Political science
Lecture 1: introduction (CH: 1&2&5) + Heywood CH.1
Four main themes
1. Political concepts: politics, power, state, government, political regime, democracy,
autocracy
2. Political institutions: democratic models, legislatures, executives, elections, sub-national
government
3. Political actors and behaviors: voters, political parties, political ideologies, political
participation, political culture
4. Political outcomes: quality of government, good governance
What is political science
- Political science is a social science with different sub-fields, such as political economy,
political psychology, international relations, comparative politics, national politics, policy
administration
- This course focus is on comparative politics
- Political science is about the study of governments, public policies and political
processes, systems and political behavior
- Aristotle: political science is the master science as politics affect every human social
endeavor.
Values of comparative politics/approach
- Describing and classifying government and politics
- Providing context
- Broadening understanding; improves our understanding of government and politics.
Comparing systems.
- Testing hypotheses and drawing up rules
- Making predictions; help understanding possible outcomes
- Making better choices
- ‘Those who know only one country know no country’ (Lipset)
What is politics?
- Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable.. The art of the next best (Otto von
Bismarck)
- Politics is far more complicated than Physics (Einstein)
- Politics is a science. You can demonstrate that you are right and that others are wrong
(Sartre)
- Politics is the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next
month.. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn’t happen (Churchill)
- Politics is war without bloodshed, while war is politics with blood shedding (Mao)
Politics
, - Politics: the process by which people negotiate and compete in making and executing
collective decision (book)
- Essentially contested → consist of contrasting conceptions
- Concept: a term, idea or category such as power or democracy
- Conception: a broader understanding or interpretation of a concept/ further specification
of concept
- Three aspects of politics:
1. Collective activity, between and among people
2. Involves making decisions on matters affecting two or more people
3. Once reached, political decisions become authoritative policy for the group
Government and governance
- Government: institution and offices through which societies are governed
- In democracy: government offers security and predictability
- Governance: the process by which decisions/laws/policies are made, with or without the
input of formal institutions
Approaches to study politics - two
approaches
1. Politics as an arena: behavior
becomes political because of where it
takes place
- Where it takes place is the
arena
- Whatever is in
‘public’/government is political
- Art of government
- Public affairs (public/private
divide) see picture →
2. Politics as a process: behavior
becomes political because of
distinctive qualities.
- Politics as conflict and
compromise
- Wherever you have something that needs compromise, or conflict, it is
political
- Therefore it can also be something inside your family
- Politics is exciting because people disagree. They disagree about how
they should live
- Politics is thus unavoidably linked to the phenomena of conflict and
cooperation
- The heart of politics is often portrayed as a process of conflict resolution
, - Inescapable presence of diversity (we are not all alike) and scarcity (there
is never enough to go around) ensures that politics is an inevitable feature
of the human condition
- Politics is, above all, a social activity. It is always a dialogue, and never a
monologue.
- Politics as power
- Whenever power is involved, something is politics
- Politics is who gets what, when and how
- The study of sharpening and sharing power
- Many people want to have it and therefore it is shared
Power
- Power is the capacity to bring about intended effects
- Different sources of power:
- Political/legal
- Economic
- Physical/coercive
- Information/ideas/expertise
- Social norms/values
- Personal/charisma
- Numbers/size
Definitions book
- Polity: a society organized through the exercise of political authority; for Aristotle, rule by
the many in the interests of all
- Anti-politics: disillusionment with formal or established political processes, reflected in
non-participation, support for anti-system parties, or the use of direct action.
Approaches to study politics
- Theoretical approaches
- School of thoughts or ways of study politics
- Influence identifying and structuring what questions to ask
- And where and how we should search for answers
- Six approaches with focus on six i’s
1. Institutional approach (institutions)
- Known as one of the historical theoretical approaches and remains an
important tradition in comparative politics
- Core to the discipline
- Positions within organizations matter more than the people who occupy
them
- Institutions provide the rules of the game and shape individual behavior
- Institutions are pillars of the order in (liberal democratic) politics; provide
sources of continuity and predictability
, - Limited explanation because of ignorance, geography and culture
- Best explaining differences: institutions
- Extractive vs inclusive institutions:
- Inclusive economic institutions allow and encourage participation
in economic activities
- Extractive institutions remove the majority of the population from
participation in political or economic affairs.
- Examples: north-korea vs south-korea
2. Behavioral approach (individuals)
- In the 1960s, a shift from institutions to individuals
- Study of individuals, as the unit of analysis, rather than institutions; e.g.
legislators instead of legislature, judges rather than courts
- Generalization about political attitudes and behavior
- Apply innovative social science techniques; e.g. public surveys
- Objective, value-free research, scientific explanation rather than
descriptions
- Criticism: too much science and too little politics
- More affected by psychological order
3. Rational-choice approach (interests)
- Rooted in ahistorical economics
- The elementary unit of social life is individual human action
- Rationality and self-interest as core assumptions
- Based on universal model of human behavior (which is questionable)
- People want maximal interests for themselves (eigenbelang)
- Criticism: the collective action problem: individual rationality leads to a
poor collective result; moreover, people are not always rational actors
4. Structural approach (interrelations of groups)
- The objective interrelationship between social groups
- Corrective to the limitation of individual-level analysis
- Embrace change more easily than institutionalists
- Emphasize objective relationships among social groups rather than the
interests and outlooks of particular actors
- Importance of social structure and social relationships which shape,
constrain and empower actors
- Using comparative history methodology, contrast with non-historical
generalization favored by behaviorists/rationalists
- Social groups and networks as factor for acting (groepsdruk)
5. Cultural approach
- How cultural norms and practices support/undermine different political
preferences/forms
