Defining Politics Flashcards
Broad Definition of Politics
An activity through which people make, preserve and amend general rules under which they live.
Conditions of Disagreement and Compromise
- Diversity of interest (wants and needs) and limited amount of resources
- Concessions are needed to maintain and shape general rules
Politics as the Art of Government
- Politics = polis = city/state
- political analysis concentrates on the government and its personnel
- the activities at the parliament, cabinet rooms, ministries and government departments
Actors: politicians, civil servants and lobbyists
Limitations to poli as art of gov
- limited view of politics, leaving out various areas in the civil society where politics do occur
(Schools, community groups etc.) - it ignores international and global influence on politics
(Multinational corporations and supranational institutions such as the EU) - Negative connotation
(Politics is the way to achieve power)
Politics as Public Affairs
- Political = public sphere
- Non-political = private sphere
- State: apparatus of the government, the courts, the police, the army. All financially supported out of taxation
- Civil society: family, trade unions, clubs, community groups. All funded by individual citizens or community groups
- politics is restricted to the activities of the public bodies of the state
Limitations to poli as public affairs
- political/non-political (does not)= public sphere/private sphere
- it also ignores international and global influence on politics
Politics as compromise and consensus
- politics as a process to resolve conflict, based on compromise and reconciliation
- motto: ‘politics is the art of the possible’
- political analysis focus on the way in which compromise was made, and how it has affected the original position of political parties and political individuals
Limitations to poli as compromise and consensus
- equated with electoral practices and political party competitions
- highly based on the western democratic political system
Politics as Power
- not restrained to any particular realm
- Politics is at the heart of all collective social
activity, formal and informal, public and
private, in all human groups, institutions and
societies. (Leftwich 1984: 64). - politics is about power: the ability to achieve a desired outcome
- Political analysis can focus in various
spheres, analyzing how a certain sector is
dominated and subjugated to some other
sectors. - Feminist Motto: “personal is political”
Limitations to poli as power
- politics is seen solely in negative terms: as an instrument of oppression and subjugation
- too much emphasis on the conflict nature of politics
Claude Lefort: Politics and democracy
- La politique (politics): public power and decision-making apparatus
- Le politique (the political): society represented as whole, unified as one
- Society Unity (‘The Political’ dimension of society) requires a point of power, ‘symbolic location of power”
(Traditional society: power based on custom, cosmos, etc.)
(Absolutism (monarchy): the monarch acts as the mediator the people and transcendent divine authority
Modern regimes: place of power falls to society
Implications:
- authority is no longer transcendental
- how is it possible to establish unity? (The political face of society)
Solutions:
- Totalitarianism: equate society/state to form unity and eradicate social divisions
- Modern Democratic Regime: Symbolic place of power is empty
(No single actor, group or principle can claim true representation of society)
(Power, legitimacy, identity and unity is always open to be questioned)
Carl Schmitt (1888-1985)
‘The Concept of the Political’ (1932)
The political: friends/enemies
Enemy exist ‘in a specifically intense way, essentially something different and alien, so that in the extreme case conflicts with him are possible.’ (Schmitt, pg.27)
Implications:
- antagonism is a key aspect in politics
- politics is about the construction of a ‘community’
- Politics is not limited to any particular institutional setting
- any particularly social relations (among individuals and groups) has the possibility of becoming political
Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe
‘Hegemony and socialist strategy’ (1985) and ‘the return of the political’ (1993)
Hegemony: Political is the moment when one agent (working class, social movements or political party) is able to articulate with other social agents as friends, against an external enemy.
- political is the collective face of an articulatory process that brings various social agents as a community, as one (The New Collective)
- You can only be political by adding to your program other particular demands
