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NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF STUDY AND

RESEARCH IN LAW,RANCHI

POLITICAL SCIENCE PROJECT

Politics As a Social Process

SUBMITTED TO: SUBMITTED BY:

DR. NARENDRA NAROTTAM YASH SINGH
NARUKA
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR SEMESTER- I
POLITICAL SCIENCE SECTION- B
(CHIEF COURSE COORDINATOR) ROLL NO.- 1329
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DECLARATION
I, Yash Singh Naruka, a first semester BALLB student of National University of Study and
Research in Law, Ranchi, hereby declare that the project titled “Politics As a Social Process”
under the guidance of Dr. Narendra Narottam Sir, faculty of Political Science, is an original
work. I have made sincere efforts to complete this project and have not done any
misrepresentation of fact or data.

I declare that the statements made and the conclusions drawn are the bona fide outcome of
the research work. I further assert that, to the best of my knowledge and belief, proper
references have been given and does not contain any work that has been submitted in any
other university.

Yash Singh
Naruka
Semester- I
Roll Number-1329
NUSRL, Ranchi
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I, Yash Singh Naruka Singh, would like to thank all of those who helped me during the whole
procedure of making this project and helped me in completing it successfully.
Firstly, I would like to thank my teacher and mentor Dr. Narendra Narottam who showed
faith in me by providing such a wonderful topic. His constant guidance has played a vital role
in completion of this project successfully. His keen attention helped me to deal with each
problem that I faced during the making of this project. My heartfelt gratitude to all the staff
members and administrators of NUSRL for providing me with a wonderful library. Their
support cannot be expressed in words.
Finally, I would like to thank God for his benevolence and grace in enabling me to finish this
task. I express my heartfelt gratitude to my parents, siblings, and friends who helped me to
complete this project without much problems.

Thanking you

Yash Singh
Naruka
BA LLB
Semester-I
Roll No. – 1329
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CONTENT
…………………………………………………………..
Declaration………………………………………………………………………………….02
Acknowledgement………………………………………………………………………….03
Introduction………………………………………………………………………..……….05
The Political Situation……………………………………………………………..……….05
Politics as an ‘Authoritative Allocation of Values’………………………………..……...07
Political Socialization……………………………………………………………………….08
Family……………………………………………………………………………………...08
Schools…………………………………………………………………………………….08
Peer Groups……………………………………………………………………………......08
Mass Media……………………………………………………………………………......09
Salient Features of Politics as a Social Process………………………………………........09
Politics involves conflict or dispute regarding allocation of values………………….........09
Politics is concerned with Public Goals and Decisions………………………………........09
Politics involves interest groups…………………………………………………………...10
Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………...10
Sources & Bibliography……………………………………………………………….........10
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Introduction:
The term Politics was first time used by famous Greek philosopher Aristotle and he called it
‘the master science’. The word politics is derived from the Greek word polis which was a city
in ancient Greece. For the Greeks the city was the ‘state’1 and the subject that dealt with the
City-State and its problems and resolution process was designated as politics. But in the
current times, the word politics presents a negative image of itself in the eye of a day-to-day
commoner. Politics is majorly interpreted as party politics, election tussles, campaigning, etc.
Sometimes parties are indulged in criminal activities and dirty political manoeuvres. Ernest
Benn has sarcastically described politics as ‘the art of looking for trouble, finding it where it
exists or not, diagnosing it wrongly, and applying the wrong remedy’.

As we can see, from the very beginning, politics came to be associated with the ‘state’. In
fact, traditional writers have considered political science as the ‘science of the state’, and
have devoted themselves: (a) to a study of the institutions of the state; (b) to developing ideas
concerning the nature of a perfect state. However, modern writers have increasingly
recognised that politics does not operate strictly within the framework of a constitutional
setup. But permeates the entire social fabric. Accordingly, politics is now treated as a social
process rather than an aggregate of the formal institutions of the state.

