IGP

• Politics


  The ability to achieve a desired outcome, through whatever means necessary
• Ancient Greek Society


  • The largest and most influential city-state was Athens, often portrayed as the cradle of democratic government
• Four Approaches to Defining Politics

  • Politics as an art of government
  • Politics as public affairs
  • Politics as compromise and consensus
  • Politics as power
• Politics as an art of government


  Politics is associated with an area or location
• Politics as public affairs


  Politics as a process or mechanism
• Politics as compromise and consensus

  Politics is the process of resolving conflicts
• Politics as power


  The ability of person A to get person B to do something that person B would not have otherwise done (if given the option of not doing it)
• Dimensions of Power


  • Power as decision-making
  • Power as agenda setting
  • Power as thought control
• Politics in essence is Power
• Scarcity


  The fact that while human needs and desires are infinite, resources available to satisfy them are limited
• Politics can be seen as a struggle over scarce resources, whilst power can be seen as the means through which this struggle is conducted
• State


  A political association that establishes sovereign jurisdiction within defined territorial borders and exercises authority through a set of permanent institutions
• State


  • Sovereign - has absolute power, no one has power higher
  • Public institutions responsible for collective organization of communal life, funded at public expense
  • Legitimate - decisions accepted as binding on society as in public interest
  • Instrument of domination - backed by coercion to ensure laws are obeyed
  • Defined territory with permanent population
• Montevideo convention of the rights and duties of the state (1933)
• Failed state


  When the government is not "effective", meaning it cannot maintain law and order or provide basic services
• Rival theories of the state

  • Pluralist state
  • Capitalist state
  • Leviathan state
  • Patriarchal state
• Pluralist state


  State should be a "referee" or "umpire" in society, arisen from voluntary social contract to protect individuals
• Capitalist state


  State serves the interests of the capital owners of large businesses and multinational companies at the expense of the working class
• Leviathan state


  State is a self-serving monster intent on expansion and aggrandizement, not an impartial referee
• Patriarchal state


  State power reflects a deeper structure of oppression in the form of patriarchy, with males occupying public offices and females the private sphere
• Roles of the state

  • Minimal state
  • Developmental state
  • Social-democratic state
  • Collectivized state
  • Totalitarian state
  • Religious state
• Minimal state


  Aims for maximum individual freedom, state acts as a "night watchman" to maintain order and enforce contracts
• Developmental state


  State intervenes in economic life to promote industrial growth and development
• Social-democratic state


  Intervenes to bring about social restructuring, fairness, equality and social justice
• Collectivized state


  Intervenes to bring economic life under state control, abolishing private enterprise
• Totalitarian state


  Most extreme form of state intervention, penetrating all aspects of human existence
• Religious state


  Religion is the basis of politics and the state, rejecting public/private divide
• Political nationalism


  Emphasizes civic loyalties and political alliances over cultural identity. Views a nation as a group of people bound together by shared citizenship, regardless of their cultural and ethnic backgrounds.
• Political nationalism


  • Example 1
  • Example 2
• Political ideology is necessary because it offers a split cause and effect understanding on complex issues or concepts
• Ideology is necessary in order to understand the "why and how" certain things are the way they are
• Social Democrats have in common