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Book summary Political Science Course
- Instelling
- Tilburg University (UVT)
Book summary covering the material for the course of political science Course for Bestuurskunde/ Sociologie/ International Sociology
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Chapter 1Key arguments:
- The academ. Study of politics requires few technical terms, but it is useful to identify both a one-
sentence definition (concepts) and any issues surrounding the term (conceptions).
- The concepts of governance is increasingly used in political writing, emphasizing the activity rather
than the institutions of governing, offering a distinct focus that builds on, rather than supplanting, the
more familiar notion of government.
- A precise definition of politics is difficult, because the term has multiple nuances. But it is clearly a
collective activity, leading to decisions affecting an entire group.
- Power is central of politics. But there, again, conceptions are important. If we see persuasion and
manipulation as form of power, the range of the political expands considerably.
- Ideology has lost its original meaning as the science of ideas, but it remains useful as a way of
packaging different views about the role of government and the goals of public policy.
-Typologies are important as a means of imposing order on the variety of the world’s pol systems, and
helping us develop explanations and rules. Unfortunately, no typ has yet won general support.
Concept: term, idea, category
Conception: the manner in which something is understood or interpreted
(Builds on a concept by describing the understandings/perspectives/interpretations of a concept. Build
on definitions by moving to fuller discussion and consideration of alternative positions).
Social science: the study of human society and of the structured interactions among people within
society. Distinct form the natural sciences, such as physics and biology.
Only by looking at gov and pol across place and time: build context to be able to gain broader and
more complete understanding. Within this context: comparative politics involves systematic study of
the institutions, character of performance and pol processes in different societies.
Government and governance
Decision-making organizations formed for developing standard procedures for making and enforcing
collective decisions: government: arena for making and enforcing collective decisions.
Government: The institutions and offices through which socieites are governed. Also used to describe
the group of people who govern (Japanese gov), a specific admin (Putin gov), the form of the system
of rule (centralized gov), and the nature and direction of the administration of a community (eg good
government)
Classis case for the institution of gov: 17th century: Hobbes: he judged that gov provides us with
protection from the harm that we would otherwise inflict on each other in our quest for gain and glory.
Transforming anarchy into order. A multitude so united is called: a commonwealth. Risk:
commonwealth can abuse its own authority -> creating more problems than it solves.
One way of referring to broader array of forces surrounding and influencing gov is through the
concept of a pol system.
Political system: the interaction and organizations (including but not restricted to government)
through which a society reaches and successfully enforces collective decisions. Interchangeably used
with the term regime, but the latter tends to have neg connotations. (‘Swedish pol system means more
than the ‘Swedish government’).
Governance refers to the whole range of actor involved in gov. Governance highlights the process and
quality of collective decision-making, with a particular focus on regulation. Emphasis on activity of
governing, rather than the institutions of government. It is supplemental rather than a replacement for
notion of government.
Governance: the process by which decisions, laws and policies are made, with or without the input of
formal institutions.
Governance refer to activity of ruling, therefore it has also become preferred term when examining the
quality and effectiveness or rule.
Politics
,Politics: the process by which people negotiate and compete in the process of making and executing
shared or collective decisions.
Boundaries of politics: less precise. Crisp def is difficult, term is used in many diff ways. Three
aspects are clear though:
-It is a collective activity, occurring between and among people. A lone castaway on a desert island
could not engage in politics, but if there were two castaways on same island, they could have a pol
relship.
-It involves making decisions on matters affecting two or more people, typically to decide on a course
of action, or to resolve disagreements.
- Once reached, pol decisions become authoritative policy for the group, binding and committing its
members.
Politics: necessary bec of social nature of humans. Once reached, decisions must be implemented.
Politics possesses a hard edge, reflected in the adverb authoritatively in the famous definition of a pol
system offered by the pol scientist David Easton: a pol system can be designated as the interactions
through which values are authoritatively allocated for society; that is what distinguishes a pol system
from other systems lying in its environment. |
Interpretation of politics as a community-serving activity can be traced to the ancient Greeks.
