Lecture notes
Lecture notes - Introduction to politics
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- The University Of Warwick (UoW)
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PO107: Introduction to politicsPROGRAMME
1.1. Introduction
1.2. What is politics?
1.3. Methods of analysis
1.4. Actors, institutions, ideas
1.5. Power and authorities
1.6. ..
1.7. the state
1.8. democracy and legitimacy
1.9. representation & participation
1.10. pressure groups and the media
2.1. political parties & voting
2.2. ideology
2.3. conservatism
2.4. liberalism
2.5. Marxism
2.6. …
2.7. feminism
2.8. nationalism
2.9. political change & revolution
2.10. depoliticisation
Term 3:
st
3.1. politics in the 21 century
3.2. the exam
Academic Reviews:
- American political science review
- British journal of politics and international relations
- British politics
- European political science
- Journal of democracy
- Parliamentary affairs
- Political quarterly
- Political studies
- Policy and politics
- Politics
- Political studies review
Lecture 1: What is politics?
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,PO107: Introduction to politics
The plan:
1. What is politics
2. Conceptions of politics
3. Do we need politic? = Are human beings inherently “political”? (intrisèquement)
4. The “modern liberal” view
5. The politics of ‘politics'
6. What are the boundaries of 'the political'?
1. What is politics?
Etymologically:
From Greek, politikos” of, for, or relating to citizens”). Derived from the word “polis”
Polis is a particular place, a “city state” and a social community.
The establishment of the polis is often regarded to be the single greatest political innovation of the
ancient Greeks. It introduced notions of citizenship, rights, shared identify
Definitions
“In the broadest sense, Politics is the activity through which people make, preserve and amend the general
rules under which they live”. It’s linked to the phenomena of conflict (different opinion) and cooperation.
Politics – Andrew Heywood 2013
According to Hannah Arendt the political power is like “acting in concert”.
“Often conjures up images of trouble, disruption and even violence (…) and deceit manipulation and lies
(…)” Politics Andrew Heywood, 2013
Politics as “nothing more than a means of rising in the world” Samuel Johnson
Politics is “the systematic organization of hatreds” Henry Adams
Politics as an area Politics as a process
- Politics as the art of government - Politics as compromise and consensus =
« Politics is not a science but an art » Bismarck mean of resolving conflicts
To study politics = to study government = to study “compromise, conciliation and negotiation rather
the exercise of authority. than force and naked power”
Politics is the “authoritative allocation of values” e.g. “political solution” means peaceful solution
David Easton (influential US political scientist)
Politics as “the art of the possible”
- Politics as public affairs “Politics [is] the activity by which differing interests
The distinction between ‘the political’ and ‘the within a given unit of rule are conciliated by giving
non-political’ coincides with the division between them a share in power in proportion to their
an essentially public sphere of life and what can be importance to the welfare and the survival of the
thought of as a private sphere. whole community.” Bernard Crick, Defence of
- The public/the political Politics
- The private/the non-political
Politics should not interfere in personal Politics utopian solution: compromise means
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,PO107: Introduction to politics
situations? that concessions are made by all sides (no one
perfectly satisfied), but it is preferable to the
“Man is by nature a political animal”. Politics has alternatives: bloodshed and brutality.
been created to permit humans to live the “good Politics as a civilized and civilizing force.
life”, in a “just society” Aristotle, Politics
= all human being need a political community to - Politics as power
live “a good life” most radical and broadest definition: not a
sphere anymore but everywhere
Civil society: autonomous groups and associations “Politics is at the heart of all collective social
“politics is the most important form of human activity, formal and informal, public and private, in
activity because it involves interaction amongst all human groups, institutions and societies ”
free and equal citizens” Hannah Arendt Adrian Leftwich
Mill and Rousseau think the same way Marxism: power by the exploitation of the
proletariat by the bourgeoisie
Consensus: broad agreement about fundamental Feminism: male power
or underlying principles Politics as “power-structured relationships,
- Procedural consensus: “willingness to make arrangements whereby one group of persons is
decisions through a process of consultation controlled by another” Kate Millett, Sexual Politics
and bargaining” (1969)
- Substantive consensus: “overlap of - First wave: vote for women (end of the 19th
ideological positions that reflect agreement century - beginning of the 20th) women
about broad policy goal” wanted access to the public sphere which
was run by men only at that time
- Second wave (1960’s): The Women’s
liberation movement wanted to challenge
traditional thinking about politics as linked
with the private sphere and so women
were excluded because they are part of the
private sphere (families and domestic tasks)
slogan “the personal is the political”
The Concept of Authority and Legitimacy:
Authority = ‘legitimate power’ (ability to influence the behaviour of others): no manipulation.
Whereas power is the ability to influence the behaviour of others, authority is the right to do so. Thomas
Hobbes – The Leviathan
Weber distinguished between three kinds of authority, based on the different grounds on which obedience
can be established:
traditional authority is rooted in history
charismatic authority stems from personality
legal– rational authority is grounded in a set of impersonal rules
Public Private
The state: Civil society:
Apparatus of government Autonomous bodies – businesses, trade unions, clubs,
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, PO107: Introduction to politics
families, and so on
Public realm: Personal realm:
Politics, commerce, work, art, culture and so on Family and domestic life
Aristotle (384–322 BCE):
Greek philosopher, student of Plato and tutor of the young Alexander the Great.
He established his own school of philosophy in Athens in 335 BCE: the ‘peripatetic school’ after his tendency
to walk up and down as he talked. His 22 surviving treatises, compiled as lecture notes, range over logic,
physics, metaphysics, astronomy, meteorology, biology, ethics and politics. In the Middle Ages, Aristotle’s
work became the foundation of Islamic philosophy, and it was later incorporated into Christian theology. His
best-known political work is Politics, in which he portrayed the city-state as the basis for virtue and well-
being and argued that democracy is preferable to oligarchy.
Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)
German political theorist and philosopher, brought up in a middle-class Jewish family. She fled Germany in
1933 to escape from Nazism, and finally settled in the USA, where her major work was produced. Her wide-
ranging, even idiosyncratic, writing was influenced by the existentialism of Heidegger (1889– 1976) and
Jaspers (1883–1969); she described it as ‘thinking without barriers’. Her major works include The Origins of
Totalitarianism (1951), which drew parallels between Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia, her major
philosophical work The Human Condition (1958), On Revolution (1963) and Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963).
The final work stimulated particular controversy because it stressed the ‘banality of evil’, by portraying
Eichmann as a Nazi functionary rather than as a raving ideologue.
The Concept of Power
Power […] is the ability to achieve a desired outcome, sometimes seen as the ‘power to’ do something. This
includes everything from the ability to keep oneself alive to the ability of government to promote economic
growth. In politics, however, power is usually thought of as a relationship; that is, as the ability to influence
the behaviour of others in a manner not of their choosing. This implies having ‘power over’ people. More
narrowly, power may be associated with the ability to punish or reward, bringing it close to force or
manipulation, in contrast to ‘influence’.
Power is complex and multidimensional as it can be understood in terms of capability, as a relationship, or
a structure.
Global Politics – Andrew Heywood – p.217
2. Conceptions of politics
The everyday view: politics as something that politicians do
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