INTRODUCTION TO POLITICAL SOCIOLOGY

Origin and growth of political sociology, definition, nature and scope, founding fathers - Karl Marx and Max Weber their contribution

Origin and growth of political sociology

Political sociology, although a new emergence in its modern form, has a long history and there are substantial contributions made by the scholars of nineteenth century. Political sociology, as an independent discipline emerged in the middle of 19^th century. It was not born by accident. Politician, political scientists and sociologists have played a major role in the evolution of this subject. There were a few important factors that contributed to the growth of political sociology. There were many factors that were responsible for the emergence of political sociology.

•      The growing dissatisfaction with the traditional nature of political science. Political science was interested in normative prescriptions and political science had always viewed the state as its star attention.
•     The growth of political sociology was made possible by political scientists who quietly accepted the invasion of sociology into the sphere of politics without any protest. Political scientists began to look at political realities from a scientific perspective or in an empirical manner.
•       Extension of area of politics
•       Distinction between state and society.

Definition

Political sociology is the product of cross fertilization between sociology and political science. It studies the impact of society and politics on each other. Political sociology studies the interrelations between state and other social structures. In simple terms it can be called ‘study of power in a social context’.

Bendix and Lipset define political sociology as that ‘political science starts with the state and examines how it affects the state”. And Smelser N. J tells political sociology can be defined as the study of the interrelationship between society and polity between social structures and political institution. It seeks to investigate and explain the interrelationship between politics, social structures, ideologies and cultures.

Nature and Scope

Political sociology is a science like any other science. It employs systematic methods of investigation, theoretical thinking and logical assessment of arguments. Political sociology collects evidence about the selected subject matter using planned and organized methods. Explanations and conclusions are drawn on the basis of carefully collected evidences. Findings and conclusions are open to inspections, criticism and testing by other researchers. Political sociology involves systematic methods of investigation, analysis of data and the assessment of theories in the light of evidences and logical argument.

The scope of political sociology is very vast

Political sociology is concerned with the way in which political arrangements depend on social organizations and cultural values. It studies the relationship between the state and society, party system and its relations to society. Politics pervades the entire society. The scope includes the effect of social attitudes on political participations, social classes and their political attitudes, social implication of voting pattern. Political sociology studies the nature of modern democracy and their forum in different socio- political contexts. It studies the impact of social groupings upon political activity, the nature of welfare state, the effectiveness of propaganda and public opinion as means of informal political education. In short political sociology includes all political and social aspects which arise time and again in contemporary societies. Political sociology studies modern institution like bureaucracy, political parties, voting propaganda etc, which are day to day issues in the life of modern masses.

Founding fathers: Karl Marx and Max Weber

Although many have contributed to the growth and development of political sociology, karl marx and max weber are said to be the founding fathers of political sociology.

Karl Marx: he was one of the most influential thinkers in the 19^th century. He was born in Germany in 1818 and his parents were Jewish, the descendent of many generation of rabbis.

·        Historical materialism

·        Class struggle

·        Alienation

According to Marx alienated labour involves four aspects

•         Worker’s alienation from the object he produces.
•        From the process of production
•       From himself
•      From the community of his fellow

Characteristics of Bureaucracy

1.     .    A formal hierarchical structure
2.       Management by rules
3.         Organization by functional specialty
4.         An ‘up focused’ or ‘in focused’ mission
5.         Purposely impersonal
6.         Employment based on technical qualifications

Criticism of Bureaucratic organization

• o   Too much emphasis on rules and regulations
• o   No importance is given to informal groups
• o   Bureaucracy involves a lot of paper work
• o   Unnecessary delay in decision making

Karl Marx: He was one of the most influential thinkers in the 19^th century, He was born in Germany in 1818 and his parents were Jewish, the descendants of many generations of rabbis. He was a man of enormous and obvious brilliance. One contemporary described him in his mid-twenties, Imagine Rousseau vottaire, Holbach, Lessing, Heine and Hegel fused into one person and you have Marx. Marx devoted his life to the cause of socialist revolution. He and his family were, as a result, hounded and spied on by the police forces of half of Europe. They lived in miserable poverty. He is known to the world as the architect of socialism and the champion of communism. He was trained lawyer, a historian, an economist, a political thinker, a journalist, a great humanist and a philosopher. He committed himself to the cause of the exploited working class. His views and thoughts were so powerful that one third of the world’s population was under the grip of his views. In his early life he was concerned more about philosophy and was deeply influenced by George W.F Hegel.

