POLS101

CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS POLITICS?

OCTOBER 25-26
 CHAPTER 1- WHAT IS POLITICS?
ANDREW HEYWOOD
Chapter Outline
A. Defining politics
• Politics as the art of government
• Politics as public affairs
• Politics as compromise and consensus
• Politics as power

B. Studying Politics
• Approaches to the study of politics
• Concepts, models and theories

C. Politics in A Global Age

• Beyond the domestic/ international divide?
• Questions for discussion
 INTRODUCTION TO POLITICS

The Central Issues Examined in this Chapter:

• What are the defining features of politics as an activity?

• How has ‘politics’ been understood by various thinkers

and traditions?

• Does politics take place within all social institutions, or

only in some?
 INTRODUCTION TO POLITICS

Politics is exciting because people disagree about

many things. They disagree about:
• how they should live.
• how they should distribute resources.
• how they should make collective decisions.
 WHAT IS POLITICS?

Aristotle says, “Politics is

the ‘master science’.”
Because it is the most
important activity through
which human beings
attempt to improve their
lives and create the
‘Good Society’.
 WHAT IS POLITICS?

There are disagreements about the nature of the subject

and how it should be studied.

People disagree about both what it is that makes social

interaction political;

And how political activity can be best analyzed and

explained.
 WHAT IS POLITICS?

What is Politics?

Politics can be defined as “the activity through which

people make, preserve and amend the general rules
under which they live.”

It, therefore, by definition, involves both conflict and

cooperation.

On the one hand, the existence of rival opinions, different

wants, competing needs and opposing interests leads to
disagreement about the rules under which people live
(CONFLICT).
 WHAT IS POLITICS?

On the other hand, people recognize that, in order to

influence these rules or ensure that they are
maintained, they must work with others
(COOPERATION).

-Thus politics is often portrayed as a process of conflict

resolution, in which rival views or competing interests
are reconciled with one another.

• But not all conflicts are, or can be, resolved. Thus

politics is a “search for conflict resolution”.
 WHAT IS POLITICS?

The inescapable presence of diversity (we’re not all

alike) and scarcity (there is never enough to go
around) ensures that politics is an inevitable feature
of the human condition.
 WHAT IS POLITICS?

Any attempt to clarify the meaning of ‘politics’ must

address two major problems:
1- The first is about the use of the word “politics” in
everyday language. It is a ‘loaded’ (a biased) term. In
other words, it has an underlying meaning or implication.

• Many find it difficult to believe that the subject can be

approached objectively.

• As importantly, politics is often thought of as a ‘dirty’

word. It often creates images of trouble, violence,
manipulation and lies.
 WHAT IS POLITICS?

Therefore, any attempt to define politics entails trying

to disentangle (separate) it from such associations.

The term needs to be rescued from its negative

reputation by showing that it is a valuable activity.
 WHAT IS POLITICS?

2- The second and more intractable difficulty is that

even respected authorities cannot agree what the
subject is about.

Politics is defined in such different ways as:

• The exercise of power,
• The exercise of authority,
• The making of collective decisions,
• The allocation of scarce resources,
• The practice of deception and manipulation, and
so on.
 WHAT IS POLITICS?

This is to say, politics is essentially a “contested

concept,” in the sense that the term has a number of
acceptable or legitimate meanings.
 WHAT IS POLITICS?

We are going to discuss 4 different views of politics:

• Politics as the art of government

• Politics as public affairs
• Politics as compromise and consensus
• Politics as power
A. DEFINING POLITICS
1. POLITICS AS THE ART OF GOVERNMENT:

“Politics is not a science

... but an art”.
Chancellor Bismarck told
the German parliament.

He meant the art of

government:
The exercise of control
within society through
the making and
enforcement of
collective decisions.
1. POLITICS AS THE ART OF GOVERNMENT:

In this light, politics can be understood to refer to the

affairs of the polis – or in its modern sense ‘what
concerns the state’.

To study politics is, then, in essence to study

government, or, more broadly, to study the exercise
of authority.
 CONCEPT: AUTHORITY

• «Authority can most simply be defined as ‘legitimate

power’.» (HEYWOOD, p.37)
• Weber distinguished between three kinds of authority,
based on the different grounds on which obedience can
be established:
1. traditional authority is rooted in history;
2. charismatic authority stems from personality;
3. legal–rational authority is grounded in a set of
impersonal rules.
1. POLITICS AS THE ART OF GOVERNMENT:

This is the traditional view of the discipline, reflected in

the tendency for academic study to focus on the
personnel and machinery of government.

