Course Title: Political Thoughts and Practices:

Democratic Developmental State in Focus

Chapter1: Political Philosophy as a Field of

Inquiry
Contents:
• Thinking about Political Philosophy
• Political Thought and Political Institutions
• Vision and Political Imagination
• Political Philosophy and Society
• Political Ideology

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 Thinking about Political Philosophy
“There are two powers in the world, the sword and the mind. In the
long run, the sword is always beaten by the mind” Napoleon
Political philosophy is the intersection of two
discipline: Political Science and Philosophy. Both
disciplines claim that political philosophy is their
sub-discipline.
Political Science is a systematic study of
governments, of the methods by which
governments seek to control people, and the
techniques through which people try to influence
government.
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 Thinking about Political Philosophy Cont’d

According to Lespinasse (2008), political science is a

science that attempts to connect the micro-level of
individual lives and action with the macro-level of
collective life and actions.
Lespinasse further claim that political science focuses
on three basic types of social powers:
• the power of the pen,
• the power of the purse, and
• the power of the sword.
 Thinking about Political Philosophy Cont’d

• Harold Laswell, a prominent political scientist,

defined political science as a study of who get
what, when, and how.
• The study of political science is motivated by the
need to understand the sources and consequences
of political stability and revolution, of repression
and liberty, of equality and inequality, of war and
peace, of democracy and dictatorship.
• Its emphasis is on government and power.
• The study of political science reveals how world
of politics operate, along with its institutions,
leaders, and citizens. 4
 Thinking about Political Philosophy Cont’d
• In general, political science is an academic
discipline that deals with the study of government,
political processes, institutions and behaviours. It
is the study of idea, interests and power.
Cross-discipline connection
• What distinguishes political science as an
academic discipline is its emphasis on government
and power. However, the study of government
and power is not confined to political science, it
naturally permeates into other social sciences as
well. For example:
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 Thinking about Political Philosophy Cont’d

Economics: Economic and political processes are

closely related because the actions of political
institutions can either expand or constrain
economic activity.
• Additionally, economic conditions can have a
direct influence on political institutions. For
instance, voters tend to vote against the party in
power if they perceive a decline or standstill in
their personal financial situations.

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 Thinking about Political Philosophy Cont’d

Sociology: Political scientists also study the social

bases of politics. For example, what are the
political activities of various social classes, races,
ethnicities, and religions?
• How do social forces work together to change
political policies on issues such as abortion,
criminal justice, foreign policy, and welfare?
• How do social movements outside of the formal
institutions of political power affect politics? For
example, the civil rights and women’s suffrage
movements helped not only reshape public policy
but also public opinion as well. 7
 Thinking about Political Philosophy Cont’d

History: Political scientists attempt to analyze and

understand historic political patterns in addition to
specific political events. This requires putting
historical events and texts into a political context.
• A good textual example is the U.S. Constitution. It
is both a historic document, in that it describes the
creation of a new form of government (i.e.
federalism) in that it sets the framework for the
functioning of the U.S. government as a system of
shared powers, checks and balances.

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 Thinking about Political Philosophy Cont’d

Sub-disciplines in Political Science

• Political science is organized into several sub-
disciplines, each representing a major subject area
of teaching and research in colleges and
universities. These sub-disciplines include:
– comparative politics,
– international relations,
– political theory (also called political thought,
political philosophy)
– public administration,
– public policy, and
– political behaviour.
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 Thinking about Political Philosophy Cont’d

• What is philosophy? The word philosophy

comes from the two Greek words “philein” which
means “to love”, and “sophia”, which means
“knowledge” or “wisdom”.
• Philosophy, is therefore, the search for knowledge
or wisdom.
• Philosophy raises fundamental questions which
cannot be answered with absolute certainty. The
questions include, inter alia:
– Why is something, rather than nothing at all?
– Does the universe have a purpose? Does life has a
purpose?
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 Thinking about Political Philosophy Cont’d

– Is there a person more than a physical body?

What is mind? What is thought?
– Does people really have free will?
– What is God?
– What is art? What is beauty? What is truth?
– What are ethically legitimate functions and
scope of the state? The list goes....

