Fundamentals of Political Science

MR. NOEL P. LENTIJA

 THE MEANING OF POLITICS

• Crick defined politics as the activity by which

different interests in a given unit of rule are
conciliated by giving a share of power in
proportion to their importance to the survival and
welfare of the community.

• Barrington, et. al. defined politics as the set of

activities that organizes individuals, systematically
resolves disputes, and maintains order in a society
through creation and enforcement of rules and
government policy
• Harold Lasswell defined politics as who gets
what, when and how.
• Hague, Harrop and Breslin defined politics
as the process by which groups make
collective decisions.
• Powell, et. al. Defined politics as the
activities associated with the control of
public decisions among a given group of
people in a given territory, where this control
maybe backed up by authoritative means.
• Marsh and Stoker defined politics as struggle
over power
Power – the ability to make other people do
what they do not want to do. Power is the ability to
apply force.

-the capacity to effect outcomes. Power is the

capacity to bring about actions or result.
-the ability to achieve a desired outcome.

- the capacity to make formal decisions which

are in some way binding upon others.

Power brings about compliance through persuasion,

pressure, threats, coercion or violence.
Political power- the capacity to effect outcomes by
controlling or influencing the state. The state
means government at any level.
- the ability of one person or group to impose
its will on another.

Dimensions of Power
1. Dominance – the ability to determine or control
political outcome-especially when it exists on a
regular or continuing basis rather than just
occasionally…

2. Influence – the capacity to effect outcomes

indirectly or partially.
 Types of Power
A. Capability – the ability to effect outcome through
the use of force, threat, coercion or violence.

B. Authority – power based upon a perceived ‘right to

rule’ and brings about compliance through a moral
obligation on the part of the ruled to obey.

- is a legitimate power or power cloaked in

legitimacy

- a means of gaining compliance which avoids

both persuasion and rational arguments and any
form of pressure or coercion.
 Types of Authority

1. Traditional Authority- based upon respect for

long-established customs and traditions.

- in practice, this authority tends to operate

through a hierarchical system which allocates to
each to each person within society a particular
status.

-closely tied up with the hereditary system of

power and privilege.
2. Charismatic Authority – based on the power of
individual personality. The word is derived from
Christianity and refers to divinely bestowed
power, a ‘gift of grace’.

- owes nothing to a person’s status, social

position or office, and everything to his or her
personal qualities, and, in particular, the ability to
make a direct and personal appeal to others.

- is often looked upon with suspicion as it is linked to

authoritarianism, the demand for unquestioning
obedience, the imposition of authority regardless of
consent.
3. Legal-rational Authority – had almost entirely
displaced tradition authority and become the
dominant mode of organization in modern industrial
society.

-characteristic of large-scale bureaucratic

organizations.

- operates through the existence of a body of

clearly defined rules ; legal-rational authority
attaches entirely to the office and its formal
powers and not to the office-holder.

-arises out of the respect for the rule of law.

C. Influence- the ability to affect the content of
action through some form of external pressure,
highlighting the fact that formal and binding
decisions are not made in vacuum.

- May involve anything from organized lobbying

and rational persuasion to open intimidation.

Faces of Power
1. Power can involve the ability to influence one in
making of decision;
2. It may be reflected in the capacity to shape the
political agenda and thus prevent decisions being
made;
3. It may take the form of controlling people’s thought
by the manipulation of their perceptions and
preferences.

THE MEANING OF POLITICAL SCIENCE

• The study of patterns of systematic interactions
between and among groups in a community or
society.

• A diverse and constantly changing field of inquiry

into the political behavior of individuals and
groups of human beings, the institutions with
which mankind identifies and govern itself, and
the values that underlie the political thought and
 Structure and Agency in the Study of
Politics
Agency –refers to a person’s capability or
power to act, to “make a difference” or to
intentionally intervene in his world. Agency
concerns events of which an individual is
the perpetrator, in the sense that the
individual could, at any phase in a given
sequence of conduct, have acted
differently.
Structure (functionalist) external forces
that determine or constrain individual
action. Social structures are like the
scaffolding of a building or the anatomy of
an organism that is invisible to the
observer. It is said to work “behind the
backs” of individuals.
• Giddens defines structures as rules and
resources drawn upon by individuals in
the production and reproduction of
social action.
 APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF POLITICAL
SCIENCE

1. Institutionalism and Neo-institutionalism –

institutionalism is the approach that focuses
on the formal-legal rules that direct how
the government, the various parts of it, and
related entities such as political parties are
supposed to work.
Neo-institutionalism – is an approach that
investigates the informal rules that govern
institutions, the evolution of institutions , and
the strategies politicians and others use to
take advantage of institutional rules.
2. Structuralism – views social reality as
governed by complex interaction of
economic, political and ideological
structures which have their own relative
autonomy from one another. Individuals act
in accordance with structures that they
cannot see and of which they may have no
• Structural-Functionalism – considers the
formal and informal power arrangements
that comprise a political system and the
functions they must carry to survive.
• It recognizes that structure are important
only because they carry out certain
necessary functions for the maintainance of
the political system- acquiring resources,
providing for legitimacy of officials and their
decisions, articulating and aggregating
different interests, making policy decisions
and implementing those decisions.
b. Marxism
1. Classical Marxism – contends that
structures, particularly economic structures,
shape or cause contemporary social existence.