Historical materialism

Hegel had tremendous influence on Marx and borrowed the Hegelian notion of thesis, antithesis and synthesis. Historical materialism is a methodological approach to the study of society economics and history. Marx himself never used the term but referred to his approach as the materialist conception of history. Historical materialism looks for the causes of developments and changes in human society in the means by which humans collectively produce the necessities of life. The non-economic features of a society (e.g. social classes. Political structures, ideologies) are seen as being an outgrowth of its economic activity.

Hegel had tremendous influence on Marx and borrowed the Hegelian notion of thesis, antithesis and synthesis. Historical materialism is a methods logical approach to the study of society economics and history. Marx himself never used the term but referred to his approach as ‘the materialist conception of history’. Historical materialism looks for the causes of developments and changes in human society in the means by which humans collectively produce the necessities of life. The non- economic features of a society are seen as being an outgrowth of its economic activity.

According to him, for human being to survive and continue existence from generation to generation, it is necessary for them to produce and reproduce the material requirements of life like food, shelter etc. Marx thus extended this premise by asserting the importance of the fact that, in order to carry out production and exchange, people have to enter into worry definite social relations, most fundamentally ‘ production relations; However, production doesn’t get carried out in the abstract, or by entering into arbitrary or random relations chosen at will. Human beings collectively work on nature but don’t do the in which people not only do different jobs, but according to Marxist theory, some people live from the work of others by owning the means of production like land, labour, capital and organization. How this is accomplished depends on the type of society. Production is carried out through very definite relations between people. And in turn, these production relations are determined by the level and character of the productive forces that are present at any given time in history for Marx, production such as the fools, instruments, technology, land, raw material and human knowledge and abilities in terms of using these means of production.

Marx identifies the production relations of society (arising on the basis of given production forces) as the economic base of society. In simple terms the economic base of the society consisted of two things;

·        Forces of production:

Forces of production consisted of labour force, tools raw materials, technological knowledge and scientific knowledge. On the other hand relations that control and organize production.

He also explained that on the foundation of the economic base there arise certain political institution, laws, customs, culture etc. and ideas, ways of thinking, morality etc., these constituted the political/ ideological superstructure of society. This superstructure not only has its origin in the economic base, but its features also ultimately correspond to the character and development of that economic base that is the way people organize society is determined by the economic base and the relations that arise from its mode of production.

·        Relations of production:-

He also explained that on the foundation of the economic base there arise certain political institutions, laws, customs, culture etc. and ideas, ways ot thinking, moralities etc.  These constituted the political/ ideological superstructure of society. This superstructure not only has its origin in the economic base, but its features also ultimately correspond to the character and development of that economic base that is the way people organize society is determined by the economic base and the relations that arise from its mode of production.

Class Struggle

Marx conceived society consisting of classes and argued that classes are the most important groups in almost all the societies. According to him different classes are antagonistic to each other. Class is a social group where members share the same relationships to the forces of production. Thus during the feudal stage there are two main classes distinguished by their relationship to land, the major forces of production. They are the feudal nobility who own the land and the landless serf who works the land, similarly in the capitalist society there these bourgeoisies or capitalists who own the forces of production and the proletariats or working class who own only their labour. Marx based his theory of class struggle on the inevitability on conflict of two opposing classes’ society. Classes are interest of the capitalist class is to pay workers as little as possible, to exploit them in order to make more profit whereas the interest of the working class is to raise wages, and eventually to abolish capitalism entirely.

Alienation

Alienation refers to the sense of powerlessness, isolation and meaninglessness experienced by human beings when they are confronted with social institutions or condition that they cannot control and consider oppressive. For Marx the social arrangements in capitalist society alienated the worker. They failed to provide him with the opportunities for a meaningful and creative existence. The worker is alienated because he neither receives satisfaction from his work nor receives the full product of his labour. Marx’s theory of alienation is the contention that under capitalist t condition workers will inevitably lose control over their work. Workers thus cease to be autonomous beings in any significant sense under pre- capitalist conditions a black smith eg or a shoemaker would own his own shop. Set his own hours, determine his own working conditions, shape his own product and have some say in how his product is bartered or sold. His relationships with the people with whom he worked and dealt had a more or less personal character. Under the conditions of modern factory production, by contrast the average worker is not much more than a replaceable cog in a gigantic and impersonal production apparatus.

Criticism on theories of Marx

1.     He was criticized for regarding the sociological factors as dependent variables rather than independent variables and subordinating them to economic interpretation of history.

2.      He also failed to anticipate the adaptive capacity of capitalism. However his general theories of economic determinism and dialectic materialism and his specific theories of class struggle class consciousness and alienation have stimulated a great amount work.

3.     Marx tried to give his theories a firm ground on the basis of evidence which he sought to examine in a systematic and rigorous manner.

