Capter 1 - Necessity Of Politics Flashcards
Why is the “stateless fantasy” a fantasy?
Because it takes for granted the importance of well carved political institutions.
What is liberal democracy?
The complex set of institutions that restrain and regularized the exercise of power through law and a system of checks an balances.
Why is change political institutions so slow and difficult?
They are transmitted culturally across time and earn a psychological and intrinsic value in the mechanism. External pressures to change are typically followed by great lag time before a society is willing to make required changes.
Hobbesian fallacy:
The idea that human brings were primordial individualistic and that they entered into society at a later stage in their development only as a result of rational calculation that social cooperation was the best way for them to achieve their individual ends.
Political characteristics if a tribe:
1) agrarian/pastoral society
2) private property thru kinship as a result if religious ancestor worship.
3) no 3d party rule of law; akin to international law in which each sovereign negotiates.
4) wars are begat by belligerent segments; which may combine w/ other segments of a lineage when the dispute rises at a higher level
Confucianism vs Legalism
Family oriented, absolutism imbued with moral values vs naked absolutism
Foundations of political dvlpmt (4)
Favoring of kin and friends
Capacity to think abstractly; religion
Emotionally founded norm following
Inter subjective recognition
How was consolidated political power limited by the brahmanic system in India?
Limited military mobilization due to the varna/jati system
Individual villages had the necessary institutions to govern; they didn’t rely on a larger state system
Controlled literacy prevented the emergence of central linguistic and canonic devices such as was present in China
Rule of law effectively reduced the king to the enforcer of the Varnas/jatis tradition.
What is modern society?
Individualistic, egalitarian, merit and market oriented, socially mobile societies structured by rational-legal forms of authority.
What was the “investiture conflict”?
The Catholic Church under Gregory VII declared independence from the the State. It struggled to ensure that bishoprics and priesthood ceases to continue as a patrimonial office subordinate to the state.
Consequences of the investiture conflict?
The Concordat of Worms which resulted in the following:
Allowed the Catholic Church to evolve into a modern, hierarchical, bureaucratic, and law governed institution.
It resulted in a separation of spiritual and temporal matters thereby paving the way for the emergence of secular state.
Why was Rule of Law stronger in Europe than in the Middle East and India?
1) codification - comprehensive and logically consistent at a very early stage - premodern era
2) legal specialization - sophisticated university system
3) institutional autonomy - the investiture conflict paved the way for a secular state limited in its power by the legitimating, autonomous Catholic Church
How did The Mongolian invasion exert considerable influence over subsequent Russian political development?
1) it cut Russia off from trade and intellectual contact with Byzantium and the Middle East, which had been the source of Russian religion and culture
2) The Mongol occupation greatly delayed Russian political development, the Russian state had started to break up before the Mongols arrival, but the conquest confirmed the dispersion of political authority
3) The Mongols undermined any legal traditions inherited from Byzantium and made political life far harsher and more cruel.
The Mongols the strained several generations of Russian leaders in their own predatory tactics.
If the Hungarian State suffered from a weak central state, then the Russian state suffered from a Perfect absolutism. What is one critical difference between Russia and hungry?
In Russia, the middle service class was recruited to work directly for the Muscovite State, whereas in Hungary it was incorporated into the noble class. In Russia therefore the middle class was subordinated directly to the centralized state.
Russian absolutism was founded on what critical Political groups?
The alliance that emerged between the Monarch and both the upper and lower nobility was critical, all of whom committed themselves to binding rules at the expense of the peasantry such as mobility restrictions.