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 Thinking about Political Philosophy Cont’d
Sub-Disciplines of Philosophy
• Metaphysics: It studies being and existence. What is
being? What is its fundamental features, components and
principles.
• Epistemology: It studies knowledge. What is the nature of
knowledge? What is its sources and limit?
• Ethics: It the philosophical study of moral judgment about
human conduct whether it good or bad; right or wrong.
• Aesthetic: It a philosophical study of art and value
judgement about art.
• Political Philosophy: It is the study of state. It seeks to
determine the justification for its existence and its ethically
proper organization.
• Logic: It is the study of correct reasoning. 12
 Thinking about Political Philosophy Cont’d
Political philosophy is a sub-field of political
science and philosophy that addresses conceptual,
normative and evaluative questions of society,
state and government.
It is the study of philosophical thought about
politics from ancient Greece to the present. It is
concerned with the fundamental questions of
public life. It tries to address such issues as:
• the nature of political authority,
• the relationships of the state to the individual, and
• citizens obligations and responsibilities to one
another.
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 Thinking about Political Philosophy Cont’d

It seeks to interpret abstract concepts such as

liberty, justice, human rights, power, freedom,
equality, authority, legitimacy, democracy,
welfare, and so on.
More generally, political philosophy seeks to find
the best form of political existence. It is concerned
with determining the state’s right to exist, its
ethically legitimate functions and scope, and its
power organization.
Political philosophy also seeks to describe and
understand the nature of political relationships and
political authority. 14
 Political Thought Cont’d

• According to Roger Scruton, political thought

include thoughts, theories, and values which
motivate policy, political institutions, and political
behaviour (Scruton, 2007).
• The author further claims that political thought
include the theories through which people attempt
to explain each other’s political behaviour, the
values by which they judge it and the mechanisms
(such as law) whereby they attempt to control it.

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 Political Institutions Cont’d

• Political institutions are organizations that create,

enforce and apply laws.
• They often mediate conflict, make policies on
social and economic issues and otherwise provide
representation for the people. Political institutions
legitimate the way political power is exercised.
• They are in essence a set of arrangements for
organizing political competition, legitimating
rulers and implementing rules.

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 Political Institutions Cont’d

• Political thoughts of great political thinkers have

influenced the way political institutions are
created and developed.
Political Thought of Baron de Montesquieu
(1689-1755) on Political Institutions
• In his great work, The Theory of Governments
Montesquieu divides the government system into
three major parts: republican, monarchic and
despotic.
• Republican government he sub-divides into
democracy and aristocracy.
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 Political Institutions Cont’d
• A republican government is that which the body
(democracy) or only the part (aristocracy) of the people, is
possessed of the supreme power; monarchy, which in
which a single person governs by fixed and established
laws (the prince is the source of all power); a despotic
government, that in which a single person directs
everything by its own will.
• As to the principle of governments, probity is the
lifeblood of a democratic republic.
• By probity Montesquieu means civic virtue, a universal
sense of moral rectitude, whereby each citizen is devoted
to the state as to sacrifice to the common interest his/her
selfish inclinations and personal ambitions.

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 Political Institutions Cont’d

• Without probity, a democracy is doomed, for

democracy is popular government, government by
the greatest number; and if corruption, selfishness,
and love of luxury (all things contrary to probity)
are rife, the state is certainly lost.
• The central principle of aristocratic government is
moderation or restraint in those who command.
Its central concern is to address all gross
inequalities between the ruler and subjects.

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 Political Institutions Cont’d

• The central principle of monarchy is “honour and

ambition”; the desire for recognition and reward,
the gratification of self-love by the bestowal of a
title, dignity, a rank.
• The central principle of despotic government is
fear. Under such a system, man is a creature who
submits blindly to the absolute will of the
sovereign through “compliance and punishment”.

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 Political Institutions Cont’d

• In his Theory of Political Liberty, Montesquieu

states his theory as follows: “Political liberty does
not consist in unlimited power. Liberty exists in a
government where the power is restricted, subject
to limitations; and only when there is no abuse of
power.
• He argued that “since experience teaches that
every man invested with power is option to abuse
it, a way must be found to prevent this corruption.
This is the way: ‘let power be a check to power’.
Instead of a single and concentrated power, there
should be a certain distribution of powers, each
acting as a check and balance on the other.” 21
 Political Institutions Cont’d

• These separate powers are the “legislative, the

executive, the judiciary.”
• In the virtue of the first laws are enacted; in the
virtue of the second, all legislative enactments are
executed and enforced; in the virtue of the third,
crimes are punished and disputes between
individuals judged and settled.
• Political thoughts of Montesquieu (decision and
separation of power) have enduring impact in the
shaping and reshaping of contemporary political
institutions. 22
 Political Institutions Cont’d
Political Thought of John Locke (1632-1704) on
Political Institutions
• John Locke, powerful mind who was to give
European political thought a new direction, was
born near Bristol, in Britain, on August 29, 1632.
• Locke’s conception of state: For him a state is
created for a specific end, a legal, judicial end: to
translate into concrete terms the enactments of
natural law and to safeguard the individual
through their impartial execution. Thus,
containment of state power is Locke’s constant
preoccupation, the heart of his thesis, the key to
his political thoughts. 23
 Political Institutions Cont’d
• For Locke, while natural law is still the final
criterion of right and wrong, the political
community (commonwealth) is sovereign. It is the
depository of all authority.
• Its members (citizens), acting on the principle of
majority, have the right to choose their own
government, as well as the right to resist and
overthrow it, in the name of the natural law (It is
not possible to ignore or amend or abrogate
natural law).

