Summary
Summary Political science 324 Class notes
- Course
- Political Science 324 (324)
- Institution
- Stellenbosch University (SUN)
Class notes compiled from online learning 2021
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POL SCI EXAM CLASS NOTESContents
Week 4 .................................................................................................................................................... 2
The Totalitarian Model: A false utopia .................................................................................................... 2
Lecture 6 ................................................................................................................................................. 2
Week 5 .................................................................................................................................................... 4
The Totalitarian Model continued ........................................................................................................... 4
Lecture 7 ................................................................................................................................................. 4
Week 6 .................................................................................................................................................... 9
Democracy: An imperfect system ........................................................................................................... 9
Lecture 9 ................................................................................................................................................. 9
Lecture 10 ............................................................................................................................................. 10
Part 3: Democratic Regimes .................................................................................................................. 11
Week 7 .................................................................................................................................................. 11
Untangling democracy and good governance ....................................................................................... 11
Lecture 11 ............................................................................................................................................. 11
Lecture 12 ............................................................................................................................................. 13
Week 8 .................................................................................................................................................. 14
Democratic stability: Understanding democratic failure and survival ................................................... 14
Lecture 13 ............................................................................................................................................. 15
Lecture 14 ............................................................................................................................................. 17
Week 9 .................................................................................................................................................. 18
Democratic stability: Understanding democratic failure and survival ................................................... 18
Lecture 15 ............................................................................................................................................. 18
Challenges to democracy: Digital unfreedom?...................................................................................... 19
Lecture 16 ............................................................................................................................................. 19
Week 11 ................................................................................................................................................ 20
Challenges to democracy: Digital unfreedom?...................................................................................... 20
Lecture 17 ............................................................................................................................................. 20
Lecture 18 ............................................................................................................................................. 21
Week 12 ................................................................................................................................................ 22
• The end of history or the return to history? ................................................................................. 22
1
, Week 4
The Totalitarian Model: A false utopia
Reading: Magstadt, pp. 131-155 (incorporated into the lecture)
Lecture 6
Totalitarianism
Def:
• Complete domination of every aspect of society, the polity and the economy
• An all-encompassing system: the economy, society everything the compete
domination of the polity.
• Transform society through imposed beliefs or ideology through the state onto the
society. Imposes belief and enforces it with violence by tyrannical rulers.
• Control extends beyond the public into private. = Blurring between public and
private. What you do in your house is the state’s business in every aspect of life the
state tries to control you. So, obsession of control extends beyond the public realm
into the private lives of citizens.
• “enemies of the people” defined in terms of group. Disloyal people are enemies and
can be exterminated.
• Idealism gone awry.
• Attempts to realize utopian visions and creation of so-called political orders.
• Removal of all private and civil society = i.e. running clubs, book clubs etc anything
that could be independent of the state was closed down and out under the state.
• Demand active participation on their system.
• Induvial Is suppressed for the group/state
• Distinguished groups were enemies (e.g. Nazis: Jews and gypsies.)
Versus authoritarianism
• Maintain political power (e.g monarchy, one party rule) power but not to transform
society, not a belief to impute into society to control it or utopian motivates.
• Political enemies defined as individuals – anyone who challenges their power.
Whereas totalitarianism sees groups as enemies.
Characteristics of totalitarian regimes
• Violence is the core of any authoritarian state. At it worse it, it assumes the form of
indiscriminate mass terror and genocide aimed at whole groups, classes or
categories of people whoa re labelled as enemies.
• Promise of new social order, new utopian society. In first you killed my father: can’t
show any type of difference wore the same clothes, don’t say anything about your
social status, keep quiet about your profession. (e.g., with Nazis if we can just get rid
of Jews then we can have a perfect society new social order of the Aryan race or a
classless society as promised by Stalin and Lenin).
2
, • Totalitarian societies are egalitarian, no social differences will remain. Individualism
is criminalized.
• Rights for society are paramount, no room for the rights of the individual.
• Centralized one party system in the name of an official ideology that functions as a
kind of state religion. Party would then permeate into the state apparatus. Into
private and public. Tried to eradicate private tho.
• Charismatic leadership. Unlikely to see the kind of system in the USSR if it wasn’t for
Stalin. And Nazi Germany without Hitler.
• Media monopoly- so propaganda and censorship
• Coercion- secret police for those who contended the ideology. Subject to this
system you must be loyal to the system if you don’t then the secret police will try to
keep you in line.
• Not based on legitimacy but on coercion.
• Rights of community trump individual. Want no type of independence.
• Central control over economy
Key authors and writers:
• Hanna Arendt
o German Jew
o Political scientist
o “The origins of totalitarianism” tried to understand how this rose, looked at
Hitlers Nazism and Stalin’s ideology and tries to see why.
o Endemic to totalitarianism is the telling of lies. How else would you get
everyday people get on board onto these ideas? Repeat lies, undermines their
integrity so they become bound to leaders by shame and integrity. By getting
subordinates to repeat lies which castes aside their integrity and hence be
bound to the leader through shame and complicity.
• Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
o The Gulag Archipelago book he wrote. “Live not by lies” 1974. Letter he wrote
on the day he was being exiled. Said: if you are complicit to the lies you
underpin the system don’t have to shout it out to the world but if each one
doesn’t comply with the system then slowly you will begin to undermine the
system.
o Gulag archipelago = Labour camp during contenders during the Soviet Union
o First people exiled and wrote the book above and exposed the labour camps,
torture, the murder, the intimidation, and coercion etc.
o Both pick up the lies that perpetuate the complicity of the system.
→ Monday timetable 8 April (Thursday) bcos 5 April p/h – showed movie: A United
Kingdom.
3
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