Politics 5th Edition PDF by Andrew Heywood

‘Politics was the first textbook I bought and read as an undergraduate and I have seen it benefit many more students since. Successive editions have provided a brilliant foundation for those eager to learn, engaging them with the joy of new understandings of complex political phenomena.’...

‘Politics was the first textbook I bought and read as an undergraduate and I have seen it benefit many more students since. Successive editions have provided a brilliant foundation for those eager to learn, engaging them with the joy of new understandings of complex political phenomena.’ – Matthew Ryan, University of Southampton, UK ‘This comprehensive and coherent textbook provides the best available introduction to the study of politics. Andrew Heywood organizes the material into meaningful categories, explores the major disciplinary debates with remarkable clarity, and carefully selects detailed examples that greatly enhance understanding. The book is highly accessible, and yet also sophisticated – students are well advised to hang on to their copies for future reference. The fifth edition, meanwhile, seamlessly integrates such hot-button issues as populism, post-truth politics, and the growing prominence of autocracy, and manages overall to capture the dynamic character of politics in a transitional era.’ – Bruce Morrison, Western University, Canada ‘As with every edition that has preceded this latest, updated edition, Andrew Heywood manages to render complex concepts, ideas, institutions and debates accessible and engaging for students. This is a comprehensive and incredibly useful resource for both student and educator alike.’ – Narelle Miragliotta, Monash University, Australia ‘Heywood’s Politics is by far the best introductory text to political science currently on the market. It does an excellent job of introducing vital concepts for the study of politics in an accessible, easy to grasp format.’ – Johannes van Gorp, American University of Sharjah, UAE ‘A stellar textbook that covers the essential introductory topics for first- year students while at the same time delves into contentious contemporary issues. The fifth edition includes a new thought-provoking final chapter that addresses the wave of anti-establishment fervour circulating in Western liberal democracies. Students who study political science are looking for answers and guidance in understanding today’s political disillusionment. Heywood’s text provides both and goes the extra mile by also discussing solutions with the clearest and most up-to-date advice on “mending politics”.’ – Roberta Haar, Maastricht University, the Netherlands ‘There is hardly a better textbook to approach the study of politics. This is an easy-to-read yet systematic and engaging introduction to political 2 science. This new edition has received a timely update and now covers topics such as populism, illiberal democracy and the crises of the EU. Heywood’s book is a key reference text that students should always keep on their desk for consultation as they progress through their degree in politics.’ – Edoardo Bressanelli, King’s College London, UK ‘Politics remains the text that still best hits the sweet spot between accessibility and academic sophistication.’ –Stephen Thornton, Cardiff University, UK ‘Thoughtfully organized, attractively presented, and eminently approachable, Heywood raises the bar for introductory politics texts. Instructors seeking a comprehensive overview of key concepts, theories, scholars, events, and political actors will find everything they need and more in this thoroughly updated edition of Politics.’ – Scott Fitzsimmons, University of Limerick, Ireland ‘This book is a marvel of erudition and compilation. It is accessible and user friendly. It remains the first stop for lecturers and students studying Politics.’ – Cillian McGrattan, University of Ulster, Ireland ‘Heywood’s Politics stands out as one of the most comprehensive and accessible textbooks in the market. Students will benefit especially from its illustrations of case studies and debates in politics.’ – James Wong, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong ‘The most versatile and rewarding foundational text for studying politics. Comprehensive in scope, packed with carefully crafted pedagogical features, and incorporating the latest scholarship, this edition is the ideal prompt for stimulating classroom discussions.’ – Andrew Glencross, Aston University, UK 3  POLITICS FIFTH EDITION ANDREW HEYWOOD 4 © Andrew Heywood, under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited 1997, 2002, 2007, 2013, 2019 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This edition published 2019 by RED GLOBE PRESS Previous editions published under the imprint PALGRAVE Red Globe Press in the UK is an imprint of Springer Nature Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of 4 Crinan Street, London, N1 9XW. Red Globe Press® is a registered trademark in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978–1–352–00548–6 hardback ISBN 978–1–352–00545–5 paperback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. 5 To Mark and Robin 6 BRIEF CONTENTS 1. WHAT IS POLITICS? 2. POLITICAL IDEAS AND IDEOLOGIES 3. POLITICS AND THE STATE 4. DEMOCRACY AND LEGITIMACY 5. REGIMES OF THE MODERN WORLD 6. NATIONS AND NATIONALISM 7. POLITICAL ECONOMY AND GLOBALIZATION 8. POLITICS, SOCIETY AND IDENTITY 9. POLITICAL CULTURE AND THE MEDIA 10. REPRESENTATION, ELECTIONS AND VOTING 11. PARTIES AND PARTY SYSTEMS 12. GROUPS, INTERESTS AND MOVEMENTS 13. CONSTITUTIONS, LAW AND JUDGES 14. POLITICAL EXECUTIVES AND LEADERSHIP 15. ASSEMBLIES 16. PUBLIC POLICY AND THE BUREAUCRACY 17. MULTILEVEL POLITICS 18. SECURITY: DOMESTIC AND INTERNATIONAL 19. WORLD ORDER AND GLOBAL GOVERNANCE 20. IS POLITICS BROKEN? 7 CONTENTS List of Illustrative Material Preface to the Fifth Edition Using This Book Guide to Key Features Guide to Website 1. WHAT IS POLITICS? Preview Key issues DEFINING POLITICS Politics as the art of government Politics as public affairs Politics as compromise and consensus Politics as power STUDYING POLITICS Approaches to the study of politics Concepts, models and theories POLITICS IN A GLOBAL AGE Beyond the domestic/international divide? Questions for discussion Further reading 2. POLITICAL IDEAS AND IDEOLOGIES Preview Key issues WHAT IS POLITICAL IDEOLOGY? CLASSICAL IDEOLOGICAL TRADITIONS Liberalism Conservatism Socialism OTHER IDEOLOGICAL TRADITIONS Anarchism Fascism Feminism Green ideology Cosmopolitanism Religious fundamentalism Populism Questions for discussion Further reading 3. POLITICS AND THE STATE 8  Preview Key issues DEFINING THE STATE Origins and development of the state Approaches to the state DEBATING THE STATE Rival theories of the state The role of the state ECLIPSE OF THE STATE? Decline and fall of the state Return of the state? Questions for discussion Further reading 4. DEMOCRACY AND LEGITIMACY Preview Key issues LEGITIMACY AND POLITICAL STABILITY Legitimizing power Legitimation crises and revolutions DEMOCRATIC LEGITIMACY Is democracy failing to deliver? Non-democratic legitimacy DEMOCRACY Understanding democracy Models of democracy Democracy in practice: rival views Towards cosmopolitan democracy? Questions for discussion Further reading 5. REGIMES OF THE MODERN WORLD Preview Key issues TRADITIONAL SYSTEMS OF REGIME CLASSIFICATION Why classify political regimes? Classical typologies The ‘three worlds’ typology MODERN SYSTEMS OF POLITICAL RULE Western liberal democracies Illiberal democracies East Asian regimes 9  Islamic regimes Military regimes Questions for discussion Further reading 6. NATIONS AND NATIONALISM Preview Key issues WHAT IS A NATION? Nations as cultural communities Nations as political communities VARIETIES OF NATIONALISM Liberal nationalism Conservative nationalism Expansionist nationalism Anti-colonial and postcolonial nationalism THE FUTURE OF NATIONALISM A world of nation-states Beyond nationalism? Questions for discussion Further reading 7. POLITICAL ECONOMY AND GLOBALIZATION Preview Key issues POLITICAL ECONOMY Approaches to political economy VARIETIES OF CAPITALISM Enterprise capitalism Social capitalism State capitalism Managed or unmanaged capitalism? GLOBALIZATION Understanding globalization The 2007–09 crisis and its legacy Backlash against globalization Questions for discussion Further reading 8. POLITICS, SOCIETY AND IDENTITY Preview Key issues POLITICS AND SOCIETY 10  From industrialism to postindustrialism Decline of class politics New technology and the ‘information society’ No such thing as society? IDENTITY POLITICS Rise of identity politics Race and ethnicity Cultural diversity Gender and identity Religion and politics Questions for discussion Further reading 9. POLITICAL CULTURE AND THE MEDIA Preview Key issues POLITICAL CULTURE Approaches to political culture Political culture in crisis THE MEDIA AND POLITICS Theories of the media Impact of the traditional media Social media and politics POST-TRUTH POLITICS? Politics and truth The drift towards anti-intellectualism Questions for discussion Further reading 10. REPRESENTATION, ELECTIONS AND VOTING Preview Key issues REPRESENTATION Theories of representation ELECTIONS Functions of elections Electoral systems: debates and controversies What do elections mean? VOTING BEHAVIOUR Theories of voting Questions for discussion Further reading 11 11. PARTIES AND PARTY SYSTEMS Preview Key issues PARTY POLITICS Types of party Functions of parties Party organization: where does power lie? PARTY SYSTEMS One-party systems Two-party systems Dominant-party systems Multiparty systems A CRISIS OF PARTY POLITICS? Questions for discussion Further reading 12. GROUPS, INTERESTS AND MOVEMENTS Preview Key issues GROUP POLITICS Types of group Models of group politics Patterns of group politics SOCIAL MOVEMENTS New social movements Questions for discussion Further reading 13. CONSTITUTIONS, LAW AND JUDGES Preview Key issues CONSTITUTIONS Constitutions: their nature and origins Classifying constitutions The purpose of a constitution Do constitutions matter? THE LAW Law, morality and politics The question of international law THE JUDICIARY Are judges political? Do judges make policy? 12  Questions for discussion Further reading 14. POLITICAL EXECUTIVES AND LEADERSHIP Preview Key issues ROLE OF THE EXECUTIVE Who’s who in the executive? Functions of political executives POWER IN THE EXECUTIVE: WHO LEADS? Presidents Prime ministers Cabinets LEADERS AND LEADERSHIP Leadership: its fall and rise? Theories of leadership Styles of leadership Populism and leadership Questions for discussion Further reading 15. ASSEMBLIES Preview Key issues ROLE OF ASSEMBLIES Parliamentary, presidential and semi-presidential systems Functions of assemblies STRUCTURE OF ASSEMBLIES Unicameralism or bicameralism? Committee systems PERFORMANCE OF ASSEMBLIES Do assemblies make policy? Assemblies in decline The rise of assemblies? Questions for discussion Further reading 16. PUBLIC POLICY AND THE BUREAUCRACY Preview Key issues THE POLICY PROCESS Theories of decision-making Stages in the policy process 13  ROLE OF THE BUREAUCRACY Functions of the bureaucracy Organization of the bureaucracy BUREAUCRATIC POWER: OUT OF CONTROL? Sources of bureaucratic power How can bureaucrats be controlled? Questions for discussion Further reading 17. MULTILEVEL POLITICS Preview Key issues POLITICS, TERRITORY AND MULTILEVEL GOVERNANCE SUBNATIONAL POLITICS Federal systems Unitary systems TRANSNATIONAL REGIONALISM Regionalism: its nature and growth European regionalism Questions for discussion Further reading 18. SECURITY: DOMESTIC AND INTERNATIONAL Preview Key issues SECURITY BEYOND BOUNDARIES? DOMESTIC SECURITY The police and politics The military and domestic politics INTERNATIONAL SECURITY Approaches to international politics New security challenges Human security Questions for discussion Further reading 19. WORLD ORDER AND GLOBAL GOVERNANCE Preview Key issues TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY WORLD ORDER The ‘new world order’ and its fate The ‘war on terror’ and beyond From unipolarity to multipolarity? 