UNDERSTANDING THE STATE, GOVERNMENT,

SOCIETY, AND THE CITIZEN: A REVIEW OF

FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS

Politics, Governance, and Citizenship (Lecture 1)

POWER & AUTHORITY

◦ The nature of political control—what we will define as power and

authority—is an important part of society.
◦ power relationships refer in general to a kind of strategic
relationship between rulers and the ruled (ex: parent to
child, gov’t to citizens, etc)
“one person or one group of people has power over another”
In other words, when we think about somebody, some group, or
some institution having power over us, we are thinking about a
relation of domination.
POWER

◦ Max Weber defined ‘power’ as “the chance of a man or of a

number of men to realize their own will in a communal action even
against the resistance of others who are participating in the action”
(Weber 1919a, p. 180)
◦ Importance of retaining the distinction between ‘domination’ and
‘power’.
◦ At a more basic level, power is a capacity that each of us has to
create and act. As a result, power and politics must also be
understood as the collective capacities we have to create and build
new forms of community or “commons” (Negri 2004).
◦ Aristotle: politics is the idea of a freedom people grant themselves
to rule themselves (Aristotle 1908).
◦ Therefore, power is not in principle domination. It is the give and
take we experience in everyday life as we come together to
construct a better community—a “good life”
POLITICS

◦ control, allocation, production, and use of resources and the values

and ideas underlying those activities
POLITICS

◦ Conventional political studies, however, usually limit investigation

into the questions and processes implied in this view of politics to
governments, states, and the organized efforts to influence what
those two institutions do or to change them altogether.
◦ Citizens in many parts of the world also typically relegate politics to what
government officials, politicians, lobbyists, and the like do. Journalists and
other public commentators also usually talk and write this way, thereby
deliberately or unintentionally encouraging and perpetuating this small arena
for politics.
◦ Conventional view to politics: to link politics with unbecoming, nefarious, and
other negative actions, usually involving government officials and agencies but
sometimes referring to real or perceived unsavory actions in other aspects of
life
◦ Example: reason a faculty did not get promoted was ‘politics in the
university’s committee on promotions’.
◦ Dangers of Conventional View of Politics:
1. marginalizes the many positive and constructive aspects of political activities.
2. conventional political studies and commentary concentrates on a minute fraction of
any country’s population – primarily government officials, political parties,
influential individuals, and activists in organizations trying to affect what
government authorities do.
3. such a restricted view of politics misses a great deal of what is politically
significant. The allocation of important resources is rarely confined to
governments and related organizations.
TYPES OF POLITICS

1. Official politics - It involves authorities in organizations making,

implementing, changing, contesting, and evading policies
regarding resource allocations.
TYPES OF POLITICS

2. Advocacy politics - It involves direct and concerted efforts to

support, criticize, and oppose authorities, their policies and
programs, or the entire way in which resources are produced and
distributed within an organization or a system of organizations.
◦ Conventional political studies are largely limited to aspects of
official and advocacy politics
◦ fewer are studies of official and advocacy politics regarding other
types of organizations, such as corporations, religious
organizations, and unions.
3. EVERYDAY POLITICS

◦ Often it is entwined with individuals and small groups’ activities

while making a living, raising their families, wrestling with daily
problems, and interacting with others like themselves and with
superiors and subordinates.
◦ Everyday politics also includes resource production and distribution
practices within households and families and within small
communities in ways that rely primarily on local people’s own
resources with little involvement from formal organizations.