Summary of notes for Introduction to Politics part 1
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Module
Introduction to Political Science
Institution
EPSCI
The document includes extended notes on major topics surrounding the subject. Examples of topics are state formation, state actors, political organization, and Secularization in MENA. Plus, the document provides real-life examples and political scientists' opinions.
Social Contract – the principle of individual’s consent to power
Political Science – study of the experience of the political field of our societies; science of political facts
(today); the scientific study of facts and phenomena considered at a given moment as political.
Politicization – the process by which questions, activities, practices, speeches are endowed with a political
significance and are thus appropriated by the actors invested in the political field (Lefebvre)
Polity – the political field, a social space qualified as political, the organization of power relations within a
society. The space of conflict’s regulation, of social regulation.
Politics – competition of power, partisan competition, elections, law-making
Power relations (Domination) (Weber)
Defining common course of action (Samuel Finer) - resolving conflicts
Policies – all the measures decided and implemented thanks to the political activities of politicians.
Mise à Niveau - a disciplinary technique, a procedure that is supposed to be able to continuously inspect,
record and evaluate
State – institutionalized political power which successfully claims the monopoly of legitimate physical violence
(Weber)
a community formed by people and exercising permanent power within a specified territory.
independent territory with borders; an institutional set of government; the legitimate source of law
political entity, form of political organization, in which some people exercise the monopoly over the
physical means of coercion
Power - the chance to make one's own will triumph within a social relationship; can only sustainably rely on
coercion. (the capacity of X to make Y to do Z)
Domination - the chance to find people willingly to obey.
Obedience – based on belief in the legitimacy of power
Legitimacy: the character of any domination that is justified, normal, in conformity with the dominant values
in a society. Legitimacy is a basic condition of rule for any governing regime
Legality: which is in conformity with the laws. It refers to the legal modalities of exercise and transmission of
power.
Legitimate power: presupposes the existence of consent on the part of those who are subject to it.
Socialization - internalization of the social and of certain habitus (internalized dispositions) specific to one's
primary group or social class, learning a way of behaving in accordance with the social order.
Political socialization - process of internalization of the founding beliefs of the political order
Ethnosymbolism - importance of symbols, myths, values, traditions in the formation of modern nations
Nationalism – ideology based on the premise that the individual’s loyalty and devotion to the nation-
state surpass other individual or group interests.
Nation – a group of people with a common language, history, culture, and (usually) geographic territory.
Nation-state – a territorially bounded sovereign polity—i.e., a state—that is ruled in the name of
a community of citizens who identify themselves as a nation.
Secularization: designates a social and cultural process which induces a lesser influence of religions on
collective life and on the structures of collective life.
Laicity- focuses on the relations, instituted legally, of various public institutions with religion.
Post-Colonialism – an approach that takes into account colonization as an important factor shaping modern
societies, both in colonized and colonizing countries
Othering – transforming a difference into otherness, generating an us/them dichotomcy between an in-group
and out-group
Essentialism – see a social group on the basis on one of its cultural or biological traits and see these traits as
invariable given that do not have a history and do not change
Culture –
Identity – a narratibe of the individual and/or collective self
Orientalism in reverse – internalization of the Orientalist imaginary and positivation of Orientalist stereotypes
(Sadik Jalal al-‘Azm)
Theocracy - a political regime in which there is a confusion between political and religious functions. The head
of the state hails from the religious institution and often heads it.
, Political Science Midterm
Field (Bourdieu) – a domain of social activity relatively autonomous with its own laws. /
Democracy is a form of government in which the government get its authority from the people (gets voted in
by the people).
Authoritarianism – restricted pluralism, which means that there are elections, but without much choice.
Totalitarianism - A form of ideal authoritarianism whereby pluralism is non-existent. Instead, people subscribe
to a single dominant ideology which would govern everyone’s way of thinking and speaking.
Hybrids - political models caught halfway between democracies and autocracies.
