Assignment Code: MPS-004/ASST/TMA/2021-22

Course Code: MPS-004

Assignment Name: Comparative Politics: Issues and Trends

Year: 2022-2023

Verification Status: Verified by Professor

SECTION-I

1. Critically examine the impact of globalization on the internal functioning of a state.

Ans) Globalisation has been producing a subtle change in the functions of the State. Its role in the ownership and production of goods has been getting reduced. However, this does not in any way mean a return of the Laisses faire state.

In the era of globalisation, the functions of the State began undergoing a change. With the increasing disinvestment of public sector, privatisation was encouraged. Public sector was made to compete with the private sector, and as a whole open competition, free trade, market economy and globalisation were practiced. State ownership of industries came to be rejected. The role of state began emerging as that of a facilitator and coordinator. The exercise still continues.

Decreased Economic activities of State: The process of liberalisation- privatisation has acted as a source of limitation on the role of the state in the economic sphere. Public sector and enterprises are getting privatized and state presence in economic domain is shrinking.

Decrease in the role of the State in International Economy: The emergence of free trade, market competition, multinational corporations and international economic organisations and trading blocs like European Union, NAFTA, APEC, ASEAN and others, have limited the scope of the role of state in the sphere of international economy.

Decline of State Sovereignty: Increasing international inter-dependence has been compelling each state to accept limitations on its external sovereignty. Each state now finds it essential to accept the rules of international economic system, the WTO, the World Bank and the IMF. The role of MNC/TNC has also been growing in national and local politics as they play a significant role in shaping the state decisions and policies. Their key objective behind influencing the state decision and policymaking is to promote their vested interests.

Growing People’s Opposition to their Respective States: Globalisation has encouraged and expanded people-to-people socio-economic-cultural relations and cooperation in the word. As IT revolution and development of fast means of transport and communication have been together making the world a real Global Community.

The people of each state now deal with people of other states as members of the World Community. The loyalty towards their respective states continues, but now the people do not hesitate to oppose those state policies which are held to be not in tune with the demands of globalization.

Reduced Importance of Military Power of the State: The state continues to maintain its military power as an important dimension of its national power. However, the strength being gained by movement for international peace and peaceful coexistence as the way of life has tended to reduce the importance of military power of the state.

Increasing Role of International Conventions and Treaties: Several international conventions and treaties have placed some limitations upon all the states. All the states are now finding it essential to follow the rules and norms laid down by such conventions. The need to fight the menace of terrorism and rogue nuclear proliferation as well as the shared responsibility for protecting the environment and human rights, have compelled all the states to accept such rules and regulations as are considered essential for the securing of these objectives.

Decline in Public Expenditure on Public Welfare Policies: Most advanced western states appear committed to reducing social expenditure on public welfare programs, and to introducing measures such as labour market deregulation and lowered tax rates which facilitate greater economic competitiveness, but impact adversely on rates of poverty and inequality. These economic and political initiatives have coincided with a period of intense economic globalisation. The growing significance of international trade, investment, production and financial flows appears to be curtailing the autonomy of individual nation states.

2. Discuss the impact of multinational corporation on developing nations.

Ans) Economists are not in unanimous agreement as to define trans how best or multinational corporations. Most MNCs are multidimensional and can be viewed from a multitude of perspectives. These include Ownership, strategy, management and structural.

According to Franklin Root (1994), that though some argue that ownership is the key criterion amongst all of the above, a firm truly becomes multinational given its parent company or headquarter is run/owned by nationals of varying countries. Examples that fit this category are Unilever and Shell, which are owned and run by Dutch and British interests. However, via this test, very few companies would fall under the banner of being a true Multinational company, rather most are unnational.

According to Howard Perlmutter multinational companies might pursue either world oriented, host country oriented or home country oriented policies. He uses these terms as geocentric, polycentric and ethnocentric, however the last is misleading since it focuses upon ethnicity and race, but most countries are themselves populated by a variety and mix of races, whereas Polycentric means the MNCs operations only take place in a couple of foreign countries.

The word “Multinational” is a combined word of “Multi” and “National,” which when combined refers to numerous countries. A Multinational Corporation is a corporation that has its facilities and other valuable assets in at least one country, which is other than its parent country. It is an organization or company that both produces and sells services and goods in a multitude of countries. Some MNCs have a budget which is greater than some small sized countries GDP’s.

Some of the major examples of MNCs today are Nokia, McDonalds, Microsoft, Exon Mobile and BP:

One of the initial MNCs was the East India Company (1600 – 1874), which is an excellent examples of both the benefits and drawbacks of such ventures. On one hand there existed a dynamic profit making entity, on the other existed a company operating on foreign soil, under very little control of the British government, having, operating and running their own private armies, utilizing military power and ultimately taking over administrative functions of India.

MNCs have come a long way since then and have seen a sharp increase in the past few decades. The numbers of active MNCs went from being roughly 7,000 in the 1970’s to 78,000 in 2006, being responsible for over half the global industrial output.

