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Introduction to political science (IPOL) mid-term summary
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Summary of lectures and readings for the IPOL mid term exam
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IPOL Mid-term summaryLecture 1: Central concepts I: What is politics?
The lecture introduces the course with examples of the most important political developments of the present,
the past and the future. It provides examples of urgent political issues and political controversies that we want
to understand better. Then, more systematically, we discuss the question of what politics is. Various definitions
and components of politics are discussed, as well as some classical and modern thinkers (e.g. Aristotle, Dahl).
Reading:
Chapter 1 : Key concepts
- Government: focused on institutions
- Governance: processes
- Key arguments
- The concept of governance is used increasingly in political writing
- Defining politics is difficult : in general a collective activity affecting an entire group
- Ideology has lost its original meaning as science of ideas but still useful
- Typologies are important to impose order
A: An overview:
- Concept: a term, idea or category
- Conception: the way something is understood or interpreted
- In order to understand human behaviour we need to examine many examples
- Comparative politics includes systematic study of institutions, character and performance of
government and political process
B: Government and governance:
- Small groups can make collective decisions more easily
- Decision making groups formed as larger groups cannot make decisions easily
- Government: arena for making and enforcing decisions
- A group of people who govern: the Japanese
- A specific administration: Putin
- Form of system rule: centralized
- Nature and direction of administration of a country: a good government\
C: Politics:
- Negotiation and competition in making and executing shared decisions
- Collective activity
- Making decisions on matters affecting people
- Once reached it becomes authoritative and implemented
,D: Power:
- At the heart of politics is the distribution and manipulation of power
- Power: capacity to bring intended effects
- Luke’s 3 dimensions of power
- Who prevails when preferences conflict? Dahl 1957
- Who controls whether preferences are expressed? Bachrach and Baratz 1962
- Who shapes preferences? Luke 1974
- Authority: the right to rule
- Legitimacy: a government based on authority and those subjects recognise their right to make those
decisions
E: Ideology
- A system of connected beliefs, shared view of the world
- Anarchism: society makes decisions with no need for authoritative control
- Marxism: eliminating state system and private property will lead to a classless non exploitative and self
governing society
- Liberalism: individuals are the best judges of their own interests
- Conservatism: traditional institution, free mark and decentralised government
- Fascism: nationalism, militarism and unity through authoritarian state
F: Comparative politics:
- Systematic study of government and politics in different countries to better understand similarities and
differences
- Broadening our understanding
- Predicting political outcomes
G: Classifying political systems
- Typology: a system of classification which states institutions, process, political cultures etc. are divided
into groups with common attributes
- Aristotle based his scheme on 2 dimensions:
- The number of people governing
- Whether rulers governed for their own interest or common interest
Lecture:
A: Examples
- President of Brazil: Dependency theory/ neo colonialism (Cardosa)
- US secretary of state to Bush (Rice)
- Author for violence and resistance against colonialism (Fanon)
- Prayut : bloodless coup
, - Aung San Suu Kyi: acts as darling of Myanmar
B: Terminology
- Collective action: Paris agreement where everyone must make changes for succession
- The bottom billion: tend to be countries with ongoing conflict
- In terms of life expectancy
- Most refugees stay in the country they came from
- Gentrification: the process of renovating and improving a house or district so that it conforms to
middle-class taste.
- New York
- Definitions of politics:
- Domain: more traditional in the formal institutions of the state
- Aspect: any place where there is a hierarchy or leadership
C: Definitions of politics:
- How we make decisions: (look at Brexit)
- Rules must be made to somehow reflect a community's interests
- Peace of Westphalia - the founding of modern state after 30 year war
- Cooperation or conflict:
- E.g. after each large genocide we say “never again” yet we continue to let this happen
- The environment
- Refugee policy
- How and why people are coerced:
- The state is the actor that controls the use of legitimate violence
- There are limits to violence which states can use
- Who gets what:
- Locke: who are we to determine who gets what god gave us?
- The Greek banking crisis: Germany put together a fund during the deficit
- Money went to foreign lender (who were German)
Lecture 2: Central concepts II- Political science: sub-disciplines and relation to other social sciences
This lecture explains what political science is and how this differs from other ways of thinking, writing and
debating politics (by journalists, politicians themselves, commentators, but also within the humanities, such as
Philosophy and History). We discuss the difference between different types of debates (descriptive,
explanatory/causal and normative) and the comprehensiveness of these debates (eternal paradigmatic
debates versus problem solving mid-level debates). The lecture also addresses the importance of
conceptualization in descriptive and causal reasoning. Finally, attention will be paid to the relationship
between theory/arguments on the one hand and different forms of empirical information / analysis on the
other.
, Reading: Comparing government and politics
Key arguments:
- 3 main methods: case study/qualitative approach to small selection and quantitative to a large
selection
- Comparative research will have different approaches and results depending on whether its empirical or
normative, quantitative or qualitative
- History is underused in comparative political research
A: An overview
- Methodology: systematic analysis of methods used in a given field of enquiry
- To choose appropriate research methods you must consider: unit and level of analysis
- 3 approaches: experimental/ statistical/ comparative
Lecture:
A: General theory examples
- Which things to concentrate on to explain patterns of international relations
- Waltz theory of international politics
- Generalise and carry to a higher order of abstraction
- Rawls theory of justice
- Explain people’s loyalties and significance in political activity
- Whyte Street corner society
B: Political research (what political scientists want to do)
- Frame questions
- Define concepts
- Adding more dimensions to a concept: if no. attributes increases then references decrease
- Specify their theoretical arguments
- Empirically illustrate and test arguments
- Patterns of causation: if x then y
- Constitution not causation: a set of rules that guides how it must work
Lecture 3: Core concepts III- Theories and approaches
Building on the different types of debates and problems of political science in lecture 2, we will now discuss
what theories are and how we can use them. Some examples of theoretical debates are summarized, such as
approaches that emphasize the role of ideas versus the role of institutions versus the role of material positions
and interests. The lecture also explains how theoretical debates can be ‘settled’, among other things at the
level of argumentation (conceptual clarifications and developments) and at the level of empirical findings and
discoveries.
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