Lecture 14 - Review Lecture PDF

PPG1 2024-25 B. Netelenbos LECTURE 14 – REVIEW LECTURE 1 The lectures Introduction What is politics? What is power? Part 1: The state The institutional structure of politics How is political power organised? The org...

PPG1 2024-25 B. Netelenbos LECTURE 14 – REVIEW LECTURE 1 The lectures Introduction What is politics? What is power? Part 1: The state The institutional structure of politics How is political power organised? The organisation of domination – power over… Where do these institutions come from? Part 2: Political processes Who rules? How are decisions being made? Political influence – power to… And the need for more critical perspectives…. 2 INTRODUCTION 3 Lecture 1 - What is politics? The political condition What is political science? – Confronted with pressing problems, and in – Domain approach circumstances of uncertainty and conflict, politics a separate domain of human activity concerns the question: “What must we do?” The state and its institutions Action; Collective action; Necessity; Conflict (reasonable people can disagree) – Aspect approach – The burden of judgment A specific aspect of human activity The decision could have been otherwise; freedom The distribution of power in social systems, institutions (will/power); what is a reasonable decision? and relationships Political – Scientific methods “distort [the world] into clarity” “What shall we do when something has to be done that (Law 2004, p.2) affects us all, we wish to be reasonable, yet we disagree on means and ends and are without independent grounds for making the choice?” (Barber 1984:120-1) Antipolitical “Where there is certain knowledge, true science, or absolute right, there is no conflict that cannot be resolved by reference to the unity of truth, and thus there is no necessity for politics” (Barber 1984:129) “Where Reason claims to speak, politics is silent” (Barber 1988:205) 4 Question Barber separates reasonability and absence of independent grounds in his text. Did you combine them in your lecture? 5 Lecture 2 Causal vs Social Power Exercising vs Holding power Others as objects – power is the production of – Exercising power: ‘power to’ causal effects How to modify choice alternatives, to pursue Others as ‘free subjects’ – to structure choice your own goals and will alternatives; the structuring of freedom Use/Threat of force; The river metaphor: causal or social Manipulation/promises; Legitimation/decisions Signification /advice The infrastructure of everyday life – Holding power: ‘power over’ What structures choice alternatives? power has effect without being exercised – Lion (superior means of violence); The physical setting; interest constellations; social norms; facts – Foxes (economic domination; controlling access); – Bears (the right to decide; shadow of hierarchy); – Owls (closing of possible worlds; language of truth) Economic vs. Vulnerabilities 6 PART 1. THE MODERN STATE 7 Part 1 – The modern state 3: The Sovereign state 6: The nation state – Defining the state – What is nationalism? – The rise of state sovereignty – An invented tradition: myths & rituals – As a function of war-making – Imagined community: technologies 4: The Liberal state 7: The Bureaucratic state – Taming the sovereign state – The historical struggle – The Bureaucratic machine – Liberalism – The rise of the professional – The rule of law 5: The Democratic state 8: The Modern State – The belief in maakbaarheid – The rise of the popular sovereign – JC Scott’s metaphor of forestry – Taming the popular sovereign: – The limitations of maakbaarheid Representative democracy 8 Lecture 3 – The Sovereign State Defining the state The historical rise of the state – Claiming sovereignty – Tilly: As a function of war-making The sole right to establish, interpret or recognise rules – The struggle with rival ‘lions’ and ‘bears’ The right to demand and enforce obedience , with violence if need be – Within a territory Beyond Hobbes and the State – Ostrom Thomas Hobbes – Characteristics of Collective action dilemma Excludability, extractability, asymmetry – Social contract theory – Alternative beyond the state vs. state of nature – The rational foundation of states – Different behavioural types changes the nature of the Obligation to recognize sovereignty problem – The nature of sovereignty Problem of information and uncertainty Claim to sole authority – Institutional solution for trust building The source of public order Self-governing institutions Resting on monopoly of violence Different kinds of sovereignty Internal External Popular Traditional / Modern 9 Lecture 4 – The Liberal State How to tame the sovereign The problem of arbitrary power The problem of the Janus Face of the state The problem of domination The solution: Government by law – John Locke And separation of powers Social Contract Theory Negative liberty; Prepolitical justice The ideal of the rule of law Conditional contract; right to resist Joseph Raz Its guiding principle: non-arbitrariness; If the law demands obedience, law must be capable of being Reflected in liberal revolutions obeyed – In the USA / France The tax issue Some major principles – And its principles