14  GLOBAL GOVERNANCE Rise of global governance Global economic governance The United Nations Questions for discussion Further reading 20. IS POLITICS BROKEN? Preview Key issues A CRISIS OF ‘ANTI-POLITICS’? Declining political engagement? The politics of ‘anti-politics’ WHY WE HATE POLITICS Uninspiring party politics Declining capacity to deliver The ‘wrong’ politicians Media negativity Growth of consumerist politics MENDING POLITICS? More democracy Scaling down politics Reviving citizenship Rebuilding equality Questions for discussion Further reading Bibliography Index 15 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIVE MATERIAL POLITICS IN ACTION Trump’s triumph: politics as polarization and anger? Socialism: a dead ideology? Brexit: taking back control? The Arab Spring: revolution reversed? Russia: the rebirth of autocracy? Catalonia: the path to independence? Market reform in China: a viable economic model? Canada: multiculturalism that works? Social media: purveyors of fake news? The USA: elections without democracy? South Africa: a one-party state? The Women’s March: a counter- inauguration? Law in the international sphere: bringing tyrants to justice? Turkey: between limited and unlimited presidentialism? The UK: resurgent parliamentary power? Japan: successful bureaucratic rule? The migration crisis: Europe’s failure? North Korea: a rogue nuclear power? Conflict in Ukraine: the Cold War revived? Italy: a victory for anti-politics? DEBATING... Should students of politics seek to be objective and politically neutral? Can politics exist without ideology? Is the state a force for good? Is democracy always the best form of government? Is liberal democracy the ‘default position’ for human societies? Are nations ‘natural’ political communities? Is global capitalism inherently unstable and crisis-prone? Does social equality matter? Does the wider use of digital media enrich politics? Should voting be compulsory? Do parties breed discord and constrain political debate? Do interest groups enhance democracy? Is the central purpose of law to protect freedom? Should personalized leadership always be feared? Are two legislative chambers better than one? Can civil servants ever be politically impartial? 16 Should political decisions be made at the lowest possible level? Is peace and cooperation amongst states destined to remain elusive? Will China’s rise continue to be peaceful? Should political participation be widened and deepened whenever possible? FOCUS ON... ‘Faces’ of power The prisoners’ dilemma Politics and IR: two disciplines or one? Social-contract theory Why do revolutions occur? Is populism a democratic force? Direct democracy or representative democracy? Authoritarianism goes global? Referendums: for or against? Electoral systems: single-member plurality (SMP) system (‘first past the post’) Electoral systems: second ballot system Electoral systems: alternative vote (AV) system; supplementary vote (SV) Electoral systems: mixed-member proportional (MMP) system; additional member system (AMS) Electoral systems: single-transferable-vote (STV) system Electoral systems: party-list system The left/right divide The iron law of oligarchy A codified constitution: strengths and weaknesses The monarchy debate Prime-ministerial government: a virtue or a vice? Cabinet government: advantages and disadvantages The rise of ‘strongman’ politics Committees: advantages and disadvantages Adversary politics: for or against? Open government: for or against? Quangos: advantages and disadvantages Regional economic blocs How the European Union works The ‘war on terror’ Humanitarian intervention 17 Dimensions of global power Global economic governance How the United Nations works CONCEPTS Absolutism Administration Anti-politics Anti-Semitism Athenian democracy Authoritarianism Authority Autonomy Bill of rights Bureaucracy Capitalism Charisma Citizenship Civil disobedience Civil liberty Civil society Class dealignment Coalition Collective security Colonialism Communism Communitarianism Comparative politics Confucianism Consensus Constitution Constitutionalism Constructivism Consumerism Convention Core executive Corporatism Corruption Crime Cult of personality Cultural nationalism 18 Democratization Departmentalism Devolution Dictatorship Ecologism Elitism Equality Ethnocentrism Executive Faction, factionalism Failed state Federalism Fordism, post-Fordism Freedom Free trade Fundamentalism Gender Geopolitics Global civil society Global governance Globalization Governance Government Heads of state Hegemony Human rights Human security Ideal type Ideology Imperialism Individualism Information society Interculturalism Interdependence Interest group Inter governmentalism, supranationalism Internationalism Intersectionality Islamism Judicial review 19 Laissez-faire Leadership Legitimacy Liberal democracy Lobby Majoritarianism Mandate Mass media Ministerial responsibility Multiculturalism Multilateralism Multilevel governance Nation-state Nation Neo-Marxism Neoliberalism Neopluralism Neutrality New Left New public management Non-governmental organization Ombudsman Order Paradigm Parliamentary democracy Parliamentary government Parliamentary sovereignty Partisan dealignment Party democracy Party government Patriarchy Patriotism Plebiscitary democracy Pluralism Pluralist democracy Policy Policy network Political bias Political culture Political economy 20 Political equality Political participation Political party Political socialization Polyarchy Populism Postcolonialism Postmaterialism Postmodernism Power Pre-emptive attack Presidential government Primary election Propaganda Proportional representation Public choice Public interest Race Racialism, racism Realism Regionalism Relativism Representation Responsibility Rule of law Science Separation of powers Social capital Social class Social market Social movement Sovereignty State, the Statism Status Superpower Terrorism Theocracy Third way Totalitarianism 21 Tradition Transnational corporations Trust Utilitarianism Utopia, utopianism War Washington consensus, the West, the KEY IDEAS Liberalism Conservatism Socialism Feminism Green ideology KEY THINKERS Hannah Arendt (1906–75) Aristotle (384–322 BCE) Simone de Beauvoir (1908–86) Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) Isaiah Berlin (1909–97) Eduard Bernstein (1850–1932) Edmund Burke (1729–97) Judith Butler (born 1956) Noam Chomsky (born 1928) Robert Dahl (1915-2014) Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–59) Jean Bethke Elshtain (born 1941) Betty Friedan (1921–2006) Milton Friedman (1912–2006) Francis Fukuyama (born 1952) John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) Marcus Garvey (1887–1940) Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869–1948) Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) Jürgen Habermas (born 1929) Friedrich von Hayek (1899–1992) Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) 22 Bell Hooks (born 1952) Samuel P. Huntington (1927–2008) Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) Robert Keohane (born 1941) Ayatollah Khomeini (1900–89) Naomi Klein (born 1970) Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870–1924) John Locke (1632–1704) Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919) Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527) James Madison (1751–1836) Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) Karl Marx (1818–83) Giuseppe Mazzini (1805–72) John Stuart Mill (1806–73) Jean Monnet (1888–1979) Charles-Louis de Secondat Montesquieu (1689–1775) Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) Robert Nozick (1938–2002) Michael Oakeshott (1901–90) Thomas Paine (1737–1809) Plato (427–347 BCE) Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–65) Robert D. Putnam (born 1941) John Rawls (1921–2002) Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78) Edward Said (1935–2003) E. F. Schumacher (1911–77) Joseph Schumpeter (1883–1950) Adam Smith (1723–90) Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) Kenneth Waltz (1924–2013) Max Weber (1864–1920) Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–97) Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-Tung) (1893–1976) FIGURES 1.1 Approaches to defining politics 1.2 Two views of the public/private divide 23 1.3 Options in the prisoners’ dilemma 1.4 The political system 1.5 Levels of conceptual analysis 1.6 Contrasting models of spatial politics 4.1 Elite models 5.1 Aristotle’s six forms of government 5.2 Key regime features 7.1 Systemic interdependencies 11.1 Linear political spectrum 11.2 Horseshoe political spectrum 11.3 Two-dimensional political spectrum 11.4 The open/closed divide 14.1 Presidential system of government (limited presidentialism) 15.1 Parliamentary system of government 15.2 Separation of powers 16.1 Policy-feedback process 17.1 Federal states 17.2 Unitary states 24 PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION This book provides a comprehensive and up-to-date introduction to the study of politics. It is designed to be of use to students taking courses in any field of the discipline, as well as general readers with an interest in the subject. As with earlier editions, this edition blends reflections on enduring political themes and issues with an analysis of contemporary developments. Contemporary developments are nevertheless of particular significance on this occasion. This is because the political tendency that has dominated the post-1945 period – the onward march of liberalism and democracy – has faltered and, in some cases, been reversed. In this context, new and essentially illiberal forces have emerged, often fashioned out of a potent combination of populism, nationalism and anti-globalism. However, the precise significance of these new forces, and their trajectory of development, remain unclear. How and why has this happened? Many argue that the key factor in the process was the 2007–09 global financial crisis, which, by exposing deep new economic rifts, fuelled hostility towards the political status quo in many parts of the world. Others, however, emphasize the importance of a cultural backlash against the seemingly irresistible spread of liberal values, a development that can be traced back to at least the turn of the twenty- first century. The Arab Spring of 2011 was also significant, in that the swift defeat of most of the democratic uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East both cast doubt on the idea of the inevitable spread of liberal democracy, and demonstrated the new-found resilience of authoritarianism. Nevertheless, the clearest indication that a new political landscape has emerged came in 2016, with Donald Trump’s election as US president and the referendum vote in the UK in favour of Brexit. In both cases, the logic of conventional politics was turned on its head by a surge of populist nationalism that confounded the predictions of the vast majority of pundits. The nature and significance of these and other major developments in contemporary politics are discussed in a slate of new ‘Politics in Action’ features, and also in substantial revisions throughout the text. Among the areas addressed in these revisions are the following: the ideology of populism (Chapter 2); the relationship between populism and democracy, and the possibly faltering ability of democracy to generate legitimacy (Chapter 4); the revival of authoritarianism as a challenger to democracy, and the emergence of illiberal democracies (Chapter 5); the resurgence of nationalism (Chapter 6); the backlash against globalization (Chapter 7); gender, identity and the politics of difference (Chapter 8); culture wars, the 25 political impact of social media, and the rise of post-truth politics (Chapter 9); populist parties and mainstream parties (Chapter 11); the nature of international law (Chapter 13); strongman politics, and the relationship between populism and leadership (Chapter 14); the crises confronting the EU (Chapter 17); the emergence of cyberwarfare (Chapter 18); and the origins and extent of popular disenchantment with formal politics, and how this disenchantment can be tackled (Chapter 20). I would like to thank all those at Red Globe Press who contributed to the development and production of this book, particularly Lloyd Langman and Peter Atkinson, respectively my publisher and my editor, and Amy Brownbridge, who oversaw the production process. Feedback on the proposal and chapter plan for the fifth edition from a number of anonymous reviewers was both thought-provoking and encouraging. Discussions with colleagues and friends, particularly Karon and Doug Woodward, also helped to sharpen the ideas and arguments developed here. Thanks also to Theresa Reidy and Jonathan Evershed for their work on developing the resources for the book’s companion website and for their contribution to the further reading sections at the end of each chapter. The book is dedicated to my sons, Mark and Robin. 26 USING THIS BOOK Politics is, by its nature, an overlapping and interlocking field. The material encountered in this book therefore stubbornly resists compartmentalization, which is why, throughout, there is regular cross- referencing to related discussions that occur in other chapters and particularly to relevant boxed material found elsewhere. Nevertheless, the book develops by considering what can be thought of as a series of broad issues or themes. The first group of chapters is designed to provide a background understanding for the study of politics by considering a range of key conceptual and theoretical issues. Chapter 1 reflects on the nature of politics, provides an introduction to contrasting approaches to political analysis and considers how and why globalizing tendencies have reshaped our understanding of the subject. Chapter 2 examines political ideas from the perspective of the major ideological traditions, looking at how they offer competing ‘lenses’ on the political world. Chapter 3 considers the importance of the state in politics, examining debates about both the nature and the desirable role of the state, as well as whether the state is losing its central importance in politics. Chapter 4 discusses the nature and significance of political legitimacy, considering, in particular, the relationship between legitimacy and democracy, especially in the light of contrasting models of democratic governance and debates about how democracy operates in practice. Chapter 5 provides an introduction to the machinery of government by considering how systems of government are classified and examining the range of political regimes that exist in the modern world. Chapter 6 examines the key theories of nationalism, seeking both to understand the forces that underpin national identity and to reflect on the breadth of nationalist traditions, including their often quite different political implications. The next group of chapters discusses the dynamics of political interaction by reflecting on the relationship between politics and economics, culture and society, and by examining the mechanisms through which societal pressures gain political expression. Chapter 7 discusses the linkages between economics and politics, focusing especially on the nature and different forms of capitalism, and on the dynamics and implications of economic globalization. Chapter 8 considers the relationship between politics and society, and 27  reflects on the rise of identity politics, the different forms it has taken, and its implications. Chapter 9 discusses the nature and significance of political culture, and examines the growing political importance of the media, including social media, especially in relation to its implications for democracy and governance. Chapter 10 looks at the nature of representation, the role of elections, including debates and controversies about electoral systems, and how voting behaviour can best be understood. Chapter 11 examines the key role played in politics by political parties, and also discusses the nature and significance of different party systems. Chapter 12 discusses the nature of group politics, including debates about the impact of groups on the distribution of political power, and the rise and implications of social movements. The following group of chapters considers the machinery of government and the processes through which public policy is formulated and implemented. Chapter 13 considers the nature and purpose of constitutions, and examines the relationship between politics and law, notably in terms of the role and importance of the judiciary. Chapter 14 addresses the role of political executives, where power lies within the executive and, more broadly, the significance of political leadership and the forms it can take. Chapter 15 examines the role of assemblies or legislatures, considering also the significance of their internal organization and the factors that affect their impact on policy-making. Chapter 16 focuses on public policy, reflecting both on how decisions are made and the stages through which policy is developed; it also considers the link between bureaucracies and the policy process, as well as wider political developments. The next group of chapters focuses on various issues that highlight overlaps between the domestic realm and the international realm, paying particular attention to the growing significance of global politics. Chapter 17 discusses multilevel politics, examining the territorial configuration of politics at a domestic level and at a transnational level, especially through regionalism. Chapter 18 focuses on the issue of security, examining the maintenance of order and security in the domestic realm, as well as debates about security in its national, international and global forms. 28  Chapter 19 looks at the changing shape of twenty-first-century world order, reflecting on its significance for peace and stability, and also examines the nature and effectiveness of the emerging framework of global governance. The final chapter attempts to draw together strands and themes that have featured in earlier chapters through a discussion of the alleged failings of conventional politics and how these failings may be addressed. Chapter 20 reflects on the issue of growing disenchantment with formal politics, examining both the nature and sources of popular discontent with politics and discussing possible ways of mending politics. 29 GUIDE TO KEY FEATURES The pedagogical features found in this book allow important events, concepts and theoretical issues to be examined in greater depth or detail, whilst also maintaining the flow of the main body of the text. They are, moreover, designed to encourage you to think critically and independently about the key issues in politics. 30 31 GUIDE TO WEBSITE Th is book is accompanied by a companion website that can be found at www.macmillanihe.com/companion/Heywood-Politics-5e. Th e website contains an array of resources for students that are freely accessible, as well as lecturer resources that can be accessed on request. 32 CHAPTER 1 WHAT IS POLITICS? ‘Man is by nature a political animal.’ ARISTOTLE, Politics, 1 PREVIEW Politics is exciting because people disagree. They disagree about how they should live. Who should get what? How should power and other resources be distributed? Should society be based on cooperation or conflict? And so on. They also disagree about how such matters should be resolved. How should collective decisions be made? Who should have a say? How much influence should each person have? And so forth. For Aristotle, this made politics the ‘master science’: that is, nothing less than the activity through which human beings attempt to improve their lives and create the Good Society. Politics is, above all, a social activity. It is always a dialogue, and never a monologue. Solitary individuals such as Robinson Crusoe may be able to develop a simple economy, produce art, and so on, but they cannot engage in politics. Politics emerges only with the arrival of someone else into the story (a Man (or Woman) Friday). Nevertheless, the disagreement that lies at the heart of politics also extends to the nature of the subject and how it should be studied. People disagree about what it is that makes social interaction ‘political’, whether it is where it takes place (within government, the state or the public sphere generally), or the kind of activity it involves (peacefully resolving conflict or exercising control over less powerful groups). Disagreement about the nature of politics as an academic discipline means that it embraces a range of theoretical approaches and a variety of schools of analysis. Finally, globalizing tendencies have encouraged some to speculate that 33  the disciplinary divide between politics and international relations has now become redundant. (Chapter 20 considers how, why, and with what justification, politics has been criticized.) KEY ISSUES What are the defining features of politics as an activity? How has ‘politics’ been understood by various thinkers and traditions? What are the main approaches to the study of politics as an academic discipline? Can the study of politics be scientific? What roles do concepts, models and theories play in political analysis? How have globalizing trends affected the relationship between politics and international relations? DEFINING POLITICS Politics, in its broadest sense, is the activity through which people make, preserve and amend the general rules under which they live. Although politics is also an academic subject (sometimes indicated by the use of ‘Politics’ with a capital P), it is then clearly the study of this activity. Politics is thus inextricably linked to the phenomena of conflict and cooperation. On the one hand, the existence of rival opinions, different wants, competing needs, and opposing interests guarantees disagreement about the rules under which people live. On the other hand, people recognize that, in order to influence these rules or ensure that they are upheld, they must work with others – hence Hannah Arendt’s (see p. 7) definition of political power as ‘acting in concert’. This is why the heart of politics is often portrayed as a process of conflict resolution, in which rival views or competing interests are reconciled with one another. However, politics in this broad sense is better thought of as a search for conflict resolution than as its achievement, as not all conflicts are, or can be, resolved. Nevertheless, the inescapable presence of diversity (we are not all alike) and scarcity (there is never enough to go around) ensures that politics is an inevitable feature of the human condition. Conflict: Competition between opposing