The Non-Western Political Process by Alfred Diamant - Article Example

He illustrates his point by quoting from Pyre’s paper, for instance, he quotes Pye’s example of a non-Western system where changes in one’s political affiliation lead up to changes in a person’s social and personal relationships, then he debunks it by stating how this is true of a Western political system as well – in the Democratic vs. Republican scenario of the US, for instance.Diamant asserts that the non-Western political process is not new and in this regard, the Western political process, specifically that of Europe, in dealing with concepts such as industrialization could afford much help and guidance.

The changes caused by industrialization in the Western political process, “can serve as a guide for assessing the effects of a similar process on non-European traditional societies” (Diamant 125). Diamant proposes that if the typical Western ideal-type political process, based on the British political system and society, is abandoned, and in its stead, some continental political system is adopted as the ideal-type, “[n]on-Western political systems would become more comprehensible and less remote” (Diamant 125).

Finally, Diamant discusses and examines five of the seventeen characteristics of the non-Western model presented by Pye, and shows how these characteristics are not typically non-Western but are in fact present in the Western political process just as much. One such characteristic is that, according to Pye, in the non-Western system, political loyalty is won not by the policies of the political group, but by a feeling of identification with it; Diamant shows how this is true for the Western system as well, where the middle-class votes for the conservative parties because it identifies more with it (Diamant 126).

Diamant says that the comparative study approach should be “ideal-type”, and in this context, he cites the example of the two ideal-type models set up by Riggs, namely “Agraria” and “Industria,” are used to classify and compare various administrative systems. This, Diamant feels is the right approach as “it will stress the existence of a continuum rather than of two sharply differentiated systems” (Diamant 127).