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POLITICS, ANDREW HEYWOOD

CHAPTER I:
What is Politics?

 Politics is a social activity. It is always a dialogue and never a monologue.

 Politics is the activity through which people make, preserve and amend general rules
under which they live.

Politics as an arena Politics as a process

Definition of politics
Approaches to the study
of politics
 The art of government  Compromise and
 Public affairs consensus
 Power and distribution of
resources
 Behaviouralism  Feminism
 Rational-choice theory  Marxism
 Institutionalism  Post-positivist approaches

 The word politics derive from “polis” meaning city-state.

 Authority can most simply be defined as “legitimate power”.
 Power is the ability to influence the behaviour of others, authority is right to do so.
 Weber defines 3 kinds of authority: traditional that is rooted in history, charismatic
stemming from personality and legal that is grounded in a set of impersonal rules..
 Polity: A society organized through the exercise of political authority. For Aristotle,
rule by the many for the interests of all.
 Anti-politics can be traced back to Machiavelli who in Prince, developed a strictly
realistic account of politics that drew attention to the use by political leaders of
cunning, cruelty and manipulation. (politics as an art of government)
 In Politics, Aristotle defined man as a political animal and he meant that human
beings can only live a good life in a political community. (politics as public affairs)
 Civil society: It is used to describe institutions that are private meaning that they are
independent from government and organized by individuals.

Public Private
The state: Apparatus of government Civil society: autonomous bodies (family,
business, club etc.)
Public Private
Public realm: politics, commerce, work, art, Personal realm: family and domestic life
culture etc.

 Politics is seen as a particular means of resolving conflict: that is by compromise,

conciliation and negotiation rather than through force and naked power. (politics as
compromise and consensus)

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 Politics is in esence power: the ability to achieve a desired outcome, through whatever
means. (politics as power) This view sees politics at work in all social activities and in every
corner of human existence.
 Power as decision-making: Conscious actions that influence the content of decisions.
 Power as agenda setting: Ability to prevent decisions being made, non-decision
making.
 Power as thought control: Ability to influence another by shaping what he or she
thinks, wants and needs.

Approaches to the study of politics

 The philosophical tradition: Ethical, prescriptive, normative questions. Plato and
Aristotle are the founding fathers. Now has taken the form of a collection of major
thinkers and a canon of classic texts. It cannot be objective as it deals with normative
questions.
 Plato: Both The Republic and The Laws are authoritarian and pay no attention to
individual liberty believing that power should be in the hands of the educated elite:
philosopher kings.
 The empirical tradition: Attempt to offer a dispassionate and impartial account of
political reality. This approach is descriptive. It seeks to analyse and explain.
Machiavelli, Montesquieu. Positivism.
 Behaviouralism: Objective and quantifiable data against which hypotheses could be
tested. Politics could adopt the methodology of the natural sciences and this gave rise
to number of researches in areas that are best suited to use of quantitative methods
such as voting behaviour etc.
 Rational-choice theory: Formal political theory. Draws heavily on the example of
economic theory in building up models based on procedural rules. May provide
insights into the actions of voters, lobbyists, politicians as well states. Preferences and
choices of individuals. May overestimate human rationality.
 New institutionalism: Traditional institutionalism focused on the rulesi procedures
and formal organisation of government and employed methods akin to those used in
the study of law and history. New instutionalism also believed that political structures
shape political behaviour. But this new approach revised our understanding of what
constitutes an institution. Political institutions are not thought as things but as sets of
rules.
 Critical approaches: Feminism, critical theory, Marxism, green politics,
constructivism, post-structuralism and post-colonialism. What unites them is a shared
antipathy towards mainstream thinking. They seek to contest the political status quo
by aligning themselves with marginalised/oppressed groups. Trying go beyond the
positivism of mainstream politics. Questioning what is objective.
 Constructivism: There is no objective social or political reality independent of our
understanding of it.
 Post-positivism: Questioning the idea of objective and emphasising the role of
consciousness.
 Post-structuralism: All ideas and concepts are in language which itself is enmeshed in
complex relations of power.

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 Postmodernism: Highlights the shift away from societies structured by

industrialisation and class solidarity to increasingly fragmented and pluralistic
information societies.

Concepts, models and theories

 A concept is a general idea about smth usually expressed in a single word or a
short passage. They are the tools with which we think, criticise, argue, explain and
analyse.
 What about more rounded concepts such as freedom etc.? Weber tried to
overcome this problem by recognising “ideal types”.
 Conceptual travelling: application of concepts to new cases
 Conceptual stretching: The distortion that occurs when these concepts do not fit
the new cases
 A further problem is that political concepts’ meaning are different to different
people. No exact definition of concepts can be developed.
 A model is a representation of smth. Models’ task is to asist to the following task:
facts do not speak for themselves, they need interpretation.
 Political system model of Easton:

 Conceptual models are not reliable knowledge.