forces, reflecting a diversity of opinions, preferences, needs or interests. Cooperation: Working together; achieving goals through collective action. Any attempt to clarify the meaning of ‘politics’ must nevertheless address two major problems. The first is the mass of associations that the word has 34 when used in everyday language; in other words, politics is a ‘loaded’ term. Whereas most people think of, say, economics, geography, history and biology simply as academic subjects, few people come to politics without preconceptions. Many, for instance, automatically assume that students and teachers of politics must in some way be biased, finding it difficult to believe that the subject can be approached in an impartial and dispassionate manner. To make matters worse, politics is usually thought of as a ‘dirty’ word: it conjures up images of trouble, disruption and even violence on the one hand, and deceit, manipulation and lies on the other. There is nothing new about such associations. As long ago as 1775, Samuel Johnson dismissed politics as ‘nothing more than a means of rising in the world’, while in the nineteenth century the US historian Henry Adams summed up politics as ‘the systematic organization of hatreds’. The second and more intractable difficulty is that even respected authorities cannot agree what the subject is about. Politics is defined in such different ways as the exercise of power, the science of government, the making of collective decisions, the allocation of scarce resources, the practice of deception and manipulation, and so on. The virtue of the definition advanced in this text – ‘the making, preserving and amending of general social rules’ – is that it is sufficiently broad to encompass most, if not all, of the competing definitions. However, problems arise when the definition is unpacked, or when the meaning is refined. For instance, does ‘politics’ refer to a particular way in which rules are made, preserved or amended (that is, peacefully, by debate), or to all such processes? Similarly, is politics practised in all social contexts and institutions, or only in certain ones (that is, government and public life)? From this perspective, politics may be treated as an ‘essentially contested’ concept, in the sense that the term has a number of acceptable or legitimate meanings (concepts are discussed more fully later in the chapter). On the other hand, these different views may simply consist of contrasting conceptions of the same, if necessarily vague, concept. Whether we are dealing with rival concepts or alternative conceptions, it is helpful to distinguish between two broad approaches to defining politics (Hay, 2002; Leftwich, 2004). In the first, politics is associated with an arena or location, in which case behaviour becomes ‘political’ because of where it takes place. In the second, politics is viewed as a process or mechanism, in which case ‘political’ behaviour is behaviour that exhibits distinctive characteristics or qualities, and so can take place in any, and perhaps all, social contexts. Each of these broad approaches has spawned alternative definitions of politics, and, as discussed later in the chapter, helped to 35 shape different schools of political analysis (see Figure 1.1). Indeed, the debate about ‘what is politics?’ is worth pursuing precisely because it exposes some of the deepest intellectual and ideological disagreement in the academic study of the subject. Figure 1.1 Approaches to defining politics Politics as the art of government ‘Politics is not a science … but an art’, Chancellor Bismarck is reputed to have told the German Reichstag. The art Bismarck had in mind was the art of government, the exercise of control within society through the making and enforcement of collective decisions. This is perhaps the classical definition of politics, developed from the original meaning of the term in Ancient Greece. The word ‘politics’ is derived from polis, meaning literally ‘city-state’. Ancient Greek society was divided into a collection of independent city- states, each of which possessed its own system of government. The largest and most influential of these city-states was Athens, often portrayed as the cradle of democratic government. In this light, politics can be understood to refer to the affairs of the polis – in effect, ‘what concerns the polis’. The modern form of this definition is therefore ‘what concerns the state’ (see p. 57). This view of politics is clearly evident in the everyday use of the term: people are said to be ‘in politics’ when they hold public office, or to be ‘entering politics’ when they seek to do so. It is also a definition that academic political science has helped to perpetuate. Polis: (Greek) City-state; classically understood to imply the highest or most desirable form of social organization. In many ways, the notion that politics amounts to ‘what concerns the state’ is the traditional view of the discipline, reflected in the tendency for academic study to focus on the personnel and machinery of government. To study politics is, in essence, to study government, or, more broadly, to study the exercise of authority. This view is advanced in the writings of the influential US political scientist David Easton (1979, 1981), who defined politics as the ‘authoritative allocation of values’. By this, he meant that 36 politics encompasses the various processes through which government responds to pressures from the larger society, in particular by allocating benefits, rewards or penalties. ‘Authoritative values’ are therefore those that are widely accepted in society, and are considered binding by the mass of citizens. In this view, politics is associated with ‘policy’ (see p. 365): that is, with formal or authoritative decisions that establish a plan of action for the community. CONCEPT Authority Authority can most simply be defined as ‘legitimate power’. Whereas power is the ability to influence the behaviour of others, authority is the right to do so. Authority is therefore based on an acknowledged duty to obey rather than on any form of coercion or manipulation. In this sense, authority is power cloaked in legitimacy or rightfulness. Weber (see p. 81) distinguished between three kinds of authority, based on the different grounds on which obedience can be established: traditional authority is rooted in history; charismatic authority stems from personality; and legal–rational authority is grounded in a set of impersonal rules. However, what is striking about this definition is that it offers a highly restricted view of politics. Politics is what takes place within a polity, a system of social organization centred on the machinery of government. Politics is therefore practised in cabinet rooms, legislative chambers, government departments and the like; and it is engaged in by a limited and specific group of people, notably politicians, civil servants and lobbyists. This means that most people, most institutions and most social activities can be regarded as being ‘outside’ politics. Businesses, schools and other educational institutions, community groups, families and so on are in this sense ‘non-political’, because they are not engaged in ‘running the country’. By the same token, to portray politics as an essentially state- bound activity is to ignore the increasingly important international or global influences on modern life, as discussed in the next main section. Polity: A society organized through the exercise of political authority; for Aristotle, rule by the many in the interests of all. This definition can, however, be narrowed still further. This is evident in the tendency to treat politics as the equivalent of party politics. In other words, the realm of ‘the political’ is restricted to those state actors who are consciously motivated by ideological beliefs, and who seek to advance 37 them through membership of a formal organization such as a political party. This is the sense in which politicians are described as ‘political’, whereas civil servants are seen as ‘non-political’, as long as, of course, they act in a neutral and professional fashion. Similarly, judges are taken to be ‘non-political’ figures while they interpret the law impartially and in accordance with the available evidence, but they may be accused of being ‘political’ if their judgement is influenced by personal preferences or some other form of bias. The link between politics and the affairs of the state also helps to explain why negative or pejorative images have so often been attached to politics. This is because, in the popular mind, politics is closely associated with the activities of politicians. Put brutally, politicians are often seen as power- seeking hypocrites who conceal personal ambition behind the rhetoric of public service and ideological conviction. Indeed, this perception has become more common in the modern period as intensified media exposure has more effectively brought to light examples of corruption and dishonesty, giving rise to the phenomenon of anti-politics (as discussed in Chapter 20). This rejection of the personnel and machinery of conventional political life is rooted in a view of politics as a self-serving, two-faced and unprincipled activity, clearly evident in the use of derogatory phrases such as ‘office politics’ and ‘politicking’. Such an image of politics is sometimes traced back to the writings of Niccolò Machiavelli (see p. 5), who, in The Prince ( 1961), developed a strictly realistic account of politics that drew attention to the use by political leaders of cunning, cruelty and manipulation. Anti-politics: Disillusionment with formal or established political processes, reflected in non-participation, support for anti-system parties, or the use of direct action. KEY THINKER NICCOLÒ MACHIAVELLI (1469–1527) Source: Getty Images/Fine Art 38  Italian politician and author. The son of a civil lawyer, Machiavelli’s knowledge of public life was gained from a sometimes precarious existence in politically unstable Florence. He served as Second Chancellor (1498–1512), and was dispatched on missions to France, Germany and throughout Italy. After a brief period of imprisonment and the restoration of Medici rule, Machiavelli embarked on a literary career. His major work, The Prince, published in 1532, drew heavily on his first-hand observations of the statecraft of Cesare Borgia and the power politics that dominated his period. It was written as a guide for the future prince of a united Italy. The adjective ‘Machiavellian’ subsequently came to mean ‘cunning and duplicitous’. Such a negative view of politics reflects the essentially liberal perception that, as individuals are self-interested, political power is corrupting, because it encourages those ‘in power’ to exploit their position for personal advantage and at the expense of others. This is famously expressed in Lord Acton’s (1834–1902) aphorism: ‘power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely’. Nevertheless, few who view politics in this way doubt that political activity is an inevitable and permanent feature of social existence. However venal politicians may be, there is a general, if grudging, acceptance that they are always with us. Without some kind of mechanism for allocating authoritative values, society would simply disintegrate into a civil war of each against all, as the early social-contract theorists argued (see p. 62). The task is therefore not to abolish politicians and bring politics to an end but, rather, to ensure that politics is conducted within a framework of checks and constraints that guarantee