Artistotle: man is by nature a political animal. Continuation of Aristotle’s perspective can be found
today in those who interpret politics as a peaceful process of open discussion leading to collective
decisions, acceptable to all stakeholder in society. Bernard Crick: “Politics.. can be defined as the
activity by which different interests within a given unit of rule are conciliated by giving them a share
in power in proportion to their importance to the welfare and the survival of the whole community”.
It provides an ideal of what politics should be, rather than a description of what it actually is.
Second perspective: pol viewed as a competition yielding winners and losers. Harold Lasswell:
politics: ‘who gets what, when and how’. But, further, the attempt to limit politics to peaceful, open
debate: unduly narrow. Mixture of concepts needed.
Power
Heart of politics: distribution and manipulation of power. Latine ‘potere’: ‘to be able’.
Power: the capacity to bring about intended effects. The term is often used as a synonym for
influence: but is also used more narrowly to refer to more forceful model of influence: notably, getting
one’s way by threats.
Emphasis: power to instead power over. Luke’s three dimensions of power:
Assessing power proponent
First: who prevails when preferences conflict?
(decision-making approach: identifying preferences and observing decisions). Dahl (1957)
Second: who controls whether preferences are expressed?
(capacity to keep issues off the political agenda) ‘mobilization of bias Schattschneider: all forms of
political organization have a bias in favour of the exploitation of some kinds of conflict and the
suppression of others because organization is the mobilization of bias. Some issues are organized into
politics, while others are organized out. Bachrach and Baratz (1962)
Third: who shapes preferences?
Most efficient form of power: to shape people’s information and preferences. Notion of a manipulated
consensus. Luke (1974)
The state, authority and legitimacy
State: more pol term of a country. State: intimately related to two concepts of understanding gov and
pol: authority and legitimacy. Authority: power: capacity to act: authority: acknowledged right to do
so. Authority: the right to rule, creates its own power, so long as people accepts that the person in
authority has the right to make decisions. Weber: 3 ways of validating pol power: tradition, charisma,
appeal to legal-rational norms). We speak of authority of an official but legitimacy of a regime.
Legitimacy: the state or quality of being legitimate. A legitimate system of gov is one based on
authority, and those subject to its rule recognize its right to make decisions.
,Ideology
To describe the science of ideas, a system of thought expressing a view on:
-human nature
-the proper organization of, and relship between, state and society
- the indivd’s position within this prescribed order
Ideology: a system of connected beliefs, a shared view of the world, or a blueprint for how politics,
economics and society should be structured.
5 Major ideologies
-anarchism: all forms of gov authority are unnecessary, and society is best structured around
voluntary cooperation and free association.
-Marxism: elimination of the state system and private property will lead to the creation of a classless,
non-exploitative, and self-governing society.
-Liberalism: individuals: best judges of own interests. Advocates tolerant society which maximizes
personal freedom, and favours a government which is limited but freely elected.
-Conservatism: traditional institutions and practices work best, the free market is the most efficient at
meeting societal needs, and government should be a decentralized as possible.
Fascism: achievement of national unity through an authoritarian state, strong leadership, mass
mobilization, emphasis on nationalism and militarism.
Ideologies now: left vs right ( equality, human rights vs tradition, national interest)
Comparative politics
Comparative pol: systematic study of gov and politics in diff countries, designed to better understand
them by drawing out their contrasts and similarities.
First strength: it improves our understanding of gov and politics. Also, comparison permits
generalizations which have some potential for prediction. In pol: predicting is an art rather than a
science.
Classifying political systems
Typology: system of classification that divides states into groups or clusters with common features. /
system of classification by which states, institutions, processes, political cultures, and so on are
divided intro groups or types with common sets attributes.
Recent example: three worlds system: - First World: wealthy, democratic industrialized states, most
of which were partners in the Western alliance against communism.
- Second World: communist systems, including most of those states ranged against the Western
alliance. -Third World: poorer, less democratic, and less developed states, some of which took sides
in the Cold War, but some of which did not. Three world system: a political typology that divided the
world along ideological lines, with states labelled according to the side they took in the Cold War.
Political economy: the relationship political activity and economic performance. The core measure is
economic output, there are various ways of measuring this, the most popular : gross national income
GNI. Gross national income: the total domestic and foreign output by residents of a country in a give
year.
