abated with the late 20th century’s experience of Western governments finding
external commitments deeply entangling.
Egalitarianism
Egalitarianism is the doctrine that all citizens of a state should be accorded
exactly equal rights and privileges. However, there are many conflicting
interpretations of what this commitment means in practice. Three major
strands of thought can usefully be identified. Firstly, egalitarianism certainly
means that all political rights should be the same for all adult human beings. In
terms of access to politics, the suffrage and equality before the law, no social,
religious, ethnic or other criterion should be allowed to produce inequality.
This is the minimum definition of egalitarianism, and is accepted in theory, and
usually in practice, in most Western democracies and many other types of state.
Secondly, egalitarianism may also be held to involveequality of opportunity,
which implies that, regardless of the socio-economic situation into which
someone is born, they will have the same chance as everybody else to develop
their talents and acquire qualifications, and that when they apply for jobs their
case will be considered entirely on the basis of such talents and qualifications,
rather than, for example, on the type of school attended or their parents’social
status. This requires, at the very least, an educational and social welfare system
which will train and provide for the less-advantaged so that they can really
compete on equal terms with those from more favourable backgrounds. While
no modern state can be said actually to achieve this goal, many seriously
attempt to do so, and all would probably pay lip service to the idea. Increasingly
governments committed to equality of opportunity plans are finding their
strategies thwarted not by non-compliance by institutions, but by a lack of
enthusiasm for advanced education on the part of those the governments seek
to help. Thirdly, the most stringent version of egalitarianism would require not
just equal opportunities, but actual equality in material welfare and, perhaps,
political weight. Such total equality is not regarded as even theoretically
possible, let alone desirable, by most states. In communist societies, where it
had been accepted as an aim, it invariably became conspicuously absent (see
new class). Most non-Marxist thinkers argue that such an equality could only
be attained by extensive loss of liberty, and would be economically inefficient
since it would provide no material incentives to effort.
Election
An election is a method of choosing among candidates for some post or office,
and elections have become the only fully respectable method for selecting
political leaders and governors throughout the world. Even a country which is
Election