In this view, politics is associated with policy: that is,

with formal decisions that establish a plan of action
for the community.
1. POLITICS AS THE ART OF GOVERNMENT:

Politics is what takes place within a system of social

organization centred upon the machinery of
government.
• It is practiced in cabinet rooms, legislative
chambers, government departments and the like,
and it is engaged in by a limited and specific group
of people, notably politicians, civil servants and
lobbyists.

Note that, this definition offers a “highly restricted”

view of politics.
1. POLITICS AS THE ART OF GOVERNMENT:

This means that most people, most institutions and

most social activities can be regarded as being
‘outside’ politics.

Businesses, schools and other educational institutions,

community groups, families and so on are in this
sense ‘nonpolitical’, because they are not “engaged
in running the country”.
1. POLITICS AS THE ART OF GOVERNMENT:

It is also important to note that portraying politics as

an essentially state-bound activity is to ignore the
increasingly important role of international and
global influences upon modern life, such as the
multinational corporations + private sector actors.
1. POLITICS AS THE ART OF GOVERNMENT:

The link between politics and the affairs of the state helps to
explain why negative images have been attached to politics:

This is because in the popular mind, politics is closely associated

with the activities of politicians.

Politicians are often seen as power-seeking hypocrites who

conceal personal ambition behind the rhetoric of public service
and ideological conviction.

Indeed, this perception has become more common in the

modern period as intensified media exposure has more
effectively brought to light examples of corruption and
dishonesty, giving rise to the phenomenon of anti-politics.
 CONCEPT: ANTI-POLITICS

Disappointment with formal

and established political
processes, reflected in
nonparticipation, support
for anti-system parties, or
the use of direct action.
 CONCEPT: ANTI-POLITICS

US: Occupy Wall Street Germany: Pirate Party

1. POLITICS AS THE ART OF GOVERNMENT:

Such an image of politics is sometimes traced back to

the writings of Niccolo Machiavelli, who, in The Prince
(1531), developed a strictly realistic account of politics
that drew attention to the use by political leaders of
cunning, cruelty and manipulation.
1. POLITICS AS THE ART OF GOVERNMENT:

Such negative opinions about politics reflects the

essentially liberal perception that, as individuals are
self-interested, political power is corrupting, because
it encourages those “in power” to exploit their
position for personal advantage.
1. POLITICS AS THE ART OF GOVERNMENT:

All these may be true. However, the proponents of this

view see political activity as an inevitable and permanent
feature of social existence.

Because without some kind of mechanism for allocating

authoritative values, society would simply disintegrate into
a civil war of each against all.

The task is therefore not to abolish politicians and bring

politics to an end, but rather to ensure that politics is
conducted within a framework of checks and constraints
that ensure that governmental power is not abused.
 CONCEPT: POWER

• «the ability to achieve a desired outcome,

sometimes seen as the ‘power to’ do something.»
• «In politics, however, power is usually thought of as
a relationship; that is, as the ability to influence the
behaviour of others in a manner not of their
choosing.»
 2- POLITICS AS PUBLIC AFFAIRS

This broader conception of politics moves it beyond

the narrow realm of government.

Here, the distinction between ‘the political’ and ‘the

nonpolitical’ coincides with the division between an
essentially public sphere of life and what can be
thought of as a private sphere.

Such a view of politics is often traced back to

Aristotle.
 2- POLITICS AS PUBLIC AFFAIRS

In Politics, Aristotle declared that ‘man is by nature a

political animal’, by which he meant that it is only
within a political community that human beings can
live ‘the good life’.

From this viewpoint, then, politics is an ethical activity

concerned with creating a ‘just society’.

Now, we have to define “public” and “private”…

 2- POLITICS AS PUBLIC AFFAIRS

Traditional Distinction Alternative Distinction

Public Private Public Private
The State Civil Society
Public Realm Personal Realm
Apparatus of Autonomous
Politics, Family and
Government bodies:
Commerce, Domestic Life
businesses,
Work, Art,
trade unions,
Culture, etc.
clubs, families
etc.
 2- POLITICS AS PUBLIC AFFAIRS

Traditional Distinction

The traditional distinction between the public realm

and the private realm is in line with the division
between the state and civil society.
 2- POLITICS AS PUBLIC AFFAIRS

The institutions of the state (the apparatus of government,

the courts, the police, the army, the social-security system
and so forth) can be regarded as ‘public’ in the sense
that they are responsible for the collective organization of
community life. + They are funded by taxes i.e. public.

