Defining Politics

Defining Politics

• Politics involves competition between opposing forces, reflecting diverse opinions, preferences, needs, or interests.
• Politics also includes cooperation, where people work together to achieve goals through collective action.
• Politics is the activity through which people make, preserve, and amend the general rules under which they live.
• Politics always involves conflict and cooperation.
• Disagreement arises from rival opinions, different wants, competing needs, and opposing interests.
• People must collaborate to influence or uphold the rules.
• The heart of politics is often seen as conflict resolution, reconciling rival views or competing interests.
• Politics is the search for conflict resolution, but not all conflicts can be resolved.
• Diversity and scarcity make politics an inevitable feature of human existence.
• Clarifying politics is difficult due to associations in everyday language and the disagreement among authorities on the subject.
• Politics is often seen negatively, associated with trouble, disruption, deceit, manipulation, corruption, and lies.
• Politics can be defined as the exercise of power, the science of government, the making of collective decisions, or the allocation of scarce resources.
• A definition of politics is "the making, preserving and amending of general social rules."
• Politics can be an "essentially contested" concept with many acceptable meanings.
• Two approaches to defining politics: politics as an arena or location, and politics as a process or mechanism.

What is Politics?

• Politics as an arena or location makes behaviour 'political' because of where it takes place.
• Politics as a process or mechanism identifies 'political' behaviour by its distinctive characteristics or qualities.
• The definition of politics is worth pursuing because it exposes disagreements in the academic study of the subject.
• Politics is derived from 'polis', the Greek word for 'city-state'.
• Politics can be understood to refer to the affairs of the polis.
• 'Polity' refers to a group of people working together as an organized political entity.
• A modern definition is "what concerns the polity or state."
• Common associations with politics include governments, elected officials, campaigning, and public issues.
• Traditional academic political science focuses on the personnel and machinery of government.
• David Easton defined politics as the 'authoritative allocation of values'.
• Politics is the processes through which government responds to pressures, allocating benefits, rewards, or penalties.
• 'Authoritative values' are widely accepted and binding within society.
• This definition associates politics with 'policy', formal decisions which establish a plan of action for the community.
• This definition narrows politics, referring to cabinet rooms, legislative chambers, government departments and similar and the activities of politicians, civil servants and lobbyists.
• Most institutions and social activities exist 'outside' politics; businesses, schools, community groups, families are 'non-political'.
• This state-bound activity ignores international or global influences.
• Politics is also those actors within government who are ideologically motivated; politicians are described as 'political'.
• Civil servants are "non-political" when they act neutrally.
• Politics links affairs of the state to negative images with politicians seen as power-seeking hypocrites.
• Negative views can be traced back to Niccolò Machiavelli, who described political leaders using cunning, manipulation and cruelty to maintain power.
• 'Office politics' and 'politicking' are derogatory phrases.

Politics as Public Affairs

• Politics as public affairs moves beyond government to 'public life'.
• The 'political' and 'non-political' coincide with the division between a public and private sphere.
• Aristotle stated that 'man is by nature a political animal', living the 'good life' within a political community.
• Politics is an ethical activity concerned with creating a 'just society' as the 'master science'.
• The line between 'public' and 'private' can be complex.
• The public realm traditionally conforms to the division between state and civil society.
• State institutions are 'public', responsible for the organization and welfare of community life, and funded by taxation.
• Civil society consists of institutions such as family, kinship groups, private businesses, trade unions and community groups.
• These are 'private' as they are funded by individuals or groups towards specific interests.
• Politics is restricted to the activities of the state and the responsibilities exercised by public bodies.
• The economic, social, domestic, personal, cultural and artistic spheres are 'non-political'.
• An alternative public/private divide can be defined as that between the 'political' and 'the personal'.
• Civil society contains a range of institutions considered 'public' in the sense of open institutions accessible to the public.
• This expands politics, transferring areas like the economy to the public realm.
• Politics can be found in the marketplace and workplace.
• This view remains restricted as politics does not infringe on 'personal' affairs and institutions.
• The State is the apparatus of government.
• Civil society is made of autonomous bodies -- businesses, trade unions, clubs, families.
• The public realm is politics, commerce, work, art, culture.
• The personal realm is family and domestic life.
• The notion that politics excludes the personal has been challenged by feminist thinkers.
• Gender inequality has been preserved as the sexual division of labour has been seen as 'natural' instead of 'political'.
• The public sphere has been the preserve of men, with women confined to a private existence, centred on the family.
• If politics takes place only in the public sphere, gender equality is not politically important.
• Radical feminists argue this excludes the core processes through which male domination and female subordination occur.
• Conditioning of gender roles, distribution of housework, and politics of personal and sexual conduct are excluded from political analysis.
• Viewing politics as a 'public' activity can have positive and negative connotations.
• It is seen as noble and enlightened in the Aristotelian tradition.
• Hannah Arendt argued that politics is the most important form of human activity.

