ut none of them, as a moment's thought tells us,
is synonymous with change.125 Any change which can be con-
sidere(i Of notable significance, 'is intermittent rather than
continuous niutational, even explosive, rather than the simple
accun@ulatioil of internal variational And, such a significant
change 'is overwhelmingly the result of non-developmental
factors; that is to say, factors inseparable from external events and
intMSi@nS'.27
Basically, the notion of change in the context of the theories
The Concept of Development 197
of development involves the related concepts of immanence,
'Continuity. directionality, necessity, and uniforrnitarianism
without which it could hardly be stated, far less developed in
any detail. But history as an account of concrete events fixedly
anchored in specific space and time does not provide any
evidence, according to Nisbet, of the meaningful applicability
of such concepts. As he argues, 'the language of history ad-
mittedly is not to be converted into the language of develop-
mentalism with its hoary concepts and premises of immanence,
continuity, directionality, necessity, and uniformitarianism.'28
And this is so,. for 'there is no historical evidence that macro-changes in
time are the cumulative results ofsmall-scale, linear micro-changes.'29
The dilemma posed by Nisbet seems too forced to be accepted
unreservedly. That the concepts of growth and development
cannot be relevantly applied to any field whatsoever, seems
an over-reaction to the unabashed claims of its unrestricted
application. True, there seems little justification for the un-
limited application of the notions of immanence, continuity,
directionality, necessity and uniforrnitarianism which go to
form what may be called 'the development syndrome'. But to
argue that the application of the constellation of these concepts
is impossible in principle would be to argue that they are self-
contradictory in nature, for without that it is difficult to see how
the contention could possibly he maintained. Yet, there is
nothing logically self-contradictory about them. At least Nisbet
has not shown that it is so. But even on the historical plane, his
argument does not appear to be as well-grounded as h c thinks.
It is not true to say that over short periods of concrete historical
time, we do not apprehend mutual interaction which is
primarily internal to the system. The development in philoso-
phical thought f@om Thales to Aristotle in -a -ncient Greece 'or
from Kant to Hegel in Germany may be given as one example
of this. Developments in science from Galileo onwards, or in
distinct domains of art in, say, the renaissance or nineteenth-
century France could be treated as other examples. And, even
if one were not to accept these as correct examples of growth or
development, one could find others in these or other domains,
for surely no one believes that all- human creations are of the
same Borders or that they have no relation@ to each other.
Simildrly, it is e-qually wrong for Nisbet to think that 'the
14
198 Political Development
larger, the more general, abstract, and distant in experience
the object of our interest,. the greater the utility of 'the meta-
phor,.30 But as we have shown in some detail, this is not true.
In the fields of religion, morality, art and philosophy there is
not much impression of growth or development when we
apprehend things in the longer, and the larger, perspective.
True, even in those short centuries of actual history when
growth is. undeniable in a particular field, it does not reveal
itself as either immanent or necessary except to.a retrospective
glance which may reconstruct the story in terms of those con-
cepts. On the other hand, there is a continuity and direction-
ality without which no notion of growth or development would
be applicable. As for uniforrrfitarianism it is applicable only in
the comparative context when it is argued that there are
similar stages in the growth or evolution of different societies or
cultures. The concepts enumerated by Nisbet have thus to he
differentiated, for while some of them may be regarded as
intrinsic to the notion of growth and development, others are
required only for a particular variety of the theory of history
which tries to interpret the diverse, multifarious phenomena
from a certain perspective only.
Whenever, therefore, we find continuity, and directionality
we may talk of growth or development, provided We have a
positive attitude towards the direction which the process is
taking.* However, even when such a situation obtains, the
prediction may take two very different forms. In one, the move-
ment is from a negative state to a positive one which itself can
be completely realized. In the other form, the positive state
functions more as an ideal which may be approximated but
never actualized. The classic example- of the former is the
movement from disease to health; there are myriad ways of
being ill, but there is only one way of being healthy. Also, one
cannot be more or less healthy, though one may say loosely
that one is more or less ill, implying thereby either the severity
The Concept of Development 199
of the illness concerned or its distance from possible fatal con-
sequences for the person concerned. The closest analogy to the
situation with respect to health may be found in 'winning',
where also one cannot win more or less, as one either wins or
fails to win. There is, of course, the radical difference that
'winning' has a finality about it which 'being healthy' does
not. A game that has been won can ndver, be lost, but one may
lose the health one has gained almost the very next moment.