Civil society consists of what Edmund Burke called the

‘little platoons’, institutions such as the family and kinship
groups, private businesses, trade unions, clubs, community
groups and so on that are ‘private’ in the sense that they
are set up and funded by individual citizens to satisfy their
own interests.
 2- POLITICS AS PUBLIC AFFAIRS

Those areas of life that individuals can and do

manage for themselves (the economic, social,
domestic, personal, cultural and artistic spheres, and
so on) are therefore clearly ‘nonpolitical’.
 2- POLITICS AS PUBLIC AFFAIRS

Alternative Distinction

Although civil society can be distinguished from the

state, it contains a range of institutions that are
thought of as “public” in the wider sense that they
are open institutions, operating in public, to which the
public has access.

One of the crucial implications of this is that it

broadens our notion of the political, transferring the
economy in particular from the private to the public
realm.
 2- POLITICS AS PUBLIC AFFAIRS

Criticism!
This, still, remains a restricted view of politics because
according to this perspective, politics does not, and
should not, infringe upon ‘personal’ affairs and
institutions.

(Feminist thinkers in particular have pointed out that

this implies that politics effectively stops at the front
door; it does not take place in the family, in domestic
life, or in personal relationships.)
 2- POLITICS AS PUBLIC AFFAIRS

This view has generated both positive and negative images.

Positive images:
In a tradition dating back to Aristotle, politics has been seen as
a noble and enlightened activity precisely because of its
“public” character.

Hannah Arendt firmly endorses this position: “politics is the most

important form of human activity because it involves interaction
amongst free and equal citizens. It thus gives meaning to life
and affirms the uniqueness of each individual.”

Rousseau: “Only through the direct and continuous

participation of all citizens in political life can the state be
bound to the common good” or “general will”.
 2- POLITICS AS PUBLIC AFFAIRS

In J.S. Mill’s view: “Involvement in ‘public’ affairs is

educational in that it promotes the personal, moral and
intellectual development of the individual.”

Negative images:
In sharp contrast, however, politics as public activity has
also been portrayed as a form of unwanted interference.

Liberal theorists in particular have exhibited a preference

for civil society over the state, on the grounds that ‘private’
life is a realm of choice, personal freedom and individual
responsibility.
 2- POLITICS AS PUBLIC AFFAIRS

This is most clearly demonstrated by attempts to

narrow the realm of the political, commonly
expressed as the wish to “keep politics out of” private
activities such as business, sport, and family life.
 3. POLITICS AS COMPROMISE AND
CONSENSUS

Here, politics is seen as a particular means of resolving

conflict: that is, by compromise, conciliation and
negotiation, rather than through force and naked power.

This is what is implied when politics is portrayed as ‘the art of

the possible’.

The description of a solution to a problem as a ‘political’

solution implies peaceful debate and arbitration, as
opposed to what is often called a ‘military’ solution.
 CONCEPT: CONSENSUS

• Consensus means agreement, but it refers to an

agreement of a particular kind.
1. a broad agreement, the terms of which are accepted by
a wide range of individuals or groups.
2. it implies an agreement about fundamental or
underlying principles, as opposed to a precise or exact
agreement.
 3. POLITICS AS COMPROMISE AND
CONSENSUS
One of the leading modern exponents of this view is
Bernard Crick. Crick offered the following definition:

• “Politics [is] the activity by which differing 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.”

In this view, the key to politics is therefore a wide

dispersal of power.
 3. POLITICS AS COMPROMISE AND
CONSENSUS
This view of politics clearly has a positive character.
Note that, politics is certainly no utopian solution
because compromise means that concessions are
made by all sides, leaving no one perfectly satisfied.

• But, it is definitely preferable to the alternatives:

bloodshed and brutality.
• In this sense, politics can be seen as a civilized and
civilizing force.
 3. POLITICS AS COMPROMISE AND
CONSENSUS
People should be encouraged to respect politics as an
activity, and should be prepared to engage in the
political life of their own community.

