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Summary PPG Final Exam Study Guide
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study guide for the final exam of the course Politics, Power and Governance 1
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Lecture 1: What is politics?● What is politics?
○ Not a definite answer, very difficult to define something as politics
○ Boundary problems with the question “What is politics?”: defining politics always has boundary
problems
■ Narrow: state, political parties, government
■ Broad: is everything politics? But boundaries are flexible (economy, journalism, voting)
○ What makes something politics?
■ Wars (states fighting with other states)
■ Military industry (how do you become the superior power?; military industrial complex)
■ Boundaries (no state without borders)
● Crossing or guarding borders: politics
● Are there political borders?
■ Voting or protesting, political acts
■ Is market politics? (Corporate America as ruling the world?)
● Then should we say economics instead of politics?
○ Politics according to Benjamin Barber: “Politics is the necessity to make collective and
binding-decisions in circumstances of conflict and uncertainty” (Barber, 1988)
■ This won’t clear out the boundary problem, but it helps us understand the nature of
politics or some crucial elements of it
○ (1) Conflict:
■ Of interests:
● “Politics is who gets what, when and how” (Lasswell, 1950)
● Individual vs. group interests
● Monetary and distributional issues
■ Of values:
● “Politics is the warring of the gods” (Weber, 1920)
● Politics of conviction (gay marriage, abortion)
● Sharp and fundamental conflicts
■ Good politics would turn conflict of values into interests (i.e. abortion)
■ Conflict as the core of politics: creates the problem of order
● Vulnerability of human coexistence and collective action
● Politics is always a conflictual context that aims at establishing an order
(Mouffe, 1993)
○ (2) Uncertainty: no single response to a problem
■ Lack of information/knowledge: future is always uncertain
● And politics is not about past but future
■ Problem of”acceptable” risk: something could go wrong (i.e. vaccinations)
● This is not something that can be calculated, we live in a risk society in
sociological terms
■ Conflicting facts: “wicked problems”
● i.e. unemployment (what causes this?), global warming (what this means as a
political problem?)
● These are wicked because they can’t be settled with more facts
■ “Where reason claims to speak, politics is silent” (Barber 1988)
● Politics cannot be substituted by methods of philosophy or science
○ it is not a scientific problem, science can’t replace politics
, ● Decisions are the outcome of a political process that is ongoing and never
finalized
○ This is structured by conflict and strategic power, and is never final
● Aristotle: “practical wisdom” (phronesis: faculty of the human soul that
determines the best action to perform in a given situation)
○ This allows us to make the wise decision
○ (3) Necessity
■ Politics is about real things that need attention now (war/peace, welfare, global warming)
● “It is not granted to political judges not to judge” (Barber 1988: 208)
○ It can’t wait for consensus and certainty
○ you have to make a decision and let it be wise
○ (4) Collective and binding decisions
■ These decisions hold for all, even if we disagree
● Making such binding-decisions is an exercise of power
■ Politics is a means through which we achieve collective goals
○ The distinctive nature of politics is consists of collective; conflict; exercise of power; cannot be
substituted by science or philosophy; not about truth but about reasonability; not a game but urgent
● What is political science? The study of power in a certain domain
○ The study of power (what is power is the core question)
■ As an aspect of human activity: implies that you can’t escape power
● All human actions can be interpreted from a power perspective
● Can be analyzed and understood in terms of power
● The distribution of power in social systems, institutions, relationships
● The study of “any persistent pattern of human relationships that involved to a
significant extent, control, influence, power or authority” (Robert Dahl, 1991)
■ As a separate domain of human activity: power can be escaped
● Collective ruling organizations
● The state, its institutions, its processes
○ Why study politics?
■ “Political analysis helps one to understand the world one lives in, to make more
intelligent choices among the alternatives one faces, and to influence the changes inherent
in all political systems” (Dahl 1976:12)
○ Aspect and domain are ways of understanding the study of power, but also applicable to other
disciplines. Together they make multiple worlds
○ Different perspectives: two different ways of looking at such disciplines (these different
perspectives imply that reality is ambiguous: there is political aspect to markets and law, and there
is legal, economic, psychological aspects to politics)
■ Law: domain (legal system); aspect (understanding one’s life through human aspects,
legality)
■ Economics: domain (economic system/markets); aspect (utility, aspects intertwined with
human life)
■ Psychology: domain (human mind); aspect (emotion)
■ Politics: domain (the state, the prime political organization); aspect (power,
understanding political action in terms of power but without necessarily being a part of
the state)
○ Science gives clarity and ambiguity (how do we deal with multiple worlds?)
■ Methods “distort [the world] into clarity” (Law, 2004, p.2)
Scott: Patterns of Power
, ● Politics has something to do with power. But what is power?
