SUMMARY: POLITICS BY ANDREW HEYWOOD
Table of contents:
SUMMARY: POLITICS BY ANDREW HEYWOOD................................................................................................1
Chapter 1: What is Politics?..................................................................................................................................1
Chapter 2: Political Ideas and Ideologies..............................................................................................................6
Chapter 3: Politics and The State........................................................................................................................13
Chapter 6: Nations and Nationalism..................................................................................................................18
Chapter 4: Democracy and Legitimacy...............................................................................................................22
Chapter 10: Representation, Elections and Voting.............................................................................................28
Chapter 11: Parties and Party Systems..............................................................................................................33
Chapter 12: Groups, Interests and Movements..................................................................................................38
Chapter 7: Globalization.....................................................................................................................................41
Chapter 17: Multilevel Politics............................................................................................................................44
Chapter 1: What is Politics?
Defining Politics
Politics, is in its broader sense, is the activity through which people make, preserve and
amend the general rules under which they live. Politics is linked to the phenomena of
conflict (competition between opposing forces, reflecting a diversity of opinions,
preferences, needs or interests) and cooperation (working together; achieving goals through
collective action). Politics is better thought of as a search for conflict resolution than at its
achievement, as not all conflicts are, or can be, resolved. Nevertheless, the inescapable
presence of diversity (we are not all alike) and scarcity (there is never enough to go around)
ensures that politics is an inevitable feature of the human condition.
Politics as an arena Politics as a process
Definitions of politics The art of government Compromise and consensus
Public affairs Power and the distribution of
resources
Approaches to the study of Behaviouralism Feminism
politics Rational-choice theory Marxism
Institutionalism Post-positive approaches
Politics as the art of government
The word politics is derived from polis, meaning literally ‘city-state’. Ancient Greek society
was divided into a collection of independent city-states, each of which possessed its own
system of government. The largest and most influential of these city-states was Athens. To
study politics is, in essence, to study government, or more broadly, to study the exercise of
authority (legitimate power). Politics is what takes place within a polity (a society organized
through the exercise of political authority; for Aristotle, rule by the many in the interests of
all), a system of social organization centred on the machinery of government. Politicians are
often seen as power-seeking hypocrites who conceal personal ambition behind the rhetoric
of public service and ideological conviction. Anti-politics is rooted in a view of politics as a
self-serving, two-faced and unprincipled activity, clearly evident in the use of derogatory
,phrases such as ‘office politics’ and ‘politicking’. > This image can be traced back to the
writings of Machiavelli (1469-1527), who wrote; The Prince. The adjective Machiavellian
came to mean ‘cunning and duplicitous’.
Without some kind of mechanism (politics) for allocating authoritative values, society would
simply disintegrate into a civil war of each against all, as the early social-contract theorists
argued. The task is therefore not to abolish politicians and bring politics to an end but, rather,
to ensure that politics is conducted within a framework of checks and constraints that
guarantee that governmental power is not abused.
Politics as public affairs
In Politics, Aristotle declared that ‘man is by nature a political animal’, by which he meant that
it is only within a political community that human beings can live the ‘good life’. From this
viewpoint, then, politics is an ethical activity concerned with creating a ‘just society’; it is what
Aristotle called the ‘master science’. The institutions of the state (the apparatus of
government, the courts, the police, the army, the social security system, and so forth) can be
regarded as ‘public’ in the sense that they are responsible for the collective organization of
community life. Moreover, they are funded at the public’s expense, out of taxation. In
contrast, civil society consists of what Edmund Burke called the ‘little platoons’, institutions
and such as the family and kinship groups, private businesses, trade unions, clubs,
community groups, that are ‘private’ in the sense that they are set up and funded by
individual citizens to satisfy their own interests, rather than those of the larger society. An
alternative ‘public/private’ divide is sometimes defined in terms of a further and more subtle
distinction; namely, that between ‘the political’ and ‘the personal’. According to this
perspective, politics does not, and should not, infringe on ‘personal’ affairs and institutions.
The notion that politics should exclude ‘the personal’ has nevertheless been challenged by
feminist thinkers. Not only does this in effect exclude women from politics, but, as radical
feminists in particular argue, it excludes from political analysis the core processes through
which male domination and female subordination are brought about. These include
conditioning within the family (the process through which boys and girls are encouraged to
conform to contrasting stereotypes of ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’), the distribution of
housework and other domestic responsibilities, and the politics of personal and sexual
conduct.
Public Private
The state: Civil society:
Apparatus of government Autonomous bodies – businesses, trade unions,
clubs, families and so on
Public Private
Public realm: Personal realm:
Politics, commerce, work, art, culture and so on Family and domestic life
According to Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) politics is the most important form of human
activity because it involves interaction amongst free and equal citizens (The Human
Condition). It thus gives meaning to life and affirms the uniqueness of each individual. In
Mill’s view, involvement in ‘public’ affairs is educational, in that it promotes the personal,
moral and intellectual development of the individual.
In sharp contrast, however, politics as public activity has also been portrayed as a form of
unwanted interference. This is most clearly demonstrated by attempts to narrow the realm of
,‘the political’, commonly expressed as the wish to ‘keep politics out of’ private activities such
as business, sport and family life.
Politics as compromise and consensus
Politics is seen as a particular means of resolving conflict: that is, by compromise,
conciliation and negotiation, rather than through force and naked power. In the view of
Bernard Crick (1962), the key to politics is a wide dispersal of power. In other words, the
disagreements that exist can be solved without resort to intimidation and violence. (= this
model has little to tell about one-party states or military regimes).
