POLITICS

Question 1

Heywood’s definition of politics is…

Answer 1

That politics in the broadest sense is the activity through which people make, preserve, and amend rules under which they live.

Question 2

What does this definition (Heywood) link to?

Answer 2

• conflict and cooperation
• search for conflict resolution rather than the solutions themselves

Question 3

How does Bismarck define politics as the art of government? (2)

Answer 3

• the exercise of control
• the making and enforcing of collective decisions

Question 4

what is ‘polis’?

Answer 4

‘city-state’
- what concerns the state

Question 5

How did Easton define politics? (2)

Answer 5

• authoritative allocation of values.
• various processes that government responds to the pressure from larger society.

Question 6

What is a ‘polity’? (1)

Answer 6

• social organisation centred on the machinery of government.

Question 7

What is politics seen as in term of the public-mind? (2)

Answer 7

• closely associated with the activity of politicians.
• (seen as power-seeking hypocrites that conceal their true intentions.)

Question 8

What is ‘anti-politics’? (2)

Answer 8

• disillusionment with formal and established political processes.
• rejection of conventional political life

Question 9

How can ‘power’ be defined in a political sense? (1)

Answer 9

• ability to influence the behaviour of others, having power over someone.

Question 10

How is ‘power’ defined in a broader sense? (2)

Answer 10

• ability to achieve a desired outcome.
• the power to do something.

Question 11

What is Lord Acton’s aphorism? (1)

Answer 11

• “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Question 12

What are the private and public aspects in the traditional distinction that is ‘state vs civil society’? (2)

Answer 12

private - family, private businesses. private because they are funded by the individuals in order to satisfy their own interests.

public - responsible for the collective organisation of community life.

Question 13

What are the private and public aspects behind the ‘political and the personal’? (2)

Answer 13

public - open institutions, public access.

private - politics should not infringe upon ones personal affairs.

Question 14

What is meant by politics as ‘compromise and consensus’? (2)

Answer 14

• a particular means of resolving conflict through compromise and negotiation.
• focusing on how decisions are made rather than focussing on how politics is conducted.

Question 15

What are described as the ‘faces’ of power in politics? (3)

Answer 15

• decision-making
• agenda setting
• as thought control (ideological indoctrination)

Question 16

What are the 2 main views of politics as power? (2)

Answer 16

• feminism
• marxism

Question 17

What was the traditional argument that the Marxists had on the capitalist society? (1)

Answer 17

• argued that politics in a capatilist society is characterised by the exploitation of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie.

Question 18

Describe the philosophical traditional approach to studying politics. (3)

Answer 18

• a preoccupation with ethical, prescriptive or normative questions.
• what should be and not what is.
• it is not objective.

Question 19

Describe the emperical traditional approach to studying politics.

Answer 19

• based on observation and experiment.
• derived from sense data and experience.
• offers an impartial account of political reality.
• is ‘descriptive’, it seeks to analyse and explain.

Question 20

What is the ‘doctrine of empericism’? (1)

Answer 20

• theory that all knowledge is based on experience, and derived through the senses.

Question 21

What is ‘positivism’? (1)

Answer 21

• theory that all social forms of enquiry should adhere strictly to the methods of the natural science.

Question 22

Define ‘behaviouralism’. (1)

Answer 22

• the belief that all social theories should only be constructed on the basis of observable behaviour.

Question 23

What is Rational-Choice Theory?

Answer 23

• explains how people make decisions
• provides insight in the actions of others, i.e voters, lobbyists.
• technically based on the rational self-interested behaviour of individuals.

Question 24

What are the critiques on rational-choice theory? (2)

Answer 24

• overestimate human rationality
• pays insufficient attention to social and historical factors.

Question 25

What is game theory? (1)

Answer 25

• a way of explaining and exploring how one ‘actor’s’ action may affect another, and visa versa.

Question 26

What did ‘old institutionalism’ focus on? (3)

Answer 26

• rules
• procedures
• formal organisations of government

Question 27

How is ‘new institutionalism’ different from ‘old institutionalism’? (3)

Answer 27

• no longer equated with political organisations.
• focuses on rules that constrain human behaviour, and normative systems.
• shaped more by unwritten conventions than by formal arrangements.

Question 28

What are the 2 critical approaches of politics? (2)

Answer 28

• Marxism
• Feminism

Question 29

What are the conditions of the critical approaches? (3)

Answer 29

• contest political status quo
• aligned with the interests of the marginalised and oppressed groups.
• uncover inequalities that are ignored in the mainstream.