○ key characteristics of power are introduced
● Scott distinguishes between causal power and social power:
○ argues why social power can only be exercised over free subjects, and what power is as a capacity.
● Power is the production of causal effects
○ The idea of power as causal power is integral to the idea of human agency
○ Exercising causal powers that produce effects in the world
■ Power as an aspect of human activity perspective
■ “Transformative capacity” of human agents
○ Acting is having causal powers: that form of the “potency” that defines human agent, an actor’s
general ability to produce performances
● Social power: form of causation, related to social relations, central concern for Scott
○ Use of causal powers to impact others in social relations
○ Principal: paramount agent; subaltern: subordinate agent
■ Power is the social relation between the two
● Intentions and interests of principals are important in understanding power:
○ Social power reaction should involve the reproduction of intended effects, it involves the intention
to produce a particular effect
○ Power is the intended causal effect
● Free agents are able to choose freely among alternatives, but they don’t necessarily choose the rational/wise
options
○ Subalterns must be seen as able to act thersie (resist principal’s wishes)
○ Principal’s power is to freely pursue intentions and interests while subaltern’s power is the
freedom to resist (resistance is part of social power)
● Dialectic (used to understand progress) of control and autonomy: a balance of power that limits the actions
of the participants
○ Formed by the exercise of power and possibility of resistance
○ Principal is able to restrict subaltern’s choices, and the greater the restriction the greater the power
○ Yet, resistance is not always expressed
● Exercising vs holding power: holding power is anticipating the intentions of principal and acting
accordingly to the “anticipated reactions”
○ Power has effect without being exercised
■ Power can have social consequences even without explicit overt intervention by principal
(but through anticipation of its use)
○ Thus, power is a capacity: to have power is to have enduring capacity/disposition to do something
regardless of actually doing it
■ It can be held in readiness for use whenever it is needed
Leach: What is politics really about? (2008)
● Leach proposes different answers to the question “what is politics”?
● (1) Government: identified with leaders
○ Governing, executive role, legislating, law-making
○ Adjudication on the law, judiciary
○ Although people have influence over government, they are not real parts of it. So politics as
government excludes majority of the people
○ Need to collaborate civil society, institutions
● (2) Governing: more inclusive
○ Not about institutions and people but about the process
■ Which would imply that it is alive, changing, evolving
, ○ Sharing authority with the involvement of other institutions
○ Includes organizations, media, whoever has influence on the making and implementation of public
policy
■ But still implies control (governors vs. governed ones, which calling “governance” blurs)
■ Government is the instrument we use to govern (9)
● (3) State: sovereign political and governmental unit (9)
○ Includes coercion and compulsion (all formal institutions)
○ Consists of a nation (people are bounded by a shared identity)
○ But focusing on such neglects the contribution of non-state organizations and interests (i.e.
pressure groups) to political processes
● (4) Power: underpins many definitions of politics
○ Political power is more associated with other forms of influence than physical force
■ Democracy implies that power rests within the people
○ For Marx, political power reflects economic power and os the ruling class controls the “means of
production” under capitalism
○ Power is the capacity to do something or “produce intended effects” (12). But who has power?
● (5) Conflict: politics arise because people disagree over issues where collective binding decisions on the
whole political community are required
○ If there was a universal agreement, then there wouldn’t be politics (13)
○ Conflict as arising in between individuals
■ Humanity as ceaseless competition for scarce resources (mainstream economics)
■ But humans are sociable, so conflicts as arising from groups pursuing collective interests
● (6) Consensus: and pursuit of compromise
○ But is compromise abandoning all values/beliefs? No, so maybe not compromising but exploring
middle grounds for different views to coexist must be the main purpose of politics
● (7) ideas and principles
○ Important as for many years, political philosophers argued over the justification of private
property, best from of government, rights and freedom (15)
● Conclusion: what is politics? Inherently controversial
○ The evidence on answering this question is not conclusive
○ Such controversy reflect the “differing and competing interpretations of the world and human
society” (17)
○ Normative political theory: involves the study of what ought to be rather than what it is
○ Positive political science: involves “positive” or “objective” scientific analysis of political
behavior
● Politics cannot be imagined without conflicts: the need for collective decision-making despite conflicts
○ Politics also refer so means, it is necessary to organize our social lives (so it is everywhere)
○ For order, cooperation, consensus, we need politics
Lecture 2: Between Violence and Legitimacy
● Domination: state dominates us in a pervasive manner
● John Scott: key dimensions of power
○ Causal vs social power
○ Exercising vs holding power
■ Elementary vs developed forms of power
○ Ideal-types vs reality
● Causal power: exercising brute physical/psychological force to bring about consequences
○ The use of power resources on others as objects (not as subjects)
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