introduction: Comparative politics is a field and a method used in political sci ence, characterized by an empirical approach based on the

comparative methodthe traditional approach to comparative politics uses case studies of particular reg ions worldwide. it creates a unique case for each study and therefore there is n o generalization of regions, that being one of the downfalls of this approach. t he positive side is that the traditional approach creates a specific group of sc holars for each particular country/region. although these scholars may be wester n leaning and possibly infuse biases into their studies, recently they've been m ore sensitive to each particular case study. Read more: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_traditional_approach_to_compara tive_politics#ixzz27dKSEV1E rural development:Integrated Rural Development Program From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search Question book-new.svg This article does not cite any references or sources. Please help improv e this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may b e challenged and removed. (November 2010) The Integrated Rural Development Programme (IRDP) is a rural development program of the Government of India launched in Financial Year 1978 and extended through out India by 1980. It is a self-employment program intended to raise the incomegeneration capacity of target groups among the poor. The target group consists l argely of small and marginal farmers, agricultural labourers and rural artisans living below the poverty line. The pattern of subsidy is 25 per cent for small f armers, 33-1/3 per cent for marginal farmers, agricultural labourers and rural a rtisans and 50 per cent for Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes families and physi cally handicapped persons. The ceiling for subsidy is Rs.6000/- for Scheduled Ca stes/Scheduled Tribes families and the physically handicapped;for others, it is Rs.4000/-in non-DPAP/non-DDP areas and Rs.5000/- in DPAP and DDP areas. Within t he target group, there is an assured coverage of 50 per cent for Scheduled Caste s/Scheduled Tribes, 40 per cent for women and 3 per cent for the physically hand icapped. Priority in assistance is also given to the families belonging to the a ssignees of ceiling surplus land, Green Card Holders covered under the Family We lfare Programme and freed bonded labourers. RDP is a major self-employment programme for Poverty Alleviation. The objective of IRDP is to provide suitable income generating assests through a mix of subsid y and credit to Below poverty Line families with a view to bring them above the Poverty Line. A family with an annual income of Rs. 20,000/- and below per annum is considered to be below the poverty line based on the 1998 below Poverty Line Census. The list of individual and family activities which are eligible for ass istance with the unit cost of each is placed in Annexure. The aim is to raise recipients above the poverty line by providing substantial o pportunities for self-employment. During the 7th five year plan, the total expen diture under the program was Rs 33.2 million, and Rs 53.7 million of term credit was mobilized. Some 13 million new families participated, bringing total covera ge under the program to more than 18 million families. These development program s have played an important role in increased agricultural production by educatin g farmers and providing them with financial and other inputs to increase yields. .. The objective of IRDP is overty line by providing assets which could be in ugh financial assistance to enable identified rural poor families to cross the p productive assets and inputs to the target groups. The primary, secondary or tertiary sector are provided thro in the form of subsidy by the government and term credi

t advanced by financial institutions. The program is implemented in all the bloc ks in the country as a centrally sponsored scheme funded on 50:50 basis by the C entre and State. The Scheme is merged with another Scheme named Swarnajayanti Gr am Swarozgar Yojana (SGSY) since 01.04.1999. Reserve bank of IndiaRural Development Through the Plans Five Year Plans : First Second Third Fourth Fifth Sixth Seventh Eighth Ninth Ten th Eleventh The function of the Rural Development Division is primarily to provide overall p olicy guidance in formulation of plans and programmes for Rural Development. Thi s is the nodal Division for matters relating to poverty eradication, employment generation in rural areas, development of watershed & degraded land. The followi ng specific activities are undertaken by Division; To assist in formulation of rural development programmes to be included in F ive Year Plans and Annual Plans and to make periodic assessment of progress achi eved. To analyse and prepare comments on the EFC Memoranda and Cabinet Notes paper for Group of Ministers pertaining to rural development programmes. To maintain liaison with Ministry of Rural Development, National Institute o f Rural Development (NIRD) and other allied organisations mainly and participati ng in the meetings. To collect information from various Divisions of the Planning Commission, St ate Governments and also from the Central Ministries which are implementing vari ous schemes related to rural development. To organize Working Group meetings to finalise the Draft Five Year Plan prop osals of the State Governments. This involves the preparation of background pape rs, discussions on inter-se plan priorities, critical examination of plan propos als in relation to plan objectives and approaches, preparation of Working Group Reports giving, inter-alia, outlays and physical targets. Finalisation of the Five Year Plan outlays of the Ministry of Rural Developm ent. Finalisation of Annual Plans of the Central Ministry of Rural Development a nd State Governments. This includes assessment of progress both in physical and financial terms, in relation to the approved targets and outlays, scheme-wise ex amination of proposals and reviewing targets and finalizing allocation for next Annual Plan. To provide comments, materials etc. for Public representations, VIP referenc es, Parliament Questions and Agenda items for the meetings of Consultative Commi ttee/ Standing Committee for the Planning Commission pertaining to rural develop ment sector are also attended to. The Rural Development Division looks after the following programmes being implem ented by the Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD): National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), The NREG was launched on February 2, 2006 and the first full year of operation w as 2006-07 covering 200 districts. The programme was expanded to 330 districts i n 2007-08 and covers the whole country from 1.4.08. The primary objective of the scheme is to provide guaranteed work for 100 days for any household wishing to have such employment. Although all households are eligible, the expectation is t hat only the poorer sections, i.e., landless labour and marginal farmers would a ctually seek work. The secondary objective is to ensure that employment generate d is from works that raise land productivity. Swarnjayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana (SGSY)

SGSY is a major on-going scheme for the self-employment of the rural poor. The b asic objective of the scheme is to bring the assisted poor families (swarozgaris ) above the poverty line by providing them income generating assets through a mi x of bank credit and government subsidy. Credit is the critical component of the scheme whereas the subsidy is an enabling element. The scheme involves organisa tion of the poor into Self Help Groups (SHGs) build their capacities through a p rocess of social mobilization, their training, selection of key activities, plan ning of activity clusters, creation of infrastructure, provision of technology a nd marketing support, etc. Under the scheme focus is on the group approach. Howe ver, individual Swarozgaris are also assisted. The SGSY is being implemented by the District Rural Development Agencies (DRDAs) with the active involvement of P anchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs), banks, line Departments and the Non-Governmen t Organisations (NGOs). The credit mobilization under SGSY has been abysmally low. Further, a large numb er of SHGs are formed but fizzle out midway after availing the revolving fund. T o make the scheme more effective it is being re-structured with a sharper focus on poorest of the poor people. A suitable mechanism will be put in place for hig her social mobilization, capacity building and institution building among the ta rget population Indira Awaas Yojana (IAY) The IAY is being implemented as an independent scheme since 1996. It aims to pro vide assistance for construction / upgradation of dwelling units to the Below Po verty Line (BPL) rural households, with special emphasis on SCs, STs and freed b onded labor categories. A maximum assistance of Rs 35,000 per unit is provided f or construction in plain areas and Rs 38,500 per unit for hilly/difficult areas. Rs 15000 is given for upgradation of a dwelling unit for all areas. The funding of IAY is shared between the Centre and State in the ratio of 75:25. (100% in t he case of UTs). National Social Assistance Programme (NSAP) The National Social Assistance Programme (NSAP) was launched with the aim to pro vide social assistance benefit to poor households in the case of old age, death of primary breadwinner and maternity. The programme supplements the efforts of t he State Governments with the objective of ensuring minimum national levels of w ell being and the Central assistance is an addition to the benefit that the Stat es are already providing on Social Protection Schemes. With a view to ensure bet ter linkage with nutrition and national population control programmes, the Mater nity Benefit Component of the NSAP was transferred to the Department of Family W elfare, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare with effect from 2001-02. The sche mes of NSAP and Annapurna have been transferred to the State Plan with effect fr om 2002-03 with a view to provide requisite flexibility to the State / UT in the choice and implementation of the schemes. Integrated Watershed Management Programme (IWMP) During the Eleventh Plan, the three area development programmes, namely, Integra ted Wasteland Development Programme, Drought Prone Area Programme and Desert Dev elopment Programme have been integrated and consolidated into a single programme called Integrated Watershed Management Programme (IWMP). This consolidation is for optimum use of resources, sustainable outcomes an integrated planning. The c ommon guidelines for the Watershed Development Programme have been formulated an d are effective from 1.4.2008. An amount of Rs.1825 crore has been allocated for IWMP during 2008-09. The ongoing projects sanctioned prior to 1.4.2008 under DA DP, DDP, and IWDP would be continued to be implemented as per old guidelines.

The modified IWMP would adopt a three tier apporch in which the upper reaches wh ich are mainly forested and hilly would be treated with the support of Forest De partment. For land situated intermediate slopes above the agriculture lands, the IWMP would address all the necessary issues of land treatment by adopting best possible options including cropping pattern, horticulture and agro-forestry etc. In the lower tire, which are plains and mainly agricultural lands, the IWMP wou ld be dovetailed with the employment generating programme such as National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) an would fill the critical gaps of NREGS an d vice versa. Under the new programme, a cluster approach would be followed with a broader vis ion of natural hydro-geographical unit of average size of 4,000 to 10,000 ha. co mprising of clusters of micro-watershed to be selected as project area. The prog rrame would be implemented by dedicated institutional agencies at state and cent ral level. Professional support (in the form of multidisciplinary expert team) w ould be provided to support these institutions with proper fund allocation. A co re GIS facility with spatial and non-spatial data augmented with satellite image ry data would be set up for giving Controlled access/distributon for local proje ct planning. The project period is proposed in the range of 5 to 7 years in three distinct ph ases, i.e. Preparatory, Watershed works and Consodilation phase. The consodilati on phase will include livelihood activities, marketing, processing and value add ition activities. National Land Records Modernization Programme (NLRMP): The National Land Records Modernization Programme (NLRMP) has been conceptualize d as a major system and reform initiative that is concerned not merely with comp uterization, updating and maintenance of land records and validation of titles, but also as a programme that will add value and provide a comprehensive database for planning developmental, regulatory and disaster management activities by pr oviding location-specific information, while providing citizen services based on land records data. Under the NLRMP, the following three layers of data will be integrated on a geog raphic information system (GIS) platform: Spatial data from satellite imagery/ae rial photography, Survey of India and Forest Survey of India maps, and Revenue r ecords: cadastral maps and RoR details. All cadastral maps will be digitized, an d data included with plot numbers and unique id for each land parcel. Administra tive unit boundaries from village level upwards (including panchayat, block, teh sil, circle, sub-division, district, division, State and national boundaries), f orest, water bodies and other physical attributes of land and land use details w ill be overlaid, and other developmental layers (e.g., watersheds, road networks , etc.) added to the core GIS. The activities to be supported under the Programme, inter alia, include survey/r esurvey using modern technology including aerial photogrammetry, updating of lan d records including mutation records, completion of computerization of the recor ds of rights (RoRs), computerization of registration, automatic generation of mu tation notices, digitization of maps , integration of the entire system digitiza tion of maps and training and capacity building of the concerned officials and f unctionaries. Connectivity amongst the land records and registration offices and land records management centers at tehsil/taluk/circle/block level would be sup ported. Access to land records data would be provided to Cooperative and other f inancial institutions for facilitating credit operations. A major focus of the Programme will be on citizen services, such as providing re cords of rights (RoRs) with maps; other land-based certificates such as caste ce rtificates, income certificates (particularly in rural areas), domicile certific

ates; information for eligibility for development programmes; land passbooks, et c. In addition, the Programme will be of immense usefulness to the governments - bo th Central and State Governments - in modernizing and bringing efficiency to the land revenue administration as well as offering a comprehensive tool for planni ng various land-based developmental, regulatory and disaster management activiti es needing location-specific information. Even the private sector will be able t o benefit from this comprehensive tool for planning business and economic activi ties. As indicated above, the NLRMP has been approved by the Cabinet in its meeting he ld on 21.8.2008. The budget provision for the Scheme during the current year (20 08-09) is Rs.473.00 crore. Accordingly, it is proposed to implement the NLRMP ac ross the country and to make it fully operational over the next five to eight ye ar period. The components of the scheme will become integrated with the Revenue Administration of the States/UTs and will continue as such on an ongoing basis.G eneral Overview Integrated development of rural areas is one of the abiding tasks before the Gov ernment of India. The National Common Minimum Programme (NCMP) (External website that opens in a new window) of the Central government reiterates the cardinal i mportance of villages to the overall development of the country and commits to w ork towards development of rural areas, which for various reasons could not keep pace with urban areas in the past. In conformity with this commitment of the Government, the Ministry of Rural Deve lopment (External website that opens in a new window) accords foremost priority to development in rural areas and eradication of poverty and hunger from the fac e of rural India. A number of initiatives have been taken in the recent years fo r creation of social and economic infrastructure in rural areas to bridge the ru ral-urban divide as well as to provide food security and fulfill other basic nee ds of the rural populace. The renewed emphasis on rural development is also visible in the commensurate pr ogressive increase in the allocation of resources for implementation of poverty alleviation programmes. For the Tenth Five Year Plan, the allocation of funds fo r rural development programmes has been enhanced to Rs. 76,774 crore as against Rs. 42,874 crore in Ninth Plan. Addressing the challenge of unemployment in the rural areas of the country is ce ntral to the development of rural sector for ameliorating the economic condition of the people. Wage employment is provided in rural areas under National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) (External website that opens in a new window) a nd Sampoorna Grameen Rozgar Yojana (SGRY) (External website that opens in a new window) whereas self-employment is provided under Swarnajayanti Gram Swarozgar Y ojana (SGSY). Besides generating employment these wage employment schemes also e nsure creation of durable assets in rural areas. Initiatives are also taken by t he Ministry to build and upgrade the basic rural infrastructure through various schemes. Under Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY) (External website that opens in a new window) construction and repairing of rural roads are taken up to ensure ru ral connectivity. It is expected under the scheme that an expanded and renovated rural road network will lead to an increase in rural employment opportunities, better access to regulated and fair market, better access to health, education a nd other public services so as to accelerate the pace of economic growth in rura l areas. Similarly basic amenities for housing, drinking water and toilets, etc. are provided under Indira Awaas Yojana (IAY), Accelerated Rural Water Supply Pr ogramme (ARWSP) (External website that opens in a new window) and Total Sanitati

on Campaign (TSC) (External website that opens in a new window) to enhance the w elfare and well-being of the vulnerable sections of rural population. Area Devel opment is encouraged through Watershed Programmes to check the diminishing produ ctivity of waste land and loss of natural resources. Council for Advancement of People s Action & Rural Technology (CAPART) Recognising the need for an organisation that would coordinate and catalyse the development work of voluntary agencies in the country, particularly to ensure sm ooth flow of benefits to the underprivileged and socio-economically weaker secti ons of society, Government of India, in September, 1986 set up the Council for A dvancement of People s Action and Rural Technology (CAPART), a registered society under the aegis of the Department of Rural Development, by merging two autonomou s bodies, namely, People s Action for Development of India (PADI) and Council for Advancement of Rural Technology (CAPART). The main objectives of the CAPART are :To encourage, promote and assist voluntary action for the implementation of projects intending enhancement of rural prosperity. To Strengthen and promote voluntary efforts in rural development with focus on injecting new technological inputs; To act as a catalyst for the development of technology appropriate for rural areas. To promote, plan, undertake, develop, maintain and support projects/schemes aimed at all-round development, creation of employment opportunities, promotion of self-reliance, generation of awareness, organisation and improvement in the q uality of life of the people in rural areas through voluntary action. CAPART made useful contribution towards the implementation of the following prog rammes/schemes : 1. Jawahar Rozgar Yojana (Now renamed as Gram Samridhi Yojana (JGSY) 2. Development of Women & Children in Rural Areas (DWCRA) The Schemes DWCR A, IRDP, MWS have been merged in single scheme renamed as Swarnjayanti Gram Swar ozgar Yojana (SGSY) 3. Integrated Rural Development Programme (IRDP) "2". Million Well Scheme (MWS) 5. Accelerated Rural Water Supply Programme (ARWSP) 6. Central Rural Sanitation Programme (CRSP) 7. Indira Awas Yojana (IAY) 8. Panchayati Raj (PR) 9. Promotion of Voluntary Action in Rural Development (PC) 10. Organisation of Beneficiaries (OB) and Social Animators Training (SAT) 11. Advancement of Rural Technology Scheme (ARTS) 12. Watershed Development 13. Assistance to NGOs/V.A.S. Regional Centres 5. With a view to bringing CAPART nearer to the people and to ensure closer inte r action between CAPART and voluntary agencies at the grass-root level, function ing of CAPART has been decentralised by setting up of nine Regional Committees/R egional Centres at Jaipur, Lucknow, Ahmedabad, Bhubaneswar, Patna, Chandigarh, H yderabad, Guwahati and Dharwad. The Regional Committee are empowered to sanction project proposals to voluntary agencies upto an outlay of Rs. 10.00 lakh in the

ir respective regions. Since its inception and upto 31.12.1998, the CAPART has sanctioned 18126 pro jects of Rs. "2"95.20 crore. Against this, an amount of Rs. 363.8"2" crore has b een released. Funding Pattern The quantum of assistance is normally decided on the basis of the nature of the project and the capability of the organisation to take up the project/to handle the funds requested. On acceptance of the terms and conditions, CAPART releases sanctioned funds in suitable instalments depending upon the nature of the projec t, quantum of assistance involved and the proportion of assistance to be mobilis ed from other sources including beneficiaries contribution. Implementing Agency NGOs are provided financial assistance through CAPART. Monitoring & Evaluation CAPART has fairly well developed monitoring system. CAPART projects are monitore d with the help of its own officers and external monitors. CAPART has a system o f empanelling project Evaluators on different subjects. CAPART projects are moni tored at three different stages:Pre funding appraisal Mid terms appraisal Post Evaluation Provision of Urban Amenities in Rural Areas(PURA) Constitutionalism From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search Globe icon. The examples and perspective in this article may not represent a worldwi de view of the subject. Please improve this article and discuss the issue on the talk page. (May 2011) "Constitutionalist" redirects here. For parties called Constitutionalist see Constitution Party. Constitutionalism has a variety of meanings. Most generally, it is "a complex of ideas, attitudes, and patterns of behavior elaborating the principle that the a uthority of government derives from and is limited by a body of fundamental law" .[1] A political organization is constitutional to the extent that it "contain[s] ins titutionalized mechanisms of power control for the protection of the interests a nd liberties of the citizenry, including those that may be in the minority".[2] As described by political scientist and constitutional scholar David Fellman: Constitutionalism is descriptive of a complicated concept, deeply imbedded i n historical experience, which subjects the officials who exercise governmental powers to the limitations of a higher law. Constitutionalism proclaims the desir ability of the rule of law as opposed to rule by the arbitrary judgment or mere

fiat of public officials . Throughout the literature dealing with modern public la w and the foundations of statecraft the central element of the concept of consti tutionalism is that in political society government officials are not free to do anything they please in any manner they choose; they are bound to observe both the limitations on power and the procedures which are set out in the supreme, co nstitutional law of the community. It may therefore be said that the touchstone of constitutionalism is the concept of limited government under a higher law.[3] Contents 1 Usage 1.1 Descriptive use 1.2 Prescriptive use 1.3 Authority of government 1.4 Fundamental law empowering and limiting government 2 Constitutionalism vs. constitutional questions 3 Constitutional economics 4 Examples 4.1 Descriptive use 4.1.1 United States 4.1.2 United Kingdom 4.1.3 Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth 4.2 Prescriptive use 4.2.1 United States 4.2.2 Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth 4.2.3 United Kingdom 4.2.4 Dominican Republic 5 Criticisms 6 Islamic constitutionalism 7 See also 8 References 9 External links Usage Constitutionalism has prescriptive and descriptive uses. Law professor Gerhard C asper captured this aspect of the term in noting that: "Constitutionalism has bo th descriptive and prescriptive connotations. Used descriptively, it refers chie fly to the historical struggle for constitutional recognition of the people's ri ght to 'consent' and certain other rights, freedoms, and privileges . Used prescri ptively its meaning incorporates those features of government seen as the essent ial elements of the Constitution."[4] Descriptive use One example of constitutionalism's descriptive use is law professor Bernard Schw artz's 5 volume compilation of sources seeking to trace the origins of the U.S. Bill of Rights.[5] Beginning with English antecedents going back to the Magna Ca rta (1215), Schwartz explores the presence and development of ideas of individua l freedoms and privileges through colonial charters and legal understandings. Th en, in carrying the story forward, he identifies revolutionary declarations and constitutions, documents and judicial decisions of the Confederation period and the formation of the federal Constitution. Finally, he turns to the debates over the federal Constitution's ratification that ultimately provided mounting press ure for a federal bill of rights. While hardly presenting a "straight-line," the account illustrates the historical struggle to recognize and enshrine constitut ional rights and principles in a constitutional order. Prescriptive use In contrast to describing what constitutions are, a prescriptive approach addres ses what a constitution should be. As presented by Canadian philosopher Wil Walu

chow, constitutionalism embodies "the idea that government can and should be leg ally limited in its powers, and that its authority depends on its observing thes e limitations. This idea brings with it a host of vexing questions of interest n ot only to legal scholars, but to anyone keen to explore the legal and philosoph ical foundations of the state."[6] One example of this prescriptive approach was the project of the National Municipal League[7] to develop a model state consti tution.[8] Authority of government Whether reflecting a descriptive or prescriptive focus, treatments of the concep t of constitutionalism all deal with the legitimacy of government. One recent as sessment of American constitutionalism, for example, notes that the idea of cons titutionalism serves to define what it is that "grants and guides the legitimate exercise of government authority."[9] Similarly, historian Gordon S. Wood descr ibed this American constitutionalism as "advanced thinking" on the nature of con stitutions in which the constitution was conceived to be "a 'set of fundamental rules by which even the supreme power of the state shall be governed.'"[10] Ulti mately, American constitutionalism came to rest on the collective sovereignty of the people - the source that legitimized American governments. Fundamental law empowering and limiting government One of the most salient features of constitutionalism is that it describes and p rescribes both the source and the limits of government power. William H. Hamilto n has captured this dual aspect by noting that constitutionalism "is the name gi ven to the trust which men repose in the power of words engrossed on parchment t o keep a government in order."[11] Constitutionalism vs. constitutional questions The study of constitutions is not necessarily synonymous with the study of const itutionalism. Although frequently conflated, there are crucial differences. A di scussion of this difference appears in legal historian Christian G. Fritz's Amer ican Sovereigns: The People and America's Constitutional Tradition Before the Ci vil War,[12] a study of the early history of American constitutionalism. Fritz n otes that an analyst could approach the study of historic events focusing on iss ues that entailed "constitutional questions" and that this differs from a focus that involves "questions of constitutionalism."[13] Constitutional questions inv olve the analyst in examining how the constitution was interpreted and applied t o distribute power and authority as the new nation struggled with problems of wa r and peace, taxation and representation. However, [t]hese political and constitutional controversies also posed questions of c onstitutionalism how to identify the collective sovereign, what powers the sover eign possessed, and how one recognized when that sovereign acted. Unlike constit utional questions, questions of constitutionalism could not be answered by refer ence to given constitutional text or even judicial opinions. Rather, they were o pen-ended questions drawing upon competing views Americans developed after Indep endence about the sovereignty of the people and the ongoing role of the people t o monitor the constitutional order that rested on their sovereign authority.[13] A similar distinction was drawn by British constitutional scholar A.V. Dicey in assessing Britain's unwritten constitution. Dicey noted a difference between the "conventions of the constitution" and the "law of the constitution." The "essen tial distinction" between the two concepts was that the law of the constitution was made up of "rules enforced or recognised by the Courts," making up "a body o f 'laws' in the proper sense of that term." In contrast, the conventions of the constitution consisted "of customs, practices, maxims, or precepts which are not enforced or recognised by the Courts" yet they "make up a body not of laws, but of constitutional or political ethics."[14] Constitutional economics

Constitutionalism has been the subject of criticism for its previous ignorance o f economic issues but this criticism is now taken into account by the developmen t of constitutional economics. Constitutional economics is a field of economics and constitutionalism which describes and analyzes the specific interrelationshi ps between constitutional issues and the structure and functioning of the econom y. The term constitutional economics was used by American economist James M. Bucha nan as a name for a new academic sub-discipline. Buchanan received in 1986 the N obel Prize in Economic Sciences for his development of the contractual and consti tutional bases for the theory of economic and political decision-making. [15] Buch anan rejects any organic conception of the state as superior in wisdom, to the in dividuals who are its members. This philosophical position is, in fact, the very subject matter of constitutional economics. A constitutional economics approach allows for a combined economic and constitut ional analysis, helping to avoid a one-dimensional understanding. Buchanan belie ves that a constitution, intended for use by at least several generations of cit izens, must be able to adjust itself for pragmatic economic decisions and to bal ance interests of the state and society against those of individuals and their c onstitutional rights to personal freedom and private happiness. Constitutional e conomics draws substantial inspiration from the reformist attitude which is char acteristic of Adam Smith s vision, and that Buchanan s concept can be considered the modern-day counterpart to what Smith called the science of legislation. Concurren tly with the rise of academic research in the field of constitutional economics in the U.S. in the 1980s, the Supreme Court of India for almost a decade had bee n encouraging public interest litigation on behalf of the poor and oppressed by using a very broad interpretation of several articles of the Indian Constitution .[16] This is a vivid example of a de facto practical application of the methodo logy of constitutional economics. The Russian school of constitutional economics was created in the early twenty-f irst century with the idea that constitutional economics allows for a combined e conomic and constitutional analysis in the legislative (especially budgetary) pr ocess, thus helping to overcome arbitrariness in the economic and financial deci sion-making: for instance, when military expenses (and the like) dwarf the budge t spending on education and culture. In the English language, the word constituti on possesses a whole number of meanings, encompassing not only national constitut ions as such, but also charters of public organizations, unwritten rules of vari ous clubs, informal groups, etc. The Russian model of constitutional economics, originally intended for transitional and developing countries, focuses entirely on the concept of state constitution. In 2006, the Russian Academy of Sciences o fficially recognized constitutional economics as a separate academic sub-discipl ine..[17] Since many a country with transitional political and economic system c ontinues treating its constitution as an abstract legal document disengaged from the economic policy of the state, the practice of constitutional economics beco mes there a decisive prerequisite for democratic development of the state and so ciety. Examples Descriptive use Used descriptively, the concept of constitutionalism can refer chiefly to the hi storical struggle for constitutional recognition of the people's right to "conse nt" and certain other rights, freedoms, and privileges.[4] United States American constitutionalism has been defined as a complex of ideas, attitudes, an d patterns of behavior elaborating the principle that the authority of governmen t derives from the people, and is limited by a body of fundamental law. These id eas, attitudes and patterns of behavior, according to one analyst, derive from " a dynamic political and historical process rather than from a static body of tho ught laid down in the eighteenth century".[18]