CHAPTER 2 THE STATE
Modern idea of state: emerged in Europe between 16th and 18th centuries, with use of word state as a
pol term coming into common use towards the end of this period.
State: the legal and political authority of territory containing a pop and marked by borders. The state
defines the political authority of which government is the managing authority: that authority is
regarded as both sovereign and legitimate by the citizens of the state and the govs of other states. Term
country refers to only a territory and not to the mechanisms of gov and power. Distinction state/ govs
reflected in characteristics separation in many countries of the roles of head of state and head of gov.
Theoretical justification for stated: provided by idea of sovereignty: the ultimate source of authority in
a society. The sovereign is the highest and final decision-maker within a community. Sovereign body
, is the one institution unlimited by higher authority: the highest of the high. Body is the state. A state’s
control over its destiny is a matter of degree but its sovereignty is, by its nature, unlimited. The
essence of sovereignty lies in an unqualified legal title.
Inherent in notion of the state is the idea of the citizen: a full member of a state, entitled to the rights
and subject to the duties associated with that status. Citizenship is typically confirmed in a document
such as a passport or identity card.
The qualities of the state
Population: States contain populations, without whom the territory concerned would be little more
than a block of real estate. Legitimacy: states are normally recognized both by their residents and by
other states as having jurisdiction and authority within their territory. Territory: states operate within
a fixed territory marked by borders, and control the movement of people, money and goods across the
borders. Sovereignty: states have sovereignty over that territory, its people and resources, meaning
that they have the sole authority to impose laws and taxes.
Emergence of the state system
the state emerged from ember of medieval Europe. Possible force responsible for the transition: war.
War-making weakened feudal pillar of the medieval framework. Also the Reformation destroyed its
religious foundations, shattering Christian commonwealth. Birth modern state: tied to single event:
1648 Peace of Westphalia: the modern state system that many believe emerged out of the 1648 Peace
of Westphalia, based on the sovereignty of states and political self-determination.
John Locke: citizens possess natural rights to life: those rights (such as life, liberty, and property)
supposedly given to humans by God or by nature, their existence taken to be independent of
government.
These ideas of sovereignty and consent were reflected, in contrasting ways, in two most momentous
affirmations of modernity: the American and French rev. French rev mapped out contours of modern
democracy. Where the American federal gov was limited in its authority, the French revolutionairies
regarded a centralized, unitary state as the sovereign expression of a national community populated by
citizens with equal rights. 1791 Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen: served as preamble
to the French constitution, and is considered by Finer : ‘blueprint of virtually all modern states’.
The expansion of states
During 19th century: outlines of the state became more precise, especially in Europe. Most of 20 th
century: Western states bore deeper into their societies. First and second world wars were examples of
total war: war requiring the mobilization of the population to support a conflict fought with advanced
weaponry on a large geographical scale, requiring state leadership, intervention and funding. Total
wars: expensive, thus tax revenues as a proportion of national product almost doubled in Western
states. Troughout Western Europe, the warfare state gave way to the welfare state, rulers accepting
direct responsibility for protecting their citizens from the scourges of illness, unemployment and old
age. Welfare state: an arrangement in which the government is primarily responsible for the social
and economic security of its citizens through public programmes such as incomes for the unemployed,
pensions for the elderly and medical care for the sick.
Waves of decolonization: first wave: early in the nineteenth century, Latin America. Early wars of
independence lacked the liberal, egalitarian basis of their US predecessor. New constitutions were
produced, but were neither democratic nor fully implemented. Second wave: Europe and Middle East
around end WWI, final collapse of Austro-Hungarian, Russian, and Ottoman empires. Third and
largest wave: after 1945, retreat from empire by European states diminished by war. Fourth and
final wave: final decade of twentieth century, triggered by the collapse of communism. Dissolution of
he communist bloc previously dominated by the Soviet Union -> independence for more than dozen
Soviet satellites in Eastern Europe.
The diversity of states
Review of distribution of states by population, pol authority, and income provides insight into these
divergent pol realities: European state is impossible to replicate in a significant number of small,
dependent post-colonial states.
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