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Summary Introduction to Political Science
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- Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB)
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FOUNDATIONS OF COMPARATIVE POLITICS: A SUMMARYBy Kenneth Newton and Jan W. Van Deth
‘WHAT IS POLITICS’ CLASS 1 – HEYWOOD - SEPARATE PDF
▪ Politics as the art of government
Exercise of control within society through making and enforcement of collective decisions.
Developed from Greece: Polis: city-state. Each possessed its own system of government. What
concerns the polis/state. = traditional view: focus on machinery of government. Everything
outside the actual state or government is considered sociological. Restricted view → rise anti-
politics: rejection of conventional political life.
▪ Politics as public affairs
Broader conception: public life, public affairs. Since 18thC: before there wasn’t a real distinction
between state and private life. Challenges 1st view: still defines WHERE, but not restricted to
government. Distinction between political and non-political, coincides with division between
public and private sphere. E.g. tea houses, protests, twitter…But: where should we draw line?
Two views on public/private divide
Public Private
The state: apparatus of government Civil society: autonomous bodies – business,
trade unions, clubs, families, etc.
Public Private
Public realm: politics, commerce, work, art, Personal realm: family and domestic life
culture, etc.
There has been a shift in boundaries of what’s public and private. What should public look like?
E.g. gun control: having gun in US considered private manner, in Belgium public. Domestic
violence could be considered both as well. E.g. Leopold II statues.
▪ Politics as power
1. Power as decision making: 1st face conscious actions that influence the content of decisions;
e.g. force or intimidation (the stick), productive exchanges involving mutual gain (the deal)
and the creation of obligations, loyalty and commitment (the kiss). People who have the
ability to make the rules in society, very visible power.
2. Power as agenda setting: 2nd face prevent decisions being made, non-decision-making. E.g.
private businesses exerting power by campaigning to defeat proposed consumer-
protection legislation (1st face) and by lobbying parties and politicians to prevent the
question of consumer rights being publicly discussed (2nd face). E.g. Dylan in slides: doesn’t
have actual power but his actions did. Or: prevent things for be discusses at all.
3. Powe as thought control: 3rd face Influence others by shaping what he or she thinks, wants.
Ideological indoctrination or psychological control. Overlaps with ‘soft power’. Propaganda.
E.g. the American Dream: people made to believe that everything is individual
responsibility, the notion that there’s plenty of opportunities for social mobility. Although
actual not that possible due to structural problems.
They can overlap each other. E.g. decision-making and though control: a charismatic leader
who has both the actual power and an invisible pervasive power.
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,As it’s hard to define the public sphere: when there’s power at play, there’s politics. E.g.
domestic violence: clearly about power so political. Broadest and most radical definition.
‘Politics is at the heart of all collective social activity, formal and informal, public and private,
in all human groups, institutions and societies. Politics is power: the ability to achieve a desired
outcome, through whatever means. E.g. when A gets B to do something he would otherwise
not have done: E.g. Prof asking us to stand up. E.g. a very personal act like eating (vegetarian)
can be very political. Various ways this can be done:
1) Force: torture in prisons to give information, water cannons… = hard power
2) Manipulation: losing your job if you protest, manipulating election results
3) Promise of reward: solar panels (tax break) = soft power
4) Loyalty: saying you belong to a certain sphere, so you have to behave in certain manner
5) Numbers: protest, petition
Can be seen as a struggle over scarce resources and power as the means through which this
struggle is conducted. E.g. feminists and Marxists: patriarchal society, subjected to male power.
Capitalist society characterized by class struggle. Negative implications balanced: emancipating
force, injustice and domination can be challenged → proletarian and sexual revolution.
→withering away of the state, also bringing conventional politics to an end.
▪ Defining politics
Broadest sense: activity through which people make, preserve and amend the general rules
under which the live. Conflict and cooperation.
Loaded term; preconceptions.
Conflict: Competition between opposing forces, reflecting a diversity of opinions, preferences,
needs or interests.
Cooperation: Working together; achieving goals through collective action.
Politics originating from Greece. Scientific discipline: value free approach: don’t start from
ideology, shouldn’t be interfere with study. But possible?
Philosophical tradition: normative questions. Cannot be objective in any scientific sense, trying
to give an answer/stance: e.g. why should voting be compulsory? empirical: why is voting
compulsory in Belgium and not in the US.
Empirical tradition: Descriptive, seeks to analyse and explain whereas norms are prescriptive.
Doctrine of empiricism advanced the belief that experience is the only basis of knowledge. →
all hypotheses and theories should be tested by a process of observation. → 19th century:
positivism. → once science was perceived to be the only reliable means of disclosing truth, the
pressure to develop a science of politics became irresistible.
