POL 110 Introduction To Political Theory Unit-VI Major Contemporary Issues

POL 110
Introduction to Political Theory
Unit- VI
Major contemporary issues
Today’s Discussion Topic
Changing dynamics of democracy and economic

growth
Changing
Dynamics of
Democracy and
Economic
Growth
What is Democracy?
 Derived from Greek words ‘demos’ meaning people and ‘crato’

meaning rule, ie. Self-Rule, people governing themselves
 Types of Democracy
 Direct Democracy
 Indirect or Representative Democracy
Notions of Democracy
 Minimalist or Procedural: Based on electoral contests in modern age among political

parties
• Schumpeter and Dahl - majority rule or polyarchy. For them, democracy is an
institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions based on elections or a
competitive struggle for people’s vote.
 Substantive: Democracy includes besides voting many other facets

• Merkel and Diamond - wider political participation, civil rights and freedoms
(including speech, publish, internet, religious and cultural rights), independence of
judiciary, legal equality, vibrant civil society, checks on arbitrariness of power
• Adam Smith talks of economic and social justice, because economic deprivation leads
to economic disempowerment
Democracy in the World
 How many countries are democratic in the world today?
 Around 122 countries are democratic. These include most of North America and
Europe, Large parts of South Asian countries. Around 45 percent of world
population live in democratic countries.
 Why?
 Democracy is considered to be the most morally legitimate form of government.
 It is based on will of the people.
 Gandhiji talked of moral grounds of having self rule or swashashan and Tilak
talked of Swaraj as the birth right of every individual.
The Spread of Democracy in the World
• Beginning with Enlightenment in 17th and 18th century when the power of
monarchs to rule was challenged
• 1776 Declaration of Independence in the USA: talked of self evident truths and
inalienable rights of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness
• Anti-colonial movements and independence of developing countries and
acceptance of the principle of self-determination by the UN
• Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations in 1948
• Collapse of communism in former Soviet Union and other countries in early 1990s
• Assertion of liberal democracy professing free market economy, becomes the
dominant world ideology
Conti…
• Enormous growth of mass media and social media indicate a greater
connect between government and the governed, mass movements and
demonstrations around the world like Arab spring from Tunisia to Egypt
to Yemen indicate the yearning for democracy
• Developing countries are challenged to maintain liberal democratic
institutions
• Some countries like India are stable democracies while some others are
regressing into authoritarianism like North Korea, China, Yemen, Laos,
Cuba, Azerbaijan, Sudan, Somalia etc.
Democracy in India
• India is a stable, deepened and institutionalized democracy.
• We have seen 16 Parliamentary and innumerable state and local government elections
• Freely contested elections the only way to come to power and incumbents routinely lose power
• Governments openly and freely challenged by institutions and organizations, opposition
parties, press, the courts etc
• The Constitution of India enshrines fundamental rights of the people
 Democracy rests on the pillars of soci0economic equality, individual liberty, peaceful
coexistence, tolerance, secularism etc.
 But today…
 In 2017, India stood 131/188 countries in human development index
• 23 % of our population is below poverty line (about 27 crores)meaning they are not able to get
two square meals every day
Conti…
• Our literacy rate is 74% meaning about ¼ of our population is illiterate, more
women than men. 65% women and 82% men are literate
• Poor health care availability
• About 1.7 million shelter-less people
• Malnutrition among children, 1/3 of undernourished children in the world live
in India, 38.5% of children under the 5 are stunted
• Our sex ratio is skewed,940 women to 1000 men
• Crime against women, and Dalits and other vulnerable sections, honour
killings, impingement on rights of LGBT community
• Recent events of mobocracy defy the very rule of law
Core Values of Democracy
 Democracy is an open and honest system based on consent of majority of the
governed.
 Democracy is ethically right as it ensures freedom and presumes equality of all
citizens.
 There is a correlation between democracy and economic development.
 Democracy ensures active citizen participation and promotes a vibrant and strong
civil society
 Democracy may not be the best form of government but of all others that have been tried and
tested, this appears to be the one most sought after and pushed for at the international level.
