POLI 100 Final Flashcards
Ideologies
Systems of ideas & ideals that inform political theory, action, parties, policy agendas & theories of how the political world works
Political Science
Basic concepts of political life, different political theories emerge in different historical contexts with different problems & struggles, often competing, rooted in different ideologies/social positions
Dahl’s 5 Criteria for a Democratic Process
1) Effective Participation: before a decision is made, all members must have equal & effective opportunities for making their views known, no systemic barriers, considered in collective decision making
2) Voting Equality: when the final decision is to be taken, every member must have an equal & effective opportunity to vote; all votes must be counted as equal
3) Enlightened Understanding: each member must have equal & effective opportunities to learn about the relevant alternative policies & their likely consequences (ex.Understanding food prices organic vs conventional and its social enviro meanings, Musk & Twitter’s unequal political power)
4) Control of the Agenda: members must have the exclusive opportunity to decide how matters are to be placed on the agenda, and what matters are to be placed on the agenda.
5) Inclusion of all Adults: all adult permanent residents should have the full rights of citizens (indicated by first four criteria)
Dahl’s 5 Conclusions on Capitalism & Democracy
Conceptual, empirical & normative aspects of political science, or political analysis as they might relate to climate politics
See notes.
Paul Krugman’s discussion of “Environmental Econ 101”: “Environmental economics is all about answering” the question of how to address “negative externalities: the emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases is a classic negative externality ….” Explain how this issue of negative externalities would be addressed by burke, sultana, etc.
David Wallace-Wells, in “Has Climate Change Blinded Us to the Biodiversity Crisis?,” argues that it is a mistake to think that we can address the problem of climate change independently of other environmental problems, such as the biodiversity crisis? Explain (NOT so briefly) relation to…
Explain how Ulrich Beck understands the following notions and how they relate to challenges of climate politics:
Ulrich Beck’s “cosmopolitan” (global or internationalist) view of the increasing need for international forms of governance to address transnational or global political problems alongside Robert Dahl’s reasons for being skeptical about the prospects for extending meaningfully democratic politics to international institutions.
Promises & limitations of Dahl’s polyarchical democracy as it operates within distinct nation states in relation to Ulrich Beck’s understanding of the “world economy” as a kind of meta-power? In particular, what does Beck’s view add to Dahl account of the relationship between capitalism (and its accompanying economic inequalities) and democracy as it would relate to climate change politics?
First, summarize the gist of J.S. Mill’s principle of liberty and T. H. Green’s “positive” conception of freedom. Second, explain how their ideas might be extended to address the politics of environmental issues such as climate change and the biodiversity crisis
Explain how T. H. Green’s “positive” conception of freedom, particularly his view that government action can expand the “real freedom of society,” is quite relevant to – and arguably foreshadows –contemporary liberal approaches to environmentalism, including climate change, such as the approaches of Paul Krugman and Al Gore.
Why, or on what grounds, have different liberal thinkers, such as Mill, T.H. Green, and Milton Friedman, differed over the proper place of private property rights among the various basic rights that should be protected by and against governments? How might this debate be related to democratic socialist Eduard Bernstein’s claim that “with respect to liberalism as a great historical movement, socialism is its legitimate heir, not only in chronological sequence, but also in its spiritual qualities.”
Briefly explain links between Edmund Burke’s conservatism, environmentalism, and the ideas of the Indigenous writings that we discussed in class.
How does Henry Paulson’s conservative approach to climate politics relate to (a) Burke’s conservatism and (b) Milton’s Friedman’s liberalism? Note: Friedman’s liberalism is “neoliberalism.”
E - Why have conservatives like Burke tended to be wary of appeals to abstract ideals and ambitious visions of government-led social and political reform?
