summary political science 2024/2025

Week 1: introduction to political science
Reading: What is politics
 Andrew Heywood

Concepts
Politics: activity through which people make, preserve and amend the general rules under
which they live
Politics: study of this activity
Authority: legitimate power, the right to influence the behaviour of others
Power: ability to achieve a desired outcome, ability to influence the behaviour of others
Civil society: originally: political community, now: institution that are ‘private’
 independent from the government
Conflict: competition between opposing forces, reflecting a diversity in opinions,
preferences, need or interests

Two problems of the word politics
1) Politics is a loaded term, politics usually seen as a dirty word, manipulation and lies to
disruption and violence
2) Even authorities cannot agree on what the real definition of politics

Defining politics
- Inextricably linked to conflict ( existence of rival opinions: different wants, competing
needs, opposing interests) and cooperation ( in order to influence rules or ensure that
they are upheld: must work with others)
 Politics = search for conflict resolution rather than its achievements: not all conflicts can
be solved
- Two problems when addressing meaning of politics”
1. Mass of associations with term: students & teachers of ‘politics’ must automatically be
biased, must be impossible to be impartial
 Conjures up images of trouble, disruption, even violence and manipulation
2. Even respected authorities cannot agree what subject is about: exercise of power, science
of government, making collective decisions, allocation of scarce resources, practice of
deception and manipulation
 does politics refer to a particular way in which rules are made, preserved or amended?
 Is politics practiced in all social contexts and institutions?
 Essentially contested concept

Two broad approaches to defining:
1. Politics as an arena: behaviour becomes ‘political’ because of where it takes place
2. Politics as a process: ‘political’ behaviour exhibits distinctive characteristics or qualities,
can take place in almost all social contexts

We can distinguish 4 views on the meaning of politics
1. Politics as the art of government
2 Politics as public affairs
3 Politics as compromise and consensus
4 Politics as power and the distribution of resources

,Politics as an arena – the art of government
- “Politics is not a science… but an art” – Chancellor Bismarck
 Art of government = the exercise of control within society through the making and
enforcing of collective decisions
- Originally from Ancient Greece: polis = city state
 What concerns the polis = what concerns the state
- Here: politics as everyday use  to be ‘in politics’ = holding public office
- Here: to study politics = to study government = to study the exercise of authority
 David Easton: “Authoritative allocation of views”  values widely accepted in society,
considered binding by mass of citizens
- To narrow definition: politics is what takes place within a polity (= system of social
organization centered on machinery of government)
 non-political if you are not running the country
- Even further narrowed: political = state actors who are consciously motivated by
ideological beliefs, who seek to advance them through membership of formal organization
(political party)
 Creates negative view
- Liberal participation: as individuals are self-interested, political power is corrupting,
because it encourages those ‘in power’ to exploit their position for personal advantage at
the expense of others
 Lord Acton: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”

Authority: legitimate power, whereas power is the ability to influence the behaviour of
others, authority is the right to do so
Weber distinguished between three kinds of authority
1. Traditional authority (rooted in history)
2. Charismatic authority (stems from personality)
3. Legal rational authority (grounded in a set of impersonal rules)

Politics as an arena – Politics as public affairs
- Government as ‘public life’ or ‘public affairs’
 Distinction between public sphere and private sphere
- Aristotle: “Man is by nature a political animal”  only within a political community can a
human being live in ‘good life’
- Where is the distinction being made?
 Public sphere: institutions of the state (responsible for collective organization of
community life
 Private sphere family, clubs, community groups (set up and funded by individual citizens
to satisfy own interests rather than those of larger society

Further division: ‘political’ vs ‘personal’
 Explanation for politician’s behaviour: by classifying cheating on partner as ‘personal’
matter, they are implying that there is no political significance and that it does not touch
their conduct of public affairs
Liberal theorists: politics as public activity as form of unwanted interference  preference
for civil society over state (wish to ‘keep politics out’ of private life)