I. Authority, Power, and Order
1. Reading analysis:
How state-level societies differ from tribal ones?
- Pristine Vs Competitive state-formation
- Different theories of state formation
State-level societies: centralized source of authority, monopoly of the legitimate means of coercion (army or
police)
Theories of state formation:
- Social contract
- State as hydraulic-engineering project
- Population density
- States as a product of violence and compulsion
- State as a product of charismatic authority
Pristine state-formation factors:
- A sufficient abundance of resources to permit the creation of surpluses above what is necessary for
subsistence.
- The absolute scale of the society must be sufficiently large to permit the emergence of rudimentary
opportunities present themselves.
- Population needs to be physically constrained so that it increases in density when technological
opportunities present themselves.
- Tribal groups must be motivated to give up their freedom.
Because of: the threat of physical extinction, the charismatic authority of religious leader
2. Reading Analysis 2 – Beatrice Hibou (Domination and control in Tunisia: economic levers for the
exercise of authoritarian power”
- Weberian perspective - using Weber’s political economy and Foucault’s analysis of the exercice of
power.
- Focus: political significance of economic reforms
Argument:
- demonstrate that techniues of domination are embedded in the most everyday economic
mechanism: tax system, solidarity practices, and “mise a niveau)
- The economic wheels are also the basis of these power relations that allow domination.
- Continuum between repression and political control on the one hand and the most banal economic
and social practices on the other (ex of the islamists)
*Privatization – allows corruption and monopolizations = the mode of governing of the Ben Ali clan in
Tunisia
3. The notion of Power
Weber: power – any chance to make one’s own will triumph within a social relationship; it doesn’t matter what
this chance is based on
VS domination power does not necessarily imply legitimacy.
, Political Science Midterm
Question: Can we identify a specificity of a political power?
3 approaches:
- Substantialist approach – power can be possessed or lost
- Institutionalist approach – power is identified with the state and institution
Ex. Democracy, which as 3 main powers: ones that control each other, criticism, the myth of the
decision
- Relational approach (interactionist) – power not as a thing but as a relation, a power over someone
(Robert Dahl - ability of a person A to get a person B to do something that they would not have done
without A's intervention)
Pierre Bourdieu: apprehends power relations within what he defines as "social fields" = specific
spaces where relationships of domination are organized.
Fields: of forces, of struggles, conflicts
- Political Power and the state
Political power is exerted on the whole of the society
It can fix the extension and the limits of the other powers
It is political when it produces injunctions that concern the whle of a political community (population,
a territory, production activities, communication practices and social rules)
State – institutionalized political power which successfully claims the monopoly of legitimate physical violence
(Weber)
*Charles Tilly defines the state as "an organization that controls the population occupying a defined territory
insofar as it is differentiated from other organizations operating in the same territory, where it is
autonomous, where it is centralized, and where its subdivisions are coordinated with each other”.
4. From power to domination (rule)
Robert Dahl: power and the concept of domination at the heart of politics: "A political system is a persistent
web of human relationships that involves a significant measure of power, domination, authority.”
Power VS domination:
= unlike domination, power does not necessarily imply legitimacy or its search. Can be exercised by pure force
The concept of domination allows the introduction of the notion of consent: the dominated must accept that
the dominators exercise domination over them. It must be based on a belief.
Power - the chance to make one's own will triumph within a social relationship; can only sustainably rely on
coercion.
Domination - the chance to find people willingly to obey.
Obedience – based on belief in the legitimacy of power
3 ideal types of political domination (Weber)
Traditional domination - bases its legitimacy on the sanctity of tradition/customs/rules from the past, which
are no longer contested because they are naturalized and transmitted from generation to generation
Charismatic domination - based on the qualities attributed to the leader with an aura deemed
exceptional/heroic virtues (can occur in the situations of crisis)
Legal-rational domination - based on the power of an abstract and impersonal law, thought to be imposed on
all
5. Legitimacy and legitimization of political power
! The main objective of any political power is legitimization
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