WEEK 1: WHO/WHAT/WHY OF POLITICAL SCIENCE AND THE

STATE

Lesson 1: Defining Politics

Politics the Master Science
❖ Aristotle: father of European/Western political science
❖ The idea of politics according to the founder of western political science (Aristotle)
argued that political science is the master science
❖ What he meant by master science was that politics determines all the rest of the
things that can be found or can be engaged within a community. This includes what
the community does, what it decided to do to other people, and also individual
actions and what lives they can lead
❖ For him it was important to remember that humans are social animals, we like to
live in communities, we want to hangout with other people, we also want to engage
with other people
❖ He believed the highest aspect of this social animal was the ‘zoon politikon’ or the
political animal
➢ The political animal in this regard, were the ones that would take power,
have power, they would organize society, they would organize our lives, they
would also judge us, determine what laws we live by, and they got to decide
the question of death amongst the members of the community
❖ Aristotle is said to have famously remarked, “it is the mark of an educated mind to
be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” That means to think of all
possibilities, or all different possibilities, but the thinking that they might not be
correct/valid
➢ Aristotle never actually said this, this is a summary of what translators have
given to a paragraph of remarks that he had

Defining Politics
1) Conflict over Interest and Value: one definition of politics suggested that the idea of
politics is about the conflict over interest in values
❖ Scarcity: this is because there's scarcity, there's not enough of stuff, and people have
to figure out how to get access to it, who gets it and who doesn't
❖ Reconcile and Agree: there are also questions of reconciling and agreeing, how we
distribute things, how we solve problems amongst each other
❖ Make Collective Decisions: when we conflict over interest and values, we have to
make a decision as a group on what to do about certain things
❖ Laswell: “who gets what, when, how?”
 2) The Good Life: another definition is that maybe politics is about the good life
❖ What is the best kind of society to have
❖ Stoker: ask ourselves questions related to liberty vs equality preference. How free
people should be, and if exercising that freedom creates inequality
➢ Which do you prefer?
❖ Different Societies: how different societies have organized and defined their politics
❖ Western liberal democracies (Canada, North America)
❖ African nationalist dictatorships
❖ Middle east theocracies
❖ In different societies there are different institutions and ideas

Lesson 2: What are the Types of Political Analysis

What are the Types of Political Analysis
❖ Normative Analysis: this one asks value questions
➢ What ought we to value, when, and why?
➢ What is good?
➢ Morals?
➢ Ethics?
❖ Empirical Analysis: focuses on observable phenomena
➢ What is? What can be observed? What can we take note of? (not: what ought
to be?)
➢ Natural sciences (things like gravity)
➢ Rules, laws, and anxioms of human behaviour
❖ Semantic Analysis: concerned with meaning and origin of concepts, ideas, and
words
❖ What are they about? What is trying to be captured in that word? How does that
affect the politics we have?
❖ “Essentially Contested” concepts= that not all of political science agrees on what that
term means, but there is some agreement
❖ Identity politics? What it means to have an identity and whose identity matters
❖ Content analysis

How are Theories in/of Politics Developed?

❖ Asking what are some of the approaches? What are the lenses that are used? What
are the paradigms of ways people organize information?
❖ Inductive approach:
Should the Master Science be a Political Science?
❖ If politics is the master science, should this master science be a political science or
an art
❖ Machiavelli/Burke/Butler say it's an art
❖ What might be gained or lost if we turned it into a science?
❖ Should only some aspects be science?
❖ Can there be a science of human behaviour?

Lesson 3: What is Politics

What are Some Meanings of Politics?
❖ Noble pursuit of the public good
❖ Answering the question of “who gets what, when, and how?”
❖ Formal activity of government
➢ What do governments do? How do people in government react and do stuff?
❖ Dishonesty seeking personal gain