 A theory is a systematic explanation of empirical data whereas a model is only an
explanatory device. They are both used as tools of political analysis and often used
interchangeably.
 A paradigm is a related set of principles, doctrines and theories that helps to
structure the process of intellectual enquiry.
 The natural sciences are dominated
Concepts by a single paradigm Power,
whereassocial
political and
class, social
rights
enquiry is a battleground of competing paradigms. These paradigms take the form of
broad social philosophies called “political ideologies”.
Models/microtheories Systems analysis, public choice

Macrotheories Pluralism, functionalism, elitism

Ideological traditions/paradigms Liberalism, feminism, Marxism

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Beyond the domestic/international divide?

 Sovereignty is hard shell dividing inside and outside politics.
 Inside: ability of the state within the domestic sphere to impose rules from above.
 Outside: anarchic character derived from the fact that there is no authority in the
international sphere higher than the sovereign state.
 Political science sees state as a macro-level actor where international relations see it
as micro-level actor.
 As state borders become more porous, these have started to change.
 The increase in the scale, scope and nature of spatial interdepence has made the
disciplanary divide between PS and IR dissolve.
 Sovereignty is no longer a hard shell but a soft one.

CHAPTER 2:
What is political ideology?
 Ideology had a negative and pejorative meaning in the past.
 Ideology is coherent set of ideas that provides a basis for organised political
action whether this is intended to preserve, modify, or overthrow the existing
system of power relationships.
 De Tracy found this term as the science of ideas.
 For Marx, ideology means the ideas of the ruling class and saw his ideas scientific.
 This distinction blurred in Lenin and Gramsci’s writings. They used terms such as
“socialist ideology”.
 Totalitarian dictatorships of the interwar period made ideology to be seen as an
instrument of social control to ensure compliance and subordination. (Popper,
Talmon, Arendt)
 Conservative use of the term ideology relies on pragmatism and says that
ideologies are abstract systems of thought that distort political reality.
 An inclusive definition of ideology should be neutral.

Classical Ideological Traditions

Liberalism:
 The ideology of the industrialised West
 It attacked absolutism and feudal privilige, promoting constitutional and
representative government. Condemned all forms of government intervention.
 Late 19th century onwards: social liberalism emphasising welfare reform and
economic intervention.

Key ideas of liberalism:

1. Individualism

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2. Freedom (freedom under the law)

3. Reason
4. Equality
5. Toleration
6. Consent
7. Constitutionalism (a limited government)

Classical Liberalism:
 Commitment to an extreme form of individualism.
 Establishment of a minimal state
 Laissez-faire capitalism

Modern liberalism:
 More sympathetic attitude towards state intervention
 Freedom: ability of the individual to gain fulfilment and achieve self-esteem.
 Keynes: growth and prosperity can be maintained through a system of managed or
regulated capitalism with key economic responsibilities being placed in the hands of
the state.
 Redistribution

Neoliberalism:
 The market and the individual
 Updated version of classical political economy developed by free-market economists
 Unregulated market capitalism

Conservatism:
 A reaction against the growing pace of economic and political change which was
symbolised by French Revolution.
 Traditional social order
 The form that is autocratic and reactionary, rejecting any idea of reform, developed in
continental Europe (de Maistre)
 Another form emerged in the UK and the USA, “change in order to conserve”. (Burke)

Key ideas of conservatism:

1. Tradition
2. Pragmatism
3. Human imperfection
4. Organicism
5. Hierarchy
6. Authority
7. Property

Paternalistic conservatism:
 “Reform from above” was more preferable than “revolution from below”.

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 Noblesse oblige: Responsibility to look after the less well-off in the broader interests
of social cohesion and unity.
 One-Nation principle: disposition towards social reform+ pragmatic attitude towards
economic policy. Middle way approach: a blend of market competition and
government regulation.
 Christian democracy: A market strategy highlighting the virtues of private enterprise
and competition but it believes that the prosperity gained should be employed for
the broader benefit of society.

The New Right:

 A kind of counter-revolution against both the post-1945 drift towards state
intervention and the spread of liberal or progressive social values.
 Thatcherism and Reaganism
 Influence in in bringing about a general shift from state –to market- orientated forms
of organisation

Neoconservatism:
 Reasserts 19th century conservative social principles
 Traditional values
 Authority is seen as guaranteeing social stability.
 Emergence of multicultural and multireligious societies is a concern
 An insular form of nationalism that is sceptical about both multiculturalism and the
growing influence of supranational bodies such as the UN and the EU.