Multinational corporations usually bring with them foreign direct investment, which is direct investment in a country by the company for expanding their existing business base or for buying of raw goods and inputs from them.

Multinational corporations were the vital factor in globalization, where local and national governments competed against each other in order to incentives and attract more MNCs and ultimately, investment in their countries. An example of such incentive is the Free Trade Zones, where goods may be manufactured, handled, landed or even exported without any intervention of the local custom authorities. Most of these free trade zones exist in developing countries such as Pakistan, Mexico, Sri Lanka, Madagascar, Brazil and India, as they are eager to attract more foreign investors.

SECTION-II

3. Write short notes on the following in about 250 words each:

a) Gramsci’s conception of civil society

Ans) The left-wing radical criticism of civic society was modernised by Italian communist leader and social scientist Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci was a Marxist, but he developed his own idea of civil society based largely on his reading of According to Gramsci, the only way to comprehend the state is to make reference to the characteristics of civil society. distinguishes between civil society and political society.

The former is the location of the state's coercive machinery, while the latter is "the area where the state works to impose abstract, immaterial, and subtle forms of power through institutional means such as religious, cultural, and educational systems. Through its laws and jails, the political society disciplines the body, but the civil society uses these institutions to discipline the mind and psyche ".

According to Gramsci, the State refers to all the activities that a ruling class uses to retain its domination. It replicates itself in the activities of daily living that take place in civil society and, in this way, subtly creates both individual and community awareness. Hegemony has been understood as the formation of consent through the deployment of mythologies, institutions, and practises. Hegemony is an important concept in Gramscian formulation.

Hegemony is an organising principle that gives the diverse and violently divided civil sphere cohesion. According to Neera Chandhoke, "Civil society is the ethical moment where a fragmented society is held together by the moral vision and foresight of the leading class." Hegemony, as the moral and intellectual leadership of the dominant classes, offers the ethical moment of political life.

By separating the associational and cultural components of civil society from the economic and governmental dimensions, Gramsci avoids the economic and political reductionism. Gramsci views the social, political, and cultural institutions of civil society in developed capitalist nations as "trenches" of the existing system that contribute to the stability of bourgeois administration. In order to construct a proletarian counter-hegemony that would displace the current bourgeois structures, this version of civil society must be eliminated and replaced with other forms of association clubs, a new proletarian party, intellectual and cultural life, and values.

b) Marxist conception of political economy

Ans) Marx's early focus was diverted from jurisprudence to material interests as a result of his embarrassment over his inexperience of economic matters. "I was led by my studies to the conclusion that legal relations as well as forms of state could not be understood by themselves, nor could they be explained by the so-called general evolution of the human mind, but that they were rooted in the conditions of life," Marx states.

According to this, people's fundamental relationships, over which they have little influence, become the real foundation on which society as a whole is built. In contrast, that base is reflected in the legal and political superstructure.

The following points are made by the Marxist political economy approach:

First, it has argued that political analysis should be comprehensive and historically oriented rather than being restricted to specific topics and current events. It should look for synthesis in its quest to comprehend societal issues and challenges.

Second, economics and political science should be studied together. Political science distinctions between domestic and foreign politics, as well as between comparative and international politics, distort reality and cause confusion. The opposition between the centre and the peripheral also causes problems in theory. Dialectical analysis will aid in a comprehensive and dynamic examination of politics.

Various approaches are used in the study of political economy. They can be distinguished as conventional and radical approaches, which provide questions and explanations that are very distinct from one another. To distinguish between these methods, it is necessary to distinguish between Marxist and non-Marxist standards. In this situation, Marxism should be viewed as a method rather than an ideology.

4. Write short notes on the following in about 250 words each:

a) State building and nation building

Ans) Although the nation is primarily a human phenomenon, the state is primarily a territorial idea. The phrase "nation-state" has become part of the global political lexicon ever since the United Nations Organization was founded. In a sense, the United Nations Charter equated the state. Despite their interdependence, national affairs are more complicated than state-level affairs. In national affairs as opposed to state affairs, psychology plays a more significant influence.

Even if the term "country building" is more common in Third World nations, political science is better suited to deal with "state building." In addition to administration, which is the main goal of state construction, "nation building" also entails economic growth and social integration of a population. According to Gabriel A. Almond Bingham Powell, Jr.

"Although putting it this way oversimplifies things, we may consider the issue of state construction and how successfully a political system addresses it a structural issue. The structural diversification of new roles, structures, and subsystems that permeate the countryside is what is at issue, in other words.

On the other hand, construction places more focus on the cultural facets of political development. It describes the process by which individuals shift their allegiance and dedication from smaller tribes, towns, or petty princes to a more comprehensive central political organisation. Despite the fact that these two processes of nation and state building are interconnected, it is vital to evaluate them independently. There are several instances where centralised, pervasive bureaucracies have been established, but no consistent pattern of adherence to the main political institutions has ever developed ".

