Aristotle said that a state is a group of families and towns that work together to make a perfect and self-sufficient life, which means a good and happy life. MacIver says that the state is a group that keeps uniform external conditions of social order in a community by using laws made by the government and giving them the power to force people to do what they want. On the other hand, you could say that a state is made up of a group of people who live forever in a certain area, have their own government, and are not controlled by anyone else. This group of people is called a sovereign state, and it has power over its people.
Using Maciver’s description, we can say that the following things are important for a state:
• A certain area and its people (ii) The area that is not controlled from the outside
• Need for an independent government.
• The state uses its power to control and bring people together. It does this through the lawmakers, the courts, the executive branch, and the armed forces.
In general, everyone agrees on four things:
1. Territory
2. Population
3. Government
4. Sovereignty
Power is used by the state as a way to keep society together. Power is used by the state to make laws, run the troops, and make plans. Through the legislative function, it enforces the rules of society. The legal function uses power to protect citizens’ lives and property with physical force. The military function uses power to build relationships with other societies linked to the way scarce goods and resources are shared.
Concept of state as elaborated in different theoretical models:
Karl Marx on state:
Marx didn’t have a fully formed theory of the state, but he did talk about it in many of his works. Marx shows how the way work is split up in society has changed over time. Primitive societies are simple and less complicated. So, in primitive societies, there is no state. When the forces of production change, private property and extra wealth appear in society. And then a central controlling body comes into being. This leads to the creation of a state in the end. His ideas about state are closely linked to how he groups people into groups.
1. For Marx, the state is force, and it uses its power and authority to advance the goals of the dominant class while suppressing and taking advantage of the weaker classes, which are called the “proletariat” in a capitalist society. He thinks that the state is something that people made, not something that God made. Marxists see the state as something that comes out of class conflict and is used to rule by class. So, for Marx, the state is mostly a system of classes, a way for one class to control other classes. He thinks that state began at a certain point in the history of humanity’s economic growth, when society was split into two groups: the “haves” and the “have-nots.”
2. In Marxist theory, economic action is the most important thing that people do. He says that the key to knowing a society’s whole social structure is to know how it organises its production. He thinks that people’s ideas about law, art, and even faith have been shaped by how they make a living. Marx says that economic production is the most important part of any society’s structure. He called the way a society organises its economic production its “Infrastructure.” He called the rest of a society’s organisation, including things like ideas, beliefs, philosophies, the legal system, the state, etc., its “Superstructure.” Any society’s “superstructure” is affected by its “infrastructure,” or its economic activities. Marx says that the state is an institution that has nothing to do with economics. So, how a society organises its economic production has a big impact on how the state is made and how it works. Marx called the different ways that goods are made in a society “modes of production.” Based on these modes of production, Marx identified five historical periods in the history of humanity: primitive communist, ancient, feudal, capitalist, and communist. Each of these periods had its own type of government and state.
3. With the exception of the first and last modes of production, which are primitive communism and communism, each mode of production has one important thing in common: it produces goods based on class. In each historical era, there are two classes: the minority dominant class, which owns the means of production, and the majority subordinate class, which does not own the means of production and does the work.
4. Those who own the means of production are in charge of the state. When a society’s way of making things changes, so does the government (the physical form of the state). Marx says that the state is always a tool for exploitation in the hands of the ruling class, no matter what kind of society it is (ancient, feudal, or capitalist).
5. Marx’s thinking about the state as an organisation is based mostly on the capitalist way of life. For him, the state is a centralised organisation that made it necessary for one class to rule over the others. Marx talks about the bourgeoisie and the proletariat as the most important groups in a capitalist society. Marx said that capitalism is a system that naturally grows, and that the social class at the top of it (the bourgeoisie) rises to political power not because they do anything on purpose, but because that’s how society grows.
6. Some people say that Marx thought the state was a plot against the working class or that the wealth of the bourgeoisie could be used to make sure that whoever is in power does what the bourgeoisie wants (Miller 1991). Marx’s worry about the state of individual liberty could be seen as an attempt to protect the rights of property owners (bourgeoisie) against people without property (proletariat), whose only power came from working together to take action. The behaviour of the proletariat as a whole can be seen in the political fight for trade union rights.
Max weber on state:
Marx Weber’s book Politics as a Vocation said that the state is a group of people or a special kind of organisation that has the right to use physical force in a certain area. By this, he meant that the state not only had the power to make sure its people obeyed, but also had the right to do so. Sovereignty of the state is shown in practise through a hold on legal violence. He thought the state was the most powerful organisation in modern society because it had the right to be the only one that could use force in a certain area.
Modern states have the following Characteristics:
• First, there is a judicial and administrative order that can only be changed by laws. It has a government that follows the rules set by the law. This means that government workers and judges don’t make their own rules. Instead, they follow the ones made by the lawmakers.
• Second, the state has power over all of its citizens and the things that happen on its land.
• Third, most people are born into the group.
• Finally, the government can use force if the law says it can.
1. For Weber, a “political society” is a group of people whose survival and order are constantly protected in a certain area by the threat and use of physical force by the people in charge. And a “political society” becomes a “state” when it can successfully exercise a legal monopoly over the organised use of force in a certain area.
2. Weber disagreed with Marx’s idea that the economy controls everything. Weber says that the way legal, religious, and political systems interact has a big impact on economic structures and growth, not the other way around as Marx thought. He thought that having a small number of people in charge was the most important thing in the state. This, in turn, has a lot to do with his theory about how people dominate. Weber talks about attractive, traditional, and legal-rational types of dominance. He says that these three kinds of dominance are always present, but it’s likely that only one of them will be dominant. Weber says that in modern states, rationality is more likely to be in charge.
3. Weber says that a modern state is valid as long as people think it is legitimate. There can be any of these three kinds of dominance in the modern state. We can’t choose between the three because each one has its own reasons to be true. Each system justifies itself: traditional dominance is based on custom, charismatic dominance is based on charisma, and rational legal dominance is based on the idea that laws are valid as long as they are made in accordance with the law. There is no set of standards that we can use to decide which system is better or worse.
4. Weber thought that in a modern state, any rule could be made into a law, and people would have to follow it. The government and its tools are bound by the abstract system that these laws make up, and justice is the application of these laws. In this kind of government, people have power because they hold temporary office, not because they have personal power, and people obey the rules, not the office holders who enforce them. A state with reasonable legal power couldn’t get in the way of people’s rights without getting permission from the people through their officials.
5. For Weber, bureaucracy is the way that the modern state organises itself, and the modern capitalist state can’t survive without bureaucratic organisation. Weber says that the modern state gets its power from putting all of the tools of government in the hands of an absolute ruler. In ancient Egypt, for example, a bureaucratic system was set up because the king needed a permanent army to make sure he always had enough weapons and war gear.
6. Weber says that these changes were the most important ones that led to the rise of the modern state, in which the expert officialdom and specialised division of labour are completely different from who owns the tools of government. Officials in modern, rational bureaucracies have little or no control over what they do. This is because the rules and procedures of bureaucracies take on a life of their own, limiting the activities and choices of those who work in them to the functions of the offices they fill. The bureaucracy has become the’steel-hard homes’ of the modern state.
7. This growth of the modern-rational state, which has its own group of government officials, is not entirely the result of economic rationalisation. In some ways, it came before capitalism and helped it grow. The head of the state is the person in charge of the system of law and government. It can hold a post by being given one, by being elected, or by being named by succession. But even then, their power is restricted by the law.
8. Weber says that even though rationalisation is clear in the economy, culture, etc. Modern institutions of government, particularly bureaucracy, show this about a society in a very clear way. He says that neither capitalism, which is linked to democracy, nor state socialism, which is supposed to be committed to social justice, can avoid using bureaucratic means to control the government. People think that the impersonality and predictability of bureaucracy are not only limiting, but also very effective at getting people to follow the structures of dominance. Weber sees them as a key example of the kind of modern form of legitimate dominance that is replacing the appeal of custom as the most important reason why society is right.
Emile Durkheim on state:
In his book Professional Ethics and Civic Morals, Durkheim talks about what the state is and how it works. He says that the difference between those in power and those who are ruled is the most important thing in politics. His explanations of how work is split and different kinds of cooperation work together with his ideas about the state. Durkheim said that the division of labour in society led to the rise of the state. As societies became more complicated, there was a split between those who ruled and those who were ruled, which led to the rise of the state.
Durkheim thought that the role of the state was to find a balance between different interests and to protect the person from the power of smaller groups. This is how the government guards each person and keeps group interests in check.
1. When there isn’t much division of work, mechanical solidarity is a sign of a society that isn’t very developed or is very old. Societies with a well-developed division of work, on the other hand, are held together by something called “organic solidarity.” Durkheim thought that there was no politics or state in primitive societies because there was little or no division of work. This meant that there was no grouping of the government and the people who were ruled over.
2. At the same time, he says that a social group is split into those who rule and those who are ruled over not just in states, but also in male households. Durkheim tries to tell the difference between the state and such groups. The difference between a state and such an organisation is the size and control of a certain area.
3. Durkheim thought that the most important thing about a state is that it has power over a number of smaller social groups, not necessarily a lot of people. The state is the group of people who are in charge of running these other groups. It’s not a representation of society as a whole; instead, it’s made up of specialised organisations.
4. The relationship of the state of the person is the next topic that Durkheim talks about. Durkheim says that this is not a problem in societies where mechanical solidarity rules and people are absorbed into the social whole. However, as organic solidarity grows, so do the rights of the person and the power of the state. The growth of the state does not threaten the rights of people. Instead, it makes them possible.