Socialism:
 Developed as a reaction against the emergence of industrial capitalism
 In the earliest forms, its goal was to abolish the capitalist economy and to replace it
with socialism constructed on the principle of common ownership.
 Reformist socialism: Gradual integration of the working class into capitalist society
through an improvement of working conditions and wages, growth of trade unions
and social political parties. It has 2 sources: humanist tradition of ethical socialism
and revisionist Marxism.
 Revolutinary socialism: Communists following Lenin and the Bolsheviks.
 Social democracy: Turns its back to common ownership and recasts socialism in
terms of welfare, redistribution and economic management.

Key ideas of socialism:

1. Community
2. Fraternity
3. Social equality
4. Need
5. Social class
6. Common ownership

Marxism:

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 Collapse of communism at the end of 20th century is a fresh lease of Marxism from
Leninism and Stalinism.
 Orthodox Marxism dominated by dialectical materialism used as the basis of Soviets.

Classical Marxism:
 Historical materialism: Economic conditions structure law, politics, culture and other
aspects of social existence.
 Historical change is a result of internal contradictions within a mode of production
reflected in class conflict.
 Capitalism is doomed to collapse and the inevitable proletarian revolution
 Dictatorship of the proletariat: Temporary proletarian state, established to prevent
counter-revolution and oversee the transition from capitalism to communism.

Orthodox communism:
 Lenin’s contribution to Marxism: revolutionary or vanguard party
 Fear that the proletariat won’t realise its revolutionary potential therefore a
revolutionary party will serve as the vanguard of the working class.
 Economic Stalinism: 5 Year Plan which brought the swift and total eradication of
private enterprise. Collectivisation of agriculture. All resources are under the control
of the state. State Planning Committee.
 Gorbachev’s perestroika reform process.
 Perestroika: Restructuring. An attempt to liberalise and democratise the Soviet
system within a communist framework.

Neo-Marxism:
 Process of reification
 Hegemony of capitalism

Social democracy:
 Balance between market/state and individual/community
 An acceptance of capitalism as the only reliable mechanism for generating wealth but
also a desire to distribute this wealth in accordance with moral principles.
 Keynesian social democracy: Humanising capitalism through state intervention
 Bernstein: modernised Orthodox Marxism. Possibility of a peaceful transition to
socialism. One of the founding figures of social democracy.

New social democracy:

 Neo-revisionism or third way
 Reconciling old-style social democracy with electorally-attractive aspects of
neoliberalism.
 Embracing liberal ideas of equality of opportunity and meritocracy

Other Ideological Traditions:

Fascism:

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 A revolt against the ideas and values that dominated western political thought since
the French Revolution.
 Values such as progress, rationalism, freedom and equality were overturned in the
name of struggle, leadership, power and war.
 Strength through unity. Individual is nothing.
 Italian fascism: Extreme form of statism based on unquestioning respect and
absolute loyalty to the totalitarian state.
 German National Socialism: Constructed largely on racialism

Anarchism:
 Political authority in all its forms, especially in the form of the state is evil and
unnecessary.
 A stateless society in which free individuals manage their own affairs through
voluntary agreement and cooperation has been developed on the basşs of two rival
traditions: liberal individualism and socialist communitarianism.
 Anarcho-capitalism: Unregulated market competition can and should be applied to
all social arrangements.
 Mutualism: A system of fair and quitable Exchange in which individuals or groups
trade with one another without profiteering or exploitation.
 Anarcho-communism: Common ownership is the sole reliable basis for social
solidarity.

Feminism:
 First-wave feminism: Women’s suffrage movement in 1840s and 1850s.
 Second-wave feminism: More radical and sometimes revolutionary demands of the
growing Women’s Liberation Movement in 1960s.
 Liberal feminism: Unequal distribution of rights opportunities in society. Concerned
with the reform in the public sphere.
 Socialist feminism: Economic significance of women being confined to a family or
domestic life.
 Radical feminism: Need for a sexual revolution that will restructure personal,
domestic and family life. “The personal is political.”
 Third-wave feminism: Doubts about the conventional foal of gender equality, plaing
an emphasis instead of differences, both between women and men and between
women themselves.
Green politics:
 Reflects concenr about the damage done to the natural world by the increasing oace
of economic development.
 Anxiety about the declining quality of human existence.
 Ecosocialism: Explains environmental destruction in terms of capitalism’s rapacious
desire for profit.
 Ecoconservatism: Desire to preserve traditional values and established institutions.
 Ecofeminism: Origins of the ecological crisis is male power.
 Anthropocentricism: The world is to satisfy human needs.
Cosmopolitanism:
 Ideological expression of globalisation
 A belief in the cosmopolis: world-state

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 Moral cosmopolitanism: World constitutes a single moral community.

 Liberal cosmopolitanism: Universalising civic and political rights. Strengthening
international law through international courts and tribunals. Universalising market
society.
 Socialist cosmopolitanism: Proletarian class solidarity has a transnational character.
 Cultural cosmopolitanism: People’s values and lifestyles are reconfigured as a result
of global interconnectedness.

