SEMESTER 2019/2020

SPU326/E DEMOCRATIC GOVERMENT

INDIVIDUAL ASSIGNMENT BOOK REVIEW

“ANIMAL FARM BY GEORGE ORWEL”

NAME : NOOR AISYAH MOHD NOOR

MATRIC NO : 140158

LECTURER : DR. AZMIL TAYEB

1) What is the meaning of the popular French word "more things change them still the same
"in the book?

The meaning of the popular French word "more things change them still the same "
in the animal farm book is same with “the more things change, the more they stay the same”
is a reference to situations where there appears to be a meaningful change, but many
underlying fundamentals are still the same. It nicely catches peoples thoughts in a diverse
array of matters including. Firstly, a drug lord is arrested and people think things are
improving, then another drug lord takes his place and things stay the same. Second, a new
government promises change but reverts back to the policies of its predecessors once in
power. Lastly, when a person knows the sun will rise everyday, regardless of what else is
happening in her life

2) Using examples from the book, why differences of opinion / opinion important in a healthy
democracy?

When red deer stand up and honeybees dance, they are not simply stretching their
legs or indicating where the nectar is, according to a new study. As bizarre as it may seem,
they are voting on whether to move to greener pastures or richer flowers.The process is
unconscious, the researchers say. No deer counts votes or checks ballots; bees do not know
the difference between a dimple and a chad. But no one deer or bee or buffalo decides when
the group moves. If democracy means that actions are taken based not on a ruler's
preference, but the preferences of a majority, then animals have democracy.
Not surprisingly, decisions based on majority preferences tend to fit in with what
most individuals in the group want. But, the researchers say, this is not a mere tautology. An
analysis based on some hefty mathematical models that they developed shows that
democracy in groups of animals can have a tangible survival edge over despotism.
Dr. Tim Roper, of the University of Sussex in Brighton, England, who did the research
with Dr. Larissa Conradt and reported it in the current issue of Nature, said that despite the
wording of the paper, ''We're very anxious to avoid any extrapolation to the political
domain.''
 The voting habits of baboons and gorillas and buffalo are not meant to be
comparable to ward politics, attack ads on television or negative campaigning that ignores
the issues. The parallel to human activity is on a different scale. ''There are human cases of
decision making to which our model would be relevant,'' Dr. Roper said, like ''small groups
making rather simple decisions.''
He offered an example: ''Suppose you've got a few friends who want to meet in the
pub in the evening. In order to all be at the same place in the same time, they've got to talk it
over.'' Presumably the deer and swans don't whine as much as people do, or threaten to find
a new flock if everyone keeps going to the same place with the soggy French fries. But the
question -- how the decision gets made -- is the same. And although human groups have
been well studied, and individual animals, little attention has been paid to decision making
by groups of animals.
Dr. Thomas D. Seeley of Cornell, whose research on bees was cited in the paper, but
who was not aware of it in advance, said: ''I think it's a very important paper. The basic
phenomenon that they're looking at -- group decision making -- is actually fairly common, but
it's not well studied.''
He said that most of the study of animal decision making had been at the individual
level, and although there seemed to be groups that decided, en masse, to act, ''there's really
been no theory about why you would expect the decision making to be democratic, or
distributed.''
Dr. Seeley said he thought the phrasing of the decision making in terms of democracy
or despotism was fair, and that the paper was ''a good first step'' that could lead to other
research. Dr. Conradt and Dr. Roper did their research in two parts. First they reviewed
earlier research to determine whether various group decisions were being directed by one
individual or seemed to come from the group as a whole.
For example, observations of group behavior showed that red deer moved when
more that 60 percent of adults stood up -- that is, voted with their feet. In African buffalo, he
said, adult females made the decisions, voting with the direction of their gaze. Whooper
swans voted with head movements. They would move when a large number made low
intensity movements, or when a smaller number made high intensity movements.
Somehow, unconsciously, the animals sense when enough of them get the urge for
going. It is certainly a decision by a majority, but what to call it is another question. Dr.
Kathreen Ruckstuhl of the University of Cambridge, who studies bighorn sheep and was
familiar with some of the studies of African buffalo the paper describes, said, ''It all depends
on how you define democracy.''
 If no conscious act is required and democracy simply means that the group acts
according to the preference of a majority, then it is democracy. She did question whether
anything corresponding to ''despotism'' could exist, since even in a group that followed a
leader, the implication of coercion might be inappropriate.The more complicated aspect of
the research involved mathematical models that Dr. Conradt and Dr. Roper developed to
analyze the benefits to animal groups of different ways of decision making that they
described as democratic or despotic.
In essence the models compared costs to individuals of not getting to do things when
they wanted to. Having to wait or hurry up was considered a cost, and the presumption was
that for animals as for people, time is money or food or something important to survival.
These are abstract models, not ways to process the previous research. And what they
show is that when majorities decide, more individuals get what they want, and that should
translate into better survival. There could, of course, be situations with incredibly smart or
sensitive despots that maximize the benefit to the group, but Dr. Conradt and Dr. Roper did
not come up with them. Dr. Roper said the research was meant to suggest a new way of
looking at decision making and a new area for research. The models apply only to animals
that make group decisions.
It may be that some animals, like domestic cats, for instance, do not vote, do not care
to vote and have no interest in any sort of group activity. They were not, however, a subject
of the paper. Dr. Roper and Dr. Conradt modeled democracy and despotism. They did not
consider anarchy

3) What does the author mean by "all animals are equal but some animals are more like
other people "and its relationship to democracy?

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
A proclamation by the pigs who control the government in the novel Animal Farm, by
George Orwell. The sentence is a comment on the hypocrisy of governments that proclaim
the absolute equality of their citizens but give power and privileges to a small elite.
While the novella is ostensibly a fairy tale-esque story of farm animals, it's really a
thinly veiled allegory for the Soviet Union. The animals are led by a pair of pigs, Snowball
(Trotsky) and Napoleon (Stalin), who lead a rebellion against the human owner of the farm.
The animals successfully drive him out and establish Animal Farm. They agree to adopt the
Seven Commandments of Animalism as their constitution. The most important of these is the
last commandment: "All animals are equal."
Napoleon runs Snowball off the farm and gives himself full leadership. He gradually
violates more and more of the commandments as his behavior becomes increasing like that
of their previous human master. The climax comes years later when the animals spot
Napoleon walking on his hind legs while carrying a whip (violations of the commandments)
and discover that all the commandments have been reduced to simply "All animals are equal,
but some animals are more equal than others."
Logically, this quote is nonsensical. To be equal means to be exactly the same, so
there cannot be more or less equal. You are either equal or unequal. What it symbolizes is
the open admission that the ideals of social justice and equality that inspired the animal's
revolution will never come to fruition. Through all of Napoleon's previous transgressions, the
animals held on to the hope that they could create the farm described by Old Major
(Marx/Lenin). This line represents the moment they are forced to let go of that dream, and
shows that Napoleon and the pigs have become just like the humans they overthrew. In this
way, it defines the central thesis of the book--that the Soviet Union has abandoned the ideas
that sparked its creation and adopted the oppression and tyranny of the government it
replaced.