Politics as power
The fourth definition of politics is both the broadest and the most radical. Rather than
confining politics to a particular sphere (the government, the state or the ‘public’ realm), this
view sees politics at work in all collective social activity, formal and informal, public and
private, in all human groups, institutions and societies’.
‘Faces’ of power:
Power as decision-making
Power as agenda setting
Power as thought control
At its broadest, politics concerns the production, distribution, and use of resources in the
course of social existence. Politics is, in essence, power: the ability to achieve a desired
outcome, through whatever means. This notion was summed up in the title of Harold
Laswell’s book Who Gets What, When, How? (1936). From this perspective, politics is about
diversity and conflict, but the essential ingredient is the existence of scarcity: the simple fact
that, while human needs and desire are infinite, the resources available to satisfy them are
always limited. Politics can therefore be seen as a struggle of scarce resources, and power
can be seen as the means through which this struggle is conducted.
Advocates of the view of politics as power include feminists and Marxists. Not only have
feminists sought to expand the arenas I which politics can be seen to take place, a notion
most boldly asserted through the radical feminist slogan ‘the personal is the political’, but
they have also tended to view politics as a process, specifically one related to the exercise of
power over others. Marxists can be said to believe that ‘the economic is political’. From this
perspective, civil society, characterized as Marxists believe it to be by class struggle, is the
very heart of politics.
Studying politics
One of the most ancient spheres of intellectual enquiry, politics was originally seen as an arm
of philosophy, history or law. Its central purpose was to uncover the principles on which
human society should be based. There are a couple different approaches to the study of
politics.
The philosophical tradition
The origins of political analysis date back to Ancient Greece and a tradition usually referred
to as ‘political-philosophy’. This involved a preoccupation with essentially ethical, prescriptive
or normative (what ‘should be’ rather than what ‘is’) questions, reflecting a concern with
what ‘should’, ‘ought’ or ‘must’ be brought about, rather than what ‘is’. Plato (427-347 BCE)
and Aristotle are usually identified as the founding fathers of this tradition. This is also called
the ‘traditional’ approach, which involves analytical study of ideas and doctrines that have
, been central to political thought. This approach focuses on the ‘major’ thinkers. Hereby, this
approach cannot be objective in any scientific sense, as it deals with normative questions.
The empirical tradition
Although it was less prominent than normative theorizing, a descriptive or empirical (based
on observation and experiment) tradition can be traced back to the earliest days of political
thought. The empirical approach to political analysis is characterized by the attempt to offer a
dispassionate and impartial account of political reality. The approach is ‘descriptive’, in that it
seeks to analyse and explain, whereas the normative approach is ‘prescriptive’, in the sense
that it makes judgements and offers recommendations. Descriptive political analysis acquired
its philosophical underpinning from the doctrine of empiricism, which spread from the 17th
century onwards through the work of theorists such as John Locke and David Hume (1711-
1776). The doctrine of empiricism advanced the belief that experience is the only basis of
knowledge and that, therefore, all hypotheses and theories should be tested by a process of
observation. By the 19th century, such ideas had developed into what became known as
‘positivism’, an intellectual movement particularly associated with the writings of Auguste
Comte (1798-1857).
Behaviouralism
Since the mid-nineteenth century, mainstream political analysis has been dominated by the
‘scientific’ tradition, reflecting the growing impact of positivism. Enthusiasm for a science of
politics peaked in the 1950s and 1960s with the emergence, most strongly in the USA, of a
form of political analysis that drew heavily on behaviouralism (the belief that social theories
should be constructed only on the basis of observable behaviour, providing quantifiable data
for research. Political analysts such as David Easton (1979, 1981) proclaimed that politics
could adopt the methodology of the natural sciences, and this gave rise to a proliferation of
studies in areas best suited to the use of quantitative research methods, such s voting
behaviour, the behaviour of legislators, and the behaviour of municipal politicians and
lobbyists. It was claimed that behaviouralism had significantly constrained the scope of
political analysis, preventing it from going beyond what was directly observable.
Dissatisfaction with behaviouralism has grown as interest in normative questions has revived
since the 1970s, as reflected in the writings of theorists such as John Rawls and Robert
Nozick.
Rational-choice theory
Amongst recent theoretical approaches to politics is what is called ‘formal political theory’,
variously known as ‘rational-choice theory’, ‘public-choice theory’ and ‘political economy’.
This approach to analysis draws heavily on the example of economic theory in building up
models based on procedural rules, usually about the rationally self-interested behaviour of
the individuals involved. The best-known example in game theory is the ‘prisoners’ dilemma.
Game theory (a way of exploring problems of conflict or collaboration by explaining how one
actor’s choice of strategy affects another’s best choice and vice versa). has been used by IR
theorists to explain why states find it difficult to prevent, for instance, the overfishing of the
seas, or the scale of arms to undesirable regimes. By no means, however, has the rational-
choice approach to political analysis been universally accepted.
New institutionalism
Until the 1950s, the study of politics had largely involved the study of institutions. This
‘traditional’ or ‘old’ institutionalism focused on the rules, procedures and formal organization
of government, and employed methods akin to those used in the study of law and history.
While remaining faithful to the core institutionalist belief that ‘institutions matter’, in the sense