Non-western ideological trends

Postcolonialism:
 Giving the non-western world a distinctive political voice
 Bandung Conference, Non Aligned Movement as an independent power bloc
 Contradiction to both western and Soviet models of development

Religious fundamentalism:
 Most importantly Islamic fundamentalism or political Islam
 Islamic beliefs should constitute the principles of social life and politics
 Shari’a law
 Iranian Revolution in 1979, founding of world’s first Islamic state
 Islamism has been a vehicle to express anti-westernism

Asian values:
 Not rejecting universal human rights
 But also drawing attention to the differences between western and Asian value
systems, highlighting that human rights are constructed on the basis of culturally
biaes western assumptions.

Beyond dualism:
 Non-dualistic emphasis
 Has its greates impact on green politics

CHAPTER 3: POLITICS AND THE STATE

Defining the State

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 Idealist approach to the state: Hegel identified three moments of social existence:
the family, civil society and the state. In family particular altruism operates, in civil
society universal egoism is seen and in state universal altruism.
 Functionalist approach: Focuses on the role or purpose of state institutions.The
central function of the state is invariably seen as the maintenance of social order, the
state being defined as a set of institutions that uphold order and deliver socail
stability. The weakness of this approach is that it associates any institution that
maintain order with the state itself.
 Organisational approach: The state is the apparatus of government. It is a set of
institutions that are recognisably public in that they are responsible for the collective
organisation of social existence and funded at the public’s expense.
 State: A political association that establishes sovereign jurisdiction within defined
territorial borderd and exercises authority through a set of permanent institutions.
Five key features of the state:
1. The state is sovereign. It exercises absolute and unrestricted power. Hobbes potrayed
the state as leviathan.
2. State institutions are public. Public bodies are responsible for making and enforcing
collective decisions.
3. The state is an exercise in legitimation.
4. The state is an instrument of domination. It must have the capacity to ensure that its
laws are obeyed and that transgressors are punished. Weber defined the state by its
monopoly of the means of legitimate violence.
5. The state is a territorial association. The state is an autonomous entity.

 Sovereignty is the principle of absolute and unlimited power. Legal sovereignty refers
to supreme legal authority. Right to command compliance. Political sovereignty refers
to absolute political power. Ability to command compliance. Internal sovereignty is
Notion of supreme powe/authortity within the state. External sovereignty relates to a
state’s place in the international order and its capacity to act as an independent and
autonomous entity.
 The state has a dualistic structure of: one face looking outwards and the other
looking inwards.
 The classic definition of the state in international law has four features:
1. A defined territory
2. A permanent pouplation
3. An effective government
4. The capacity to enter into relations with other states
 States are legally equal, but in political terms very different.
 Some states are defined as great or superpowers whereas others are defined as
middle or small powers and in cases of Caribbean and the Pacific, they are regarded
as micro-states.
 The state is a historical institution that emerged in 16th-17th century Europe as a
system of centralized rulet hat succeeded in subordinating all other institutions and

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groups including the Church, bringing an end to the competing authority systems that
had characterised Medieval Europe.
 Peace of Westphalia formalised the modern Notion of statehood.
 Why the state came into existence?
1. Tilly: War made the state, state made the war.
2. Marxism: It emerged in economic terms. This can be traced back to the
transition from feudalism to capitalism.
3. Mann: State’s capacity to combine ideological, economic, military and
political forms of power.
 Nation-state: A sovereign political association within which citizenship and nationality
overlap; one nation within a single state. 19th century.

Rival theories of the state:

The pluralist state:
 Has a very clear liberal lineage
 Anglo-American thought to discount the state and state organisations and focus on
government.
 Assumptions on state neutrality.
 Principal concern of Hobbes and Locke was to examine the grounds of political
obligation, the grounds on which the individual is obliged to obey.
 They argued that the state had arisen out of a voluntary agreement or social contract
made by individuals who recognised that only the establishment of a sovereign
power could safeguard them from the insecurity, disorder and brutality of the state of
nature.
 In liberal theory, the state is a neutral arbiter amongst the competing groups and
individuals of society.
 Neutrality of the state emphasises that state acts in the interest of all citizens.
 Hobbes supports a government with absolute and unlimited power.
 Locke supports a limited state that is restricted to the defence of the natural rights.
Citizens must have some form of protection against the state. This happens through
the mechanisms of constitutional and representative government.
 The state is neutral: 1- It is affectively subordinate to the government. Non-elected
state bodies are strictly impartial and are subject to the authority of their political
masters. 2- The democratic process is meaningful and effective.
 Modern pluralists, (neoliberalists) have a more critical view of the state. Modern
states are more complex and less responsive to popular pressures than classical
pluralism suggested. Business enjoys a privileged position in relation to government
that other groups cannot rival.

