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"Government of the people, for the people". Ever wonder how far this statement holds true? There are more forces than people alone that affect political processes and outcomes.
Political change is the study of underlying forces, balance of power and proceses that cause a change in either system of government, its ruling class, its functions or priorities. It can be either evolutionary change whereby existing structures and people retain their power but their priorities change or a revolutionary change where the existing structures are disbanded and replaced with new structures.
Political change can be caused by one or more of the following eight forces:
Citizen's movements for better governance: Political structures are designed for efficient functioning of society and distribution of resources. Often the norms underlying actual functioning of the system are unwritten and work as a shared assumption. Policy makers and policy execution class has significant discretion in how the resources are spent. This class being self interest maximizer has a tendency to divert resources to their own benefit first and common masses come later. Masses generally tolerate this diversion of resources as presumed reward for executive's holding the office. This diversion has a tendency to cross tolerable threshold. Once that happens, people start expressing their discontentment among themselves. When it becomes a widely shared problem, it gets mentions in the media. If the ruling class listens to ciizen's concerns, the problem does not grow. However, often the ruling class understimates the level of frustration compared to its own reward. The issue keep simmering until somebody with enough concern for the issue, leadership, time, energy and resources decides to take the matters in its hands. It becomes a movement for political change. It can be either for resolving a particular issue or for changing the ruling class. If it is for change of ruling class, it can take enormous time. It can turn violent too. The empirical evidence on success of movements for political change is mixed. The seemingly obvious issues can take years to resolve. This can be unequal battle. Ruling class has better control over media, financial resources and police forces while the citizen's movements have none. Most of the movements die their early death for lack of critical mass and resources.
Balance of power, degree of cooperation, intensity of competition between incumbent and opponents: This is more true in democratic governments but also true in other forms of governments. Opponents play the role of finding holes in performance of the incumbent. If opponents hold substantial power, the incumbent has room to play and has to convince other stake holders more to implement its policies. In national issues, incumbents generally align with the policies and actions of incumbents. However on other issues, there can be significant disagreement and both groups tend to stick to their ideologies and agendas. This interaction can have significant impact on policial outcome.
Economic necessities of the country: This kind of change is necessitated by economic forces and invisible hands of market supply and demand. If a country has large government employed work force but limited revenue base it can slowly drive the country into high inflation mode or goods shortage. The government might be inclined to shed its ideology, abdicate some of the assumed responsibilities like healthcare and move to market based economy thus reducing its wage bill. Alternatively if a country discovers and develops a rich natural resource, it can cause different kind of political change for example from democracy to autocracy depending on the circumstances.
Corporate and money influence: Corporate entities though unable to vote legally in most countries exercise their influence on the political system through money often in the form of donations or bribes. If large enough, they can change policies of the governments significantly. In some cases they not only control the goverment they actually become government in themselves. Corporate honchos frequently run for political offices. Often their interests come in conflict with those of the common masses. When there is conflict of interest between interests of corporations and those of citizens, corporations often win.
Structure and ownership of media entities: Media has a very important role in propagation of information and ideas in political system. Media acts as a gate valve that interprets information that filters and prioritizes information and interprets it for the masses. Media can also be called delegated brain of the masses since masses do not have time and expertise to interpret and form informed opinion on the issues on their own. In theory, media reflects opinion and aspirations of the masses. However, in practice, media acts as an independent actor on its own depending .. more on this later.
External forces like wars or subversion by other governments to install puppets: Foreign governments often have vested interest in the political structure and policies of other countries. Their aim can be resource driven, territory driven or ideology driven. If a country is economically weak with poor literacy rate, its political structure often reflects influence of external forces.
Technological changes that tilt the balance of power: Technological changes like widespread use of automobiles, communication technologies and mass media have disruptive effect on balance of power between ruler and ruled. On the one hand these can strengthen the ruling class in their governance, on the other hand these can allow ruled masses to share ideas and organize themselves for collective effort. Where the balance tilts does not depend on technology but access to the technology and its creative use. For example, use of SMS has been helping democracy movement in Nepal against the autocratic ruler. Such movement would have been extremely difficult to organize in this hilly terrain kingdom. Coverage in mass media especially at international level is exerting significant pressure on the king. In this case technological change has tilted the balance of power.
Social changes-changes in the composition of citizens: Composition of citizenry and change in social mix can determine the pace and direction of political change in a country. Blue collar working class have different needs (bread, cloth, housing, religion) and different way of organizing themselves -demonstrations, strikes, violence, personality and kinship based identification with political class. On the other hands, white collar class has different aspirations like education, freedom of expression, intellectual discourse, luxury. They identify more with status and money than with kinship based primordial loyalties. They also tend to be less organized. If a country is in transition socially, it reflects in changes in composition of political class, political processes and outcomes.
Interaction of these forces together determine the processes involved in and outcomes of political change effort. The weight of these six forces combined with resources available to each actor on relative basis and creative use of those resources determine dominant direction of political change.