What is Politics
❖ The elements of politics:
❖ Politics is social
➢ It involves more than one person
➢ Being engaged socially and working with others
❖ Politics is process
➢ Best way for engaging with one another
➢ What is appropriate to talk about and what are the things you would engage
with
❖ Politics is conflict
➢ When people are engaging with each other there is conflict
➢ Politics seeks to sort out when theres social engagement that leads to various
processes that brings people together, then what to do when there is conflict
❖ Politics is binding decisions
 ➢ When there is fighting we have to make decisions on what sort of ways are
better ways to do things
➢ Just because there is a binding decision doesn't mean everyone is actually
bound by that decision
❖ Politics is enforced
➢ Politics involves figuring out how rules, measures, and binding decisions get
enforced
❖ A social engagement of people that involves various processes, which bring them
into conflict with each other which eventually leads them to make certain decisions
about how they are going to interact and work with each other to resolve conflict.
Eventually we have to have the capacity to enforce those binding decisions on each
other and ourselves
❖ Pure conflict= endless war
➢ It is the idea that all that's going to happen is fighting
❖ Pure cooperation= true love
➢ The idea that everything everybody does is about loving each other, taking
care of each other, nothing but cooperation, and in a state of true love
❖ Politics= conflict and cooperation
➢ It is a mix of both

Key Aspects of Politics

❖ Collective action
➢ Social being working together
➢ How do we all come together? How do we act? How do we figure out what to
do? How do we solve problems?
❖ Conflict and cooperation
➢ When we come together for collective action there will be conflict and
cooperation in deciding what to do
❖ Authoritative decisions
➢ Once the decisions are made, we have to ask how these decisions are
authoritatively put on people?
❖ Enforced against the disobedient
➢ How are we going to enforce that on those who are disobedient?

Lesson 4: What are the Two Central Questions of Politics?

What are the Two Central Questions of Politics?
1) Who gets what?
❖ Argument made by Harold Lasswell
 ❖ Analysis that politics is really about figuring out who gets to have what, when, and
how
2) Says who?
❖ Who decides who gets what? Who decides when you get it? Who decides how one
gets it?
❖ We have to have political powers

Who Gets What?

❖ Ambani home in Mumbai, India
➢ $2 billion dollars
➢ 53000 sq feet
❖ Ambani home vs Social science centre
➢ 550 ft high vs ssc 230 ft
➢ 27 storeys vs 10 storeys
➢ 5 habitants and 600 staff vs 4000 students and 800 staff/profs
➢ Valet parking on 6 floors vs none
❖ Politics
➢ In order to build this house he needed to have a waiving of the planning
rules: take over orphanage/3 helipads/no blocking of his view of the arabian
sea
➢ His wealth is protected and it is legal to have that wealth
➢ Politics itself has an impact on questions of poverty, who has property, who
gets to keep their wealth, determines inequality

Says Who?
❖ Who is saying you can have this wealth?
❖ Trueduau/John Tory/Doug Ford decided who has to wear a mask, health services
etc…
❖ New Zealand did a great job handling the pandemic at the beginning
❖ Indigenous people are important to the decision of says who, they have a important
say on what's being decided (they haven't had the chance in the past to make
decisions)
❖ Some people say its the two most important men in the world (presidents of Russia
and China)
❖ RCMP commissioner, Toronto chief of police, minister of defence all have a say
❖ The canadian charter of rights and freedoms and constitution gets to decide
❖ If there's a pandemic, interested in what doctors, nurses, and health officials have to
say
❖ There are a lot of people who can say who (BLM, people who are outraged)
Lesson 5: What is Power? What is Authority?
What is Power?
❖ Power is that somebody is able to have the ability to produce results
➢ If you have power you can produce results, you can get things done, and
make other people do that too
❖ Power is the ability to influence others behaviour
➢ Can get others to do stuff even if they do not want to
➢ The law
❖ Power can take several forms

3 Main Forms of Power

❖ Coercion
➢ Ontario premier has the power of coercion
➢ Means the premier has access to the law, police, power of the state to make
us do stuff
❖ Influence
➢ Suggest behaviour
❖ Manipulation
➢ Choices get manipulated
➢ Politicians manipulate people to vote for them
➢ Involves playing with the institution

Hard Power
❖ The stick
➢ Force and coercion
■ Forcing people to do things you want them to do
➢ Military and police
■ Used by the state when people do not follow the law
■ To force compliance
❖ The carrot
➢ Economic inducement
■ If you do this, we will open up your economy
➢ Bribes and sanctions
■ Idea of sanctions is telling people we will make it difficult for you to
engage in economic activity, educational opportunities, and travel

