Module 1: What is politics?

• Politics


  The activity through which people make, preserve, and amend the general rules under which they live
• 4 Different Views of Politics

  • Politics as the art of government
  • Politics as public affairs
  • Politics as compromise and consensus
  • Politics as power
• Polis: (Greek) City-state; classically understood to imply the highest or most desirable form of social organization.
• Authority can most simply be defined as ‘legitimate power’. It is therefore based on an acknowledged duty to obey rather than on any form of coercion or manipulation. In this sense, it is power cloaked in legitimacy or rightfulness
• Polity: A society organized through the exercise of political authority; for Aristotle, rule by the many in the interests of all
• Anti-politics: Disillusionment with formal or established political processes, reflected in non-participation, support for anti-system parties, or the use of direct action.
• Machiavelli’s 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.
• Power: is the ability to achieve a desired outcome, sometimes seen as the ‘power to’ do something; the ability to influence the behaviour of others in a manner not of their choosing; ability to keep oneself alive to the ability of government to promote economic growth; power may be associated with the ability to punish or reward, bringing it close to force or manipulation, in contrast to ‘influence’.
• Aristotle is 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.
• 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. It therefore refers to a realm of autonomous groups and associations.
• State: apparatus of government.
• Human Condition (1958) by Hannah Arendt argues that politics is the most important form of human activity because it involves interaction amongst free and equal citizens. It thus gives meaning to life and affirms the uniqueness of each individual.
• Consensus means agreement, but it refers to an agreement of a particular kind; it 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.
• 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 by testing them against the available evidence, is therefore seen as a means of disclosing value-free and objective truth.
• Normative: The prescription of values and standards of conduct; what ‘should be’ rather than what ‘is’.
• Empirical: Based on observation and experiment; such knowledge is derived from sense data and experience.
• Positivism: Auguste Comte argues that social, and indeed all forms of, enquiry should adhere strictly to the methods of the natural science.
• Adjudication: a formal judgment on a disputed matter or to amend.
• Institutionalist tradition: What concerns the polis, what concerns the state.
• Politics takes place in the polity – a system of social

  organization centered upon the machinery of the government or the place of how a community or country is organized and run by its government.
• Based on traditional institutionalists, there is a line drawn between what is referred to as the public sphere and the non-political private sphere.
• Libertarian theorists emphasize individual freedom and autonomy, placing civil society as both separate from and superior to the state; they also emphasize maximum freedom and control over their own lives without interference from the government.
• Civil society is characterized by: (1) voluntary participation, (2)

  pluralist interest, (3) defined boundaries from the encroachment

  of the state.
• Power is defined by Heywood (2013) as “the ability to achieve a desired outcome” and “the ability to influence others not in a matter of their own choosing”.
• 3 Faces of Power

  • Power as decision-making: Who gets to make or influence the decision?

  • Power as agenda-setting: What gets discussed/acted on and what

  ow will people perceive matters and think?

  • Power as thought control: How will people perceive matters and think?