NATIONAL LAW INSTITUTE UNIVERSITY,

BHOPAL

SOCIOLOGY- II

SOCIOLOGY AND DEMOCRACY

SUBMITTED TO: SUBMITTED BY:

ABC XYZ

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 ACKNOWLEDGMENT

I am extremely thankful for the continuous assistance, understanding and guidance offered by Mr.

Tapan Mohanty in planning this project, and struggling with debt to the relentless motivation from

him in this respect.

We also owe honest appreciation to employees at the library and the computer lab for always

assisting in the process of researching the content and other resources for research project, and

without their support this project wouldn’t have been completed.

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................... 4

DEMOCRACY ............................................................................................................................... 5

VIEWS OF SOCIOLOGISTS ON DEMOCRACY ....................................................................... 6

1. Aristotle................................................................................................................................ 6

2. Karl Marx ............................................................................................................................. 6

3. Lenin .................................................................................................................................... 7

ROLE OF DEMOCRACY IN SOCIETY ...................................................................................... 8

1. Democracy And Women......................................................................................................... 8

2. Democracy And Caste System............................................................................................. 9

3. Democracy And Minorities.................................................................................................. 9

NEGATIVE IMPACTS OF DEMOCRACY ............................................................................... 11

CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................. 13

BIBLIOGRAPHY ......................................................................................................................... 14

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 INTRODUCTION

Democracy is a central principle in socialist thought. However, in socialist theory the sphere in
which the people are to rule is not limited to political life "wherein the masses are permitted to
decide which of the ruling will govern". The socialist position is which that people rule in the areas
where decisions count : in economic and cultural sphere as well.

Democratic socialism is a political ideology advocating a democratic political system alongside a

socialist economic system, involving a combination of political democracy with social ownership
of the means of production. Although sometimes used synonymously with "socialism", the
adjective "democratic" is often added to distinguish itself from the Marxist–Leninist brand of
socialism.

For both Marx and Lenin parliamentary democracy was a place for talk while decisions with shape
the course of history are made in private for elites. The trust of democratic socialism is to make
those decisions in the public sphere with maximum participation. Democratic socialism is an
economic and political system that combines private ownership of some of the means of
production, government distribution of some essential goods and service, and free elections.

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 DEMOCRACY

Democracy, or democratic government, is "a system of government in which all the people of a
state or polity are involved in making decisions about its affairs, typically by voting to elect
representatives to a parliament or similar assembly".

Democracy consists of four key elements :

i. A political system for choosing and replacing the government through free and fair
elections.
ii. The active participation of the people, as citizens, in politics and civic life.
iii. Protection of the human rights of all citizens.
iv. A rule of law, in which the laws and procedures apply equally to all citizens.

The term originates from the Greek word(dēmokratía) "rule of the people", which was found from
(dêmos) "people" and (krátos) "power" or "rule".
While theoretically these definitions are in opposition, in practice the distinction has been blurred
historically. The political system of Classical Athens, for example, granted democratic citizenship
to an elite class of free men and excluded slaves and women from political participation. In
virtually all democratic governments throughout ancient and modern history, democratic
citizenship consisted of an elite class until full enfranchisement was won for all adult citizens in
most modern democracies through the suffrage movements of the 19th and 20th centuries. The
English word dates to the 16th century, from the older Middle French and Middle Latin
equivalents.
Several variants of democracy exist, but there are two basic forms, both of which concern how the
whole body of all eligible citizens executes its will. One form of democracy is direct democracy,
in which all eligible citizens have direct and active participation in the political decision making.
In most modern democracies, the whole body of eligible citizens remain the sovereign power but
political power is exercised indirectly through elected representatives; this is called a
representative democracy.

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 VIEWS OF SOCIOLOGISTS ON DEMOCRACY

1. Aristotle
Depending upon the number of people involved in governing and the focus of their
interests, Aristotle distinguished six kinds of social structure in three pairs:

 A state with only one ruler is either a monarchy or a tyranny;

 A state with several rulers is either an aristocracy or an oligarchy; and
 A state in which all rule is either a polity or a democracy.

He also thought that there was a good and a bad variant of each system (he considered
democracy to be the degenerate counterpart to polity).

According to Aristotle, democracy is the most corrupt form of government of all because
people in a Democracy are deluded into thinking that one person is as good as another.
That the masses in a democracy follow the lead of corrupt and selfish demagogues and
plunder the property of the hardworking and the capable. For Aristotle the underlying
principle of democracy is freedom, since only in a democracy the citizens can have a share
in freedom. In essence, he argues that this is what every democracy should make its aim.
There are two main aspects of freedom: being ruled and ruling in turn, since everyone is
equal according to number, not merit, and to be able to live as one pleases.