that governmental power is not abused. CONCEPT Power Power, in its broadest sense, is the ability to achieve a desired outcome, sometimes seen as the ‘power to’ do something. This includes everything from the ability to keep oneself alive to the ability of government to promote economic growth. In politics, however, power is usually thought of as a relationship; that is, as the ability to influence the behaviour of others in a manner not of their choosing. This implies having ‘power over’ people. More narrowly, power may be associated with the ability to punish or reward, bringing it close to force or manipulation, in contrast to ‘influence’. (See ‘faces’ of power, p. 9 and dimensions of global 39  power, p. 445.) Politics as public affairs A second and broader conception of politics moves it beyond the narrow realm of government to what is thought of as ‘public life’ or ‘public affairs’. In other words, the distinction between ‘the political’ and ‘the non-political’ coincides with the division between an essentially public sphere of life and what can be thought of as a private sphere. Such a view of politics is often traced back to the work of the famous Greek philosopher Aristotle (see p. 6). In Politics, Aristotle declared that ‘man is by nature a political animal’, by which he meant that it is only within a political community that human beings can live the ‘good life’. From this viewpoint, then, politics is an ethical activity concerned with creating a ‘just society’; it is what Aristotle called the ‘master science’. However, where should the line between ‘public’ life and ‘private’ life be drawn? The traditional distinction between the public realm and the private realm conforms to the division between the state and civil society. The institutions of the state (the apparatus of government, the courts, the police, the army, the social security system, and so forth) can be regarded as ‘public’ in the sense that they are responsible for the collective organization of community life. Moreover, they are funded at the public’s expense, out of taxation. In contrast, civil society consists of what Edmund Burke (see p. 35) called the ‘little platoons’, institutions such as the family and kinship groups, private businesses, trade unions, clubs, community groups and so on, that are ‘private’ in the sense that they are set up and funded by individual citizens to satisfy their own interests, rather than those of the larger society. On the basis of this ‘public/private’ division, politics is restricted to the activities of the state itself and the responsibilities that are properly exercised by public bodies. Those areas of life that individuals can and do manage for themselves (the economic, social, domestic, personal, cultural and artistic spheres, and so on) are therefore clearly ‘non-political’. KEY THINKER ARISTOTLE (384–322 BCE) 40  Source: iStock/sneska Greek philosopher. Aristotle was a student of Plato (see p. 13) and tutor of the young Alexander the Great. He established his own school of philosophy in Athens in 335 BCE; this was called the ‘peripatetic school’ after his tendency to walk up and down as he talked. His 22 surviving treatises, compiled as lecture notes, range over logic, physics, metaphysics, astronomy, meteorology, biology, ethics and politics. In the Middle Ages, Aristotle’s work became the foundation of Islamic philosophy, and it was later incorporated into Christian theology. His best-known political work is Politics, in which he portrayed the city-state as the basis for virtue and well-being, and argued that democracy is preferable to oligarchy (see pp. 111–12). CONCEPT Civil society Civil society originally meant a ‘political community’. The term is now more commonly distinguished from the state, and is used to describe institutions that are ‘private’, in that they are independent from government and organized by individuals in pursuit of their own ends. Civil society therefore refers to a realm of autonomous groups and associations: businesses, interest groups, clubs, families and so on. The term ‘global civil society’ (see p. 107) has become fashionable as a means of referring to non-governmental organizations (NGOs) (see p. 273) and transnational social movements (see p. 286). An alternative ‘public/private’ divide is sometimes defined in terms of a further and more subtle distinction; namely, that between ‘the political’ and ‘the personal’ (see Figure 1.2). Although civil society can be distinguished from the state, it nevertheless contains a range of institutions that are thought of as ‘public’ in the wider sense that they are open institutions, operating in public, to which the public has access. One of the crucial implications of this is that it broadens our notion of the political, 41 transferring the economy, in particular, from the private to the public realm. A form of politics can thus be found in the workplace. Nevertheless, although this view regards institutions such as businesses, community groups, clubs and trade unions as ‘public’, it remains a restricted view of politics. According to this perspective, politics does not, and should not, infringe on ‘personal’ affairs and institutions. The notion that politics should exclude ‘the personal’ has nevertheless been challenged by feminist thinkers. From the feminist perspective, gender inequality has been preserved precisely because the sexual division of labour that runs through society has traditionally been thought of as ‘natural’ rather than ‘political’. The public sphere of life, encompassing politics, work, art and literature, has historically been the preserve of men, while women have been confined to an essentially private existence, centred on the family and domestic responsibilities. If politics takes place only within the public sphere, the role of women and the question of gender equality are issues of little or no political importance. Not only does this in effect exclude women from politics, but, as radical feminists (discussed in Chapter 2) in particular argue, it excludes from political analysis the core processes through which male domination and female subordination are brought about. These includeconditioning within the family (the process through which boys and girls are encouraged to conform to contrasting stereotypes of ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’), the distribution of housework and other domestic responsibilities, and the politics of personal and sexual conduct. Figure 1.2 Two views of the public/private divide The view of politics as an essentially ‘public’ activity has generated both positive and negative images. In a tradition dating back to Aristotle, politics has been seen as a noble and enlightened activity precisely because of its ‘public’ character. This position was firmly endorsed by Hannah Arendt, who argued in The Human Condition (1958) that politics is the most important form of human activity because it involves interaction 42 amongst free and equal citizens. It thus gives meaning to life and affirms the uniqueness of each individual. Theorists such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau (see p. 98) and John Stuart Mill (see p. 220) who portrayed political participation as a good in itself have drawn similar conclusions. Rousseau argued that only through the direct and continuous participation of all citizens in political life can the state be bound to the common good, or what he called the ‘general will’. In Mill’s view, involvement in ‘public’ affairs is educational, in that it promotes the personal, moral and intellectual development of the individual. KEY THINKER HANNAH ARENDT (1906–75) Source: Getty Images/Fred Stein Archive German political theorist and philosopher. Hannah Arendt was brought up in a middle-class Jewish family. She fled Germany in 1933 to escape from Nazism, and finally settled in the USA, where her major work was produced. Her wide-ranging, even idiosyncratic, writing was influenced by the existentialism of Heidegger (1889–1976) and Jaspers (1883–1969); she described it as ‘thinking without barriers’. Her major works include The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), which drew parallels between Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia, her major philosophical work The Human Condition (1958), On Revolution (1963) and Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963). The final work stimulated particular controversy because it stressed the ‘banality of evil’, by portraying Eichmann as a Nazi functionary rather than as a raving ideologue. In sharp contrast, however, politics as public activity has also been portrayed as a form of unwanted interference. Liberal theorists, in particular, have exhibited a preference for civil society over the state, on the grounds that ‘private’ life is a realm of choice, personal freedom and 43 individual responsibility. This is most clearly demonstrated by attempts to narrow the realm of ‘the political’, commonly expressed as the wish to ‘keep politics out of’ private activities such as business, sport and family life. From this point of view, politics is unwholesome quite simply because it prevents people acting as they choose. For example, it may interfere with how firms conduct their business, or with how and with whom we play sports, or with how we bring up our children. CONCEPT Consensus Consensus means agreement, but it refers to an agreement of a particular kind. It implies, first, a broad agreement, the terms of which are accepted by a wide range of individuals or groups. Second, it implies an agreement about fundamental or underlying principles, as opposed to a precise or exact agreement. In other words, a consensus permits disagreement on matters of emphasis or detail. A procedural consensus is a willingness to make decisions through a process of consultation and bargaining. A substantive consensus is an overlap of ideological positions that reflect agreement about broad policy goals. Politics as compromise and consensus The third conception of politics relates not to the arena within which politics is conducted but to the way in which decisions are made. Specifically, politics is seen as a particular means of resolving conflict: that is, by compromise, conciliation and negotiation, rather than through force and naked power. This is what is implied when politics is portrayed as ‘the art of the possible’. Such a definition is inherent in the everyday use of the term. For instance, the description of a solution to a problem as a ‘political’ solution implies peaceful debate and arbitration, as opposed to what is often called a ‘military’ solution. Once again, this view of politics has been traced back to the writings of Aristotle and, in particular, to his belief that what he called ‘polity’ is the ideal system of government, as it is ‘mixed’, in the sense that it combines both aristocratic and democratic features (see Chapter 4). One of the leading modern exponents of this view is Bernard Crick. In his classic study In Defence of Politics, Crick offered the following definition: Politics [is] the activity by which differing interests within a given unit of rule are conciliated by giving them a share in power in proportion to their importance to the welfare and the survival of the whole community. (Crick, 2000) 44 In this view, the key to politics is therefore a wide dispersal of power. Accepting that conflict is inevitable, Crick argued that when social groups and interests possess power they must be conciliated; they cannot merely be crushed. This is why he portrayed politics as ‘that solution to