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Comparative Politics and Government

Notes industrially developed nation may outstretch its imperialistic arms to subjugate another country
and cause a transformation of the political culture of the subjugated people before it withdraws its
control as happened in Japan where the promulgation of the Peace Constitution in 1946 at the
hands of the Americans led to the superimposition of liberal-democratic values over the feudal
political culture providing sanction to the norms of military behaviour.
Allied with this is the subject of secularisation of the political culture. It has two attributes — (i)
pragmatic and empirical orientations and (ii) movement from diffuseness to specificity of cultural
orientations. Times change and so change the beliefs and values of the people. This change should,
however, be in a pragmatic and empirical direction and that too in a way from diffuseness to
specificity. That is, the political beliefs and values of the people must change from a parochial to
a mundane variety, the people must learn more and more the meaning of political participation
and political recruitment and their knowledge of political involvement should grow so that they
may grasp the implications of the idea of a political legitimacy. Thus, it is through the secularisation
of political culture that these rigid, ascribed and diffuse customs of social interaction come to be
over-ridden by a set of codified, specifically political, and universalistic rules. By the same token,
“It is in the secularisation process that bargaining and accommodative political actions become a
common feature of the society, and that the development of special structures such as interest,
groups and parties become meaningful.”

The process of the secularisation of political culture means increasing political awareness
of the people enabling them to have a growing information about their political system
and their role as a political actor in it.

It follows that the system of parliamentary democracy cannot be imposed on people having their
faith m the tenets of authoritarianism. More than hundred fifty years ago, John Stuart Mill was
right when he held that despotism was the best form of government for the barbarians, while
representative government for the civilised ones. Examining the case of the Weimer Republic of
Germany established after the First World War, Eckstein, for this reason, concludes that the reason
of its instability should be related to the wide gap between the democratic rules of the conduct of
government and the authoritarianism found in the military, the bureaucracy, the political parties
and the family.’ Likewise, while referring to the case of Japan, Frank Langdon has observed that
the strength of the support attached to the status quo and to traditional norms is a source of
hindrance to the tasks of social and political modernisation.
The dichotomy between tradition and modernity on the cultural front thus creates the problem of
political bi-culturalism. The makers of the new states are, therefore, confronted with this dilemma and
it depends upon their sagacity and magnanimity as how to take their country to the path of political
modernisation. Evidence shows that a sudden or total change amounts to the breakdown of the new
political system, because the tradition-bound people donot appreciate change that stands in total
contradiction to the values of their conventional culture. On the other hand, the leaders who strive for
a gradual change get ample success in their endeavours. In this way, the “very stability and integration
of the political culture depend on promoting orderly changes and achieving a political consensus
depends on the politician’s ability to strike a balance between the old and the new.”
If so, the case of political development has both conservating and innovating aspects. The former
aspect may be seen in vehement opposition to any move towards total change, the latter may be
traced in the endeavours of the leaders like Kemal Ataturk of Turkey, Nasser of Egypt and Nehru
of India to infuse political modernisation in degrees. The latter course proves eminently successful,
because the process of incremental change finds its simultaneous assimilation with the traditional
culture and that effects its legitimisation in an imperceptible way. What strikes us here is that the
leaders of such countries appreciate the existence of diverse cultures in the midst of which a sort
of astonishing homogeneity prevails. Nehru calls it by the name of ‘unity in diversity’. The burden

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