Soft Power
❖ Power of attraction
➢ Appreciate ways of doing things
 ➢ People follow or agree to what someone does because they think it is
attractive
❖ Agenda setting
➢ The idea that you can decide what's most important
❖ Getting others to want what you want
➢ Influence
➢ Getting others to want the institutions, the values, the policies you want

Power as Empowerment
❖ The idea is that we want to counter the notion of power as self-interest as the only
notion of power
❖ Power can be empowering, it is the ability to help/facilitate others to achieve their
goals
❖ Power can be productive: generate the subject of power (student, slave, worker,
politician etc…)
❖ Necropolitics: politics decides who lives/dies
➢ It suggests that it is important for us to look at the way in which politics
configures us and our subjectivity, and has the ability to decide who
lives/dies
➢ The way we construct our structures of politics

What is Authority?
❖ Authority is the right to command
❖ Authority is the right to punish those who disobey
❖ Authority in different places is going to be different

Lesson 6: What is the State of Nature

What is the State of Nature
❖ What would it be like if there was no state or political power?
❖ Hobbes thought experiment
❖ This thought experiment tells us what it would be like in the state of nature, and
what is the situation of human beings in the state of nature. That will give us the
basis for figuring out why we need to create political authority, and then get into the
idea of creating the state itself
❖ The state of nature helps us to understand what are the justifications for creating
the state itself, and once the state is created we are outside of the state of nature
❖ It is about giving us reasons for arguing for the state
Lesson 7: Who is Hobbes and What is his Main Claim?
Who is Hobbes?
❖ Hobbes (1588-1679)
❖ Hes written two of the most important works in western political thought:
Leviathan (1651) and Behemoth (1679)

What are the 3 Key Hobbesian Themes?

❖ The first theme in hobbes is the notion of fear
➢ He reminds us that when he was born england was going to be attacked by
the spanish armada
➢ It is the idea that he, war, and fear were all born at once
➢ A key theme in most of his writings is about the role of fear amongst people
and how it shapes their behaviour
❖ The second theme is war
➢ He thinks that the concern and fear we have leads to situations of warfare
➢ Fear and war are connected
❖ The third theme is peace
➢ His end goal is how do we deal with fear and war to get to peace

What does Hobbes Claim?

❖ He said the worst case scenario we can have in this regard is where there is no state
and no state protection for us
➢ A situation where there is no political authority, no defences etc…
❖ He believes a powerful state is necessary in order for us to avoid disastrous
interpersonal conflict
❖ One of his main premises is that we want to look at how human nature leads us
down the path to disastrous interpersonal conflict
 ➢ From there we can make an argument as to why we need to come to a state
and build a state to get out of these interpersonal conflicts and to prevent
war and bring peace

Lesson 8: What does Hobbes Claim about Human Nature?

What does Hobbes Claim about Human Nature?
❖ He said when it comes to human nature people focus on introspection
➢ They think about their own lives, they think about how they're playing out,
the things they want
❖ Materialism
➢ We are materialists
➢ We want and need stuff to meet our desires
❖ Felicity
➢ The idea that we want to get stuff that we want now, but we want to get it
easily
➢ Acquiring stuff in the easiest way possible
➢ `The desires that run after your materialist needs and wants are the things
that will be part of your felicity
❖ Power
➢ You need power in terms of physical capabilities, mental stamina, how you
and other perceive yourself
➢ How can your power help you to achieve your felicity, which seeks to gain
access to the things you want

What does Hobbes say about Human Nature?

❖ Hobbes is suggesting that we are predominantly self-regarding individuals
➢ We care about ourselves, we want stuff for ourselves, and we are going to
look after ourselves before we look after others
❖ Seek to enhance reputation
➢ We want things that seek to enhance our reputation
➢ Physical, material, intellectual stuff
❖ Averse to our own death
➢ We don't want to die
➢ We eat, sleep, protect ourselves to make sure we are safe
❖ Each one of us is equally vulnerable and equally able
➢ No one if ever going to be fully protected in this regard
Lesson 9: Why does Hobbes Think we Fight
What is the Road to War
❖ Equality
➢ Each of us is equally vulnerable
❖ Scarcity
➢ If we want felicity, and we want power over others and things we wn there is
a sense of scarcity
➢ There isn't enough of everything to go around
➢ We are driven by scarcity
➢ Scarcity brings us to conflict with one another
❖ Uncertainty
➢ We can't rely on each other
❖ Hobbes says this is leading us down the road to war

