The Concept of State and the Political Process - Term Paper Example

? Midterm Paper LIST A: Question 3 Political community could refer to a group of individuals with shared interest, shared goals and interest in their government. This could refer to how they conduct themselves, how they make the decision; how they identify common issues that affect their rights, life and duties. The most obvious expression of a political community could be the state. It has a one way of the many different ways of organizing a government; this could be due to the different levels and varying degrees of unity of the community. For example, a citizen of Berne population belongs to commune which could be the most important political community. This concept of state could have led the division of the whole world into states which triumph as a form of political organization. Although they could be universal they could not clearly be the only political actors due to impacts of organizations, for example, International Monetary Fund and the Microsoft. The political process comprises of establishing the priorities and the scale of policies, goals values and interests within and among political communities. The nature and quality development of, political community, varies due to how differences in potential values, interests and values could be handled. This could be through rules, institutions and procedures. The creative tension between conflicting interests, values, interest and preferences could distinguish the political communities. On the other hand, there could be consensus and communal ties on orientation and key features of political community. The work of the democratic process would be to find a balance between the two sides of the equation. A life or death situation could emerge through debates and different views on cases of the political community. The emergence could be evoked in times of war or during external or internal attacks among the member of a community. The threat to the community could be true although total consensus could be maintained before the essence of real danger. This could reveal how dictatorship was born thousands of the year back. The birth of dictatorship could be justified today by the imposition of a single opinion on various issues at the end of a real political community. If the conflicts systematically predominate, over the agreement on primary goals and procedures the political community becomes inefficient and could be threatened by a breakdown. Past and current experience could have taught other way of domestic political order to dynamic function of democracy. LIST B: QUESTION 1 AGE OF THE EMPIRE Huntley (22) refers to the period between 1875 and 1914 as the Age of the Empire. This is not only due to the fact that a new strain of imperialism emerged during this time, but also because of a very archaic reason. It was period during which the number of rulers who viewed themselves (officially) or viewed by western scholars as worthy of the “emperor” tag was the highest. In Europe the rulers of Austria, Germany, Turkey, Russia and (in their glory as rulers of India) Britain laid claim to this title. Of the five, India/Britain and Germany emerged in the 1870s, and they more than made up for the decline and disappearance of Napoleon’s “Second Empire”. Outside Europe, rulers of Japan, Persia, China and- maybe with a broader attribute of global diplomatic courtesy- Morocco and Ethiopia were gradually allowed this tag, while up until 1899 Brazil had an American emperor. By 1987, Japan was the only country that could still be said to have a super-monarch, but its political influence and profile had already waned significantly (Huntley 39). The military and economic supremacy of capitalist nations had lacked serious challengers for a very long time, but there were no planned attempts made to extend this to formal annexation, administration and conquest between the latter years of the 18th century and the last 25 years of the 19th century. However, from 1880 to 1914 they were made, and a majority of countries outside the Americas and Europe were officially partitioned into areas that were officially ruled and politically colonized (Huntley 41). The colonial powers were a handful of nations, with the main players being France, the Netherlands, the USA, Japan, Belgium, Italy and Great Britain. Ethiopia was the only non-European country to successfully avoid and resist formal colonization by fighting off Italy, the weakest of the colonial powers. NATION-STATE Huntley states that scholars have examined and explored different routes of the nation-statehood transition. These include slow but gradual transformation into statehood as seen in Thailand and Sweden; unification as in Yemen and Germany; the toppling of ancient governments through revolution as witnessed in Russia or even through civil war like in the United States; and nationalist separation as in Mexico and Yugoslavia. Huntley suggests that nationalist movements usually stem from imitation techniques that are driven by the resounding global dominance and success of first-nation states (Huntley 27). Subsequently, nation-states emerge each time a shift in power enables nationalists to absorb or overthrow established governments, with a lack of dependence on whether processes associated with domestic advancement have prepared a society for the task of nation-building. Huntley’s analysis shows that only when nationalists have adequate time to galvanize and bring together the masses and delegitimize incumbent regimes or when current regimes have been weakened by instability or war is this power shift probable. The influence of nation-states on neighbors or within similar empires also encourages nationalists by providing new partners on which they can depend as well as a template to follow. However, nationalists who come up against imperial powers face huge obstacles due to the presence of significant international economic and military power that can be employed in the fight against independence outfits (Huntley 28). INSTITUTIONALIZED INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION Huntley employs a number of contrasting conceptions of international cooperation and organization. These concepts can be usefully imagined as belonging to three categories: international cooperation as official organization, international cooperation as an ordering mechanism in the international system, and international cooperation as a regime (Huntley 28). The last category has been the subject of much scrutiny and attention and has generally generated a lot of theories about institutionalized international cooperation. Huntley states that political scientists who examine international cooperation. This phase is punctuated by the emergence, growth and formation of several international organizations like the UN and its affiliates, regional blocs and trade zones (the EU) that turned international cooperation into something of an institution (Huntley 30). This institutionalization was seen as the only way to enhance growth and development throughout the world, since countries were becoming more and more dependent on each other for economic and military purposes. Independence became more and more difficult as nations found out that resources were becoming more and more depleted and volatility was seeping into every aspect of growth and development (Huntley 33). VIABLE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITIES The expansion and proliferation of international cooperation treaties and agreements was the subject of interest from scholars in various academic disciplines and spheres. The subsequent shift in the scope of foreign and domestic policy from the national to the supranational stage made it very necessary to study the roots and evolutionary attributes of these supranational characteristics from not