In U.S. history, constitutionalism in both its descriptive and prescriptive sense ha s traditionally focused on the federal Constitution. Indeed, a routine assumptio n of many scholars has been that understanding "American constitutionalism" nece ssarily entails the thought that went into the drafting of the federal Constitut ion and the American experience with that constitution since its ratification in 1789.[19] There is a rich tradition of state constitutionalism that offers broader insight into constitutionalism in the United States.[20] While state constitutions and the federal Constitution operate differently as a function of federalism the coexi stence and interplay of governments at both a national and state level they all re st on a shared assumption that their legitimacy comes from the sovereign authori ty of the people or Popular sovereignty. This underlying premise embraced by the A merican revolutionaries with the Declaration of Independence unites the American c onstitutional tradition.[21] Both the experience with state constitutions before a nd after the federal Constitution as well as the emergence and operation of the fe deral Constitution reflect an on-going struggle over the idea that all governmen ts in America rested on the sovereignty of the people for their legitimacy.[22] United Kingdom The United Kingdom is perhaps the best instance of constitutionalism in a countr y that has an uncodified constitution. A variety of developments in seventeenthcentury England, including "the protracted struggle for power between king and P arliament was accompanied by an efflorescence of political ideas in which the co ncept of countervailing powers was clearly defined,"[23] led to a well-developed polity with multiple governmental and private institutions that counter the pow er of the state.[24] Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth From the mid-sixteenth to the late eighteenth century, the Polish Lithuanian Commo nwealth utilized the liberum veto, a form of unanimity voting rule, in its parli amentary deliberations. The "principle of liberum veto played an important role in [the] emergence of the unique Polish form of constitutionalism." This constra int on the powers of the monarch were significant in making the "[r]ule of law, religious tolerance and limited constitutional government ... the norm in Poland in times when the rest of Europe was being devastated by religious hatred and d espotism."[25] Prescriptive use The prescriptive approach to constitutionalism addresses what a constitution sho uld be. Two observations might be offered about its prescriptive use. There is often confusion in equating the presence of a written constitution with the conclusion that a state or polity is one based upon constitutionalism. As noted by David Fellman constitutionalism "should not be taken to mean that if a state has a constitution, it is necessarily committed to the idea of constitu tionalism. In a very real sense every state may be said to have a constitution, s ince every state has institutions which are at the very least expected to be per manent, and every state has established ways of doing things." But even with a " formal written document labelled [sic] 'constitution' which includes the provisi ons customarily found in such a document, it does not follow that it is committe d to constitutionalism ."[26] Often the word "constitutionalism" is used in a rhetorical sense as a politi cal argument that equates the views of the speaker or writer with a preferred vi ew of the constitution. For instance, University of Maryland Constitutional Hist ory Professor Herman Belz's critical assessment of expansive constitutional cons truction notes that "constitutionalism . . . ought to be recognized as a distinc tive ideology and approach to political life . Constitutionalism not only establis

hes the institutional and intellectual framework, but it also supplies much of t he rhetorical currency with which political transactions are carried on."[27] Si milarly, Georgetown University Law Center Professor Louis Michael Seidman noted as well the confluence of political rhetoric with arguments supposedly rooted in constitutionalism. In assessing the "meaning that critical scholars attributed to constitutional law in the late twentieth century," Professor Seidman notes a "new order ... characterized most prominently by extremely aggressive use of leg al argument and rhetoric" and as a result "powerful legal actors are willing to advance arguments previously thought out-of-bounds. They have, in short, used le gal reasoning to do exactly what crits claim legal reasoning always does - put t he lipstick of disinterested constitutionalism on the pig of raw politics."[28] United States Starting with the proposition that "'Constitutionalism' refers to the position o r practice that government be limited by a constitution, usually written," analy sts take a variety of positions on what the constitution means. For instance, th ey describe the document as a document that may specify its relation to statutes , treaties, executive and judicial actions, and the constitutions or laws of reg ional jurisdictions. This prescriptive use of Constitutionalism is also concerne d with the principles of constitutional design, which includes the principle tha t the field of public action be partitioned between delegated powers to the gove rnment and the rights of individuals, each of which is a restriction of the othe r, and that no powers be delegated that are beyond the competence of government. [29] Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth The Constitution of May 3, 1791, which historian Norman Davies calls "the first constitution of its kind in Europe",[30] was in effect for only a year. It was d esigned to redress long-standing political defects of the Polish Lithuanian Common wealth and its traditional system of "Golden Liberty". The Constitution introduc ed political equality between townspeople and nobility (szlachta) and placed the peasants under the protection of the government, thus mitigating the worst abus es of serfdom.[citation needed] United Kingdom See also: Constitution of the United Kingdom Constitutionalist was also a label used by some independent candidates in UK gen eral elections in the early 1920s. Most of the candidates were former Liberal Pa rty members, and many of them joined the Conservative Party soon after being ele cted. The best known Constitutionalist candidate was Winston Churchill in the 19 24 UK general election.[citation needed] Dominican Republic After the democratically elected government of president Juan Bosch in the Domin ican Republic was deposed, the Constitutionalist movement was born in the countr y. As opposed to said movement, the Anticonstitutionalist movement was also born . Juan Bosch had to depart to Puerto Rico after he was deposed. His first leader was Colonel Rafael Toms Fernndez Domnguez, and he wanted Bosch to come back to pow er once again. Colonel Fernndez Domnguez was exiled to Puerto Rico where Bosch was . The Constitutionalists had a new leader: Colonel Francisco Alberto Caamao De.[cit ation needed] Criticisms Constitutionalism has been the subject of criticism by numerous anarchist thinke rs. For example, Murray Rothbard, who coined the term "anarcho-capitalism", atta cked constitutionalism, arguing that constitutions are incapable of restraining governments and do not protect the rights of citizens from their governments. Ro thbard wrote that

[i]t is true that, in the United States, at least, we have a constitution th at imposes strict limits on some powers of government. But, as we have discovere d in the past century, no constitution can interpret or enforce itself; it must be interpreted by men. And if the ultimate power to interpret a constitution is given to the government's own Supreme Court, then the inevitable tendency is for the Court to continue to place its imprimatur on ever-broader powers for its ow n government. Furthermore, the highly touted checks and balances and separation of powers in the American government are flimsy indeed, since in the final analysis all of these divisions are part of the same government and are governed by the s ame set of rulers.[31] Legal scholar Jeremy Waldron contends that constitutionalism is often undemocrat ic: Constitutions are not just about retraining and limiting power; they are abo ut the empowerment of ordinary people in a democracy and allowing them to contro l the sources of law and harness the apparatus of government to their aspiration s. That is the democratic view of constitutions, but it is not the constitutiona list view.[...] Of course, it is always possible to present an alternative to co nstitutionalism as an alternative form of constitutionalism: scholars talk of "p opular constitutionalism" or "democratic constitutionalism."[...] But I think it is worth setting out a stark version of the antipathy between constitutionalism and democratic or popular self-government, if only because that will help us to measure more clearly the extent to which a new and mature theory of constitutio nal law takes proper account of the constitutional burden of ensuring that the p eople are not disenfranchised by the very document that is supposed to give them their power.[32] Islamic constitutionalism The scope and limits of constitutionalism in Muslim countries have attracted gro wing interest in recent years. Authors such as Ann E. Mayer define Islamic const itutionalism as "constitutionalism that is in some form based on Islamic princip les, as opposed to constitutionalism that has developed in countries that happen to be Muslim but that has not been informed by distinctively Islamic principles ."[33] However, the concrete meaning of the notion remains contested among Musli m as well as Western scholars. Influential thinkers like Mohammad Hashim Kamali[ 34] and Khaled Abou El Fadl [35], but also younger ones like Asifa Quraishi[36] and Nadirsyah Hosen[37] combine classic Islamic law with modern constitutionalis m. The constitutional changes initiated by the Arab spring movement have already brought into reality many new hybrid models of Islamic constitutionalismDemocra cy Papers Constitutionalism: America & Beyond By Greg Russell "Freedom of men under government is to have a standing rule to live by, common t o every one of that society, and made by the legislative power erected in it." -- John Locke Second Treatise, Ch. 4 Democracy Papers Constitutionalism or rule of law means that the power of leaders and government bodies is limited, and that these limits can be enforced through established pro cedures. As a body of political or legal doctrine, it refers to government that is, in the first instance, devoted both to the good of the entire community and to the preservation of the rights of individual persons. Constitutional government, rooted in liberal political ideas, originated in West ern Europe and the United States as a defense of the individual's right to life

and property, and to freedom of religion and speech. In order to secure these ri ghts, constitutional architects emphasized checks on the power of each branch of government, equality under the law, impartial courts, and separation of church and state. The exemplary representatives of this tradition include the poet John Milton, jurists Edward Coke and William Blackstone, statesmen such as Thomas Je fferson and James Madison, and philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, A dam Smith, Baron de Montesquieu, John Stuart Mill, and Isaiah Berlin. Problems of constitutional governance in the 21st century will likely be problem s within governments recognized as democratic. The modern-day phenomenon of "ill iberal democracies" gains legitimacy, and thus strength, from the fact that thes e regimes seem reasonably democratic. Illiberal democracy -- that is, nominally democratic government shorn of constitutional liberalism -- is not simply inadeq uate but dangerous, bringing with it the erosion of liberty, the abuse of power, ethnic divisions, and even war. The spread of democracy around the world has no t always been accompanied by a corresponding spread of constitutional liberty. A number of democratically elected leaders have used their authority to justify r estricting freedoms. A living tradition of political liberty contributes somethi ng even more than free and fair elections, or additional opportunities for polit ical expression. Liberal democracy also provides a legal foundation for the sepa ration of governmental powers so as to uphold basic freedoms of speech, assembly , religion, and property. Constitutionalism: historical foundations Modern liberal political theories found practical expression in the struggle for constitutional government. The earliest, and perhaps greatest, victory for libe ralism was achieved in England. The rising commercial class that had supported t he Tudor monarchy in the 16th century led the revolutionary battle in the 17th, and succeeded in establishing the supremacy of Parliament and, eventually, of th e House of Commons. What emerged as the distinctive feature of modern constituti onalism was not the insistence on the idea that the king is subject to law (alth ough this concept is an essential attribute of all constitutionalism). This noti on was already well established in the Middle Ages. What was distinctive was the establishment of effective means of political control whereby the rule of law m ight be enforced. Modern constitutionalism was born with the political requireme nt that representative government depended upon the consent of citizen subjects. Moreover, modern constitutional government was intimately linked to economics an d the power of the purse, the idea that those whose taxes fund the government mu st be represented in that government. The principle that economic supply and red ress of grievances go hand-in-hand is the key to modern constitutional governmen t. The decline of the king's feudal revenues, the growth of representative insti tutions, and a feeling of national solidarity, as opposed to symbolic allegiance to king and court, tended to make real and effective the limited character of k ingship. However, as can be seen through provisions in the 1689 Bill of Rights, the Engli sh Revolution was fought not just to protect the rights of property (in the narr ow sense) but to establish those liberties which liberals believed essential to human dignity and moral worth. The "rights of man" enumerated in the English Bil l of Rights gradually were proclaimed beyond the boundaries of England, notably in the American Declaration of Independence of 1776 and in the French Declaratio n of the Rights of Man in 1789. The 18th century witnessed the emergence of cons titutional government in the United States and in France, and the 19th century s aw its extension with varying degrees of success to Germany, Italy, and other na tions of the Western world. Constitutionalism and the legacy of the American Founders

The constitutional order of American society is built on the foundation of the c onsent of free and reasonable men and women, as expressed in the symbol of the " social contract" as a trust established for limited purposes. "Social contract" theories had their greatest currency in 17th- and 18th- century Europe, and are associated with English philosophers Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, and French ph ilosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. These thinkers justified the political obligati on of individuals to a community on the grounds of self-interest and reason, and were well aware of the advantages of a civil society where individuals have bot h rights and obligations, compared to the disadvantages of a "state of nature," a hypothetical condition characterized by a complete absence of governmental aut hority. This idea of a "social contract" reflects an underlying awareness that a viable community -- not just a government -- must be established if free govern ment is to exist and if human beings are to be secured against the onslaught of the passions whose rule is the very definition of disorder, tyranny, and rebelli on against the rational order of being. John Jay noted, in Federalist No. 2, tha t the individual relinquishes certain natural rights to society if government is to have requisite power to act in order to secure the common good. As a result, participation as a citizen in a constitutional democracy carries with it the re sponsibility of abiding by the laws and decisions of the community in its public transactions, even when the individual sharply disagrees. Both the "beast-man" -- the nihilistic criminal or anarchist -- and the "god-man" -- the potential di ctator -- who take law into their own hands must be subdued or banished from soc iety, so thought Aristotle and Spinoza. Hobbes, Locke, and the American Founding Fathers all agreed. This is the essential condition of civil society, without w hich it cannot exist. The laws and policies of constitutional government not onl y are limited in scope and grounded in consent. They are also bound to serve the well-being of the people of the society in general and of every single individu al in it. American statesmen -- revolutionaries and constitution-makers alike -- laid clai m to this heritage as American history unfolded from the Declaration of Independ ence (1776), to the Articles of Confederation (1781), the conclusion of the Revo lutionary War (1783), the framing of the Constitution (1787), and the ratificati on of the Bill of Rights (1791). A number of common themes typified this America n struggle for liberty and constitutionalism. Popular sovereignty "We the People . . . do ordain and establish this Constitution." These words are contained in the Constitution's Preamble and give expression to the doctrine of popular sovereignty, or rule by the people. The Constitution's framers crafted a governing document, which they submitted for popular ratification, based on th e conception that ultimate political authority resides not in the government or in any single government official, but rather, in the people. "We the People" ow n our government, but under our representative democracy, we delegate the day-to -day governing powers to a body of elected representatives. However, this delega tion of powers in no way impairs or diminishes the people's rights and responsib ilities as the supreme sovereign. The government's legitimacy remains dependent on the governed, who retain the inalienable right peacefully to alter their gove rn-ment or amend their Constitution. The rule of law Under constitutional theory, however, government must be just and reasonable, no t only from the viewpoint of majority sentiment but also in conformity with high er law, what the Declaration of Independence refers to as "Laws of Nature and of Nature's God." The Declaratory Act of 1766, by which the British Parliament lai d claim over the American colonies "to bind (them) in all matters whatsoever," d ramatized the contrast between rule of law and rule by law. Rule of law suggests an appeal to a higher standard of law and justice -- transcendent and universal

ly understood -- than the merely mortal or the enacted law of contemporary polit icians. The Founders believed that the rule of law was the lifeblood of the Amer ican social order and basic civil liberties. The rule of law suggests that if ou r relationships with each other (and with the state) are governed by a set of re latively impartial rules -- rather than by a group of individuals -- then we are less likely to become the victims of arbitrary or authoritarian rule. Note here that the political obligation implied by the rule of law applies not only to th e rights and liberties of subject and citizen but also with equal claim to ruler s and governors. By precluding both the individual and the state from transcendi ng the supreme law of the land, the framers constructed a protective layer over individual rights and liberties. Separation of powers and a system of checks and balances The Founders had to answer the question of how to implement a government of laws and not of men, when there were only men available to rule. After all, these le aders were political realists who attempted to connect the spirit of constitutio nalism to unique features of their time and place. Perhaps the best statement on this philosophical and practical dilemma comes from James Madison in Federalist No. 51. Ambition, Madison declared, had to counteract ambition. The interests o f men had to be indissolubly wed to the constitutional rights of the place. Just a little knowledge of human nature would suggest to us that "such devices shoul d be necessary to control the abuses of government." If men and women were angel s, then neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. But Madison was a realist. Constitutionalism, again to use the words of Madison , entails a policy of "supplying, by opposite and rival interests, the defect of better motives." A constitutional framework, built on a prudent regard for huma n beings, must enable the government to control the governed. No less important, however, is the auxiliary precaution of checking and balancing within governmen t itself. By dividing the business of government among three independent branches, the Con stitutional framers ensured that the principle powers of government -- legislati ve, executive, and judicial -- were not monopolized by any single branch. Alloca ting government authority among three separate branches also prevented the forma tion of too strong a national government capable of overpowering individual stat e governments. Governmental powers and responsibilities intentionally overlap. O ne example is how congressional authority to make laws can be checked by a presi dential veto. This veto, in turn, can be overridden by a two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress. The president serves as commander-in-chief, but only Congre ss has the authority to raise and support an army, and formally to declare war. The president has the power to appoint all federal judges, ambassadors, and othe r high government officials, but all appointments must have the advice and conse nt of the Senate. No law can go into effect unless it is passed by both houses o f Congress. The Supreme Court has the final authority to strike down both legislative and ex ecutive acts as unconstitutional. Herein lies the root of judicial review and th e empowerment of the federal judiciary in the United States after Marbury v. Mad ison (1803). The power of judicial review derives not from the written U.S. Cons titution, which contains no explicit reference to this authority, but from a ser ies of court cases dating back to the late 1700s. What is common to these cases, at least as a philosophical or ethical justification of court authority, is the link between judicial review and higher law. Americans of the time would have e mbraced the ancient teaching that, if positive or human law departs from the law of nature, it is no longer law but a perversion of the law. The general idea is captured in James Otis' Rights of British Colonies Asserted and Proved (1764), wherein he stipulates: The law of nature was not of man's making, nor is it in his power to mend or alt

er its course. He can only perform and keep or disobey and break it. The last is never done with impunity, even in this life, if it is any punishment for a man to feel himself depraved, to find himself degraded by his own folly and wickedne ss from the rank of a virtuous and good man to that of a brute, or to be transfo rmed from the friend, perhaps father, of his country to a devouring lion or tige r. Federalism The Founders also determined that power must be divided among the different leve ls of government: national and state. The failure of the Articles of Confederati on (1781-87) to create a viable government for the American colonies led delegat es at the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia to establish more power at the center of government. The Articles served as a bridge between the initial government by the Continenta l Congress of the Revolutionary period and the federal government created by the U.S. Constitution of 1787. Because the experience of overbearing British centra l authority was vivid in colonial minds, the drafters of the Articles deliberate ly established a "confederation" of sovereign states. However, the Articles gave Congress no power to enforce its requests to the states for money or troops, an d by the end of 1786, governmental effectiveness had broken down. Under the U.S. Constitution, confederation was to give way to federation -- a sy stem in which power would be shared between one national and several state gover nments. The national government was to be supreme in certain areas, but the stat es were not to become mere administrative units of the central government. State s' rights were protected in a number of ways. First, the 10th Amendment to the C onstitution made clear that a number of spheres of activity were to be reserved for the states. State governments, for instance, are largely responsible for man aging their own budgets and making and enforcing laws in many areas that impact residents of the state. Second, states were also protected by their representati on inside the U.S. Senate: two senators to a state, irrespective of the size of the state. Third, the Electoral College, the body that formally elects the U.S. president, was to be an aggregation of electors selected by the states, with eac h state awarded a minimum of three delegates. Fourth, the amending procedure of the Constitution itself also reflected state interests, for any amendment to the Constitution requires approval by three-fourths of all state legislatures as we ll as two-thirds of the members of both houses of Congress. These protections we re built into the Constitution as well, to prevent the smaller states from being dominated by the power of the larger states. The sharing of power between state s and the national government is one more structural check in an elaborate schem e of checks and balances. The struggle for individual rights The Preamble to the Constitution looked to a new American political order based on the following principles: to form a more perfect union, to provide for the co mmon defense, to establish justice, and secure the blessings of liberty for pres ent and future generations. Even earlier, the Declaration of Independence had sp oken of "inalienable rights" that were inherent in all people by virtue of their being human and that no government could take away. Just how best to secure jus tice and the blessings of liberty (then as well as now) inspired fierce partisan differences. When first drafted and submitted to the states for ratification, t he Constitution did not include any reference to individual rights. One explanat ion for this anomaly is that the framers assumed that the powers of the newly cr eated national government were so carefully limited that individual rights reall y required no additional protections. In addition, other Federalists made the ca se that enumerating additional rights carried an additional liability -- that is , those rights deemed essential yet left unspecified would become vulnerable to

government encroachment. Although the Antifederalists were defeated in the battle over drafting the 1787 Constitution, they were able to force concessions from their opponents. Fearful of the power of the new national government, they demanded that a series of spec ific protections of individual rights be written into the Constitution. They als o obtained promises from Federalist leaders in some state conventions to support the passage of appropriate amendments to the Constitution. Unless assured that a bill of rights would be passed, a number of states threatened to withhold rati fication of the Constitution. The Federalists kept their promises. In 1789, the first Congress of the United States adopted the first 10 amendments to the Const itution. By 1791, the Bill of Rights, constituting these first 10 amendments, ha d been ratified by the required number of states. Moreover, the Ninth Amendment -- expressly protecting fundamental rights not specifically described in the Con stitution -- laid to rest Federalist fears that singling out any right for prote ction would jeopardize the protection of all other rights not similarly identifi ed. The Bill of Rights limits the ability of government to trespass upon certain ind ividual liberties, including freedom of speech, press, assembly, and religion. I t also prohibits Congress from passing laws respecting the "establishment" of an y official religion, that is, favoring one religion over another. Nearly two-thi rds of the Bill of Rights is geared to safeguarding the rights of persons suspec ted or accused of crime. These rights encompass due process of law, fair trials, freedom from self-incrimination and from cruel and unusual punishment, and bein g held twice in jeopardy for the same crime. When first adopted, the Bill of Rig hts applied only to the actions of the national government. Restraining state infringements upon civil liberties was the subject of the 13th (1865), 14th (1868), and 15th (1870) amendments, the so-called Reconstruction A mendments passed after the Civil War and intended to dismantle the institution o f slavery. Over the past 100 years, many of the liberties provided for in the fi rst 10 amendments have been incorporated in the 14th amendment's guarantee that no state shall deprive its citizens of either due process or equal protection of the law. Especially after the 1920s, the Constitution's first 10 amendments pla yed an increasingly active and significant role in resolving difficult questions of public policy -- from the constitutionality of school prayer and mandatory d rug testing laws to birth control and capital punishment. And basic founding pri nciples such as "justice" or "liberty," as well as constitutional precepts such as "due process" and "equal protection under the law," have been given new meani ng by succeeding generations. These developments, often accompanied by protest m ovements and civil disobedience, reflect changes in human sensibilities and soci al mores over the past 200 years. The philosophical justification for the Bill of Rights is that it places certain liberties beyond the reach of majorities on the premise that depriving citizens of fundamental rights would diminish their civil standing and, in fact, their v ery humanity. The vast array of rights secured by the Bill of Rights and Constit ution compose the texture of a free government. Civil rights may arise directly from natural rights or indirectly through political arrangements in a society bu ilt upon the consent of the people given in constitutions, common law precedent, and statutes. The success story of Madison and his colleagues at the Constituti onal Convention, and at the first Congress, reflects the way they set about crea ting a self-adjusting set of processes and structures that could legally enforce rights and supply standards for their realization in the United States. Constitutionalism, freedom, and the new world order The end of the Cold War, along with the collapse of the Soviet Union and communi st client states throughout Eastern Europe, ushered in a sense of triumphalism a

nd optimism about the promise of liberal-democratic ideas and constitutional gov ernment. In December, 2000, Freedom House, a not-for-profit organization that pr omotes democracy worldwide, released a major study detailing the state of politi cal rights and civil liberties in today's world of 191 countries. The study, Fre edom in the World 2000-2001, finds that a decade-long trend of positive, increme ntal gains for freedom continued in the year 2000. According to the organization 's annual survey, 86 countries representing 2.5 billion [thousand million] peopl e (or 40.7 percent of the world's population, the highest proportion in the surv ey's history) are rated "free." Their inhabitants enjoy a broad range of rights. Fifty-nine countries, representing 1.4 billion people (23.8 percent), are consi dered "partly free." Political rights and civil liberties are more limited in th ese countries, which are often characterized by corruption, dominant ruling part ies, and, in some cases, ethnic or religious strife. The survey finds that 47 co untries, representing 2.2 billion people (35.5 percent), fall into the "not free " category. Inhabitants of these countries are denied basic political rights and civil liberties. The Freedom House survey reinforces the widespread conviction that there are no longer respectable alternatives to democracy; it has become an established bulwa rk of modernity. Another part of this post-Cold War legacy, however, is proving much more challenging and problematic for policy-makers and political thinkers a like. Democratically elected regimes, often ones that have been re-elected or re affirmed through referenda, are routinely ignoring constitutional limits on thei r power and depriving their citizens of basic rights and freedoms. In many regio ns of the world, we see the rise of a disturbing phenomenon in international lif e -- illiberal democracy. At the heart of the matter is the difference between democracy and constitutiona l government. The problem has been difficult to recognize since, for at least a century in the West, democracy has coincided with liberal democracy. The mix of freedoms associated with constitutional liberalism is theoretically distinct fro m democracy. From the time of Plato and Aristotle, democracy has meant rule by t he people. This view of democracy, as a process of selecting governments, has be en articulated by scholars ranging from Alexis de Tocqueville to Joseph Schumpet er and Robert Dahl. Political Scientist Samuel Huntington has explained why this is the case: Elections -- open, free, and fair -- are the essence of democracy, the inescapable sine qua non. Yet governments produced by elections may be inef ficient, corrupt, shortsighted, irresponsible, dominated by special interests, a nd incapable of adopting policies demanded by the public good. While these quali ties make such governments undesirable, they do not make them undemocratic. Demo cracy is one public virtue, not the only one, and the relation of democracy to o ther public virtues and vices can only be understood if democracy is clearly dis tinguished from the other characteristics of political systems. But elections an d mass mobilization do not always vouchsafe liberal constitutional government. T here is a growing unease at the rapid spread of multiparty elections across sout h-central Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America, perhaps because of what happe ns after the elections. Some elected popular leaders have bypassed their parliam ents and ruled by presidential decree, eroding basic constitutional practices. Naturally there is a spectrum of illiberal democracy, ranging from modest offend ers to near-tyrannies. In Latin America, many democracies have now survived for over a decade through harsh economic conditions, with no explicit challenges fro m the military or anti-system parties. Yet most of these regimes have yet to be consolidated. Certain countries have persisted in the face of weak institutional ization of formal democratic structures. Yet democratic consolidation is incompl ete without the support of constitutional liberalism. In addition to agreement o n rules for the competition of power, there must be fundamental and self-enforci ng restraints on the exercise of power. One effect of overemphasizing pure democ racy as the ultimate test for freedom is that little effort is given to creating imaginative constitutions for transitional countries. This is done not simply b

y scheduling frequent elections or writing up a list of rights, but by construct ing a system which will not violate those rights. Constitutional government look s beyond the procedures for selecting a government to the kind of deliberative a rrangements, insulated from public passions, that defend individual liberty and the rule of law. This requires a mutual commitment among elites -- through the c oordinating mechanism of a constitution, related political institutions, and oft en through an elite pact or settlement as well, where governments maintain order by building coalitions among leading political parties and interest groups. The goal is to enforce limits on state authority, no matter which party or faction may control the state at any given time. At the beginning of the 20th century, W oodrow Wilson wanted to make the world safe for democracy. The challenge for the next century may be to make democracy safe for the world. panchayati raj:Panchayat Raj is a connecting chain between common man and govern ment. Panchayat raj helps common man to put his talk effectively.Its of great su ccess especially states like U.P., Bihar where many people are illetrate and not much familiar with press. For many years congress continually trying to pursue rural people that they are sole responsible for this change. but now with increa sing bjp mandate even in rural areas its clear that bjp done a lot for implement ing panchayat raj effectively in its NDA government regieme. actually its BJP wh o implemented Panchayat Raj in real terms and showed a way to others. on congress comment: BJP is a party of rich man its true that BJP is a party of rich man so, its always striving to make prosper ous india. It tries to make poor people richer with its effective policies to in crease its vote bank whereas congress always termed itself as party for poor peo ple. but truth is that for past 60 years they done nothing to help poor to susta ined their vote bank. they always try to fool people on basis of divide and rule . but now people start understanding their bipolar stand and start distancing th em 4m congress itself. Panchayati raj From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search Republic of India Emblem of India.svg Part of the series Politics and Government of India Union Government[show] Elections[show] Political parties[show] Local and state govt.[show] Government of India Portal v t e The panchayat raj is a South Asian political system mainly in India, Pakistan, a nd Nepal. It is actually the oldest system of local government in the Indian sub continent. The word "panchayat" literally means "assembly" (ayat) of five (panch ) wise and respected elders chosen and accepted by the local community. However, there are different forms of assemblies. Traditionally, these assemblies settle d disputes between individuals and villages. Modern Indian government has decent ralized several administrative functions to the local level, empowering elected gram panchayats. Gram panchayats are not to be confused with the unelected khap panchayats (or caste panchayats) found in some parts of India.[1] Contents

1 Panchayat raj 2 Block panchayat 2.1 Constitution 2.2 Departments 2.3 Functions 2.4 Sources of income 3 District level panchayat 4 Reservation for women in PRIs in India 5 See also 6 References 7 Further reading 8 External links Panchayat raj Panchayat Raj is a system of governance in which gram panchayats are the basic u nits of administration. It has 3 levels: Gram (village, though it can comprise m ore than one village), Janpad (block) and Zilla (district). The term "panchayat raj" is relatively new, having originated during the British administration[citation needed]. Raj literally means "governance or government" . Mahatma Gandhi advocated Panchayati Raj, a decentralized form of Government wh ere each village is responsible for its own affairs, as the foundation of India' s political system. The term for such a vision was Gram Swaraj ("village self-go vernance"). This system was adopted by state governments during the 1950s and 60s, as laws w ere passed to establish panchayats in various states. It also found backing in t he Indian Constitution, with the 73rd amendment in 1992 to accommodate the idea. The Amendment Act of 1992 contains provision for devolution of powers and respo nsibilities to the panchayats both for the preparation of economic development p lans and social justice, as well as for implementation in relation to 29 subject s listed in the eleventh schedule of the constitution.[2] The panchayats receive funds from three sources:[2] Local body grants, as recommended by the Central Finance Commission Funds for implementation of centrally sponsored schemes Funds released by the state governments on the recommendations of the State Finance Commissions In the history of Panchayati Raj in India, on 24 April 1993, the Constitutional (73rd Amendment) Act 1992 came into force to provide constitutional status to th e Panchayati Raj institutions. This act was extended to Panchayats in the tribal areas of eight states, namely Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Mahara shtra, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa and Rajasthan starting 24 December 1996. Currently , the Panchayati Raj system exists in all the states except Nagaland, Meghalaya and Mizoram, and in all Union Territories except Delhi.[3] The Act aims to provide a 3-tier system of Panchayati Raj for all States having a population of over 2 million, to hold Panchayat elections regularly every 5 ye ars, to provide seats reservations for scheduled castes, scheduled tribes and wo men; to appoint a State Finance Commission to make recommendations as regards to the financial powers of the Panchayats and to constitute a District Planning Co mmittee to prepare a development plan draft for the district. The 3-tier system of Panchayati Raj consists: Village-level Panchayats Block-level Panchayats