What are the 3 Reasons for Attack

1) Competition: attack for gain
❖ Because we are competing with others for stuff we can attack for gain because we
want their stuff
2) Lack of trust: attack for safety
❖ Attack because we don’t trust each other
❖ We want to feel safe from them
3) Glory: attack for reputation
❖ If you attack somebody, other people are going to be worried about attacking you
❖ If you have a good reputation you are going to get stuff

Not Fun
❖ For hobbes we all live in “... continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life
of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

Lesson 10: What are Hobbes’s Argument for the State

Is Hobbes too Pessimistic?
❖ Hobbes says “read thyself”
➢ He's going to suggest that you care about yourself first, you want power to
achieve goals, you want a reputation, etc…
❖ What do we think of others?
➢ Are you hesitant? Friends with everyone?
➢ We tend to be suspicious of others
❖ Actions speak louder than words
➢ It's about the actions
 ❖ Evidence: locking doors and chests
➢ Everyone locks their doors
➢ The evidence is all around us that we do not trust each other, we want to
protect the things we have, we want to have a good reputation
❖ Hobbes says he is not being pessimistic he’s being realistic

Is there Morality in the State of Nature

❖ Hobbes says there isn't a sense of morality in the state of nature
❖ We all have a natural right of liberty
➢ We are free and clear to do whatever we want
➢ There is no civil society, there is no state
➢ People have their power and glory
➢ There is a natural liberty to do whatever you want in the state of nature
❖ No injustice
➢ How can we have a sense of injustice when it's all about surviving
❖ Laws of nature
➢ This is what the laws look like under natural circumstance where we have to
start from scratch to create laws themselves

Hobbes’s Laws of Nature

❖ Fundamental law: in the state of nature you need to seek peace if you can get it
➢ Your life is going to be nasty and short if you can’t get other people to work
with you
❖ Second law: lay down your natural right if others do too
➢ Your natural right to meet your felicity, to survive, to meet your material
needs
➢ Only do it if others do too, that will help to seek peace
❖ Third law: perform your covenants
➢ If you and others lay down your natural right you are agreeing or creating a
covenant with others to follow through with other rules that will then
emerge
➢ You have to work on ensuring you meet your promises, you have to ensure
others meet their promises as well

What is the Impact of Individual and Collective Rationality?

❖ Hobbes says it is rational for individuals to attack others
❖ Smart for one, dumb for all
➢ Might be smart for one person so they can meet their needs, but a dumb
thing for all of us to do
 ❖ It is rational for the collective to seek peace
➢ The rational thing to do for people to avoid a life that is nasty and short is to
collectively come together and rationally realize they should seek peace, that
they should lay down their natural liberty, and that they should perform the
covenant

Why not Break the Deal?

❖ Hobbes says it is collectively rational but the outcome is unstable
❖ Individuals has an incentive to defect
➢ Each of us has a reason as to why we might not agree to the deal, why we
may try to do something else, and why we may actually achieve other goals
❖ The state provides assurance that the laws of nature will be followed
➢ We need an individuals to provide on behalf of all of us
➢ The state assures us that our interests will be protected, that we will not have
our natural liberty sued by somebody to cause us problems

Lesson 11: What are Locke’s Arguments for the State

Locke vs Hobbes: SoN
❖ Locke says hobbes is wrong, he says the state of nature is a state of peace
➢ People get along, people live their lives, their is a stable state of peace
❖ He agrees with hobbes that there is a state of equality
➢ Everybody is equal, everybody has equal rights of liberty
❖ His view for the law of nature is different: he argues that the law of nature is that all
should be preserved as much as may be
➢ It is not the idea that everybody is running around trying to hurt everybody,
it is the idea that all of us in the state of nature have and exist in such a way
that we want to preserve and want to preserve others as much as maybe
possible
➢ We realize the ways in which the things others have may be of use to us
➢ We are not there to take after others or go after others
❖ Locke doesn't believe that the natural liberty is license: “liberty is not license”
➢ He doesn't believe liberty means you can go ahead and do whatever you
want
➢ He believes there are limitations on liberty (he disagrees with hobbes)