5. Society and the state are two different things to Durkheim. Every culture changes over time. As societies get more complicated, people need to be able to move from one group to another. They also need to make sure that secondary groups don’t abuse their power over their members. It is the state’s job to meet this need. Durkheim’s point was that each person in a society felt responsible to the society as a whole. The job of the state, he said, was to build and protect the space where each person could act responsibly.
6. Durkheim thought that society is “so kind.” His idea of society was more important than anything else. Society lives beyond the individual, over whom it has a lot of power. This view of society also shows up in his view of the state. For Durkheim, the state is basically a middleman between the person and other groups. As the way people divide into groups gets more complicated, like in modern society, the secondary groups grow. The state acts as a middleman between the individual and the secondary group, just as the secondary group acts as a middleman between the person and the state.
The Nation
In modern times, the nation is the biggest effective community that has a shared sense of self. Some writers think that a nation is the same thing as a state and that the people who live in a state are a nation. Hans Kohn, Frederick Hertz, Karl Marx, and Frederick Engels all agreed that the nation is a unique event in history. All of these writers and thinkers agree that the nation is a historical and social phenomenon that came about when different racial and family groups came together after slavery and feudal societies fell apart.
• A nation is a group of people who have strong ties to each other because they are from the same race, speak the same language, follow the same religion, have the same culture, live in the same place, etc., and have similar political goals and a similar history. Nationality is how you feel about your country.
• But this term has a narrow meaning that, when applied to the state as a whole, splits it into different nations, which has many bad effects in the long run. For example, when there are a lot of conflicting and separatist movements and demands, the state has to deal with a lot of major problems. For example, India has to deal with the demands of Khalistan, Kashmir, the North-East states, etc.
• Such Problems have been seen widely. So, some symbols, like the national emblem, national song, national language, national game, animal, and bird, etc., were used as a way to bring everyone in the state together so that a national culture could grow.
What led to the formation of a nation:
There are some external things that have helped the nation grow and change. At the same time, it is said that neither of them, nor any of them, are completely necessary. The most important of these factors are speaking the same language, living in the same place, and having the same past and traditions. But not everyone agrees on even those things. Professor MacIver says that there are almost no two countries that find support in the same objective causes.
1. Race and kinship: While it is true that ‘unity of race and kinship helps in cementing people together’, to argue that ‘such unity is an indispensable objective factor is unacceptable’. F.Schuman says that if there were ever pure races, they have been gone for a long time because of migrations, wars, conquests, and journeys that have happened over thousands of years. All modern countries are made up of people from many different races and tribes. The best examples are “Unity in Diversity” in India and “Melting Pot” in the United States.
2. Community of religion: Religion has been and can be a great way to bring people together, and it has helped to bring countries together in the past. The modern country is a territory-based group of people. It includes and includes everyone of the same race or religion who lives permanently on the same land and is therefore part of the past and traditions of that land. In this age of democracy and secularism, putting religion forward as an objective factor that is necessary for the formation of a country is to promote religious bigotry and persecution, which is to put secular democracy on shaky ground.
3. Common history or traditions: Having the same language, living in the same area, and having the same economic ties are all ties that make people who live together share the same experiences, create a similar point of view, and want the same things. This gives them all the same mental make-up, or character. People’s personalities are shaped by the way they have lived and worked together. Even though the phrase “national character” is used, there are still differences between people.
4. Karl Marx pushed this idea of economic ties between people. Since then, people have seen how important it was. When it was agreed that a nation was both a historical and a social event, people started to pay attention to the conditions that led to the formation of nations. In the past, when slaves and feudalism were common, there was no way for people to live together in one place. Clans, tribes, and ethnic groups came together to form the country. Nationalities come about when trade between areas grows and a home market develops.
5. In modern society, looking at country and state separately would keep making strange things happen. When people realised this, they decided to combine the two ideas to figure out what they really mean. In this way, the idea that grew would know what a state was in relation to a nation and what a nation was in relation to a state. This idea is called “Nation-state.” So, nothing would be done to make a difference between regions and cultures. Lastly, integration is the best way to deal with any problem that has to do with not adjusting. In this case, the best models are India’s “Unity in Diversity” and America’s “Melting Pot” ideas.
Nation- state:
1. A nation is a group of people from the same country who have come together to form a government body that is either independent or wants to be independent. People in a state are organised by where they live. Nation is a group of people who feel like they are special and united and want to keep it that way. If these people organise themselves on a certain piece of land and want to be independent or are already independent, they make up a nation state.
2. People from different countries can live in the same state.
• Nationality is a matter of opinion, but status is a fact.
• Nationality is about how people feel, while status is about politics.
• Being a citizen is a state of mind, while being a state is a state of law.
• Being a citizen of a state is a legal duty, while being a citizen of a country is a spiritual possession.
• Sovereignty is a very important part of a state, but not a country.
3. Nation is a sense of togetherness that comes from mental and spiritual feelings that may or may not be sovereign. The physical part of sovereignty is not as important as the idea of being one.
The Competition and Conflict Theory and the Rise of Nation States:
Nation states came about because of competition and war. The Hundred Years War made the English and the French, who were at war with each other, feel like they were the same kind of people. The War of the Roses brought the English people together under the rule of the Tudors. When the English, the French, the Portuguese, and the Spaniards competed to find new places and fight pirates on the high seas, it brought their countries closer together. War gave birth to the United States. Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity of the French Revolution took over most of Europe and gave the countries that lost their sense of national identity. Germany came into being because of a fight with France. Under the leadership of Mazzini and Garibaldi, the Italian country came into being as a protest against Austrian rule.
How Democratic Nation States Grew:
Recently, the idea of a democratic nation state has grown. From a political point of view, the first step was to put all power in the hands of strong, centralised, independent monarchs. which replaced the inefficient and small-minded feudal officials. After many wars, the concept of state absolutism became the most important thing in Europe. All of the great reformers of the past told their people to obey the government without question. They thought that the people who should be obeyed ruled because God told them to. In England, what they taught set the stage for the cruel rule of the Tudors and Stuarts.
1. But this kind of dictatorship wasn’t left alone. As people became more educated and realised how powerful and important they were, they slowly started getting certain rights from the people in power. The king or queen lost his position as a god-like being with special powers. Once the goal of bringing order and unity was reached, there was no longer a need for absolute monarchy. Political parties got bigger and grew into open groups that represented liberal views on a number of issues that were important to the constitutional group.
2. In some places, the democratic movement began violently, while in others, kings gave in to the will of the people and were happy to stay in power as figuresheads under a democratic government. The people’s right to be in charge was recognised, and a democracy nation state was set up.
Nationalism is a way of thinking that tries to make the country a strong unit and the most important thing in a person’s life. It started in the western world and is now spreading to the rest of the world. It has made it possible for democracy nation states to exist today. It has made both state freedom and personal freedom bigger. Nationalism brings people together in a state, but it can be dangerous when it ignores the things that all nations have in common. Then it turns into ethnocentrism, chauvinism, which is a form of bigotry, or empire, which wants to take over more land and control politics. When nationalism divides people, it makes it hard for people from different countries to get along with each other and sets the stage for rivalries and fights. Nationalism can bring people together when it is at its most ideal, but when it is at its most narrow, it can cause big problems between countries. Nationalism has been around for a long time and has strong feelings tied to it. Hayes said that nationalism will be a unique blessing for people and the world when it means the same thing as pure pride.
Nationality is a way of thinking or feeling that people have. Zimmermann says that nationality, like faith, is a mental state, a spiritual possession, and a way of feeling, thinking, and living. Nationality is a natural thing. It is a cultural idea. It comes from a history of memories, whether they are of great success and glory or of disaster and pain. Maclver said that nationality is a type of community feeling that comes from history and is backed by common psychological factors to the point where those who feel it want to have a government that is uniquely or only for them.
The purpose of the government is to look out for the safety of each person. In recent years, the people who live in a state have been called its citizens. When you look at the history of the word “citizenship,” it means that you live in a city (i.e., a city-state). A ‘citizen’ is someone who lives in a city. But the world has a much bigger meaning now than it did back then. Even though India is not a place, we say “a citizen of India.” So, a citizen is a person who is part of a group or a State. A person has a duty to the State, just like a man has a duty to his parents. Because the State is more than just a parent. When you are young, you always want something from your parents. But as you get older, you realise that you owe your parents and older people service and effort. The same is true for a person. When a citizen is young, he makes a lot of claims on the State and thinks that it should do everything for him.
Citizenship is more than just having certain rights and protections. It also means taking care of one’s responsibilities. People should want to do their part for the good of society by getting involved in public events to make cultural, political, and material aspects of social life better. Without this kind of involvement, being a citizen is pointless. It aims for the good of everyone, not just the good of one group. It depends on both enlightenment and a high average of character. Laski calls this “the contribution of one’s instructed judgement to the public good.”
Citizenship is the legal position of being a member of a country. The legal status showed that the person had a special connection to the political group. When the modern state was made, citizenship came to mean that everyone had the same rights and responsibilities as a part of the state. Citizenship started to be taken care of by the modern state. State decides who gets citizenship, what rights and privileges come with it, and what rewards come with it. As a legal status, citizenship has come to mean that a person and the political group have a unique, two-way, and unmediated relationship. In short, being a citizen means having the right to have rights.