On the other hand, there are ideals which one never seems
to actualize, or rather, which can never be actualized but only
more or less'approximated, though even to talk of 'approxima-
tion' in their case is unwarranted as one knows them chiefly in
the negative sense of dissatisfaction with 'what is', rather than
positively as apprehension of 'what ought to be'. In their case,
the notion of development implies a movement from positive
to positive in an unending series where the latter generally
seems to embody more of the positive than the earlier. This, of
course, need not necessarily be the case as there may be stagna-
tion or decline in the sense that either nothing new has been
added, and there is only, a repetition of what was achieved
earlier, or even a.loss through extraneous processes interfering
with the transmission to new generations of what was earlier
achieved by the culture. The latter, of course, may interfere
with transmission in all domains, for it is a characteristic of all
that is culturally acquired that, unless transmitted from one
generation to another, it may lapse into complete oblivion
incapable of being resuscitated by later generations even if
they wish to do so. 1
There is, however, a sharp difference even in this realm of
ideals which can never be completely actualized and which
thus provides the possibility of indefinite development to man
in many fields of his activities in which he engages both indi-
vidually and collectively in the course of history. There are
'lms which do not permit of the application of the notion of
rea
cumulative growth where the latter builds on the earlier and
includes it as an integral part of itself. The seeking in many of
these realms may be rather to break away from.the past, to get
rid of it and to create something new having little relation to
what has gone before, or even an express repudiation of it. Art,
religion, morality and philosophy are almost paradigmatic
* It is not being denied that there are 'non-yaluational' and even 'dis-valua-
tional' uses of the term, but they are of little relevance to the issue we are discussing.
In the former case, only the Quantitative aspect is being emphasized, while in the
latter, there is a directionality, though in the negative direction. 'Growth in POPU-
lation' may be taken as an example of the former, while the 'growth of a tumour'
or the, 'progress of a disease' exemplifies the latter.
200 Political Development
examples of such realms and we have already discussed them
in detail earlier. The poin't here is that in these doma ns what
appears later in time does not supplant the one' that was
achieved earlier. Rather, the two together reveal the infinite
inexhaustibility of the realm, instead of any unilinear growth
towards an ideal where the latter may be taken as a closer
approximation, for it contains within itself not only the"truth
of all that has gone before, but goes beyond it.also.
The oh jection may he made that the contrast we are drawing
cannot be sustained by a closer examination of the situation. To
the historian's eye, the situation is never as discontinuous as we
have tried to make it out to be. After all the techniques once
discovered or values once apprehended or the solutions once
proposed become as much a part of the patrimony of ma;ikind
which later generations are necessarily heir to, and which they
may use in any way they like. On tl-ic other hand, the so-called
incremental, cumulative model of growth where the latter
inevitably contains the truth of the earlier and is in this sense
the truer, has come in for serious questioning even in the realm
of scientific knowledge which was regarded as the paradigmatic
example of the continuous, linear, cumulative, developmental
model. Kiihn's attack on the models' may be said to have
demolished at least the so-called self-evident character of the
assumption. However, the debate that has followed Kuhn's
ideas shows that while it is true that there are predominant
paradigms of explanation at any one period in the history of
science, and that scientists are not easily willing to give up
their theories even in the-face of facts that seemingly disprove
them, the distinction between,'normal' and 'revolutionary'
science is not very tenable. Not only is there no such thing as
an exclusive paradigm of explanation at any stage in the history
of science but even after revolutionary change in the so-called
'paradigms of explanation', the facts which were explained by
the former theories are explained by the, newer ones also.3? In
other words, the theories still retain commensurate compar-
ability, and the earlier never stands alongside the latter as
demanding cognitive allegiance, except as a creation of the
human mind in which context it becomes more like a work of
an as @a 'tool for discovering the. truth about ' ific
art th a spec
domain, which all cognitive theory purports to be.