Politics as Compromise and Consensus

• This conception of politics relates to how decisions are made.
• Politics is resolving conflict through compromise, conciliation and negotiation, instead of force.
• It is described as 'the art of the possible'.
• A 'political' solution implies peaceful debate and arbitration.
• Bernard Crick stated that Politics is the activity by which differing interests within a given unit of rule are conciliated by giving them a share in power.
• Key to politics is a wide dispersal of power.
• Conflict is inevitable, social groups must be conciliated, and not crushed.
• The solution to the problem of order which chooses conciliation rather than violence and coercion.
• It reflects a commitment to liberal-rationalist principles.
• It is based on faith in debate and discussion, or in the belief that society is characterized by consensus rather than conflict.
• Disagreements can be resolved without resorting to intimidation and violence.
• Critics suggest that Crick's conception of politics is biased towards Western pluralist democracies.
• It equates politics with electoral choice and party affiliation.
• It has little to say about one-party state, theocracies, or military regimes.
• This view can have an unmistakably positive character.
• Compromise means concessions made by all sides, leaving no one perfectly satisfied.
• Politics can be a civilizing force; people should respect politics and be prepared to engage in the political community.
• Politics is necessarily difficult - listening carefully, weighing options and building consensus is not easy.
• Frustration with this process may contribute to popular disenchantment with democratic politics.
• This frustration is expressed in the rise of populism and in a style that disdains compromise.

Politics as Power

• This fourth definition is the broadest and most radical.
• Politics is at work in all social activities and every corner of human existence.
• Politics is at the heart of all collective social activity, formal and informal, public and private, in all human groups, institutions and societies.
• Politics takes place at every level of social interaction, with families, friends, nations, etc.
• Politics is always about the production, distribution and use of resources.
• Politics is about diversity and conflict, but the essential ingredient is the existence of scarcity.
• Resources available to satisfy human needs are always limited.
• Politics can be seen as a struggle over scarce resources.
• Power is the ability to decide how those scarce resources are allocated.
• Power is the ability to achieve a desired outcome, through whatever means.
• Power is the ability to influence the behavior of others in a manner not of their choosing or having 'power over' people.
• More narrowly, power may be the ability to punish or reward.
• Authority is the legitimate or accepted use of power.
• Most contemporary political battles are for authority.
• Winning elections and securing public favor give leaders the perceived right to make decisions.
• Power is linked to authority and sustained by being in office, or having public support.
• Advocates of this view of politics include feminists and Marxists.
• Modern feminists seek to expand the arenas in which politics can be seen to take place.
• The radical feminist slogan is 'the personal is the political'.
• Kate Millett defined politics as 'power-structured relationships, arrangements whereby one group of persons is controlled by another'.
• She argues that male dominance is rewarded and female passivity encouraged.
• This leads to perceived male authority that underpins the structures of society.
• Marxists use 'politics' to refer to the apparatus of the state.
• The Communist Manifesto refers to political power as 'the organized power of one class for oppressing another'.
• For Marx, law and culture are a 'superstructure' distinct from the economic 'base'.
• Political power is rooted in the class system.
• Lenin stated that 'politics is the most concentrated form of economics'.
• Marxists believe that socio-economic relationships constitute the heart of politics.
• In these views, politics is about oppression and subjugation.
• Radical feminists hold that society is patriarchal, with women systematically subordinated.
• Marxists traditionally argued that politics is characterized by the exploitation of the poorer classes by the wealthier ones.
• Politics is also seen as an emancipating force, a means through which injustice and domination can be challenged.
• Marx predicted that class exploitation would be overthrown, and radical feminists want gender relations reordered.
• Politics as power is not an inevitable feature of social existence; feminists look to an end to 'sexual politics'.
• Marxists believe that 'class politics' will end with a classless communist society.
• The aim is the withering away' of the state.
• Power is exercised whenever A gets B to do something that B would not otherwise have done.
• Power as decision-making consists of conscious actions that influence the content of decisions.
• It influences outcomes, such as a getting a law passed or shaping how a budget gets allocated.
• Power as agenda setting shapes which decisions get made in the first place, and how they are made.
• Power as thought control influences another by shaping what he or she thinks, wants or needs.
• Authority is legitimate power.
• Authority is based on an acknowledged duty to obey rather than coercion.
• Authority is power cloaked in legitimacy or rightfulness.
• Weber distinguished between three kinds of authority: traditional, charismatic and legal-rational.
• Traditional authority is rooted in history; charismatic authority stems from personality; legal-rational authority is grounded in a set of impersonal rules.

Rise of the Populists

• Populism is a heady mix of nationalism, isolationism, protectionism and conservatism.
• Populist leaders have triumphed in various countries.
• Populism is politics of 'the people' in contrast to the political establishment and is more about action.
• Appeals to the disenfranchised.
• It is an important check on the power of the elite.
• Populist leaders may have contradictory positions.
• Issues that drive popular discontent are wealth disparity, transformation of the economy ans changing social values.
• Populism does offer an important voice to those who are ignored by the media and mainstream political parties.
• Populism can be whipped up by ambitious leaders who are seeking easy routes to power.
• Populists often have autocratic tendencies, transgressing the democratic norms they are supposed to be upholding.
• Populist movements tend to be better at vocalizing problems than solving them.
• Many of the issues which drive populardiscontent in contemporary politics are complex issues.
• In recent years, prominent populists have lost re-election, and populist movements are falling from the mainstream.

Studying Politics

• Controversy about the nature of political activity is matched by controversy about the nature of politics as an academic discipline.
• One of the most ancient spheres of intellectual inquiry, politics was originally seen as an arm of philosophy, history or law.
• From the late nineteenth century onwards, this philosophical emphasis was gradually displaced by an attempt to turn politics into a scientific discipline.
• The 1950s and 1960s rejected the earlier tradition as meaningless metaphysics.
• Enthusiasm for a strict science of politics has waned, with recognition of political values and normative theories.
• The traditional search for universal values has been abandoned.
• The discipline embraces a range of theoretical approaches and a variety of schools of analysis.
• The origins of political analysis date back to Ancient Greece and 'political philosophy'.
• This involved a preoccupation with ethical or normative questions.
• Plato and Aristotle are identified as the founding philosophers.