Central Asia: Horiozon of Political Culture and People Participation

Horiozon of Political Culture and People Participation

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• Publisher: KW Publishers
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9789385714245
• Edition: 1

The emerging political systems of Central Asian countries have given a new impetus to the world political scientist to add and theorise new democratic developments after the collapse of Communism. This book is a scholarly contribution which combines theory and practice of political culture and participation in the Central Asian political context. This book focuses on the Soviet and Post-Soviet development of political culture in the Central Asian region and the role of political parties, other non-political formations like the opposition, the media, civil society and ethnic minority groups who are also augmenting the process of democratisation. This book has extensively used opinions of experts from authoritative Russian, Central Asian and Indian scholars which were specially undertaken for the purpose of this book. Students, academicians, researchers, policy makers, businessmen and diplomats would be enormously benefited by this book. This book would make its humble contribution to enriching knowledge about the newly politically formed five Central Asian countries' constitutional provisions and political practices for India's Central Asia connect policy.

1

Theoretical Perspectives

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Every political system of the world is studied on the basis of political culture and participation. The tradition of political culture and participation not only gives impetus to know the entire political system of a country but also provides knowledge about the establishment of an ideal political system with effective political participation. In the modern world, people are so informed and active in every sphere that on the one hand they try to establish a political system which gives optimum benefit to the common people and provide national security, and on the other a culture of active citizen participation. Without active participation, the country may fail to provide good governance and prosperity as is evident of many newly independent states.

1.1 Political Culture

Political system of a country is shaped by its history, culture, tradition and pattern of social formations and these elements play a major role in developing the political culture of a country. The notion of political culture assumes that the attitudes, sentiments and cognitions that inform and govern political behaviour in any society are representing coherent patterns together and are mutually reinforcing. In spite of the great potentialities for diversity in political orientations, in any particular community, there is a limited and distinct political culture which gives meaning, predictability, and form to the political process.¹ Also, each individual must, in his or her own historical context, learn and incorporate into his or her own personality, the knowledge and feelings about the politics of his or her people and community.²

The political culture of a society is limited but is given a firm structure by the basic factors of dynamic psychology. Therefore, a generation must receive its politics from the previous one; each must react against that process to find its own politics and the total process must follow the laws that govern the development of the individual personality and the general culture of a society.

The functioning of a political system is to be seen with reference to a nation’s political culture because the citizens’ attitude to the political system clearly affects the kind of demands made, the way they are expressed and organised, the reaction of the political system and the nature of the popular support etc.³ For this reason, it is necessary to study the history, social structures and cleavages which affect the politics of a country. It has also been seen that the society is the source of conflict and sometimes of violence, which the political unit must resolve or regulate. Nearly every political unit has faced the task of confronting social crisis that has tested its ability to survive. Political values of the society have been connected with an interest in the conditions of the social order and the political stability of regimes. These regimes have also been maintained by a mixture of incentives including force, legitimacy, tradition and the distribution of material benefits.⁴ The contemporary political system has faced lots of challenges like ethnic conflict, religious extremism, vast economic disparities, inequalities and conflicting value systems that make the functioning of a stable political process difficult. Even with all these social and economic differences, society presents a political system that tries to resolve disputes and maintain political stability. Society also provides a support that helps to maintain the stability of the political system through economic and social structures, established pattern of interpersonal relations and consensus on the goals of social life.

Wildavasky points out that each nation is a mix of cultures that requires a realistic understanding of political culture in actual political practice. For him, political culture is not a static conceptual frame for classifying nations but living principles that constantly interact with daily political life. In a country, or the international system, the motivations generated by the political subcultures are the very product of politics. The peculiarities of a nation’s politics will vary according to the type of political culture held by those in the government, those acting as opposition and by the several competing groups seeking access to elite positions.⁵ So, people’s political ideas, attitudes, values etc. normally passing down from one generation to the next, imply that the attitudes and values of the past tend to be conveyed into the present. However, the individual’s political ideas change throughout life in response to political experiences, with basic orientations often remaining the same. Thus, the attitudes of previous generations based on the political events of their lifetimes may indirectly influence the political conduct of contemporary citizens. Political culture provides a set of ‘resources’ in terms of images, symbols, myths and traditions enabling people to make sense of their position, and generate a kind of need that influences the selection and interpretation of the available cultural resources.⁶