Who can be a citizen?
In short, a citizen is a person who lives in a state and has rights and responsibilities there. Even if someone lives in India, they are not a member of India. Because people who are not from Earth also live here. So, not everyone who lives in the country is a citizen.
1. A citizen is a member of the state who takes part in how the government works. In a democratic state, the people and the government must be able to talk to each other.
2. All governments expect their people to do certain things, and everyone has to do those things. But the state must also admit that its citizens have some expectations of it.
3. People who live in states that aren’t fair often don’t have political rights. In such a state, the people are expected to do their jobs, pay taxes, follow the rules, and do anything else the government wants. But they can’t ask the state to explain its actions or question its rules. Politics in these places only goes in one direction. People are told what to do and what not to do by the government, but the government doesn’t listen to them. Only the people in power have rights. The people who are ruled do not have rights, so they are not citizens.
Democracy and citizenship:
Throughout history, the word “citizen” has been linked to the spread of democracy. The first places where people wanted a democratic government were England, France, and the United States of America. In a democracy, everyone should have the right to vote. A person is a citizen when he or she has political rights, such as the right to vote and the right to take part in making decisions about important issues facing the country.
1. Of course, these thoughts didn’t all come up at once. It took them a long time to grow up. They grew up bit by bit. Universal suffrage, which is a system in which everyone can vote, is a pretty new idea. People fought for their rights against monarchical governments because they believed in democratic ideas. After big events, many of the ideas that make up democracy are accepted. France became a republic after the French Revolution of 1789. People were told that every person was the same and had the same rights. It’s not strange that the French Revolution in 1789 spread the word “citizen.” In the future, this word was used to set up governments.
2. People in democratic countries are usually called “citizens” these days. It means that when it comes to the government, each person is an involved part of the process of running the country. They not only do what the government says and listen to what it says, but the government must also listen to what they have to say.
3. In a democracy state, people have the freedom to say what they think, to be listened to, and to take part in the government. In a free government, the average person is no longer seen as an outsider.
4. A democracy state depends a lot on the kind of people who live there. If people don’t care about politics, a democratic state could also become less democratic over time.
5. On the other hand, democracy can be improved if people know what their rights are and what the rights of others are, if they know what they can ask the government for and what the government can ask of them.
6. There are a lot of bad things in the world that can’t be stopped just by making rules against them. There needs to be a strong social view against these social evils among the people. In the end, it’s people, not rules, who make a society.
7. Citizens having a say in how their country is run is an important part of a democracy state. Democracy works better when people from all walks of life take part in its activities and are interested in how important decisions are made for their society. Democracy means that decisions that touch the whole society should be made by as many people as possible in the society.
8. In a democracy, a good person knows both their rights and their responsibilities. One of our most important rights is the right to vote, and it is also our job to use that right. A person who doesn’t vote can’t be called a good citizen, even if they are good people in other ways.
9. In a democracy, good citizens should be aware of their own rights as well as the government’s. They should follow the rules made by the legislature and pay taxes. This is what they have to do for the government. But they also have to do their jobs for other people. And every citizen’s most important job is to respect the rights of others. For instance, the Constitution says that everyone has the right to follow their own religion. Every citizen should practise religion in the way that works best for them, but they should also accept the right of other citizens to do the same. Good people must, therefore, be aware of their own rights, tolerant of others, and respectful of the law.
A detailed look at citizenship:
In the 19th century, Britain and the USA gave even commoners the right to vote, and CIVIL RIGHTS were finally finished. In countries like Sweden, people didn’t have any rights until the beginning of the 20th century. At that time, people fought for their rights under socialist philosophy and leadership, which led to both revolutionary socialism and the achievement of people’s rights. In the same way, people did not have the same freedom and right to vote until the Russian Revolution. Civil rights were won in Germany at the end of the 19th century, when Reformative Democracy and non-revolutionary socialism were in power.
The British sociologist T.H. Marshall wrote for the first time in length about citizenship and how class struggle is the most important thing in modern states. He used the ideas of Marx and Weber in his writing. Marshal thinks that capitalism has made the struggle between classes in modern countries worse. “Citizenship and Social Class” by T. H. Marshall is a very important article about citizenship. This book came out in 1950. He looked at how civil rights came first, then political rights, and finally social rights. These were roughly put in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries.
1. His main achievement was to bring up the idea of social rights, which are often confused with welfare rights. Social rights aren’t given out based on social class or need, but on a person’s position as a citizen. He said that giving people more social rights does not mean getting rid of social groups and differences. In Britain, there were three steps to becoming a citizen:
• Urban Citizenship (Civil) in the 18th Century: Equal rights before the law, freedom of speech and religion, the right to own land and sign contracts.
• Political citizenship in the 1800s: the right to vote and be chosen for.
• Social citizenship in the 20th century: full participation in state life.
Critics said that Marshall’s modal only talked about the British way of life and didn’t say anything about economic patriotism.
Marxist critics say that Marshall’s analysis is shallow because it doesn’t talk about the right of the citizen to control economic production, which they say is needed for everyone to be happy in the long run.
4. From a feminist point of view, Marshall’s work is very limited because it only looks at men and doesn’t look at women’s social rights or the things that stop them from being realised.
5.Scholars disagree about whether Marshall wanted his historical analysis to be seen as a general theory of citizenship or just as a reflection on what was happening in England.
6. The essay has been used by editors to push for more equality in society, including the “Black” vote in the US, and against Margaret Thatcher in a 1992 version that was introduced by Tom Bottomore. It is an Anglo-Saxon view of how rights have changed over time in a “peaceful reform” way, as opposed to the revolutionary views of Charles Tilly, the other great citizenship theorist of the 20th century, who bases his ideas on how things changed during the French Revolution.
Global citizenship:
Citizenship gives people a sense of who they are, which makes it easier for bad things like regionalism, communalism, and so on to grow. Global citizenship can help get rid of these bad things in a big way. In fact, globalisation is making the world’s cultures more similar, which would make it harder for people to identify with their land and blood.
Dual citizenship:
When someone has dual citizenship, they work hard to keep their national identity, which shows how narrow-minded they are. Most of the time, it is given for material benefits and conveniences. It doesn’t make me feel like I love and care about the land. But it can be used to help any two countries get along better.
The rights and responsibilities of being a citizen:
• Harold J. Laski thinks that a state’s rights are what make it stand out. The state is not only a sovereign institution that is responsible for citizens’ discipline and has the power to make people follow orders, but it also has some other powers and morals built into it.
• Just as citizens have responsibilities to the state, the state also has responsibilities to its citizens, such as giving them the opportunities they need to grow physically, mentally, and morally. In this way, it is a two-way process that builds and keeps a society that is healthy and balanced.
Democracy
In the history of Western political thought, the word “democracy” has been used for a very long time. It comes from the Greek word demos, which means “the people,” and the word “cracy,” which means “rule” or “government.” So, democracy truly means “the rule of the people.” Lincoln’s description of democracy is very close to what the word actually means. “Democracy is government by the people, for the people, and of the people,” it says. In short, democracy as a type of government means that the people have the ultimate power over the government. This means that public policy is made to fit the will of the people and to serve their interests.
So, democracy is a form of government in which the people, not a ruler or aristocracy, are in charge. This sounds like it should be easy, but it’s not. Depending on how the idea is understood, democratic rule has looked different at different times and in different places……. For example, “the people” has been taken to mean all men, land owners, white men, educated men, and both men and women over the age of 18. In some countries, the official version of democracy only applies to politics, while in others, it applies to a wider range of aspects of daily life.
How its values and goals are known and how they compare to other goals is a big part of how democracy looks in a certain situation. Most people think that democracy is the best way to ensure political equality, protect freedom and liberty, defend the common good, meet citizens’ needs, encourage moral self-development, and make good decisions that take everyone’s needs into account (Held). Depending on how much weight is given to each of these goals, democracy may be seen first and foremost as a way for the people to have power (self-government and self-regulation) or as a way for others to make decisions (like a group of elected representatives).
Participatory democracy:
1. In a participatory democracy, also called a direct democracy, the people who are touched by the decisions make them together as a group. In ancient Greece, this was the first kind of democracy that was used. Citizens, who made up a small part of the population, met often to talk about policies and make big decisions. Participatory democracy isn’t as important in modern societies, where most people have political rights and it would be impossible for everyone to actively take part in making all the decisions that touch them.
Some parts of participatory democracy do have a place in modern countries, though. Small towns in New England, in the northeast of the United States, still hold yearly “town meetings” as they have for many years.
3. Referendums, in which the people say what they think about a certain topic, are another example of participatory democracy. By reducing the issue to just one or two questions to be answered, a large number of people can be consulted directly. Some European countries use referenda often at the national level to help make important policy decisions. Several European countries held votes in 2005 to decide if they should join the planned European Constitution.
Democracy with representatives:
1. Participatory democracy is hard to use on a big scale, except in certain situations, like a special referendum. Today, representative democracy is more popular. In this type of government, decisions that affect a community are made not by its members as a whole, but by people who were elected to make those decisions. When it comes to national government, representative democracy looks like elections to congresses, parliaments, and other national groups with similar roles. Representative democracy also appears at other levels where decisions are made as a group, such as in cities, counties, boroughs, provinces, or states that are part of a larger national community. Many big organisations choose to use representative democracy to run their business by electing a small executive committee to make important decisions.
