Abstract
Democratic institutions are easy to establish but difficult to sustain. They can be formally set up by means of constitutional provisions and their implementations. But to sustain them, and the democratic process in general, what is required is a political society which shares their underlying values and constantly manifests commitment to them in its own political activity. Only such a political society, as de Tocqueville pointed out in Democracy in America, can ensure the operation of the democratic process and the survival of its institutions.
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Notes
Gabriel A. Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1963 ).
Lucian W. Pye and Sidney Verba (eds), Political Culture and Political Development ( Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1965 ).
S. P. Huntington and J. M. Nelson, No Easy Choice: Political Participation in Developing Countries (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976) PP. 28–9.
See Robert Dahl, Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition ( New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971 ) pp. 2–8.
There is an interesting form of politico-economic mobilisation also going on in rural Gujarat in the form of the highly successful milk co-operative moment. An exposure to such a movement has brought about social change in various areas of rural life. See in this connection, A. H. Somjee and G. Somjee, ‘Cooperative Dairying and the Profiles of Social Change in India’, Economic Development and Cultural Change (April 1978).
Edward Shils, Political Development in the New States ( The Hague: Mouton & Company, 1960 ).
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© 1979 A. H. Somjee
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Somjee, A.H. (1979). An Emerging Political Society. In: The Democratic Process in a Developing Society. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-16158-4_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-16158-4_6
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