A nation’s political culture includes its citizens’ orientations towards three levels: the political system, the political and policymaking process, and policy output and outcomes. The political system is the governance of its political institutions involving both input and output functions. The principal inputs are political parties, interest groups and the mass media. The main outputs are legislatures, executives, bureaucracies, courts and the nation itself. The policymaking process includes the actions, conflicts, alliances, behavioural styles of parties, interest groups, movements and individuals involving citizens’ and leaders’ policy expectations from the government.⁷

Political culture was originated as an analytical tool for political scientists using quantitative behaviouralist methods. So, the theory of political culture was developed in response to the need to bridge a growing gap in the behavioural approach in political science between the level of microanalysis with psychological interpretations of the individual’s political behaviour and the level of macroanalysis with the variables common to political sociology.⁸ It constitutes an attempt to integrate psychology and sociology in political analysis for mapping attitudes in mass societies. This theory is associated with modernisation theories and the behaviouralist revolution of the 1950s and 1960s.

1.1.1 Concept of Political Culture

The ‘word political culture’ is the combination of two words-—political and culture. Politics simple means the study of state, government and relating to public affairs. But the culture is a historically created system. It is a system of beliefs and practices, in terms of which a group of human beings understand, regulate and structure their individual and collective lives.⁹ In that connection a classical anthropological definition states that “culture is that complex whole which includes knowledge, beliefs, art, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society”.¹⁰ So, the culture is the main source of political power and legitimacy. A political organisation is an arrangement for maintaining order, resolving disputes, selecting authoritative leaders and thus promoting community among two or more moral forces.¹¹ A political culture is a part of the larger culture of a society. It abstracts from the larger culture those orientations relating to political objects. Within the political system subculture has also played a major role. Subculture means societal groups who possess a particular identity. A political subculture is a group of the population that possesses a distinct and consistent set of attitudes, beliefs and orientations to political objects. So the culture and politics are inextricably linked in a reciprocal relationship. Sometimes governmental decisions affect the culture of a country and vice versa. The concept of political culture was popularised through the writings of Gabriel A. Almond, Sidney Verba and Lucian W. Pye though many of the political thinkers also stressed upon the political culture before these thinkers. Rousseau conceived political culture in terms of the morality, customs and public opinion of a particular people.¹² Tocqueville argued that political culture was ‘the habits of heart’, that lead to the whole moral and intellectual condition of people.¹³ Burke argued that a nation is not merely a territory of landmass, but more importantly an embodiment of history, morals, and culture, extending to time, values, and telling a way of life that grows out of “the peculiar circumstances, occasions, tempers, dispositions and moral, civil, and social habitudes of the people”. For him it is an invention of ages and generations, an idea of continuity or tradition.¹⁴

In the behavioural revolution of politics, many scholars relate people’s fundamental and deep sentiments towards politics, public opinion, and political ideology. Almond and Powell define political culture “as the pattern of individual attitudes and orientations towards politics among the members of a political system”.¹⁵ Almond’s political culture theory gives some importance to political attitudes, beliefs, values, and emotions in the explanation of political, structural and behavioural phenomena—national cohesion, patterns of political cleavage, modes of dealing with political conflict, the extent and the character of participation in politics, and compliance with authority.¹⁶ He also analysed that orientations are predispositions to political action. These orientations are also determined by such factors as traditions, historical memories, motives, norms, emotions and symbols.¹⁷ The political objects of the orientations include such institutions as the executive, legislature and judiciary, the political parties, pressure groups, a person’s view of himself or herself as a political actor, and his or her view of other citizens.¹⁸ Georgi Shaknazanov who was the President of the Soviet Political Science Association, has explained political culture as the participation of diverse social opinions in politics; the political culture of the people and political culture training, as the regulation of social-political attitudes.¹⁹ At the same level, Lucian Pye defined political culture as the set of attitudes, beliefs and sentiments, which give order and meaning to a political process, providing the underlying assumptions and rules that govern behaviour in the political system. In this sense, political culture includes both the political ideals and the operating norms of a polity. This is the manifestation in aggregate form of the psychological and subjective dimensions of politics including ‘public opinion, political ideology, national ethos and the basic consensus, values and constitutional integrating sentiments of a people’.²⁰

Another famous definition was given by the American political scientists Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba that political culture is the pattern of orientations to political objects among the members of the nation. By ‘political objects’, they meant parliaments and political parties, as well as less tangible aspects of a nation’s political life such as the conventional account of its history. So, political culture can also be understood i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Map of Central Asian Countries
• Abbreviations
• 1. Theoretical Perspectives
• 2. Soviet Legacies
• 3. Institutional Developments
• 4. Non-State Actors
• 5. Conclusion