 Democracy is correlated with the following interrelated core values. In the absence of any one of
these democracy would be meaningless.
 Liberty, Equality, Justice and Human Rights
Changing Nature of Democracy
 Despite cultural, political and economic differences across different countries, more
and more countries are moving toward more democratic regimes, with higher levels of
civil liberties.
 At the same time rising levels of education and standards of living in many parts of the
world have given more and more people higher existential security. Parallel to these
phenomena, the World Values Survey has found that cultures and therefore cultural
values are changing too.
 Does economic development cause societies to adopt democratic systems of
government? Are democracies with higher income more likely to survive? These
questions have been asked and answered many times. Yet, they return periodically, as
new generations reignite the old debates with expanded data sets, novel statistical
models, and reframed historical arguments.
Conti…
 The idea that economic advances lead to positive changes in political practices can be
traced to the Enlightenment conception of progress, in the works of Turgot, Condorcet,
Adam Smith, and others. Some credit Aristotle with first linking democracy to affluence,
although he associated good government with equality rather than higher income per se.
Later, Marx and Durkheim saw the roots of social and political modernity in the
economic transformations of the Industrial Revolution.
 Liberals such as Viscount Bryce (1921, pp. 31–32) attributed the broadening of British
democracy to “the upward economic progress of the middle and humbler classes, which
made it seem unfair to keep them in tutelage.”
 Like Marx, the postwar modernization theorists saw the forces that reshaped nineteenth-
century Europe as a syndrome that—they conjectured—would repeat in the decolonizing
countries of Asia and Africa.
Conti…
 There, too, industrialization, urbanization, occupational specialization, social
differentiation, broader education, and consequent cultural changes would undermine
traditional power structures.
 Unlike Marx, they envisioned as the endpoint not communist utopia but popular
government. Their belief in a universal logic was criticized by some as ethnocentric and
insensitive to the ways that global capitalism limited development in the periphery. But
were the modernization theorists right?
 A first wave of challenges focused on exceptions. Germany and Japan industrialized but
did not immediately become stable democracies.
 The Soviet Union and its East European satellites remained communist, even as their
scientists probed space and pioneered missile technology.
 In the 1970s, military juntas took over the most economically advanced countries of Latin
America. These cases motivated theories of alternative, illiberal paths to modernity (
Moore 1966, O'Donnell 1988).
Conti….
 What is most interesting now about these counterexamples is that none lasted.
Germany, Japan, Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay have been democratic for decades.
The Soviet Union collapsed, yielding 15 new countries and liberating its East
European allies. Almost all are more democratic today than 30 years ago. Fascist
and bureaucratic-authoritarian regimes have proved both rare and temporary
deviations from a common path rather than pioneers of alternative ones.
 The third wave of democratisation which occurred in the late 20th Century
revolutionised different political systems across Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe and
Latin America.
 It is clear that in the 21st century, the majority of countries have follow the principle
of liberal democracy. The changing dynamic of democracy to liberal democracy is
increasing the economic development of the majority of countries.
Conclusion
 So why does democracy increase growth? Our strategy is not well-suited to
disentangling particular mechanisms, but we attempt to disaggregate both
dimensions of democracy and proximate determinants of growth. When we
disentangle what components of democracy matter the most for growth, we find that
civil liberties are what seem to be the most important. We also find positive effects
of democracy on economic reforms, private investment, the size and capacity of
government, and a reduction in social conflict. Clearly all of these are channels by
which democracy can increase economic growth.
Thank You

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POL 110

Introduction to Political Theory

Changing dynamics of democracy and economic

 Derived from Greek words ‘demos’ meaning people and ‘crato’

 Minimalist or Procedural: Based on electoral contests in modern age among political

 Substantive: Democracy includes besides voting many other facets

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