District-level Panchayats. Powers and responsibilities are delegated to panchayats at the appropriate level : Preparation of the economic development plan and social justice plan. Implementation of schemes for economic development and social justice in rel ation to 29 subjects given in the Eleventh Schedule of the Constitution. To levy, collect and appropriate taxes, duties, tolls and fees. Block panchayat A block panchayat (panchayat samiti) is a local government body at the tehsil or taluka level in India. This body works for the villages of the tehsil or taluka that together are called a Development Block. The panchayat samiti is the link between the gram panchayat and the district administration. There are a number o f variations of this institution in different states. It is known as Mandal Praj a Parishad in Andhra Pradesh, Taluka panchayat in Gujarat, Mandal Panchayat in K arnataka, Panchayat Samiti in Maharashtra etc. In general, the block panchayat i s a form of the Panchayati raj but at a higher level. Constitution The constitution is composed of ex-official members (all sarpanchas of the panch ayat samiti area, the MPs and MLAs of the area and the SDO of the subdivision), co-opt members (representatives of SC/ST and women), associate members (a farmer of the area, a representative of the cooperative societies and one of the marke ting services), and some elected members. The samiti is elected for 5 years and is headed by the Chairman and the Deputy C hairman. Departments The common departments in the Samiti are as follows: General administration Finance Public work Agriculture Health Education Social welfare Information technology, and others. There is an officer for every department. A government appointed Block Developme nt Officer (BDO) is the executive officer to the Samiti and the chief of its adm inistration. Functions Implementation schemes for the development of agriculture. Establishment of primary health centres and primary schools. Supply of drinking water, drainage, and construction/repair of roads. Development of cottage and small-scale industries, and the opening of cooper ative societies. Establishment of youth organisations. Sources of income The main source of income of the panchayat samiti are grants-in-aid and loans fr om the State Government. District level panchayat

The governing system at district level in Panchayat Raj is also popularly known as "Jila Parishad". Chief of administration is an officer from IAS cadre. Functions: Provide essential services and facilities to the rural population Supply improved seeds to farmers. Inform them of new farming techniques Set up and run schools and libraries in the rural areas Start Primary Health Centers and hospitals in villages. Start vaccination dr ives against epidemics Execute plans for the development of the scheduled castes and tribes. Run as hramshalas for adivasi children. Set up free hostels for them Encourage entrepreneurs to start small-scale industries and implement rural employment schemes Construct bridges, roads & other public facilities and their maintenance Provide employment Sources of Income: Taxes on water, pilgrimage, markets, etc. Fixed grant from the State Government in proportion with the land revenue an d money for works and schemes assigned to the Parishad. Reservation for women in PRIs in India The Union Cabinet of the Government of India, on 27 August 2009, approved 50% re servation for women in PRIs (Panchayati Raj Institutions). The Indian states whi ch have already implemented 50% reservation for women in PRIs are Madhya Pradesh , Bihar, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh.[4] As of 25 November 2011, the states of Andhra Pradesh, Chhatisgarh, Jharkhand, Kerala, Maharastra, Orissa, Rajastha n and Tripura also reserve 50% of their posts for women.[5] See alsoLocal self-government in India From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search Panchayati Raj (Rule of Village Committee) Panchayati Raj system is a three-tier system in the state with elected bodies at the Village, Taluk and District leve ls. It ensures greater participation of people and more effective implementation of rural development programmes. There will be a Grama Panchayat for a village or group of villages, a Taluk level and the Zilla Panchayat at the district leve l. India has a chequered history of panchayati raj starting from a self-sufficient and self-governing village communities that survived the rise and fall of empire s in the past to the modern legalized institutions of governance at the third ti er provided with Constitutional support. Contents 1 Early history 2 During British rule 3 Post-independence period 4 The Balwant Rai Mehta Committee (1957) 5 S K Dey : The first Minister for panchayati raj in India 6 K. Santhanam Committee (1963) 7 Ashok Mehta Committee (1978) 8 G.V.K. Rao Committee (1985) 9 L.M.Singhvi Committee (1986) 10 The 73rd Constitutional Amendment Act 11 Present scenario

12 See also 13 References 14 External links Early history During the time of the Rig-Veda (1700 BC), evidences suggest that self-governing village bodies called 'sabhas' existed. With the passage of time, these bodies became panchayats (council of five persons). Panchayats were functional institut ions of grassroots governance in almost every village. The Village Panchayat or elected council had large powers, both executive and judicial. Land was distribu ted by this panchayat which also collected taxes out of the produce and paid the government's share on behalf of the village. Above a number of these village co uncils there was a larger panchayat or council to supervise and interfere if nec essary.[1] Casteism and feudalistic system of governance under Mughal rule in th e medieval period slowly eroded the self-government in villages. A new class of feudal chiefs and revenue collectors (zamindars) emerged between the ruler and t he people. And, so began the stagnation and decline of self-government in villag es. During the British rule, the autonomy of panchayats gradually declined with the establishment of local civil and criminal courts, revenue and police organisatio ns, the increase in communications, the growth of individualism and the operatio n of the individual Ryotwari '(landholder-wise) system as against the Mahalwari or village tenure system. During British rule The panchayat had never been the priority of the British rulers.[2] The rulers w ere interested in the creation of 'controlled' local bodies, which could help th em in their trading interests by collecting taxes for them. When the colonial ad ministration came under severe financial pressure after the 1857 uprising, the r emedy sought was decentralisation in terms of transferring responsibility for ro ad and public works to local bodies. However, the thrust of this 'compelled' dec entralisation was with respect to municipal administration.. "The panchayat was destroyed by the East India Company when it was granted the o ffice of Diwan in 1765 by the Mughal Emperor as part of reparation after his def eat at Buxar. As Diwan the Company took two decisions. The first was that it abo lished the village land record office and created a company official called Patw ari. The Patwari became the official record keeper for a number of villages. The second was the creation of the office of magistrate and the abolition of villag e police. The magistrate carried out policing functions through the Darogha who had always been a state functionary under the Faujdar. The primary purpose of th ese measures was the collection of land revenue by fiat. The depredations of the Patwari and the Darogha are part of our folklore and it led to the worst famine in Bengal. The effects of the famine lingered right to the end of the 18th cent ury. These two measures completely disempowered the village community and destro yed the panchayat. After 1857 the British tried to restore the panchayat by givi ng it powers to try minor offences and to resolve village disputes. But these me asures never restored the lost powers of the village community." From 1870 that Viceroy Lord Mayo's Resolution (for decentralisation of power to bring about administrative efficiency in meeting people's demand and to add to t he finances of colonial regime) gave the needed impetus to the development of lo cal institutions. It was a landmark in the evolution of colonial policy towards local government. The real benchmarking of the government policy on decentralisa tion can, however, be attributed to Lord Ripon who, in his famous resolution on local self-government on May 18, 1882, recognised the twin considerations of loc al government: (i) administrative efficiency and (ii) political education. The R ipon Resolution, which focused on towns, provided for local bodies consisting of

a large majority of elected non-official members and presided over by a non-off icial chairperson. This resolution met with resistance from colonial administrat ors. The progress of local self-government was tardy with only half-hearted step s taken in setting up municipal bodies. Rural decentralisation remained a neglec ted area of administrative reform. The Royal Commission on Decentralisation (1907) under the chairmanship of C.E.H. Hobhouse recognised the importance of panchayats at the village level. The comm ission recommended that "it is most desirable, alike in the interests of decentr alisation and in order to associate the people with the local tasks of administr ation, that an attempt should be made to constitute and develop village panchaya ts for the administration of local village affairs".[3] But, the Montague-Chemsford reforms (1919) brought local self-government as a pr ovincial transferred subject, under the domain of Indian ministers in the provin ces. Due to organisational and fiscal constraints, the reform was unable to make panchayat institutions truly democratic and vibrant. However, the most signific ant development of this period was the 'establishment of village panchayats in a number of provinces, that were no longer mere ad hoc judicial tribunal, but rep resentative institutions symbolising the corporate character of the village and having a wide jurisdiction in respect of civic matters'. l By 1925, eight provin ces had passed panchayat acts and by 1926, six native states had also passed pan chayat laws. The provincial autonomy under the Government of India Act, 1935, marked the evol ution of panchayats in India. Popularly elected governments in provinces enacted legislations to further democratise institutions of local self-government. But the system of responsible government at the grassroots level was least responsib le. D.P. Mishra, the then minister for local self-government under the Governmen t of India Act of 1935 in Central Provinces was of the view that 'the working of our local bodies... in our province and perhaps in the whole country presents a tragic picture... 'Inefficiency' and 'local body' have become synonymous terms. ...'.[4] In spite of various committees such as the Royal Commission on Decentralization (1907), the report of Montague and Chemsford on constitutional reform (1919), th e Government of India Resolution (1918), etc., a hierarchical administrative str ucture based on supervision and control evolved. The administrator became the fo cal point of rural governance. The British were not concerned with decentralised democracy but were aiming for colonial objectives.[5] The Indian National Congress from the 1920s to 1947, emphasized the issue of all -India Swaraj, and organized movements for Independence under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi. The task of preparing any sort of blueprint for the local level was neglected as a result. There was no consensus among the top leaders regardin g the status and role to be assigned to the institution of rural local self-gove rnment; rather there were divergent views on the subject. On the one end Gandhi favoured Village Swaraj and strengthening the village panchayat to the fullest e xtent and on the other end, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar opposed this idea. He believed tha t the village represented regressive India, a source of oppression. The model st ate hence had to build safeguards against such social oppression and the only wa y it could be done was through the adoption of the parliamentary model of politi cs [6] During the drafting of the Constitution of India, Panchayati Raj Institut ions were placed in the non-justiciable part of the Constitution, the Directive Principles of State Policy, as Article 40. The Article read 'the State shall tak e steps to organise village panchayats and endow them with such powers and autho rity as may be necessary to enable them to function as units of self-government' . However, no worthwhile legislation was enacted either at the national or state level to implement it.

In the four decades since the adoption of the Constitution, panchayat raj instit utions have travelled from the non-justiciable part of the Constitution to one w here, through a separate amendment, a whole new status has been added to their h istory [7] Post-independence period Panchayat raj had to go through various stages. The First Five Year Plan failed to bring about active participation and involvement of the people in the Plan pr ocesses, which included Plan formulation implementation and monitoring. The Seco nd Five Year Plan attempted to cover the entire countryside with National Extens ive Service Blocks through the institutions of Block Development Officers, Assis tant Development Officers, Village Level Workers, in addition to nominated repre sentatives of village panchayats of that area and some other popular organisatio ns like co-operative societies. But the plan failed to satisfactorily accomplish decentralisation. Hence, committees were constituted by various authorities to advise the Centre on different aspects of decentralisation. The Balwant Rai Mehta Committee (1957) In 1957, Balwant Rai Mehta Committee studied the Community Development Projects and the National Extension Service and assessed the extent to which the movement had succeeded in utilising local initiatives and in creating institutions to en sure continuity in the process of improving economic and social conditions in ru ral areas. The Committee held that community development would only be deep and enduring when the community was involved in the planning, decision-making and im plementation process.[8] The suggestions were for as follows [9] :an early establishment of elected local bodies and devolution to them of necessa ry resources, power and authority, that the basic unit of democratic decentralisation was at the block/ samiti leve l since the area of jurisdiction of the local body should neither be too large n or too small. The block was large enough for efficiency and economy of administr ation, and small enough for sustaining a sense of involvement in the citizens, such body must not be constrained by too much control by the government or gover nment agencies, the body must be constituted for five years by indirect elections from the villa ge panchayats, its functions should cover the development of agriculture in all its aspects, th e promotion of local industries and others services such as drinking water, road building, etc., and the higher level body, Zilla Parishad, would play an advisory role. The PRI structure did not develop the requisite democratic momentum and failed t o cater to the needs of rural development. There are various reasons for such an outcome which include political and bureaucratic resistance at the state level to share power and resources with local level institutions, domination of local elites over the major share of the benefits of welfare schemes, lack of capabili ty at the local level and lack of political will. S K Dey : The first Minister for panchayati raj in India Late Mr. S. K. Dey [1] (1905 1989) piloted and steered the course of community dev elopment and Panchayati Raj in the challenging, formative period of India s indepe ndence as Cabinet Minister of Cooperation and Panchayati Raj under the prime min istership of Jawaharlal Nehru. After Nehru s death he took leave from Ministerial responsibilities to dedicate himself fully for the cause of Panchayati Raj as lo

ng as he lived.[2] K. Santhanam Committee (1963) One of the prime areas of concern in this long debate on panchayati raj institut ions was fiscal decentralisation. The K. Santhanam Committee was appointed to lo ok solely at the issue of PRI finance, in 1963. The fiscal capacity of PRIs tend s to be limited, as rich resources of revenue are pre-empted by higher levels of government, and issue is still debated today. The Committee was asked to determ ine issues related to sanctioning of grants to PRIs by the state government, evo lving mutual financial relations between the three tiers of PRIs, gifts and dona tion, handing over revenue in full or part to PRIs. The Committee recommended th e following [10]: panchayats should have special powers to levy special tax on land revenues and h ome taxes, etc., people should not be burdened with too many demands (taxes), all grants and subventions at the state level should be mobilised and sent in a consolidated form to various PRIs, a Panchayat Raj Finance Corporation should be set up to look into the financial resource of PRIs at all levels, provide loans and financial assistance to these grassroots level governments and also provide non-financial requirements of vill ages. These issues have been debated over the last three decades and have been taken u p by the State Finance Commissions which are required to select taxes for assign ment and sharing, identifying the principles for such sharing and assignment, de termine the level of grants and recommend the final distribution of state's tran sfers to local authorities.20 Ashok Mehta Committee (1978) Main article: Ashok Mehta Committee With the coming of the Janata Party into power at the Centre in 1977, a serious view was taken of the weaknesses in the functioning of Panchayati Raj.[11] It wa s decided to appoint a high-level committee under the chairmanship of Ashok Meht a to examine and suggest measures to strengthen PRIs. The Committee had to evolv e an effective decentralised system of development for PRIs. They made the follo wing recommendations [12] :the district is a viable administrative unit for which planning, co-ordination a nd resource allocation are feasible and technical expertise available, PRIs as a two-tier system, with Mandal Panchayat at the base and Zilla Parishad at the top, the PRIs are capable of planning for themselves with the resources available to them, district planning should take care of the urban-rural continuum, representation of SCs and STs in the election to PRIs on the basis of their popu lation, four-year term of PRIs, participation of political parties in elections, any financial devolution should be committed to accepting that much of the devel

opmental functions at the district level would be played by the panchayats. The states of Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal passed new legislation b ased on this report. However, the flux in politics at the state level did not al low these institutions to develop their own political dynamics. G.V.K. Rao Committee (1985) The G.V.K. Rao Committee was appointed to once again look at various aspects of PRIs. The Committee was of the opinion that a total view of rural development mu st be taken in which PRIs must play a central role in handling people's problems . It recommended the following [13] :PRIs have to be activated and provided with all the required support to become e ffective organisations, PRIs at district district level and below should be assigned the work of plannin g, implementation and monitoring of rural development programmes, and the block development office should be the spinal cord of the rural development process. L.M.Singhvi Committee (1986) L.M. singhaniaCommittee studied panchayatiraj. The Gram Sabha was considered as the base of a decentralised democracy, and PRIs viewed as institutions of self-g overnance which would actually facilitate the participation of the people in the process of planning and development. It recommended [14] : local self-government should be constitutionally recognised, protected and prese rved by the inclusion of new chapter in the Constitution, non-involvement of political parties in Panchayat elections. The suggestion of giving panchayats constitutional status was opposed by the Sar karia Commission, but the idea, however, gained momentum in the late 1980s espec ially because of the endorsement by the late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, who in troduced the 64th Constitutional Amendment Bill in 1989. The 64th Amendment Bill was prepared and introduced in the lower house of Parliament. But it got defeat ed in the Rajya Sabha as non-convincing. He lost the general elections too. In 1 989, the National Front introduced the 74th Constitutional Amendment Bill, which could not become an Act because of the dissolution of the Ninth Lok Sabha. All these various suggestions and recommendations and means of strengthening PRIs we re considered while formulating the new Constitutional Amendment Act. The 73rd Constitutional Amendment Act The idea that produced the 73rd Amendment [15] was not a response to pressure fr om the grassroots, but to an increasing recognition that the institutional initi atives of the preceding decade had not delivered, that the extent of rural pover ty was still much too large and thus the existing structure of government needed to be reformed. It is interesting to note that this idea evolved from the Centr e and the state governments. It was a political drive to see PRIs as a solution to the governmental crises that India was experiencing. The Constitutional (73rd Amendment) Act, passed in 1992 by the Narasimha Rao government, came into force on April 24, 1993. It was meant to provide constitutional sanction to establish "democracy at the grassroots level as it is at the state level or national leve l". Its main features are as follows [16]: The Gram Sabha or village assembly as a deliberative body to decentralised gover nance has been envisaged as the foundation of the Panchayati Raj System. A uniform three-tier structure of panchayats at village (Gram Panchayat GP), int

ermediate or block (Panchayat Samiti .

PS) and district (Zilla Parishad

ZP) levels

All the seats in a panchayat at every level are to be filled by elections from r espective territorial constituencies. Not less than one-third of the total seats for membership as well as office of c hairpersons of each tier have to be reserved for women. Reservation for weaker castes and tribes (SCs and STs) have to be provided at al l levels in proportion to their population in the panchayats. To supervise, direct and control the regular and smooth elections to panchayats, a State Election Commission has to be constituted in every State and UT. The Act has ensured constitution of a State Finance Commission in every State/UT , for every five years, to suggest measures to strengthen finances of PRIs. To promote bottom-up-planning, the District Planning Committee fDPC} in every di strict has been accorded constitutional status. An indicative list of 29 items has been given in Eleventh Schedule of the Consti tution. Panchayats are expected to play an effective role in planning and implem entation of works related to these 29 items. Present scenario At present, there are about 3 million elected representatives at all levels of t he panchayat one-third of which are women. These members represent more than 2.4 lakh Gram Panchayats, about 6,000 intermediate level tiers and more than 500 di strict panchayats . Spread over the length and breadth of the country, the new p anchayats cover about 96 per cent of India's more than 5.8 lakh villages and nea rly 99.6 per cent of rural population. This is the largest experiment in decentr alisation of governance in the history of humanity. The Constitution visualises panchayats as institutions of self-governance. Howev er, giving due consideration to the federal structure of our polity, most of the financial powers and authorities to be endowed on panchayats have been left at the discretion of concerned state legislatures. Consequently, the powers and fun ctions vested in PRIs vary from state to state. These provisions combine represe ntative and direct democracy into a synergy and are expected to result in an ext ension and deepening of democracy in India. Hence, panchayats have journeyed fro m an institution within the culture of India to attain constitutional status.121 4 words essay on Panchayati Raj system in India By Priyanka Free sample essay on Panchayati Raj system in India. The Panchayati system in In dia goes back to the Vedic times. It has been an integral part of a self-contain ed and self-sufficient rural administration. A Panchayati consisted of five or more public representatives, selected or elect ed by the people. A pinch could be removed if people so liked. The Panchayati wa s headed by a Sarpancha or a Chief Sarpancha, who presided over the meetings and deliberations of a Panchayati. This council of panchas was fully responsible fo r the administration and development of a village. These five or more officials, constituting a panchayat, represented all the major sections of rural society. They administered justice, ruled over disputes, punished the guilty and looked a fter the welfare of the people. It functioned as a very important administrative body at various levels of villages, districts and provinces. These Panchayats o r local bodies also looked after the temples, hospitals, welfare of the poor and other charitable works like digging and maintenance of ponds, wells, and the ir

rigation system, etc. With the centralization of power, village panchayats came to be neglected, ensur ing the rights and privileges of the ruling classes, nobility and feudal communi ty only. These people concentrated powers in their own hands with the help of th e state. This gave rise to authoritarianism, tyranny and exploitation of the rur al poor, landless, and marginal farmers. The reincarnation of Panchayati Raj, as a system of local self-government admini stered by a council or Panchayat duly elected in a free and fair manner, is a step in the right direction. It is in keeping with the very spirit of democracy. It is essential that, to strengthen democracy, the panchayat system in India be giv en all possible help and encouragement. It will further help decentralisation of power and check the degeneration of democracy in a very effective manner. It ha s been an established fact that authoritarianism and too much concentration of p ower are the main obstacles in the process of democracy, which stands for full p articipation of the masses- in the administration through regular fair and free elections, etc. The Panchayati Raj system has been purposefully and specially de signed to take care of various rural problems. It provides the administrative an d legislative apparatus for implementation of the programmes of rural developmen t. The 64th Constitution Amendment Bill of May 15, 1989 has been a landmark in this context. It gave a new lease of life to Panchayati Raj as a truly representativ e system in our country. During the debate on the subject, the then Prime Minist er Rajiv Gandhi told the Lok Sabha that Too often in the past Panchayati Raj has had functions without finances, responsibilities without authority, duties witho ut the means for carrying them out. The Bill seeks to remove these disparities a nd bottlenecks and to make these rural legislatures or councils a fit and effect ive instrument of self-government. The Bill also made it obligatory that election s be held regularly every five years, but various states have failed to fulfill this obligation and the Centre has had to intervene. Thus, the Bill has proved a milestone in revitalizing an ancient and time-tested democratic institution. The Panchayati Raj system is best suited for developmental and administrative re quirements of rural population and society because of wide variation in the natu re of local problems. It is an inexpensive form of local self-government, which can suitably identify the local problems and issues, particularly of the poor an d weaker sections of society, like scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, small, ma rginal and landless farmers, women and backward classes. It also ensures quick a nd equitable measures to solve the problems. It provides a proper forum, where l ocal people can meet, discuss and chalk out programmes, policies and their speed y implementation. It also ensures decentralisation of power, and effective devel opmental activities, in which active participation of the rural masses can be en visaged. The main objective of the system is to develop a method of decentralisation and devaluation of powers, functions and authority to the rural folk with a view to ensure rapid socioeconomic progress and speedier and inexpensive justice. This is to be achieved through increasing agricultural production, development of cotta ge and rural industries, fuller and proper utilization of available local, natur al and human resources with the active participation of the people. Besides prog ressive decentralisation of powers and authority, it aims at improving the livin g standard of the rural people in general and the weaker sections in particular. It has a three-tier structure that includes Village Panchayats, Panchayat Semite s and the Zila Parishads. While in most of the states there is a three-tier stru cture, in some states and Union Territories there is only a two-tier system and in some cases only one-tier structure. The village or Gram Panchayat functions a t the village level. Each village has its own panchayat. In case of very small v

illages, there can be a common panchayat for a group of villages. The Gram Sabha or the Village Council, consisting of all the adult members of the village, ele cts the members of the panchayat. These members elect their chairman or head, kn own as Pradhan. They hold the office of the Gram Panchayat normally for a period of three years. Every panchayat has its own secretary and a Gramsevak to help i t in its various functions. The panchayat chalks out the programme for agricultu ral production and co-operative management of the land. It also seeks to ensure a minimum standard of cultivation for raising agricultural production. Panchayat Samitis work at the block level. These main executive bodies have all the elected Village Prashads of the Gram Panchayats as their members. The Presid ents and Vice Presidents of these Samitis are elected from among these members f or a period of three years. The main function of the Panchayat Samitis is to pre pare, execute and co-ordinate the developmental programme at the block level. It is responsible for preparing and implementing plans for the development of agri culture, animal husbandry, fisheries, cottage and small scale industries, rural health by the block development officer and extension officers. Then there are Zila Parishads. These function at the district level and are resp onsible for making, executing and coordinating the programmes of rural developmen t for the entire district. A Zila Parishads has the presidents of the Panchayat Samitis in the district, the members of the legislative assembly (MLAs) from the district and the members of the Parliament (MPs) representing the district as i ts members. All these members elect their Chairman, from amongst themselves. The district collector and other government officials provide guidance and help for formation and implementation of development schemes and programmes. Thus, the panchayat system in India assumes a very significant role because near ly 80% of its population lives in villages, spread over about 95% of its geograp hical area. This system is quite rational, practicable and in perfect harmony wi th the spirit of democracy and should be further strengthened and encouraged. It should be made economically viable and self-sufficient by providing adequate re sources, funds and generous grants. The reservation of seats for women, schedule d castes and tribes in panchayats is a welcome step, for it would make the insti tution of panchayat more democratic, representative and balanced. The panchayat elections are conducted and supervised by the Election Commission to ensure free and fair elections. All these measures ensure a bright and long lasting future of panchayat system in India. political sociology:Political sociology From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search Sociology Social Network Analysis diagram Outline Theory History Positivism Antipositivism Functionalism Conflict theory Middle-range Mathematical Critical theory Socialization Structure and agency Research methods Quantitative Qualitative Historical Computational Ethnographic Network analytic Topics Subfields Cities Class Crime Culture

Deviance Demography Education Economy Environment Family Gender Health Industry Internet Knowledge Law Medicine Politics Mobility Race and ethnicity Rationalization Religion Science Secularization Social networks Social psychology Stratification Browse Portal Category tree Lists Journals Sociologists Article index v t e Contemporary political sociology involves, but is not limited to, the study of t he relations between state and society.[1] Where a typical research question in political sociology might have been: "Why do so few American citizens choose to vote?"[2] or even, "What difference does it make if women get elected?" [3] poli tical sociologists also now ask: "How is the body a site of power?",[4] "How are emotions relevant to global poverty?" [5] or "What difference does knowledge ma ke to democracy?" [6] The opening up of political sociology does not mean that old topics have been di scarded. Traditionally there were four main areas of research: The socio-political formation of the modern state; "Who rules"? How social inequality between groups (class, race, gender, etc. ) influences politics;[7] How public personalities, social movements and trends outside of the formal institutions of political power affect formal politics; Power relationships within and between social groups (e.g. families, workpla ces, bureaucracy, media, etc.).[8] In other words, political sociology was traditionally concerned with how social trends, dynamics, and structures of domination affect formal political processes , as well as exploring how various social forces work together to change politic al policies.[9] From this perspective we can identify three major theoretical fr ameworks: pluralism, elite or managerial theory, and class analysis (which overl aps with Marxist analysis).[10] Pluralism sees politics primarily as a contest a mong competing interest groups. Elite or managerial theory is sometimes called a state-centered approach. It explains what the state does by looking at constrai nts from organizational structure, semi-autonomous state managers, and interests that arise from the state as a unique, power concentrating organization. A lead ing representative is Theda Skocpol. Social class theory analysis emphasizes the political power of capitalist elites.[11] It can be split into two parts. One i s the 'power structure' or 'instrumentalist' approach, another is the structural ist approach. The power structure approach focuses on 'Who Rules?' and its most well-known representative is G. William Domhoff. The structuralist approach emph asizes on the way a capitalist economy operates; only allowing and encouraging t he state to do some things but not others (Nicos Poulantzas, Bob Jessop). Contemporary political sociology takes these questions seriously, but it is conc erned with the play of power and politics across societies, which includes, but is not restricted to, relations between the state and society. In part, this is a product of the growing complexity of social relations, the impact of social mo

vement organising, and the relative weakening of the state as a result of global ization. In large part, however, it is due to the radical rethinking of social t heory. This is as much focused now on micro questions (such as the formation of identity through social interaction, the politics of knowledge, and the effects of the contestation of meaning on structures), as it is on macro questions (such as how to capture and use state power). Chief influences here include cultural studies (Stuart Hall), post-structuralism (Michel Foucault, Judith Butler), prag matism (Luc Boltanski), structuration theory (Anthony Giddens), and cultural soc iology (Jeffrey C. Alexander). AHMAD REZA TAHERI POST DOCTORAL STUDIES & DOCTOR OF POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY Max Weber: Intellectual Foundation of Political Sociology Max Weber: Intellectual Foundation of Political Sociology Max Weber was a German sociologist who is an important figure in terms of develo pment of political sociology. Like Marx, Weber moved from one subject to another . He attempted to understand society as a whole, so an interdisciplinary approac h made by Weber. He wrote about many things, but in this note our focus will be summarized on the followings: capitalism, social stratification, authority types , and bureaucracy. Weber on capitalism, capitalism involves certain technology for the mass product ion. It requires the existence of capital. Capitalism requires market to sell pr oducts and it requires availability of skill labor force. Weber concludes that c ertain aspects of Christian beliefs strongly influenced the rise of capitalism. The industrial revolution and the rise of capitalism were proof of a larger tren d towards rationalization. Capitalism is not dominated by class conflict, as Marx believed, but by the rise of science and bureaucracy --- large scale organization. He says that without c ompetition and free market capitalism cannot exist. In fact, Marx looked at earl y capitalism, while Weber looks at advance capitalism. There are certain unavoid able effects of capitalism described in the following way. First, in capitalism routinaization takes place: every activity become routine a nd regular so as to there would be no surplus. Capitalism requires efficiency an d efficiency requires discipline and discipline requires routine. Weber says th at this routine will not happen only in industry, rather will have its effect on other walks of life as well. Weber was a supporter of capitalism and as a socia list he believed that there are certain unavoidable effects of capitalism. Second, bureaucratization: the only way of organizing large numbers of people ef fectively expands with economic and political growth. This reduces social and ec onomic differences between administrators and the governed and presents opportun ities for members of all strata to hold administrative offices. Under bureaucrat ic principles authority is exercised according to abstract rules, so every thing becomes bureaucratic. Third, rise of formal rationality: the emergence of modern society was accompani ed by important shifts in patterns of social action. He believed that people wer e moving away from traditional believes and instead were increasingly engaging i n rationality. The development of science, modern technology and bureaucracy was described by Weber collectively as rationalization --- the organization of soci al life and economic life according to the principles of efficiency and on the b asis of technical knowledge i.e. rationality in technical sense. But, this resul ts into many irrational behaviors.