The capitalist state:

 State cannot be understood separately from the economic structure of society.
 State is nothing but an instrument of class oppression. The state emerges out of the
class system.
 Marx didn’t develop a systematic theory of the state but he believed that the state is
a part of a superstructure that is determined by the economic base.

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 Two theories in Marx’s writings:

1. The state is clearly dependent on society and entirely dependent on its
economically dominant class.
2. Autonomy of the state is only relative in that the state appears to mediate
between conflicting classes and so maintains the class system itself in
existence.
 All states are class dictatorships.
 Marx did not see the state as a necessary social formation. As class antagonisms
faded, the state would wither away.
The leviathan state:
 Leviathan: Self-serving monster intent on expansion and aggrandisement.
 Associated with the New Right
 The New Right has a strong antipathy towards state intervention in economic and
social life.
 Demand-side, supply-side pressures
 Electoral competition encourages politicians to outbid oen another by making
promises of increased spending and more generous government programs are, more
increased taxes and higher inflation.
 While Marxist argue that the state reflects broader class and other social interests,
the New Right portrays the state as an independent or autonomoud entity that
pursues its own interests.
The patriarchal state:
 Feminists have usually not regarded the nature of state power as a central political
issue, preferring instead to concentrate on the deeper tructure of male power
centred on institutions such as the family and the economic system.
 Liberal feminists: They believe that sexual org ender equality can be brought about
through incremental reform, have tended to accept an essentially pluralist view of the
state. The state is biased in favour of men and this bias will ve overcome by a process
of reform.
 Radical feminists: State power reflects a deeper structure of oppression in the form
of patriarchy. Both Marxists and radical feminists deny that the state is an
autonomous entity bent on the pursuit of its own interests. Instrumentalist argument
sees the state as little more than an agent or tool used by men to defend their own
interests and uphold the structures of patriarchy.
 The state is run by men for men.
 Structuralist arguments emphasise the degree to which state institutions embedded
in a wider patriarchal society.

The role of the state:

Minimal states:
 Ideal of classic liberals whose aim is to ensure that individuals enjoy the widest
possible realm of freedom.

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 The state is a merely protective body, its core function being to provide a framework
of peace and socialorder within which citizens can conduct their lives as they think
best.
 Best examples: UK and USA during the period off early industrialisation in the 19th
century.
 Three core functions:
1. The state exists to maintain domestic order.
2. It ensures that contracts or volutary agreements made between private
citizens are enforced.
3. It provides protection against external attack.
 Institutional apparatus of the state: a poliçe force, a court system, a military.
 Nozick: a restatement of Lockean liberalism based on a defence of individual rights,
especially property rights.
 New Right perspective: State’s economic role should be confined to two functions:
1. The maintenance of a stable means of Exchange or sound Money
2. The promotion of competition through controls on monopoly power, price
fixing etc.
Developmental states:
 Best examples: Japan, Germany
 A state that intervenes in economic life with the sepecific purpose of promoting
industrial growth and economic development.
 This doesn’t mean an attempt to bring a socialist system but an attempt to construct
a partnership between the state and major economic interests.
 Japan: Meiji Period. Japanese state had a close relationship with the zaibatsu, the
great family-run business empires that dominated Japanese economy until WW2.
Since 1945, Japan conducted its developmental role through the Japanese Ministry of
Int. Trade and Industry together with the Bank of Japan. They help to shape private
investment decisions and steer the Japanese economy towards international
competitiveness.
 A similar system has existed in France.
 Austria, Germany: Economic development through the construction of a partnership
state.
 Recently, economic globalisation has fostered the emergence of competition states
examples of which can be found amongst the tiger economies of East Asia.

Social-democratic states:
 Intervenes with a view to bringing about broader socail restructuring, usually in
accordance with principles such as fairness, equality and social justice.
 Austria, Sweden: State intervention has been guided by both developmental and
social-democratic priorities.
 Social-democratic state is an active participant helping to rectify the imbalances and
injustices of a market economy.
 An attempt to eradicate poverty and reduce social inequality.
 Keynesianism+social welfare
Collectivised states:
 They bring the entirety of economic life under state control.