In her essay “Our Revolution is Unique,” Betty Friedan reflected on the difficulties that women often experience when they try to juggle marriage and careers. “I don’t accept for most women the necessity of making a choice that no man has to make.” “we must challenge the idea that a woman is primarily responsible for raising children.” Explain the significance of these two points for Friedan’s liberal feminism
Equality as basic sameness: doesn’t believe that men and women are so completely different that it is impossible to be seen as firstly human beings - not all feminists view equality in sameness (e.g. pregnancy, sexual harassment, etc.) → some ways in equality means treating people based on their needs (equity)
Women & Sex: reproductive rights (access to abortion, birth control, etc.) → connected to women’s self-determination, control over their own lives and bodies. Highlights problem of women as “sex objects” for women’s full humanity → objectification by men
Quote 1 Significance: women have often been confronted with a choice of either marriage and children or a career, but not men, expected to organize time to ensure responsibility over the household/child-rearing.
Quote 2 Significance: women face oppression in society through power dynamics but men are also “fellow victim of the present half-equality”. The only way for a woman, as for a man, to find herself, to know herself as a person, is by creative work of her own. Must challenge ideas as not all women want equality but this is because their “wants” have been shaped by existing gender relations. Gaventa’s 3rd dimension: the wants of women have been shaped by gender norms, forcing women to internalize these ideas and beliefs as the “proper role”.
Chandra Mohanty and Farhana Sultana do not explicitly refer to Ulrich Beck’s notion of the “nationality trap.” How are they related? Each offers political analyses of gender justice (Mohanty) and climate justice (Sultana) in our post-colonial age that point beyond the nationality trap. What are the central ways in which Mohanty and Sultana seek to have us think transnationally – seeking to avoid or move beyond the nationality trap –to address gender justice and climate justice?
Norberto Bobbio says that socialism stands in tension if not conflict with liberalism (or at least some aspects of modern liberalism), but it has a closer, more complementary relationship to democracy. Explains the gist of his points about socialism’s relationships to liberalism and democracy.
E-The SDS’s idea of “economic democracy,” which was related to their broader notion of participatory democracy, was the chief democratic socialist aspect of their founding document, “The Port Huron Statement.” What was their basic idea of economic democracy and how does this fit into the tradition of democratic socialism?
The SDS said this about the phenomenon of political apathy (disinterest in politics), among many members of formally “democratic societies”: “We oppose… doctrine of human incompetence… men have been ‘competently’ manipulated into incompetence – we see little reason why people cannot meet with increasing skill the complexities and responsibilities of their situation, if society is organized not for a minority, but for majority participation in decision-making” (p. 344). Relation to Gaventa’s 2 & 3D of power & Dahl’s 5 Criteria of a Democratic Process
E - Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring (1962) environmentalism says little about the political implications of her environmentalism but foreshadows one prominent way that the Anthropocene idea has been used in recent years to speak of human domination of the Earth’s ecology. “Only within the moment of time represented by the present century has one species – man – acquired significant power to alter the nature of the world” How does Carson develop this line of thought?
E - Petra Kelley, in “Thinking Green!,” elaborates a more explicitly political environmentalism “Non-violence, ecology, social justice, and feminism are the key principles of Green politics, and they are inseparably linked” (646). How, or in what way, are these values all “inseparably linked” in Kelley’s understanding of Green politics?
Explain how Amartya Sen’s environmentalism in “Why We Should Preserve the Spotted Owl” (2004) relates “ecological citizenship” notion to (1) the idea that our material standard of living isn’t the only thing that we value; and (2) to democratic politics and political freedom.
E- According to Marx, how is the alienation of workers related to private property, specifically private ownership of the means of production? Refer to scenes from the Charlie Chaplin film “Modern Times” to make your points concrete.
How does Marx’s theory of the state – how it tends to operate and who tends to control its use in capitalist societies – relate to Dahl’s points about the tensions between capitalism and democracy?
E - Gaventa’s view of the three dimensions of power.