Fourth, carrier oriented politics: politics becomes a source of income. It becom es a profession. Weber does not contend that one social political system necessa rily gives rise to another in some sort of progressive series. He does analyze t he historical development of a set of political relationships. To Weber, the sta te is superior to other temporarily prior political systems only in technical se nse. Weber says capitalism is like a golden cage and a possibility of democracy may happen only under capitalism. Weber on social stratification, all societies structured hierarchically. In ever y society there is stratification. Society would look like a society with differ ent strata: those who are in upper positions and those who are in lower position s. Weber says that there are three bases which lead to stratification: economic, social, political. Economic is based on wealth. Social is based on honor and prestige. Political is based on formal political power. In every society some people hold lower status and some hold upper status. Status can be recognized by age, education, etc. Ho wever, every society has its own way of carrying status. Example: A is rich, but holds lower social status, and even much lower political power. Or, B holds goo d economic status, with a better degree of social status, but holds less degree of political power, etc. Different forms may occur, but the issue is that there is a direct relation between political, social and economic. Wealthy people may not have formal power, yet they do have informal political power Indeed, Weber s ex planation regarding stratification gives us enough theoretical bases to understa nd society. This is his second major contribution. Weber on authority types, in one of the most important contributions to politica l sociology, Weber distinguishes three systems of authority as follows: traditio nal, rational, charismatic. Traditional authority: authority is based on tradition and so tradition is a sou rce of power. People obey religious leaders, tribal chiefs, etc, because they fo llow certain traditions. We can take example of monarchies. The freedom of tradi tional ruler is also enhanced by the fact that they occupy office by virtue of i nherited status and not by virtue of election or possession of special and techn ical qualifications. Here, individuals are economically dependent on rulers. The ir rights and duties are personally determined by the rulers and commands are le gitimated in terms of tradition. Rational legal authority: power is based on law. Law is the source of authority and behind any law is rationality. Modern administration is based on this. All m odern democratic governments are example of this. The system of rules specifies the rights and obligations of both those who rule and those who are ruled. There is an obligation to obedience only under specified conditions and administrativ e processes are aimed at the protection of individual s interest. This system free s people from the bonds of tradition and from the arbitrarily imposed demands of traditional or charismatic rules. Charismatic authority: this literally means super human skills and capacity --a conviction that some one possessed of super human ability. Here, reason and la w does not apply and this type of authority is irrational. Jesus and Gandhi can be taken as good examples. Charismatic rule is established by the performance of unconventional acts; it involves a break with tradition and routine. Charismati c leaders are free from tradition and from a system of formal, abstract rules. T hey have no administrative staff. Weber on bureaucracy, Weber was the first scholar who made a systematic analysis of bureaucracy. He regarded that bureaucracy is based on rational legal authori ty as an effective basis for organization. The important elements of Weber s ratio

nal legal bureaucracy are: division of labor, hierarchy, rules, records, imperso nality, rationality, neutrality. According to him, bureaucracy is the most advan ce form of organization. It is superior to any other form in precision, in stabi lity, and in its reliability. Followings are the social affects of bureaucracy: there is concentration of means of administration; equal treatment i.e. law app ly to all equally; a decline of individual initiative i.e. following the rules; whoever can control bureaucracy, can control whole society. In a sense, bureaucracy becomes an instrument of power. Weber tries to look at p olitical affect of bureaucracy. Democracy and bureaucracy are opposed to each other. Democracy produces bureaucr acy, and the moment bureaucracy is created, it starts functioning against democr acy. Thus, bureaucracy is the product of democracy which very frequently acts ag ainst democracy. This is the relationship that Weber pointed out. We should know that bureaucratic type of organization is still the dominated way of carrying out the stable and routine tasks of governments and we are unlikely to eliminate bureaucrats unless we are prepared to return to a simple age. More than sixty years after Max Weber s death, the influence of his works on polit ical sociology is still obvious and will become greater. Finally, let s remind it that Karl Marx and Max Weber wrote on many things. Weber like Marx conceptualizes social class in economic terms and both of them were in terested in active politics in Germany almost hundred years ago i.e. 1905. However, Weber s definition of class is different from that of Marx. Weber was not so much interested about philosophy and not at all in revolution. Weber believe d that political is the primary factor. But, Marx believed that following the de struction of capitalism, the state would perish, alienation would end, and all p eople would live together as equals and Marx believed that social is the primary factor, whereas Weber says that social is determined by political. Weber sees bureaucracy positive, rational, efficient, and extension of bureaucra cy is inevitable. But, Marx believes that bureaucracy is negative, private inter est, and capitalists use bureaucracy to exploit the weaker class. Max Weber 1864-1920 German sociologist, economist, and political theorist. INTRODUCTION Regarded as one of the founders of modern sociological thought, Weber has had an immense impact on social science in the twentieth century, especially in the Un ited States, and was one of the first to construct a systematic, methodological approach to the study of human behavior in society. Basing his conclusions on th e comparative study of nearly all the major world cultures, Weber analyzed the e conomic, political, intellectual, histori cal, and religious factors that contri bute to modem social realities. Among his major contributions to the field of so ciology are his assessments of modern bureaucracy, his study of the nature of ch arismatic leadership throughout world history, his models of rational and non-ra tional social behavior based upon his theory of "ideal types," and his examinati on of the circumstances that made the growth of western capitalism possible. As part of the latter, Weber's Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitali smus (1904-05, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism) has had a prof ound effect on the study of the ethical and religious dimensions of economic iss ues. Weber's other significant achievements include the elevation of comparative and empirical research in sociology and the related integration of wertfreiheit , or value-neutrality, as the ideal for field. Weber's work in the realms of eco nomics and political science is likewise highly valued, especially as it indicat

es his role in German political life during the early years of the twentieth cen tury. Biographical Information Weber was born in Erfaut, Germany, on April 21, 1864. His father was a prosperou s lawyer involved in German political circles and his mother was a religious wom an who nonetheless emphasized the importance of secular education. Weber receive d classical instruction in his youth and later attended the University of Heidel berg to study law, history, and economics. He left the university briefly in 188 3 to serve in the German army, but returned to his studies the following year, f irst at the University of Berlin and later at Gttingen. Passing the bar in 1886, Weber practiced law for a time, and in 1889 completed his doctoral thesis on the rise of medieval trading companies. A second dissertation, an agrarian history of the ancient world, appeared in 1891 and earned Weber the widespread admiratio n of his colleagues. The following year he undertook a renowned study of the eco nomic conditions common among peasants in Prussia. He married Marianne Schnitger , his distant cousin, and later his biographer, in 1893. Weber accepted a profes sorship in economics at Freiburg University in 1894 and later a position as econ omics chair at the University of Heidelberg. Incapacitated in 1897 after his fat her's death, Weber suffered from an extreme depression and nervous illness for s everal years, though he had largely recovered by 1902. The next period of his li fe saw an increased literary production including his editorship and frequent co ntributions to the Archiv fr Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik (Archive for So cial Science and Social Policy). For the next fifteen years Weber devoted himsel f to the research and composition of his Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft: Grundriss der verstehenden Soziologie, 1922 (known in English as Economy and Society: An O utline of Interpretive Sociology), which included his studies of the great easte rn religions and cultures. He returned to a professorship at the University of M unich in 1918 while writing Economy and Society, a massive work that was left in complete due to his death from pneumonia on June 14, 1920. Major Works Taken as a whole, Weber's works on sociology and economics detail a nearly syste matic development, encompassing the great cultures and religions in world histor y. His early works, though narrower in scope, adumbrate many of the themes that occupied his greatest writings, Economy and Society and the Gesammelte Aufstze zu r Religionssoziologie (1920-21). Die rmische agrargeschicte in ihrer bedeutung fr das staats und privatrecht (1891, The Agrarian Sociology of Ancient Civilization s) illustrates Weber's approach to structural and comparative history as a means of uncovering the facts relating to modern sociology. In his well-known The Pro testant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism Weber argues that the Protestant Refo rmation was an important step in the increasing rationalization of western civil ization and demonstrates the connection between the values of Protestantism and the rise of capitalism in Europe. The work also inspired Weber to study the sour ces of capitalism and the reasons why similar systems had failed to develop in e astern cultures. For his Gesammelte Aufstze zur Religionssoziologie, Weber studie d the religions of Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, and ancient Judaism , evaluating the relation of each to the development of rationalization in the m odem era. In addition, Weber assessed the characteristics of modern bureaucracy by evaluating conditions found in China, India, and Imperial Rome. His masterwor k, Economy and Society, contains a system of extraordinary depth and breadth, co mbining historical and comparative sociological research and analysis. Weber elu cidates his concept of the "ideal type," a construct used for evaluating individ uals and societies across huge spans of time, and explains his methodology predi cated on the ideal of value-neutrality. As for his economic writings, a series o f lectures entitled Wirtschaftsgeschicte: Abriss der univer-salen Sozial und Wir tschaftsgeschicte (1923) reflect his systematic, empirical, and comparative appr oach to the subject. Critical Reception

Weber's worldwide influence on the field of sociology is perhaps second only to that of Karl Marx, and may be even more pervasive in the Unites States. Likewise , those who have criticized the specifics of his theories almost never fail to a cknowledge his seminal contributions to social science. His importance is also b orne out by the growing number of English translations of his works. Also, the c ontroversies that Weber's conclusions have sparked continue among sociologists j ust as the methods of study and analysis that he devised endure. Weber used a multidimensional approach to analyzing society. His interpretation of sociology merged the economic, cultural, and political organizations of socie ty together as being what shaped social institutions and social change. Another major contribution by Weber was his definition of "social action" as a behavior to which people give meaning; e.g., placing a bumper sticker on your car that st ates pride in the U.S. military troops. Read more: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_Max_Weber's_contribution_to_sociolo gy#ixzz27dTjsjkT Max Weber From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search For other people named Max Weber, see Max Weber (disambiguation). This is a good article. Click here for more information. Max Weber German sociologist, philosopher, and political economist Born Maximilian Karl Emil Weber 21 April 1864 Erfurt, Saxony, Kingdom of Prussia Died 14 June 1920 (aged 56) (pneumonia) Munich, Bavaria, Germany Nationality German Fields Economics, sociology, history, law, politics, philosophy Institutions University of Berlin, University of Freiburg, University of Heid elberg, University of Vienna, University of Munich Alma mater University of Berlin, University of Heidelberg Doctoral advisor Levin Goldschmidt Known for Bureaucracy, Disenchantment, Ideal type, Iron cage, Life chances , Methodological individualism, Monopoly on violence, Protestant work ethic, Rat ionalisation, Social action, Three-component theory of stratification, Tripartit e classification of authority, Verstehen Influences Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, Wilhelm Dilth ey, Heinrich Rickert, Georg Simmel, Werner Sombart Influenced Karl Jaspers, Talcott Parsons, Ludwig von Mises, Gyrgy Lukcs, Theo dor W. Adorno, Jrgen Habermas, Joseph Schumpeter Maximilian Karl Emil "Max" Weber (German pronunciation: ['maks 've?b?]; 21 April 1864 14 June 1920) was a German sociologist, philosopher, and political economi st who profoundly influenced social theory, social research, and the discipline of sociology itself.[1] Weber is often cited, with mile Durkheim and Karl Marx, a s one of the three founding architects of sociology.[2][3][4] Weber was a key proponent of methodological antipositivism, arguing for the stud y of social action through interpretive (rather than purely empiricist) means, b ased on understanding the purpose and meaning that individuals attach to their o wn actions. Weber's main intellectual concern was understanding the processes of rationalisation, secularization, and "disenchantment" that he associated with t he rise of capitalism and modernity[5] and which he saw as the result of a new w ay of thinking about the world.[6] Weber is perhaps best known for his thesis co mbining economic sociology and the sociology of religion, elaborated in his book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, in which he proposed that as cetic Protestantism was one of the major "elective affinities" associated with t

he rise in the Western world of market-driven capitalism and the rational-legal nation-state. Against Marx's "historical materialism," Weber emphasised the impo rtance of cultural influences embedded in religion as a means for understanding the genesis of capitalism.[7] The Protestant Ethic formed the earliest part in W eber's broader investigations into world religion: he would go on to examine the religions of China, the religions of India and ancient Judaism, with particular regard to the apparent non-development of capitalism in the corresponding socie ties, as well as to their differing forms of social stratification.[a] In another major work, Politics as a Vocation, Weber defined the state as an ent ity which successfully claims a "monopoly on the legitimate use of violence". He was also the first to categorize social authority into distinct forms, which he labelled as charismatic, traditional, and rational-legal. His analysis of burea ucracy emphasised that modern state institutions are increasingly based on ratio nal-legal authority. Weber also made a variety of other contributions in economi c history, as well as economic theory and methodology. Weber's analysis of moder nity and rationalisation significantly influenced the critical theory associated with the Frankfurt School. After the First World War, Max Weber was among the founders of the liberal Germa n Democratic Party. He also ran unsuccessfully for a seat in parliament and serv ed as advisor to the committee that drafted the ill-fated democratic Weimar Cons titution of 1919. After contracting the Spanish flu, he died of pneumonia in 192 0, aged 56.[2] Contents 1 Biography 1.1 Early life and family background 1.2 Education 1.3 Early work 1.4 Later work 1.5 Political involvements 1.6 Last years 2 Weber's thought 2.1 Inspirations 2.2 Methodology 2.3 Rationalisation 2.4 Sociology of religion 2.4.1 The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism 2.4.2 The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism 2.4.3 The Religion of India: The Sociology of Hinduism and Buddhism 2.4.4 Ancient Judaism 2.4.5 Economy and Society 2.4.6 Theodicy of Fortune and Misfortune 2.5 Politics and government 2.5.1 Social stratification 2.6 The city 2.7 Economics 2.7.1 Methodological individualism 2.7.2 Marginalism and psychophysics 2.7.3 Economic history 2.7.4 Economic calculation 3 Legacy 4 Critical responses to Weber 5 See also 6 Notes 7 References 8 Further reading 9 External links

Biography Early life and family background Weber was born in 1864, in Erfurt, Thuringia.[2] He was the eldest of the seven children of Max Weber Sr., a wealthy and prominent civil servant and member of t he National Liberal Party, and his wife Helene (Fallenstein), who partly descend ed from French Huguenot immigrants and held strong moral absolutist ideas.[2][8] Weber Sr.'s involvement in public life immersed his home in both politics and a cademia, as his salon welcomed many prominent scholars and public figures.[2] Th e young Weber and his brother Alfred, who also became a sociologist and economis t, thrived in this intellectual atmosphere. Weber's 1876 Christmas presents to h is parents, when he was thirteen years old, were two historical essays entitled "About the course of German history, with special reference to the positions of the Emperor and the Pope," and "About the Roman Imperial period from Constantine to the migration of nations."[9] In class, bored and unimpressed with the teach ers who in turn resented what they perceived as a disrespectful attitude he secr etly read all forty volumes of Goethe.[10][11] Before entering the university, h e would read many other classical works.[11] Over time, Weber would also be sign ificantly affected by the marital tension between his father, "a man who enjoyed earthly pleasures," and his mother, a devout Calvinist "who sought to lead an a scetic life."[12][13] Max Weber and his brothers, Alfred and Karl, in 1879 Education In 1882 Weber enrolled in the University of Heidelberg as a law student.[14] Aft er a year of military service he transferred to University of Berlin.[10] After his first few years as a student, during which he spent much time "drinking beer and fencing," Weber would increasingly take his mother's side in family argumen ts and grew estranged from his father.[12][13][15] Simultaneously with his studi es, he worked as a junior barrister.[10] In 1886 Weber passed the examination fo r Referendar, comparable to the bar association examination in the British and A merican legal systems. Throughout the late 1880s, Weber continued his study of l aw and history.[10] He earned his law doctorate in 1889 by writing a dissertatio n on legal history entitled 'Development of the Principle of Joint Liability and the Separate Fund in the Public Trading Company out of Household and Trade Comm unities in Italian Cities.' This work was used as part of a longer work 'On the History of Trading Companies in the Middle Ages, based on South-European Sources ,' published in the same year.[16] Two years later, Weber completed his Habilita tionsschrift, The Roman Agrarian History and its Significance for Public and Pri vate Law, working with August Meitzen.[17][18] Having thus become a Privatdozent , Weber joined the University of Berlin's faculty, lecturing and consulting for the government.[19] Early work In the years between the completion of his dissertation and habilitation, Weber took an interest in contemporary social policy. In 1888 he joined the Verein fr S ocialpolitik,[20] a new professional association of German economists affiliated with the historical school, who saw the role of economics primarily as finding solutions to the social problems of the age and who pioneered large scale statis tical studies of economic issues. He also involved himself in politics, joining the left-leaning Evangelical Social Congress.[21] In 1890 the Verein established a research program to examine "the Polish question" or Ostflucht: the influx of Polish farm workers into eastern Germany as local labourers migrated to Germany 's rapidly industrialising cities.[2] Weber was put in charge of the study and w rote a large part of the final report,[2][20] which generated considerable atten tion and controversy and marked the beginning of Weber's renown as a social scie ntist.[2] From 1893 to 1899 Weber was a member of the Alldeutscher Verband (PanGerman League), an organisation that campaigned against the influx of the Polish workers; the degree of Weber's support for the Germanisation of Poles and simil ar nationalist policies is still debated by modern scholars.[22][23] In some of

his work in particular his provocative lecture on "The Nation State and Economic Policy" delivered in 1895, Weber criticizes the immigration of Poles and blames the Junker class for perpetuating Slavic immigration to serve their selfish int erests.[24] Max Weber and his wife Marianne in 1894 Also in 1893 he married his distant cousin Marianne Schnitger, later a feminist activist and author in her own right,[2][25] who was instrumental in collecting and publishing Weber's journal articles as books after his death and her biograp hy of him is an important source for understanding Weber's life.[26][27] They wo uld have no children and it is usually acknowledged that their marriage was neve r consummated.[15] The marriage granted long-awaited financial independence to W eber, allowing him to finally leave his parents' household.[13] The couple moved to Freiburg in 1894, where Weber was appointed professor of economics at the un iversity,[18][19] before accepting the same position at the University of Heidel berg in 1896.[18][19] There Weber became a central figure in the so-called "Webe r Circle," composed of other intellectuals such as his wife Marianne, Georg Jell inek, Ernst Troeltsch, Werner Sombart, Marc Bloch, Robert Michels and Gyrgy Lukcs. [2] Weber also remained active in the Verein and the Evangelical Social Congress .[2] His research in that period was focused on economics and legal history.[28] In 1897 Max Weber Sr. died, two months after a severe quarrel with his son that was never resolved.[2][29] After this, Weber became increasingly prone to depres sion, nervousness and insomnia, making it difficult for him to fulfill his dutie s as a professor.[10][18] His condition forced him to reduce his teaching and le ave unfinished his course in the fall of 1899. After spending months in a sanato rium during the summer and fall of 1900, Weber and his wife travelled to Italy a t the end of the year and did not return to Heidelberg until April 1902. He woul d again withdraw from teaching in 1903 and not return to it till 1919. Weber's o rdeal with mental illness was carefully described in a personal chronology that was destroyed by his wife. This chronicle was supposedly destroyed because Maria nne Weber feared that Max Weber's work would be discredited by the Nazis if his experience with mental illness were widely known.[30] [2] Later work After Weber's immense productivity in the early 1890s, he did not publish any pa pers between early 1898 and late 1902, finally resigning his professorship in la te 1903. Freed from those obligations, in that year he accepted a position as as sociate editor of the Archives for Social Science and Social Welfare,[31] where he worked with his colleagues Edgar Jaff and Werner Sombart.[2][32] His new inter ests would lie in more fundamental issues of social sciences; his works from thi s latter period are of primary interest to modern scholars.[28] In 1904, Weber b egan to publish some of his most seminal papers in this journal, notably his ess ay The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, which became his most famo us work[33] and laid the foundations for his later research on the impact of cul tures and religions on the development of economic systems.[34] This essay was t he only one of his works from that period that was published as a book during hi s lifetime. Some other of his works written in the first one and a half decades of the 20th century published posthumously and dedicated primarily from the fiel ds of sociology of religion, economic and legal sociology are also recognised as among his most important intellectual contributions.[2] Also in 1904, he visited the United States and participated in the Congress of A rts and Sciences held in connection with the World's Fair (Louisiana Purchase Ex position) in St. Louis. Despite his partial recovery, Weber felt that he was una ble to resume regular teaching at that time and continued on as a private schola r, helped by an inheritance in 1907.[19][31] In 1909, disappointed with the Vere in, he co-founded the German Sociological Association (Deutsche Gesellschaft fr S oziologie, or DGS) and served as its first treasurer.[2] He would, however, resi gn from the DGS in 1912.[2] In 1912, Weber tried to organise a left-wing politic

al party to combine social-democrats and liberals. This attempt was unsuccessful , in part because many liberals feared social-democratic revolutionary ideals.[3 5] Political involvements Max Weber (foreground) in 1917 with Ernst Toller (facing) At the outbreak of World War I, Weber, aged 50, volunteered for service and was appointed as a reserve officer and put in charge of organising the army hospital s in Heidelberg, a role he fulfilled until the end of 1915.[31][36] Weber's view s on the war and the expansion of the German empire changed during the course of the conflict.[35][36][37] Early on he supported the nationalist rhetoric and th e war effort, though with some hesitation as he viewed the war as a necessity to fulfill German duty as a leading state power. In time, however, Weber became on e of the most prominent critics of German expansionism and of the Kaiser's war p olicies.[2] He publicly attacked the Belgian annexation policy and unrestricted submarine warfare and later supported calls for constitutional reform, democrati sation and universal suffrage.[2] Weber joined the worker and soldier council of Heidelberg in 1918. He then serve d in the German delegation to the Paris Peace Conference and as advisor to the C onfidential Committee for Constitutional Reform, which drafted the Weimar Consti tution.[31] Motivated by his understanding of the American model, he advocated a strong, popularly elected presidency as a constitutional counterbalance to the power of the professional bureaucracy.[2] More controversially, he also defended the provisions for emergency presidential powers that became Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution. These provisions were later used by Adolf Hitler to subvert the rest of the constitution and institute rule by decree, allowing his regime to suppress opposition and gain dictatorial powers.[38] Weber also ran, unsuccessfully, for a parliamentary seat, as a member of the lib eral German Democratic Party, which he had co-founded.[2][39] He opposed both th e leftist German Revolution of 1918 1919 and the ratification of the Treaty of Ver sailles, a principled position that defied the political alignments in Germany a t that time[2] and which may have prevented Friedrich Ebert, the new social-demo cratic President of Germany, from appointing Weber as minister or ambassador.[36 ] Weber commanded widespread respect but relatively little influence.[2] Weber's role in German politics remains controversial to this day. Last years Weber's grave in Heidelberg Frustrated with politics, Weber resumed teaching during this time, first at the University of Vienna, then, after 1919, at the University of Munich.[2][19][31] His lectures from that period were collected into major works, such as the Gener al Economic History, Science as a Vocation and Politics as a Vocation.[2] In Mun ich, he headed the first German university institute of sociology, but never hel d a professorial position in sociology. Many colleagues and students in Munich a ttacked his response to the German Revolution and some right-wing students held protests in front of his home.[35] Max Weber contracted the Spanish flu and died of pneumonia in Munich on 14 June 1920.[2] At the time of his death, Weber had not finished writing his magnum opus on sociological theory: Economy and Society . His widow Marianne helped prepare it for its publication in 1921 22. Weber's thought Inspirations Weber's thinking was strongly influenced by German idealism and particularly by neo-Kantianism, to which he had been exposed through Heinrich Rickert, his profe ssorial colleague at the University of Freiburg.[2] Especially important to Webe r's work is the neo-Kantian belief that reality is essentially chaotic and incom prehensible, with all rational order deriving from the way in which the human mi nd focuses its attention on certain aspects of reality and organises the resulti

ng perceptions.[2] Weber's opinions regarding the methodology of the social scie nces show parallels with the work of contemporary neo-Kantian philosopher and pi oneering sociologist Georg Simmel.[40] Weber was also influenced by Kantian ethics, which he nonetheless came to think of as obsolete in a modern age lacking in religious certainties. In this last re spect, the influence of Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy is evident.[2] Accordin g to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, the "deep tension between the Kant ian moral imperatives and a Nietzschean diagnosis of the modern cultural world i s apparently what gives such a darkly tragic and agnostic shade to Weber's ethic al worldview."[2] Another major influence in Weber's life were the writings of K arl Marx and the workings of socialist thought in academia and active politics. While Weber shares some of Marx's consternation with bureaucratic systems and ma ligns them as being capable of advancing their own logic to the detriment of hum an freedom and autonomy, Weber views conflict as perpetual and inevitable and do es not host the spirit of a materially available utopia.[41] Though the influenc e of his mother's Calvinist religiosity is evident throughout Weber's life and w ork, and though he maintained a deep, lifelong interest in the study of religion s, Weber was open about the fact that he was personally irreligious.[42][43] As a political economist and economic historian, Weber belonged to the "youngest " German historical school of economics, represented by academics such as Gustav von Schmoller and his student Werner Sombart. But, even though Weber's research interests were very much in line with that school, his views on methodology and the theory of value diverged significantly from those of other German historici sts and were closer, in fact, to those of Carl Menger and the Austrian School, t he traditional rivals of the historical school.[44][45] (See section on Economic s.) Methodology Unlike some other classical figures (Comte, Durkheim) Weber did not attempt, con sciously, to create any specific set of rules governing social sciences in gener al, or sociology in particular.[2] Compared to Durkheim and Marx, Weber was more focused on individuals and culture and this is clear in his methodology.[10] Wh ereas Durkheim focused on the society, Weber concentrated on the individuals and their actions (see structure and action discussion) and whereas Marx argued for the primacy of the material world over the world of ideas, Weber valued ideas a s motivating actions of individuals, at least in the big picture.[10][46][47] Sociology, for Max Weber, is: ...a science which attempts the interpretive understanding of social action in order thereby to arrive at a causal explanation of its course and effects. Max Weber[48] Weber was concerned with the question of objectivity and subjectivity.[2] Weber distinguished social action from social behaviour, noting that social action mus t be understood through how individuals subjectively relate to one another.[2][4 9] Study of social action through interpretive means (Verstehen) must be based u pon understanding the subjective meaning and purpose that the individual attache s to their actions.[2][28] Social actions may have easily identifiable and objec tive means, but much more subjective ends and the understanding of those ends by a scientist is subject to yet another layer of subjective understanding (that o f the scientist).[2] Weber noted that the importance of subjectivity in social s ciences makes creation of fool-proof, universal laws much more difficult than in natural sciences and that the amount of objective knowledge that social science s may achieve is precariously limited.[2] Overall, Weber supported the goal of o bjective science, but he noted that it is an unreachable goal although one defin itely worth striving for.[2]