The Political Situation:

Politics as a process operates in a particular situation which may be termed as a ‘political
situation’. According to Alan Ball (Modern Politics and Gvernment;1988), ‘political
activity... involves disagreements and the reconciliation of those disagreements. In other
words, ‘the essence of the political situation is conflict and resolution of that conflict’. J.D.B.
Miller (The Nature of Politics;1962) had pointed to the ‘use of government’ in the process of
conflict-resolution in a political situation:

Political activity…arises out of disagreement, and it is concerned with the use of

government to resolve conflict in the direction of change or in the prevention of change …
Politics, to be distinguished as a recognizable activity, demands some initial disagreement

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State refers to the set of institutions within a society which are responsible for taking public decisions, making
and enforcing law, maintaining justice, public safety as well as public order.
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between parties or persons, and the presence of government as a means of resolving the
disagreement in some direction.

We should keep in mind that, not all the conflicts are political situation. But all the political
conflicts are real conflicts. Look at the following diagram:

All kinds of conflicts

Political situations
or conflicts

Majorly all conflicts can be divided into two categories i.e., Public and Private. Private
conflicts refer to all those disagreements which don’t affect public at large and is related to a
small group of people. For example, husband-wife quarrels, two children fighting over a
single toy, etc. these conflicts don’t qualify to be political ones. Whereas in Public conflicts
the topic of contention affects a significant section of society and it also covers political
conflicts also. Public conflicts deal with the social setting, whether local, regional, national or
international, or at the economic, cultural, linguistic, religious, or ethnic fields. But people
can misunderstand a normal private conflict with a political situation. For example, in an
educational institution, a group of students are protesting for the bad electricity arrangements
in the academic building. Maybe there are hundreds of students in the protest which shows
that this conflict affected people of significant numbers but still it doesn’t qualify to be a
political situation because it’s a matter that’s within the boundaries of the particular
institution (which can be solved at their institutional level) and doesn’t affect the outside
society. So, a particular situation should be thoroughly diagnosed before it being classified as
a political situation.
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In the history, we can see many instances where people resorted to violence as a way of
resolving the differences. Many wars took place in different continents due to political issues.
Kings and monarchs spent huge sums of money to raise a strong army which ultimately led to
huge losses of life and material resources. But after the World War II (1939-45), leaders of
most nations decided to give prime importance to the universal peace and resolve all the
conflicts by negotiations and reconciliation. With the formation of United Nations (1945) the
concept of peaceful negotiation process was spread all over the world.

Politics as an ‘Authoritative Allocation of

Values’:
According to David Easton (The Political System: An Inquiry into the state of Political
Science; 1953), politics is concerned with ‘authoritative allocation of values’ for a society.
This short and succinct concept consist of three important terms, whose definition and role
are important to understand. They are (a) Authoritative or Authority, (b) Allocation, (c)
Values. By ‘Authority’ it means the discretionary power of the state or the government. The
state has the legitimate right and the administrative power to possibly perform different tasks.
It is the authority of the state by which it exerts its decisions arbitrarily on its subordinates
which needs to be followed by all. If anyone is not satisfied by the ruling of the court, then he
has no alternative (legally) other than to follow the court’s order. Authority is necessary
because if there is no authority and everyone is left to their own discretion, then we will get
back to the pre-historic times where we humans were no more than any other creature on
earth. People will start looting each other, murderers will roam openly in streets, children will
die of starvation and many other unimaginable horrendous crimes. That’s why there should
always be some higher authority which regulates the social life of people and resolve the
conflicts with peaceful processes.

Allocation means distributing something among more than two or more than two persons. As
we know our earth has limited number of resources at our disposition but our wants are
unlimited. This inverted relation between things and their demand, sets us humans into a rock
and hard situation. People do have a tendency to collect as much things as possible without
bothering of other’s needs. This problem is solved by the concept of allocation. Things are
equally distributed among all people according to their needs. But a question arises, ‘Who is
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responsible for the process of Allocation?’. The answer is the ‘State’ is responsible for the
allocation of things. Different governments give incentives and formulates policies for the
poor which shows that governments as an authority is very well suited for this process.

If you look at the previous paragraph where we discussed allocation, we used the term
‘things’ instead of resources because Easton in his definition has used the word ‘Values’. In
values it includes both spiritual and material things which are valued by the society. A
particular thing doesn’t get its value until it is recognised by the society as worthy. A 6-years
old wouldn’t be esteemed worthy to be paid Rs. 75,000/per month until it becomes a
qualified professional in some field like law, medical, sports, etc.