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 USSR, Eastern Europe

 Abolish private enterprise and set up centrally planned economies administered by a
network of economic ministries and planning committees.
 Command economies
 Collectivisation stems from a fundamental socialist preference for common
ownership over private property.
 Dictatorship of the proletariat is temporary however, the collectivised state in USSr
became permanent and increasingly powerful.
 Under Stalin, socialism was equated with statism.
Totalitarian states:
 The most extreme and extensive form of interventionism
 The essence of totalitarianism is the construction of an all-embracing state, the
influence of which penetrates every aspect of human existence.
 The state brings not only the economy but also education etc. under state control.
 Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s USSR
 Comprehensive process of surveillance and terroristic policing and a pervasive system
of ideological manipulation and control.
 Abolishing the private sphere of life
Religious states:
 It is a contradiction in terms. Modern state emerged through the triumph of civil
authority over religious authority, religion increasingly being confined to the private
sphere, through a separation between church and the state.
 USA, the secular nature of the state was enshrined in the First Amendment of the
constitution.
 France, the separation of church and state has been maintained through a strict
emphasis on the principle of laicité.
 Norway, Denmark, UK: established or state religions have developed, although the
privileges these religions enjoy stop well short or theocratic rule, and their political
influence has generally been restricted by a high level of social secularisation.
 Since 1980s, rise of the religious state, driven by the tendency within religious
fundamentalism to reject the public/private divide and to view religion as the basis of
politics.
 Seizing control of the state and using it as an instrument of moral and spiritual
regeneration.
 Religious states are founded on the basis of religious principles. In the Iranian model
contains explicitly theocratic features, in other cases religiously-oriented
governments operate in a context of constitutional secularism: AKP in TR, Muslim
Brotherhood in Egypt.

Eclipse of the state?

 Although states and markets are commonly portrayed as rival forces, they also
interlock and complement one another.
 Markets cannot function without a system of property rights that only the state can
establish and protect.
Decline and fall of the state
Globalisation and state transformation:

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 1-Some theorists have proclaimed the emergence of post-sovereign government

suggesting that the rise of globalisation is inevitably marked by the decline of the
state as a meaningful actor.
 2-Globalisation and the state are not separate or opposing forces; rather,
globalisation was created by states and exists to serve their interests.
 3-Globalisation has brought about qualitative changes in the role and significance of
of the state, and in the nature of sovereignty. These have transformed the state.
 The central feature of economic globalisation is the rise of supraterritoriality, the
process through which economic activity takes places in a borderless world.
 Increased global competition generated pressure to develop more efficient and
responsive means of developing public policy and delivering public services.
 A shift from government to governance
 Market state: A state that aims to enlarge citizens’ rights and opportunities rather
than assume control over economic and social life.
 Market states legitimise themselves with their capacity to maximize the opportunities
available to citizens.
Non-state actors and international bodies:
 Decline of the state+growing importance of international organisations
 Transnational actors often dwarf states in terms of economic size
 Economic size does not necessarily translate into political power or influence
 UN, EU, WTO undermined the capacity of states to operate as self-governing political
units.
 Multilevel governance

Failed states and state-building:

 States unable to establish a legitimate monopoly of the use of force, thus leading to
endemic warlordism, widespread criminality and social dislocation.
 Somalia, Sierra Leone, Liberia, DR Congo: can’t maintain domestic order
 Failed states often have wider impact than only domestic: refugee crises, terrorist
organisations etc.
 Externally-imposed order is sustained only for a limited period of time. (Iraq)

CHAPTER 4: DEMOCRACY AND LEGITIMACY

 Legitimacy: Rightfulness. It confers on an order or command an authoritative or
binding character, thus transformative power.
Legitimising power:
 Max Weber
 Traditional authority: based on long-established customs and traditions. It is
legitimate because it has always existed.

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 Charismatic authority: based on the power of an individual’s personality. Operates

entirely thorugh the capacity of a leader to make a direct and personal appeal to
followers as a kind of hero or saint. It has no limits. The leader is unquestionable.
Difficult to outlive its founding figüre.
 Legal-rational authority: Links authority to a clearly and legally defined set of rules.
Most of the modern states. Attached to an office rather than a person. Less likely to
be abused. More efficiency. More depersonalised and inhuman social environment.
 Beetham: Power can only be legitimate if following conditions are met:
1. Power must be exercised according to established rules.
2. The rules must be justified in terms of shared beliefs of a government and the
governed.
3. Legitimacy must be demonstrated by an expression of consent on the part of
the governed.
Legitimation crises and revolutions:
 Orthodoc Marxists saw legitimacy as bogus, nothing more than a bourgeois myth.
 Modern Marxists acknowledged that capitalism is upheld by its ability to secure
political support.
 Neo-Marxists also focused on the machinery through which legitimacy is maintained.
 Habermas: Capitalist democracies cannot permanently satisfy both popular demands
for social security and welfare rights, and the requirement of a market economy.
 Rose: Governments find it increasingly difficult to govern because of over-demand.
 Since 1980s, influenced by concerns of a growing fiscal crisis of the welfare state, the
New Right attempted to challenge and displace the theories and values that had
previously legitimised the progressive expansion of state’s responsibilities.
 When faltering support for a regime can no longer be managed b adjustments in
public policy or a change in leadership, legitimacy may collapse leading either to a
resort to repression or to revolution.
Democratic legitimacy:
 Democracy promotes legitimacy in three ways:
1. Through consent. Implicitly by voting.
2. The essence of democratic governance is a process of compromise,
conciliation and negotiation.
3. Democracy operates as a feedback system that tends towards long-term
political stability.
 Democratic societies mostly in the hand of capitalist economy, enjoy widespread
prosperity anda re effective in delivering the goods. Therefore, democratic legitimacy
can be less significant than capitalist legitimacy.
 Mature democratic societies face a growing political disenchantment: declining
electoral turnouts etc.
 Democratic malaise: Over-promising politicians creates an expectation gap.
Non-democratic legitimacy:
 Three key forms of non-democratic legitimation
1. Elections, albeit one-party, non-competitive or rigged elections
2. Non-democratic regimes have sought performance legitimation based on their
ability to deliver, amongst other things, rising living standards, improved
healthcare etc.