The Concept of Development 201
The question, thus, is not of continuity or discontinuity, of
sudden revolutionary breaks or of imperceptible incremental
growth, but of the status of the earlier achievement after the
latter has come into being. Has it to be necessarily superseded
or has the earlier to be subsumed under the latter, or can the
two stand side by side without involving either of the alterna-
tives? There can be little doubt that there are substantial
differences in this respect between different realms,. and that
the cognitive enterprise in the field of science is the example
par excellence of the situation where the latter necessarily claims
to supersede.the former and, if accepted, actually does so.
We need not labour any further in establishing the contention
that the concept of development is not equally applicable to
all realms of human seeking, whether cognitive or otherwise.
The crucial question which therefore remains to be answered
is whether the realm dealt with by the science of politics is of
such a nature as to permit the application of the concept of
'development' to itself. And our answer to this question is in
the negative,-for the simple reason that the only relevant dis-
tinction here is -between 'good government' and 'bad govern-
ment', and not 'between' a 'developed polity' and an 'un-
developed polity', as many contemporary political scientists
seem to think. And though it is difficult to say that there are
not 'varieties of goodness' or even 'more or less of goodness',
Socrates was perhaps not wrong in the Platonic dialogues when
he denied both. Perhaps 'the body politic' is really like 'the
body' which has a thousand ways of being ill, but only one way
of being healthy. Analogies may deceive, but they may illumine
as well. And 1 see no reason why the analogy with individual
health need be regarded as'more misleading than illuminating.
In fact, in a recent discussion Fred Riggs has taken recourse to
the same analogy, though he has chosen to draw different
conclusions from it. He observes that 'if,we compare health
with development, then we can see that a balance of height
and weight is a consideration-even an important considera-
tion in determining health'.33 He, of course, explicitly warns..
'my thinking about the prismatic model and the relation of
differentiation to integration, is, not derived from the body
metaphor just used, but perhaps the metaphor can appro-
priately be employed to show that we are dealing with different
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202 Political Development
variables, and none of them imply unilinearity or irreversibi-
lity.'34 True, but there is a deeper dissimilarity with the
metaphor in that the concept of development does not seem
applicable to health except in the indirect sense of reducing
illness, creating institutional mechanisms for its prevention and
cure, and increasing longevity.
In this article, Riggs has tried to meet the objections 1 had
raised in the course of the debate and attempted to clarify
further h is own notion of 'political development'. It may,
therefore, not be entirely irrelevant to discuss his final position
as stated in this paper. He suggests that the word 'development'
in the political context be confined to connote 'an increasing
ability to make and carry out collective decisions affecting the
environment (not the context)'.35 The crucial concepts i@ the
definition are those of 'collective decision', 'environment', and
'context'. As the distinction between 'environment' and 'con-
text' is crucial to this new move in the definition of 'political
development', we may devote some time to its clari cation.
The ecological dimension which the term 'environment' intro-
duces in considerations of political decision-making requires
that 'both the cultural and the human environment need to
be added to the physical environment in order to form an
adequate picture of the ecology of politicalladministrative
action.'313 But while it is necessary to include 'cultural and
human environment in the concept of "environment", it is
equall necessary to exclude from its definition all other social
,Y
systems with which it interacts,' for they are what is meant by
the term 'context'.37 Clarifying the notion of 'context' further
by providing specific examples, Riggs observes, 'thus the
context of nation-states is the international system. Within
India, the context of Rajasthan is other Indian States, and
the context ofjaipur is-other Indian cities.'38
But, if taken scriousl' the examples would make nonsense
yy
of the distinction between 'context' and 'environment' on
which Riggs' whole argument rests. If every 'social system'
with which one interacts is to be included in the 'context', it
is difficult to see how anything except the hare physical en-
vironmen't can be excluded from it, for surely it is not the
contention of Riggs that there could 'be 'cultural or human
environment' which was not anchored in a social system. One
The Concept of Development 203
could also argue@ conversely, that there can hardly be a social
system without human or cultural components. But this would
be, to accept the contention. that the distinction between 'con-
text', and 'environment' on which Riggs' whole argument is
built@ is untenable at its very foundations. It could perhaps be
saved by treating it as an analytic distinction which applies to
all institutions having on one side thefunction of power which
they have to exercise vis-b.-vis all other institutions for pur-
poses of survival and growth, along with the other aspect which
Riggs has called the capacity of 'self-determination'. In his
own words,.'My view of development, accordingly, is that it
involves a growing understanding of both constraints and
resources of the environment. Moreover, and this is often the
critical element in development, a society may choose to do
things that change its environment so as to reduce the c ement
of constraint and increase the element of resources, thereby
expanding its own capacity to make decisions that will enlarge
the scope of its own sej-determination.'311 And he makes it clear
that 'the relation between a system and its context is governed
by '.'power", not by levels of development'. 40
It is not, howc.ver, quit6 clear what will be gained by treating
the distinction as analytic rather than substantive in character.
