What is Politics?

Introduction
• Politics is a social activity. It is always a dialogue, and never a monologue.
• Politics, in its broadest sense, is the activity through which people make, preserve and amend the
general rules under which they live.
• Politics is thus inextricably linked to the phenomena of conflict and cooperation.
• 2 major problems in defining what is politics- the mass of associations that the word has when
used in everyday language (politics can be a dirty word) and there is no consensus on what the
subject is about.
• Politics is understood in various ways
Politics as the art of government
• The word ‘politics’ is derived from polis, meaning ‘city-state’. Ancient Greek society was divided into a collection of
independent city-states, each of which possessed its own system of government.
• In this light, politics can be understood to refer to the affairs of the polis – in effect, ‘what concerns the polis’. The
modern form of this definition is therefore ‘what concerns the state’.
• This is the traditional view of the discipline, reflected in the tendency for academic study to focus on the personnel
and machinery of government. To study politics is, in essence, to study government, or, more broadly, to study the
exercise of authority.
• This view is highly restrictive. It means most of the institutions and social activities are outside politics.
• tendency to treat politics as the equivalent of party politics. This is the sense in which politicians are described as
‘political’, whereas civil servants are seen as ‘non-political’.
• The link between politics and the affairs of the state also helps to explain why negative or pejorative images have so
often been attached to politics. This is because, in the popular mind, politics is closely associated with the activities of
politicians.
• giving rise to the phenomenon of anti-politics
Politics as public affairs
• moves it beyond the narrow realm of government to what is thought of as ‘public life’ or ‘public
affairs’.
• the distinction between ‘the political’ and ‘the non-political’ coincides with the division between a
public sphere of life and a private sphere.
• The traditional distinction between the public/ private realm conforms to the division between the
state and civil society. The institutions of the state (the apparatus of government, the courts, the
police, the army, the social security system and so forth) can be regarded as ‘public’. Whereas,
civil society which consists of institutions such as the family and kinship groups, private
businesses, trade unions, clubs, community groups and so on, are ‘private’. On the basis of this
‘public/private’ division, politics is restricted to the activities of the state itself.
• Another view which broadens the distinction sees certain civil society institutions as public like
the economic activities. this view regards institutions such as businesses, community groups, clubs
and trade unions as ‘public’,
• it remains a restricted view of politics. According to this
perspective, politics does not, and should not, infringe on
‘personal’ affairs and institutions.
• Feminist thinkers in particular have pointed out that this implies
that politics effectively stops at the front door; it does not take
place in the family, in domestic life, or in personal relationships.
Politics as compromise and consensus
• The third conception of politics relates not to the arena within which politics is conducted but to
the way in which decisions are made. Specifically, politics is seen as a particular means of
resolving conflict: that is, by compromise, conciliation and negotiation, rather than through force
and naked power.
• Bernard Crick- Politics [is] the activity by which differing 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.
• In this view, the key to politics is therefore a wide dispersal of power.
• Such a view of politics reflects a deep commitment to liberal–rationalist principles. It is based on
resolute faith in the efficacy of debate and discussion, as well as on the belief that society is
characterized by consensus, rather than by irreconcilable conflict.
• Critics, however, point out that Crick’s conception of politics is heavily biased towards the form of
politics that takes place in western pluralist democracies: in effect, he equated politics with
electoral choice and party competition. As a result, his model has little to tell us about, say, one-
party states or military regimes.
Politics as power
• Rather than confining politics to a particular sphere (the government, the state or the ‘public’
realm), this view sees politics at work in all social activities and in every corner of human
existence.
• In this sense, politics takes place at every level of social interaction; it can be found within families
and amongst small groups of friends just as much as amongst nations and on the global stage.
• the essential ingredient is the existence of scarcity: the simple fact that, while human needs and
desires are infinite, the resources available to satisfy them are always limited. Politics can
therefore be seen as a struggle over scarce resources, and power can be seen as the means through
which this struggle is conducted.
• Advocates of the view of politics as power include feminists and Marxists.
• This view was summed by Kate Millett in Sexual Politics (1969), in which she defined politics as
‘power-structured relationships, arrangements whereby one group of persons is controlled by
another’.
• For Marx, politics, together with law and culture, are part of a ‘superstructure’ that is distinct from
the economic ‘base’ that is the real foundation of social life. He believed that the ‘superstructure’
arose out of, and reflected, the economic ‘base’. At a deeper level, political power or politics, in
this view, is therefore rooted in the class system.
• On the other hand, politics is also seen as an emancipating force, a means through which injustice
and domination can be challenged. Marx, for instance, predicted that class exploitation would be
overthrown by a proletarian revolution, and radical feminists proclaim the need for gender
relations to be reordered through a sexual revolution.