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3. Ideological legitimation has been used, either in an attempt to uphold the

leader’s, military’s or party’s right yo rule, or to establish broader goals and
principles that invest the larger regime with a sense of rightfulness.

Democracy
 Kratos= power or rule, demos= the people, the many
 Many different definitions have been written.
 Lincoln: Government of the people, by the people and for the people

Who are the people?

 Political equality: An equal distribution of political power and influence.
 People can be decribed as the entire population of the country, however in practice
every democratic system has restricted participation in different ways.
 In Greek city-states, political participation was restricted to male citizens over 20 yo.
 An important restriction continues to be practised in the form of exclusion of children
from political participation. Then the people= all adult citizens
 Technical restrictions: Certifiably insane and imprisoned criminals
 Rousseau: The people is a single, cohesive body, bound together by a common or
collective interest: general/collective will over private will.
 The people can also be understood as “the majority”. In this case, democracy comes
to mean the strict application of the majority rule. So, democracy can degenerate into
the “tyranny of the majority”.

How should the people rule?

 Direct democracy: Popular participation entails direct and continuous involvement in
decision-making, through devices such as referendums, mass meetings or even
interactive television.
 Indirect/Representative democracy: Most common form is through voting.
 Totalitarian democracy: “government for the people”. An absolute dictatorship that
masquerades as a democracy, typically based on the leader’s claim to a monopoly of
ideological wisdom.
How far should popular rule extend?
 Models of democracy that have been constructed on the basis of liberal
individualism have proposed that democracy should be restricted to political life. The
purpose of democracy is to establish a framework of laws within which individuals
can conduct their own affairs and pursue their private interests.
 From the socialist and radical democrat perspective (radical democracy), democracy
is seen as a general principle applicable to all areas of social existence. People have
the basic right to participate in the making of any decisions that affect their lives,
democracy being the collective process through which this is done.
 Economic democracy: A broad term that covers attempts to apply democratic
principles to the workplace, ranging from profit-sharing to full workers’ self-
management.
 Feminists have demanded the democratisation of family life.

Models of democracy
Classical democracy:

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 Based on polis, city-state

 The form of direct democracy that operated during 5th-4th BCE in Athens
 Often portrayed as the only pure and ideal system of popular participation.
 Considerable impact on Rousseau and Marx
 Form of government by mass meetings
 Plato attacked tis system because he didn’t believe in political equality on the grounds
that the mass of the poeple possess neither the wisdom nor the experience to rule
wisely on their behalf.
 Participation was restricted to Athenian-born males over 20 years old.

Protective democracy:
 Democracy was seen more as a device through which citizens could protect
themselves from the encroachments of government.
 Aristotle to Plato: “Who will guard the Guardians?”
 Locke: The right to vote is based on the existence of natural rights. Democracy came
to mean a system of government by consent operating through a representative
assembly. Only property owners can vote.
 Political equality means equal voting rights.
 Limited and indirect democracy
 A system of constitutional democracy that operates within a set of forma lor informal
rules that check the exercise of government power.
 Laissez-faire capitalism. New Right.

Developmental democracy:
 Concern with the development of the human individual and the community
 Developed by Rousseau: No citizen shall be rich enough to buy another and non so
poor as to be forced to sell himself
 Citizens are free only when they participate directly and continuously in shaping the
life of their community
 Freedom ultimately means obedience to general will
 General will: what individuals would will if they acted selflessly
 Participatory society: A society in which each and every citizen is able to achieve self-
development by participating in the decisions that shape his or her life.
 This goal can be achieved only through the promotion of openness, accountability
and decentralization within all the key institutions of society: within the family as
much as within political institutions.
 Grass-roots democracy: The belief that political power should be exercised at the
lowest possible level.
 Mill: Central virtue of democracy is that it promotes the highest and harmonious
development of individual capacity. Demoracy is an educational experience. Suffrage
should be extenden to women. He rejected the idea of formal political equality. He
proposed a plural voting system. Supports deliberative/parliamentary democracy.