2. Karl Marx
The role of democracy in Marxist thinking may refer to the role of democratic processes
in the transition from capitalism to socialism, or to the importance ascribed to participatory
democracy in a post-capitalist society. Karl Marx is often cited as saying "democracy is
the road to socialism", but this line is not directly stated in any of his works. Marx did
however express belief that the working class could achieve power through democratic
elections, but that working people had the right to revolt if they were denied political
expression.

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3. Lenin
Leninists believe democracy under capitalism is an unrealistic utopia. This is because they
believe that, in a capitalist state, all "independent" media and most political parties are
controlled by capitalists and one either needs large financial resources or to be supported
by the bourgeoisie to win an election.

Vladimir Lenin (1917) believed that, in a capitalist state, the system focuses on resolving
disputes within the ruling bourgeoisie class and ignores the interests of the proletariat or
labour class which are not represented and therefore dependent on the bourgeoisie's good
will. Thus, one section of the society gets an advantage over the other and hence this
inequality leads to exploitation.

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 ROLE OF DEMOCRACY IN SOCIETY

1. Democracy And Women

Democracy requires that citizens’ interests be heard, deliberated and legislated on. Women are half
of the world’s population, and as such their voice should be heard in the democratic process.
Democracy needs women in order to be truly democratic, and women need democracy if they are
to change the systems and laws that preclude them, and preclude them, and preclude societies as a
whole, from attaining equality.

Practices for Women’s Effective Political Participation-

1. Make both local and national elections free and fair for women.

Promote temporary special measures such as quotas, sanctions on non-complying political parties,
waivers of nomination fees, access to public media, and access to public resources, and to increase
women’s participation as both elected and appointed decision-makers in public institutions. Ensure
voter registration processes enable women to exercise their democratic right.

2. Support women’s civil society organizations to advance women’s interests.

Provide assistance to develop collective policy agendas, for instance, through Women’s Charters
or by holding National Conventions of Women. Provide capacity building and skills development
training to promote advocacy and communication skills, as well as internal organizational
capacities of women’s groups and movements.

3. Build accountability for women’s rights in public institutions.

Ensure that constitutional revision processes consider the impact of the design of political, judicial
and other public institutions on women’s participation and the exercise of their social, political and
economic rights. Constitutional revisions should ensure harmonization with international
standards on women’s rights.

4. Support women political leaders to expand their influence.

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Support skills and capacity development for both candidates and elected leaders. This support
involves both training in terms of skills as well as content skills on gender mainstreaming,
international gender equality commitments and strategies that can be of use.

2. Democracy And Caste System

Democracy is quite different from a Republic as well as from parliamentary Government. The
roots of democracy lie not in the form of Government, Parliamentary or otherwise. A democracy
is more than a form of government. The roots of democracy are to be searched in the social
relationship, in the terms of associated life between people who form a society. The existence of
caste system is a standing denial of the existence of those ideals of society and therefore of
democracy. An Indian cannot eat or marry with an Indian simply because he or she does not belong
to his or her caste. An Indian simply cannot touch an Indian because he or she does belong to his
or her caste. ‘Castes are not equal in their status. They are standing one above another. They are
jealous of one another. It is an ascending scale of hatred and descending scale of contempt. The
feature of caste system has most pernicious consequences. It destroys willing and helpful
cooperation.'

Ambedkar questioned the political system and how Congress party field its candidate and how
they are selected carefully on the basis of their caste. Ambedkar said that an Indian votes in an
election who belongs to his own caste and no other further he considers caste system as a bane to
democracy. His concerns were really about the constitutional provisions for the Dalits. He realized
that democracy was a broadly a majority concept and cannot really be confined to electoral
exercise and therefore a mere political alliance of communities which lead to political power
cannot be the only objective of a democratic exercise.

3. Democracy And Minorities

Indian democracy was the outcome of the freedom movement, which in turn was based on the
values of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity (community). During the freedom movement there were
marginal streams which did not subscribe to these values and they stood out as Muslim League on

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one side and Hindu Mahasabha and RSS on the other. The Indian nation inherited the celebratory
ethos of pluralism and diversity. Few sections whose interests stood to be threatened due to
democracy and accompanying social and political relations did raise hula boo about their religion
coming under the threat. Indian constitution, like most of the progressive modern constitutions
provided the concept of affirmative action for weaker sections of society (SCs and STs) and certain
other type of provisions for security of minorities (religious, linguistic and ethnic). Later to keep
in tune with the concurrent developments and articulations in the concepts of human rights, India
did endorse the recommendations of various UN bodies on this issue.