Evaluation of the rule of law Freedom = Property – Negative virtue Justice = Negative liberty – Procedural vs. instrumental rationality Justice is pre-political Limited government Paradox: The liberal ruling elite Constitutional government How can champions of liberty be so illiberal? – Civil Rights – Public accountability Or: why are especially liberal countries so illiberal? The right to resist Philosophy vs. History Revolutionary vs. Reactionary force 10 Lecture 5 – The Democratic State The threat of democracy 2) Madison & the American Rev. The ambiguity of liberalism – ‘we the people’ Not take away the causes but its effects The liberal puzzle: to extent political participation without upending liberal (unequal) society The social question – Political Fragmentation Constitutional checks & balances And pluralist (!) society Two Solutions Not a singular interest, but a balance of interest 1) Rousseau & The French Rev. – Representation Take away its causes 1) total exclusion of the people Virtuous & homogeneous community 2) Aristocratic institutions: election, professional, The will of the majority reveals the interest of all without consultation or constraint – That already exists – The minority is wrong Robespierre & the reign of Terror – A seat of reason – Virtue vs. Corruption An elected aristocracy – In name of the true people against the enemies of Trial by debate th people Electoral accountability & public opinion 11 … 1. The problem of populism Models of democracy – Pragmatic face Ancient model (democratic institutions) Conflict resolution; balance & compromises; reasonable Electoral democracy – Redemptive face Theatre model The promise of democracy: problems will be solved Popular / Redemptive model (Rousseau) when the people that matters into their own hands Populism The people reveal what is right and true Polyarchy – Populism when pragmatic face gets the overhand – too much compromise, experts, interest organisations, etc. A politics with specific characteristics 2. The problem of accountability – Democracy as theatre Schumpeter: the theatre metaphor Political reality is malleable 12 Question – If you could explain the difference between the popular government and the democratic government – I don’t fully understand the two faces of democracy with the redemptive and pragmatic face. In the text they talk about if a democracy is too pragmatic it is a recipe for corruption. I don’t really understand that part, how the faces need each other and what the difference is. Because I feel like they’re quite similar. Moreover, how populism rises if there is a gap between them? 13 Lecture 6 – The nation state What is nationalism? 2. Imagined Communities – Defining the nation – What makes it possible to imagine the nation? “an imagined political community - and imagined as 1. Technology both inherently limited and sovereign” 2. Representation – Analysing national myths 3. Imagination Rituals and symbols Journals, Novels, Colonial census; mapmaking The great Paradox – Sociology and the rituals of power Claim to antiquity, but modern phenomenon Artificial political ties Two explanations A religious analysis of politics – Durkheim 1. Invented Tradition A functionalist analysis of society Military, conservative & reactionary force Religion is but one way through which society can Elite projects maintain itself Invention of myths, symbols and rituals Whether society takes the guise of a God or of a Nation Society must reproduce itself, through collective rituals 14 Lecture 7 – Bureaucratic State Bureaucracy in our story so far… Some characteristics of bureaucr. – From indirect to direct rule – Insulated from both politics and public – From traditional to modern sovereignty 1) Professional Authority – Surveillance, information & control (Foucault, JC Scott, Anderson) 2) Centralized Control 3) Functional Differentiation Modernity is Bureaucracy – Yet, pretty difficult to define and understand… Modernity as the rise of the professional – Weber: a religious analysis of politics – So we take the historical route: – Three experiences of the divine: tradition, charisma and vocation – Bureaucracy as the outcome of political struggle Authority of priests, prophets and saints Saints: trying to find meaning with intellectual means Historical struggle – Vocation and Bureaucracy – The political machine (patronage) The conditions of contemporary professionals Vicious circle Duty for duty’s sake – The professional reformers The professional The rise of modern sovereignty Discussion of Institutionalizing reform “In the modern conception, state sovereignty is fully, flatly, and evenly Solution floating around… operative over each square centimetre of a legally demarcated – The rational organisation territory. But in the older imagining, where states were defined by centres” (Anderson 2006 :19) Efficiency The Grid vs. the Light Bulb (centres) Equity 15 Question – the concept of the bulb and the grid from Anderson in his concept of Imagined Communities: concretely what both these concepts mean and imply in the bigger picture of Anderson’s concept 16 Lecture 8 – The modern state The belief in maakbaarheid JC Scott: the metaphor of