2.Liberal democracies are usually countries where voters can choose between two or more groups and where most adults have the right to vote. This group includes Britain and the other countries of Western Europe, as well as the USA, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. As we will see, a growing number of countries in the developing world, like India, also have liberal democratic governments.
Classical notion of democracy
Democracy goes back a long way. But people’s ideas about what it’s all about and why it’s right have changed over time. Plato and Aristotle saw democracy in action in some old Greek city-states, especially in Athens. Its most important parts were: 1. All freemen had an equal say in the common affairs of the polis (city-state), which was seen as an important part of a good life; 2. Making public decisions through free discussion; and 3. A general respect for the law and the way things were done in the community. The Greeks were proud of their customary law and looked down on the “arbitrary rule” that most “barbarians” lived by.
But the type of democracy that was used in old Greek city-states was by no means thought to be the best way to run a country. Plato was against democracy because he thought people didn’t have enough knowledge “to choose the best rulers and the wisest paths.” Democracy made it possible for men with the skills of eloquence and oratory to win the votes of the people and get into public office. However, these men were completely self-centered and useless, and they ended up destroying the state. Then, Aristotle said that democracy was “the rule of the many,” or the most common people in the community, especially the poor. Aristotle divided governments into “normal” and “perverted” types. He put democracy in the “perverted” category because it meant that the average people were in charge and they were only looking out for their own needs, not the needs of the state. Aristotle noticed that none of the types of government in use during his time were steady, which led to a lot of changes. In his search for a safe way to run the country.
Liberal democracy – concept:
Liberal democracy today is different from other types of government because of its rules and procedures, as well as the way it is set up institutionally. values can’t be put into action without institutions, but institutions might not be much more than a formality if there are no values to back them up. Both have to go together. Liberal democracy is based on certain ideas and ways of doing things.
In general, liberal democracy is based on the following principles: government by agreement, public accountability, rule by the majority, respect for the rights of minorities, and constitutional government.
Government by Consent: In a democracy, the people decide who runs the government. Reasonable agreement can be reached through influence, which requires a space where people can talk freely. Even if a government has some democratic institutions, it can’t be called a “democracy” if it tries to get the consent of the people without letting them freely express different views. Because government decisions are very detailed, there are a lot of them, and they need to be made quickly, it is not possible to ask the people about every detail of every policy. But it is important to talk about the big problems. Usually, there are two types of talk.
• In the parliamentary assemblies, where members of the opposition have a full voice; and • In the public sphere, where the leadership and the people can talk directly with each other. Democratic policies, since the groups in power have to ask the people for a new mandate every so often.
Accountability to the public: Because liberal democracy is based on the agreement of the people, it must always answer to the people who made it.
• John Locke thought of governments as “trustees” of the power that the people gave them to protect their natural rights to life, liberty, and property. However, he also thought that governments could not be trusted completely. He wanted everyone to be on guard all the time. He saw the people as a homeowner who hires a watchman to protect his home and then stays up all night to keep an eye on the watchman.
• Jeremy Bentham saw liberal democracy as a system of government that would make it impossible for leaders to be held accountable by the people they rule. Bentham thought that, as people, both rulers and those who are ruled want to be as happy as possible. Then leaders, who have power, may be more likely to use it for their own gain. So, to make sure they don’t abuse their power. Governors should have to answer directly to voters, who will often check to see if their goals have been reasonable.
• John Stuart Mill made an important point when he said, “The only reason power can be used against the will of a member of a civilised community is to keep others from getting hurt.” Mill said that freedom of thought, feeling, discussion, and publication, freedom of tastes and hobbies, and freedom of association or combination are all part of the right range of human freedom, as long as they don’t hurt other people. He said that freedom and democracy together make it possible for people to be “humanly excellent.”
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who believed in the authority of the people, had a different idea about how the public should be able to hold the government accountable. His idea of the “social contract” says that power comes from the people and stays with the people in civil society. People agree to give their power to the “general will,” which is their own “higher selves.” Rousseau is sure that sovereignty can’t be expressed because he believes in “direct democracy.” Rousseau said, “The people’s deputies are not and can’t be its representatives; they are only its agents, and they can’t decide anything for sure.” Rousseau favoured a government and law-making process in which citizens are active and involved.
3. Majority Rule: In modern representative democracies, choices are made by several bodies, such as legislatures, committees, cabinets, and executive or regulatory bodies. Majority rule says that all of these groups that make decisions, from the voters to the last committee, have to vote to decide what to do. “One man, one vote” is a concept that makes sure everyone has an equal say in politics. This means that no one group will have their voice ignored. No one can be treated differently because of their religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth, where they own land, or even how much schooling they have. Any limit on the right to vote should be based on a good reason, like when the ballot can’t be used in a reasonable and responsible way, like when a person is a convicted criminal, in a mental hospital, or under a certain age set by law. The idea of popular rule is based on the idea that most people know what’s best. In an atmosphere of free discussion, a minority view has the chance to persuade more people to agree with it.
4. Recognising the Rights of Minorities: The idea of majority rule does not mean that the rights of minorities should be taken away. There may be several racial, religious, linguistic, or cultural minorities in modern nation-states who are afraid of discrimination or the rule of the majority. Minority complaints can come in many forms, from mental insults caused by unfair treatment in housing, education, and jobs to physical abuse and even genocide. Legal protections are seen as important for putting democratic ideas into practise because they help both the majority and the minority become more aware of their rights and create an environment that is good for democratic politics.
5. Constitutional Government: A “government by laws” instead of “government by men” is what a “constitutional government” means. To put the will of the majority into action, democracy needs a very complicated system of rules, processes, and institutions. It puts a huge amount of pressure on the time, goodwill, and honesty of its people and government workers. Once the rules are broken, even for a good reason, it can set a bad example that could be followed for bad reasons, and the floodgates of corruption could be thrown wide open. For a democratic government to be stable, it is important to have a long history of law and a written constitution.
The most important things about a liberal democracy are:
1. More than one political party can freely compete for power. In a liberal democracy, different groups’ different goals and ideas are brought together. There is no set way to make sure the peace is kept. When more than one political party is free to compete for power, the people have the chance to think about different ideas. Programmes and people to make their own choices. Based on this test, countries with only one party do not qualify as democracies. Even though there are elections every few years, the People’s Republic of China and the former Soviet Union can’t be called republics because they gave their Communist Parties full control of the government.
2. Political Offices Are Not Limited to Privileged Classes: In a liberal democracy, a person can only get a political or public office with the support of the people, not by birth, custom, or anyone’s favour. This is one thing that makes democracy different from feudalism, royalty, despotism, etc. In a democracy, everyone has the same rights and standing. Any person can run for political office as long as they follow the rules and meet certain requirements. Political office can only be kept for a certain amount of time, and it must be given up when the time is up or for some other reason, like when the legislature is dissolved, the person resigns, etc. Some requirements, like age, schooling, etc., may be set for people who want to run for political office, but no one can be disqualified because of their caste, creed, sex, language, region, etc. But to make sure that all parts of the population are represented fairly, some places in decision-making groups can be set aside for minorities or people with less power. This is thought to strengthen democracy rather than weaken it.
3. frequent Elections Based on Adults’ Right to Vote: Since representative government is the only way to make democracy work in the modern world, frequent elections are needed to make democracy work. Every citizen should be able to vote when they reach the required age, say 18 years old. No one should be able to vote less because of their caste, religion, sex, language, area, etc. It’s true that the idea that all adults should be able to vote came slowly to modern democracies, but today it’s seen as an important part of democracy. Periodic elections mean that people’s leaders are chosen for a set amount of time, like four or five years, so that the party in power can carry out its policies and programmes, but has to win back the trust of the people in order to stay in power. At the same time, the opposition should be able to tell the people about any problems with the ruling party and give alternative policies and programmes in order to win the next election.
4. Protection of Civil Liberties: A key part of a liberal democracy is the protection of civil liberties, such as freedom of thought and speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly and union, and personal freedom, which means not being arrested for no reason. On the one hand, these freedoms let people join interest groups and other groups to try to change how the government makes decisions. On the other hand, they keep the government from controlling the mass media, especially the press. Without civil rights, the public policy and decisions can’t be based on what the people want. So, civil rights are the most important part of democracy.
5. Independence of the Judiciary: The freedom of the people cannot be protected by putting too much power in one part of the government. So, in a liberal democracy, each part of the government must have its own set of responsibilities. In a democracy, politicians control the legislature and the executive branch. However, judges are chosen based on their qualifications, and they can’t be fired because of sudden changes in the political mood of the country. The judges can give their verdicts without fear or favour when the courts are independent.
Conditions for a democracy to work well:
Democracy as a form of government can’t work well if there aren’t enough social, economic, and cultural forces to back it up. In the modern world, a lot of countries have chosen democracy as their type of government. It doesn’t work the same everywhere. There are many things that affect how well democracy works. Some of the important factors include the following:
1. National Attitude: Some thinkers have said that national uniformity is an important part of democracy’s success. John Stuart Mill, who lived from 1806 to 1873, said in his book Representative Government (1861) that a single-national state is necessary for democracy to work. A lot of new countries have been formed since J.S. Representative Government was written by Mill. People of different races, faiths, languages, and cultures live in most of these states. In many of these states, democracy works well. For democracy to work, people don’t need to be the same nationality, but they do need to feel like they belong to the same nation. This comes from a sense of having a common past, life in the present, and future, as well as a common centre of loyalty.