only theoretical but also empirical perspectives. International cooperation, especially in the European aspect, is of great importance to both policy-making and scholarly perspectives in order to understand the complex web of international cooperation within the larger European Union (Huntley 35). According to Huntley (45), in the game of international cooperation and the development of viable international communities, there is a greater urgency to come up with a grand union. The net result of institutionalized international cooperation has been globalization on a much larger scale that has never been seen before. It is now common to hear utterances of an international order that was previously unimagined in other phases like the age of empire and the rise of the nation-state. It is now common to find countries cooperating easily by removing unnecessary restrictions and obstacles that that they previously faced in the quest to achieve a feasible international community. International regimes and unions are continuing to grow and expand, paving the way for countries to integrate and relate more effectively as autonomous but more or similar entities (Huntley 45). Challenges Ahead Huntley hypothesizes that there will be major obstacles along the way if international order has to be strengthened and maintained. He recognizes that it will take a greater willingness among nations in order to ensure the global community stays in peaceful co-existence. Other major issues include the proliferation of arms as well as terrorism which have caused huge tensions among countries and therefore posed dangers to the continuing existence of the international order (Paul & John 76). These must be looked into, although it appears more likely that they will be difficult to contain. There are other issues like competition and mistrust that will have to be addressed in the future or else the international order will face the threat of collapse (Paul & John 87). LIST C: Question 2 Development of modern democracy could be widely accepted and practiced across the continent. Countries have become fed up by the mistrust of political institutions, declining turnout in elections and the rise of terrorism as a major threat to democratic practices are all challenging the conventional wisdom of a comfortable political consensus around core institutions (Newton & Van Deth 12). The key points for the development of modern states and the development of democracy include; parliamentary democracy, transparency, responsiveness and accountability, sub-national democracy and subsidiary and participation and civic society. According to Newton & Van Deth (27), transparency, responsiveness and accountability could refer to tackling all forms of corruption through the use of range of instrument at all levels. This means that corruption activities should be criminalised either at government level of the international level. This could require efforts to support active and free media. Parliamentary democracy refers to commitments by the council to enforce separation of powers through which opinions could be formulated and articulated. The parliament should represent in the full spectrum the political interest and socio-economic in the community at large. They should act an institution of political debate and deliberation. Sub-national democracy and subsidiary could refer to the role of local government in broader democratic politics. The principle of subsidiary requires decision making process to be undertaken at the closest to the citizens. This could not always been observed due to top bottom decision making approach. Participation and civic society could be focussed on encouraging and supporting active participation of the marginalised groups which may include; immigrants, young people and the ethnic minority groups. This would be to enhance balanced gender representation in various prominent areas. The development of the key point to democracy must be acknowledged since they have emerged from an incremental of responsive process other than the coherent and stable activity of deliberation. The democracy gained could be made to work through the establishment of institutions which could refer to rules observed by the politics in a given context. These rules could be codified, meaning they could be unwritten codes and customs. Effective institutional development should require designs that could be revisable and robust (Newton & Van Deth 69). LIST D: Question 2 Freedom refers to persona liberty, the state of being free from slavery. Freedom house could refer to a Non- Governmental Organization that could be financed by private sectors and the American government to compare the degree of freedom in a state. It could also mean an independent watchdog organization that expresses, conducts research and advocacy on political rights, democracy and human right around the world. It functions as a catalyst to democracy, rule of law and freedom through evaluating components of freedom, amplifying the voice for democracy and working directly with human rights advocates. Some of the main principals of freedom house include; rule of law, personal autonomy and individual rights, electoral process, political pluralism and participation, freedom of expression and functioning of the government. The rule of law could refer to accountability of law to all people that could be fairly applied and enforce by the government. The rule of law enhances equality and principle of governance where international human rights standard and norms could be exercised. Under the rule of law, one could be prosecuted by the act and not get punished by law. Personal autonomy and individual rights refer to the freedom of a citizen or individual to choose or in making decisions. Its also referred to as the right of privacy which protects families, marriages, procreation, motherhood in performance of certain acts in regard to their decisions. The freedom house also protects individuals during the electoral process. This refers to electoral democracy where a country may be disqualified from being electoral democracy due to certain irregularities during the electoral process. Electoral democracy ensures the national election would be sufficiently fair in that national decisions would not be residing in the hands of unelected power. Freedom of expression refers to the rights to express one’s own ideas in various ways. It has the cornerstone of human rights and democracy. It enforces that everybody has a right to hold the opinion without interference. Under the freedom of right and expression, one could be entitled to seek information and disseminated it regardless of the medium used. Political, pluralism and participation monitors and measures the humans’ right and freedom. It ensures that have access to democracy, freedom of expression without bias of ethnicity, gender class or religion. The standards of freedom and democracy rights should apply to all countries irrespective of geographical location, level of economic development and the religious composition. Associational and Organizational Rights ensures protection of individual rights from the abuse of organization or institutions. The freedom house monitors the actions organization on their employees, for example, freedom to join of establishes trade unions and peasant organization without interference by the government r the organization itself. Works Cited Huntley, James Robert. Pax democratica: a strategy for the 21st century. Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, 1998. Print. Newton, Kenneth & Van Deth, Jan. Foundations of comparative politics: democracies of the modern world. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Print. Paul, T. V., and John A. Hall. International order and the future of world politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Print. Read More