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IPOL Year 1 UvA summary of the book Politics by Andrew Haywood
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Chapter 1● What are defining features of politics as an activity?
It is an activity through which people make, preserve and amend the general rules under which
they live. It is therefore linked with the phenomena of conflict and cooperation, as well as a
search for conflict resolution.
● Politics through different schools of thought
Many assume that politics cannot be studied academically as those that study it can be biased in some
way, since the word ‘politics’ has been used in many different ways in daily language. Politics as a word
can be thought of as dirty or taboo because things associated with it are often connected to chaos,
trouble, disruption, manipulation and violence.
Saumel Johnson (1775) “nothing more than a means of rising in the world”
Henry Adams (19th century) “the systematic organization of hatreds”
Furthermore, politics can be treated as an essentially contested concept (many different meanings)
1. Politics as an arena:
Behavior becomes political because of where it takes place
- Politics as the art of government
(the exercise of control within society through the making and enforcement of collective
decisions)
Meaning: studying ‘what concerns the state’, focusing on the personnel and the machinery of the
government
David Easton (1979, 1981) “authoritative allocation of values”
Most people can therefore be regarded as ‘outside of politics’ (politics is practiced in various
governmental places)
Lord Acton (1834-1902) “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”
- Public affairs
It moves beyond the narrow realm of government to ‘public life’/’public affairs’.
Aristotle “man is by nature a political animal” -> ethical activity for creating a just society
Civil society vs. state:
Public: publicly funded, institutions of the state, public as they are responsible for the
collective organization of community life (politics, commerce, work, art, culture)
Edman Burke on civil society: ‘little platoons’, set up and funded by individual citizens to
satisfy their own interests (family and domestic life)
Challenged by feminist thinkers (“politics should exclude the personal”)
2. Politics as a process: Political behavior is behavior that exhibits distinctive characteristics or
qualities, so it can take place in all social contexts
- Politics as compromise and consensus
Meaning: Politics is seen as a means of resolving conflict (through compromise, conciliation and
negotiation rather than through force or naked power)
Bernard Crick is one of the main thinkers
A key to this view is a wide dispersal of power by accepting that conflict is inevitable, but social
, groups have the power to be conciliated, as they can’t just be destroyed.-> can be seen as a
civilized and civilizing force
Critics: overly oriented to Western political systems
- Politics as power
Sees politics in all social activities, in every corner of human existence. (Adrian Leftwich “politics is at the
heart of all collective social activity, formal and informal, private and public, in all human groups, societies
and institutions”)
-> power as decision making
-> power as agenda-setting
-> power as thought control
Advocates of this view include feminists and Marxists.
● What are the main approaches to the study of politics as an academic discipline?
1. The Philosophical tradition
- Ethical questions: what should/ought/must rather than what is
- Plato and Aristotle as founding fathers
- Medieval theorists Augustine and Aquinas resurfaced their ideas in their writings
- Traditional approach to politics which involves the analytical study of ideas and doctrines that
have been central to political thought
- Cannot be objective in any scientific case, as it deals with normative questions
2. The empirical tradition
- Attempts to offer a dispassionate and impartial account of political reality
- Based on observation and experiment, derived from sense data and experience
- This approach is descriptive, it comes from the doctrine of empiricism (spread through works of
Locke and Hume)
- Experience is the only basis of knowledge, so hypothesis and theories should be tested by
observation
-> these ideas developed into positivism by the 19th century (Auguste Comte)
= all forms of philosophical enquiry should adhere to the methods of natural sciences
3. Behavioralism
- Provided objective and quantifiable data to test hypotheses
- Areas of studies where quantitative research methods could be used (voting behavior, behavior of
legislators, behavior of municipal politicians and lobbyists…)
- Rise in the 1950s and 1960s
- It was Claimed that it strained the scope of political analysis from 1960s onwards
4. Rational-choice theory
- Draws heavily on the example of economic theory in building up models usually about individual
decision making
- Applied in institutional public choice theory & game theory
- Supporters: “it introduces greater rigour into the discussion of political phenomena”
- Critics question its basic assumption (overestimating human rationality, insufficient attention to
social and historical factors)
5. New institutionalism
,- Traditional institutionalism focused on rules, procedures and formal government organizations
- Used methods also applied in law and history, very descriptive
- Institutionalism got marginalized in the 1960s-1970s
- Emergence of new institutionalism in 1980s revised our understanding of what constitutes an
institution (thought of as sets of rules rather than things which guide or constrain the behavior of
individual actors)
- Emphasizes that institutions are embedded in a particular normative or historical context
- Critics: subscribes to structuralist logic where political actors are imprisoned within the
institutional context within which they operate
6. Critical approaches
- Has expanded greatly since the 1980s
- Exemplify two broad and sometimes linked characteristics
- 1st: aligning themselves with the interests of marginalized and oppressed groups, seeking to
uncover inequalities and asymmetries that mainstream approaches tend to ignore
- 2nd: trying to go beyond positivism of mainstream political science, emphasizing the role of
consciousness in shaping social conduct and the political world -> post-positivist approaches
● Can the study of politics be scientific?