There is no absolutely "objective" scientific analysis of culture... All kno wledge of cultural reality... is always knowledge from particular points of view . ... an "objective" analysis of cultural events, which proceeds according to th e thesis that the ideal of science is the reduction of empirical reality to "law s," is meaningless... [because]... the knowledge of social laws is not knowledge of social reality but is rather one of the various aids used by our minds for a ttaining this end. Max Weber, "Objectivity" in Social Science, 1897[50] The principle of "methodological individualism," which holds that social scienti sts should seek to understand collectivities (such as nations, cultures, governm ents, churches, corporations, etc.) solely as the result and the context of the actions of individual persons, can be traced to Weber, particularly to the first chapter of Economy and Society, in which he argues that only individuals "can b e treated as agents in a course of subjectively understandable action."[45][49] In other words, Weber argued that social phenomena can be understood scientifica lly only to the extent that they are captured by models of the behaviour of purp oseful individuals, models which Weber called "ideal types," from which actual h istorical events will necessarily deviate due to accidental and irrational facto rs.[45] The analytical constructs of an ideal type never exist in reality, but p rovide objective benchmarks against which real-life constructs can be measured.[ 51] We know of no scientifically ascertainable ideals. To be sure, that makes ou r efforts more arduous than in the past, since we are expected to create our ide als from within our breast in the very age of subjectivist culture. Max Weber, 1909[52] Weber's methodology was developed in the context of a wider debate about methodo logy of social sciences, the Methodenstreit.[28] Weber's position was close to h istoricism, as he understood social actions as being heavily tied to particular historical contexts and its analysis required the understanding of subjective mo tivations of individuals (social actors).[28] Thus Weber's methodology emphasise s the use of comparative historical analysis.[53] Therefore, Weber was more inte rested in explaining how a certain outcome was the result of various historical processes rather than predicting an outcome of those processes in the future.[47 ] Rationalisation Many scholars have described rationalisation and the question of individual free dom in an increasingly rational society, as the main theme of Weber's work.[2][5 4][55][56] This theme was situated in the larger context of the relationship bet ween psychological motivations, cultural values and beliefs (primarily, religion ) and the structure of the society (usually determined by the economy).[47] By rationalisation, Weber understood first, the individual cost-benefit calculat ion, second, the wider, bureaucratic organisation of the organisations and final ly, in the more general sense as the opposite of understanding the reality throu gh mystery and magic (disenchantment).[56] The fate of our times is characterised by rationalisation and intellectualis ation and, above all, by the "disenchantment of the world" Max Weber[57] Weber began his studies of the subject in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, in which he argued that the redefinition of the connection between work and piety in Protestantism and especially in ascetic Protestant denominatio ns, particularly Calvinism, shifted human effort towards rational efforts aimed at achieving economic gain.[58][59] In Protestant religion, Christian piety towa rds God was expressed through one's secular vocation (secularisation of calling)

.[59] The rational roots of this doctrine, he argued, soon grew incompatible wit h and larger than the religious and so the latter were eventually discarded.[60] Weber continued his investigation into this matter in later works, notably in hi s studies on bureaucracy and on the classification of legitimate authority into three types Rational-legal, traditional and charismatic of which the legitimate (or rational) is the dominant one in the modern world.[2] In these works Weber d escribed what he saw as society's movement towards rationalisation.[2] Similarly , rationalisation could be seen in the economy, with the development of highly r ational and calculating capitalism.[2] Weber also saw rationalisation as one of the main factors setting the European West apart from the rest of the world.[2] Rationalisation relied on deep changes in ethics, religion, psychology and cultu re; changes that first took place in the Western civilisation.[2] What Weber depicted was not only the secularisation of Western culture, but also and especially the development of modern societies from the viewpoint of ra tionalisation. The new structures of society were marked by the differentiation of the two functionally intermeshing systems that had taken shape around the org anisational cores of the capitalist enterprise and the bureaucratic state appara tus. Weber understood this process as the institutionalisation of purposive-rati onal economic and administrative action. To the degree that everyday life was af fected by this cultural and societal rationalisation, traditional forms of life which in the early modern period were differentiated primarily according to one' s trade were dissolved. Jrgen Habermas, Modernity's Consciousness of Time, 1985, [5] Features of rationalisation include increasing knowledge, growing impersonality and enhanced control of social and material life.[2] Weber was ambivalent toward s rationalisation; while admitting it was responsible for many advances, in part icular, freeing humans from traditional, restrictive and illogical social guidel ines, he also criticised it for dehumanising individuals as "cogs in the machine " and curtailing their freedom, trapping them in the bureaucratic iron cage of r ationality and bureaucracy.[2][54][61][62] Related to rationalisation is the pro cess of disenchantment, in which the world is becoming more explained and less m ystical, moving from polytheistic religions to monotheistic ones and finally to the Godless science of modernity.[2] Those processes affect all of society, remo ving "sublime values... from public life" and making art less creative.[63] In a dystopian critique of rationalisation, Weber notes that modern society is a product of an individualistic drive of the Reformation, yet at the same time, t he society created in this process is less and less welcoming of individualism.[ 2] How is it at all possible to salvage any remnants of 'individual' freedom of movement in any sense given this all-powerful trend? Max Weber[2] Sociology of religion Weber's work in the field of sociology of religion started with the essay The Pr otestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism and continued with the analysis of T he Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism, The Religion of India: The Sociol ogy of Hinduism and Buddhism and Ancient Judaism. His work on other religions wa s interrupted by his sudden death in 1920, which prevented him from following An cient Judaism with studies of early Christianity and Islam.[64] His three main t hemes in the essays were the effect of religious ideas on economic activities, t he relation between social stratification and religious ideas and the distinguis hable characteristics of Western civilization.[65] Weber saw religion as one of the core forces in the society.[53] His goal was to

find reasons for the different development paths of the cultures of the Occiden t and the Orient, although without judging or valuing them, like some of the con temporary thinkers who followed the social Darwinist paradigm; Weber wanted prim arily to explain the distinctive elements of the Western civilisation.[65] In th e analysis of his findings, Weber maintained that Calvinist (and more widely, Pr otestant) religious ideas had had a major impact on the social innovation and de velopment of the economic system of the West, but noted that they were not the o nly factors in this development. Other notable factors mentioned by Weber includ ed the rationalism of scientific pursuit, merging observation with mathematics, science of scholarship and jurisprudence, rational systematisation and bureaucra tisation of government administration and economic enterprise.[65] In the end, t he study of the sociology of religion, according to Weber, focused on one distin guishing part of the Western culture, the decline of beliefs in magic, or what h e referred to as "disenchantment of the world".[65] Weber also proposed a socioevolutionary model of religious change, showing that in general, societies have moved from magic to polytheism, then to pantheism, mo notheism and finally, ethical monotheism.[66] According to Weber, this evolution occurred as the growing economic stability allowed professionalisation and the evolution of ever more sophisticated priesthood.[67] As societies grew more comp lex and encompassed different groups, a hierarchy of gods developed and as power in the society became more centralised, the concept of a single, universal God became more popular and desirable.[68] The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism Main article: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism Cover of the original German edition of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of C apitalism Weber's essay The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism is his most famo us work.[33] It is argued that this work should not be viewed as a detailed stud y of Protestantism, but rather as an introduction into Weber's later works, espe cially his studies of interaction between various religious ideas and economic b ehaviour as part of the rationalisation of the economic system.[69] In The Prote stant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Weber put forward the thesis that Calv inist ethic and ideas influenced the development of capitalism.[69] He noted the post-Reformation shift of Europe's economic centre away from Catholic countries such as France, Spain and Italy, and toward Protestant countries such as the Ne therlands, England, Scotland and Germany. Weber also noted that societies having more Protestants were those with a more highly developed capitalist economy.[70 ] Similarly, in societies with different religions, most successful business lea ders were Protestant.[69] Weber thus argued that Roman Catholicism impeded the d evelopment of the capitalist economy in the West, as did other religions such as Confucianism and Buddhism elsewhere in the world.[69] The development of the concept of the calling quickly gave to the modern ent repreneur a fabulously clear conscience and also industrious workers; he gave to his employees as the wages of their ascetic devotion to the calling and of co-o peration in his ruthless exploitation of them through capitalism the prospect of eternal salvation. Max Weber[59] Christian religious devotion had historically been accompanied by rejection of m undane affairs, including economic pursuit.[71] Weber showed that certain types of Protestantism notably Calvinism were supportive of rational pursuit of econom ic gain and worldly activities dedicated to it, seeing them as endowed with mora l and spiritual significance.[58] Weber argued that there were many reasons to l ook for the origins of modern capitalism in the religious ideas of the Reformati on.[72] In particular, the Protestant ethic (or more specifically, Calvinist eth ic) motivated the believers to work hard, be successful in business and reinvest their profits in further development rather than frivolous pleasures.[69] The n

otion of calling meant that each individual had to take action in order to be sa ved; just being a member of the Church was not enough.[59] Predestination also r educed antagonising over economic inequality and further, it meant that a materi al wealth could be taken as a sign of salvation in the afterlife.[69][73] The be lievers thus justified pursuit of profit with religion, as instead of being fuel led by morally suspect greed or ambition, their actions were motivated by a high ly moral and respected philosophy.[69] This Weber called the "spirit of capitali sm": it was the Protestant religious ideology that was behind and inevitably lea d to the capitalist economic system.[69] This theory is often viewed as a revers al of Marx's thesis that the economic "base" of society determines all other asp ects of it.[58] Weber abandoned research into Protestantism because his colleague Ernst Troeltsc h, a professional theologian, had begun work on the book The Social Teachings of the Christian Churches and Sects. Another reason for Weber's decision was that Troeltsch's work already achieved what he desired in that area: laying the groun dwork for a comparative analysis of religion and society.[74] The phrase "work ethic" used in modern commentary is a derivative of the "Protes tant ethic" discussed by Weber. It was adopted when the idea of the Protestant e thic was generalised to apply to the Japanese people, Jews and other non-Christi ans and thus lost its religious connotations.[75] The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism Main article: The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism was Weber's second major work on the sociology of religion. Weber focused on those aspects of Chinese society tha t were different from those of Western Europe, especially those aspects which co ntrasted with Puritanism. His work also questioned why capitalism did not develo p in China.[76] He focused on the issues of Chinese urban development, Chinese p atrimonialism and officialdom and Chinese religion and philosophy (primarily, Co nfucianism and Taoism), as the areas in which Chinese development differed most distinctively from the European route.[76] According to Weber, Confucianism and Puritanism are mutually exclusive types of rational thought, each attempting to prescribe a way of life based on religious dogma.[77] Notably, they both valued self control and restraint and did not oppo se accumulation of wealth.[77] However, to both those qualities were just means to the final goal and here they were divided by a key difference.[73] Confuciani sm's goal was "a cultured status position", while Puritanism's goal was to creat e individuals who are "tools of God".[77] The intensity of belief and enthusiasm for action were rare in Confucianism, but common in Protestantism.[77] Actively working for wealth was unbecoming a proper Confucian.[73] Therefore, Weber stat es that it was this difference in social attitudes and mentality, shaped by the respective, dominant religions, that contributed to the development of capitalis m in the West and the absence of it in China.[77] The Religion of India: The Sociology of Hinduism and Buddhism Main article: The Religion of India: The Sociology of Hinduism and Buddhism The Religion of India: The Sociology of Hinduism and Buddhism was Weber's third major work on the sociology of religion. In this work he deals with the structur e of Indian society, with the orthodox doctrines of Hinduism and the heterodox d octrines of Buddhism, with modifications brought by the influence of popular rel igiosity and finally with the impact of religious beliefs on the secular ethic o f Indian society.[78] Like Confucianism in China, for Weber, Hinduism in India w as a barrier for capitalism.[73] The Indian caste system made it very difficult for individuals to advance in the society beyond their caste.[73] Activity, incl uding economic activity, was seen as unimportant in the context of the advanceme nt of the soul.[73]

Weber ended his research of society and religion in India by bringing in insight s from his previous work on China to discuss similarities of the Asian belief sy stems.[79] He notes that the beliefs saw the meaning of life as otherworldly mys tical experience.[79] The social world is fundamentally divided between the educ ated elite, following the guidance of a prophet or wise man and the uneducated m asses whose beliefs are centered on magic.[79] In Asia, there was no Messianic p rophecy to give plan and meaning to the everyday life of educated and uneducated alike.[79] Weber juxtaposed such Messianic prophecies (also called ethical prop hecies), notably from the Near East region to the exemplary prophecies found on the Asiatic mainland, focused more on reaching to the educated elites and enligh tening them on the proper ways to live one's life, usually with little emphasis on hard work and the material world.[79][80] It was those differences that preve nted the countries of the Occident from following the paths of the earlier Chine se and Indian civilizations. His next work, Ancient Judaism was an attempt to pr ove this theory.[79] Ancient Judaism Main article: Ancient Judaism (book) In Ancient Judaism, his fourth major work on the sociology of religion, Weber at tempted to explain the factors which resulted in the early differences between O riental and Occidental religiosity.[81] He contrasted the innerworldly asceticis m developed by Western Christianity with mystical contemplation of the kind deve loped in India.[81] Weber noted that some aspects of Christianity sought to conq uer and change the world, rather than withdraw from its imperfections.[81] This fundamental characteristic of Christianity (when compared to Far Eastern religio ns) stems originally from ancient Jewish prophecy.[82] Weber noted that Judaism not only fathered Christianity and Islam, but was cruci al to the rise of the modern Occidental state; Judaism's influence was as import ant as Hellenistic and Roman cultures. Weber's premature death in 1920 prevented him from following his planned analysi s of Psalms, the Book of Job, Talmudic Jewry, early Christianity and Islam. Economy and Society Main article: Economy and Society In his magnum opus, Economy and Society, Weber distinguished three ideal types o f religious attitudes: world-flying mysticism, world-rejecting asceticism, and i nner-worldly asceticism. He defined magic as a pre-religious activity.[83] Theodicy of Fortune and Misfortune The Theodicy of fortune and misfortune within sociology is the theory, as Weber suggested, of how "members of different social classes adopt different belief sy stems, or theodices, to explain their social situation."[84] The concept of theodicy was expanded mainly with the thought of Weber and his ad dition of ethical considerations to the subject of religion. There is this ethic al part of religion, including "(1) soteriology and (2) theodicy. These mean, re spectively, how people understand themselves to be able to be in a right relatio nship with supernatural powers, and how to explain evil - or why bad things seem to happen to those who seem to be good people".[85] There is a separation of di fferent theodicies with regard to class. "Theodicies of misfortune tend to the b elief that weath and other manifestations of privilege are indicications or sign s of evil...In contrast, theodicies of fortune emphasise the notion that privile ges are a blessing and are deserved".[85] Weber also writes that "the affluent e mbrace good fortune theodicies, which emphasise that prosperity is a blessing of God...[while] theodices of misfortune emphasise that affluence is a sign of evi l and that suffering in this world will be rewarded in the next."[84] Thus these two distinctions can be applied not only to class structure within society but denomination and racial segregation within religion.

Weber defines the importance of societal class within religion by examining the difference between the two theodicies and to what class structures they apply. T he concept of "work ethic" is attached to the theodicy of fortune; thus, because of the Protestant "work ethic," there was a contribution of higher class outcom es and more education amongst Protestants.[86] Those without the work ethic clun g to the theodicy of misfortune, believing wealth and happiness were granted in the afterlife. Another example of how this belief of religious theodicy influenc es class, is that those of lower status, the poor, cling to deep religiousness a nd faith as a way to comfort themselves and provide hope for a more prosperous f uture, whilst those of higher status cling to the sacraments or actions which pr ove their right of possessing greater wealth.[84] These two theodices can be found in the denominational segregation within the re ligious community. The main division can be seen between the mainline Protestant and evangelical denominations and their relation to the class in to which their particular theodicy pertains. For example, mainline churches, with their upper class congregations, "promote[d] order, stability, and conservatism, and in so d oing proved to be a powerful source of legitimation of the status quo and of exi sting disparities in the distribution of wealth and power" because much of the w ealth of the church comes from the congregation.[87] In contrast, Pentecostal ch urches adopted the theodicy of misfortune. They instead "advocated change intend ed to advance the cause of justice and fairness".[87] Thus the learned and upper class religious churches who preach the theodicy of fortune, ultimately support capitalism and corporation, while the churches who adopted the theodicy of misf ortune, instead preached equality and fairness. Politics and government In political sociology, one of Weber's most significant contributions is his Pol itics as a Vocation essay. Therein, Weber unveils the definition of the state as that entity which possesses a delegatable monopoly on the legitimate use of phy sical force.[88] Weber wrote that politics is the sharing of state's power betwe en various groups, and political leaders are those who wield this power.[88] A p olitician must not be a man of the "true Christian ethic", understood by Weber a s being the ethic of the Sermon on the Mount, that is to say, the injunction to turn the other cheek.[89] An adherent of such an ethic ought rather to be unders tood to be a saint, for it is only saints, according to Weber, that can appropri ately follow it.[89] The political realm is no realm for saints; a politician ou ght to marry the ethic of ultimate ends and the ethic of responsibility and must possess both a passion for his vocation and the capacity to distance himself fr om the subject of his exertions (the governed).[89] Weber distinguished three ideal types of political leadership (alternatively ref erred to as three types of domination, legitimisation or authority): charismatic domination (familial and religious), traditional domination (patriarchs, patrimonialism, feudalism) and legal domination (modern law and state, bureaucracy).[90] In his view, every historical relation between rulers and ruled contained such e lements and they can be analysed on the basis of this tripartite distinction.[91 ] He notes that the instability of charismatic authority forces it to "routinise " into a more structured form of authority.[61] In a pure type of traditional ru le, sufficient resistance to a ruler can lead to a "traditional revolution". The move towards a rational-legal structure of authority, utilising a bureaucratic structure, is inevitable in the end.[92] Thus this theory can be sometimes viewe d as part of the social evolutionism theory. This ties to his broader concept of rationalisation by suggesting the inevitability of a move in this direction.[61 ]

Bureaucratic administration means fundamentally domination through knowledge . Max Weber[93] Weber described many ideal types of public administration and government in his masterpiece Economy and Society (1922). His critical study of the bureaucratisat ion of society became one of the most enduring parts of his work.[61][93] It was Weber who began the studies of bureaucracy and whose works led to the popularis ation of this term.[94] Many aspects of modern public administration go back to him and a classic, hierarchically organised civil service of the Continental typ e is called "Weberian civil service".[95] As the most efficient and rational way of organising, bureaucratisation for Weber was the key part of the rational-leg al authority and furthermore, he saw it as the key process in the ongoing ration alisation of the Western society.[61][93] Weber listed several preconditions for the emergence of the bureaucracy:[96] The growth in space and population being administered, the growth in complexity of the administrative tasks being carried out and the existence of a monetary econo my these resulted in a need for a more efficient administrative system.[96] Deve lopment of communication and transportation technologies made more efficient adm inistration possible (and popularly requested) and democratisation and rationali sation of culture resulted in demands that the new system treat everybody equall y.[96] Weber's ideal bureaucracy is characterised by hierarchical organisation, by deli neated lines of authority in a fixed area of activity, by action taken (and reco rded) on the basis of written rules, by bureaucratic officials needing expert tr aining, by rules being implemented neutrally and by career advancement depending on technical qualifications judged by organisations, not by individuals.[93][96 ] The decisive reason for the advance of the bureaucratic organisation has alw ays been its purely technical superiority over any other form of organisation. Max Weber[95] While recognising bureaucracy as the most efficient form of organisation and eve n indispensable for the modern state, Weber also saw it as a threat to individua l freedoms and the ongoing bureaucratisation as leading to a "polar night of icy darkness", in which increasing rationalisation of human life traps individuals in the aforementioned "iron cage" of bureaucratic, rule-based, rational control. [93][97] In order to counteract bureaucrats, the system needs entrepreneurs and politicians.[93] Social stratification Weber also formulated a three-component theory of stratification, with Social cl ass, Social status and Political party as conceptually distinct elements.[98] Social class is based on economically determined relationship to the market (owner, renter, employee etc.). Status class is based on non-economical qualities like honour, prestige and religion. Party class refers to affiliations in the political domain. All three dimensions have consequences for what Weber called "life chances" (opp ortunities to improve one's life).[98] The city As part of his overarching effort to understand the unique development of the We stern world, Weber produced a detailed general study of the city as the characte ristic locus of the social and economic relations, political arrangements, and i

deas that eventually came to define the West. This resulted in a monograph title d The City, which was probably compiled from research conducted in 1911-1913, an d which was published posthumously in 1921. In 1924 it was incorporated into the second part of his Economy and Society, as chapter XVI, "The City (Non-legitima te Domination)". According to Weber, the city as a politically autonomous organization of people living in close proximity, employed in a variety of specialized trades, and phys ically separated from the surrounding countryside, only fully developed in the W est and to a great extent shaped its cultural evolution: The origin of a rational and inner-worldly ethic is associated in the Occide nt with the appearance of thinkers and prophets [...] who developed in a social context which was alien to the Asiatic cultures. This context consisted of the p olitical problems engendered by the bourgeois status-group of the city, without which neither Judaism, nor Christianity, nor the development of Hellenistic thin king are conceivable. Max Weber [99] Weber argued that Judaism, early Christianity, theology, and later the political party and modern science, were only possible in the urban context that reached a full development the West alone.[100] He also saw in the history of medieval E uropean cities the rise of a unique form of "non-legitimate domination" that suc cessfully challenged the existing forms of legitimate domination (traditional, c harismatic, and rational-legal) that had prevailed until then in the Medieval wo rld.[101] This new domination was based on the great economic and military power wielded by the organized community of city-dwellers ("citizens"). Economics Weber regarded himself primarily as a "political economist,"[102][103][104] and all of his professorial appointments were in economics, though today his contrib utions in that field are largely overshadowed by his role as a founder of modern sociology. As an economist, Weber belonged to the "youngest" German historical school of economics.[105] The great differences between that school's interests and methods on the one hand and those of the neoclassical school (from which mod ern mainstream economics largely derives) on the other, explain why Weber's infl uence on economics today is hard to discern.[106] Methodological individualism Though his research interests were always in line with those of the German histo ricists, with a strong emphasis on interpreting economic history, Weber's defenc e of "methodological individualism" in the social sciences represented an import ant break with that school and an embracing of many of the arguments that had be en made against the historicists by Carl Menger, the founder of the Austrian Sch ool of economics, in the context of the academic Methodenstreit ("debate over me thods") of the late 19th century.[45] The phrase "methodological individualism," which has come into common usage in modern debates about the connection between microeconomics and macroeconomics, was coined by the Austrian-American economis t Joseph Schumpeter in 1908 as a way of referring to the views of Weber.[45] Acc ording to Weber's theses, social research cannot be fully inductive or descripti ve, because understanding some phenomenon implies that the researcher must go be yond mere description and interpret it; interpretation requires classification a ccording to abstract "ideal (pure) types".[105] This, together with his antiposi tivistic argumentation (see Verstehen), can be taken as a methodological justifi cation for the model of the "rational economic man" (homo economicus), which is at the heart of modern mainstream economics.[45][105] Marginalism and psychophysics Unlike other historicists, Weber also accepted the marginal theory of value (als o called "marginalism") and taught it to his students.[44][107] In 1908, Weber p

ublished an article in which he drew a sharp methodological distinction between psychology and economics and attacked the claims that the marginal theory of val ue in economics reflected the form of the psychological response to stimuli as d escribed by the Weber-Fechner law. Max Weber's article has been cited as a defin itive refutation of the dependence of the economic theory of value on the laws o f psychophysics by Lionel Robbins, George Stigler,[108] and Friedrich Hayek, tho ugh the broader issue of the relation between economics and psychology has come back into the academic debate with the development of "behavioral economics."[10 9] Economic history Weber's best known work in economics concerned the preconditions for capitalist development, particularly the relations between religion and capitalism, which h e explored in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism as well as in hi s other works on the sociology of religion.[105] He argued that bureaucratic pol itical and economic systems emerging in the Middle Ages were essential in the ri se of modern capitalism (including rational book-keeping and organization of for mally free labour), while they were a hindrance in the case of ancient capitalis m, which had a different social and political structure based on conquest, slave ry, and the coastal city-state.[110] Other contributions include his early work on the economic history of Roman agrarian society (1891) and on the labour relat ions in Eastern Germany (1892), his analysis of the history of commercial partne rships in the Middle Ages (1889), his critique of Marxism, the discussion of the roles of idealism and materialism in the history of capitalism in his Economy a nd Society (1922) and his General Economic History (1923), a notable example of the kind of empirical work associated with the German Historical School.[105] Though today read primarily by sociologists and social philosophers, Weber's wor k did have a significant influence on Frank Knight, one of the founders of the n eoclassical Chicago school of economics, who translated Weber's General Economic History into English in 1927.[111] Knight also wrote in 1956 that Max Weber was the only economist who dealt with the problem of understanding the emergence of modern capitalism "from the angle which alone can yield an answer to such quest ions, that is, the angle of comparative history in the broad sense."[107] Economic calculation Weber, like his colleague Werner Sombart, regarded economic calculation and espe cially the double-entry bookkeeping method of business accounting, as one of the most important forms of rationalisation associated the development of modern ca pitalism.[112] Weber's preoccupation with the importance of economic calculation led him to develop a critique of socialism as a system that lacked a mechanism for allocating resources efficiently in order to satisfy human needs.[113] Socia list intellectuals like Otto Neurath had realised that in a completely socialise d economy, prices would not exist and central planners would have to resort to i n-kind (rather than monetary) economic calculation.[113][114] According to Weber , this type of coordination would be inefficient, especially because it would be incapable of solving the problem of imputation (i.e. of accurately determining the relative values of capital goods).[113][114] Weber wrote that, under full so cialism, In order to make possible a rational utilisation of the means of production, a system of in-kind accounting would have to determine "value" indicators of so me kind for the individual capital goods which could take over the role of the " prices" used in book valuation in modern business accounting. But it is not at a ll clear how such indicators could be established and in particular, verified; w hether, for instance, they should vary from one production unit to the next (on the basis of economic location), or whether they should be uniform for the entir e economy, on the basis of "social utility," that is, of (present and future) co nsumption requirements [...] Nothing is gained by assuming that, if only the pro blem of a non-monetary economy were seriously enough attacked, a suitable accoun

ting method would be discovered or invented. The problem is fundamental to any k ind of complete socialisation. We cannot speak of a rational "planned economy" s o long as in this decisive respect we have no instrument for elaborating a ratio nal "plan." Max Weber[115] This argument against socialism was made independently, at about the same time, by Ludwig von Mises.[113][116] Weber himself had a significant influence on Mise s, whom he had befriended when they were both at the University of Vienna in the spring of 1918,[117] and, through Mises, on several other economists associated with the Austrian School in the 20th century.[118] Friedrich Hayek in particula r elaborated the arguments of Weber and Mises about economic calculation into a central part of free market economics's intellectual assault on socialism, as we ll as into a model for the spontaneous coordination of "dispersed knowledge" in markets.[119][120][121] Legacy The prestige of t to over-estimate. and... has become a Hans Heinrich ology, 1991[3] Max Weber among European social scientists would be difficul He is widely considered the greatest of German sociologists leading influence in European and American thought. Gerth and Charles Wright Mills, From Max Weber: Essays in Soci