Should we Enforce the Law of Nature

❖ Locke says we don’t want the law of nature to be in vain, so we need an enforcer
➢ We need some way or somebody to ensure that all will be preserved as may
be possible
 ❖ In the case of the state of nature, each of us has the executive power of the law of
nature
➢ EPLN gives us the right to punish, to punish those who violate the law of
nature

Scarcity or Abundance?
❖ He agrees with hobbes that there is natural scarcity
❖ Locke says that there is natural abundance
❖ There are more things out there that we could ever need
❖ Locke: cultivate your own land
➢ You have to ensure you look after yourself
➢ We have enough of everything, we just have to make use of it

Why do we Need a State? “Inconveniences” in SoN

❖ Inconveniences= conflict, disagreements
➢ Locke says we run into inconveniences in the state of nature
➢ He agrees with Hobbes that in the state of nature we can end up in a state of
conflict
❖ Problem: administration of justice
➢ How do we make sure justice is done so we follow the first law of nature
❖ Conflict about the law of nature
❖ For locke the problem becomes some people are going to lack the power to enforce
the the law of nature
➢ He says not all of us are going to be able to use our EPLN to punish others
even though we have the right to punish in the state of nature
❖ We need the state to deal with the inconveniences
❖ The key role the state has to play is the administration of justice
❖ We have the state to get us out of the state of nature to deal specifically with the
problems of the administration of justice

Lesson 12: Who is Rousseau and the Natural Savage

Rousseau's View of Human Nature
❖ Two key features for rousseau in terms of human nature:
1) Humans have a desire for self preservation
2) Humans have a sense of pity and compassion for others

Who are the Social Man and the Natural Savage?

❖ He says hobbes and locke describe civilized man, and then work their way
backwards
 ❖ He says we have to recognize civilization has corrupted us
➢ It moved us away from possibly our better natures
➢ Civilization corrupts from the way we were in the state of nature
❖ Savage is unaware of morality
➢ They don't do the right thing because it's the moral thing to do, they do the
right thing because they have a sense of compassion and pity

How does Self-Preservation Trump Compassion?

❖ Scarcity creates a problem
❖ Self preservation trumps pity
❖ War seems inevitable
➢ People will fight because they are in a situation of scarcity

Who is the Natural Savage?

❖ For rousseau the natural savage is one who solitary, no language, fears only pain
and language
❖ They live a survival instinct existence
➢ Desires only food, sex, and sleep

Lesson 13: Why do we End up with the State According to Rousseau?

How does Change Happen in the State of Nature
1) Free will
2) We have the capacity for self improvement

❖ Scarcity combined with free will and the capacity for self improvement gives us the
capacity to make tools
➢ People are going to come up with these tools to get out of the citation of
scarcity and so we are not reliant on others
❖ We engage in cooperation
➢ Since we have the sense of compassion and pity we have the desire to work
with others
❖ Leisure, luxury goods, corrupted needs
➢ If we aren't doing anything we have time to relax
➢ Through the process of tool making we might discover jewels or gold
➢ Corrupts our needs (now we want jewels and gold)
❖ Language and comparison of talents
❖ Agriculture, metallurgy, property
❖ Rules of justice and inequality
➢ Rules for what is right and wrong
 ➢ Rules that have to allow for inequality
❖ Aforementioned leads to the state of war
❖ Rousseau says the rich devises a brilliant plan, and the brilliant plan is the state
➢ Rich refers to the idea that those who have want to protect what they have
➢ The state emerges because the rich devise a plan to ensure that those who
are unequal in what they have are better off because of language, property,
agriculture, leisure etc… therefore they create the state and the state
reinforces this inequality but also protects them from those that would want
to overcome their inequality

How does the State Emerge from the State of Nature?

❖ Anatole France “the law, in its majestic equality, forbids both rich and poor alike
from sleeping under bridges, begging in the streets, and stealing bread.”
➢ Everybody is treated the same
➢ Rousseau suggest that the state emerges as a way to protect the private
porey and the unequal power of those who are rich, who are powerful, who
have differentiated themselves in language, who have the talents that allow
them to hold onto that power, and therefore it is not just to bring us all to
peace its to prevent war and to protect the rights, privileges, and property of
the powerful