forestry Glorification of science – Legibility Optimism & Progress The will to power; The conquest of illegibility Rationalised state power (bureaucracy) State building project “a system of knowledge spun in the webs of power” Example of Nagele – Simplification Mapping: representation of the city in The will to knowledge; ‘To distort the world scientific terms into clarity’ Optimalization of human potential that is only A map is always biased, and determines how weakly present in the City we ‘see’ the world – Manipulation The dream of perfection; The rationalisation of society To optimize reality in light of systems of knowledge 17 … Limitations of rational planning Disasters or Emancipation? – 1) Dystopia – The problem is Anything that doesn't fit the map is lost Not science as such. Not planning as – the human measure such. Not the state as such The means become the end (disenchantment) – The problem is Scientific hubris legitimizing and – 2) Limits to ‘maakbaarheid’ depoliticizing radical state Scientific hubris interventions The world is not empty By excluding other forms of knowledge, The world is not simple voices, interests and/or values – i.e. It talks back as problems are difficult to politics ‘tame’ or ‘isolate’ 18 Question – the difference between the bureaucratic state and the modernist state 19 Our story of the modern state A story of the rise of sovereignty Modern Foundations of state power – A story of warmaking Monopoly on superior violence Hobbes’ theory of sovereignty Universal Rights & Freedoms – Modern sovereignty Political constitution Bureaucratically organized: the grid Popular Sovereignty / Nationalism Representative Democracy – Popular sovereignty Science Liberalism, Democracy, Nationalism Bureaucracy A story about contradictions of modernity A story of the rise of the modern state Janus face of the state: – From historical struggles – Pacification and the Leviathan Liberals: Freedom and Property – Violence and Moral order Lawyers: the rule of law Universal Freedom and Exploitative politics Liberal elites: representative democracy Civic and Ethnic nationalism The nationalists: the nation state Reasoned philosophy and Rituals of power Professionals: Rationalising policy and state organisation Democracy as the exclusion of the people Scientists: the old dream abolishing politics Democracy as the seat of reason vs. a house of mirrors The inherent limitations of ‘the intellectual method’ Modern Science and its limitations 20 PART 2: WHO RULES? 21 Part 2 – Political Processes 9. Who Rules? The 1st face of power 12. Who Rules? The 3rd face of power – Interests organisations – The power of ideology – Power as influence – Naturalisation of domination & – The garbage can model of policy making exploitation – False consciousness & Objective interests 10. Who Rules? The 2nd face of power? – The power elite 13. Politics in everyday life – Power as non-decision making – Productive power, not repressive power – The suppression of conflict / Organised – Gender and Power Bias 11. Politics and Group conflict – Social Cleavages & the problem of order – Culture wars & Polarization 22 Lecture 9 – The first face of power How to explain policy? – The problem stream – The rational model Struggle for attention The policy cycle Agenda of media & politics Empirically inaccurate Struggle over problem definition Strategic action (influence, power to) – Political models Helicopter: random, chaotic – The policy stream Driver’s seat: streams of action, with their Puzzling: work of experts own logic – Metaphor of the primeval soup Solutions float around government: work of policy entrepreneurs Kingdon’s Garbage Can – Political Stream – Things are stuck (muddling through) Powering; Pressure system – Policy window Force field of organised interests Hot issue; momentum; negotiations; Strategic action (influence; power to) bandwagon effect The policy entrepreneur: the surfer metaphor 23 … Robert Dahl: Who Governs? – Pluralism: pressure not command – Two models of democracy Electoral vs. Polyarchy Active participation and responsive gov. – Democracy and Inequality? Power as influence: resources Potential vs. Actual power Cumulative vs. Dispersed inequality Civic vs Political humans – An empirical question 24 Lecture 10 – The second face of power An empirical question? Organization = mobilization of bias The end of ideology – 1) Institutional – the rules of the game: The revolutions of the 60s/70s issues are organized in – Eruption of unconventional politics Path dependency – institutional ‘lock in’ – New values, issues and conflicts Elite network research The pluralist system is not open and – Mills: the power elite responsive: why? – ‘Tight patterns of circulation and association’ – 2) Strategic –issues are organized out Democracy or Oligarchy? nondecision-making power The system is biased Strategic use of power to keep out Gillens & Page Conflicts, actors or cooptation 25 Lecture 11 – Politics and Conflict The problem of order Trying to make some sense of What holds democracy together? Rising authoritarianism Against the backdrop of Fascism and Communism Societal polarization Bending institutions to the breaking point Insights