Economic and Political Crisis

8/6/2019 Economic and Political Crisis

1/5

Economic and Political Shifts and Social Change

Politics and economy are part and parcel of social life. Politics is concernedwith the power structure embedded in the social formation. Economy is laden

with modes of production and distribution of manufactured goods in a givensociety. Different levels of political developments or regressions give rise tonew social realities. The rise of Nazis, fascists, Marxists and nationalists gavebirth to novel social orders with new tools of social control. The majordifference amongst these political trends is modus operandi to deal with theirrespective economic systems. The underlying social systems were alsothematic determinants to bring out new trends in polity and economy of astate and society.

The political routes extremely vary in historical institutionalism module of formulating new political economy of a state and as a sequel changing socialstructure of a society. Different paths of political development noted in thesecases are briefly discussed here. There are four main paths of politicaldevelopment.

First, there is a path that leads from non-democracy gradually but inexorably and inevitably to democracy. Once created, democracy is never

threatened and it endures and consolidates however there occurs an unusualrise of non democratic actors. But they remain with the political structure of society by and large. Britain is the best example of such a path of politicaldevelopment. There democratic traditions spawned a social attitude muchopen to new ideas. Openness on the part of society is hospitable to diffusion of cultures, ideas and technologies and peoples. As the inevitable result of thesedevelopments is a multi-culturalism at national level.

The subsequent problems also accompany with these trends like racialdiscrimination, issue of minority, extremism and anti-immigration debate. But the salient part of these democratic cultures is that all these issues andproblems are debated within the democratic paraphernalia within the state.

Second, there is a path that leads to democracy but where democracy, oncecreated, quickly collapses. Following this, the forces that led to the initial


2/5

democratization reassert themselves, but then democracy collapses again andthe cycle repeats itself. This path where democracy, once created, remainsunconsolidated is best exemplified by the Argentinian and Pakistaniexperience during the twentieth and twenty first centuries. In these statessocial change varies according to the role of civil society and opposition toundemocratic forces. The periods of undemocratic style of politics witnessedhigh rate of economic growth and polarization of society along class linesbased on the distribution of wealth and privileges.

This phenomenon is much pronounced in those states where military rulewith backing of metropolitan powers like Britain and the U.S. The rulingoligarchies become loci of political change and societal destabilization after

few decades of iron-fisted rule. We can see that every military regime inPakistan left a legacy of ethnic problems, creation of a praetorian state systemand economic system governed by the structural adjustment programmes of international financial institutions.

Logically, a third path is one in which a country remains nondemocratic ordemocratization is much delayed as in Saudi Arabia. Because there areimportant variations in the origins of such a path, it is useful to split nondemocratic paths into two. In the first path, democracy is never created

because society is relatively egalitarian and prosperous, which makes the non-democratic political status quo stable. The system is not challenged becausepeople are sufficiently satisfied under the existing political institutions. Insuch states the economic windfall of natural resources plays a vital role insatisfying people s needs. The rentier state system creates an inorganic link between state and society due to absence of taxation system. The societyremains immune from social upheavals and popular mobilization due to lack of social capital.

Singapore, Saudi Arabia and Gulf statelets are the societies whose politicaldynamics we can characterize in this way. In the second of thesenondemocratic paths, the opposite situation arises. Society is highly unequaland exploitative, which makes the prospect of democracy so threatening topolitical elites that they use all means possible, including violence and


3/5

repression, to avoid it. In such conditions chances of mass mobilization arevery high. What types of social change takes place in existing political crisisdepends upon the nature of oppressive state apparatus and the nature of theleadership emerged from the ashes of those who are oppressed. Thus politicaloppression can lead to revolutionary change, which tends to catapult thewhole dominated political discourse and its subsequent assemblage throughinstitutions and the use of force. South Africa, before the collapse of theapartheid regime, is our canonical example of such a path. Algerian and Cubanrevolutions also manifest these trends, when underlying political oppressionand economic marginalization of masses created situation ripe for total socialchange.

