Has the increased participation of the underprivileged in the political process of the developing societies strengthened democracy or created political chaos and conflict? Comment. (2020, 10 Marks)
The entry of the poor, lower castes, ethnic minorities and women into politics is the defining feature of post-colonial democracy. Whether it deepens or destabilises democracy is an old quarrel between order theorists and inclusion theorists; the evidence favours inclusion, with a turbulent transition.
The case for chaos and conflict
- Samuel P. Huntington‘s Political Order in Changing Societies (1968) argued that when participation outruns institutionalisation, the result is praetorianism: every social force acts directly and none is mediated.
- Elitist and “governability” theorists, from Joseph A. Schumpeter to the Trilateral Commission’s The Crisis of Democracy (1975), doubted the ordinary citizen’s competence and warned of an excess of demands.
- Ascriptive mobilisation can harden cleavages; Donald L. Horowitz showed how ethnic parties turn elections into censuses. Kenya’s disputed 2007 election, fought on ethnic lines, ended in violence that killed over a thousand people.
- Street uprisings toppled governments in Bangladesh (2024) and Nepal (2025), a country that has had several constitutions since 1959.
The case for democratic deepening
- Participation builds political efficacy and with it the legitimacy of the state; groups with a stake in elections have less reason to seek change outside them.
- Christophe Jaffrelot‘s silent revolution describes lower-caste power won through the ballot rather than revolt; reservation in legislatures and panchayats converted presence into voice. India expanded participation enormously without collapse.
- Post-apartheid South Africa drew the Black majority into politics from 1994; when the ANC lost its majority in 2024, discontent was absorbed through a Government of National Unity, not violence.
- Even the South Asian upheavals returned to the ballot box: Bangladesh voted in February 2026 and Nepal in March 2026, where the Rastriya Swatantra Party won 182 of 275 seats on the protesters’ agenda.
- The alternative to noisy inclusion is not order but quiet exclusion, which suppresses conflict rather than resolving it.
Reconciling the two
Atul Kohli‘s inverted-U thesis (1997), drawn from Indian self-determination movements, is the best synthesis: mobilisation first raises conflict as new groups press claims and old elites resist, then subsides as institutions accommodate them. Ashutosh Varshney (2002) adds that dense inter-communal civic networks keep such conflict from turning violent. The outcome depends on the accommodative capacity of institutions, not on the character of the newcomers.
Conclusion
Participation of the underprivileged has strengthened democracy wherever institutions could absorb it; chaos marks weak institutions, not excess democracy. The remedy is stronger parties, cross-cutting civic life and political education, not restricted participation.