The idea of these was that the religious, ethnic or linguistic groups which are numerically smaller
should not feel intimidated, should not feel out of the place and should feel free from the fear of
being swept aside by the dominance of majority community. Indian constitution while giving the
minority status to the religious denominations did recognize most of the religions with smaller
following as minorities. The base of this provision was numerical weakness and social
disadvantage due to various reasons. Accordingly Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Parsis and Jews
amongst others were logical religious minorities. Some religions, like Jainsim, were initially
denied this minority status as the dominant political forces asserted that it is not an independent
religion but is a mere sect of Hinduism. The statement by Sudarshan that Sikhism is a sect of
Hinduism did create turmoil in large section of Sikh community.By asserting that only Jews and
Parsis are minorities, Mr. Sudarshan, true to his Hindu Nation theory, wants to do away with the
safeguards for weaker religious denominations.Such anti Minority designs need to be curbed so
that we can have the flowering of democracy in a more egalitarian manner.

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 NEGATIVE IMPACTS OF DEMOCRACY

1. Populism
A common criticism of democracy is that in the end it devolves into a popularity contest. Polls
don’t decide who is right—that’s simply decided by whoever is most willing to say what people
like to hear. As a result, many candidates to political office resort to populism, pursuing policies
that focus on the immediate satisfaction of whims instead of long-term improvements.

2. Tribal Mentality

In a democracy, tribal mentality is very dangerous, because it will make you vote “for your team”
instead of voting according to issues. That means that whoever leads “your team” can rest assured
that they have your vote, and instead of focusing on your interests, they can proceed to deal with
their own. Unfair legislation can be passed if there are vocal groups in the majority (by oppressing
the minority) or in the minorities (by entitling them to privileges that the majority can’t enjoy).

3. Entitlements

Another side-effect of democracy is that if the State starts providing a service or a pay to someone,
they begin to feel entitled to it. So if someone tries to stop providing it—well, they just made a
large number of deadly foes. When Margaret Thatcher cut coal subsidies, for example, coal miners
felt that their jobs had been threatened and became bitter enemies of Thatcher and her ilk. Most
people will never vote for the party of someone who “took their jobs”, no matter how long ago this
might have happened.

4. Complex Accountability

When a dictatorship falls, it is fairly easy to hold someone accountable for any crimes committed
by the State. It is certainly easier than in a democracy, since in that case, officials have been elected
by the people. If those officials have committed a crime in opposition to their official platform and
without the knowledge of the public, it is simply their own fault and the people who voted for them
are innocent

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 5. Democracy is unsustainable

A perfect democracy is unsustainable—but a mostly democratic system can (and does) work. In
many democratic countries, your vote only measures up against other votes in your district. So if
a district runs a majority system and you vote for a losing runner, then your vote was useless. A
proportional system can be used, but that doesn’t solve the problem: the issue still remains that
large numbers of people can effectively “waste their vote.

6. Mob rule

Minority is relatively powerless and the smaller it is, the less power it wields which means that the
smallest minority of all the individual is effectively depending on his agreement with the majority.
To account for this problem, mature democracies have developed a set of checks and balances in
an attempt to make sure that it doesn't happen; chief among these is the separation of the powers
of the State. But this actually makes a system less democratic, since it interferes with the principle
of "people's power".

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 CONCLUSION

The Democratic means the government is a democratically elected, head of the government is
elected by the people.

The factors such as education, corruption, women's issues, student politics, leadership strategies
and the design of political institutions affect national and local politics. Some other factors such
as the caste issue, environment policy, new long-term investment in the economy by foreigners
etc., also have a bearing in the democracy of India. It is because of these factors that democracy
places an important role in sociology.

Thus, democracy as a whole not only affects the people or the government but also has a huge
impact on the society. The women rights, upliftment of dalits etc are also the consequence of
democracy. Nevertheless, the democracy also has been criticized a lot by the people because of
its features like tribe mentality and how a characteristic of caste in India is used in bad light by
people to gain votes. The very example of the policy of reservation which was initially started for
a period of 10 years has now been extended and has been used in caste politics.

Hence, it can rightly be concluded that if used for correct purposes this form of government, i.e.
democracy can be the biggest tool for development of the society as a whole.

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 BIBLIOGRAPHY

 http://listverse.com/2013/06/16/reasons-why-democracy-doesnt-work/

 http://www.un.org/en/globalissues/democracy/

 http://www.un.org/en/globalissues/democracy/index.shtml

 Defining Minorities In A Democratic Setup, Ram Puniyani, 10 October, 2005,

Countercurrents.org

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy

 www.britannica.com/topic/democracy

 Sociology, Unique Publishers

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