Sub-system autonomy

Refers the role of the interest and demand groups autonomous of that of the role of the political parties. Political parties are treated as agencies of interest aggregation, i.e., taking the demands and interests as well as the policy proposals to the forums of legislator and policy-makers in the shape of programmes and policies. Interest and demand groups are treated as agencies of interest articulation, i.e., raising demands and requirements so that the policy-makers and agencies of the state can convert them into programmes and policies. It is said that in a participant political culture or a culture with participant political culture widely distributed support the role of the interest articulators as differentiated from the role of the aggregators. Political parties, interest groups, mass media, etc. are relatively differentiated. Political sociologists and political development theorists treat the American and British political culture as having high level of sub-system autonomy. If we look at the Indian case, we find multi-party competition, which appears more pronounced after the decline of the ‘dominant Congress party’. This is coupled with specialized interest and demand groups in the form of pressure groups, labour and trade unions, professional associations and caste associations. However, one can argue that the way Rajni Kothari and Morris-Jones had designated and characterized the party system in India as the ‘Congress system’ or the ‘one-party dominant system’, it appeared in the 1960s and 1970s that Congress worked as a coalition of various pressures. Hence, it presented a picture of a less differentiated political culture and of limited sub-system autonomy. Applying the criteria of sub-system autonomy, political systems can be classified into ones with low sub-system autonomy, as was India within the Congress system or one-party dominant model or as Mexico under a hegemonic party system and high sub-system autonomy model as American and British systems are treated. Sub-system autonomy means functional specificity.