This document contains a few definitions or terms that we came to know in class. These notes are the individual student uploading them and contain no contents from the university or professor himself.
● Authority- A situation whereby an individual or group is re-garded as
having the Right To Exercise power,And Is Thereby Acting legitimately.
● Agency- In social science literature denotes the fact of some- thing
happening or existing because of an actor's action. The contrast is
with a state of affairs that is chiefly determined by impersonal factors
(historical, economic, etc.) over which hu- man actors have little
control. Hence, the frequent use of the combined term structure-agency
to pose the question whether background factors or human action were the
primary causes.
● legal-rational authority: authority derived from the status of an office
as part of a system of constitutional rules, in a democratic country, or
a religious document such as the Koran in Islamic regimes.
● *Authoritarian State: Authoritarian Refers to rule which is
unaccountable and restrictive of personal liberty.
● Social contract A device used by a number of political thinkers, most
recently John Rawls, to justify a particular form of state. It is
conceived as a voluntary agreement that indi- viduals make in a state
of nature, which is a society before government is set up.
● Social democracy An approach which, after the Russian Revolution in
1917, became associated with liberal democra- cies that engaged in
redistributive policies and the creation of a welfare state.
● Social justice The principle that goods ought to be distrib- uted
according to a principle based on need, merit, or pure equality.
● ‘third dimension’ of power ability to shape the demands which groups
articulate in the decision-making arena. the ability of a ruling group
to influence, if not determine, the way that the masses think
● Social democratic states which have a broader social and political
objective. They are associated with attempts to secure greater social and
economic equality, rather than just economic development. Greater social
and economic equality is greatly assisted by general economic prosperity
which provides a great deal more resources to redistribute.
● freedom is defined as the absence of constraints, the identification of
constraints on our freedom is a useful starting point. Possible
constraints can be divided into those that are external to us, and
those that are internal to us, the latter including such
characteristics as rationality and morality.
● Harm principle A position, associated with John Stuart Mill, that actions
are to be allowed unless the effect of them is to harm others. Only
those actions that harm others (affecting them adversely) should ke
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