Berdzenishvili A. - Political Sociology. - Tbilisi: Meridiani - 2000 - 323 p. - in Georgian.
The object of the monograph is to assimilate achievements of western political philosophy, politology and political sociology on the basis of the analysis of works by R. Aron, P. Bourdieu, A. Giddens, M. Dogan, T. Parsons, R. Merton, J. Habermass, P. Sharan, R. Schwarzenberg, M. Weber and others; and to provide Georgian political elite with these achievements.
The work presents an attempt of integrating politological and sociological approaches toward research problems. It highlights specific character of political sociology as implying study of politics and political relations in the context of social structure. The author argues that the purpose of political sociology is:
The author considers the authority as the means for fighting chaos and indeterminacy, for expanding and reinforcing possibilities of ordering interactions between individuals and predicting their behavior. The author disagrees with the view of M. Crosier that no advances have been made in the analysis of power after Machiavelli and Marx. The author argues that works of Nietzsche and Weber were contributions to understanding of power relationships. Contributions of Weber and Parsons to establishing social character of power and politics are highlighted. In spite of multitude of various definitions of power, that by Weber still remains the sole valid one.
Significant attention is paid to the conditions of interaction of a political system and a society; to the analysis of the impulses (demands and support) being received by a political system from a society; and to characterization of social unions and political parties responsible for articulation and aggregation of interests in our society.
Capacities (extractive, regulative, distributive, reactive, symbolizing) and functions (articulation and aggregation of interests, creation of norms, utilization of norms and rules, control of this utilization, political communication) required for a political system for its proper functioning are analyzed. Against this background, the author discusses the reality of a society under transformation, like Georgia, where the government resorts to simulations rather than to real actions to realize these abilities and functions.
The author considers the essential attribute of political communication to be information interchange between governors and subordinates for achieving certain consensus. It is argued that the nature of information interchange depends not only on a political regime but also on the nature of a society itself, on its mentality and culture.
Political regime, when trying to give a desirable direction to public opinion (as it was practiced in Soviet Union, and unfortunately still is in some ex-Soviet countries), promotes annihilation of public opinion or splits it into formal and informal parts. This, in its turn, deprives the political regime of the sense of societal reality. Efficiency of a political system is conditioned by its constant readiness to apprehend attentively demands and developmental tendencies of a society. Information interchange between a political system and a society in the form of communication and dialog is secured by democratic regime and high participation culture of citizens.
The author briefly discusses the essence of totalitarianism; authoritarianism is discussed more extensively, since according to the author, under the circumstances of pursuit of freedom and strong social movements, authoritarianism is one of the conditions of transition to democracy. Special attention is paid to the democratic regime, characteristic ways and contradictions of democratization processes.
How to establish democratic government in a country, which has never lived under democratic conditions? When there are no traditions and habits of reflection and action according to democratic norms and principles? While the whole society, individuals as well as their social relationships are involved in transition to democracy. The author thinks that formation of the most democratic civil society mainly depends on the loyalty of a large part of the population to democratic ideals, on their active participation in all spheres of political, social, and cultural life, on the tolerant attitude towards diversity and alternative viewpoints. Therefore one major factor, together with others (fair distribution of incomes, strong middle class, independent economic and political elites, influence of the external world, multitude of decision making instances), for formation of democracy and civil society, is assimilation and dissemination of the values of democratic culture.
The work also includes an analysis of the place of bureaucracy and bureaucrats in construction of democratic and civil society. Distinctions between politics and governing, politician and official are highlighted; bureaucratism is considered as a degenerate state of bureaucratic system, as governors' joint monopoly on power and governing functions.
Following M. Weber, the author draws distinction between the concepts of legitimacy and legality, i.e. lawfulness. Legitimacy is not expressed by clauses of the constitution; it is an idea-view, belief of citizens, that the sovereign authority existing in a country is entitled to make decisions to be obeyed by the citizens. Only when citizens agree that the institutes existing in a country correspond to their traditions, customs and outlooks, are these institutes to be considered as legitimate. The author concludes that any political system can increase the credit of its power and carry out the appropriate policy only if it corresponds to ideas and expectations, customs and outlooks, morality and political values of the population in large.
The author depends the view that the problem of legitimacy and efficiency of a political regime is of special importance for Georgia presently. Since strengthening political system and legitimacy of a regime remains one of the main problems for a newly independent country. Under modern conditions, governing society politically and resolving problems facing it are impossible without recognition of fairness of the political system by the population.
In this connection three types of political culture are analyzed: traditional, subordination and participation. Attention is focused on the synthesis of cultural elements of subordination and participation. The author thinks that without mastering such political culture democratic processes will not evolve in Georgia. In this matter the leader of the country and its political elite have decisive importance. Therefore author rather thoroughly exposes existing conceptions of the elite and the political leader and critically estimates them against the background of current political changes in Georgia.
The identification of Georgian political elite has crucial importance for understanding actual social and political mechanisms in the country. The author thinks that in spite of the fact that the institutional theory exaggerates the role of elite in a modern democratic society with strong civil institutes, in respect of social methodology, this theory is more effective and heuristically valuable for understanding processes occurring in a transitional society. The author claims that through deepening the institutional concept it is possible to obtain the criterion of identification of any elite: availability of power resources and their deployment for making decisions with large-scale results. Thus political elite consists of persons occupying strategic positions in the most important public or private institutions and establishments.
It is the institutional approach, writes the author that enables us to allocate the following elites in a transitional society like Georgia: economic, political, military, religious, trade union, scientific-academic, institutional and others. In Georgia today the political elite is most distinctive; though slowly, the economic elite is clearly emerging; the military and religious elites are in the process of formation. The old ideological elite gradually lose its superiority and are replaced by the intellectual elite - representatives of Media, philosophers, politologists and other dissidents.
The author characterizes the role of political leader and notices the increase of the number of populist leaders that become particularly active in the turning point of the evolution of the society – during the period when the old is destroyed, while the new is not yet established. Today Georgia needs a political leader, who expresses opinions, hopes and aspirations of the majority of social groups, leader, who on the one hand controls and governs the environment and on the other hand submits and serves to this world.
In the concluding part of the work the author suggests that the federal model of organizing political space matches democratic regime best. For only this model can ensure both personal and national independence and integrity of a society.