Page 19
● What roles do concepts, models and theories play in political analysis?
Concepts are tools with which we think, criticize, argue, explain and analyze.
Models and theories comprise a wide range of ideas rather than a single idea.
A model is a representation of something on a smaller scale, its purpose being to resemble the
original object as well as possible. Conceptual models are devices through which meaning can be
imposed on what would otherwise be a disorganized collection of facts. Broad political theories
must be explained in terms of a series of models.
A theory is a proposition, offering a systematic explanation of a body of empirical data
Concepts
Models or microtheories
Macrotheories
Ideological traditions/ paradigms
● How have globalizing trends affected the relationship between politics and
international relations?
- The traditional ‘inside’’outside’ has become difficult to sustain
- Greater vulnerability of domestic economies to events that take place outside of the state
(2007-9 crisis)
- Increase in the scale, scope and spatial interdependence
- Expands the parameters and complexity of politics that it becomes difficult to make sense
of it as a whole when it comes to political analysis
- States still continue to be the most significant actors in both the domestic and
international spheres
- Sovereignty is not a hard shell anymore but it still remains present between
inside/outside
, Chapter 2
● What is a political ideology?
A more or less coherent set of ideas that provides a basis for organized political action, whether to
preserve, modify or overthrow an existing system of power relationships.
Keys to an ideology:
1. Offers an account of an existent order, often in the ‘world view’
2. Provides a model of a desired future
3. Outlines how political change can and should be brought about.
-> history of the term:
- arose out of the transition from feudalism to industrial capitalism
- Coined in 1796 “science of ideas”
- A more enduring meaning was assigned to it in the 19th century by Karl Marx : the defining feature of it
is that it was false as it confuses the subordinate classes by concealing from the contradictions which all
class societies are based on. He believed that ideas uphold the class system and perpetuate exploitation
- The emergence of totalitarian dictatorships encouraged writers to view an ideology as an instrument of
social control to ensure compliance and subordination (relying on examples of fascism and communism)
- Conservative use of the term: “abstract system of thought”, incomprehensible to humans
-> therefore, Conservatives have traditionally dismissed the notion that they subscribe to an ideology, but
rather subscribing to an ‘attitude of mind; placing their faith in pragmatism, tradition and history
-> modern use of the term excludes the notion that an ideology is good or bad, right or false, it is neutral
in order to apply to all political traditions
● Is politics intrinsically linked to ideology? Can ideology come to an end?
No, yes Yes, no
It can be done by overcoming falsehood and Ideologies provide political actors an
delusion. The solution is to see the world ‘as it intellectual framework which helps them make
is’, in order to see beyond one’s chosen world sense of the world we live in. They shed light
view. on different aspects of reality.
The rise of technocratic politics, and accepting Ideologies adapt to the changing social,
that we live in a capitalistic society has shifted historical and cultural circumstances,
focus from ideologies to the best way to therefore always remaining relevant through
manage the capitalistic system, making the new ideologies emerging or developing from
initial divide between the right and the left pre existing ones. Ideologies go through a
irrelevant to modern politics. constant process of redefinition & renewal.
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