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Comparative Politics and Government

Notes prevail over the desires of another. The former position may be called the state of ‘spontaneous
unanimity’, the latter as imposed consensus. The common point is that political activity stops at
the point of ‘political rest.’ “So, just as a situation of political rest does not start up any political
activity, it also closes down a cycle of political activity.”

Politics not only connotes ‘political activity’, it also implies a ‘train of activities’, i.e.,
efforts directed towards creating the conditions of tension and having their resolution
until the point of ‘spontaneous unanimity’ is achieved.

Political process is an extension of the sense of political activity. Here the case of all those agencies
figures in which have their role in the decision-making process. The study of politics is thus
broadened so as to include even ‘non-state’ agencies. A study of the way groups and associations
operate shows that they are not free from the trends of struggle for power; they have their internal’
governments’ to deal with their internal conflicts and tensions. What is particularly important for
our purpose is that these ‘non-state’ associations influence the government of the country for the
sake of protecting and promoting their specific interests. Thus, there occurs a very sharp process of
interaction between the groups inter se and between the groups and the government of the country.
Finer is right in saying that clearly a private association’s hope of success in its competition with
other groups is maximised if the full power of the state, as mediated through the government, is
put behind it. And so it is that, once such competition takes place within the framework of the state,
what would otherwise have to be a private and intermittent struggle of one group against another
now becomes a public competition with other groups, either to get the government to espouse its
policy and enforce it, or else to go forward and become the government. And the set of procedures
whereby the private associations existing in a state seek to influence the government, or participate
in policy formation by the government or become the government, is the ‘political process’.
Since comparative politics includes all that comes within the scope of political activity and
political process, it is said to ‘drown’ the national governments “among the whole universe of
‘partial governments’ which exist in any community.” It is needed that the study of the government
(as an element of the state) should be made vis-a-vis the ‘governments’ of non-state associations
that operate in a way so as to influence the government of the country and also be influenced by
it in some way or another. As Blondel says: “Government is the machinery by which values are
allocated, if necessary by using compulsion: what is, therefore, important is to examine the three
stages of the operation by which these values are allocated. Firstly, we must see the way in which
the values come to be formulated and government is made aware of them. Secondly, we must see
how the machinery of government ‘digests’ and transforms these values into decisions applicable
to the whole community. Thirdly, we must see how these decisions come to be implemented
down the level of governmental command. The whole operation of government thus takes the
form of a two-way operation, or, perhaps more appropriately, of a machine which receives
signals and transforms these signals into others.”
Finally, the scope of comparative politics includes the subject of ‘political power’. The term ‘power’
has been defined by different writers in different ways. For instance, while. Carl J. Friedrich describes
it as ‘a certain kind of human relationship’, Tawney regards it as ‘the capacity of an individual, or
a group of individuals, to modify the conduct of other individuals or groups in the manner in
which he desires. Referring to the role of power in the matter of decision-making, Lasswell says:
“The making of decision is an interpersonal process: the policies which other persons are to pursue
are what is decided upon. Power as participation in the making of decisions is an interpersonal
relation.” Politics thus connotes a special case in the exercise of power—an exercise in the attempt
to change the conduct of others in one’s own direction. To define the term precisely, one can say
that power “is taken to denote the whole spectrum of those external influences that, by being
brought to bear upon an individual, can make him move in a required direction.”

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