Write a note on Modern Liberalism / Welfarism.

There was a new change in society and that was the awakening of the
working class. They felt laissez-faire market, Laissez-faire individualism
uplifted the capitalist economy and that denied working class its due
stake. This gave rise to a new form of liberalism i.e., Modern Liberalism,
which is also known as welfarism.

The modern liberalism thinkers were opined that the government has to
remove hurdles that eclipse individual freedom. T.H. Green was the
main proponent of this statement The other obstacles were poverty,
disease, discrimination and ignorance can be dealt with assistance of
government.

The idea of positive liberty was introduced by John Stuart Mill. Mill tried
to define a sphere where an individual’s behavior could be regulated in
the interests of the community. He proposed positive role for the state in
securing social welfare even if it meant curbing liberty of the individual
to some extent.

Green suggested a theory that creating conditions under which men

could effectively exercise their moral freedom. Hobhouse and Laski
promoted that private property was not an absolute right and that the
state must fix the welfare of the people. An important element of
negative liberty was positive liberty that complemented each other.

Welfare reform and economic management became the characteristic

theme of modern or twentieth-century liberalism. There is a more
sympathetic attitude of modern liberalism towards the state known as
welfarism.

Further development of social welfare program occurred in liberal

democracies during the postwar decades in Britain and America which
provided not only usual forms of social insurance but also pensions,
unemployment benefits, subsidized medical care, family allowances and
government-funded higher education.
Asia and Africa also adopted the liberal democratic model that emerged
from the dissolution of the British and French colonial empires in the
1950s and early 60s.

What do you understand by Evolutionary and Revolutionary

Socialism? Elaborate.
There are two types of socialism Evolutionary and Revolutionary
socialism. While evolutionary socialism discards revolution and aspires
for socialism through a peaceful means, revolutionary socialism believes
that social change has to be violent. Evolutionary socialism believes in
parliamentary democracy and change through ballot whereas
revolutionary socialism advocates class struggle, revolution and
dictatorship of the proletariat. Among the evolutionary socialist thought,
we include Guild socialism, Democratic socialism and Fabian socialism
while Marxism and Syndicalism are kinds of revolutionary socialism.
The basic contention between the Evolutionary and Revolutionary
Socialism is of withering away of the state. While the former links it to
the withering away of the state in the capitalist society the latter relates it
to the withering away of the state in the socialist state or the dictatorship
of the proletariat. The revolutionary socialism believes that state can
never wither away in a capitalist society
What is Conservatism? Explain with reference to the views of
Edmund Burke.

Conservatism is a political and social philosophy promoting traditional

social institutions in the context of culture and civilization. The main
features are tradition, organic society, hierarchy, authority, and property
rights.

The conservatism can be distinguished from both liberalism and

radicalism is to say that conservatives reject the optimistic view that
human beings can be morally improved through political and social
change and tend to assume that human beings are driven by their
passions and desires therefore naturally prone to selfishness, anarchy,
irrationality, and violence. That is why; they try to resist change in the
existing order. Change is resisted until it becomes inevitable. In Burke’s
words, people need “A sufficient restraint upon their passions,” which it
is the office of government “to bridle and subdue.”

Families, churches, and schools must teach the value of self-discipline,

and those who fail to learn this lesson must have discipline imposed
upon them by government and law. Without the restraining power of
such institutions, conservatives believe, there can be no ethical behavior
and no responsible use of liberty.

Burke’s ‘Reflections on the Revolution in France’ is key to modern

conservatism, with its opposition to radical reform based on abstract
principles and its plea for the virtues of established and evolved
institutions.

His conservatism is the base of all his creations and it contains mostly
three varieties:

a) Status Quo: It says people who are interested to keep things as they
stand and who would not like to bring changes, for, in a status quo, they
have nothing to lose.
b) Organizational Conservatism: People would find ways and means to
protect Status Quo. Thus, the organization serves those who want to keep
the status quo. Yesterday’s idea becomes today’s movement and today’s
movement becomes tomorrow’s organization.