Behaviouralism: 1850s: political analysis dominated by growing impact of positivism. 1870s: PS
courses in universities. 1950s peak in popularity when PS dew on behaviouralism: objective
and quantifiable data, e.g. voting & legislator behaviour. BUT: preventing it from going beyond
what was directly observable. Turned their back on tradition of normative thoughts. Concepts
as ‘liberty’, ‘equality’... were discarded as not empirically verifiable. → 1970s back normative
Question: E.g. why are there fewer women than men in politics?
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, Behaviouralists: focus on values. Because women have different values.
Rational choices: they focus on a rational calculation. They calculate the benefits and
disadvantages and which one dominates. Self-interested behaviour of individuals.
New institutionalism: focus on rules: because women were granted voting rights later than
men and we’re still experiencing the consequences
Critical approach: focus on power: the dominating norms say: women shouldn’t be in politics.
All of these valid but from a different angle.
Positivism: The theory that social, and indeed all forms of, enquiry should adhere strictly to
the methods of the natural sciences.
Behaviouralism: The belief that social theories should be constructed only on the basis of
observable behaviour, providing quantifiable data for research
Concept: general idea. Different talking ABOUT a cat and having a concept OF a cat. Concept
gives distinctive character → classify → are general. In order to make sense of the world, we
impose meaning on it.
Ideological controversy about political concepts. E.g. go to war claiming to ‘defend freedom’;
different meanings to different people.
Model: representation on smaller scale, e.g. doll’s house. Resemble the original as a faithfully
as possible. When specific phenomena too complex that they try to get rid of the complexity
and boil it down to its essential features and key characteristics.
Theory: Systematic explanation of a body of empirical data. Model is merely an explanatory
device, more like a hypothesis that has yet to be
tested. Theories are ‘true’, models are ‘useful’.
Models describe, get rid of complexity, theories
explain.
Model: Theoretical representation of empirical data
that aims to advance understanding by highlighting
significant relationships and interactions
Theory: A systematic explanation of empirical data, usually (unlike a hypothesis) presented as
reliable knowledge
Introduction START CLASS 1-2 – Chapters 1-
PART I
1. The development of the modern state
Territory, people and sovereignty
How do we recognise a state if virtually anything can and has been done in their name?
Symbols of statehood: National anthem, a flag, a coat of arms, a national currency, a national
capital and a head of state. States are acknowledged by other states as ‘states’, and they
exchange ambassadors.
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, Three core features:
1. Territory: a state entails a territory that it considers to be its own. Represents physical
aspect of state. As huge or as tiny, island or continent, borders may have been undisputed
or constantly challenged. Also air space & coastal waters belong to state. !! Not: Ice floe.
Empire: goal to expand borders, so constantly changing territory = not state! Jurisdiction:
e.g. going from Belgium to Netherlands: jurisdiction such as speeding limit is decided by
country you enter.
Territory: Terrain or geographical area
Country: An imprecise synonym or short-hand term for state or nation-state
2. Sovereignty:
- Internal sovereignty: within its own territory every state can act as it wishes and is
independent of other powers. Overrules any other rules.
- External sovereignty: the state is recognised as a state by other states.
Macron critical how Bolsonaro handles wild fires in Brazil: can question it but not likely to
interfere, no political, legal ground to interfere with any state’s internal business. BUT:
States increasingly accept the idea that sovereignty cannot be invoked when genocide,
ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity occur. Who can interfere? EU, UN.
States can give up parts of sovereignty: agriculture, trait, migration. Can also take it back,
e.g. Brexit.
Sovereignty: The highest power that gives the state freedom of action within its own territory.
3. People: a state entails people living together. Minimum: people are called citizens and have
the rights and duties this entails. Not possible to buy ground and make it a state, need
permanent population. !! Different from those who live in a state but are not citizens:
immigrants and visitors: denizens. Not every human being is a citizen.
People: A group of people whose common consciousness and identity makes them a collective
entity.
Citizen: A legally recognised member or subject of a state (or commonwealth) with all the
individual rights and duties of that state.
State and nations: you might have states with different nations living on it, e.g. Belgium:
Flemish and Walloon nation. Some nations don’t have state: Kurds are nation but don’t have
clear state. We talk about nation-states when both have a clear overlap, majority of cases.
Each state is characterised by these three features of territory, people and sovereignty; each
claims sovereign power over its people and its territory. Added later-on:
Monopoly legitimate use of force: BLM: social movement criticizing the legitimacy of the
violence being used by the police (in mostly the US). Saying that racial profiling is going on,
there’s a bias in the way that the state is trying to enforce sovereignty. If use of violence
contested by some groups of society: problem.
Max Weber: sovereignty means that the state possesses the monopoly of the use of physical
force. The monopoly should be accepted as right, one that is not only legal, but has legitimacy.
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