It is important to understand that this involves listening

carefully to the opinions of others – and this is not so easy.

That’s why there is a growing disappointment with

democratic politics across much of the developed world.

As Stoker put it, “Politics is designed to disappoint;” its

outcomes are “often messy, ambiguous and never final”.
 4. POLITICS AS POWER

The fourth definition of politics is both the broadest

and the most radical.

Rather than confining politics to a particular sphere

(the government, the state or the ‘public’ realm) this
view sees politics at work in all social activities and in
every corner of human existence.

‘Politics is at the heart of all collective social activity,

formal and informal, public and private, in all human
groups, institutions and societies’ (Leftwich).
 4. POLITICS AS POWER

In this sense, politics takes place at every level of

social interaction; it can be found within families and
amongst small groups of friends just as much as
amongst nations.

Politics concerns the production, distribution and use

of resources in the course of social existence. Politics
is, in essence, power: the ability to achieve a desired
outcome, through whatever means.
 4. POLITICS AS POWER

This notion was summed up in the title of Harold

Laswell’s book Politics: Who Gets What, When, How?
(1936).

From this perspective, politics is about diversity and

conflict, but the essential ingredient is the existence
of scarcity: the simple fact that, while human needs
and desires are infinite, the resources available to
satisfy them are always limited.
 4. POLITICS AS POWER

Politics can therefore be seen as a struggle over

scarce resources, and power can be seen as the
means through which this struggle is conducted.
 4. POLITICS AS POWER

Advocates of this view of power include Feminists and Marxists.

Kate Millett, a feminist, defines politics as “power-structured

relationships, arrangements whereby one group of persons is
controlled by another”.

Feminists can therefore be said to be concerned with “the

politics of everyday life”.

In their view, relationships within the family, between husbands

and wives, and between parents and children, are every bit as
political as relationships between employers and workers, or
between governments and citizens.
 4. POLITICS AS POWER

Marxists:
• As opposed to believing that politics can be
confined to the state and a narrow public sphere,
Marxists believe that “the economic is political”.

• Lenin says “politics is the most concentrated form of

economics”.

• Class struggle is the heart of politics.

 4. POLITICS AS POWER

In Marxism and Feminism, politics is portrayed in largely

negative terms.

Politics is about oppression and subjugation.

But at the same time, politics is seen as the means through

which injustice and domination can be challenged.

According to Marxists, class exploitation will be overthrown

by a proletarian revolution; Feminists call for a sexual
revolution where gender relations will be re-ordered.
 4. POLITICS AS POWER
Finally, it is important to note that when politics is
portrayed as power and domination, it is no longer
an inevitable feature of social existence.

Proletarian/ sexual revolution, will bring politics to an

end.
 ‘FACES’(DIMENSIONS) OF POWER

In politics power is thought of as a relationship: that is,

as the ability to influence the behavior of others in a
manner not of their choosing.

Power, therefore, can be said to be exercised

whenever A gets B to do something that B would not
otherwise have done.

This can be done in various ways:

 ‘FACES’(DIMENSIONS) OF POWER

1. Power as decision-making:
-Conscious actions that in some way influence the content
of decisions.
The decisions can be influenced in various ways:

In Three Faces of Power (1989), Keith Boulding distinguished

between the use of force or intimidation (the stick), productive
exchanges involving mutual gain (the deal), and the creation of
obligations, loyalty and commitment (the kiss).
 ‘FACES’(DIMENSIONS) OF POWER

2. Power as agenda setting:

The ability to prevent decisions being made: that is, in
effect, ‘non-decision-making’.
-This involves the ability to set or control the political
agenda, thereby preventing issues or proposals from being
aired in the first place.
Example: Private businesses may exert power both by
campaigning to defeat proposed consumer-protection
legislation (first face), and by lobbying politicians to
prevent the question of consumer rights being publicly
discussed (second face).
 ‘FACES’(DIMENSIONS) OF POWER

3. Power as thought control:

The ability to influence another by shaping what he or
she thinks, wants, or needs.
This is power expressed as ideological indoctrination or
psychological control. (the use of propaganda and,
more generally, the impact of ideology).