the problem of order which chooses conciliation rather than violence and coercion’. Such a view of politics reflects a deep commitment to liberal– rationalist principles. It is based on resolute faith in the efficacy of debate and discussion, as well as on the belief that society is characterized by consensus, rather than by irreconcilable conflict. In other words, the disagreements that exist can be resolved without resort to intimidation and violence. Critics, however, point out that Crick’s conception of politics is heavily biased towards the form of politics that takes place in Western pluralist democracies: in effect, he equated politics with electoral choice and party competition. As a result, his model has little to tell us about, say, one-party states or military regimes. This view of politics has an unmistakably positive character. Politics is certainly no utopian solution (compromise means that concessions are made by all sides, leaving no one perfectly satisfied), but it is undoubtedly preferable to the alternatives: bloodshed and brutality. In this sense, politics can be seen as a civilized and civilizing force. People should be encouraged to respect politics as an activity, and should be prepared to engage in the political life of their own community. Nevertheless, a failure to understand that politics as a process of compromise and reconciliation is necessarily frustrating and difficult (in part, because it involves listening carefully to the opinions of others) may have contributed to a growing popular disenchantment with democratic politics across much of the developed world. This has been expressed in the rise of populism (see p. 53) and in the emergence of a style of politics that disdains compromise and consensus and places much more emphasis on conflict. The election of Donald Trump as US president has often been said to illustrate this trend (see p. 11). Politics as power The fourth definition of politics is both the broadest and the most radical. Rather than confining politics to a particular sphere (the government, the state or the ‘public’ realm), this view sees politics at work in all social activities and in every corner of human existence. As Adrian Leftwich proclaimed in What is Politics? The Activity and Its Study (2004), ‘politics is at the heart of all collective social activity, formal and informal, public and private, in all human groups, institutions and societies’. In this sense, politics takes place at every level of social interaction; it can be found 45 within families and amongst small groups of friends just as much as amongst nations and on the global stage. However, what is it that is distinctive about political activity? What marks off politics from any other form of social behaviour? FOCUS ON... ‘FACES’ OF POWER Power can be said to be exercised whenever A gets B to do something that B would not otherwise have done. However, A can influence B in various ways. This allows us to distinguish between different dimensions or ‘faces’ of power: Power as decision-making: This face of power consists of conscious actions that in some way influence the content of decisions. The classic account of this form of power is found in Robert Dahl’s Who Governs? Democracy and Power in an American City (1961), which made judgements about who had power by analysing decisions in the light of the known preferences of the actors involved. Such decisions can nevertheless be influenced in a variety of ways. In Three Faces of Power (1989), Keith Boulding distinguished between the use of force or intimidation (the stick), productive exchanges involving mutual gain (the deal), and the creation of obligations, loyalty and commitment (the kiss). Power as agenda setting: The second face of power, as suggested by Bachrach and Baratz (1962), is the ability to prevent decisions being made: that is, in effect, ‘non-decision- making’. This involves the ability to set or control the political agenda, thereby preventing issues or proposals from being aired in the first place. For instance, private businesses may exert power both by campaigning to defeat proposed consumer-protection legislation (first face), and by lobbying parties and politicians to prevent the question of consumer rights being publicly discussed (second face). Power as thought control: The third face of power is the ability to influence another by shaping what he or she thinks, wants or needs. This is power expressed as ideological indoctrination or psychological control. This is what Lukes (2004) called the ‘radical’ view of power, and it overlaps with the notion of ‘soft’ power (see p. 443). An example of this would be the ability of advertising to shape consumer tastes, 46  often by cultivating associations with a ‘brand’. In political life, the exercise of this form of power is seen in the use of propaganda and, more generally, in the impact of ideology (see p. 27). At its broadest, politics concerns the production, distribution, and use of resources in the course of social existence. Politics is, in essence, power: the ability to achieve a desired outcome, through whatever means. This notion was neatly summed up in the title of Harold Lasswell’s book Politics: Who Gets What, When, How? (1936). From this perspective, politics is about diversity and conflict, but the essential ingredient is the existence of scarcity: the simple fact that, while human needs and desires are infinite, the resources available to satisfy them are always limited. Politics can therefore be seen as a struggle over scarce resources, and power can be seen as the means through which this struggle is conducted. Advocates of the view of politics as power include feminists and Marxists. The rise of the women’s liberation movement in the 1960s and 1970s, bringing with it a growing interest in feminism, stimulated more radical thinking about the nature of ‘the political’. Not only have modern feminists sought to expand the arenas in which politics can be seen to take place, a notion most boldly asserted through the radical feminist slogan ‘the personal is the political’, but they have also tended to view politics as a process, specifically one related to the exercise of power over others. This view was summed by Kate Millett in Sexual Politics (1970), in which she defined politics as ‘power-structured relationships, arrangements whereby one group of persons is controlled by another’. Marxists, for their part, have used the term ‘politics’ in two senses. On one level, Marx (see p. 40) used ‘politics’ in a conventional sense to refer to the apparatus of the state. In the Communist Manifesto ( 1967), he (and Engels) thus referred to political power as ‘merely the organized power of one class for oppressing another’. For Marx, politics, together with law and culture, are part of a ‘superstructure’ that is distinct from the economic ‘base’ that is the real foundation of social life. However, he did not see the economic ‘base’ and the legal and political ‘superstructure’ as entirely separate. He believed that the ‘superstructure’ arose out of, and reflected, the economic ‘base’. At a deeper level, political power, in this view, is therefore rooted in the class system; as Lenin (see p. 100) put it, ‘politics is the most concentrated form of economics’. As opposed to believing that politics can be confined to the state and a narrow public sphere, Marxists can be said to believe that ‘the economic is political’. From this perspective, civil society, characterized as Marxists believe it to 47 be by class struggle, is the very heart of politics. Views such as these portray politics in largely negative terms. Politics is, quite simply, about oppression and subjugation. Radical feminists hold that society is patriarchal, in that women are systematically subordinated and subjected to male power. Marxists traditionally argued that politics in a capitalist society is characterized by the exploitation of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie. On the other hand, these negative implications are balanced against the fact that politics is also seen as an emancipating force, a means through which injustice and domination can be challenged. Marx, for instance, predicted that class exploitation would be overthrown by a proletarian revolution, and radical feminists proclaim the need for gender relations to be reordered through a sexual revolution. However, it is also clear that when politics is portrayed as power and domination it need not be seen as an inevitable feature of social existence. Feminists look to an end of ‘sexual politics’ achieved through the construction of a non-sexist society, in which people will be valued according to personal worth, rather than on the basis of gender. Marxists believe that ‘class politics’ will end with the establishment of a classless communist society. This, in turn, will eventually lead to the ‘withering away’ of the state, also bringing politics in the conventional sense to an end. POLITICS IN ACTION... TRUMP’S TRIUMPH: POLITICS AS POLARIZATION AND ANGER? Events: In the early evening of 8 November 2016, the day of the US presidential election, an anonymous senior adviser to Donald Trump was quoted on CNN as saying: ‘It will take a miracle for us to win’. In the event, the miracle happened. Indeed, the ‘miracle’ had started rather earlier that year, when, having built up an unassailable lead in the Republican Party’s primary election race, Trump was declared the party’s presumptive nominee on 3May. This occurred despite the fact that Trump had enjoyed almost no support from either Republican elites or conservative media figures, and was heavily outspent by three other candidates for the nomination. In the presidential election itself, Trump triumphed over Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party nominee, who had been widely expected to win. Although Clinton took the popular vote by a margin of nearly three million votes, Trump won the crucial Electoral College vote by 306 to 232. In doing so, he became the first US president to take office without having 48 previously stood for election or having served in a military or government post. Significance: Donald Trump’s victory in 2016 was a surprise not merely because (despite his personal wealth and celebrity status) he was an archetypal political outsider, lacking in conventional political experience. A further reason was that, in his personality, temperament and political style, Trump differed markedly from most presidential candidates. For one thing, his campaign rhetoric was, by turn, boastful, abrasive and, in the view of some, deeply offensive. Indeed, Trump’s candidacy exemplified a form of politics that was distinctively polarized and polarizing; it seemed to relish division and attack and disdained compromise and consensus-building. However, it would be a mistake to suggest that this form of politics simply emerged out of the upheavals of 2016; instead, it can be traced back to developments in US party politics that have taken place since the early years of Ronald Reagan’s presidency (1981–89). The most important of these has been the tendency of both the Democrats and the Republicans to abandon the pragmatic centre ground of politics and embrace a more ideological stance on matters related to family and lifestyle questions. This process was fuelled in significant ways by the growing influence of the new Christian right (discussed in Chapter 2). A series of so-called culture wars have therefore developed in US politics over issues such as immigration, gun control, racial integration, sex education in schools, homosexuality