Introduction to Political Science.
The Essence of Politics. By Cees van der Eijck.
Chapter 1. What is Politics?
1. Aspect perspective: this perspective sees politics as an aspect of practical all kinds of human behavior
and human interactions. This perspective believes that politics does not only exist in the domain of
the state, but in all human interactions like sports, education, health care etc. Not everything is
political, but politics is everywhere. Politics is about the characteristic blend of conflict en
cooperation. Pure conflict is war, pure cooperation is love. Politics is a mixture of both.
2. Domain perspective: sees politics as only existing in a specific, defined sphere of human relations.
This ‘narrow’ perspective maintains that politics is exclusively related to a specific context of
organizations, institutions and actors. Politics is not everywhere, instead politics is only to be found
in its own political domain.
-> comparison of the aspect and domain perspectives:
- It is not possible to say that one perspective is better than the other. The aspect perspective makes it
possible to investigate organizations and institutions. Regarding interactions as political leads to
unexpected and innovative insights that otherwise wouldn’t have been there. Weak points of this
perspective are that if politics is everywhere, it’s not clear which political process is the most
important.
- Domain perspective is more focused on the content of conflict and decisions and the outcomes, than
on abstract process. Disadvantages of the domain perspective are that the concept of the state and
government is hard to define and mark out. moreover, some elements of ‘the state’ are more ‘political’
and the domain perspective does not help choosing which element is more important. It’s also hard to
work with politics on international scale with this perspective.
There are also other perceptions on politics.
Conclusion ‘What is Politics?’:
The several discussed perspectives on politics have four features in common:
1. Politics is a social phenomenon: it exists only in relations and interactions between people, and it
pertains (betrekking hebben op) therefore the groups. The overarching term that is often used for
the defining of the group/collective/society is that they all represent a political system in some form.
These systems can be identified in the following contexts.
a. The political system at the global level
b. Political systems at the level of countries, states or societies
c. Political systems within regional and local registrations
d. Diverse other groups and collectives which also act as political systems.
2. Politics involves matters that must be settled for a group, collective or the entire society.
3. Politics involves power. As a result there are conflicts and hard decisions to make in which the
government should choose for the collective.
4. There is something at stake (op het spel staan) in political processes and interactions.
It’s not possible to give an encompassing (allesomvattend) definition of politics. There are a lot of
contested (bestreden) concepts of politics. The character of contested concepts can be summarized in at
least four aspects:
1. Contested concepts are complex, which means they derive (voortkomen) from multiple concepts,
which aren’t all exactly defined.
2. Some of the components of complex concepts may themselves be complex.
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, Introduction to Political Science.
3. Contested concepts generally contain two kinds of components that give meaning to them:
descriptive and evaluative (or normative) ones. Descriptive components are usually explicit.
Evaluative components are often implicit. Descriptive and evaluative almost always go together,
because the concepts we try to define would lose much of their purpose and meaning without them.
•
Descriptive statements present an account of how the world is. The word is connected to
'description'.
•Normative statements present an evaluative (schatting) account, or an account of how the
world should be. The word contains the stem 'norm': something that should be lived up to; or that
should be pursued.
4. You need words to formulate a definition, but this words also need to be defined, ad infinitum.
Contested concepts are concepts that have different meanings for different people. Yet there is also often
a degree of shared understanding of what is meant by the term or concept in question. This partially
understanding makes communicating possible.
Chapter 2. Conflict and Cooperation
Politics is an aspect of conflictual and cooperative interactions about matters that must be settled for a
society or community.
Normally, conflict is seen as bad and cooperation as good, this is not always the case.
A conflict exists when different individuals or groups actively pursue goals or interests that are
incompatible (onverenigbaar) with those of the others.
Cooperation is defined as the active pursuit of shared goals or interests.
These definitions contain two aspects: the relations of the goals between the groups and if they are
pursued actively.
These goals or interests can be incompatible or synergetic (Het wordt gebruikt voor een situatie waarin
het effect van een samenwerking groter is dan elk van de samenwerkende partijen afzonderlijk zou
kunnen bereiken.)
But when are goals/interests incompatible or synergetic? For this, you can rely on the perception of
those involved or you can trust the judgement of a third party: a political observer.
Conflict is inevitable and so is cooperation. Together they constitute the basis of politics.
Conflict is inevitable because of several reasons:
- Arises from scarcity
- Occurs from the incompatibility of what people and groups regard as desirable or necessary for
society.
- Conflicts about universally desired matters (valence issues): not conflicts about end-goals, but about
the means to realize them.
- Misunderstanding
- Human emotions as distrust, envy and hate.