At economic level similar parallels can be drawn to formulate broaderschemes of path- development, which directly affect society and polity.Intuitively, the structure of the economy or economic institutions could beimportant if they influence the trade-off between democracy and non-democracy for the elites or the benefits of democracy as opposed torevolution for the citizens. There are many reasons why this might be so.

First, the structure of the economy might influence the costs of revolution,repression, or coups. Second, the structure of the economy may also influence

the nature of redistributive politics between different groups, something that our framework links to the creation and consolidation of democracy. Themodels analyzed also allow us to consider some of the most salient claims inthe political science and sociology literature about democracy. For instance,the claim that democracy can never be sustained in a primarily agrariansociety, or at least one where the elites are large landowners, is common inthe literature from Barrington Moore (1966), and Robert Dahl (1971), toRueschemeyer, Stephens, and Stephens (1992). Yet, the micro-foundations of

this claim are unclear.

Although the socioeconomic development tends to bring predictablechanges in people s worldviews, cultural traditions such as whether asociety has been historically shaped by Protestantism, Confucianism, orcommunism continue to show a lasting imprint on a society s worldview.


4/5

H istory matters and a society s prevailing value orientations reflect aninteraction between the driving forces of modernization and the retardinginfluence of tradition.

Second, modernization is not linear. It does not move indefinitely in thesame direction but reaches inflection points at which the prevailing directionof change, changes. Thus, modernization goes through different phases, eachof which brings distinctive changes in people s worldviews. Modernizationalso occurs at multiple fronts politics, society, culture and economy. Allthese are entangled together.

The Industrial Revolution was linked with a shift from traditional tosecular-rational values, bringing the secularization of authority, urbanization,

creation of labour class, social polarization along class-lines, womenparticipation in work places and production en masse. It created newbureaucratic system of governance and rigid formalization of methods of social control.

Colonization of foreign lands took place at stratospheric levels in that erato make industry of the west churn out manufactured products. Thecapitalistic development of agrarian economy linked the local markets of these colonized lands to metropolitan powers of the West. The relationbetween land, labour and capital created new social links marked byrationality. The social relations in urban centers were ridden with impersonalcalculations. The sense of communitarianism began to lose steam. Socialcapital was depleted.

In the postindustrial phase of modernization, a new cultural changebecomes dominant a shift from survival values to self-expression values orconsumer values, which brings increasing emancipation from authority.

Rising self-expression values have transformed modernization into a processof much emphasis on consumption of luxuries and advertised goods at masslevel. This trend has given rise to mass society at social level.

This process of development of mass culture is the most salient feature of 21 st century. It has unleashed new forces of social change too at every level.


5/5

The work has been rendered routinized and alienating. Leisure has beenindustrialized. Corporatism of social life has taken place. Religion has lost itsinfluence. There is a sharp lack of deeply held moral values, although themasses are prone to ideological fanaticism. The relationship betweenindividuals is becoming very weak. The culture has become a mass culturemainly operated through ideological apparatuses installed through networksof society and polity. Thus the rise of consumer value system in economicarena has produced a mass of undifferentiated and easily influenced peopleover the world. Thus there is a shift from production to consumption at masslevel.

Third, there is also a strong social reaction to these economic changes in

modern world. Take the issue of fundamentalism in Muslim societies. In thesesocieties the issue of westernization of local cultures is breeding a wave of unrest and violence. The people, bathed in the values of simplicity andtraditionalism, are finding it very difficult to cope with vulgarized, open andwesternized notions of consumption and modernity. These people areculturally dislocated and left in the middle of the fort. They are fevered by thedreams of the future and engulfed by the memories of a glorified past. Thus,there occurs a duality of thought and behavior pattern in their daily lives. Thisduality is often expressed in the form of fluctuation between the East and theWest. Sometimes it also takes shape of violence. Violence is increasingcreating new social conflicts due to these consumptive-driven impulses inpost-industrial societies.

Thus these are the symptoms of political and economic crises and their rolein social change. The study requires deep research in order to explore newideas to tackle these interlinked politico-economic crises and their impact onsocial change.

Documents

Economic and Political Crisis