Power relations are involved everywhere, and they themselves
are determined by that capacity of decision-making and self-
determination which are considered by Riggs as the distinctive
characteristics of the development of a,polity. Riggs seems to
have an unstated metaphysical belief that any real increase in
the capacity of 'self-determination' or 'effective decision-
making' on the part of a polity would not result in its domina-
tion over, or aggrandizement and exploitation of other polities.
He is, of course, vaguely aware that it may not be so. He almost
concedes as much when he writes that 'this is not to say that
development and aggrandizement are unrelated to each other.
A, developing country may, certainly, choose to enhance its
military capabilities and use them to subject and exploit others.'
But he salves his conscience by calling such a possibility. a
negative' development,." little realizing that it completely
undermines the, unbridgeable divide between 'context' and
'environment'pn which he built the whole edifice of his argu-
rnent in reply to my criticism. To introduce the .-notions of
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204 Political Development
'positive' and 'negative' development and to correlate them
with 'environment' and 'context', is to go counter not only to
the radical distinction between the latter on which the hard
core, of his argument rested, but also to that neutral definition
of development with which he started his clarification, when
lie wrote: 'I think it is helpful to use the word "development"
for a kind of change that can be clearly identified, but which
one may approve or disapprove of for vari.ous-reasons-it may
combine beneficial with harmful consequences; and it may
affect some more favourably than others.'42 And, 'to use the
word "development" for a decision-making capability is there-
fore to recognize differences in values and goals-it is not to
accord any particular output of decision-makii@g (such as economic
growth) the honor of serving as a criterion for development'. 43
But if no particular output can be given such honour, why
should we call one type of development 'positive' and the
other 'negative', or one 'responsible' and the other 'irrespon-
sible'? Riggs has made both the distinctions and thus succumbed
to the same temptation which he accuses others of succumbing
to, that is, to make the concept of 'development' value-loaded
rather than value-neutral
We have already alluded to the former distinction while
discussing his attempt at distinguishing between 'context' and
'environment'. The latter distinction he makes in the,context
of whether the collective decisions taken by a society take into
account their long-run consequences on the environment or
not. As he says, 'not to consider the long-run consequences of
the impact on one's environment of the decisions taken by a
society is to manifest irresponsible development; to adapt one's
policies affecting environmental transformations to the long-
term requirements of survival is to engage in responsible devel-
opment.'44 One wonders how Riggs would characterize collec-
tive decisions taken by a polity Which ignore the consequences
on its 'context', whether short-term or long-term, and how he
would distinguish between those that ignore only the long-term
consequences and take into account only those that are short-
term. It would perhaps be still more inconvenient to ask how
short is the short-term and how long the long-term for decisions
to be characterized as 'responsible' or 'irresponsible'. To raise
these questions is not only to reveal the irresponsibly casual
The Concept of Development 205
way in which Riggs has made distinctions, but also to show
the utter untenability of his attempt to provide a formal notion
of 'political development' which would steer clear of all the
pitfalls pointed out in my critique of his earlier formulations. 45
It appears then that the concept of development has not
only to be positively value-laden for it to be interesting to
thinkers for application to social phenomena, but also that it
has to be buttressed by 'premises of immanence, continuity,
directionality, necessity, and uniformitarianism',46 which most
thinkers find extremely questionable. Besides these, what is
perhaps even more important for the application of the concept
is the requirement that the specific field of its application be
defined by a value which is of such a nature that it can possibly
be realized through a process of infinite, additive accretion
which can be computed through some common measure in
terms of which the concerned value may find its quantitative
correlate for measurement. The realm of the political, along
with many others, does not seem defined by any such value and
hence, as we have shown in detail in all these pages, the concept
of 'Political development'. is not a viable concept for the study
of political phenomena. The criteria that have been offered
uptil now have been shown to be untenable, and there can be
little hope of finding any unless it be first established that the
value or values sought to be realized in the field of politics are
of such a nature as to permit not only asymptotic growth but
the devising of a common measure in terms of which that growth
may be measured. Till such time as this is established, the
search for criteria is bound to be fruitless; and there are reasons
to think that, if the arguments advanced in the course of this
book have any validity, the situation is irremediable not only
as a matter of fact, but in principle. This, hoWdVet. need be no
cause for despondency for, as we have shown in this last
chapter, the same situation prevails in many other areas which
are not only dear to the human heart, but which may even be
said to make man more distinctively human.