This is the radical view of power, and it overlaps with

the notion of “soft” power.
 B. STUDYING POLITICS

Approaches to the study of politics:

• One of the most ancient spheres of intellectual

enquiry, politics was originally seen as an arm of
philosophy, history or law.
• Its central purpose was to uncover the principles on
which human society should be based. From the
late nineteenth century onwards, however, this
philosophical emphasis was gradually displaced by
an attempt to turn politics into a scientific discipline.
APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF POLITICS

• The philosophical tradition: This involved a

preoccupation with essentially ethical, prescriptive
or normative questions, reflecting a concern with
what ‘should’, ‘ought’ or ‘must’ be brought about,
rather than with what ‘is’.
• Plato – Aristotle – Augustine – Aquinas –Marx…
 APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF
POLITICS
• The empirical tradition: Although it was less
prominent than normative theorizing, a descriptive
or empirical tradition can be traced back to the
earliest days of political thought.

• Aristotle’s attempt to classify constitutions

• Machiavelli’s realistic account of statecraft
• Montesquieu’s sociological theory of government
and law
APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF POLITICS

• Positivism (Auguste Comte): This doctrine

proclaimed that the social sciences and, for that
matter, all forms of philosophical enquiry, should
adhere strictly to the methods of the natural
sciences.
 APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF
POLITICS
• Behaviouralism
• Since the mid-nineteenth century, mainstream political
analysis has been dominated by the ‘scientific’ tradition,
reflecting the growing impact of positivism.
• In the 1870s, ‘political science’ courses were introduced
in the universities of Oxford, Paris and Columbia, and by
1906 the American Political Science Review was being
published.
• For the first time, behaviouralism gave politics reliably
scientific credentials, because it provided what had
previously been lacking: objective and quantifiable
data against which hypotheses could be tested.
 APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF
POLITICS
• Rational-choice theory
• «invented» by behaviouralists
• This approach to analysis draws heavily on the
example of economic theory in building up models
based on procedural rules, usually about the
rationally self-interested behaviour of the individuals
involved.
APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF POLITICS

• Game theory: A way of exploring problems of

conflict or collaboration by explaining how one
actor’s choice of strategy affects another’s best
choice and vice versa.
• «Prisoners Dilemma»
 CONCEPTS, MODELS AND THEORIES

• Model: A data that aims to advance understanding

by highlighting significant relationships and
interactions.

• Models and theories are broader than concepts;

they comprise a range of ideas rather than a single
idea. A model is usually thought of as a
representation of something, usually on a smaller
scale, as in the case of a doll’s house or a toy
aeroplane.
 CONCEPTS, MODELS AND THEORIES

• A paradigm is, in a general sense, a pattern or

model that highlights relevant features of a
particular phenomenon.

• «an intellectual framework comprising interrelated

values, theories and assumptions, within which the
search for knowledge is conducted.»
CONCEPTS, MODELS AND THEORIES
 C. POLITICS IN A GLOBAL AGE

• Transnational: Configuration, which may apply to

events, people, groups or organizations, that takes
little or no account of national governments or state
borders.
C. POLITICS IN A GLOBAL AGE
 SUBFIELDS OF POLITICAL SCIENCE

1. Political Theory / Political Thought / Political

Philosophy:
• Descriptive rather than empirical
• A survey of political thoughts expressed by political
philosophers throughout the history.
 SUBFIELDS OF POLITICAL SCIENCE

2. Comparative Politics:
Comparative politics refers to both a disciplinary subfield
and a method of analysis. As a disciplinary subfield, it is
often taken, especially in the USA, to mean simply ‘the
politics of foreign countries’. As a method of analysis,
comparative politics involves

• identifying and exploring similarities and differences

between political units (usually states) in order to
develop ‘grounded theories’,
• test hypotheses,
• infer causal relationships,
• and produce
• reliable generalizations.
 SUBFIELDS OF POLITICAL SCIENCE

• Are political science and international relations (IR) two

separate disciplines, or should they be thought of as subfields,
or different levels of analysis, within the same broad discipline:
politics or political analysis?

• In most contexts, political science and IR emerged

independently from one another. Political science was
established as an academic discipline from the mid-
nineteenth century onwards in the USA and across Europe,
while IR developed in the aftermath of World War I, and was
largely shaped by the desire to uncover the
conditions for enduring peace.
 SUBFIELDS OF POLITICAL SCIENCE

• 4. Public Administration
• 5. Political Methodology
• (As a subfield of IR) –> Political Economy
QUESTIONS
QUESTIONS