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 Political Institutions Cont’d

• For Locke, government is the trustee, and the

political community is both the creator and the
beneficiary of the trust.
• He has made clear that despotic power is not to be
identical with political power. Only the later is
valid and legitimate.
• For Locke, political power includes: (1) the power
to make laws (legislative power), (2) the power of
war and peace (also called federative power), and
(3) the power execute laws (including judicial
power). 25
 Vision and Political Imagination Cont’d

Vision and Political Imagination

Vision is the description of future position and the
approach used to achieve that position. It requires:
• Projection to the future (forward looking)
• Dreaming big and focusing on success
• Using clear and jargon-free language
• Passion and emotion to achieve
• Aligning with personal values

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 Vision and Political Imagination Cont’d

• Imagination is “the forming of mental pictures or

images, based on the principle that there is a deep
tendency in human nature to ultimately become
precisely like what which we imagine or image
ourselves as being” (Peale, 1982: 9).
• Imagination is positive thinking carried out one
step further. This releases powerful internal forces
(passion) that can bring about astonishing
changes.

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 Vision and Political Imagination Cont’d

• In the broader sense, political imagination is

meant to designate all those “imaginative
processes by which collective life is symbolically
experienced and this experience mobilized in view
of achieving political aims.”
» The key notion here is political aims - the
end products of political imagination - what
political aims are pursued in relation to
others – to assimilate, exclude, control,
dominate, emancipate, empower.

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 Political Thought and Society
One of the key concern of political philosophy is how to
create just society. According to John S. Mill (1861),
just society is a society that allows individual to live
their lives so long as they do not interfere in the lives of
others.
For example, John Rawls (1921-2002), the most recent
political philosopher, in his book A Theory of Justice
(1991) more concerned with creating a well-ordered
society. For him, a society is not well-ordered unless:
1) Its members know and accept the same principles of
social justice; and
2) The basic social institutions generally satisfy and are
generally known to satisfy these principles. 29
 Political Thought and Society Cont’d
According to Rawls, there are two principles of social
justice.
1) Each person has an equal rights to the most extensive
basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for
others; and
2) Social and economic inequalities be arranged so that
they are both (a) reasonably expected to be to
everyone’s advantage and (b) attached to positions
and offices open to all.
• Moreover, Rawls argues that self-interested but
rational people exist in just society. All social goods
(e.g. Liberty, opportunity and income are to be
equally distributed unless unequal distribution is30 to
everyone’s advantage.
 Political Ideology
• We are inclined to begin instead with a simple,
general, and hopefully uncontroversial textbook
definition of political ideology, such as that
offered by Erikson & Tedin (2003: 64), namely a
“set of beliefs about the proper order of society
and how it can be achieved.”
• For Parsons (1951: 24), ideologies “are the shared
framework of mental models that groups of
individuals possess that provide both an
interpretation of the environment and a
prescription as to how that environment should be
structured.” 31
 Political Ideology Cont’d
Critical Approaches to Ideology
• More critical tradition descends from the writings
of Marx & Engels (1846/1970), who regarded
ideology (in contrast to science) as a potentially
dangerous form of illusion and mystification that
typically serves to conceal and maintain exploitative
social relations.
• Along these lines, Mannheim (1936) depicted
certain ideologies as more or less conscious
disguises of the real nature of a situation .
• Habermas (1989), too, treated ideology as a form of
systematically distorted communication.
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Readings
• Anderson, B. (1983). Imagined Communities: Reflections
on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.
• Harris, P.L. (2000). The Work of Imagination. Oxford:
Blackwell.
• Lespinasse, de Paul (2008). Basic Political Concepts.
• Peale, N. ( 1982) The Positive Way to Change Your Life.
London: Vermilion.
• Scruton, Roger (2007). The Palgrave Macmillan
Dictionary of Political Thoughts, Third Edition.
• Zitton, T. and Gillespie A. (2015). Imagination in Human
and Cultural Development. London: Routledge.

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