c) Philosophical Conservatism: Once there is interest in the status quo

and an organization to protect it, there is a philosophy around the
interest to be protected. Burke, having stood for the admiration of the
status quo, he builds the organization like parliamentary system, the
political parties with national interests to support the status quo. But
within the framework of conservatism, he demonstrated reformism.
Write a note on the Second Wave of feminist political theory.
The First wave of feminism provided lot of impetus to women’s
movement. it gathered activists for a common cause and provided the
movement its definite structure. Though many activists became
complacent once they women got voting right and considered it as
complete liberation for women.
But significant progress was made during second wave of feminism in
the 1960s that the movement got resurrected, when Betty Friedan
published The Feminist Mystique in 1963.
Betty Friedan highlighted the core issues like women’s confinement in
domestic cores, motherhood and housewives and that brought
frustration and despite of advancement in political and legal right, the
core issues remained unsolved and that was the reason for second wave.
Carol Hanisch’s slogan “The personal is political” represented sexual,
psychological and personal aspects of oppressed women. Personal lives
of women were seen in context of patriarchal political power structure.
Radical feminist connected political and personal, both aspects, for
movement. Miss America beauty pageant termed as cattle parade and
opposed by feminist. First wave spread among western middle class but
second wave aggressively included women from developing nations. Idea
of solidarity and sisterhood prevailing.
Simone De Beauvoir sighted in her work, The Second Sex, women are
not united like other class struggle and women’s struggle is also a class
struggle, as women as a class oppressed by patriarchal class.
There were three sets of ideologies - Liberal Feminism, Marxist
Feminism (extended as Socialist Feminism) and Radical Feminism
another type Ecological feminism was emerged to indicate that women
are natural environmentalists, by virtue of being born as women.
Examine Jacques Derrida’s views on Post –Modernism.

Jacques Derrida is a French philosopher known for his semiotic analysis

known as Deconstruction, in his book of Granimatology.

The theory of deconstruction by Derrida is a reaction against the old

assumption of the presence of a stable centre by what he calls
logocentrism-western philosophy’s search for a foundation to all
knowledge and it constructed on the basis of conceptual oppositions
(binary oppositions) such as transcendental/empirical,
internal/external, original/derivative, good/evil, universal particular and
God/devil.

Derrida argues metaphysics creates dualistic oppositions and installs a

hierarchy that unfortunately privileges one term of each dichotomy The
deconstructive strategy is to unmask these too-sedimented ways of
thinking.

Derrida believed that speech is not aware of the gap between the word as
sound and the infinity of possible meaning. Derrida stressed on what he
calls the inter-textuality method and argues that we can never master
language. In all, Derrida believed that all foundations are dead. The main
objective of deconstruction is to reveal logocentrism (metaphysics) and
phonocentrism prevalent in the history of western thought from Plato
onwards.
Write a note on type of democracy

Democracy can be classified as direct and representative depending on

how the people rule. In direct democracy citizen participates directly in
government rule. All adult citizens take part in decision making.

Direct Democracy : In the ancient city-states of Greece democracy, the

citizens of the states were the direct participants in the management of
the public affairs. The will of the state is directly formulated by them,
and not through their elected delegates. With the development modern
nation-states and with the introduction of universal adult franchise,
direct, democracy is unattainable today. Some direct democratic checks
such as referendum are in operation to-day in Switzerland and in a few
states of the United States.

Representative Democracy: It is a limited and indirect form of

democracy. Popular participation in policy-making is very less. People do
not exercise power directly but through their elected representatives.
Presidential and parliamentary democracies are two main types of
representative democracies around the world.
Examine representative democracy.
Representative democracy is a limited and indirect form of democracy: It
is limited to act of voting every few years. It is indirect in the sense that
the public does not exercise power by itself, but selects those who will
rule on its behalf. Representative democracy has come to the fore in the
late Middle Ages in the states of Western Europe.
In Representative democracy the powers of the elected representatives
are defined by a constitution that establishes the basic laws, principles,
and framework of the government.
There are two types of representative democracies (1) Presidential and
(2) parliamentary democracy. In current world parliamentary
democracies more prevalent than the presidential democracies. Also
Parliamentary democracies are more representative than the
presidential, but at the same time, they are relatively less stable.
Write a note on democracy and elections
The concept of democracy first appeared in Athens in the 5th century BC.
The word democracy is derived from the word ‘demokratia’. It is a
combination of two Greek words, ‘demos’ meaning people and ‘kratos’
meaning power. Therefore, democracy stands for rule by the people
which gives true legitimacy to the government.
There are different types of democracy, direct, representative,
deliberative etc. There is a consensus on the idea that democracy means
popular rule and sovereignty, but how that will be achieved varies.
Election of representative is the most salient feature of the democracy. It
allows eligible citizens to cast an equally weighted vote to elect one or
more of their candidates to a governing body. It also consists of the
existence of regular, free, fair elections based upon universal suffrage
and secret ballots, competing political parties offering electoral choice. It
includes electoral laws supervised by an independent judiciary, freedom
of speech and association, freedom to stand as an election candidate. The
provision of election in a democracy is intended to ensure that the
government will exercise its power with the consent of the governed.