People’s democracy:
 Derived from the orthodox communist regimes that sprang up on the Soviet model
after WW2.

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 Marxists have tended to be dismissive of liberal or parliamentary democracy seeing it

as a form or bourgeois democracy. Stil drawn to this concept because of its clear
egalitarian implications.
 Bolshevik/Communist Party: vanguard of the working class according to Lenin.
 Leninist democracy: A form of democracy in which the communist party, organised
on the basis of democratic centralism, articulates the interests of the proletariat.
 Lenin failed to build a mechanism to check the power of the Communist Party.

Democracy in practice: rival views

 Acceptance of the liberal democracy worldwide.
 Liberal demcoracy: Indirect, representative. Regular elections. Competition and
electoral choice. Political pluralism. Clear distinction between the state and civil
society. Protection for minorities and individuals.

Pluralist view:
 First systematic development by Madison: unchecked democratic rule might lead to
majoritarianism. Stres upon the multiplicity of interests and groups in society. Unless
each group possessed a political voice, stability would be impossible. Proposed a
system of divided government based on the separation of power: federalism and
bicameralism.
 Madisonian democracy: A form of democracy that incorporates constitutional
protections for minorities that enable them to resist majority rule.
 Pluralist democracy: used interchangeably with liberal democracy. Operates through
the capacity of organised groups and interests to articulate popular demands and
ensure responsive government.
 Pluralist stagnation: The system of rule by multiple minorities may simply become a
device to prevent the majority from exercising political power.

Elitist view:
 Elitisim developed as a critique of egalitarian ideas such as democracy and socialism.
 Classical elitism: Elite rule is inevitable and desirable. Democracy is a foolish delusion
because political power is always exercised by a privileged minority: the elite. This
minority will always be able to manipulate and control masses even in a
parliamentary democracy.
 Modern elitism: Highlights how far particular political systems fall short of the
democratic ideal. Mills offered a triumvirate to dominate the USA: big business, the
US military and political cliques surrounding the President.
 Competitive elitism: Highlights the significance of elite rivalry. The electorate can
decide which elite rules but cannot change the fact that power is always exercised by
an elite.

Corporatist view:
 Date backs to the attempt in Fascist Italy for a corporate state by integrating both
managers and workers into the processes of government.
 Neocorporatism/liberal corporatism: Tripartite government in which government is
conducted through organisations that allow state officalsi employers’ groups and
unions to deal directly with one another.

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 The need for institutional arrangements designed to secure the cooperation and
support of major economic interests
 Shift from the state intervention towards the free market diminished the impact of
corporatism.
 Corporatism makes possible a form of functional representation in that indiviudals’
views and interests are more articulated by the groups to which they belong through
competitive elections.
 Corporatism as a threat to democracy: it only advantages groups that have privileged
access to government. + it can work fort he benefit of the state rather than major
economic interests. + it threatens to subvert the process of electoral or parliamentary
democracy.
New Right view:
 Democratic overload: the paralysis of a political system that is subject to
unrestrained group and electoral pressures.
 Corporatism critique: it empowers sectional groups and economic interests enabling
them to make demands on government for increased pay etc. It allows some interest
groups to dominate government. Irresistible drift towards state intervention
 Government overload can be caused by the electoral process as well. Politicians keep
offering unrealistic promises.
Marxist view:
 Political power reflects the distribution of economic power in particular unequal
ownership of productive wealth.
 Liberal democracy= bourgeois democracy
 Eurocommunists abandon the idea of revolution and instead embrace the notion of a
peaceful, legal and democratic way to socialism.
Towards cosmopolitan democracy?
 1- Construction of a world parliament. Global decision making process through UN,
WTO, IMF etc. Multilevel system of post-sovereign governance.
 2- Reform of existing int. organisations. Strengthening global civil society. Faith in
NGOs.
 States, especially major ones, are likely to block any trend towards global democracy.
CHAPTER 8: POLITICAL CULTURE AND THE MEDIA
 Almond and Verba, The Civic Culture (1963)
 Research on the USA, the UK, West Germany, Italy, Mexico
 A desire to explain the collapse of representative government in interwar Italy,
Germany and elsewhere, and the failure of democracy in many newly-independent
developing states after 1945.

Civic culture of cultural hegemony?

 Civic culture: A set of specific attitudes which are crucial to the success of modern
democracies.
 Three types of political culture:
1. Participant: Citizens pay close attention to politics and regard popular
participation as both desirable and effective.
2. Subject: Passivity and recognition that they have only a very limited capacity
to influence govenrment.

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