and women’s rights, including abortion. Source: Getty Images/Alex Wong The emergence of Trump nevertheless gave renewed impetus to the politics of polarization, especially in view of Trump’s tendency, typical of populist politicians, to see the world in terms of conflict 49  between light and darkness, or good and evil. This became apparent in a number of ways. For example, Trump’s criticisms of his political opponents had a sweeping and deeply personal character. Ted Cruz, his closest Republican rival, was thus repeatedly referred to as ‘Lyin’ Ted’ Cruz, while Hillary Clinton was branded as ‘Crooked Hillary’. Similarly, his attacks on the Washington political establishment and on the media were stark and dismissive. In relation to the allegedly corrupt and failing established political system, he promised to ‘drain the swamp’, while the mainstream media were routinely criticized as purveyors of ‘fake news’. On the other hand, the people whose concerns Trump was most keen to articulate – the white, predominantly male working class, who were believed to be angry as a result of stagnant or falling living standards, job insecurity, and the rise of women’s and minority groups – were portrayed as the ‘real people’. This suggested that they were the only group with legitimate political interests, all other groups being somehow inauthentic and therefore lacking in moral worth. CONCEPT Science Science is a field of study that aims to develop reliable explanations of phenomena through repeatable experiments, observation and deduction. The ‘scientific method’, by which hypotheses are verified (proved true) by testing them against the available evidence, is therefore seen as a means of disclosing value-free and objective truth. Karl Popper (1902–94), however, suggested that science can only falsify hypotheses, since ‘facts’ may always be disproved by later experiments. STUDYING POLITICS Approaches to the study of politics Disagreement 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 enquiry, politics was originally seen as an arm of philosophy, history or law. Its central purpose was to uncover the principles on which human society should be based. From the late nineteenth century onwards, however, this philosophical emphasis was gradually displaced by an attempt to turn politics into a scientific discipline. The high point of this development was reached in the 1950s 50 and 1960s with an open rejection of the earlier tradition as meaningless metaphysics. Since then, however, enthusiasm for a strict science of politics has waned, and there has been a renewed recognition of the enduring importance of political values and normative theories. If the ‘traditional’ search for universal values acceptable to everyone has largely been abandoned, so has the insistence that science alone provides a means of disclosing truth. The resulting discipline is more fertile and more exciting, precisely because it embraces a range of theoretical approaches and a variety of schools of analysis. The philosophical tradition The origins of political analysis date back to Ancient Greece and a tradition usually referred to as ‘political philosophy’. This involved a preoccupation with essentially ethical, prescriptive or normative questions, reflecting a concern with what ‘should’, ‘ought’ or ‘must’ be brought about, rather than with what ‘is’. Plato (see p. 13) and Aristotle are usually identified as the founding fathers of this tradition. Their ideas resurfaced in the writings of medieval theorists such as Augustine (354–430) and Aquinas (1225–74). The central theme of Plato’s work, for instance, was an attempt to describe the nature of the ideal society, which in his view took the form of a benign dictatorship dominated by a class of philosopher kings. Normative: The prescription of values and standards of conduct; what ‘should be’ rather than what ‘is’. Such writings have formed the basis of what is called the ‘traditional’ approach to politics. This involves the analytical study of ideas and doctrines that have been central to political thought. Most commonly, it has taken the form of a history of political thought that focuses on a collection of ‘major’ thinkers (that spans, for instance, Plato to Marx) and a canon of ‘classic’ texts. This approach has the character of literary analysis: it is interested primarily in examining what major thinkers said, how they developed or justified their views, and the intellectual context within which they worked. Although such analysis may be carried out critically and scrupulously, it cannot be objective in any scientific sense, as it deals with normative questions such as ‘Why should I obey the state?’, ‘How should rewards be distributed?’, and ‘What should the limits of individual freedom be?’ Objective: External to the observer, demonstrable; untainted by feelings, values or bias. KEY THINKER 51 PLATO (427–347 BCE) Source: Pixabay/mvivirito0 Greek philosopher. Plato was born of an aristocratic family. He became a follower of Socrates, who is the principal figure in his ethical and philosophical dialogues. After Socrates’ death in 399 BCE, Plato founded his own academy in order to train the new Athenian ruling class. Plato taught that the material world consists of imperfect copies of abstract and eternal ‘ideas’. His political philosophy, expounded in The Republic and The Laws, is an attempt to describe the ideal state in terms of a theory of justice. Both works are decidedly authoritarian and pay no attention to individual liberty, believing that power should be vested in the hands of an educated elite, the philosopher kings. He was therefore a firm critic of democracy. Plato’s work has exerted wide influence on Christianity and on European culture in general. The empirical tradition Although it was less prominent than normative theorizing, a descriptive or empirical tradition can be traced back to the earliest days of political thought. It can be seen in Aristotle’s attempt to classify constitutions (see pp. 111–12), in Machiavelli’s realistic account of statecraft, and in Montesquieu’s (see p. 344) sociological theory of government and law. In many ways, such writings constitute the basis of what is now called ‘comparative government’, and they gave rise to an essentially institutional approach to the discipline. In the USA and the UK, in particular, this developed into the dominant tradition of analysis. The empirical approach to political analysis is characterized by the attempt to offer a dispassionate and impartial account of political reality. The approach is ‘descriptive’, in that it seeks to analyse and explain, whereas the normative approach is ‘prescriptive’, in the sense that it makes judgements and offers recommendations. Empirical: Based on observation and experiment; empirical knowledge is derived from sense data and experience. 52 Descriptive political analysis acquired its philosophical underpinning from the doctrine of empiricism, which spread from the seventeenth century onwards through the work of theorists such as John Locke (see p. 30) and David Hume (1711–76). The doctrine of empiricism advanced the belief that experience is the only basis of knowledge and that, therefore, all hypotheses and theories should be tested by a process of observation. By the nineteenth century, such ideas had developed into what became known as ‘positivism’, an intellectual movement particularly associated with the writings of Auguste Comte (1798–1857). This doctrine proclaimed that the social sciences, and, for that matter, all forms of philosophical enquiry, should adhere strictly to the methods of the natural sciences. Once science was perceived to be the only reliable means of disclosing truth, the pressure to develop a science of politics became irresistible. Behaviouralism Since the mid-nineteenth century, mainstream political analysis has been dominated by the ‘scientific’ tradition, reflecting the growing impact of positivism. In the 1870s, ‘political science’ courses were introduced in the universities of Oxford, Paris and Columbia, and by 1906 the American Political Science Review was being published. However, enthusiasm for a science of politics peaked in the 1950s and 1960s with the emergence, most strongly in the USA, of a form of political analysis that drew heavily on behaviouralism. For the first time, this gave politics reliably scientific credentials, because it provided what had previously been lacking: objective and quantifiable data against which hypotheses could be tested. Political analysts such as David Easton (1979, 1981) proclaimed that politics could adopt the methodology of the natural sciences, and this gave rise to a proliferation of studies in areas best suited to the use of quantitative research methods, such as voting behaviour, the behaviour of legislators, and the behaviour of municipal politicians and lobbyists. Attempts were also made to apply behaviouralism to international relations (IR), in the hope of developing objective ‘laws’ of international relations. The rise of behaviouralism also gave a major impetus to the systemic study of comparative politics. Positivism: The theory that social, and indeed all forms of, enquiry should adhere strictly to the methods of the natural sciences. Behaviouralism: The belief that social theories should be constructed only on the basis of observable behaviour, providing quantifiable data for research. 53 CONCEPT Comparative politics Comparative politics refers to both a disciplinary subfield and a method of analysis. As a disciplinary subfield, it is often taken, especially in the USA, to mean simply ‘the politics of foreign countries’. As a method of analysis, comparative politics involves identifying and exploring similarities and differences between political units (usually states) in order to develop ‘grounded theories’, test hypotheses, infer causal relationships, and produce reliable generalizations. The comparative method is sometimes seen as the most feasible technique for developing scientific knowledge of politics, in view of the practical difficulties of applying experimental techniques. Behaviouralism, however, came under growing pressure from the 1960s onwards. In the first place, it was claimed that behaviouralism had significantly constrained the scope of political analysis, preventing it from going beyond what was directly observable. Although behavioural analysis undoubtedly produced, and continues to produce, invaluable insights in fields such as voting studies, a narrow obsession with quantifiable data threatens to reduce the discipline of politics to little else. More worryingly, it inclined a generation of political scientists to turn their backs on the entire tradition of normative political thought. Concepts such as ‘liberty’, ‘equality’, ‘justice’ and ‘rights’ were sometimes discarded as being meaningless because they were not empirically verifiable entities. Dissatisfaction with behaviouralism has grown as interest in normative questions has revived since the 1970s, as reflected in the writings of theorists such as John Rawls (see p. 44) and Robert Nozick (see p. 68). Rational-choice theory Amongst recent theoretical approaches to politics is what is called ‘formal political theory’, variously known as ‘rational-choice theory’, ‘public- choice theory’ (see p. 277) and ‘political economy’ (see p. 151). This approach to analysis draws heavily on the example of economic theory in building up models based on procedural rules, usually about the rationally self-interested behaviour of the individuals involved. Most firmly established in the