from (neo)pluralism – Conditions of moderation 1. Why does it lead to so much polarization? Responsive politics – Polarization as Elite strategy Leads to cross-cutting cleavages The USA and the Race issue – Social Cleavage Theory The original sin, compromise undone Social structural divisions (of modernity) Radicalization of GOP Translated into social cleavage through poiltical mobilization With its own political and social identity 2. Why does authoritarianism resonate? – Dominant left right cleavage – Inglehart& Norris: gravedigger thesis; economic inequality; new Key Economic Issue (state/market) & class voting economic coalition hindered by ‘emotionally charged issues’ – A new cultural cleavage – Hochschild: the great paradox; crossing the empathy wall; deep Silent revolution: postmaterialism & backlash story; economic & values Class Realignment 3. What can we do about it? Embracing the political condition Hochschild: a story of learning; empathy Learning institutions, from model 1 to model 2 Different skills, different institutions? 26 Lecture 12 – The Third face of power Ruling class in Marxism False consciousness Economic domination & exploitation – People might be mistaken about their interest: i.e. the Objective class contradictions conflict that remains hidden Everyday consciousness: 19th century working class, Colonial subjects, Poisoned community; Estate Tax Repeal, How does the ruling class rule? Working-class in Kansas Milliband: elite networks Power of ideology: universal liberal justice; racial Poulantzas: structural relations: state is relative autonomous superiority; ignorance, framing & manipulation; mystification of class relations Offe: structural relations: contradiction of the state – Method of Ideologiekritik To hide, conceal, mystify class state Marx – Ruling Ideas of the ruling class Power of ideology Gramsci – decentred cultural analysis To accept their role in the existing order of things as Example of Rosalind Gill Legitimate or Natural “their mental representations of the social relations around Problems them systematically conceal or obscure the realities of subordination, exploitation, and domination those relations – What is ‘objective’? embody” (Little n.d.) But not about Truth, but about factuality; Not everything is reasonable – Paternalism Modernity: to think autonomously; positive freedom: to emancipate from history, nature, and the passions Forced to be free? Who speaks for whom? Orthodox Marxism: the actual vs. the True working class But: Reasonable Paternalism? Academically & Politically 27 Question – regarding neo-marxism and what exactly we are supposed to know about it, in regard to the content of lecture 12 – I would like to ask whether, for the exam, we're supposed to know only the theories of the authors of the readings, or if we're also expected to know the theories/thoughts of other authors that are mentioned in the slides. For example, for Lecture 12, the readings are of Frank and Lukes' works. Yet, are we also supposed to remember - again - the thoughts or theories of Marx, Gramsci, etc who were in the slides? – I don’t fully grasp the difference between positive and negative liberty 28 What is freedom? Negative Freedom Positive freedom Freedom is bounded by the freedom of the – Freedom is autonomy / emancipation other To be an autonomous, self-directing human – A space fenced off against unjust interference being; – Whatever you do within that space is up to – My actions are my own: Not governed by you necessity, bondage or ignorance – You can judge best what is good for you – ““The 'positive' sense of the word 'liberty' derives from the wish on the part of the No conception of the good life individual to be his own master. … I wish to be – “society, being composed of a plurality of a subject, not an object; to be moved by persons, each with his own aims, interests, reasons, by conscious purposes, which are my own, not by causes which affect me… from and conceptions of the good, is best arranged outside. … as if I were a thing, or an animal, or when it is governed by principles that do not a slave incapable of playing a human role” themselves presuppose any particular conception of the good…” (Sandel, 1982: 1) (Berlin 1958:8) A minimal state – Freedom entails a vision of the good life What does it take to lead a fulfilling life? NOT economic domination, exploitation, poverty, etc. Lecture 13 – Politics and Everyday life 1970s: Panopticon – Society is repressive; identity the road to freedom – Technology of surveillance Sexual revolution: freeing one’s true self Disciplinary power Politics of difference: emancipation based upon Permanent, automatic, individualized essential group identity, to become who we truly are. – Laboratory Normative power of Science This is an illusion Experts in normality identity is the product of a system of power (e.g. your Knowledge spun in a web of power identity as a student: who am i? what are my goals and – Self-examination values?) Productive power Emancipation from the dominant system based upon The birth of the subject or soul your ‘true identity’ only reproduces the categories of Turn gaze inwards: the self an object of