2. Spirit of Tolerance: Without the spirit of toleration, it is impossible to build a true sense of national pride. In fact, tolerance is one of the most important parts of democracy. In a democracy, we don’t expect people to be the same or blend in, but we do expect different groups to live together despite their differences. We can win people over by talking to them and persuading them, but we can’t use force or pressure. The majority expects the minority to treat them with respect, and the minority expects the majority to treat them with full honour.
3. High Moral Character: Both the people and the leaders of a democracy must have high moral character for it to work. If people are only interested in their own narrow self-interests or if leaders are only interested in what’s best for them, democracy will give way to demagogy, which is when leaders play with the feelings of the people instead of appealing to their senses. When people have a sense of morals and discipline, they are more likely to work together to solve social problems.
4. Education for Everyone: An educated public is good for democracy. Most people could be literate, even if they didn’t have a lot of education, so they could learn more and use their own judgement in issues that affect everyone. In a democracy, people have free access to the media and other forms of public communication. This service is best used by voters who can read and write, and ideally have some education. For this condition to be met, the state itself should pay for schooling for everyone.
5. Economic Security and Equality: If a lot of people don’t feel safe about their finances, it will be hard for them to believe in democracy. In the same way, people can’t feel like they have the same worth if their incomes are very different. In fact, democracy is a force if there isn’t a fair amount of economic security and equality.
Aside from this, other experts have also shared their thoughts on the subject. Alfred Stepan, citing Robert Dahl’s classic work on democracy, says that one of the most important parts of a democracy is the ability to “formulate preferences, to signify preferences, and to have these preferences weighted appropriately in the conduct of government.” According to Robert Dhal, for the government to work well, it needs to make sure that the following institutional guarantees are in place:
1. Freedom to join groups and say what you want:
2. Being able to vote:
3. try to get elected;
4. a free and fair vote;
5. the right of politicians to campaign for votes and support;
6. different ways to get information;
7. Institutions that make decisions based on votes;
8. Another way to say what you like.
Stepan agrees that these structural guarantees are important, but he thinks they are not enough for democracy to work. Not enough, because it doesn’t matter how free and fair the elections are or how big the majority of the government is; a political society isn’t good unless it has a constitution that guarantees basic freedoms, minority rights, and a set of institutions and checks and balances that limit state power and make sure people are held accountable. This is what any democratic system needs.
Civil society:
Think about the country you live in. What does it take for that country to run smoothly? Law and order are taken care of by the government, and companies sell goods and services in exchange for money. Both of these things help a society move forward. But what about other groups, like schools, churches, or NGOs? How do they help your society? These other groups are a big part of how your country works, and they are a part of what is called “civil society.”
1. A civil society is made up of groups or organisations that work for the good of the people but don’t work for the government or for business. Civil society is made up of organisations and institutions like labour unions, non-profit groups, churches, and other service agencies that do important work for society but don’t ask for much in return.
2. Civil society is sometimes called the “civil sector,” which is a term used to distinguish it from other parts of a society that make it work. For example, the United States is made up of three sectors: the public sector, which is the government and its branches; the private sector, which is made up of businesses and corporations; and the civil sector, which is made up of organisations that work for the public good but are not motivated by profit or the government.
3. According to a definition of civil society made by a number of top research centres, “the term civil society refers to the wide range of non-governmental and not-for-profit organisations that have a presence in public life, expressing the interests and values of their members or others, based on ethical, cultural, political, scientific, religious, or philanthropic considerations.” Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) include a wide range of groups, such as community groups, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), labour unions, indigenous groups, charitable organisations, faith-based organisations, professional associations, and charities.
Historical perspective:
1. From Cicero and other Roman writers to ancient Greek philosophers, the word “civil society” can be traced back. In its original meaning, civil society was mostly the same thing as the government. In the late 18th century, the Scottish and Continental Enlightenments gave rise to the idea of civil society as we know it today.
2. A number of political thinkers, from Thomas Paine to George Hegel, came up with the idea of civil society as a place where people can get together based on their own interests and goals, separate from the state.
3. Hegel’s idea of civil society in the 1800s included the market, while modern ideas of civil society focus on the non-profit sector. This new definition mirrored the rise of private property, market competition, and the bourgeoisie, as well as other changes in the economy. It also made people want freedom more and more, which led to the American, English, and French Revolutions.
4. The terms stopped being used together, though, around the middle of the 19th century, when political philosophers and sociologists started looking at the social and political effects of the industrial revolution. It became popular again after World War II because of the writings of Antonio Gramsci, a Marxist theorist. Gramsci brought back the term “civil society” to describe a special centre of independent political action that was important in the fight against tyranny. Even though Gramsci was worried about dictatorships on the right, his books were important in the 1970s and 1980s for people in Eastern Europe and Latin America who were working against dictatorships of all kinds. When the Berlin Wall came down, activists from the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland also wrapped themselves in the flag of civil society, giving it a patriotic feel.
5. Civil society has become more popular in modern times because rebel groups in Latin America, Africa, and the former communist world fought against oppression. In the 1980s and 1990s, there was a global democratic revolution on a scale that had never been seen before. Unions, women’s groups, student groups, and other forms of popular activism helped resurgent and often rebellious civil societies bring down many types of dictatorship. There were changes that led to the complicated idea that if a strong civil society could force a shift to democracy, it could also keep democracy in place.
6. David Held recently tried to give a sociological meaning of “civil society” to help explain what it means. He said, “Civil society is unique in that it is made up of areas of social life—the home, the economy, cultural activities, and political interactions—that are organised by private or voluntary agreements between individuals and groups outside of the direct control of the state.” In the 1990s, everyone from officials to political scientists repeated the phrase “civil society” over and over again. Civil society was able to grow in places that used to be dictatorships because of the global trend towards democracy. People in the United States and Western Europe were tired of old party systems, which made them interested in civil society as a way to change society.
7. In Contemporary Society, privatisation and other market changes gave civil society the chance to step in as governments pulled back. This was especially true in the developing world. And the internet revolution gave people new ways to make connections and give them more power. Civil society became an important part of the society that came after the Cold War.
The scope of civil society:
1. A lot of the excitement about civil society right now comes from its interest in non-governmental organisations, especially advocacy groups that work for public interest and causes and care about the environment, human rights, women’s issues, disability rights, election monitoring, fighting corruption, and so on.
2. Civil society, on the other hand, is a much broader concept that includes political parties and market-based organisations. It also includes a wide range of other groups, such as labour unions, professional associations like those of doctors and lawyers, chambers of commerce, ethnic associations, and others. The list has everything on it.
3. It also includes religious groups, student groups, cultural groups, sports clubs, and informal community groups that don’t have clear social or political goals.
4. In both developed and developing countries, non-government groups do have important roles to play. They help make policy by putting pressure on governments and giving policymakers the technical knowledge they need. They get people involved and teach them about their government. They teach young people how to be leaders who want to be involved in public life but don’t care about political parties. In theocratic and dictatorial countries, religious groups, cultural groups, and other groups often have a large following among the people and are able to get money from within the country. Most support groups don’t have enough money from within the country.
5. In these countries, where the number of NGOs is growing quickly, many of them are run by the elite and have few ties to the general public. They also rely heavily on foreign funding because they can’t get enough money from their own countries.
6. Aside from these good aspects of civil society formation, it is important to note that the mafia and militia groups are just as much a part of civil society as the other humane organisations. Some people who are interested in civil society have spread the one-sided idea that civil society is only about good causes and projects that help people. But civil society is a mix of the good, the bad, and the just plain weird everywhere. If you only include people in civil society who are working towards more humane goals, the idea becomes religious, not political or sociological, which could hurt the idea of society itself.
In a democratic country, civil society has the following roles:
In his piece “Rethinking Civil Society,” Larry Diamond writes, “Civil society plays a big part in building and keeping democracy strong. Diamond thinks that civil society does the following important things:
1. To limit the power of the state: by keeping an eye on its political abuses and lawbreaking and making them public. Diamond says, “A strong civil society is probably more important for making democracy work and keeping it going than making it work in the first place.”
2. To give people more power by “increasing the political efficacy and skills of the democratic citizen and promoting an understanding of the duties and rights of democratic citizenship.”
3. To teach and encourage citizens to develop democratic traits like tolerance, moderation, a desire to make compromises, and respect for different points of view. Diamond says that this is an important function because it gives “traditionally excluded groups” like women and people of different races or ethnicities access to power that has been denied to them in the top levels of formal politics.
4. To give political parties and other groups ways to talk about, combine, and stand up for their own interests. This makes democracy better because it makes involvement and influence possible at all levels of government, including the local level.
5. To act as a recruiting, information, and leadership-creating agency, especially in economically developed societies, where economic change is sometimes needed but often hard to achieve if it threatens economic interests that have been built up over time. The huge economic failure in Indonesia made a lot of people angry and put President Suharto in a dangerous position. This changed the situation so that civil society groups and alternative parties could bring people together in a way that had never been done before.
6. A well-established civil society could act as an organisation that keeps an eye out for shocks, where people with different interests can meet and help ease the main points of political conflict.
7. To get public and political support for successful economic and political reforms that need the backing of coalitions in society and the legislature.
8. A civil society with strong roots also helps find and train new political leaders. As such, it can “play a key role in reviving the narrow and stagnant party-dominated patterns of leadership recruitment.”