Political Socialization:
Political socialization is an ever-growing process by which people form their ideas about
politics and acquire political values. The family, educational system, peer groups, and the
mass media all play their respective roles. While family and school are highly impactful in
early life, what our peers think and what we read in the newspaper and see on television have
more influence on our political attitudes as adults. Following are as follows:

1. Family: Our first political ideas are formed within the family. Parents rarely "talk
politics" with their young children directly, but casual remarks made around the
dinner table or while helping with homework can have an impact. Family tradition is
particularly a factor in party identification, as if someone belongs to family of X caste
than he will be supporting the political party whose candidate belongs to caste X. In
current times, the family may be losing its power as an agent of socialization,
however, as institutions take over more of offspring care and parents perform less of
it.
2. Schools: Children are broached with the concepts of elections and voting when they
choose class officers, and the more sophisticated elections in high school and college
teach the rudiments of campaigning. Political facts are learned through courses in
Indian history and government, and schools, at their best, encourage students to
critically examine government institutions.
3. Peer Groups: Although peer pressure certainly affects students’ lifestyles, it is less
evident in developing their political values. Exceptions are issues that directly affect
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them, such as the Colonial Subjugation of India, etc. If peers are defined in terms of
occupation, then the group does exert an influence on how its members think
politically. For example, professionals such as doctors or bankers often have similar
political opinions, particularly on matters related to their careers.
4. Mass Media: We gather much of our political information from the mass media:
newspapers, television, and Internet. The amount of time today we spend on internet
is much significant, that it deicides our political view. Not only does Internet helps
shape public opinion by providing news and analysis, but its entertainment
programming addresses important contemporary issues that are in the political arena,
such as drug use, corruption, and crime.

Salient Features of Politics as a Social Process:

 Politics involves conflict or disputes regarding allocation of
values:
As we have learned previously that politics always consists of some conflict or
situation. These conflicts are only for those ‘values’ whose authoritative allocation is
done by the state. If something is easily accessible and available in abundant amount,
it won’t be esteemed of something being called value. If something is rarely available,
has demand in the society, it would qualify as a value. Following are some of the
prevalent values of society involved in the political process: power, enlightenment,
wealth, well-being, health, skill, affection, rectitude and pleasure. In other terms,
conflicting claims may be advanced by various groups for the allocation of bus
services, school, hospitals, municipal parks, markets, offices, trade & business and
employment opportunities, etc. in their favour.

 Politics is concerned with public goals and decisions:

All conflicts of value-allocation don’t qualify to be a political conflict. Because to be
a political situation it needs to be a public one which affects a significant section of
the society. A husband-wife, employer-employee, father-son, seller-consumer conflict
will remain a private issue until it needs a solution outside their personal domain it is
affecting a larger class of people. Michael Curtis (Comparative Government and
Politics; 1978) has rightly said: “The student of politics is normally concerned, with
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the inquiry into matter of public concerns, with the behaviour and acts that may
concern a society as a totality or which may ultimately be resolved by the exercise of
legitimate coercion.”

 Politics involves Interest Groups:

A political conflict arises from a clash of interests of several bigger groups of the
society. These groups must be vigilant of their particular interests, and be more or less
organized for pursuing those interests. Interest groups refers to those groups where
people who organize themselves for pursuing their scientific, common interests.
Examples are: labour unions, lawyers associations and chambers of commerce and
industry. At this point political parties appears on the scene with a view to
formulating large policy proposals incorporating the interests of their support-groups
according to the respective ideologies.

Conclusion:
Aristotle has wisely said, “Man is by nature, a social animal, he always needs some social
company of others and if not then he may be a god or demon.” Politics has intrinsically
become a part of social life of almost of every human being on earth. People tend to form
interest groups on base of gender, caste, religion, profession, etc. and favourably dwell within
the particular social aura. With time different interest groups arises which paves path for the
political situations. Basically, these conflicts revolve around the allocation of scarce
resources among different interest groups. Politics being a peaceful solution is applied in the
political situations to resolve them peacefully. With the time going, new conflicts arises and
they are resolved systematically by politics. Thus, this social process of conflicts arising
between interest groups and their solvation by the state and its segments is ever going.

Sources & Bibliography:

1. O.P. Gauba (An Introduction to Political History,1981)
2. A.C. Kapur (Principles of Political Science,1950)
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3. https://www.cliffsnotes.com/study-guides/american-
government/public-opinion/political-socialization (last visited
November 14)