USA, and associated in particular with the so-called Virginia School, formal political theory provides at least a useful analytical device, which may provide insights into the actions of voters, lobbyists, bureaucrats and politicians, as well as into the behaviour of states within the international system. This approach has had its broadest 54 impact on political analysis in the form of what is called ‘institutional public-choice theory’. The use of such techniquesin fields such as party competition, interest-group behaviour and the policy influence of bureaucrats, is discussed in later chapters. The approach has also been applied in the form of game theory, which has been developed more from the field of mathematics than from economics. It entails the use of first principles to analyse puzzles about individual behaviour. The best-known example in game theory is the ‘prisoners’ dilemma’ (see Figure 1.5). Game theory has been used by IR theorists to explain why states find it difficult to prevent, for instance, the overfishing of the seas, or the sale of arms to undesirable regimes. Game theory: A way of exploring problems of conflict or collaboration by explaining how one actor’s choice of strategy affects another’s best choice and vice versa. By no means, however, has the rational-choice approach to political analysis been universally accepted. While its supporters claim that it introduces greater rigour into the discussion of political phenomena, critics have questioned its basic assumptions. It may, for instance, overestimate human rationality in that it ignores the fact that people seldom possess a clear set of preferred goals and rarely make decisions in the light of full and accurate knowledge. Furthermore, in proceeding from an abstract model of the individual, rational-choice theory pays insufficient attention to social and historical factors, failing to recognize, amongst other things, that human self-interestedness may be socially conditioned, and not merely innate. CONCEPT Constructivism Constructivism (or social constructivism) is an approach to analysis that is based on the belief that there is no objective social or political reality independent of our understanding of it. Constructivists do not, therefore, regard the social world as something ‘out there’, in the sense of an external world of concrete objects; instead, it exists only ‘inside’, as a kind of inter- subjective awareness. In the final analysis, people, whether acting as individuals or as social groups, ‘construct’ the world according to those constructions. New institutionalism Until the 1950s, the study of politics had largely involved the study of institutions. This ‘traditional’ or ‘old’ institutionalism focused on the rules, 55 procedures and formal organization of government, and employed methods akin to those used in the study of law and history. The advent of the ‘behavioural revolution’, combined with growing concerns about its unreflective and essentially descriptive methods (which sometimes threatened to reduce politics to a collection of organizational rules and structures), led to institutionalism being marginalized during the 1960s and 1970s. However, interest in it was revived from the 1980s onwards by the emergence of what was called ‘new institutionalism’. While remaining faithful to the core institutionalist belief that ‘institutions matter’, in the sense that political structures are thought to shape political behaviour, new institutionalism has revised our understanding of what constitutes an ‘institution’ in a number of respects. Institution: A well-established body with a formal role and status; more broadly, a set of rules that ensure regular and predictable behaviour, the ‘rules of the game’. Political institutions are no longer equated with political organizations; they are thought of not as ‘things’ but as sets of ‘rules’, which guide or constrain the behaviour of individual actors. These rules, moreover, are as likely to be informal as formal, policy-making processes sometimes being shaped more by unwritten conventions or understandings than by formal arrangements. Apart from anything else, this can help to explain why institutions are often difficult to reform, transform or replace. Finally, rather than viewing institutions as independent entities, in which case they exist almost outside of time and space, new institutionalists emphasize that institutions are ‘embedded’ in a particular normative and historical context. Thus, just as actors within an institutional setting are socialized to accept key rules and procedures, the institution itself operates within a larger and more fundamental body of assumptions and practices. Nevertheless, despite these shifts, institutionalism has continued to attract criticism. For example, it is sometimes accused of subscribing to a structuralist logic in which, to a greater or lesser extent, political actors are viewed as ‘prisoners’ of the institutional contexts in which they operate. Critical approaches Since the 1980s, the range of critical approaches to politics has expanded considerably. Until that point, Marxism had constituted the principal alternative to mainstream political science. Indeed, Karl Marx can be seen as the first theorist to have attempted to describe politics in scientific terms. Using his so-called ‘materialist conception of history’ (see pp. 39– 43), Marx strove to uncover the driving force of historical development. This enabled him to make predictions about the future based on ‘laws’ that 56 had the same status in terms of proof as laws in the natural sciences. However, modern political analysis has become both richer and more diverse as a result of the emergence of new critical perspectives, notable examples including feminism (see pp. 47–8), critical theory, green ideology (see pp. 49–50), constructivism, poststructuralism and postcolonialism (see p. 181). What do these new critical voices have in common, and in what sense are they ‘critical’? CONCEPT Postmodernism Postmodernism is a term that was first used to describe experimental movements in Western arts, architecture and cultural development in general. As a tool of social and political analysis, postmodernism highlights the shift away from societies structured by industrialization and class solidarity to increasingly fragmented and pluralistic ‘information’ societies. In these, individuals are transformed from producers to consumers, and individualism replaces class, religious and ethnic loyalties. Postmodernists argue that there is no such thing as certainty; the idea of absolute and universal truth must be discarded as an arrogant pretence. Critical approaches exemplify two broad, and sometimes linked, characteristics. The first is that they are ‘critical’ in that, in their different ways, they seek to contest the political status quo, by (usually) aligning themselves with the interests of marginalized or oppressed groups. Each of them, thus, seeks to uncover inequalities and asymmetries that mainstream approaches tend to ignore. Feminism, for example, has drawn attention to systematic and pervasive structures of gender inequality that characterize politics in all its forms and at every level. Critical theory, which is rooted in the neo-Marxism (see p. 41) of the Frankfurt School, has extended the notion of critique to all social practices, drawing on a wide range of influences. Green ideology, or ecologism (see p. 49), has challenged the anthropocentric (human-centred) emphasis of established political and social theory, and championed holistic approaches to political and social understanding. Postcolonialism emphasizes the cultural dimension of colonial rule, showing how Western cultural and political hegemony (see p. 181) over the rest of the world has been preserved despite the achievement of formal political independence across almost the entire developing world. The second characteristic of critical approaches to politics is that, albeit in 57 different ways and to different degrees, they have tried to go beyond the positivism of mainstream political science, emphasizing instead the role of consciousness in shaping social conduct and, therefore, the political world. These so-called post-positivist approaches (sometimes called ‘interpretivism’ or ‘anti-foundationalism’) are therefore ‘critical’, in that they not only take issue with the conclusions of mainstream approaches, but also subject these approaches themselves to critical scrutiny, exposing biases that operate within them and examining their implications. This can be seen, in particular, in relation to constructivism (see p. 15) Post-positivism: An approach to knowledge that questions the idea of an ‘objective’ reality, emphasizing instead the extent to which people conceive, or ‘construct’, the world in which they live. and poststructuralism. Constructivism has had a significantly greater impact on IR than it has had on political science, with many now treating constructivism as a mainstream international relations theory. However, constructivism is not so much a substantive theory as an analytical tool. In arguing that people, in effect, ‘construct’ the world in which they live, suggesting that the world operates through a kind of ‘inter-subjective’ awareness, constructivists have thrown mainstream political analysis’s claim to objectivity into question. For example, as subjective entities, political actors have no fixed or objective interests or identities; rather, these are fashioned (and can be re-fashioned) through the traditions, values and sentiments that prevail at any time. Poststructuralism emerged alongside postmodernism, the two terms sometimes being used interchangeably. Poststructuralism emphasizes that all ideas and concepts are expressed in language which itself is enmeshed in complex relations of power. Influenced particularly by the writings of the French philosopher and radical intellectual Michel Foucault (1926–84), poststructuralists have drawn attention to the link between power and systems of thought using the idea of discourse, or ‘discourses of power’. In crude terms, this implies that knowledge is power. However, in the absence of a universal frame of reference or overarching perspective, there exists only a series of competing perspectives, each of which represents a particular discourse of power. Although poststructuralism and postmodernism reject the idea of absolute and universal truth (foundationalism), poststructuralists argue that it is possible to expose hidden meanings in particular concepts, theories and interpretations through a process of deconstruction. Discourse: Human interaction, especially communication; discourse may disclose or illustrate power relations. 58 Deconstruction: A close reading of philosophical or other texts with an eye to their various blind spots and/or contradictions. FOCUS ON... THE PRISONERS’ DILEMMA Figure 1.3 Options in the prisoners’ dilemma Two prisoners, held in separate cells, are faced with the choice of ‘squealing’ or ‘not squealing’ on one another. If only one of them confesses, but provides evidence to convict the other, he will be released without charge, while his partner will take the whole blame and be jailed for ten years. If both prisoners confess, they will each be jailed for six years. If both refuse to confess, they will only be convicted of a minor crime, and they will each receive a one-year sentence. Figure 1.3 shows the options available to the prisoners and their consequences in terms of jail sentences. In view of the dilemma confronting them it is likely that both prisoners will confess, fear