9. Election tracking – Both at home and abroad, a lot of non-partisan groups keep an eye on elections. Diamond says that these kinds of efforts have been very important for finding fraud, boosting voter trust, proving the legitimacy of the result, or showing that the opposition won even though there was government fraud. Some examples are the Philippines in the middle of the 1980s and Panama in the late 1980s.
10. Civil society improves “the accountability, responsiveness, inclusiveness, effectiveness, and thus legitimacy of the political system” by making people feel better about the government. By doing this, it shows respect for the state and gets people involved in it in a good way. Here, civil society is a key part of building and keeping a stable government that cares about quality.
In a paper called “Civil society and Democracy in Global Governance,” written by DR. JAN AART SCHOLTE, the ideas are looked at in depth. She Scholte says that civil society could help democracy in six ways:
1. Public education: Being aware is the most important part of any democratic society. By educating the people, the civil society could make democracy better. A well-functioning democracy depends on well-informed citizens. Civic groups can help a lot by making people more aware of and knowledgeable about the laws and institutions that are already in place around the world. To reach this goal, civil society groups can put together handbooks and information kits, make audiovisual presentations, hold workshops, send out newsletters, give information to the media and get their attention, run websites on the internet, and create curriculum materials for schools and colleges.
2. Voice for stakeholders – Stakeholders could help promote democracy government if civil society gave them a voice. Civic groups can give people a chance to tell government agencies about their needs and wants by sharing information, testimonies, and analyses. Civil society organisations can give a voice to people who aren’t heard enough, like the poor, women, and people with disabilities. This is because their chosen representatives in executive and legislative bodies don’t always speak up for them. In this way, public activism could give people more power and change politics to make it more democratic and open to participation.
3. Policy inputs: The government’s policies are heavily affected by what the civil society says, both at home and when it comes to starting debates about the so-called “Washington Consensus.” They have done quality surveys of poverty and put pressure on the South to come up with plans to cut its debt.
4. Governance that is open and clear to the public can be brought about by vigilant social mobilisation. Civil society’s constant pressure can help bring regulatory systems and how they work out into the open, where the public can look at them. Most people don’t know what choices are made by the government, who makes them, from what options, on what grounds, what the expected results are, and what resources are used to carry them out. Through their well-connected networks, civic groups can question the government’s popular talk about “transparency” by asking important questions about what is made visible, when, how, by whom, for what purpose, and in whose interest.
5. Accountability to the public: The public can hold different agencies responsible through civil society. Civic groups can keep an eye on how policies affect people and how they are put into action. If the results are bad, they can push for changes. For example, the World Bank and the IMF have fair ways for independent civic bodies to evaluate their policies. In this way, they have more often criticised how they treat countries that aren’t as developed. Even though Western countries say they are democratic, when they act as global players, they are often much more dictatorial than the countries they criticise and punish. In this case, the accountability role of the civic agencies can push the world’s leaders to take more responsibility for their actions and policies.
6. Legitimacy: The steps taken by the civil society so far could lead to a democratic rule that is legal. People accept legitimate rule when they agree that a leader has the right to rule and that they have to do what they say. Because of this, legal government tends to be carried out more easily, effectively, and without violence than illegitimate and dictatorial government.
How Civil Society and Democracy Work Together:
Civil society should have a bigger agenda of democracy as a policy of global governance. Civil society could not only work for democracy at home, but it could also be seen in the way the world order became more democratic. Aside from this, foreign concerns about human rights, women’s rights, disabled people’s rights, and the environment have a big effect on how domestic policies are made and carried out. For example, NGOs and think tanks that work on development issues and advocate for global debt relief and socially sustainable structural adjustment have started to look closely at national and local governments’ budgets. Also, women’s groups have often used international laws and institutions to their advantage in order to democratise the state based on gender. Human rights issues around the world also give a boost to the rights of people with disabilities. In all of these cases, civil society can give people a way to agree with the way that world governance is set up.
1. In this article, it is emphasised that civil society can help change authoritarian countries into democratic ones, and that it can also help keep a democratic government in place once it has been set up. For example, in Eastern European countries, South Africa, Serbia, the Philippines, Georgia, and more recently Egypt, Yemen, and Lebanon, people have used civil society organisations to fight for political independence by learning about democracy and rallying millions of their fellow citizens against repressive regimes.
2. In a democratic system, civil society organisations give citizens a way to pursue common interests in the political, social, or spiritual spheres. Citizens learn about basic democratic values like participation and group action, which they then spread in their own communities. Civil society movements that represent citizen interests can have a big impact on both government policy and social attitudes. Civil society actions that don’t depend on the government can be a check on its power.
The democratic dangers of civil society:
The role that civil society plays in democracy at home and around the world is well understood. But in this case, it’s important to note that civil society could, in some ways, hurt democratic control of foreign relations. There are seven general things that could go wrong.
1. Even though the term “civil society” seems to imply civility and virtue at first, in practise, some parts of such organisations may work to undermine democracy. For example, some civic groups may work to promote their own small interests and privileges. Groups that promote racism, ultranationalism, and religious fundamentalism are harmful and work against the political rights of others. Parts of Islam that are important in politics, like the Muslim Brotherhood, have not pushed for democracy in a complete way.
2. Civil society could move away from democracy if its efforts aren’t well planned, designed, or carried out. For example, if activists do their jobs without knowing how institutions work, they could hurt the goals of their organisation. Even academics may not be able to connect their theoretical models of how democracy works everywhere to real-world proof and the political needs of that area.
3. Government agencies that aren’t well-equipped can’t handle input from civil society. Regulatory bodies may not have the right staff, the right processes, or the right attitude to take advantage of the benefits that civil society has to offer. Officials from the government may only talk to social groups after the most important policy decisions have already been made. Instead of making society more democratic, this could lead to conflict and chaos.
4. The money and perks from the government could make the volunteers in the civic group lose sight of their goals and focus on short-term gains instead.
5. Inadequate representation could seriously hurt the way democracy works. If civil society is to live up to all of its promises, then all levels of civil society should be able to talk to the government, and everyone should have the same chances to get involved. Otherwise, civil privileges could be based on class, gender, nationality, race, religion, living in the city or the country, and so on.
6. Civil society’s interest in global democracy could make it insensitive to local cultural practises. In this case, civil society might not be able to respond to all of the situations of local people. There is a risk that civil society in the South and in countries that were once run by communists could be heavily influenced by NGOs with a western style and western funding that are run by westernised people. These activists might criticise the way the world is run now, since they have more in common with global managers than with local groups. So, NGOs and other professionalised civil society groups may, without meaning to, push aside grassroots groups that could better represent the many different ways of life that global government affects.
7. There may not be enough democracy within civil society. This is true even for groups that work for more democracy. Civil society groups that don’t have internal democracy are not only bad in and of themselves, but they also go against the goal of bringing democracy to society as a whole. Civic groups often give their members little to do besides pay dues. Civil society organisations may speak up for certain groups without asking them well enough. In the name of helping people, the leaders of a civic group might shut down discussion. Civic groups may not be transparent because they don’t always put out financial statements or statements of their organization’s goals, let alone full-scale records of what they do.
Given these problems, you shouldn’t let many of the appealing ideas about civil society sway you. A lot can go right, but a lot can go wrong, too. Civil society can be a way to reach good goals, but it is not the goal itself. There are times when being involved in the community can hurt democracy or even make it fall apart. The first thing that society should expect is that civic groups show, not just say, that they are democratically legitimate.
Conclusions about civil society:
So many academics agree on this point that some sociologists wonder if the idea of civil society even works outside of the West. Robert P. Weller, in a study comparing China and Taiwan, says, “I have avoided the term ‘civil society’ even though I have written about many of its core issues.” When writing, the word “civil society” has problematic theoretical assumptions and historical connotations that come from a certain European philosophical tradition. “With the arrival of European colonialism, the state becomes an undeniable, unavoidable part of the business of social living, and the institutional organisation of the modern state invites a discussion about the difference between the state and civil society.”
For a more academic look at the subject, the following points could help you understand how complicated it is.
1. First of all, people who support civil society tend to paint it as all good, even perfect. For example, in his article “Civil Society and Building Democracy: Lessons from International Donor Experience,” Harry Blair writes that civil society organisations make it easier for people to take part in making policy, make the government more accountable to its citizens, and teach people about democratic politics. This describes an idea, an idea that has helped get hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign grants to civil society organisations in less-developed countries since 1989, with mixed results.
2. Second, people who have a positive view of civil society often talk about how engaged citizens are without saying how they sometimes disagree. But conflict over resources, laws, policies, and power is at the heart of civil society because different people have different goals. Because of this, fundamentalist societies that believe there is only one source of truth, like the Soviet Union under Stalin and other communist countries in the first half of the 20th century or Iran under the leadership of Ayatollah Khomeini, are much less tolerant of civil society than societies that welcome different points of view.
3. Third, since Tocqueville, most people in the West have thought that individuality is the most important part of civil society. Ernest Gellner, for example, says that the building block of civil society is the “modular man,” a person who is independent but also willing and able to get along with others. But in most of the world, people don’t think of themselves as modules. They think that their identities as members of certain groups (based on family, religion, ethnicity, caste, race, or other factors) are essential and can’t be changed easily. In Saekete Centre, for example, Muslims, Christians, and people who believe in local gods all live together. When Muslims and Christians face especially hard problems, they often make sacrifices to local gods. But being open to different ways of doing things doesn’t mean that people are like Lego blocks and can easily switch from one faith to another. Like family and ethnicity, religion ties a person into a web of social relationships and cultural meanings that can only be broken at a high price. The main idea behind civil society is that people are not as social as they think they are. If people are thought of as modules, how do we come up with a concept of civil society that works across countries?
