(a) Success of contemporary democracies lies in the State limiting its own power. Explain. (20 marks) (b) Rawls' idea of the…

Democratic governance, substantive justice, and meaningful political inquiry depend on institutional restraints, contextualized moral agency, and socially responsive scholarship.

State Self-Limitation and Democratic Success

Contemporary democracies derive their stability and legitimacy not merely from majoritarian mandates, but from constitutionalism—the institutionalized restraint of state authority. Montesquieu’s doctrine of separation of powers in The Spirit of the Laws (1748), Madison's argument in Federalist No. 51 that "ambition must be made to counteract ambition", and the rule of law establish mechanisms where power checks power, safeguarding Isaiah Berlin’s negative liberty (freedom from state interference) while creating institutional conditions for positive liberty (individual self-realization).

Self-limitation operates primarily through judicial review and entrenched rights. In the Indian constitutional framework, Article 13 renders any state action violative of Fundamental Rights void, while the landmark Kesavananda Bharati (1973) judgment formulated the Basic Structure doctrine, precluding parliament from altering core constitutional values.

The causal mechanism is clear: when the state limits its own coercive apparatus, it prevents executive aggrandizement and democratic backsliding into majoritarian authoritarianism. Conversely, the concentration of unchecked power erodes institutional autonomy, as demonstrated during the Indian Emergency (1975–77). The subsequent 44th Constitutional Amendment Act (1978) restored constitutional equilibrium by introducing strict procedural safeguards against arbitrary emergency proclamations and protecting civil liberties. Globally, mature democracies sustain legitimacy because self-binding mechanisms - what Jon Elster likened to Ulysses tying himself to the mast - assure minorities of protection against the tyranny of the majority, thereby institutionalizing political trust. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt (How Democracies Die, 2018) add that written limits need unwritten norms of mutual toleration and institutional forbearance; where rulers use their powers to the hilt, democracies erode from within.

The Communitarian Critique of Rawls’ Liberal Self

In A Theory of Justice, John Rawls constructs the 'original position' behind a 'veil of ignorance', where rational individuals select principles of justice in abstraction from their social identities. Communitarians argue that this relies on an excessively individualistic conception of the moral agent.

Michael Sandel, in Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (1982), critiques Rawls’ premise of the "unencumbered self," asserting that the self is not prior to its ends; individuals are fundamentally constituted by communal attachments, moral ties, and historical inheritances. Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue, 1981) advances this by arguing that human beings possess a "narrative self," whose moral choices are intelligible only within specific traditions and shared communal practices. Charles Taylor, criticising liberal "atomism" (1979), points out that moral agency requires a linguistic and cultural community that defines what constitutes a good life. Furthermore, Michael Walzer, in Spheres of Justice (1983), rejects Rawlsian universalism, advocating particularism and "complex equality," wherein distributive criteria must emerge from the specific social meanings that different communities attach to goods.

While Rawls later attempted in Political Liberalism to present justice as a political conception tailored to democratic cultures, communitarians maintain that his universalist framework remains overly abstract, failing to adequately accommodate tradition, collective solidarity, and the constitutive role of shared social values.

Post-Behaviouralism and the 'Credo of Relevance'

Post-behaviouralism emerged in the late 1960s as a vital reaction against the methodological obsession and value-neutrality of behaviouralism. In his 1969 presidential address to the American Political Science Association, "The New Revolution in Political Science", David Easton formulated the seven-point 'Credo of Relevance', declaring that "substance must precede technique" and reorienting political inquiry into an "action science."

Behaviouralism’s pursuit of pure, value-free empiricism had detached political science from pressing real-world crises such as racial conflict, the Vietnam War, and economic inequalities. Easton’s action science introduced two core imperatives: relevance and action. The credo held that substance must precede technique; that research should stress social change rather than mere preservation; that it must address the real crises of the day; that values are integral to inquiry; that intellectuals have a duty to protect humane values; that knowledge carries a responsibility to act; and that the profession itself should be politicised. It shifted research toward urgent, problem-oriented social issues, insisted that values are the indispensable foundation of political knowledge, and positioned the political scientist as a citizen with an ethical duty to reform society rather than remain a detached technician.

In contemporary Indian political science, this paradigm remains profoundly relevant. Action science underpins scholarship addressing caste-based discrimination, gender injustice, and agrarian distress, demonstrating that empirical research must actively guide progressive policy, deepen constitutional democracy, and advance social justice.

Democratic longevity ultimately rests upon bounded sovereign authority, substantive justice requires recognizing the socially embedded individual, and political science fulfills its true vocation when empirical rigor is bound to ethical action for societal transformation.