Polsci Tutorial Class 1
Introductions
Name
Whether any background/reading in social sciences
One thing you look forward to doing on campus
On a scale of 1 to 10, how relevant do you think politics is to you?
Impact of politics on your daily life
The state of your roads
Whether you have been vaccinated, the health facilities you had access to
The tax you pay
Financing the university you are part of, the curriculum that is being taught to you, any
scholarships
Laws - are they synonymous with morality?
Politics within the family, among friends, politics at a workplace, at a university
Private vs public - what is the domain of politics? (who is party to different politics?)
2 types of politics
What governments do
People exercising and negotiating power over others - kinship, occupation, religion, culture
In this course, we are mostly concerned with the former but the latter is not excluded. Why are we so
concerned about the state? "Monopoly on violence - such that it warrants a study on how to weild the
power of this Leviathan (Hobbes)
Politics vs political science
You need a society for politics - Robinson Crusoe
Daily occurences, specific players etc (news of who's winning) - politics
Specific covid policies, actors involved, etc - also politics. Abstract principles and general
concerns - subject for polsci (liberty, socialized healthcare, ethics of vax passports, question of
how to determine all this)
For political science, the scope is broader than that
Power
Carl Schmitt - politics is about production, distribution and use of resources. Marxists - "the
economic is political"
Clausewitz - "War is nothing but the continuation of politics"
Is politics always zero-sum? Different theories of politics place emphasis on different areas -
agreement or conflict
Both consent and conflict are needed to create a political situation
Machiavelli - The Prince
Social contract theorists - govt as a necessary defence against barbarism.
Anarchists view state as evil. On the contrary, Aquinas and Aristotle regard state as benign.
Aquinas - state is "perfect community," the proper effect of law to make people good
3 academic approaches to study of politics according to Tansey
Trad (british)
Look at specific situations, places, institutions, study in theit specific context, comparative
government. Liberal-institutional, historical, philosophical
Constitutional consensus distrubed by cataclysmic events
Social science (American)
Denounce trad as "idiographic" - too specific. "Nomothetic" - generalizing approach
instead. General theories about political behaviour. Use of data, finding patterns.
Functionalist, economics, systems approach
Pluralist
Radical (French)
Question the biases in the other schools, usually derived from Marxism. Point out issues in
how political ideas are discussed, who is involved, etc.
Class/gender/species conflict
First politics writers - interdisciplinary (what is best form of govt?) as polsci wasn't separate subject -
Plato, Aristotle. Also JS Mill, De Tocqueville
Can the study of politics be value-free? Cannot apply social science principles the way we apply
science. Those from different ideologies will not agree to a value-neutral vocabulary
Uni staff meeting: social democrat sees democracy, Thatcherite sees individuals asserting their
interests, Marxist sees ideologically dominated wage-slaves, feminist sees patriarchy
Causal explanations may not be as useful in polsci as in sci. Further distorted by human
knowledge and motivation - Popper pointed out that humans will change course and adjust
according to knowledge produced, thus making predictions fail. Marx's predictions, for example
(Harrarri).
Polsci academia - elucidate political concepts like justice and democracy, other camp looks at history
of ideas
There was an attempt to adopt common vocabulary in mid 20th century
Even this may be value-laden. Eg. system is used by some to mean that constitutional institutions
are influenced by social/economic factors, by others to draw analogies to engineering - where it is
assumed that there is a specific role for the system such as "allocation of value"
Eg. Almond's functionalist model views politics as being for maintaining stability, promotes
pluralism
There is little in polsci that meets Popper's standard of scientific laws being true whcihc have been
extensively tested and proven
SYSTEMS
Politics is not limited only to states. That raises the question of what states are:
Most people see the world as divided into states, different levels of govt, govt with responsibility of
maintaining law and order
All humanity does not live under states - eg. tribals. Blood relations, nomadic (no claim to
territory)
No fixed laws, government organization. Pre-colonial Tiv of Nigeria had millions of people, no
govt. Lineage based, egalitarian, mediation used
Other tribes in which roles defined by age. May have despots like Shaka Zulu
They cannot be regarded as lawless societies, but there is no state
Feudalism - overlapping jurisdictions, hotchpotch of kingdoms, no single central authority.
sTATE VS NATIONS -
Nation - a large body of people united by common descent, history, culture, or language,
inhabiting a particular country or territory.
State:
Sovereign
Political and legal sovereignty
Universal jurisdiction within territory
Compulsory jurisdiction
ancient empires vs 19th century empires
3 branches of govt, UN
MNCs and globalization