Weber's most influential work was on economic sociology, political sociology, an d the sociology of religion. Along with Karl Marx and mile Durkheim,[103] he is c ommonly regarded as one of the founders of modern sociology. But whereas Durkhei m, following Comte, worked in the positivist tradition, Weber was instrumental i n developing an antipositivist, hermeneutic, tradition in the social sciences.[1 22] In this regard he belongs to a similar tradition as his German colleagues We rner Sombart, Georg Simmel, and Wilhelm Dilthey, who stressed the differences be tween the methodologies appropriate to the social and the natural sciences.[122] Weber presented sociology as the science of human social action; action which he separated into traditional, affectional, value-rational and instrumental.[123][ 124] [Sociology is] the science whose object is to interpret the meaning of socia l action and thereby give a causal explanation of the way in which the action pr oceeds and the effects which it produces. By "action" in this definition is mean t the human behaviour when and to the extent that the agent or agents see it as subjectively meaningful [...] the meaning to which we refer may be either (a) th e meaning actually intended either by an individual agent on a particular histor ical occasion or by a number of agents on an approximate average in a given set of cases, or (b) the meaning attributed to the agent or agents, as types, in a p ure type constructed in the abstract. In neither case is the "meaning" to be tho ught of as somehow objectively "correct" or "true" by some metaphysical criterio n. This is the difference between the empirical sciences of action, such as soci ology and history and any kind of a priori discipline, such as jurisprudence, lo gic, ethics, or aesthetics whose aim is to extract from their subject-matter "co rrect" or "valid" meaning. Max Weber, The Nature of Social Action, 1922, [125] In his own time, however, Weber was viewed primarily as a historian and an econo mist.[103][104] The breadth of Weber's topical interests is apparent in the dept h of his social theory: The affinity between capitalism and Protestantism, the religious origins of the Western world, the force of charisma in religion as well as in politics, the all-embracing process of rationalisation and the bureaucratic price of progress , the role of legitimacy and of violence as the offspring of leadership, the 'di

senchantment' of the modern world together with the never-ending power of religi on, the antagonistic relation between intellectualism and eroticism: all these a re key concepts which attest to the enduring fascination of Weber's thinking. Joachim Radkau, Max Weber: A Biography, 2005[126] Many of Weber's works famous today were collected, revised and published posthum ously. Significant interpretations of his writings were produced by such sociolo gical luminaries as Talcott Parsons and C. Wright Mills. Parsons in particular i mparted to Weber's works a functionalist, teleological perspective; this persona l interpretation has been criticised for a latent conservatism.[127] Weber has influenced many later social theorists, such as Theodor Adorno, Max Ho rkheimer, Gyrgy Lukcs and Jrgen Habermas.[2] Different elements of his thought were emphasized by Carl Schmitt, Joseph Schumpeter, Leo Strauss, Hans Morgenthau, an d Raymond Aron.[2] According to Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises, who had met Weber during his time at the University of Vienna, The early death of this genius was a great disaster for Germany. Had Weber l ived longer, the German people of today would be able to look to this example of an "Aryan" who would not be broken by National Socialism. Ludwig von Mises, 1940[128] Weber's friend, the psychiatrist and existentialist philosopher Karl Jaspers, de scribed him "the greatest German of our era" and his untimely death felt to Jasp ers "as if the German world had lost its heart."[129] Critical responses to Weber Weber's explanations are highly specific to the historical periods he analysed.[ 130] This makes it more difficult to generalise from his analysis and modify his theories for other circumstances.[130] Many scholars, however, have disagreed with specific claims Weber makes in his h istorical analysis. For example, the economist Joseph Schumpeter argued that cap italism did not begin with the Industrial Revolution but in 14th century Italy.[ 131] In Milan, Venice and Florence the small city-state governments led to the d evelopment of the earliest forms of capitalism.[132] In the 16th century Antwerp was a commercial centre of Europe. Also, the predominantly Calvinist country of Scotland did not enjoy the same economic growth as the Netherlands, England and New England. It has been pointed out that the Netherlands, which had a Calvinis t majority, industrialised much later in the 19th century than predominantly Cat holic Belgium, which was one of the centres of the Industrial Revolution on the European mainland.[133] Emil Kauder expanded Schumpeter's argument by arguing th e hypothesis that Calvinism hurt the development of capitalism by leading to the development of the labour theory of value.[134] See alsoInterpretations of Weber's liberalism From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search Sociology Social Network Analysis diagram Outline Theory History Positivism Antipositivism Functionalism Conflict theory Middle-range Mathematical Critical theory Socialization Structure and agency Research methods Quantitative Qualitative

Historical Computational Ethnographic Network analytic Topics Subfields Cities Class Crime Culture Deviance Demography Education Economy Environment Family Gender Health Industry Internet Knowledge Law Medicine Politics Mobility Race and ethnicity Rationalization Religion Science Secularization Social networks Social psychology Stratification Browse Portal Category tree Lists Journals Sociologists Article index v t e There are varying interpretations of Max Weber's liberalism due to his well know n sociological achievements. Max Weber is considered an eminent founder of moder n social sciences, rivaled by the figures of mile Durkheim and Karl Marx. Some st udents of Weberian thought have paid less attention to Weber's extensive and oft en passionate engagement with the politics of his day, particularly in the Unite d States. However, European intellectuals have given more attention to his polit ical thought. Most of Weber's political writings have not been published in tran slation, or have been translated only recently in a piecemeal form. Contents 1 Overview 2 Interpretations 2.1 Political views 2.2 Politics and sociology 3 See also 4 References Overview Weber's political ideas have inspired disagreement in Germany for decades. His c onception of democracy has been the subject of particularly heated debate. Weber rejected the Wilhelmine regime's authoritarian political structure.[1] He advoc ated parliamentary and democratic reform.[1] Weber championed the freedoms of wh at he called the "age of the Rights of Man".[1] Some find the liberalism of Webe r as problematic.[2][3][3][4][5] Raymond Aron has noted that Weber was not a "liberal in the American sense," and not, "strictly speaking, a democrat in the sense that the French, the English, or the Americans gave the term."[2] Aron saw Weber to have looked to place the " glory of the nation and the power of the state" above all other things.[2] Stephen P. Turner and Regis A. Factor have concluded that Weber rejected the phi losophical basis for most Western formulations of Enlightenment liberalism.[3][6 ] Weber conceived "parliamentarization" primarily for selecting leaders.[1][7] W eber was strongly technocratic.[1] Interpretations

Political views Jacob Peter Mayer wrote a 1944 critique of Max Weber, entitled Max Weber and Ger man Politics: a study in political sociology. Published in England during the wa r, this work never appeared in German translation.[3][4] Mayer had been an archi vist for the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the primary book reviewer for the Vorwrts, the SPD party paper. He was a target of Nazi persecution, from which he escaped to England. There he became involved with the Labour Party and was a me mber of the faculty at the London School of Economics during the last part of th e Second World War.[6] Mayer labeled Weber's philosophy as the "new Machiavellianism of the steel age." The conception of the state that Weber supported was viewed as a middle phase i n a destructive tradition of German realpolitik - a tradition that Mayer saw to extend from Bismarck to Hitler.[3][4] Mayer interpreted a "tragic" satisfaction with which Weber was seen to embrace "the empty character" of Heinrich Rickert's neo-Kantian philosophy of value.[4] Mayer viewed Weber's value theory as a nihi listic contribution to the rise of National Socialism. Wolfgang J. Mommsen initiated debate by arguing this in the 1959 German publicat ion of Max Weber and German Politics 1890-1920.[5] Mommsen questioned the sociol ogist's liberal reputation. According to Mommsen, Weber's sociological idea of c harismatic authority was evident in his political views, and was "close to fasci st notions of plebiscitary leadership."[8] Mommsen wrote that Weber's theory of democracy "lent itself all too readily to an authoritarian reinterpretation"[8][ 9] Mommsen also associated Weber with the rise of Hitler: "Weber's teachings con cerning charismatic leadership coupled with the radical formulation of the meani ng of democratic institutions, contributed to making the German people inwardly ready to acclaim the leadership position of Adolf Hitler."[3][5] Max Weber's call for the democratic reform of the Wilhelmine state, and his invo lvement in the drafting of the Weimar Constitution, had led German intellectuals in the 1950s to consider him as an authority who could justify the democratic c haracter of the new Federal Republic of Germany.[3] Mommsen's thesis, that Max W eber supported parliamentary democracy as a means to serve the power interests o f the German nation-state, met a sharp response, because, in Raymond Aron's word s, this removed "the new German democracy of a 'founding father,' a glorious anc estor, and a spokesman of genius."[2] Politics and sociology Weber's political views have been considered to threaten the reputation of his s ociology.[9] Gnther Roth, Reinhard Bendix, and Karl Loewenstein have defended Web erian sociology by arguing that it stands separate from his political conviction s.[3][6][9][10][11] They consider Weber's distinction between scientific value-n eutrality and evaluative politics to support this claim.[3][6][9][10][11] In the ir view, Weber's politics should be interpreted as separate from the interpretat ion of his sociology. This idea was rejected by Mommsen. Mommsen wrote of continuities between Weber's "value-neutral" sociology and his "evaluative" politics. The second edition of Max Weber and German Politics 18901920 argued that "values and science, in Weber's thought, were interdependent." Critics were dismissed as attempting "to shield Max Weber's sociological works a gainst any possible criticism based on political aspects."[3] Gnther Roth respond ed in a 1965 American sociological journal, stating that Weber was a major targe t for a series of critiques aimed at political sociology in general, if not at m ost of social science.[9] Roth also stated that Mommsen was removed from the int erest of American sociologists in Weber, and his treatment becomes questionable when he interprets Weber's sociological analysis as political ideology.[9] Roth stated that his "major intent" was "not to provide an historical defense of Webe r but a review of critiques as they seem to bear on the raison d'etre of politic

al sociology."[9] He claimed that Weber "must appear relativist and Machiavellia n to all those who, for ideological reasons, cannot recognize any dividing line between political sociology and political ideology. Weber emphatically insisted on such a distinction, while his critics refuse to distinguish between his schol arship and his politics."[9] Raymond Aron did not consider Weber's sociology to stand above politics. He view ed Weber, in both politics and sociology, to be a typical "power-politician."[12 ] Aron wrote in 1971 that Weber "belongs to the posterity of Machiavelli as much as to the contemporaries of Nietzsche," and that "the struggle for power betwee n classes and individuals" seemed to Weber as the "essence" of politics.[12]Spee ches of Max Weber From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search Question book-new.svg This article does not cite any references or sources. Please help improv e this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may b e challenged and removed. (July 2009) Max Weber influenced on German society and politics in the late 1910s. Some of h is speeches and articles made a big impression on his listeners. Speech of 1 August 1916 for the German National Committee Chancellor von Bethmann Holweg founded the German National Committee to give the opposition to large scale annexation a voice. Right-wing groups were pushing th e government to demand large conquests for Germany and a total defeat of the all ies. They wanted no compromises towards the allies. Weber became a member of this Committee, which was powerless from the beginning, because the war goals were not discussable for this Committee. Weber broke the rule during his first speech in Nuremberg. He told his listeners that he was not a member of the Committee. He wanted the G erman politics to do what is just. The war shouldn't take an hour too long, beca use many people are suffering in the trenches. Weber openly declared to be again st the unrestrained submarine war. Three lessons could be learned from the war. First is that money was a main reas on why the war came into being. Secondly, industry and capitalists were very imp ortant for the war efforts. Thirdly, the state is more important than the nation , because the state rules over the life and death of its subjects. But when stat e and nation are combined, the state has more power. The poor results of Austria -Hungarian war efforts compared to Germany were an example of this. Germany fought this war to become a major power in Central Europe. Germany shoul d responsible for an honourable treatment of the small nations in Central Europe and to prevent political subdual. He wanted the small nations to remain mainly politically independent, but German economy should be predominant. This way Germ any could have a lasting result when it wins the war. Speech of 5 November 1917 in Munich After hearing of the near collapse of Austria-Hungary, Weber advocated peace dur ing a mass meeting in Munich. 'I don't speak as a scientist but as a politician. As a professor at a universit y, I have no special authority in politics, just like an admiral when he can't s ee the most important things, or a common worker. The threat of the 'Alldeutsche n' is that they usually have the strongest influence on the government. The Alld eutschen are proud that they saw this war coming for a long time. They were not the only ones, but they were among the instigators of the war. They believed tha

t politics should be made with a big mouth. The small efforts of German politics were achieved with a lot of noise; our enemies have achieved much more without noise. The Alldeutsche politics, for example, during the Boer War prevented our coming to an agreement with England. The hate against England was mainly directe d towards the English constitution. 'For god sake no alliance with England, that would only bring us parliamentarianism'. This way domestic political motives be came the basis for foreign policy or other any policy. Hand in hand with these fears of the English constitution was a worthless wooing of the Tsar's Russia, which brought us the hate of the Russian liberals and the despise of the autocratic ruler. The domestic political motives are responsible for this foreign policy, is proven by the submarine-agitation of the Alldeutsch en. It began when the electoral reform was announced. Was this coincidence? In b oth questions we see the same enemies of Bethmann. From the moment that the subm arine war was a political and diplomatic possibility, the prophecies came. The m ilitary leaders never joined the agitation, but they accepted it. They knew that the end of the prophecies would have more effect on morale than a peace resolut ion could. Together with the submarine war came the Mexico telegram. Who defende d Zimmermann after this capital blunder? It was always the same group! Today they accuse the majority of the parliament of wanting a 'Hungerfrieden' (l iterally "hunger peace"). We should never accept a "hunger peace," but if foreig n countries think that we will accept a "hunger peace," then this group is respo nsible for discrediting the policy of the parliament with the word "hunger peace ." The Alldeutschen want us to follow a politics of annexation without any consider ation of our allies. The young emperor Charles [of Austria-Hungary] complained a fter the Russian revolution that he has nothing to say. Emperor Charles has a di fferent opinion than Italy and Rumania [who declared war on Germany] luckily, bu t an alliance between Austria and an Alldeutschen Germany would be very weak. Th e consideration of our allies was one of the most important reasons for the deci sion of the parliament on 19 July; today it can easily be said. The enemies of a n agreement know that the parliamentary majority had to keep their motive secret ; their agitation was therefore even more condemnable. The Alldeutschen, who call themselves Fatherland-party today even the name is an infamy are affectionately pointing to the mood on the front. Our soldiers don't n eed the pacifists and the warmongers. They say: 'If politics was pragmatic inste ad of goddamned babble, then the war would stop when security had come for our f atherland!' They should ask the question about a peace agreement during a nation al referendum or a vote on the front! The bureaucratic system that ruled us until now has now come up with the appoint ment of Count Hertling [the new chancellor of Germany]. We'll have to find out i f he is a partyman or a statesman in domestic politics. But we welcome his appoi ntment, because he responded to the papal proposition that he is in favour of a peace agreement. We welcome him also, because the strongest party in the parliam ent [the conservatives] can't deny responsibility anymore. We expect from Count Hertling, that he maintain a strong backbone against an irresponsible shadow gov ernment. Bismarck often complained about the interference of the military in pol itics. Our military leadership is brilliant; we have the full confidence in our military, but not when it comes to political questions. We expect that Count Hertling keep a strong connection between government and pa rliament, so that a failure of communication like 19 July can be prevented. When this connection between government and parliament exists, we don't need a contr olling body like the Siebenerausschuss anymore, which is headed by Michaelis. We hope that Count Hertling will understand the need for democracy. This democracy will not agree to a shameful peace; our successors will not condone it. We want

to conduct world politics, but only a Herrenvolk [nation of leaders] is capable of this. Not a Herrenvolk in the sense of the Alldeutschen idiocy, but just sim ply a nation that strongly controls its own administration. The Alldeutscher mov ement will only lead to a new de-politization of the nation. Like a free ripe na tion, we want to enlist in the group of the Herrenvoelker of the earth.' power:Power (politics) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss thes e issues on the talk page. This article needs additional citations for verification. (May 2007) This article relies largely or entirely upon a single source. (January 2008) To comply with Wikipedia's lead section guidelines, the introduction of this art icle may need to be rewritten. (July 2008) This article's tone or style may not reflect the encyclopedic tone used on Wikip edia. (April 2010) For other types of power, see Power (disambiguation). Political power (imperium in Latin) is a type of power held by a group in a soci ety which allows administration of some or all of public resources, including la bour and wealth. There are many ways to obtain possession of such power. At the nation-state level political legitimacy for political power is held by the repre sentatives of national sovereignty. Political powers are not limited to heads of states, however the extent to which a person (such as Joseph Kony, Subcomandant e Marcos, or Russell Means) or group such as an insurgency, terrorist group, or multinational corporation possesses such power is related to the amount of socie tal influence they can wield, formally or informally. In many cases this is not contained within a single state and it refers to international power. Political scientists have frequently defined power as "the ability to influence the behaviour of others" with or without resistance. For analytical reasons, I.C. MacMillan[who?][1] separates the concepts power Power is the capacity to restructure actual situations. I.C. Macmillan One of the most famous references to power comes from the Chinese communist lead er Mao Zedong Political power grows from the barrel of a gun. Mao Zedong This quote has been widely misinterpreted, however. Mao explained further that, "Our principle is that the Party commands the gun, and the gun must never be all owed to command the Party." In contrast to Mao Zedong, Hannah Arendt claims that power and violence are oppo sites and that power is: "the human ability...to act in concert."[2] Contents 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Compliance Political power and the question of good authority Separation of powers Division of power Power projection Political science perspectives See also

8 References Compliance Main article: Compliance (psychology) Power is a complex social interaction between those who command and those who ob ey.[3] For power to be effective there must be consent, cooperation, and obedien ce. Broad-based defiance of the authority of those who hold power may significan tly erode it or overthrow it.[4] Political power and the question of good authority Some opinions representative of Enlightenment, 19th century, modern, and post-mo dern views on the relationship between political power and concepts of justice, good and evil: [J]udicial power, that sure criterion of the goodness of a Government...is, in a word, a necessary evil. Jean-Louis de Lolme[5] The power to rule is a necessary evil, and by this same token, alas, it can be called a good. mile Chartier[6] Constituted power is concentrated power. Giorgio Agamben[7] [Constituted power] is the product of a grey, incessant alchemy in which goo d and evil and, along with them, all the metals of traditional ethics reach thei r point of fusion. It thus becomes a question of irresponsibility and impotentia judicandi [the inability to judge]...though one that is situated not beyond good and evil, but rather before. Giorgio Agamben[8] Separation of powers Main article: Separation of powers Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu claimed that without following a princ iple of containing and balancing power, the world is constantly at risk. Separat ion of power must be in such grade, that any of the branches can operate without excessive limitations from the others; but interdependecy between them must als o be in such grade, that one single branch cannot rule out the other's decisions . This is the separation of powers principle. Division of power A similar concept, termed "division of power", also consists of differentiated l egislative, executive, and judicial powers. However, while separation of powers prohibits one branch from interfering with another, division of power permits su ch interference. For example, in Indonesia, the President (who wields executive power) can introduce a new bill, but the People's Consultative Assembly (holding legislative power) chooses to either legalize or reject the bill. The model her e is the Checks and balances system introduced in the United States Constitution . Power projection Main article: Power projection This ability is a crucial element of a state's power in international relations. Any state able to direct its military forces outside the limited bounds of its territory might be said to have some level of power projection capability, but t he term itself is used most frequently in reference to militaries with a worldwi de reach (or at least significantly broader than a state's immediate area). Even

states with sizable hard power assets (such as a large standing army) may only be able to exert limited regional influence so long as they lack the means of ef fectively projecting their Political science perspectives Within normative political analysis, there are also various levels of power as d escribed by academics that add depth into the understanding of the notion of pow er and its political implications. Robert Dahl, a prominent American political s cientist, first ascribed to political power the trait of decision making as the source and main indicator of power. Later, two other political scientists, Peter Bachrach and Morton Baratz, decided that simply ascribing decision-making as th e basis of power was too simplistic and they added what they termed a second dim ension of power, agenda-setting by elites who worked in the backrooms and away f rom public scrutiny in order to exert their power upon society. Lastly, British academic Steven Lukes added a third dimension of power, preference-shaping, whic h he claimed was another important aspect of normative power in politics which e ntails theoretical views similar to notions of cultural hegemony. These three di mensions of power are today often considered defining aspects of political power by political researchers. A radical alternative view of the source of political power follows the formula: information plus authority permits the exercise of power. Political power is in timately related to information. Sir Francis Bacon's statement: "Nam et ipsa sci entia potentia est" for knowledge itself is power, assumed authority as given. Hannah Arendt begins by commenting that political theorists from right to left a ll seem to agree that violence is "the most flagrant manifestation of power."[9] Arendt says that violence and power are opposites and defines power as the abil ity of citizens to act in concert. "Power is never the property of an individual ; it belongs to the group and remains in existence only so long as the group kee ps together. When we say of somebody that he "is in power" we actually refer to his being empowered by a certain number of people to act in their name."[10] Fro m her perspective that power and violence are opposites, Arendt correctly judged that the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 was a sign of the diminishing power of the Soviet Union and not a sign of power. Power Versus Authority There is a fine line of difference between power and authority, especially as ba ses for LeaderShip. JamesHunter writes in TheServant (pp.29-34) that "If leadership is about influen cing others, how do we go about developing that influence with people? How do we get people to do our will? How do we get their ideas, commitment, creativity, a nd excellence, which are by definition voluntary gifts? ... To better understand how one develops this type of influence, it is critical to understand the diffe rence between power and authority. ... Power: the ability of a person or a group to influence the beliefs and actions o f other people. It is the ability to influence events. Power can be personal pow er. A person gets his personal power from his personality or from his expert kno wledge. Doctors, Lawyers, Engineers, Programmers, etc. get their power from thei r expertise and professional knowledge. Power can also be legitimate or official power. This power comes from a higher authority. Authority: the right given to a manager to achieve the objectives of the organis ation. It is a right to get the things done through others. It is a right to tak e decisions. It is a right to give orders to the subordinates and to get obedien ce from them. A manager cannot do his work without authority. ... Authority cannot be bought or sold, given or taken away. Authority is about who you are as a person, your character, and the influence you've built with peo

ple [it is one's expression of one's self, which is treated thoroughly by Warren Bennis in OnBecomingaLeader]. ... power erodes relationships. You can get a few seasons out of power, even accomplish some things, but over time power can be ve ry damaging to relationships. ... there are times when we must exercise power .. . in firing a bad employee [for example - but] we had to resort to power because our authority had broken down [WattsHumphrey also acknowledges the risks of pow er]." Needless to say, good LeaderShip leads by authority and not by power. Authority comes from Author. If I'm the Author of a theory or book, then I'm the Authority on the subject. Power is about being able to do damage. An administrator (of the RomanEmpire kin d) must be able to give rewards and punishments. See WhatIsLeadership. The distinction between authority and power is not clear to me from the above, b ut if you you will distinguish between motivation by fear and other motivations, then I think it will become more clear. -- WaldenMathews I've often heard power divided into three types: CoercivePower, also known as Th reatForce?, based on fear; ExchangePower?, based on barter, which is how economi es work; and IntegrativePower?, which is based on respect and amplified by humil ity. IntegrativePower? is the basis of NonViolence as Gandhi taught it. "Power" in this sense is defined as "the ability to influence others' actions." -- JasonFelice Discussion on CoercivePower moved there. That's one of the problems with quoting literature: sometimes you need more cont ext. I think JamesHunter should've used "influence" instead of "authority". But DeMarco uses that word, too. He writes in PeopleWare (p.148) that "Between maste r craftsman and apprentice there is a bond of natural authority ... An insecure need for obedience is the opposite of natural authority. ... In the best organiz ations, there is natural authority working in all directions." Let's say I'm your manager. I say, "Walden, I'm giving you distasteful task X, a nd your performance of it will be reviewed." I'm exercising my power and eroding our relationship. On the other hand, suppose I were to say "Walden, in the spir it of humble cooperation that we uphold here, I need you to help by taking on di stasteful problem X. Will you help me?" Hopefully I'd have some influence with y ou because we share the value (a humble willingness to help), and based on the h istory of our relationship, you would trust me to recognize and reward your hand ling the problem and your fidelity to the shared value. Anyway, Hunter goes on to argue why people are influenced by other people. Some of it simply has to do with caring for people (see WhatIsLeadership). If you thi nk back about some of the best leaders you've had in your life, chances are you liked them in part because they simply made you feel good and valued and importa nt and appreciated. They empowered you, they praised you, they recognized and re warded you. In short, they cared about you. There are other factors as well, but those are the subject of other pages. -- RandyStafford Randy, your explanation confirms my belief that the use of fear is the key discr iminator between styles. Fear is on a continuum that leads to death, while empow erment fosters life and growth. Our response to these styles is a deep one.

Concur on all points. -- RPS A bit more research might have led to the terms power and authority being coined in reverse roles from those above. The word power comes from a Latin root meani ng to be able to do things, while the word authority comes from a root meaning c reator. Authority implies that one has total control over that which he creates (including perhaps you), while ability to do things is an attribute in someone I might like to follow. I see that you're the "authority" on SoftwareEtymology ;-) I agree it is unfortu nate when people do not pay closer attention to the meanings of the words they u se. For my part, I was merely quoting literature. For better or worse, at least there is consistency between TomDeMarco, WattsHumphrey, and JamesHunter (and per haps other authors of leadership literature) in the usage of these terms. -- RPS I'm in agreement that the literature seems to be using 'power' and 'authority' i n a manner backwards from common usage. Authority implies hierarchy implies stru cture, while power implies ability implies freedom. It's not unlike the distinct ion between authority and responsibility, most often seen in toxic organizations as being made responsible for the success or failure of a project without being given authority to gather resources to move that project. -- Pete Hardie Are you familiar with Jerry Weinberg's stuff on leadership? Jerry runs a worksho p called Problem Solving Leadership (PSL). If you don't know it, you might want to check it out. [1] No, I wasn't familiar with it, though I've read his ThePsychologyOfComputerProgr amming. Thanks for the pointer. -- RPS -- WaldenMathews This is a very interesting page. I wonder how much different the world would be if no-one had Power. Just authority. How great would it be if we All had the sam e authority. But then that would just make us equal again. In that case; Imagine that Power had not been invented, only Authority. That would be cool. -- Matthe wTheobalds Authority invents Power, as an energy conserving tactic, in order to grow more a uthority. So you will never be with one and without the other for very long. Mig ht as well get used to there being Power. -- WaldenMathews See also UninterruptiblePowerSupply. In response to Matthew: The idea that everyone should have the same authority st rikes me as Marxist. Authority (as defined on this page) is the ability to influ ence people by frequently being right, insightful, helpful, and otherwise consis tently producing output deemed valuable. (I've had authority with people I've ne ver met before simply because they've read (and liked!) my writings. Think of au thors you like: They have tremendous authority with/over you even though they ha ve no power over you (unless they're your boss!).) Authority is something that's earned; some people will end up with more than others. It's also not absolute: A person has more authority in areas he's good at than those he's not; A person has more authority in some peers' eyes than others because they like his ideas b etter. Maybe we all start with the same amount of authority (virtually none), bu t then we earn it or lose it through our actions and efforts and how those are v iewed by others. It occurs to me that a lawyer's authority changes dramatically the moment a clie nt gets arrested or sued. Especially a lawyer with a reputation for being able t o get guilty people off the hook. Likewise, a consultant has a lot more authorit

y with a project that's in trouble. -- BobbyWoolf, 08/26/00 In response to Walden: You assert that power and authority go together, so you w ill never be with one and without the other for very long. That may be ideal, bu t it's not reality. If this were true, there'd be no management problems. If you r boss orders you to perform distasteful task X, he's exercising his power while undermining his authority. But as long as he continues to be your boss, and you continue to want to get paid, he has power over you, even long after he's lost all authority with you. -- BobbyWoolf, 08/26/00 Yikes, Bobby, you're cutting in on my authority! What shall I do to keep you at bay? You're right. I fell into the trap of one-sided thinking. What I meant to say ab ove is that when you have genuine authority, power is sure to follow. What that really means is that when others recognize and begin to trust your consistently useful outputs, they begin to dispense with expensive rationales and proofs: the tests fall away (HaloEffect). Now they're doing what you want just because you want it. [That's the point at which power begins to corrupt, and it never fails. It's just a question of how fast and how far.] However, the reverse is not true. Just because you wield the power of fear over others, that doesn't mean you will become trusted or respected, or that your out puts will ever become valuable. -- WaldenMathews I like that I mentioned peers. Power is the control you have over subordinates. Authority is the influence you have over peers. How effective would your boss be if he were your peer? It occurs to me that I'd like a manager who behaves more like a peer and less li ke a boss. That's exercising authority, not power. -- BobbyWoolf, 08/26/00 I don't think the difference between power and influence is quite as clear cut a s it has been presented above. Power is the degree to which people will accept y our decisions without question. Influence is the ability to convince people of t he validity of a decision. Using power when influence is needed is usually bad i n the long run. Using influence builds power which can then be used very sparing ly when absolutely needed. -- WayneMack Wayne, thanks for making the powerfully clear distinction above. Our understandi ng of power and authority (or whatever terms you feel comfortable designating fo r these) can be simplified if we acknowledge that influence - getting people to do (or not to do) - is at the core. When others follow you because you are usual ly effective in a given domain, and they follow with minimal questioning, then y ou have power, but it's not corrupt. This power goes hand-in-hand with genuine a uthority, and represents an optimized state for a well-functioning team. When yo u influence people using leverage outside the knowledge sphere in which the team is working, you are using pure power, as when you say "please do it this way, o r I shall have to dismiss you". In this case, the knowledge used to influence is knowledge of organizational policy ("If I dismiss this person, the company will back up my decision."). Either kind of power can become corrupt, but it seems t o me that the one that flows continuously from real authority (ability) is less likely to, because in reality there is always a test cycle present in these rela tionships, always the thought "He's been right in the past, but this seems diffe rent." So, the concept can be refactored into simple elements: visible capability, trus t, influence leveraged through each of these, and corruption of influence levera ged (mainly) through trust. I think you can build up the rest of this entire dis cussion from those five elements. -- WaldenMathews

Well put, Walden. "Power" (as used above in negative connotation) is really "thr eat". I think we all agree that "influence" is key; it's best to lead from a pos ition of influence than from a position of threat. I think Wayne is in perfect c onceptual agreement with JamesHunter, we just can't find baggage-free words. As I said above, I think its unfortunate that Hunter used "authority" instead of "i nfluence", because "authority" gets conflated with "power" (of the threat variet y) because people have that "authority commensurate with responsibility" cliche stuck in their minds. Now I'm thinking Hunter also should have used "threat" ins tead of "power", because true influence gives you power of a good kind (but I st ill prefer to think of it as influence because to me "power" has negative connot ations of power-mongering). So maybe this page should really be named ThreatVers usInfluence?. As far as LeaderShip goes, the point is that effective leaders lea d with influence, not threat, even if they have institutionally-given power/auth ority. -- RandyStaffordWith authority comes power. The two go hand in hand. If y ou have authority but no power, you cannot expect to be respected or even acknow ledged as an authority figure. To have power without authority is pointless. Eve n if you show dominance and power, it does not mean that you have the respect or the ability to enforce. In history we have several instances of power and authority reigning independent ly as in the case of the Pope and Henry. And there was another bizzare example o f Catherine and Rasputine. History is abundant with such examples of them residi ng in different persons, most often opposing each other and at times working in union. Note: There are comments associated with this question. See the discussion page to add to the conversation. Read more: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_relationship_between_authority_ and_power#ixzz27dV8ALNe India Insight Analysis & Opinion Home Follow India Insight [View India Insight RSS feed] The economic paradox of north-east India By Raashi Bhatia December 18, 2009 Email Print inShare army | government | northeast india | poverty | world bank India s seven northeastern states, known as the seven sisters, have been on the map , but off the mind , if one goes by the title of a Tehelka-organised seminar on th e Northeast. INDIAThe region, connected to India by a narrow stretch of land called the chicke n s neck , has been through a string of conflicts, seen the rise of many rebel group s, lack of infrastructure and poverty. The World Bank describes conditions in the region as a low-level equilibrium of poverty, non-development, civil conflict and lack of faith in political leadersh ip.