study domination and control The self is not a stable foundation for critique = The Wollstonecraft dilemma Foucault's lessons Disciplinary society Decentred power Knowledge/power There is no outside of power 30 … (short history of feminism) Rosalind Gill Ideologiekritik – Power of ideology: it hides: – Marxist feminism: against gendered economic Commercialism (readers are products being sold) exploitation Politics, power, inequality: all individual not social – Danger of paternalism & Problem of Universalism transformation Exploiting contradictions between fiction and reality Male domination The politics of difference – Radical feminism: Problem of universalism (cooptation) Emancipate as women against male domination – Dominant gender norms Problem of universal feminism: intersectionality Stereotypes, heteronormativity, racism – Danger of essentialism & political fragmentation (or: totalizing subjective experience) – But also Ambiguities Text vs. Practice Cognition vs. Desires Foucauldian feminists (e.g. Judith Butler) What is ‘true’ feminisms /femininity? Who speaks on behalf – Against essentialism of all women? The self is not a stable foundation for critique But rather the thing to escape from It is the result of power systems – To open up, to enlarge freedom to complicate and pluralize through ‘doing gender differently’ in subversive performances; spaces of struggle and rearticulation of identities – Problem of relativism & Lack of political program 31 The story of part 2: Three dimensions of power Different research questions And hence, different answers Different perspective on political conflict Overt, covert and absent (latent) Different perspectives on power Influence, Non-decision, Ideology Different ‘visibility’ of power From easy to see (and measure) To difficult to observe (waiting to be unmasked) 32 1st dimension of power Main question: Who rules? (Dahl) Who has power to influence decision-making? Overt conflict between competing organised interests Power Influence on decision-making – Political, Problem and Policy stream Intentional & strategic use of power resources Visible power Conflicting organised interests, behaviour and outcome 33 2nd dimension of power Addition to first Main question: What explains the exclusion of interests, conflicts and actors from decision-making arenas? Covert conflict Conflict remains outside the political system Power is to keep conflict out of politics Conflict is suppressed, excluded, suffocated Power – Strategic explanation Non-decision-making: strategic and intentional use of power resources by insiders – Institutional explanation Non-intentional Path-dependency /Elite networks – Structural explanations Non-intentional Nature of the modern state (policy constraint / Privileged position of business interests) More difficult to see non-decisions and covert conflict Things are not on the agenda 34 Interpreting Lukes Adding Complexity! – For Lukes: Institutionalised worldviews seem to belong to 3rd dimension 3rd dimension is indeed about knowledge and beliefs – For Benno: Research question is leading organising principle – suppression of conflict vs. absence of conflict – Institutionalised frames vs. ideology 35 Question – How is neo-pluralism connected to the first and second face of power? 36 3rd dimension Addition to first and second Main question: What prevents a conflict of interest to become a political conflict at all? What explains the inactivity of actors, despite their ‘real’ interests? Latent conflicts There is no conflict, it remains latent only “Power is to prevent conflict” (Lukes) Power Power of Ideology: naturalization & legitimation Works through the decentralized, social production of dominant knowledge and beliefs Power is very difficult to see As there is no conflict; Actors are unconscious of their interests Needs to be revealed by critical scholars 37 5. THE EXAM 38 How To Learn? Main vs. Side Issues Lectures (what is the main story?) Reading Guide (Canvas) Readings – How do they fit the main story? – What is the argumentation structure of the reading? – Try to reproduce the main story in your own words Do notice key concepts What is the role of examples? 39 How to give good answers The meaning of life is 42 We are interested in how you arrive at your conclusions. It is not bingo Please be precise with your formulations and write STRUCTURED answers with clear points. Do not just provide a summation, but EXPLAIN your answer. Use words like ‘therefore’, ‘although’, ‘first…; second….’, ‘to sum up…’, ‘even though’ Do not turn your answers into a puzzle. READ the questions carefully before writing down your answers What are the main concepts in the question? Did you explain and discuss all of them? Consider making notes before writing down your answer. 40 … Do NOT give a minimal answer But show Off! However, do not chatter on And mind your time and wordcount You do not have to reference. – Just say things like ‘as Dahl argued…’ or, ‘as the pluralist claimed…’ 41 Where when how? World Fashion Center West – 16:00-18:00 – Closed book – Digital Exam – How to get there: 42  Next time: FINAL EXAM!! Good Luck. Work consistently. Don’t stress. You can do it. 43