Max Weber

Max Weber was a great German sociologist who has left a deep imprint in political sociology. He was one of the founders of modern sociology and began his interest in social sciences when he was 13. He was a man interested in the practical affairs of government and politics. He was born in a comparatively rich protestant family and his father was quite active in politics.

Religion and Economy

Weber wrote extensively on the subject of religion. His essay on protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism is his major contribution to sociology. He observed a close connection between religion ideas and economic forces, such as the Calvinists played a role in creating the capitalistic spirit. Weber first observes a correlation between being protestant and being involved in business, and declares his intent to explore religion as a potential cause of the modern economic conditions. Weber found that, according to protestant religious, individuals were religiously compelled to follow a secular vocation with as much enthusiasm as possible. A person living according to this worldview was more likely to accumulate money. Further, the new religious, such as Calvinism and Protestantism forbade wastefully using hard earned money and labeled the purchase of luxuries as a sin. This religion also frowned upon donating money to the poor or to charity because it was seen as promoting beggary. The way these issues were resolved, Weber argued, was to invest the money, which would give a large boost to capitalism. In other words, capitalism evolved when the protestant ethic influenced large numbers of people to engage in work in the secular world, developing their own enterprises and engaging in trade and the accumulation of wealth for investment. The protestant ethic was therefore the driving force behind the mass action that led to the development of capitalism while Marx argued that it is economy that determined the nature of religion, Weber observed that it is religious conviction and beliefs that determined the basic characteristics of the economy.

Bureaucracy

Weber’s another important contribution in his theory of bureaucracy Weber’s interest in the nature of power and authority and his realization of the inevitability of rationalization in the operation of large scale enterprises in the fields of politics, administration and in business. Bureaucracy is understood as large scale formal organizations of the modern societies with specialized functions. Bureaucratization and rationalization go hand in hand because bureaucracies are organized to rational principles.

Characteristics of Bureaucracy

•      A formal hierarchical structure: - Each level controls the level below and is controlled by the level above. A formal hierarchy is the basis of central planning and centralized decision making.
•        Management by rules: - Controlling by rules allows decisions made at high levels to be executed consistently by all lower levels.
•      Organization by functional specialty:- Work is to be done by specialists, and people are organized into units based on the type of work they do or skills they have.
•      An up-focused or in- focused mission:- If the mission is described as ‘up focused’ then the organization’s purpose is to serve the stockholders, the board, or whatever agency empowered it, if the mission is to serve the organization itself, and those within it. E.g. to produce high profits to gain market share, or to produce a cash stream, then them mission is described as ‘in focused’.
•      Purposely impersonal:- the idea is to treat all employees equally and not be influenced by individual differences.
•      Employment based on technical qualifications:- the employment is done on the basis of technical qualification.

Merits of Bureaucracy

•      Bureaucracy is not only characterized by rational authority but is also endowed with technical superiority and is therefore conducive to efficiency.
•      In bureaucracy there is greater emphasis on objectivity and impartiality. Bureaucratic decisions are based not as personal considerations but as formal rules.
•     In a context of political instability and even immaturity in developing countries bureaucracy may provide stability and efficiency in administration transcending the changing character and composition of political elements.

Criticism

•      Too much emphasis on rules and regulations. The rules and regulations are rigid and inflexible.
•      No importance is given to informal groups. Nowadays, informal groups play an important role in all business organization.
•      Bureaucracy involves a lot of paper work, this result in lot of wastage of time, effort and money.
•      There will be unnecessary delay in decision making due to formalities and rules.
•      Bureaucratic model may be suitable for government organizations. But it is not suitable for business organizations because business organizations believe in quick decision making and flexibility in procedures.
•      Too much importance is given to the technical qualifications of the employees for promotion and transfers. Dedication and commitment of the employee is not considered.
•      There is difficulty in co-ordination and communication.
•      There is limited scope for human resource.

Notion of legitimacy and authority

Another major contribution of Weber is his notion of legitimacy and authority. He classified legitimacy into three different kinds

·        Traditional authority

·        Charismatic authority

·        Legal rational authority

Conclusion

Traditionally, bureaucracy was conceived as politically, a neutral organization. Weber himself emphasized the need for rationality and objectivity bureaucracy. However, scholars are of the view that bureaucracy cannot be neutral and it tends to develop its own group identity and interests more and more bureaucracy is conceived as a social class with group solidarity of its own.

In the words of Weber bureaucracy represents expertise and rationality and as result has become an indispensable part of modern government. It is also equally true that bureaucracy is likely to develop some dysfunctional characteristics and has to be constantly pulled up by political leadership.