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The generalisations or theoretical statements are not specific, and the presence of a particular leadership can make a vast difference in the volume, speed, time and direction of the development of a political system. For this purpose, various alternative courses of leadership strategies – planned or unplanned – should be independently studied and conclusions arrived at. These strategies can be viewed as political investment programme.
Given the prevailing conditions of the system and its environment, the development theory can explain and predict the results of those various alternative programmes. Main problems before political development planning, or investment relate to state building, nation-building participation, and distribution.
Analysis of political investment strategies lead us to make a rational choice from among the available alternatives. At first, we would have to specify its structural, cultural, and conversion characteristics, and also its capabilities.
Next, we would have to spell out the properties of the type of political system which we would like to have. Rational choice would mean predicting an investment programme among the alternative programmes. It would guarantee to take us most probably from the present to the desired system with less cost and risk. It would enable us to predict the outcome of alternative investment programmes for goals like democracy, welfare, and stability.
A study of the historical development of political systems would take us closer to ‘a theory of political development planning’. Examining the various patterns of growth of historical political systems would enable us to make risk, cost, or benefit predictions more precise. There can be some scheduling of priorities in the sense that at one time a system may prefer to develop regulative and extractive capability to responsive and distributive capability at an early stage of state-building, which go in reverse direction for conducting its distributive and welfare activities.
The political development programme will put stress on:
(i) Proper scheduling of the system’s development problems: state and nation building will be given priority to participation and welfare;
(ii) Holding investment choices open: the development of the regulative and extractive capabilities must stop where it threatens the destruction of pluralism;
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(iii) Making compensatory investments to face disruptive consequences of development processes by divising broader investment programmes; and
(iv) Relating non-political development-programme to political development programmes by making investment in education, industrialisation, family structure and organisation, etc., as they affect the inputs of political systems.
The development programmes appropriate for developing political systems are likely to differ from one another. They would have to look into their different starting points both at structural and cultural levels. The rate and volume of investment will reflect differences in resources as well as in the ability of these societies to absorb that investment. Development theory, incorporating those strategies and programmes would increase our ability to calculate the risks, cost, and benefits of different development programmes in secular ‘probability’ terms.’
Criticism:
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Almond’s early approach has been severely criticised on several grounds:
(1) The assumption regarding functional unity of society, concept of equilibrium and stability, etc., have been considered as conservative, status quoist, and empirically false.
(2) It supports the teleogical misconception that there is a certain fixed number of functional prerequisites. It is a form of universal functionalism.
(3) The approach is normative in the sense that it stands for the maintenance and adaptation of the system.
(4) It remains unable to deal with important variables like power, policy-making, and role of the elite. Almond and Powell have included the role of the elite in the preparation of political development strategies, but their suggestion does not constitute an essential part of their developmental approach.
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(5) Having once adopted the approach, it is rather futile to talk of the generation of a political theory, since they have already applied it in advance: a form of ex-post-facto judgement.
As such, it is not an explanatory theory. It is, in its first form, at the most a classification, scheme or a model, which can guide a scholar to make observation or collect data under certain categories.
Their second or improved form too is not a very advanced approach, making a move toward the formation of an empirical theory.
(6) Some of the concepts used by them are not defined clearly and have been applied in varying manner, such as, system, interaction, function, etc. Meehan considers the approach as functional only by designation. Almond goes little beyond description and convenient classification.
Cohen has criticised their analysis on ideological and logical grounds. He finds its goals, scheme, and contents as beyond the purview of sociology but not Political Science. Holt and Richardson object to explanation of structures from functional point of view. Most of Almond’s concepts are circular, being based on each other. They fail to develop a probabilistic theory of political systems. Almond himself has been revising his conceptual scheme off and on, and a final formulation perhaps has yet to appear.