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206
1. Charles Tilly (ed.), The Formation of National States in Western Europe (Princeton:
Prinecton University Press, 1975), pp. 619-20.
2. Ibid., p. 618.
3. Ibid., p. 615.
4. An interesting critique of the repeated attempts to find a common spirit
between different works of art is found in Ren@ Wellek's, 'The Parallelism
between Literature and the Arts', a'lccture delivered at The English Institute,
and printed in W. K. Wimsatt (ed.), Literap Criticis;n-idea and Act (Berkeley..
University of California Press, 1974).
5. Daya Krishna, Considerations Towards a Theory of Social Change (Bombay:
Manaktalas, 1965). See specially chapters V & VI, pp.. 103-57.
6. Tilly, p. 15.
7. Ibid.,, p. 618.
8. Ibid., p. 630.
9. Robert A. Nisbet, Social Change and History (London: Oxford University Press,
1969), p. V-U-.
10. Ibid., p. 241. Italics author's.
11. Ibid., p. 267.
12. Ibid.> pp. 251, 267.
13. Ibid., p. 245. Italics author's.'
14. Ibid., p. 249.
15. Robert Nisbet, Twilight of Authority (New York: Oxford University Press,
1975), p. 8.
16. Ibid., p. 9.
17. Ibid., p. 1 1.
18. Nisbet, Social Change and History, pp. 253-6.
19. Ibid., pp. 256-9.
20. Ibid., pp. 259-62.
21. Ibid., pp. 262-6.
22. Ibid., p. 270. Italics author's.
23. Ibid., p. 270.
24. Ibid., p. 27f.
25. Ibid., pp. 271-2. Italics author's.
26. Ibid., pp. 281-2.
27. Ibid., p. 280. Italics mine.
28. Ibid., p. 203.
29. Ibid., p. 288. Italics author's.
30. Ibid., p. 241.
31. Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific &volutions (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1962).
32. Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave (eds.), Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge
(Cambridge.. Cambridge University Press, 1970). See also, Brian Easlec,
Liberation and the Air@u of Science (London. Chatto & Windus, 1973).
33. Fred W. Riggs, 'Further considerations on "Development"-A Comment. on
Daya Krishna's comment', A .dministrative Change, vol. 4, no. 1 (July-Dec. 76),
p. 8. Also, see the whole. controversy in Adrninistratim Change, vol. 1, no. 2
Political Development
NOTES
n
Tize ConPept of Development
207
(Dec. 1973); vol. 11, no. 1 (June 1974); vol. 11, no. 2 and vol. Ill, no. 2.
34. Ibid., p. 8.
35. Ibid., p. 2.
36. Ibid., p. 4.
37. Ibid., p. 6.
38. Ibid.
39. Ibid., p. 5. Italics mine.
40@. Ibid., p. 6.
41. Riggs, 'But when it uses its growing capacity in this way, it manifests "nega-
tive", not "positive", development', p. 6.
42. Ibid., p. 2.
@3. Ibid., p. 3. Italics mine.
44. Ibid., p. 5.. Italics author's.
45. Daya Krishna, 'Shall we be diffracted?@A critical comment. on Fred Rigg@'s
"Prismatic Societies and Public Administratior@"', Administrative Change, vol. 11,
no. 1 and 'Towards a saner view of "Development" ', vol. 3, no. 2.
46. Robert Nisbet, Social Change and History, p. 303.
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