Not all conflict and cooperation is political in character. When there is nothing settled for a community
or society, it’s not politics.
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, Introduction to Political Science.
Why do we want to know if conflicts/cooperation are political or non-political?:
- When it’s political it gets solved in a different way.
- To understand political phenomena
- It helps demarcation of the system.
Conflict can only be waged (gevoerd) successfully if one side is unified, i.e. involved in active
cooperation.
Chapter 3. Key Questions
Because it’s nearly impossible to give politics entirely clear definitions, there is a set of key questions
that are used to deal with politics.
Note: the key questions presented here constitute (vormen) a kind of common denominator (noemer).
Thus also not black and white.
Five Key Questions: READ THEM IN THE BOOK
1. What are the characteristics of the conflictual and cooperative relations?
2. Who are the actors and what motivates and guides them?
3. How are recourses distributed?
4. How is the political environment structured?
5. What does the broader context look like?
1. What are the characteristics of the conflictual and cooperative relations?
This question is formulated abstractly on purpose. Characteristics are aspects of, in this case, conflicts.
Every conflict is then given a certain value per characteristic.
2. Who are the actors and what motivates and guides them?
The term actor is in this case used for all those individuals, groups and organizations who are actively
engaged in political conflict and cooperation. You have many forms of actors:
- Individual actors: who pursue their individual goals and interests
- Collective actors: who pursue the goals and interests of a group
- Institutional actors: who pursue a certain cause that is not necessarily limited to a specific group
3. How are resources distributed?
Concerns everything that actors can use to realize their goals: their political resources. It thus concerns
power and influence and all those matters from which power and influence are derived.
The capacity, that is power, derives from other factors, which are the so-called resources of power (for
instance money, capital, force and coercion).
4. How is the political environment structured?
Politics is about conflict and cooperation over matters to be settled for a society or group - the political
system.
5. What does the broader context look like?
The political domain of a group/society is not isolated from the rest of the world.
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, Introduction to Political Science.
Chapter 4. Political actors.
Main question of this chapter is: Who are the actors in political conflict and cooperation?
This requires a focus on different things:
Varieties of actors
You can’t exactly tell who the actor is, but you can describe them in terms of characteristics. Among the
most fundamental characteristics are two distinctions that classify actors into different kinds:
1. The distinction between individual, collective and institutional actors.
2. The distinction between elites and non-elites.
1. -> Not all actors are individual persons. Collective actors represent groups of individuals. They
represent their group members in political conflict. These organizations can also be regarded as
political systems in their own right, within which collective actors can be found. Institutional actors
do not represent a specific group of people, but have been set up to pursue particular goals or fulfill
particular functions. Collective and institutional actors only act through the individuals that
represent them. Although institutional actors
do not represent a group per se, the individuals acting for them, still have to be recognized as
legitimate. But to what extent are the ‘personal’ goals and interests of individuals distinguishable
from those of the social and institutional circumstances they form part of? Shared positions in a
social structure lead to group interests. Just as groups can have shared interests, so can an entire
society. This idea is often expressed in terms of the ‘general interest’. This perspective implies that
there is not a necessary contradiction between the interests of a group (or society) and the interests
of those who act for that group or society. In contrast to the perspective which claims the existence
of collective interests (and thus also the general interest) is the view that no such thing as group
interests or the general interest exists. But the general interests are actually a disguised form of the
interests of those who rule.
2. -> To understand politics as it operates in societies and groups requires the distinction between
people who belong to the society or group and people who act for them. Non-elitists and elitists.
Those who are most actively and intensively involved in political processes constitute the political
elite, while everyone else belongs to the non-elite. The term elite here is used as a descriptive term,
not as an evaluative term. The term elite also refers to a domain.
Structure and agency - perspectives on actors’ behavior.
Do you have to interpret the behavior of political actors as driven by circumstances or as a choice? This
is the ‘structure versus agency question’. When interpreting action, inactions and interactions of
political actors from the perspective of structure, one emphasizes that they are to a large extent
determined by how society is organized and how the political landscape is arranged. People have learned
how to operate within these structures, they know how to behave and what’s expected from them. The
structure perspective thus sees much behavior as the consequence of the environment. The agency
perspective does not see behavior as a consequence of social and political structures. It emphasizes that
these structures are the result of human behavior and that complying with the norms and expectations is
just a choice.
Neither of these perspectives is particularly compelling as an all-encompassing view of human behavior.
The structural perspective is not really able to explain how and why institutions change their goals. The
agency perspective is silent about the origins of the goals and interests that people pursue. And both
have little to say about the importance of the personalities of the actors.
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