4. Fourth, the idea of civil society is given too many different meanings. Some people have said that civil society is made up of all non-state organisations other than the family. This is not a good idea because it includes many social forms that are mostly private and doesn’t make civil society stand out from society as a whole. To make the idea more helpful, the civil aspect of civil society must limit the category to networks, movements, and organisations that have a public dimension.
5. Fifth, this section makes it clear that civil society is basically two things: it has private roots but is focused on the public good. Civil society groups promote private interests by using more often nonviolent public means, such as association, education, and demonstration, to change policy and politics at the neighbourhood, city, regional, state, or national level. The things people are interested in can be personal or related to religion, race, or other social groups. In a way that might make the government feel pressure.
To end our talk about civil society on a good academic note, the main idea that has been put into practise is that a healthy and active civil society is necessary for a democracy to work. By giving money and training to different civic groups, the foreign community can help build up civil society in countries that are democratising. But at the same time, one should be careful not to force their own ideas and values on others in the name of civil society or democracy. Even though democracy is one of the best ways to run a country, both at home and abroad, there is no end world in the social sciences. There are a lot of old culture systems and practises in the East that are much better than the way people live now in the West. They shouldn’t be thrown away just because we like to dream about and like the West. More importantly, the discussion and excitement about promoting a better way of life should go on so that people who live in authoritarian societies with terrible poverty and suffering can benefit.
Ideology
The word “ideology” is used in two ways in the field of political theory:
• A set of ideas that a group, party, or country accepts as true without questioning them further; and
• The study of how different ideas come to be, how the truth can be twisted, and how we can get past these errors to get to the truth.
As a set of ideas, ideology:
1. In the first sense, an ideology is a group of ideas that a certain group accepts as true without questioning them further. These ideas are used to defend or criticise a certain way of running a social, economic, or political system. In this way, a philosophy is just a matter of faith; it is not based on science. People who believe in an idea think that it doesn’t need to be tested to see if it’s true.
2. Different groups may have different ideas, so there will always be differences between them. So, ideology leads to love-hate relationships, which are not good for a scientific mind. Some examples of ideas are liberalism, capitalism, socialism, Marxism, communism, anarchism, fascism, imperialism, nationalism, internationalism, etc.
3. Ideologies become part of politics when they are used to defend a current system or to push for small or big changes to that system. A political philosophy can make the ruling class seem more right, or it can make people want to start a revolution. It means, then, that a dominant class or social force has the power to manipulate.
4. An philosophy is focused on doing things. It gives its followers a cause to fight for and makes them willing to give up things for that cause to come true. For example, nationalism can make people willing to give up their money or even their lives to protect the freedom of their country. But communalism can make people hate people from other communities and lead them to base their actions on ignorance, which has led to terrorism around the world.
5. In the world of politics, people may use different ideologies to support different rules or goals. Some of these ideals may be made to serve certain vested interests, while others may be made to question irrational beliefs and norms, paving the way for progress. For example, the ideology of imperialism can be used to help exploit colonial lands and their people, while the ideology of environmentalism can be used to save humanity from the curse of pollution and the loss of valuable natural resources.
Ideology, as the science of ideas, is:
1. The word “ideology” was first made up to mean the study of ideas. In this way, it tries to figure out how ideas come about, how they get messed up, and how true ideas can be separated from false ones. Destutt de Tracy, a French scholar who lived from 1954 to 1836, was the first person to use the word “ideology.” He did this between 1801 and 1815 in his writings about the Enlightenment. He said it was a science of ideas that looked at how thoughts are made. Tracy noticed that ideas are sparked by the physical world. This means that the only way to learn is through sense experience, or empirical learning. Paranormal or spiritual things have nothing to do with how real thoughts come about. These ideas are what science is built on. People could use science to make the social and political world a better place.
2. Even though Tracy was the first person to use the word “ideology” in this way, he was not the first person to study how ideas are made. Before him, the English philosopher Francis Bacon (1561–1626) said that people should learn from careful and correct observation and experience. He thought that false ideas or “idols” messed up the knowledge that could be gained from ways that weren’t as scientific. In short, Bacon and Tracy emphasised the reliability of scientific knowledge and warned against skewed forms of knowledge.
3. In modern writing, the word “ideology” refers to a set of ideas that a group agrees on in order to get them to work together to reach certain goals. Different words are used to talk about the science of ideas, like “sociology of knowledge,” which was first used by Karl Mannheim. The science of ideas is used to figure out why the most popular ideas are wrong. Marx was the first person to try to do this in a planned way. In the end, Lukacs and Mannheim also made important advances.
Karl Marx’s Views
1. Karl Marx (1818–83) wrote about the nature of ideology in “German Ideology” (1845–46) and “A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy” (1859). He says that fake consciousnesses show up in the form of ideologies.
2. Marx said that as society changes, people’s material wants get better, but their social awareness gets worse. Their ideology shows that they have a skewed or false sense of reality. At every stage of social growth, the dominant class uses ideas to keep its power. For example, the people who started the French Revolution in 1789 used the slogan “Liberty, Equality, Brotherhood” to get people to back them. But they settled for freedom because it was in their interest, that is, the interest of the new class of entrepreneurs at the time. They didn’t keep fighting until they won freedom for everyone. Instead, they stopped when they won freedom for a new ruling class to protect property.
3. Marx and Engels, who lived from 1820 to 1895, thought that ideology was a way to protect the interests of the ruling class. So, in order to stay in power, the bourgeoisie (the class of capitalists) needs a philosophy. On the other hand, when the working class (the Proletariat) takes power after the socialist revolution, it has no reason to stay in power. It tries to make things so bad that the state will “wilt away.” It doesn’t want to keep being the most powerful class, so it works to make society without classes.
4. But V.I. Lenin (1870–1924) used the term “what is” to hide the contradictions that were already there. Today, “what is” is a neutral term that refers to the political awareness of different classes, including the proletarian class. During the socialist phase, he said, the class war will go on for a very long time. So, the proletariats also need an ideology—the ideology of scientific socialism—to guide them, or else the bourgeois ideology will win out and control them.
View of Likacs
1. Georg Lukacs, a Hungarian Marxist who lived from 1885 to 1971, thought that awareness was always about class. Because the proletariat was becoming more and more alienated from the social and economic world, it was in a unique place in history from which it could reach universal awareness.
2. Lukacs said that the word “ideology” could mean both “bourgeoisie” and “proletarian consciousness” without having to mean something bad. Marxism is the thought of the working class, or proletariat. Lukacs said that bourgeois ideology is false, not because ideology is false awareness, but because the bourgeois class situation is structurally limited. In other words, the capitalist class, or bourgeoisie, can’t stand on its own. It needs to take advantage of the proletariat (the working class) to stay alive. Bourgeois ideology is bad because it controls and pollutes the proletariat’s psychological awareness. Lukacs, on the other hand, has said that ideological fight shouldn’t take the place of class struggle.
Views of Karl Mannheim
Karl Mannheim, a German philosopher who lived from 1893 to 1947, wrote a famous book called “Ideology and Utopia.” In it, he argues against Marx’s theory of ideology on three grounds:
1. The way a group thinks (its consciousness) has nothing to do with its economic goals; there is no straight link between consciousness and economic goals.
2. All thinking is shaped by a person’s social background. Because of this, Marxism is the ideology of a class.
3. Aside from classes, other social groups, like different generations, also have a big impact on awareness.
Mannheim came up with the word “sociology of knowledge” to talk about how social factors affect what people know or how they think (Consciousness). He tried to make the Marxist structure a way to look at things in a more general way.
1. He thought that false consciousness could show up in two ways: ideology and utopia. Ideology is the tendency to keep things the same, and it uses false consciousness to get people to support keeping things the same. Utopia, on the other hand, is the drive to change, and it uses false consciousness to get people to support the forces of change by presenting unrealistic principles.
2. The ruling class uses ideology, while the opposition may show a utopia. Mannheim said that the Marxist image of a society without classes was not a utopia, so it also uses false consciousness to get what it wants.
3. Mannheim’s idea that all knowledge is relative makes it hard to know objective truth. Is there no hope, then, to find the truth? Well, there is a silver lining. Mannheim depends on the possibility of a “free floating stratum of intellectuals between the contending classes to achieve disinterested knowledge.” He hopes that some enlightened people within the conflicting groups will realise that their perception of truth is part of the problem.
4. In other words, they will be able to see a realistic vision between ideology and utopia. Mannheim calls these thinkers “social scientists.” He suggests that these social scientists, who have shown they can see the objective truth, should be given the power to rule.
5. Critics say that Mannheim has made it hard to tell where knowledge comes from and whether or not it is true. His extreme relativism allows for the possibility of ideas without supporters. Also, giving power to social scientists is dangerous because it could lead to absolutism. Instead, social scientists should criticise those in power instead of being in power themselves. They could do this by organising protests and agitations, writing and reporting, and acting as consciences.
Totalitarianism and Ideology:
When ideology is seen as a way to get people to work towards fixed goals, it is close to totalitarianism. Because of this, some writers say that ideology in this way only exists in totalitarian systems and has no place in an open society.