According to the Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region, more than 426 billion rupees were kept for the northeast between 1998 and 2006. Also, central government ministries have been earmarking 10 percent of their ann ual budgets for northeastern states since 1998. The Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of India has said that funds to the nort heastern states add up to more than what India gets from the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. Even with the constant and heavy flow of funds, why is development still distant from the seven sisters? B.K.Handique, minister for the Development of North East Region, said in Parliam ent that the growth rate of the northeastern states has been less than the natio nal average.INDIA BLOCKADE Is it corruption in the political sphere that funds do not reach the grassroots level? Or is it because of rampant extortion by rebel groups? Is the Northeast on the map, but off the mind for you as well? Previous Post Next Post Comments 3 comments so far | RSS Comments RSS Dec 18, 2009 10:32 am UTC This issue is off the mind of most of us..there is a need to put in concerted ef fort rather than just doing lip service as is happening till date. I think what our politicians are considering North East is a mere vote bank.What starts from Delhi, whether its a financial package or a policy matter, hardly takes its desi red shape in the region. Posted by viga | Report as abusive Dec 18, 2009 5:14 pm UTC It is a fact that people from North eastern region are not easily accepted as fe llow citizens by other Indians. It is necessary for Indians to remember and foll ow the ideals of great persons in the past like Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, who was re sponsible for bringing the bulk of Manipuris into the fold of Hinduism. Separati sm in Manipur is rampant today because many of the present day Indians have forg otten the ideals of Chaitanya and deride the Manipuris as Chinkies.Concerted eff orts are needed to increase recruitment of North eastern people in Central Gover nment services including the armed forces. I have personally met several persons from the North east who have served in the armed forces and not one of them fav oured separatism. Development of infrastructure needs to be accelerated so that the isolation of Northeastern people is brought to an end. It was a right step t o start an IIT at Guwahati- though many more such steps are necessary. In sum, t he rest of India needs to make it worthwhile for the Northeasterners to remain i n India, and the onus certainly does not lie on politicians alone. Ethnic Politics, Democracy and Regional Political Parties in North-East India Ethnic Politics, Democracy and Regional Political Parties in North-East India Plural character of India s North East, with diverse socio-cultural communities, i s often not taken into consideration when the region is categorised as one homog enous administrative, political and geographical entity. There are differences a nd differentiations on the basis of race, religion, language, political opinions and geographical features- each state having its own characteristics unique to

itself. An interesting manifestation of ethnic politics in this region is the di vision of the country into administrative units. In spite of these differences, however, most of the states and their inhabitants have nurtured a sense of unity against policies followed by Central Government towards this region. Each ethni c community seems to have its own world-view and have always attempted to be ind ependent from other ethnic communities, and hence urged for autonomy- within or outside the constitutional framework. The strong urge for autonomy and independent existence has led to the formation of regional political parties for the articulation of their aspirations by a spe cific ethnic community or group of communities. It is believed that since the na tional parties have failed to represent the particular needs and aspirations of the people of the region, regional political parties have been formed with ethni c considerations. Ethnic dimension, therefore, has been one of the most importan t components of regionalism in India s North-East as almost all regional outfits s tand for preservation of ethnic identity of one ethnic community or the other. F ormation of the All Party Hill Leaders Conference, which was the outcome of ethn ic consideration against the imposition of Asamese language as the official Stat e language, is a pointer towards the trends of ethnicisation of politics in Indi a s North East. Sajal Nag describes party politics in the North East as contest for marginal space . In other words, regional political parties in India s North East c ompete within the region with very little scope of extending their scope and ide ology beyond regional aspirations . Regional parties in Arunachal Pradesh, having their own histories, can also said to have emerged out of ethnic considerations. People s Party of Arunachal, formed in 1977, was committed to meet aspiration of the indigenous people of Arunachal Pradesh and to preserve distinctive culture of its varied tribes. Arunachal Con gress, the second regional political party was a product of the increased ethnopolitical consciousness of the indigenous people over the issue of the settlemen t and eviction of refugees. Assam Gana Parishad is a direct product of Assam mov ement against settlement of foreigners and exploitation of Assam s natural resourc es by the outsiders . To counter the activities of AGP, United Minorities Front wa s formed. Tribal communities of Tripura are politically united under the banner of Tripura Upajati Juba Samiti, which fights for their rights and justice. Eve n parties like Federal Party of Manipur and Manipur Peoples Party were born out o f ethnic considerations. Mizo National Front, which was initially formed as a so cio-cultural organisation, Mizo National Famine Front, went on to become an ille gal outfit waging war against India. In 1985, after Mizo Accord, the party was f ully integrated into mainstream politics, and now the party plays a significant role in the state politics of Mizoram. Recently Nagaland Peoples Front got its na me changed to Naga Peoples Front ostensibly to spread its wings beyond administra tive and political boundaries- in Naga inhabited areas of Manipur and Arunachal Pr adesh. Success of Sikkim Sangram Parishad as a regional party is phenomenal. Studies have suggested that political parties create democracy by enabling the m asses to participate in political life. It is also suggested that democracy in e thnically-diverse societies is likely to be strengthened by the development of b road-based, aggregative and multi-ethnic political parties, rather than fragment ed, personalised or ethnically-based party systems. In India s North East there ha s been rapid growth of ethnic-based political parties, which may make operation of democracy problematic as each group presses for politicization of identity is sues. Scholars would rather be interested to examine whether regionalism in Nort h East, as expressed through political parties, has reached within the range of secessionism or is simply an expression of centrifugal forces, an essential elem ent of federal polity. Mizo National Front entered into mainstream politics and formed a government after twenty years of struggle in support of Mizoram s indepen dence or separation from India. Assam, a cauldron of ethnic tensions saw an inte resting transformation of Hagrama Daimary s Bodo Peoples Front from armed struggle to parliamentary democracy. Will political parties, as democratic instrument, en

sure entry of the leaders of National Socialist Council of Nagaland and United L iberation Front of Assam in mainstream politics? The seminar is an attempt to look into the role, structure and ideology of regio nal political parties in India s North-East, including Sikkim and their linkages w ith ethnicity and democracy. Some possible themes for discussions are: 1. Theories and concepts of ethnicity, democracy, regionalism and political part ies. 2. Is ethnic based political parties antithetical to democracy and democratic in stitutions? 3. What are the social bases of different regional political parties in India s North-East? 4. What are their ideological foundations? 5. What are their roles in state and national politics? 6. Identification of leadership patterns. 7. Identification of origin, emergence, policies and programmes. 8. Examination of reason(s) for success or failure of regional political parties in NE India. India and its Northeast: A new politics of race Thursday 4 September 2008, by Sanjib Baruah Tip A Friend Send by email IIC Quarterly (New Delhi: India International Centre) Vol. 32 (2& 3) Winter, 2005, pp. 165-76 There was a time when peoples of Northeast India were described as belonging to the Mongoloid race 1. Today Mongoloid and other racial categories such as Negroi d or Caucasoid and indeed, the very idea of race as a biological category have n o standing in scientific circles. For there is more diversity of gene types with in what was once thought of as a single race than between races. But while race may no longer be accepted as a scientific category, it does not m ean that human beings would stop making distinctions based on stereotypical phen otypes or skin colour. Arunachalis, Assamese, Garos, Khasis, Manipuris, Mizos, N agas and Tripuris may indeed have some phenotypical similarities related to gene tics. Thus one may be able to say that someone is from Northeast India based on looks, though he or she may not always get it right. For human populations . . . possess a wide genetic potential which increases in variation through chance mut ations or new generic combinations in each generation. . . . Completely stabiliz ed breeding isolates. . . are exceedingly rare (Bowles 1977, cited in Keyes, 2002 : 1166). And of course, most of us realise that what we think of as the Northeast ern looks are not unique to peoples from the region. For instance, peoples from t he western Himalayas those from Nepal or the Uttaranchal might share features si milar to those found among peoples in the eastern Himalayas. Race as a social category is the product of practices. There are visual regimes of labeling, and individuals encountering those labels from childhood may intern alise characteristics associated with those labels and learn to adapt to the soc ially constructed racial order. African American intellectuals have long recognised the role of visuality in the politics of race. The writer bell hooks even her way of writing her name withou t capital letters is an intervention in the regime of visuality describes her pr oject as one of resisting representation and of constructing an oppositional gaze. experience our collective crisis as African-American people, she writes, within t he realm of the image (hooks, 1992). The project of black liberation, for her, is thus a battle over images. The Indian image of the troubled Northeast is increasingly mediated by a visual regime constructed by popular films, television, pictures in magazines and newsp

We

apers, and limited contacts with people from the region. Thanks to improved comm unications, Indians today are quite mobile, and Northeasterners travel to other parts of the country more than ever before. There are a large number of students from the region in Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai, Pune, Kolkata and other cities. Th ey are now a visible minority in a number of university campuses. A disturbingly l arge number of them tell stories about their experiences of being racially label ed as Chapta (flat nosed), Oriental or Chinky . A large number of Northeast Indian young women are employed in upscale restauran ts and shops in Delhi their Oriental looks and English language skills being consi dered desirable for those positions. Many of them live in ethnic ghettos, for in stance, renting rooms and apartments in lal dora areas: the urban villages of Delh i. Apart from rents being affordable, they feel physically safer than in upscale neighbourhoods. Compared to landlords in elite neighbourhoods, these landlords of more modest means are tolerant of Northeast Indian eating habits fermented dr y fish, beef chutney and pork and less inclined to impose restrictions on the li festyles of their tenants. However, racially marked niches in the labour market or in settlement patterns have the danger of reinforcing racial thinking. Incide nts of violence against Northeast Indian women in the country s capital may partly reflect the racialisation of the divide between the mainland and the Northeast. While many Northeasterners travel to the mainland, thousands of Indian soldiers and members of the various paramilitary organisations make the reverse journey t o the region to fight external threats as well as on counter-insurgency duties. In the streets and paddy fields of the region security forces stop and interroga te Northeasterners every day. The soldier himself faces an unenviable situation: the most peaceful of surroundings can quickly turn hostile and he has to be ale rt against possible offensives by militants. Some sort of racial profiling becom es inevitable under these conditions, especially since we have no laws prohibiti ng it. As Indian soldiers return home, their stories of treacherous rebels hiding behind bamboo groves and jungles spread through friends and relatives. The share d visual regime provides ways of putting those stories and faces together. Northeast India s fractured relation with the mainland has been described as a cul tural gap, an economic gap, a psychological gap and an emotional gap. The shared visual regime now carries the danger of this fault-line becoming racialised. II Mani Ratnam s film of 1998 Dil Se is a love story between a woman militant from th e Northeast and an All India Radio journalist. The male protagonist Amar, played by Shah Rukh Khan, travels to the Northeast to speak to fellow citizens for a r adio programme to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of India s independence. He d evelops a relationship with a local woman Meghna, played by the Nepalese-born Ma nisha Koirala. If Bollywood gossip is to be believed, Manisha Koirala was chosen for the role p artly because of her small eyes. Director Mani Ratnam, according to Aishwarya Rai, definitely wanted a small-eyed girl in Dil Se. She had to have that kind of phys ical features as she was supposed to be from Assam (Rai, 2000). The caste of Dil Se also included a number of Assamese actors, among them filmmaker Gautam Bora, who played the role of the chief of a militant group. The film s story 2 unfolds between the fiftieth anniversary in of Indian independe nce on August 15th 1997 and the Republic Day on January 26th. While All India Ra dio reporter Amar embodies the Indian nation, Meghna represents the horrors of l ife in the Northeast torn apart by insurgencies and counter-insurgency operation s. Amar defends the nation against rebels bent on tearing it apart. The Northeast of Dil Se is a dangerous place where women are raped and families are destroyed. Life in Delhi could not be more different: the film portrays it a s a middle class city where tranquil family life and traditional family values p revail. Meghna in the nation s capital is a danger to both nation and family. She is on a suicide mission to blow herself up at the Republic day parade. As a gues t at Amar s home she is an awkward presence at a time when the family prepares for his arranged marriage. "Had it not been for the army, the nation would have bee n torn to shreds," says Amar to Meghna. It is your nation, not mine, says Meghna i n defiance.

III Am I making too much out of a film? Perhaps. But what if we are beginning to loo k at people from the Northeast through the prism of a visual regime exemplified by films like Dil Se? What if after nearly half a century of counter-insurgency, the counter-insurgent gaze is framing our way of seeing peoples from the Northe ast? Films like Dil Se and pictures in newspapers and magazines enable people to put together a mental picture of the Northeast and its people. The gaze of the India n army patrol, reinforced by films like Dil Se, gives meaning to what is fast be coming a racial divide. There are signs that we are slowly beginning to recognise this new politics of r ace, though we seem to be as yet unsure whether to use the r word. A Manipuri jour nalist wrote in a national daily that, physically the people of the North-east ar e closer to Southeast Asia and China. However, this racial divide, he said, is not appreciated in a sensitive manner (Singh, 2004). The journalist told me that the r w ord was edited out at one place in the printed version. He had actually written, racially the people of the Northeast are closer to South-east Asia and China. App arently the editors substituted the term physical for racial. However, his second us age of the r word in racial divide remained in the published text. Let me turn to a small sample of writings by Northeasterners who have been stude nts in mainland India, recalling their experience of being seen as different and encountering racial labels. I did my schooling in a boarding school in India, rec alls a Manipuri living in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He was the only student from t he Northeast in that school. He posted the following on an email discussion grou p: Being the only minority I was subjected to many racist comments . . . The one th at I still remember clearly was my being called "Chapta" (flat nose - for those fortunate ones that never heard the term) by my Hindi teacher. The word "chinki" . . . is peddled around with not even a little thought of whether the term coul d offend someone, by even my closest friends. I came in contact with some Mayang s (the Manipuri term for other Indians) here and it shocked me that despite my b eing there amongst them they refer to the other Asians as chaptas still with no consideration that I could find it offensive. Even on my bringing up the issue t hey just laughed it off saying they saw nothing offensive in it. So I have now r esorted to referring them as "Pakis" and that really seems to anger them. For th ose who don t know about it, "Pakis" is a racist term used in Britain to refer to people with the sub continent features (Pakistan, Indian, Srilankan etc.) So the next time you hear any mayang using the word chinki or chapta, call them a "Pak i". I think once this word gets common usage as a term to refer to them by all t he people of the north east they will finally realize what it is like to be refe rred by a racist term (Manipur Diaspora, 2004; cited in Ray 2005). In Kuala Lumpur, he wrote, because of his features he had a hard time convincing people that he was an Indian. He got tired of explaining that he was from India since he didn t look like the Indians they knew. On the other hand, he said, he was able to melt into the crowd and it was easier making friends with the Chinese an d Malays (Manipur Diaspora, 2004; cited in Ray 2005). At a seminar in Pune a Naga student joked that after coming to Pune he became hal f Naga, and half Indian , while he was a complete Indian before. He elaborated that in Pune, shopkeepers, doctors, teachers and government officials, everybody trea ted him as Japanese or Chinese because of his features. He was asked to show his passport when applying for admission to college (cited in Das, 2004). While doi ng fieldwork in Manipur, anthropologist Sohini Ray asked a young student about h is first visit to Mumbai. He told her that the first thing he and his companions found difficult was that every other person asked them where they were from, and stared at them. When they said Manipur, people asked where it was and if it was really in India. To avoid such uncomfortable encounters after a few days they st arted saying that they were from Thailand, because it was more convenient (cited i n Ray, 2005).

An Assamese woman describes her first year as a student in Delhi University (199 6-97), as follows: I didn t look Oriental the politically correct term they d devised i n lieu of the derogatory sounding chinky . So I didn t have to face some of the stupi der questions. My friend from Mizoram was asked if she needed a passport to come to India. The Oriental looking among us, did not have to go through hazing, she rec alled since Indians are always nice to foreigners (Goswami, 2004). IV The emergence of a racial label to include all indigenous Northeasterners fits nic ely with the category the Northeast that since 1971, in the words of a retired sen ior civil servant who played a key role in designing this political order, has em erged as a significant administrative concept . . . replacing the hitherto more familiar unit of public imagination, Assam (Singh, 1987a: 8). In 1971 a number of the new states were created (though not all of them were states at the beginnin g), and another piece of legislation gave birth to the North Eastern Council (NE C). These two laws were twins born out of a new vision for the Northeast (Singh, 1 987a: 117). Unlike the distinction between tribal and non-tribal that is an important part o f our vocabulary in discussing the Northeast, the racial label has the advantage of including all those who belong to the troubled region, and, is perceived as being connected to the troubles. For instance, a majority of the plains people o f Manipur and Assam are not tribal which, after all, is an arbitrary governmental category. However, the Assamese and Manipuri insurgencies are among the most pot ent in the region. Thus the distinction between tribal and non-tribal is not ver y useful when it comes to discussing insurgent Northeast India. Since tribal and non-tribal Northeasterners share certain stereotypical phenotypes in common, th e racial label has become more functional. The racial label incorporates meanings that predate the era of insurgency and co unter-insurgency. Willem van Schendel, writing mainly with Bangladesh and the Ch ittagong Hill Tracts in mind, comments on the remarkably stagnant view of the hil l people that has prevailed in South Asia. The classic nineteenth century Western assumptions about social evolution from a state of savagery to civilisation wer e superimposed on the ancient South Asian distinction between civilised society and nature. The later distinction, indicated in the categories grama (village) a nd aranya (forest), implies a relationship that is complementary but always uneq ual. These two traditions, writes van Schendel, combined to generate a dominant view that considers the tribal peoples as remnants of some hoary past who have pr eserved their culture unchanged from time immemorial. Backward and childlike, th ey need to be protected, educated and disciplined by those who are more advanced socially (van Schendel, 1995: 128). The visual label of race that transcends the colonial categories of tribal and non-tribal and reaches out to pre-colonial ca tegories such as the Kirata people used to describe the people of the periphery may now give a new lease of life some old Indian prejudices. Responsible Indian officials have from time to time used the metaphor of childre n to describe the peoples of Northeast India. In February 2004 the Mizoram Gover nor A.R. Kohli described the entire region as a spoilt child. Contrary to the ch arge that the Northeast is the most neglected region, he said it is in fact, the mo st spoilt child in the country. The central government, he said, showers funds and other goodies liberally on the region. But the funds are not properly utilized o r they do not reach the intended beneficiaries. A news report paraphrased the Go vernor as comparing the region to a petulant child who is showered with goodies b ut does not know what to do with them (Telegraph 2004). Such sentiments are also found in the language used by B.P. Singh the former civ il servant who played a key role in the creating the Northeast as an administrat ive category. In an article published in 1987, he concluded:

There is no tangible threat to the national integration ethos in the region desp ite the operation of certain disgruntled elements within the region and outside the country. But in the context of a history of limited socialization and ethnic conflicts, and rapid modernization after 1947 the unruly class-room scenario is likely to continue in the region for years to come (Singh, 1987b: 281-82). Unruly class-room is a telling metaphor. In the Northeast, Singh seems to imply, w hat is needed is a paternalistic and disciplinarian teacher someone who knows wh at is good for children and, occasionally uses the stick for their own good, the role that he probably sees the coercive apparatus of the Indian state playing i n the region. These passages smack of attitudes and habits of mind that long predate the polit ics of counter-insurgency. But while these prejudices are old, they have acquire d new meaning in the context of India s failed policies in the Northeast. While Si ngh s metaphor of an unruly class-room rationalises the coercive response to insurge ncy, Kohli s description of the region as a spoilt child expresses the frustration w ith the failures of a policy of nation-building through corruption or what Jaira m Ramesh calls using corruption as a mode of cohesion (Ramesh, 2005: 18). V What are the some of the consequences of the racialisation of the divide between India and its Northeast? 1, Motivation for militancy: According to Manipuri intellectual and politician G angmumei Kamei, a major motivation for joining insurgent groups in Manipur is th e social discrimination that young Manipuris face in different parts of India be cause of their appearance (cited in Ray 2005). Race has been a factor in the Mei tei religious revival movement of the 1940s as well. Some revivalists converted to the newly formed faith only after returning from pilgrimages to Mathura and Br indavan, where their Southeast Asian features raised curiosity and animosity amo ng the local population. The racial divide, according to anthropologist Sohini Ra y, is central to understanding the Meitei urge for constructing an alternative h istory. A constituency for an alternative geneology emerged when the whole idea o f sharing a common ancestry with the people who are hostile to them for their lo oks became unacceptable (Ray 2005). 2. Perpetuating a divide: While official narratives about counter-insurgency vie w each Northeastern insurgency as distinct; the racial label disrupts this narra tive. As a result the differences between political conditions in different part s of the Northeast have no effect on popular perceptions about the disturbed regio n, since racial thinking do not allow for such distinctions. For instance, the M izo insurgency that ended with a peace accord in 1986 is usually portrayed as a success story. Yet that does not mean that Mizo relations with mainland India ar e any different from that with other parts of the Northeast. Even today Mizos su ch as Laltluangliana Khiangte complain about mainstream India not understanding their culture and traditions, and about Mizos being mistaken as South-east Asian tourists in the national capital (cited in Singh, 2004). After nearly two decad es of a peaceful Mizoram, as Manipuri journalist Khogen Singh puts it, Mizos stil l don t feel fully at home outside the North-east (Singh, 2004). 3. Hijacking of counter-insurgency: There is evidence that the racial divide som etimes subverts counter-insurgency operations and they get hijacked for other pu rposes. For instance, it was reported that in the Karbi Anglong district of Assa m, Indian security forces, ostensibly there to deal with the security threat pos ed by insurgencies, became partisans in local land conflicts between tribal Karb i and Hindi-speaking settlers. The settlers whom Karbis refer to as Biharis had over time acquired informal control over what is formally designated as public l ands and had consolidated a considerable amount of economic and political power. T hey now seek formal change in the status of those lands and formal land titles ( MASS 2002, 11-13). In Karbi Anglong s ethnic configuration and the growth of insur gency, the loss of land by Karbis to Biharis is a factor. Many Karbi young people have come under the influence of the United People s Democratic Solidarity (UPDS).

But in local armed land conflicts, because of racial solidarity, Bihari settlers have occasionally secured the informal backing of Indian security personnel stat ioned in the area to fight the UPDS (MASS, 2002: 21). 4. Facilitating militarisation: The racial divide facilitates the relentless mil itarisation of the region. Consider for instance, the recommendation to strength en Indian military presence in Manipur made by E.N. Rammohan a senior Indian pol ice official, who was Advisor to the Governor of Manipur. In order to stop the p enetration of the government departments by militants, Rammohan recommended that battalions of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) should guard all governme nt offices and the residential neighborhoods housing central and state governmen t officials in the state. Furthermore, he recommended that ten battalions of the Central Para-Military Force (CPMF) be deployed in the Manipur Valley in a counte r-insurgency grid , and six to eight battalions be deployed in each hills district , where roads are few, with helicopter support to effectively dominate them (Rammo han, 2002: 15). Were it not for the racial fault-line it is unlikely that such p olicy options would have been seriously considered. 5. Legitimisation of corruption: The leakage of funds allocated for Northeast In dia s development can be best described as insurgency dividend. The figures are st aggering. Jairam Ramesh estimates that the annual expenditure of the Government of India on the eight states of Northeast India, including Sikkim, is about 30, 000 crores a year. With the region s population at about 32 million, he estimates that the Government annually spends about 10,000 rupees per person in the Northe ast. This money is not going for development. In Ramesh s words, it is going to ensure cohesiveness of this society with the rest of India through a series of i nterlocutors who happen to be politicians, expatriate contractors, extortionists , anybody but people working to deliver benefits to the people for whom these ex penditures are intended. A surer way of improving the economic conditions of the intended beneficiaries, he suggests, might be for the Indian government to open bank accounts and deposi t an annual cheque of Rs. 10,000 for every poor family in the Northeast (Ramesh, 2005: 18-19). The racial divide facilitates the sharing of the insurgency dividend between loc al political and bureaucratic elites and outside contractors and suppliers. Not unlike western businessmen who justify bribing politicians and bureaucrats in th e Third World in terms of local norms, the image of the Northeast and its people in this new visual regime is that of a modern frontier where corruption is just a part of the natural landscape. Even the chinky students from the Northeast in D elhi, after all, appear more modern, westernized and affluent than many of their mai nland peers apparently confirming the corruption-friendly image of the region. I t is hardly surprising that when it comes to doing business in the region make a fast buck and run appears to have become accepted practice. Even today s much-lower ed levels of inhibition and moral compunctions do not apply to India s modern but wild Northeast Frontier. VI Things did not have to turn out this way. As an Arunachali minister once said at a meeting in Mumbai, Why can t you think that in a big country like ours a few peo ple may even look Chinese? Come to Arunachal Pradesh, he said, people in areas b ordering China will greet you by saying Jai Hind (cited in Das, 2004). In everyday conversations Northeasterners resist mainland India s representation o f the region. But intellectuals, artists and activists will have to develop what bell hooks calls an oppositional gaze. Khasi commentator Patricia Mukhim believ es that because of its geographical location policy makers in Delhi think of the Northeast primarily in terms of its strategic importance. The region, she suggest s, is treated as enemy territory, which needs to be subdued by force. But you canno t buy allegiance with force, she warns and calls for an entirely new approach to th e region (Mukhim, 2004).

