Главная страница | Контакты | Случайная страница Автомобили Астрономия Биология География Дом и сад Другие языки Другое Информатика История Культура Литература Логика Математика Медицина Металлургия Механика Образование Охрана труда Педагогика Политика Право Психология Религия Риторика Социология Спорт Строительство Технология Туризм Физика Философия Финансы Химия Черчение Экология Экономика Электроника

Governments classified by stage of development

Analyzing political change

Political life is shaped by a wide variety of factors, including social and cultural conditions, economic organization, intellectual and philosophical influences, geography or climate, and historical circumstance. Recurrent attempts have been made to reduce this range of variables to analytically manageable dimensions. This is partly the motive, for example, of Marxist and other efforts to relate specific types of political systems to stages of economic development or particular kinds of socioeconomic organization. Although interesting interrelations between political and economic development have been discovered, such monistic, or single-factor, approaches are inadequate to the task of explaining political change. The problem is not only that there are many factors that should be examined but also that they are found in different combinations from one society to another. All political orders are unique as products of history and creations of the peculiar forces and conditions of their environment. A second problem that confronts comparative analysis is the difficulty of devising measures of political development. The definition of what is modern or what constitutes an advanced or developed political system has troubled many writers. Clearly, the older notions of development toward the goals of constitutionalism or democracy must now be seriously questioned, and to judge the maturity of a political system in terms of the extent to which it adopts any particular set of institutions or techniques of rule is an equally doubtful procedure. Another difficulty is that political change is not simply a reaction to “objective” factors such as economic forces but also the product of conscious manipulation. In explaining the growth and development of political systems it is impossible to ignore the fact that men, having considered the advantages and disadvantages of different forms of government, often decide to adopt one form rather than another. A similar problem arises from the fact that the nature of the interaction between political systems and their environment is extremely complex. For example, to treat the political system as merely the outgrowth of particular patterns of social or economic organization is to ignore the fact that changes in social and economic structures are often the product, sometimes the intended product, of governmental action.