E - Michel Foucault’s argument (relationship b/w power and claims of knowledge) that “truth isn’t outside power. … Truth is a thing of this world: it is produced only by virtue of multiple forms of constraint. And it induces regular effects of power”
E - Ulrich Beck’s understanding of World economy “as a kind meta-power” in relation to the state, World economy “as a kind meta-power” in relation to the state
Aristotle held that people (or at least free men) were “political animals” because we were equipped with speech enabling us to distinguish between right and wrong, just and unjust, and thus to live a “good life” rather than live just “mere life.” Be prepared to compare and contrast Aristotle’s conception of politics to that of Gaventa, Dahl (in On Democracy), Karl Marx, Edmund Burke, and the feminist thinkers Betty Friedan and Chandra Mohanty.
E - Identify at least 3 of the institutions that Dahl says large-scale polyarchical democracy requires and explain how that supports the realization of his necessary criteria for a democratic process. Keep in mind that to some degree the different institutions support the realization of different criteria, so that each institution does not by itself support the realization of all five criteria.
Gaventa developed his 3Ds of power to address certain limitations of actually existing democracies, especially to supposed pluralist democracy practiced in the USA. “I had read the theories of democracy, about how victims of injustice in an ‘open system’ are free to take action upon their concerns, about how conflicts emerge and are resolved through compromises amongst competing interests”. In light of Gaventa’s concern about the limits of existing democracies where sharp inequalities of power exist between groups, as expressed in this remark and in his discussion of the 3Ds of power, explain the challenge that inequalities of power between groups in modern “democracies” presents to the realization of the following three of Dahl’s democratic criteria:
Summarize the gist of the debate about justice b/w Socrates and Thrasymachus in Plato’s Republic and relate it to foucaul truth & power, gaventa & dahl power and democracy, Sultana
E - Explain the main aspects of Dahl’s argument concerning the “civil competence” of ordinary citizens – his critique of “guardianship,” defense of the competence of citizens to govern, and his argument for “inclusion”.
E - Dahl’s defense of the proposition of the civic competence of ordinary citizens “experts should be kept on tap, not on top” discuss the implications of this point for democratic politics as it relates to issues like climate change and the biodiversity crisis. Consider there is almost certainly an important role for experts for these issues. The question, then, concerns the character of this role according to Dahl.
Consider SDS’s Port Huron Statement critique of elitist politics and defense of participatory democracy, to the following two components of Dahl’s view of modern democratic politics: his view of the practical necessity of representative democracy in large societies (e.g., with millions of members) and his defense of the competence of citizens to govern.
Imagine that Betty Friedan, Robert Dahl, either democratic socialist Norberto Bobbio or the US Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), and feminist scholar Farhana Sultana have been selected to serve together on a committee to propose an ideal democratic society, sympathetic to the particular ideas and proposals of others. Focusing on the main ideas and contributions of each thinker to this goal (a fully or more fully democratic society), explain concisely what their joint proposal would involve.
Questions: Compared with what Dahl says about the limitations for democracy of those earlier precursors to democracy, wherein democratic beliefs were not widespread, what does Dr. Seuss’s story seem to suggest about the reach of democratic ideal such as the logic of equality in contemporary North American? Additionally, be prepared to discuss briefly what John Gaventa, Karl Marx, and Farhana Sultana would likely say about the democratic implications of “Yertle the Turtle.”
E - Robin Wall Kimmerer, “The Turtle Mothers Have Come Ashore to Ask About an Unpaid Debt”; Niigaan Sinclair, “Indigenous nationhood can save the world”; Alook etal. “Delay and Deny: Canada’s Approach to Climate Action and Indigenous Sovereignty.” All address the idea of establishing “good relations” – encompassing both relations between people and nations of people and how we human beings relate to, or interact with, non-human nature.
First, describe briefly each writer or set of writers addresses good relations. Second, discuss the central ways that the ideas of these writers about good relations can be related to Ulrich Beck’s establishing sovereignty beyond the nationalty trap, Dahls notion of a democratic process,