1. In “The Open Society and Its Enemies,” a book written by the famous Austrian philosopher Karl Popper (1902–1994), he said that doctrine is what makes totalitarianism what it is, and that it has nothing to do with an open society. He said that both science and freedom thrive in a society that is open to new ideas and ready to accept them. Totalitarian societies, on the other hand, say they have already found the total truth and work hard to force it on everyone. Ideology is the tool that the government uses to get its people and other resources to work towards a goal that is said to be the absolute truth. It doesn’t let anyone stand up to it.
2. Popper thought that liberal democratic societies in the West were open societies that didn’t need a philosophy to work well. People in these societies are free to criticise the institutions and power structures that are already in place.
Hannah Arendt, a German Jew philosopher who lived from 1906 to 1975, wrote “The Origins of Totalitarianism” in 1951. In it, she described totalitarianism as a system of total control based on philosophy and terror. It was possible in Europe in recent years because of three things:
1. The way Jews were treated in politics and society, which gave anti-Semitism (the tendency to hate Jews) a new force;
2. Imperialism, which led to racist movements and the spread of power around the world; and the breakup of European society into displaced masses that were so lonely and confused that they could be brought together by ideas.
• Because of this, Popper and Arendt focused on how philosophy is used by totalitarian governments. It’s interesting to remember that Marx created the idea of dogma in the late 1800s to show how wrong capitalism was. Early in the 20th century, the idea of “totalitarianism” was created to describe the dictatorial ways in which the communist regime of the Soviet Union worked until Stalin’s death in 1953 and the fascist regimes of Italy (under Mussolini) and Germany (under Hitler) worked until the end of the Second World War in 1945.
• Both communist and fascist governments used their beliefs to get their people to work towards their goals. Popper mostly looked at the communist regime and Arendt at the fascist regime to show how philosophy and totalitarianism go hand in hand.
End of ideology debate:
In the mid-1950s and 1960s, the world’s current state of ideas was looked at. In liberal-democratic western countries, people said that the age of dogma was over. These countries saw dogma as a tool of totalitarianism that had no place in free societies.
1. “End of ideology” also meant that a country’s social and economic organisation at a high level of industrial development is based on its level of development and not on its political philosophy. In other words, even though they have different ideologies, capitalist and communist countries were bound to develop similar traits when they reached the same stage of industrial growth.
2. In 1955, in Milan, Italy, there was a meeting called “The Future of Freedom.” In the conference’s proceedings, you can find early signs of this point of view. Edward Shills’s report on this meeting was published in Encounter in 1955. It was called “The End of Ideology” and was about the conference. The people at the meeting were told to put aside their small disagreements and find ways to work together to face the threat of Communism. During his speech, DANIEL BELL said, “Ideologies are worn out today. Intellectuals in the Western World generally agree on political problems like the need for a welfare state, the value of decentralised power, a mixed economy, and political pluralism. In this way, too, the age of ideology is over.” Several Western writers agreed with this view and added to it.
3. Daniel Bell said in his famous book “The End of Ideology” (1960) that post-industrial societies tend to grow in the same way, no matter how different their ideologies are. Less of their workers are in manufacturing than in services. In other words, when a country’s industrial growth has reached a more advanced stage, the services sector grows faster than the manufacturing sector. A second thing that defines it is that technical leaders are becoming more and more powerful. Politics have nothing to do with the change in this way.
4. Ralph Dahrendorf claimed in his 1957 book “Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society” that western societies had moved into a new stage of development. They were no longer capitalist societies; instead, they were postcapitalist societies. Marx’s theory was based on the fact that economic conflict and political conflict often happened at the same time. In postcapitalist countries, this was no longer the case. In a capitalist society, the lines of tension between business and government were mixed together.
5. In the political field, capitalists and workers, who were rivals in the business world, met again as the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. In the post-capitalist society, on the other hand, business and society are no longer tied together. The patterns and issues of the social relationships in the industrial sphere, such as industrial conflict, no longer affect the whole of society. Instead, they are limited to the industrial sphere. In a post-capitalist world, business and business conflicts are separated by institutions. In other words, they stay within their own realms and don’t get involved in politics or other parts of social life. So, from Dahrendorf’s point of view, the Marxist framework was no longer useful for analysing Western cultures.
6. First, Seymour m. In his 1960 book “Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics,” Liset made a very important point: democracy is not just or even mainly a way for different groups to achieve their goals or look for a good society. Democracy is the good society in action. Lipset said that in Western democracies, the differences between the left and the right aren’t as big as they used to be. Now, the only problems in politics are small things like small increases in wages and prices, extending pensions for the elderly, etc. He said that the main political problems caused by the industrial revolution have been solved. He said this because workers have become industrial and political citizens, conservatives have accepted the welfare state, and the democratic left has realised that an increase in overall state power poses more threats to freedom than solutions to economic problems. Since democracy has won in the west, intellectuals have come to realise that they don’t need ideals or utopias to move them to act politically.
7. W.w. Rostow, in “The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto” (1960), made a model of economic growth that was the same for all countries, no matter what their political beliefs were. He said that all societies go through five stages of growth: “Traditional society,” “preconditions for take-off,” “take-off,” “road to maturity,” and “the age of high mass consumption.” He thought that the way Asia, Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East were developing at the time was similar to how the West grew in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, when the conditions were right for growth to start and then when it did. Rostow said that the adoption of different political views had nothing to do with how the economies of different countries developed.
8. J.K. In his 1967 book “The New Industrial State,” Galbraith pointed out some things about advanced industrial societies that match up with the “end of ideology” theory. “All industrialised societies are destined to develop in the same way,” Galbraith said. This means that there needs to be more control, bureaucratization, specialisation, and technocratization. Both the Russian and American systems had these traits, even though they were based on very different ideas: communism and capitalism, respectively. It means that a country’s technoeconomic structure is not based on its political beliefs, but on how industrialised it is. Galbraith said that in all successful industrial societies, a new ruling class made up of the bureaucratic and technocratic elite had come to power. This class was neither part of the working class nor the rich. In liberal countries with an open meritocracy, people from this class held high positions. They don’t care about any individual capitalists because they move around a lot. Bureaucracy and technocracy have power in society, not businessmen. Galbraith comes to the conclusion that anti-capitalism is the best way for people to be free in the world today.
9. The thesis about the end of ideology had a lesson for the new countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. It meant that they should work on developing their industries and not look to communism as a quick fix for their problems. The “End of History” thesis gave this view a new boost when communist governments in East European countries fell apart in 1989, followed by a similar failure in the Soviet Union in 1991. In his paper called “The End of History,” Francis Fukuyama claimed that the failure of socialism (or communism in this case) meant that economic and political liberalism had won for good. It marked the end of humanity’s intellectual development and the spread of western liberal democracy as the best way to run a country. Fukuyama said that there are no basic contradictions in liberal democracy and that it can achieve the deepest hopes of people. Its victory marked the end of a long battle in history that had stopped its growth in the past. This theory got a lot of attention from the Western press and academia because it fit with the way they thought.
Critics of the discussion on the end of ideology:
1. But Richard Titmuss, C. Wright mills, C.B. The end of ideology theory was harshly criticised by both MacPherson and Alasdair Macintyre. Titmuss noticed that people who support “the end of ideology” don’t talk about the problems with the capitalist system, such as monopolistic economic power, social chaos, and a lack of culture opportunities. C. Wright Mills called the people who believed in the End of Ideology theory “proponents of the status quo.” He thinks that the only way for many social scientists to agree with or explain the current social structure is through a philosophy of political complacency. The End of Ideology Thesis is a way of saying that human and political ideas are not important. C.B. MacPherson said that those who support the End of Ideology thesis try in vain to solve the problem of fair sharing in a market society. Alasdair Macintyre pointed out in his 1971 book “Against the Self-Images of the Age” that “theorists of the end of ideology failed to consider a crucial alternative possibility: that the end of ideology, far from signalling the end of ideology, was itself a key expression of the ideology of the time and place where it came about.”
2. In short, the end of ideology debate and its most recent form are meant to show that liberal democracy is the best way to run a country, both in theory and in practise. In the world we live in now, where people want to liberalise, privatise, and go global more and more, this idea seems to be doing well. But it needs to be looked at carefully. Socialism could fail in a big part of the world because people made mistakes in how it was run. Also, the democratic world of the West is by no means the best example of fairness and morals. Emancipation is a complicated process. There are no ready-made solutions to all the problems that people face. When coming up with a solution, they may take and look at important ideas from different ideologies. The most important of these are liberalism, Marxism, socialism, fascism, anarchism, Gandhism, and feminism.
Conclusion:
1. Ideology has been called a sign of false awareness or a tool of totalitarianism, among other things. But it’s not okay to look at all ideas the same way. In real life, different philosophies will continue to exist as sets of ideas that different groups use to express their own value systems. They will be used to get people to work towards the goals that their backers care about. Some groups may also use them to convince others that their views are right. Ideologies are not just for the classes that have power; oppressed classes also have their own. You can’t just ignore them as “false consciousness.”
2. People who share the same ideas could get together through their ideologies instead of sticking to their tribe, caste, church, area, etc. They may show how people’s ideas about important problems are changing. Some ideas have led to strong social movements for the freedom of different groups that have been mistreated. Some ideas show that they care a lot about the future of people. Having a strong belief in a cause is a sign of a philosophy. It takes out having a personal interest, being biassed, or giving in to someone, a group, or a dynasty. It stands for a set of ideas that make sense when looked at from one’s own point of view. It can also be used to get other people to understand that point of view. In the world of politics, this is how developing countries try to get more developed countries to accept humanist ideas and policies.