A new approach must start with the domain of representation. Our policies have a n impact on the way the Northeast and its people are represented. For instance, softening our international borders opening up the region on the east and the no rth, and encouraging close cross-border interaction can slowly change perception s. The region seen as a gateway to a friendly transnational neighbourhood will e voke very different emotions than those of a frontier or an enemy territory a dang er zone where foreign and domestic enemies conspire against the Indian nation. P olicies could transform the Southeast Asia within India into a dynamic gateway t o the Southeast Asia of world political maps. This could be the foundation for a new social contract between India and its Northeast. This could radically chang e what it means to look Northeastern in India. The battle for the future of Nort heast India is also a battle over images. Footnotes: 2 The term Mongoloid is especially unfortunate because of the association of the t erm in medical science with mental retardation. When in 1866, John Langdon Down observed that a group of children with mental retardation (Down s syndrome) shared certain appearances and characteristics he described them as greatly resembling people of the Mongoloid race. Down described one child as follows: "The boy s aspect is such, that is difficult to realize that he is the child of Europeans; but so frequently are these characters presented, that there can be no doubt that these ethnic features are the result of degeneration." He could explain the so-called Mongoloid features of the retarded Caucasoid child only by a process of degenerat ion. Medical practitioners continued to use the terms "Mongolism" or "Mongoloid w ell after biologists had abandoned racial categories. But in 1965 when the World Health Organization awarded a prize to the British geneticist Dr. L. S. Penrose for his contributions to the understanding of "mongolism," the delegation from Mongolia, that was now a member of the World Health Organization, quietly protes ted the use of the term. WHO then stopped using these terms (Leshin, 2003) 2. This and the following paragraph borrows a few ideas from the discussion of t he film by Priya Joshi in the course material she provides for her course on Nati onalism & Popular Hindi Cinema at the University of California, Berkeley Briefing Paper Conflict in Northeast India: Issues, Causes and Concern By Philipp Heimerdinger & Tshering Chonzom Introduction The Northeast region of India comprising of eight states Assam, Nagaland, Manipu r, Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram, Tripura and Sikkim[1] a region poorly connected to the Indian mainland by a small corridor,[2] and surrounded by many countries su ch as Bhutan, Myanmar, Bangladesh and China, is the setting for a multitude of c onflict that undermines the idea of India as a prosperous and functioning democr acy. For instance, the Naga insurgence, which started in the 1950s, known as the moth er of the Northeast insurgencies, is one of the oldest unresolved armed conflict s in the world. In total, Manipur, Assam, Nagaland and Tripura have witnessed sc ales of conflict that could, at least between 1990 and 2000, be characterised as low intensity conflicts. However, it must also be mentioned that internal confl icts have been a permanent feature of the Asian political landscape since 1945, of which post-colonial India is no exception. Currently, most of the states in t he region are affected by some form of conflict, expect for Arunachal Pradesh, M izoram and Sikkim in which the situation is at the moment relatively stable. The reasons for the respective conflicts are wide ranging from separatist movements , to inter-community, communal and inter-ethnic conflicts.

Unfortunately, the data and information on the region is not sufficiently analyz ed and communicated between the region and the Centre, contributing to further m isinformation, mismanagement and alienation. At another level, conflict in the r egion has been an all pervasive phenomena, and in its violent form, it has not o nly affected the territorial and political sovereignty of the Indian state, but also the life of the various people living in the region in incomprehensible and inexplicable terms. In a drastic and dreaded sense, there is a culture of conflic t and unfortunately, people have submitted to such an existence. However, amidst the widespread sense of helplessness, there is also an overwhelming desire and force to be free from such a situation of conflict which cripples the people fro m all sides. To gain a holistic understanding of the problem that has historical and contempo rary dimensions, it is important to assess and understand the various facets of the problem that interact with each other. Historical reasons for the conflict The historical connections among the traditional tribes in the Northeast are lar gely of Tibeto-Burman/Mongoloid stock and closer to Southeast Asia than to South Asia. It is ethnically, linguistically and culturally very distinct from the ot her states of India. Though cultural and ethnic diversity per say are not causes for conflict, but one of the major problem areas is that the Northeast is terri torially organized in such a manner that ethnic and cultural specificities were ignored during the process of delineation of state boundaries in the 1950s, givi ng rise to discontentment and assertion of one s identity. Whereas,the colonial ru lers took nearly a century to annex the entire region, and administered the hill s as a loose frontier area , with the result, that large parts of the northeastern hill areas never came in touch with the principle of a central administration be fore. Hence, their allegiance to the newly formed Indian nation-state was lacking from the beginning accentuated by the creation of East Pakistan (today s Bangladesh) hich meant the loss of a major chunk of the physical connection between mainland India and Northeast India. Interestingly, 99 percent of the Northeast s boundarie s is international and only one percent is domestic boundary. Issues of governance The Indian government s past and ongoing processes of national integration, statebuilding and democratic consolidation have further aggravated the conflict scena rio in the region. For instance, the eight states comprising the Northeast is po pulated by nearly 40 million inhabitants who vary in language, race, tribe, cast e, religion, and regional heritage. Therefore, most often, the clubbing of all t hese states under the tag of northeast has tended to have a homogenizing effect wi th its own set of implications for policy formulation and implementation; not to mention local aversion to such a construct. The politico-administrative arrangements made by the Centre have also been lacki ng. For instance, the introduction of the Sixth Schedule Autonomous Councils (cu rrently there are ten such Councils in the region and many more demanding such s tatus) ended up creating multiple power centers instead of bringing in a genuine process of democratization or autonomy in the region. Moreover, Para 12 (A) of the Sixth Schedule clearly states that, whenever there is a conflict of interest between the District Councils and the state legislature, the latter would preva il. It is even alleged that it is a mere platform for aspiring politicians who nu rture ambitions to contest assembly polls in the future (Teresa Rehman, Tehelka, 30 January 2009). The AFSPA (Armed Forces Special Power Act) for instance, shows the inability and w

reluctance of the government to solve the conflict with adequate political meas ures. The AFSPA was passed on 18 August, 1958, as a short-term measure to allow deployment of the army to counter an armed separatist movement in the Naga Hills , has been in place for the last five decades and was extended to all the seven states of the Northeast region in 1972 (with the exception of Mizoram). It was p art of a bundle of provisions, passed by the central government, to retain contr ol over the Naga areas, in which the Naga National Council (NNC) demanded furthe r autonomous rights. The AFSPA became a powerful measure for the central and the state government to act against actors challenging the political and territoria l integrity of India. As a result, the Indian army for the first time since its independence was deployed to manage an internal conflict. But, instead of resolv ing the problem, it led to an ongoing escalation of the conflict by bringing it on a military level. The regular violations of human rights has led to a radical ization and militarization of the region and weakened also the supporters of a p olitical solution. According to the Human Rights Watch Report (August 2008), The Act violates provisions of international human rights law, including the right t o life, the right to be protected from arbitrary arrest and detention, and the r ight to be free from torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. It also denies the victims of the abuses the right to a remedy. A fact-finding commissio n, appointed by the government in 2004, complained that the AFSPA has become a sy mbol of oppression, an object of hate and an instrument of discrimination and hi ghhandedness . Though the conflict in the region s, such as, struggle over natural ent, social exclusion, and so on, identity lie at the heart of the ions in the Northeast . Foreign Policy imperative India s look east policy which was formulated in 1991 on the heels of India s economic liberalization, was a foreign economic policy initiative towards South East Asi a. The Northeast which is geographically situated between mainland India and Sou theast Asia is supposed to have had immense developmental benefits as a result o f this initiative and hence, have synergy effects on reducing poverty in the reg ion; as well as on insurgency and armed conflict. The region s diverse natural res ources, rich bio-diversity and enormous hydro-electricity potential, among other s, could also help to overcome the widespread feeling of backwardness among the inhabitants of the Northeast. But there is also increasing argument made that th e impact of increased introduction of market imperatives in the traditional soci ety of the region would have irreversible impact on the people s culture and life and it would also lead to increased settlement of mainland people to the northea st. Thereby it is of high importance, that the announced opening will take place in a regulated frame and through cooperation with the local people, otherwise i t could aggravate the tensions between the center and the region. The government has also faced criticism in the way in which it has been looking at the Northeast as an issue of territorial security rather than development per say. The fear of a growing Chinese influence, as well as, increasing cross-bord er terrorism (Myanmar, Bangladesh) in the region are some of the factors cited a s reasons for limiting India in its attempt to open the region. Outlook To conclude,in the words of Clemens Spiess, the various problems and conflict co nstellations in the Northeast represent(s) durable challenges to the integrative and accommodative capacity of Indian democracy . The HBS India programme on Democra cy and Conflict , of which the Northeast is an important component, focuses mainly on the Northeast region of India and aims to support, facilitate and contribute is mired with complex political-economic issue resources, migration related issues, displacem according to Dr Clemens Spiess, the politics of bigger part of the current conflict constellat

to civil society engagement, participation, and intervention in the region with regard to conflict prevention. Thereby, facilitating intermediation between the various stakeholders involved in the diverse conflict constellations in the reg ion, be it the public, civil society activists, state representatives, journalis ts, academicians and researchers; and contributing to the promotion of integrati on and socialisation into a democratic political culture through dialogue and ci vic education. The overall objective of the HBS programme is to promote the peac eful coexistence of conflict affected ethnic groups through strengthened democra tic processes, with gender being a cross-cutting issue. [1] The latter became a full state of the Indian Union in 1975, became a member of the regional North Eastern Council in 2003 and hence, became a eighth Northea stern state. [2] A link that has come to be referred to as the 'chicken's neck Insurgency in Northeast India From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search Gnome globe current event.svg Parts of this article (those related to lacks history that would justify the movement of hundreds of thousands of people. The article is not credible) a re outdated. Please update this article to reflect recent events or newly availa ble information. (August 2012) This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help im prove this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material m ay be challenged and removed. (February 2010) Insurgency in Northeast India India-locator-map-NE.svg North East States Date 1964-present Location Assam, Manipur, Nagaland, Tripura, Meghalaya and Mizoram, Northe ast India Result Conflict ongoing Belligerents Flag of India.svg India Flag of Bangladesh.svg Bangladesh Ulfa logo.svg ULFA KLNLF Front Nacional Democratic Bodoland.svg NDFB ANLA Bandera UNLF.svg UNLF PLA UPDS PREPAK NSCN NLFT ATTF ANVC HNLC HPC (until 1992) HPCD BNLF KYKL ZRF Commanders and leaders India General Bikram Singh Ulfa logo.svg Arabinda Rajkhowa Ulfa logo.svg Paresh Baruah Ulfa logo.svg Anup Chetia

Front Nacional Democratic Bodoland.svg Sabin Boro Bandera UNLF.svg Kalalung Kamei Bandera UNLF.svg Arambam Samerendra Angami Zapu Phizo Biswamohan Debbarma Men Sing Takbi alias Willingson Timung Pradip Terang alias Pongbi Dilli Ranjit Debbarma Casualties and losses Since 2005: 375 killed Since 2005: 2,704 killed Since 2005: 1,879 civilians killed [1] [show] v t e Internal conflicts in India Various groups are involved in the Insurgency in Northeast India, India's north east states, which are connected to the rest of India by a narrow strip of land known as the Siliguri Corridor.In the region several armed factions operate. Som e groups call for a separate state, others for regional autonomy while some extr eme groups demand complete independence. Northeastern India consists of 7 states (also known as the , Meghalaya, Tripura, Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram, Manipur, s exist between these states and the central government as ribal people, who are natives of these states, and migrant rts of India. seven sisters): Assam and Nagaland. Tension well as amongst the t peoples from other pa

The states have accused New Delhi of ignoring the issues concerning them.[citati on needed] A feeling of second-class citizenship meted out to them by mainland I ndians has led the natives of these states to seek greater participation in self -governance. There are existing territorial disputes between Manipur and Nagalan d, Nagaland and Assam, Meghalaya and Assam, and Mizoram and Assam, often based o n historical border disputes and differing ethnic, tribal or cultural affinities .[citation needed] There has been a number of insurgent activities and regional movements in all parts of the northeast, often unique in character to each state . Military action by the armed and paramilitary forces and political action have led to the intensity of these insurgencies fluctuating and to the resolution of the insurgency in Mizoram.[citation needed] Regional tensions have eased off as of late, with Indian and state governments' concerted effort to raise the living standards of the people in these regions. H owever, militancy still exists within the region. At present insurgent activity is present in Assam, Manipur, Nagaland and Tripura. Contents 1 Assam 1.1 ULFA 1.2 NDFB 1.3 KLNLF 1.4 UPDS 2 Manipur 2.1 Peoples Liberation Army 2.2 UNLF 2.3 PREPAK 3 Nagaland 3.1 NSCN-IM

3.2 NSCN-K 4 Tripura 4.1 National Liberation Front of Tripura 4.2 All Tripura Tiger Force 5 Meghalaya 5.1 ANVC 5.2 HNLC 6 Mizoram 6.1 Hmar People's Convention-Democratic - HPC(D) 6.2 BNLF 7 Human rights abuses 8 See also 9 Notes 10 External references Assam Main articles: Assamese nationalism, Bodo nationalism, and Assam conflict [hide]Organizations listed as terrorist groups by India North-East India National Socialist Council of Nagaland-Isak-Muivah (NSCN-IM) Naga National Council-Federal (NNCF) National Council of Nagaland-Khaplang United Liberation Front of Asom People's Liberation Army (Manipur) Kanglei Yawol Kanna Lup (KYKL) Zomi Revolutionary Front Kashmir Al-Badr Al-Badr Mujahideen Al Barq (ABQ) Al Fateh Force (AFF) Al Jihad Force (AJF)/Al Jihad Al Mujahid Force (AMF) Al Umar Mujahideen (AUR/Al Umar) Awami Action Committee (AAC) Dukhtaran-e-Millat (DEM) Harakat-ul-Ansar Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami Harakat-ul-Mujahideen Hizb-ul-Mujahideen (HUM) Ikhwan-ul-Musalmeen (IUM) Jaish-e-Mohammed (JEM) Lashkar-e-Mohammadi Jammat-ul-Mujahideen (JUM) Jammat-ul-Mujahideen Almi (JUMA) Jammu and Kashmir Democratic Freedom Party (JKDFP) Jammu and Kashmir Islamic Front (JKIF) Jammu and Kashmir Jamaat-e-Islami (JKJEI) Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) Jaish-e-Mohammed Kul Jammat Hurriyat Conference (KJHC) Mahaz-e-Azadi (MEA) Muslim Janbaaz Force (MJF/Jaanbaz Force) Muslim Mujahideen (MM) Hizbul Mujahideen Harkat-ul-Mujahideen Farzandan-e-Milat United Jihad Council Al-Qaeda

Students Islamic Movement of India Tehreek-e-Jihad (TEJ) Pasban-e-Islami (PEI/Hizbul Momineen HMM) Shora-e-Jihad (SEJ) Tehreek-ul-Mujahideen (TUM) North, Central and South India Babbar Khalsa Bhindranwala Tigers Force of Khalistan Communist Party of India (Maoist) Dashmesh Regiment International Sikh Youth Federation (ISYF) Kamagata Maru Dal of Khalistan] Khalistan Liberation Force Khalistan Commando Force Khalistan Liberation Army Khalistan Liberation Front Khalistan Liberation Organisation Khalistan National Army Khalistan Guerilla Force Khalistan Security Force Khalistan Zindabad Force LTTE Naxals Ranvir Sena v t e Assam has been the hotbed of militancy for a number of years due to its porous b orders with Bangladesh and Bhutan. The main causes of the friction include the a nti-foreigner agitation in the 1980s and the simmering Assam-Bodo tensions. The insurgency status in Assam is classified as very active.The government of Bangla desh has arrested and extradited senior leaders of ULFA. ULFA The United Liberation Front of Asom was formed in April 1979 to establish a sove reign state of Assam through an armed struggle. In recent times the organisation has lost out its middle rung leaders after most of them were arrested. NDFB The National Democratic Front of Bodoland was formed in 1989 as the Bodo Securit y Force, aims to set up an autonomous region Bodoland. KLNLF The Karbi Longri N.C. Hills Liberation Front is a militant group operating in Ka rbi Anglong and Dima Hasao districts of Assam that was formed on May 16, 2004. T he outfit claims to fight for the cause of Karbi tribes and its declared objecti ve is Hemprek Kangthim, meaning self-rule/self-determination of the Karbi people . It is closely linked with the ULFA (United Liberation Front of Asom) UPDS The United People's Democratic Solidarity was formed in March 1999 with the merg er of two terrorist outfits in Assam's Karbi Anglong district, the Karbi Nationa l Volunteers (KNV) and Karbi People s Front (KPF). Manipur Insurgent groups in Manipur may be broadly classified into hill-based (mostly tr ibals) and valley based(mostly majority meiteis).While the former demand for tri bal state to preserve their tribal cultures from outside influence,the latter ba sed their demands for independence from historical perspective claiming that Man

ipur a princely state with its geographical area extending to as far as the Kaba w valley of modern Myanmar during the British colonialism,was never a part of In dia and continues to remain so.About 90% of the hill-based insurgents and a few of the valley-based insurgents have now entered what is called Suspension of Ope ration (SoO). Peoples Liberation Army The Peoples Liberation Army is a leftist organisation formed in 1978 with the ai m of liberating Manipur from India. UNLF The United National Liberation Front was created in 1964 and demands an independ ent socialist state of Manipur. PREPAK People's Revolutionary Party of Kangleipak is an armed insurgent group in Manipu r demanding a separate and independent homeland. Nagaland Main articles: Naga nationalism and Ethnic conflict in Nagaland Nagaland was created in 1963 as the 16th State of Indian Union, before which it was a district of Assam.[2] Insurgent groups classified as active, mainly demand full independence. The Naga National Council led by Phizo was the first group t o dissent in 1947 and in 1956 they went underground. NSCN-IM The National Socialist Council of Nagaland was formed in 1980 to establish a Gre ater Nagaland, encompassing parts of Manipur, Nagaland, the north Cachar hills ( Assam). The NSCN split in 1988 to form two groups namely NSCN(IM) & NSCN(K). As of now, both the groups are in ceasefire with the Indian government.Though sover eignty and independence was their ideology initially, of late the Indo-Naga talk s seem to centre around Greater Nagaland which itself is being vehemently oppose d by the states of Assam,Manipur,Arunachal Pradesh etc. solely for the reason th at it is nothing sort of encroachment on their territories which continues to fo rment suspicion and ill-will in the North-east India. However, they continue to be actively involved in illegal activities including extortion, kidnapping, inte r-factional clashes, bootlegging and recruitment besides imposing various tax/du ties to all types of commercial enterprises and establishments. In spite of the name, the Council's ideology is Maoist rather than Hitlerite. NSCN-K The National Socialist Council of Nagaland Khaplang is the second faction with the same aim of a Greater Nagaland and was formed in 1988. Tripura Main articles: Tripuri nationalism and Tripura rebellion The insurgent groups in Tripura were emerged in the end of the 1970s, as ethnic tensions between the Bengali immigrants and the tribal native population who wer e outnumbered by the former hailing from mainland India and nearby Bangladesh wh ich resulted in their being reduced to minority status even threatening them eco nomically,socially, culturally which thus resulted in a clarion call of safeguar ding tribal rights and cultures.Such being the extent of desperation naturally r esulted in hatred and suspicion and as such their status is classified as very a ctive. National Liberation Front of Tripura The National Liberation Front of Tripura was formed in March 1989. All Tripura Tiger Force The All Tripura Tiger Force was formed by the local aboriginal tribals in 1990,

who were gradually outnumbered both directly and indirectly even at the cost of being threatened for their survival economically and culturally not to speak of their being reduced to minority population-wise, with the sole aim of the expuls ion of all Bengali speaking immigrants from mainland India and nearby Bangladesh . Meghalaya Problems in Meghalaya arise from the divide between tribals and non tribal settl ers, identity issues and growing corruption besides the fear of being reduced to minority by native tribals. The activity status is classified as active. ANVC The Achik National Volunteer Council was formed in 1995 with the intentions of f orming an Achik Land in the Garo Hills. As of 2010, a Suspension of Operations A greement (SoO) between the Government and ANVC has been in force since 23 July 2 004.[3] HNLC The Hynniewtrep National Liberation Council, formed in 1992, aims to free the st ate from the alleged Garo and non-tribal Indian domination. Mizoram See also: March 1966 Mizo National Front uprising Mizoram's tensions are largely due to the simmering Assamese domination and the neglect of the Mizo people. In 1986, the Mizo accord ended the main secessionist movement led by the Mizo National Front, bringing peace to the region. Insurgen cy status is classified as partially active, due to secessionist/autonomy demand s by the Hmars, chakmas, Brus, Pawis, Lais and the Reangs. Hmar People's Convention-Democratic - HPC(D) The Hmar People's Convention-Democracy is an armed insurgency group formed in 19 95 to create an independent Hmar State in North East India. It is the offspring of the Hmar People's Convention (HPC), which entered into agreement with the Gov ernment of Mizoram in 1994 resulting in the formation of Sinlung Hills Developme nt Council (SHDC) in North Mizoram. Their recruited cadres are from the States w here the Hmar people are spread - Assam, Manipur, Mizoram, Tripura and Meghaaya. The HPC(D) is demanding a separate administrative unit under the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution of India. BNLF The Bru National Liberation Front was formed in 1997 to protect the rights and d ignity of the Reangs. The BNLF have surrendered with 757 of their comrades to th e Mizoram Government on 21 October 2006. Assam Political Parties About Assam Political Parties Assam is one of the chief states of northeast India. The state being one of the forthcoming business hubs of the country has got a significant contribution in t he agricultural and economical front. Some of the nationally recognized parties govern the political state of affairs. Besides, the national political parties, the state is even well-controlled by the state level Assam political parties. Major political parties governing Assam Since India's independence, Assam had seen the monopoly of the Indian National C ongress party there. The first exception was in the year 1978, when the Janata P

arty came to power through the General Assembly Election. But after 2 years they were again defeated by the Indian National Congress party. Political power was alternatively vested in the hands of the Indian National Con gress party and the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) in between 1985 and 2006. Since 200 6, the Indian National Congress party has been uninterruptedly ruling the state of Assam. Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) or the Assam Peoples' Association is one of t he distinguished state level political parties of Assam. The party came into exi stence as a result of promising Assam Accord of 1985. The Assam government was r uled the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) twice from the year 1985 to 1989 and 1996 to 2 001. Other political parties operating in Assam In spite of the monopoly of the Indian National Congress party, the other nation al Political Parties working in Assam are: Nationalist Congress Party (NCP)s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Communist Party of India (CPI) Besides the strong hold of the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), other state level Polit ical Parties in Assam are: Asom Gana Parishad (Progressive) (AGPP) Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPM) Autonomous State Demand Committee (ASDC) Bodo People's Progressive Front (BPPF) Purbanchaliya Loka Parishad (PLP) Trinamul Gana Parishad (TGP) United Minority Front (UMF) Present government in Assam The eminent Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) lost its political stronghold over Assam wh en Prafulla Kumar Mahanta, the-then Chief Minister left the party to form his se parate party called Asom Gana Parishad (Progressive). This finally led to the do wnfall of the State Level Assam Political Parties in the hands of the Indian Nat ional Congress, the national level political party. Presently, the State Governm ent of Assam is headed by Mr. Tarun Gogoi, who is the Chief Minister of Assam al ong with the governorship of Mr. Janaki Ballav Patnaik. Political trends in Assam Some of the significant political trends, observed about Assam Political Parties , are: People tend to vote and bring that party in power which is the-then ruling p arty of the Central Government. Mostly all the political parties are more strengthened by the active youth o f the Assam state. Assam political parties can't afford to overlook the demands of the Muslims and the Christians, who are the religious minorities of Assam.State Level Politi cal Parties of Assam Assam, an upcoming industrial hub and the gateway to the northeast is also a pri

me contributor to the agricultural output and economy of the country. Several na tional parties and three state level political parties dominate the political sc enario of the politically active state. The state parties of Assam include the A som Gana Parishad (AGP), Asom Gana Parishad (Progressive) (AGPP) and the Communi st Party of India (Marxist-Lenninist) (Liberation). Apart from the noted national political parties of Bharatiya Janata Party, the I ndian National Congress and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPM) and Com munist Party of India (CPI), the state parties too have an iron grip on the admi nistration of Assam. In fact, the years spanning from 1985 to 2004 saw the contr ol of the state oscillating between the national level Indian National Congress and the state party, Asom Gana Parishad. Asom Gana Parishad, also recognized as the Assam Peoples Association is an emine nt state level political party in Assam. The auspicious Assam Accord of 1985 was responsible for the birth of the AGP. Prafulla Kumar Mahanta was elected as Chi ef Minister of Assam and his claim to fame rested on his being the country's you ngest Chief Minister. The Assam government has been under the jurisdiction twice extending from 1985 to 1989 and from 1996 to 2001. However, the former Chief Minister, Prafulla Kumar Mahanta has broken out of the AGP to form his own offshoot political party, the Asom Gana Parishad (Progressi ve). This has led to considerable weakening of the party's political stronghold in Assam as evinced by their dismal performance in the 2006 elections where they managed to grab only a single seat. This led to the downfall of the monarch of the State Level Political Parties of Assam followed by the establishment of the able Congress rule. Regionalism losing ground in Assam 21 August, 2009 Dayanath Singh Font size: Decrease font Enlarge font With the lapse of time and rapid changes in political scenario the illusion of r egionalism is waning in Assam and the north eastern parts of the country. During last several years Indian politics reached a chaotic situation throughout the c ountry leading an air of hatred against the national political parties. There wa s a deep feeling in the people that the national political parties failed to del iver goods and look into the interests of the region. In a vast country like Ind ia every region has got different types of problems. Simultaneously, all regions of the country face different types of situations. To safeguard the interest of the region, the necessity of regional political parties was felt for the better ment and welfare the people of the region. In Assam, even though some regional parties existed earlier, their role was negl igible. With the launching of movement against the foreign nationals in the stat e by the All Assam Students Union (AASU) and Asom Gana Sangram Parishad (AGSP), t he people were inspired to struggle and fight against maladministration, corrupt ion and other evils of the society. The controversy over the voters list in the s tate, which arose in the year 1979, is still alive. Due to inclusion of foreigne rs name in the lists, for the first time elections had to be stalled. The reports from various parts of the state came that the lists contained the names of fore igners. The delay in the process of identification and deportation of such peopl e led to more complexity of the issue. After continuous President s rule for a long time a drama of election was played by the ruling party at the Centre in 1983. Despite opposition and agitations by maj ority of organizations, the Congress government at the Centre was firm in its de cision to hold the elections and it won the so-called elections too, which was rej ected by the people. However, with the signing of the Assam Accord on August 15, 1985, between the state government and the movement leaders, in presence of ers twhile prime minister, in New Delhi, peace returned to the state and the politic

al scenario changed. Ironically, the fresh elections in 1985, were held on the basis of the same elec toral rolls, against which the movement was launched. The results of the polls w ere surprising. The newly formed Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), the staunch advocate of regionalism came to power defeating the mighty Congress. Politically immature d the AGP leaders took the reins of the state administration in December 1985. T he people of the state kept high hopes on the team in handling the affairs of th e state, as its active members were fully aware of the problems of the state and almost all of them were enthusiastic. The new leaders were firm in their opinio n that the national parties were useless , so far the state s matters were concerned. On public platform they declared that Delhi could not solve the problems of Ass am, as it did not try to understand them. The AGP ruled the state once for a ful l term of five years, but failed to provide any package of relief for the people of the state. The vexed foreign national issue remained unresolved. New problem s raised ugly heads. The tribal communities of the state began disassociating an d struggling to save their identity and culture. The law and order situation det eriorated. The administration could not detect and deport any foreigner from the state. The next election in 1991, was crucial for the regional party and the Congress c ame to power again. It was a lesson for the AGP, which failed to deliver goods. The Congress also failed to prove its worth during its term. The people were in dilemma having no alternative to decide between these two national and regional parties. In the next elections, electorate gave another chance to AGP to rule ov er the state, but the party proved complete failure in administration. The state was ruled by the corruption, abduction, killings etc. The differences in the ru ling party came to the surface, which was completely against the wishes of the p eople. The people have no choice. Illusion of regionalism has taken back seat an d the Congress, the national party has made its root strong, despite all odds.