Definition

Broadest sense: is the activity through which people make, preserve and amend the general rules under which they live. (Heywood, 2002) As academic subject (Politics) Linked with conflict and cooperation As power = people acting in concert

Two major problems in defining politics

loaded term as biased and as a dirty word It is defined in so many different ways, as:
Exercise of power Exercise of authority Making collective decisions Allocation of scarce resources Practice of deception and manipulation Etc.

Different views of Politics

As the art of government As public affairs As compromise and consensus As power and the distribution of resources
(Heywood, 2002)

Politics as the art of government

Classical definition: the exercise of control within society through the making and enforcement of collective decisions. Polis (Greek) = citystate Athens largest of the city-states in ancient Greece and often portrayed as the cradle of democratic government. Politics can mean to as the affairs of the polis or what concerns the state


Traditional view: to study politics is to study government Politics = authoritative allocation of values (D. Easton, 1979, 1981 as quoted by Heywood, 2002) Politics = policy (restricted view) = takes place within a polity (system of social organization centred upon the machinery of government)
Party politics = political is restricted to members of a political party

 power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts

absolutely Lord Acton (1834 -1902)

Anti-politics = rejection f personnel and machinery of conventional political life Niccolo Machivelli (1469 1527) wrote The Prince (1531) depicted politics as cunning, cruel and manipulative
the end justify the means

Politics as public affairs

Political and nonpolitical is synonymous to public sphere and private sphere man is by nature a political animal - Aristotle (384 -22 BCE) Public sphere: State institutions paid for by taxes (political) Private sphere: family and kinships, private businesses, trade unions, clubs, community organizations, etc. (nonppolitical)


Hannah Arendt (1906-75), The Human Condition:
Politics is the most important human activity because it involves interaction among free and equal citizens.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau:
Direct and continuous participation of all citizens in political life can the State be bound to the common good or the general will

John Stuart Mill:

Involvement in public affairs is educational. It poromotes the personal, moral an intellectual development.

 Resolving conflict by compromise, conciliation and negotiation not by force and naked power
Politics as art of the possible

Politics as compromise and consensus

Aristotle: Polity is the ideal system of government, as it is mixed, it combines aristocratic and democratic features. 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 survival of the whole community. Bernard Crick, In Defense of Politics, 1993

Politics as power
politics is at the heart of all collective social activity, formal and informal, public and private, in all human groups, institutions and societies Adrian Leftwich,
What is Politics? The Activity and its Study. 1964

Concerns production, distribution and use of limited or scarce resources Diversity and conflict


Human needs and wants are unlimited v.s. limited or scarce resources Politics = struggle over scarce resources Power = the means through which the struggle is conducted Marxists and feminists advocates


Radical feminists the personal is the political
Kate Millet in Sexual Politics (1969) defined politics as power-structured relationships, arrangements whereby one group of persons is controlled by another Politics of everyday life


Marxists: Conventional sense: apparatus of the state
Political power the organized power of one class for oppressing another (Marx, Communist Manifesto, 1848)

Economic base and Politics and culture as the superstructures Deeper level:
Politics is the most concentrated form of economics (Lenin)

Faces of Power
Power as decision-making: This face of power consists of conscious actions that in some way influence the content of decisions Power as agenda setting: the ability to set or control the political agenda, thereby preventing issues or proposals from being aired in the first place. Power as thought control: ability to influence another to think what s/he needs or wants. Ideological indoctrination or psychological control.

Group work
Given the definition of politics, what can you say about what is happening in Eastern Visayas, specifically the looting in Tacloban City? What made the people in Tacloban to loot other peoples properties? Is it a failure on the part of the people that there is chaos or is it the failure of government? How does politics come into the picture? Is the issue political? In what sense?