POLS 101 Week 1: Introduction to Politics

Concept of Power and the State

• Power is a defining element of political science, affecting resource distribution, international interactions, conflict resolution, and individual/group interests.
• Force is the exercise of power through physical means.
• Persuasion is a nonphysical type of power where the agent's intentions and desires are made known to the agent over whom power is exercised.
• Manipulation is the nonphysical use of power, concealing the agent's aims and intentions.
• Exchange is a type of power involving incentives, where one agent gives another agent an item in return for another item.

The State

• The state has been understood in different ways: as a collection of institutions, a territorial unit, a philosophical idea, or an instrument of coercion/oppression.
• Idealist, functionalist, and organisational approaches have been used to understand the state.
• The state is sovereign, with institutions that are recognizably public.
• The state is an exercise in legitimation and an instrument of domination.
• The state is a territorial association.

Types of States

• Unitary states concentrate power at the central, or national, level (e.g., the United Kingdom, France, China, and Japan).
• Federal states create different divisions and levels of government and divide power among those divisions and levels (e.g., the United States, Germany, India, Canada, Brazil, and Mexico).

Government and the State

• The state is more extensive than government.
• The state is a continuing, even permanent, entity.
• Government is the means through which state authority is brought to bear.
• The state exercises impersonal authority.
• The state, in theory at least, represents the permanent interest of society.

Rival Theories of the State

The Pluralist State

• Rooted in liberalism, dating back to 17th-century theorists such as Thomas Hobbes and John Locke.
• Seeks to establish the grounds of political obligation.
• A social contract is a voluntary agreement amongst individuals through which an organised society or state is brought into existence.
• The state is a neutral umpire or referee.
• Power, in liberal democracy, is widely and evenly dispersed.

The Capitalist State

• Marxist notion: the state is not a neutral umpire, but an instrument of class oppression.
• The state is determined by an economic base, which is the real foundation of social life.
• The state can only be understood in the context of power inequality.

The Leviathan State

• The image of the state as a self-serving monster intent on expansion and aggrandizement.
• Associated with the New Right, who argue that the expansion of the state threatens individual liberty and economic security.

The Patriarchal State

• Influenced by feminist theory.
• Liberal feminists believe that sexual or gender equality can be brought about through incremental reform.
• Radical feminists argue that power reflects a deeper structure of oppression in the form of patriarchy.
• Instrumentalists argue that the state is the instrument of male domination used to maintain patriarchy.

Roles of the State

Developmental States

• Intervene in the economic sphere to promote industrial growth and economic development.
• Forge close partnerships with business, often with conservative and nationalist interests.
• Practiced in countries such as Japan, France, Austria, and Germany.

Social-Democratic States

• Intervene to bring about broader social restructuring, focusing on fairness, equality, and social justice.
• Often practiced in conjunction with the developmental model (e.g., in Sweden and Austria).
• Focus on equitable and fair distribution of wealth rather than wealth creation.

Collectivised States

• Emphasize state control of economic life through central control.
• Practiced in former USSR and eastern European countries.
• Informed by socialist preference for collective ownership.

Totalitarian States

• Have comprehensive control over all aspects of human existence.
• Examples include Hitler's Germany and Stalin's USSR.
• Characterized by surveillance, terroristic policing, and ideological manipulation and control.

The State and Globalisation

• Globalisation has weakened states, making them redundant.
• States are primary determinants of what happens within their national boundaries.
• Globalisation has brought qualitative changes to the role and significance of the state.
• Migration and cultural globalisation have made state borders permeable.
• Economic globalisation has led to the rise of supra-territoriality.