State construction was studied by Almond and Powell within the framework of the theory of political evolution, which also includes nation building, participation, and distribution (of welfare). According to him, the key concerns in creating a state are "what sort of bureaucracy one has to create, what kind of rule-making and adjudicative institutions, and what kinds of loads these structures may be compelled to carry."

b) Cultural deprivation as an inducement to ethnicity.

Ans) This point of view contends that one of the key factors influencing ethnicity is the fear that ethnic minorities have of getting lost in the sea of the majority. This may be due to the majority's persecution and discrimination, the state's identification with the majority, or the homogenization process brought on by modernization that results in the development of synthetic state culture.

True, it might be difficult to empirically track prejudice and discrimination. In fact, even defining them is challenging. Nevertheless, experts agree that there are too many instances of ethnic groups being subjected to oppression or discrimination in the modern world. Leo Driedgere identifies four forms of prejudice committed by the majority against minorities: denial of desire, disparate treatment, biased treatment, and disadvantageous treatment. Attitude-based discrimination is the first type, while behavioural discrimination is the final.

There are two reasons why minority ethnic groups worry about losing their cultural identity. The dominating majority, which is typically also politically powerful, is the first. It challenges the alleged privileges or rights of minorities and tries to impose its own religious or cultural norms as those of the entire society. It denotes societal principles that are based on religion or culture. It entails establishing the political ideology of the core group as the cornerstone of state nationalism. This thinking system inevitably leads to intense pressure on the non-dominant tribes to assimilate.

The second is a result of modern states' ideologies, which equate the state and the nation. Even in formal democracies, this modern, centralised nation-state views localities and regions as its servants and agents. Any opposition from them is viewed as anti-national and divisive of the nation. The regimes in third-world nations often undertake policies that buck homogenising forces, especially in their fervour for nation-building. Even the modest historic rights of minorities to their religion, language, and culture are not always recognised by authorities. This not only fuels interethnic rivalry and conflict, but it also causes upheavals within the ethnic groupings, undermining the authority of the old elite.

5. Write short notes on the following in about 250 words each:

a) Relationship between parties and pressure groups

Ans) There are different relationships between parties and pressure groups in different places. Every political system has diverse parties and organisations, as well as differences in how they interact. Interest groups formulate demands in the US and UK with the aim of influencing political processes to make them into binding policies. The parties play the aggregative role, whilst the groups are functionally distinct and specific. The party system, according to Almond, "... stands between the interest group system and the authoritative policy-making organs and screens them from the particularistic and disintegrative impact of special interests."

Second, a unique kind of relationship is offered by France and Italy. Parties and interest groups both exist in these two and several other countries as somewhat well-organized bodies, but not as independent systems. The parties have several means of controlling the groups. As a result, one can find trade unions dominated by the communist or socialist parties. When groups allow themselves to become affiliated with parties, they, in turn, weaken the capacity of parties to aggregate various interests. In such a situation, "the interest groups get prevented from articulating functionally specific, pragmatic demands, for their activities have become highly political."

Thirdly, it is difficult to distinguish between political parties and pressure groups in many third-world nations in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. According to Gabriel A. Almond, "Associational interest groups like trade unions and business associations may exist in the urban westernised parts of the society, but in the village and the countryside interest organisation takes the form of lineage, caste, status, class, and religious groups, which transmit pressure demands to the other parts of the pressure structure through information communication. As a result, Almond continues, "...the important political groups are not the parties, nor the associational interest groups, but rather individuals from cliques within the army and the bureaucracy."

Whatever pattern is followed in a political system, it is evident that pressure organisations continue to communicate with parties despite their independence and attempt to sway legislation and decision-making through these connections.

b) Ecofeminism and its critics.

Ans) Ecofeminism is an ideology and movement that sees climate change, gender equality, and social injustice more broadly as intrinsically related issues, all tied to masculine dominance in society. Specifically, ecofeminism holds that most environmental issues can be traced back to the global prioritization of qualities deemed masculine (particularly the ones some would regard as toxic, like aggression and domination) and those in power who embody those attributes.

Ecofeminism, particularly cultural ecofeminism is one that has received major critique from many feminists for being essentialist as it lays too much emphasis on women’s biology and privileges female bodily processes.

Anne Archambault lays out the criticisms of ecofeminism as such – it relies on female biological functions to create a link between women and nature, it privileges women’s experiences, considers traditionally feminine traits as character ideals, and advocates an ‘ethic of care,’ which may not be feasible universally and is not enough to deliver liberation. However, ecofeminism is a vast and multi-faceted, functioning both as a philosophy and movement and thus there has been work done in recent times that addresses these criticisms and looks into better ways of theory and practice.

The biggest criticism of ecofeminism comes back to the idea of essentialism, or "a belief that things have set characteristics." Some people believe equating women with nature reinforces the dichotomy of gender norms that feminism sought to avoid. Challengers of this view of ecofeminism insist that ecofeminism is scientific, profound, and essential to human and non-human survival. Criticisms of ecofeminism, they insist, are inaccurate, infected by patriarchy and/or simply naïve.