,Politics as a process – politics as compromise and consensus
- not related to the arena within which politics is conducted but the way in which decisions
are made
- Politics is seen as a particular means of resolving conflict: by compromise, conciliation and
negotiation, rather than through force and naked power
- Politics as means of resolving conflict: by compromise, conciliation, negotiation
 ‘The art of the possible’
- Bernard Crick: “Politics is the activity by which different 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”
 Wide dispersal of power
 Reflects liberal-rationalist principles: based on resolute faith in efficacy of debate and
discussion, as well as on belief that society is characterized by consensus and not
irreconcilable conflict
 Unmistakably positive character

Politics as a process – politics as power
- Broadest and most radical definition: see politics in every corner of human existence
- Power = ability to achieve a desired outcome, through whatever means
Harold Lasswell: politics is about diversity and conflict, but essentially about existence of
scarcity: while human needs and desire are infinite, the resources are always limited
Example 1: Feminism: simulates more radical thinking about nature of ‘the political’  “the
personal is political”, politics as “power-structured relationships, arrangements whereby one
group of persons is controlled by another” (Kate Millet)
Example 2: Marxism: politics as reference to apparatus of state 
Communist Manifesto: political power as ‘merely the organized power of one class
oppressing another’
 Politics in largely negative terms

Traditional form of power: A gets B to do something that B would not otherwise have done
- Power as decision making: consist of conscious actions that in some way influence the
content of decisions
- Powe as agenda-setting: the ability to prevent decision being made, set or control the
political agenda, thereby preventing issues or proposals from being aired in the first place
- Power as thought of control: the ability to influence another by shaping what he or she
thinks, wants, or needs, ideological indoctrination or psychological control, propaganda


Studying politics – approaches to the study of politics
1. The philosophical tradition
- Origins of political analysis: Ancient Greece  political philosophy
= preoccupation with essentially ethical, prescriptive or normative questions
- involves analytical study of ideas and doctrines that have been central to political thought
 focus on collection of major thinks (from Plato to Marx) and canon of ‘classic’ text
- Cannot be objective, as it deals with normative questions such as:
 Why should I obey the state?, what should the limits of individual freedom be?

, 2. The empirical tradition
- Descriptive or empirical tradition traced back to earliest days of political thought
 Basis of what is now called ‘comparative government’
- Characterized by attempt to offer dispassionate and impartial account of political reality 
descriptive = analyse and explain
Prescriptive = judgement and recommendations
- Doctrine advanced belief that experiences is only basis of knowledge, and that, therefore,
all hypotheses and theories should be tested by process of observation
- Social sciences should adhere strictly to methods of natural science

3. Behavioralism
- 1950s – 1960s in USA: emergence of Behavioralism
 Gave politics reliably scientific credentials, because it provided what had previously been
lacking: objective and quantifiable data against which hypotheses could be tested
David Easton: politics could adopt methodology of natural science  gave reason to
proliferation of studies in areas best suited to use of quantitative research methods
- Behavioralism in IR: attempt/hope of developing objective laws of international relations
But: created invaluable insights in fields such as voting studies  threat to reduce discipline
of politics to little else
Also: inclined a generation of political scientist to discard entire tradition of normative
political thought
- Basis of assertion that behavioralism is objective and reliable is claim that it is ‘value-free’
 But if focus of analysis is observable behaviour, it is difficult to do much more than
describe existing political arrangements  status quo is legitimized
- Biased: term ‘democracy’ – original meaning: popular self-government or government by
the people – now: struggle between competing elites to win power through mechanisms of
popular election (western political systems

4. Rational-Choice theory
- Also called ‘formal political theory’, ‘public-choice theory’ and ‘political economy’
- Draws on example of economic theory in building up models based on procedural rules
(rational self-interested behaviour of individuals)
- Institutional public-choice theory: on part competition, interest-group behaviour and policy
influence on bureaucrats
 Game theory: explanation of IR theorists why states find it difficult to prevent the
overfishing of the seas or the scale of arms to undesirable regimes
 Prisoners’ dilemma
But: pays insufficient attention to social and historical factors, failing to recognize, among
other things, that human self-interestedness may be socially conditioned and not merely
innate
- provides insights into the actions of voters, lobbyist, bureaucrats and politicians, as well as
into behaviour of states within the international system