• Political institutions, laws, belief systems and

even forms of family would conform to the
basic requirements of the economic system.

• The main function of the law was to protect

private property and consequently the state
was an agent of the ruling class.
• Economic relations determined social
relations, that is, relations between classes,
and social relations determined political
relations, in particular, the form and action
of the state.

• The mode of production of material life

determines consciousness and the economic
base determines the superstructure
• Material relations shape ideas and the
dominant ideas at any time are those that
forward the interests of the ruling class.

• Historical development is a process of

contradiction.

• Progress will result in an end to exploitation

• Material relations shape ideas and the
dominanat ideas at any time are those that
forward the interests of the ruling class.

• Historical development is a process of

contradiction.

• Progress will result in an end to exploitation

c. Critical Theory
Critical theorists yearn for the creation of a
society in which social order is maintained
according to dictates of individual’s true needs
and desires, where society allows for the
realization of goals and aspirations that are
determined by the individual’s own
consciousness and autonomous capacity for
reason. But the progress of civilization…has
created a repressive, dehumanizing collectivist
forces ( culture industry, technology, mode of
economic production)
Although such forces are product of human
creativity, they have become reified or
seemingly immutable – the apparatus has a life
of its own beyond the control of humans..
…large-scale institutional forces…account for
the creation and recreation of social order
that…is founded on oppression… Critical
theorist focus on individual consciousness as
source of human liberation…social order rests
on the broader cultural transformation that
have distorted the individual’s capacity for
reason
3. Behaviouralism a movement in post-war
political science concerned with both
generation of law-like generalization about
the political world and shifting the
emphasis of political studies away from its
traditional legal-institutional manifestation.

Use quantitative techniques designed to

generate testable hypothesis about
measurable attitudes and observable
behaviour.
Behaviouralists have extensively analysed
the reasons that underlie the main form of
mass political participation in democratic
countries such as voting.

They have also examined the origins of

participation in unconventional forms of
political activity such as demonstration,
strikes and riots.
Rational Choice Theory (1970s)
Rational-choice theorists argue that one can
generally predict political behaviour by knowing
the interests of the actors involved because
they rationally maximize their interests.

In its contemporary iteration, rational choice

approach can be highly formalistic. It assumes
that individuals are rational, that ends and
means can be accurately articulated and that
risks and opportunities can be correctly
assessed.
Culturalist Approach

culture is a system of meaning that people use

to manage their daily worlds; culture is the
basis of social and political identity that affects
how people line up and how they act on a wide
range of matters… Political culture is important
because basic political attitudes such as
tolerance or intolerance, views of political
authority, or trust or lack of trust affect of fellow
citizens affects the nature of politics profoundly.
THE CONCEPT OF STATE

 Max Weber (1919): a state is an

institution which (successfully) claims
to exercise a monopoly of the
legitimate use of physical force within
a given territory.

 Argues that it is force which

constitutes the primary (not the only)
attribute which makes the state a state.
What do States do?
1. Conduct peaceful and warlike
relations with other states

2. Claim a monopoly over the use of

force within their boundaries

3. Can provide identity and cohesion

through processes of legitimation

4. Act as agents within society and

structure the actions of other agents
5. Sustain relationships with other
spheres of activity and groups and
classes – of which the relationship
with the economy is most important

6. (here we go back to what states are):

states are not unified organizations
but rather ensembles of institutions
and processes which are extremely
various, conflictual and complex.
What States cannot do…
 One important aspect of the
conflictual/contradictory/complex/dyna
mic nature of states is that they never
achieve completely what they claim in
Weber’s definition:
 the state ‘asserts a monopoly of

legitimate force which it does not

(and cannot) have’
 Focuses its activities within a given
territory and upon members of a particular
nation because its boundaries are
challenged and its national identity
contested

 It claims a monopoly of legitimacy only

because this legitimacy is contested

 On the one hand it is autonomous and

separate, public rather than private; on the
other hand the universality of its
compulsory jurisdiction means that it
permeates and structures the whole of
 Benevolent State Self- State
State Dominated by Interested Dominated by
Class or State Needs of
Interest Groups Capitalism
Assumed Works in the Pursues interests Pursues Determined by
objective of general interest of of powerful actors private ‘logic of
the State society; pursues or classes interests of capitalism’
development bureaucrats
and politicians

Whose Policymakers and Political Neo-liberal Some radical

Perspective others within the economists & economists political
? state some lobby and policy- movements;
groups makers; World communist
Bank (1980s) movements

Policies and Faith in Political activities, Minimising the Revolution;

Political government lobbies, to make state change in the
Actions (although other interests basic set-up of
improvement may heard society
Needed be necessary to
enhance
performance)

Theoretical Some public Political economy, Neo-political Structuralist

Perspective administrative marxism economy, rent- marxism
literature seeking
behavior
 THE RISE OF MODERN STATE
Historical Origins and Development
1. Transformation – states arose on the basis of the
gradual transformation of existing independent
political units.

- the Treaty of Westphalia signalled the final

triumph of the state as a form of political
organization, as well as settling the borders of
many states.

2. Unification – unification of independent but

disperse political unit.
3. Secession – states arose from the break-up of
independent political units – mostly empires or
large heterogeneous political units – into one or
more states.

ex. Austro-Hungarian Empire, Ottoman Empire

In Africa and Asia decolonization after Second World

War resulted in many new states after former
occupied territories gained independence.