A* AQA Politics A-level Political Ideas Notes (Paper 3) covering all topics in Paper 3. The topics included are:
- Feminism
- Conservatism
- Liberalism
- Socialism
• Liberalism is anti-feudalism and anti-aristocracy
• Founded on Enlightenment ideas that stress the capacity of individuals to run their own lives, as
well as embracing capitalism and property rights
o Liberalism and Capitalism are intertwined
o Stressed belief in reason rather than faith -> prompted debate + enquiry
• Early liberalism argued that humans were born both free and morally equal and no one naturally
has a right to rule over others
o This directly attacked the natural form of government of the time – absolute monarchy
• Early liberalism was radical and potentially revolutionary
o Its ideas were central to the American Declaration of Independence of 1776 – ‘no
taxation without representation’
• Classical liberalism dominated until the nineteenth century and modern liberalism has
dominated since that time
HISTORY
• 1649 – Charles I executed
o ‘Divine Right of Kings’ -> challenged by Enlightenment
• 1688 – Glorious Revolution begins the birth of modern constitutionalism
• The birth of Protestant ideas in the 16th Century put the onus on the individual on getting into
Heaven – sola fide and sola scriptura. Protestant ideas were at the very centre of the Liberal
creed (written by Christian men for the Christian communities).
o People no longer had to access God through priests or popes -> could do it themselves
o Introduction of printing and higher literacy rates = Bible could be read individually
Liberalism – a changing product of particular circumstances
Liberalism is a product of the historical and social circumstances from which it arose. No ideology is static
and unchanging bodies of thought
• 1600s – Individual liberty – challenging tyrannical monarchs and the church
o John Locke
• 17/1800s – Industrial revolution – individual freedom is limited with the rise of machinery and
loss of jobs etc
o JS Mill
• Mid 20th Century – creation of the welfare state
o John Rawls
1. REVOLUTIONARY POTENTIAL:
• The Lockean idea of Government by consent promoted the idea that government should
represent the will of the people rather than be the master of the people
• But in 17th/18th C’s these arguments were radical and often required revolutionary upheaval
for them to be put into practice
o E.g. the Glorious Revolution 1688 (glorious because no one died) which ended
Constitutional gov + concentrated political power
• Rationalism also not firmly accepted in 18th C -> radical idea which had revolutionary
potential
o Wollstonecraft’s viewed that rationalism extended to women -> seen as
dangerously radical at the time
2. NEGATIVE LIBERTY:
• Negative freedom = concept of liberty as meaning an absence of restraint
o Described by the liberal thinker Isaiah Berlin as ‘freedom from’ rather than ‘freedom
to’
• People should assume that they are ‘naturally free’ until someone impedes their actions
o Liberty is a ‘natural right’
• The state can only legitimately intervene to prevent harm to others
3. MINIMAL STATE:
• Night-watchman state Harm principle
o The state must act only to protect ‘the peace, safety and public John S. Mill argued that
gov can only rightfully
good of the people’ according to John Locke
extend its power over the
o It only has the right to impose its power on the basis of the harm
individual to prevent
principle in order to ensure the widest possible freedom
actions or beliefs that
bring harm to others. It
4. LAISSEZ-FAIRE CAPITALISM: cannot extend this power
• Inspired by negative liberty + minimal state in relation to self-
• Based on Adam Smith & ‘The Wealth of Nations’ 1776 regarding actions to
• The market economy, based around property rights, can deliver protect the individual’s
prosperity for the individual + society provided there is free trade + own good. E.g. it is right to
competition stop person A destroying
• The state must not interfere with free trade + competition by using person B’s property but
subsidies or taxes or promoting monopolies wrong to stop person A
• BUT the state has a crucial role in ensuring property is protected + from destroying their own
contracts are enforced property
, Key Classical Thinkers
Key thinker – John Locke (1632-1704)
John Locke regarded as ‘father’ of classical liberalism. His work – Two Treatises of Government (1690) – attacking
the idea that the monarchy has a natural right to rule over others and establishing a liberal justification for a
minimal state. He is a classical liberalist + believes in minimal state (ideally wants no gov)
• Locke argued that humans are naturally free, equal and independent and are not naturally under the
authority of any other body of person
o Denied medieval principle that the state = part of God’s creation + people were ‘subjects’ of the
state
• He imagined life before the state – a state of nature – to understand why humankind created the state.
Locke’s state of nature is not a state of war but rather a state of peace
• Locke argued that in the state of nature humans are perfectly free -> there are ‘natural laws’ that underpin
the state of nature
o They are equal, with natural rights such as the right to property and bound by the law of nature –
where no one should harm another in respect of their life, liberty or possessions
o ‘State of law’ would be legitimate if it respected natural rights + natural laws -> ensuring
individuals living under formal laws were never worse of than in the state of nature
o Because of its ‘contractual’ nature, the state would have to embody limited government
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-97)
Mary Wollstonecraft was committed to extending liberal thinking, particularly in relation to gender equality in
society through her key work, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)
• Optimistic view of human nature -> humanity was what made us rational
o Society called women irrational as they had no formal equality -> ‘mind has no gender’
o This makes them like slaves in a political + civil states
• Women should have formal equality: the right to property, as this right is crucial to freedom +
individualism; the right to education, to allow reason to prosper
o (wouldn’t be economically dependent on men; + should have right to vote -> ensures gov by
consent of all)
• Within marriage, women should be allowed to divorce + protection against domestic violence
o Right to property + employment would mean that women would not need to marry out of
financial necessity
• By granting formal equality + giving women access to education, the state would increase society’s
resources of intellect, wisdom + morality to enable social + economic progress
• Wollstonecraft rejected tradition & customs that formed basis of divine right of kings + rule by the
aristocracy
o These gave no basis for accepting laws or gov so were irrational, oppressive + ignorant concepts
• In its place, Wollstonecraft argued for republicanism, formal equality for all + the constitutional protection
of individual rights
KEY DEFINITIONS:
Authority
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