Controversial Harvard professor Samuel P.Huntington, in our view the world’s greatest political scientist after Plato, has died.
To those of you who may never have heard of Samuel Huntington, he was the the author who made the phrase Clash of Civilizations famous.
While Huntington has been in the limelight recently after he wrote his famous essay on the Clash of Civilizations in 1993, our favorite book by this colossus remains his classic work on comparative politics Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968).
Samuel Huntington – RIP
(Pix: Harvard News Office)
In the opening chapter of that monumental work on comparative politics, Huntington wrote:
The most important political distinction among countries concerns not their form of government but their degree of government. The differences between democracy and dictatorship are less than the differences between those countries whose politics embodies consensus, community, legitimacy, organization, effectiveness, stability, and those countries whose politics is deficient in these qualities. (P.1)
….Men may, of course, have order without liberty, but they cannot have liberty without order. (p.7-8)
Being a book on comparative politics, India figures prominently in Political Order in Changing Societies. Some of the Indians mentioned in the book include M.K. Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, K. Kamaraj, C. Rajagopalachari, Lal Bahadur Sastri and Asoke Mehta.
Huntington also gives much importance in the book, rightly, to strong political institutions:
The existence of political institutions (such as the Presidency or Central Committee) capable of giving substance to public interests distinguishes politically developed societies from undeveloped ones. It also distinguishes moral communities from amoral societies. A government with a low level of institutionalization is not just a weak government; it is also a bad government. The function of government is to govern. A weak government, a government which lacks authority, fails to perform its function and is immoral in the same sense in which a corrupt judge, a cowardly soldier, or an ignorant teacher is immoral. The moral basis of political institutions is rooted in the needs of men in complex societies. (p.28)
Besides comparative politics, Samuel Huntington’s research interests included American government, democratization, military politics, strategy, and civil-military relations and political development.
After the 9/11 attack on America, many saw in Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations (published in 1993) a prescient harbinger of the future.
The Clash of Civilizations? was first published as an essay in Foreign Affairs in the Summer of 1993.
In the essay, Huntington wrote:
It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future.
This seminal article by Huntington in Foreign Affairs apparently stirred up more debate in three years than any other article published in the journal since the 1940s.
Later in the expanded version of this essay, published as a book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order in 1996, Huntington wrote:
Wherever one looks along the perimter of Islam, Muslims have problems living peaceably with their neighbors. The question naturally arises as to whether this pattern of late twentieth-century conflict between Muslim and non-Muslim groups is equaly true of relations between groups from other civilizations. In fact, it is not. Muslims make up about one-fifth of the world’s population but in the 1990s they have been far more involved in inter-group violence than the people of any other civilization. The evidence is overwhelming. (P.256)
Huntington is not without his critics.
Many including Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen have criticized the Clash of Civilizations piece while Political Order in Changing Societies attracted flak for its emphasis on order.
Samuel Huntington, 81, died on December 24 at Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts.
India has not produced a political scientist even one-hundredth as good as Samuel Huntington. The only Indian political scientist who has written any stuff worth reading is Rajni Kothari (not sure if he’s still alive).
Samuel Huntington – RIP
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this guy seems to be anti-islamic…..I feel terrorism started in Islam because a few control freaks (on the lines of hitler) who were born turned out to be Muslims….it could have happened to any religion….look at the christians of the dark ages,with all those wars against muslims and jews, as well as witch burnings and all …..hindus are not far behind,with the gujarat carnage and all the hindu-muslim riots….. any other country which has produced a great political scientist? in India, people are busy becoming engineers and doctors…..we need to have a great university like harvard to have people like these….political science is taken up by many,but but we don’t have good universities…besides,its your point of view that he is the best….Amartya Sen is an economist right? well he’s done well for himself….but only after moving to harvard…..
SearchIndia.com Responds:
1. You write above: this guy seems to be anti-islamic…..I feel terrorism started in Islam because a few control freaks (on the lines of hitler) who were born turned out to be Muslims….it could have happened to any religion….look at the christians of the dark ages,with all those wars against muslims and jews, as well as witch burnings and all …..hindus are not far behind,with the gujarat carnage and all the hindu-muslim riots…..
We ought to look at behavior of religions on a time dimension. Muslims, and to a lesser extent Hindus, are more militant now. Christians were overtly militant in centuries past.
2. You write above: look at the christians of the dark ages,with all those wars against muslims and jews, as well as witch burnings
Lately, we’ve been doing some reading on the witch burning and its inspiration Malleus Maleficarum. Horrendous beyond description.
Some estimates of those killed in the witch trials put the number at 60,000.
3. There have been some respected political scientists outside the U.S. like the Italian political scientist Giovanni Sartori but you are right the best ones lately have come from the U.S.
4. Yiu write: Amartya Sen is an economist right? well he’s done well for himself….but only after moving to harvard…..
Wrong. Amartya Sen was highly regarded even before his Harvard days.
Overall, Amartya Sen has spent more time in the U.K. (at Oxford, Cambridge & LSE) than at Harvard.
In many cases the govts. in authority have created all the mess and they are the ones that created the terror as a tool to subjugate the opposition to their ideology, or their brand of philosophy.
As long as a group is alligned with any govt. according to their designs and plans, they don’t label/brand anyone as a terrorist. The moment they feel it works against them, they have all the means and the mechanisms to brand the antagonists as terrorists with the support and the backing of powerful nations. These powerful nations were once invaders and still they have this ambition very much active in their programs. Without the support and the backing and the initiation, no other could brand anyone being a Terrorist.
It should have the full recognition by these powers on the basis of their “Interests” (in simple terms – Their profits) and the propaganda by their media to back their govts. interests (Profits). Without these elements and it’s originators nobody could even utter the word against another saying “a terrorist”. They have the ultimate weapons to subjugate anybody to fall in line in order that they profit by any means, even if it infringes on human rights.
Humanity has no place in this. Blind followers and their skewed philosophy is another solace to these powers to gain more and more profits through destructions and murder. Nobody questions the other side due to weaknesses.
Following link could help in some way to realize this factor:
Can there be any doubt who the real terrorists are?
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/newsfull.php?newid=198480
“According to the U.S.’s own definition of terrorism Israel is squarely in the frame. Under Section 3 of Executive Order 13224 “Blocking Property and prohibiting Transactions with Persons who commit, threaten to commit, or support Terrorism”, the term “terrorism†means an activity that…
(i) involves a violent act or an act dangerous to human life, property, or infrastructure; and
(ii) appears to be intended
• to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;
• to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or
• to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, kidnapping, or hostage-taking. ”
SearchIndia.com Responds:
1. The first four paragraphs of your comment seems to tacitly hold the U.S. responsible generally.
But the Gulf Dictatorships oops Gulf Nations are no saints.
2. If the western media is Bill O’Reilly, then Al Jazeera is the equivalent of Rachel Maddow. They are the mirror reflections.
Hopefully, blogs like this will strike the middle ground.
SI: But the Gulf Dictatorships oops Gulf Nations are no saints.
True, I agree, the Gulf dictatorships are also one of the part of this grand design. They don’t even think about democracy due to the type of protection they recieve from the world powers. They don’t care about human rights and they don’t keep any powerful opposition strong enough to question them on their wasteful ways of living and their wrongdoings.
SI:Hopefully, blogs like this will strike the middle ground
That’s why I still keep on voicing my opinions and thoughts and try to give a another side to the story to a subject that you discuss in your blog.
Thanks for being in the middle.