What is politics?
In 1936, Harold Lasswell succinctly defined politics as “who gets what, when and how”. To the layman this seems simple enough, but, in practice – especially as individual community members increase or decrease in number – Lasswell’s statement is far more complex. The larger the community, the greater the complexity, the more individuals and groups within a community compete for influence and resources. Ideally, competing interest groups will cooperate to overcome any conflicts of interest, negotiate the equitable division of resources, with all members of the group accepting the decision as legitimate, authoritative, and binding. But politics is a human activity, and as such is dependent on many variables with possible outcomes. Communities that have outgrown the easy ability to cooperate and make decisions through traditional, cultural, or other arbitrary processes – such as within an entire state or a multi-national alliance (eg. the European Union) – will require division of power, a hierarchy of institutions, rule of law, and a populace that commits to abide by the process, authority, and sovereignty of persons, political systems, and judicial decisions that will affect them all. There will always be winners and losers, but if a community fails to reach collective decisions at all, it risks fragmentation which weakens the whole community, and may even lead to total collapse. Because politics is a collective activity, the issue of power cannot be ignored. Who has it, and under what authority? How do they exercise that power? In totalitarian states, power is exercised by way of force – often violent – over adversaries, and any dissent is quickly crushed. In egalitarian and democratic states, power is expressed more reasonably to resolve disagreements through conciliatory dialogue and action. Internationally, nations may either trade or go to war, and politics plays as a careful balancing act between the two.
What are the arguments for and against the claim that the state is past it’s prime?
The state is a recent concept in history, and as it has not always existed, it stands that it will not always exist. Political theorists are critical of the strength and structure of the state today, and of its relevance in a modern, globalised world. Differences of opinion vary from asserting that the state is currently stronger and more stable than ever before; the state is past it’s prime; or, between these polarities, the opinion that the state will prevail and is merely undergoing evolutionary change.
In favour of the state is the argument of authority. Through authority comes sovereignty, legitimacy, self-determination, and national unity. Despite some states being denoted as quasi-states, de facto states, or even failing states, overall state systems – particularly capitalist democracies – are made strong through treaties and trade between states. National pride strengthens the resolve of the population to contribute to the state; culture is preserved through identity, language, history, a shared border, and so on.
Those who assert that the state is an archaic construct in the modern world, claim it is both too small and too large to manage increasingly complex problems. It is too large in that it ignores ethnic diversities in favour of a narrow homogenous national identity, too restrictive on the free movement of people and capital, unnecessarily divisive, has its history rooted in war, and benefits a few powerful elites over the wider population. Conversely, it is too small to adequately solve transboundary problems such as the spread of disease, pollution, terrorism, and climate change. Overall, the state is an inhibiting factor to peace, commerce, and human potential; and that many issues facing communities (and, indeed, humanity) should be dealt with more locally at a micro level, and globally at a macro level, with the state removed completely.
What various conceptions of ‘democracy’ are there?
Democracy as a concept appears simple: rule by the people. In practice, though, it is far more nuanced, and there are many types of democracy, making a fixed definition difficult. Agreed standards regarding what a democracy should be, at a minimum, requires a representative government, free and fair elections, freedom of speech and association, protection of individual rights, and government “by the people”. From this, three primary democratic types have emerged.
The earliest is Direct Democracy, based on the highly participatory political system of Athens, where qualified citizens were the primary agents of political life and collective decision making. It is the purest form of democracy, and is practiced today in Switzerland. It requires direct popular involvement in open deliberation by informed and committed citizens who are sensitive to the range of interests found in its communities. The internet has been instrumental in revitalising direct democracy (via e-democracy) on a much wider scale. However, this can create echo chambers, allowing some – often poorly informed – voices to rise above more considered opinion.
As states have grown, direct democracy is more difficult. Representative Democracy evolved as a system of indirect democracy, where citizens elect representatives who make decisions on their behalf. Representatives are expected to be knowledgeable and considerate of the interests and concerns of the wider population.
The most modern incarnation of democracy is Liberal Democracy, which places individual rights above government, thus restricting the reach of government interference into personal life. Liberal democracies are also representative democracies, but civil liberties are given equal or greater value to government, and checks and balances are utilised to ensure that government cannot overstep its power.
Each type has its critics, and often have systemic oppressions built into them (structural violence) that can make deep-rooted inequalities difficult to overcome in the public sphere.
In the 9th edition of the textbook Comparative Government and Politics published in 2013, Putin’s Russia is categorised as a ‘competitive authoritarian regime’ (or ‘hybrid/semi-authoritarian regime’). In the 10th edition published in 2016, Russia is categorised as an ‘authoritarian regime’. What might have changed to merit this re-categorisation?
After the collapse of the communist Soviet Union, Russia emerged as a hybrid state, incorporating some aspects of democracy, most notably competitive elections, with a potential to make a difference to its leadership and political systems, albeit skewed to maintain a ruling elite’s hold on power, rather than a deliberate move toward full democratisation. As one authoritarian regime collapses, and new electoral authoritarian regime takes its place, often shaped by the strongman “cult of personality”.
In recent years, Russia – under its current leader, Putin – has exhibited more authoritarian traits, which have been catalysed by both internal and external events. Under the Russian constitution, Presidents may only serve two concurrent terms. Putin has circumnavigated this limitation and is now into his third term where he has extended the length of time allowed, per term, from four to six years. Both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have noted the Putin administration’s increasing crackdown of political and civil dissent and protest, perhaps most famously the incarceration of Russia’s all-female punk rock activists, Pussy Riot, thus weakening political pluralism. Political critics and opponents are often subject to violence and, in some cases, assassination. The media is heavily censored to remove any ideologies or opinions that do not align with the Putin regime, with journalists reporting abusive treatment. Since 2012, Russian parliament has enacted laws that are increasingly repressive and isolationist, that demonise non-governmental organisations, and further reduces human rights. Corruption is endemic, with patronage creating an oligarchy that has an ever-tightening hold on wealth and the economy, and therefore political agency. Aggression in Ukraine and military intervention in Syria show a disregard for international law or convention. Combined, these factors may indicate that Putin is on a path to ‘President for life’ – effectively, perhaps, to becoming a self-appointed dictator.
“The social sciences reveal patterns in our lives, over time and in the present moment. Employing the observational and experimental methods of the natural sciences, the social sciences – including anthropology, economics, political science and government, sociology, and psychology – examine and predict behavioural and organizational processes.”
(American Academy of Arts and Sciences, ‘The Heart of the Matter: The Humanities and Social Sciences for a vibrant, competitive, and secure nation’, 2013, p. 9 www.humanitiescommission.org/_pdf/hss_report.pdf)
Is this an accurate statement of how researchers go about studying politics?
Political science is a sub-discipline of the social sciences, with many crossovers into other Humanities sub-disciplines; for example, economics and psychology. It is a human activity that is complex and diverse, is as old as society itself, and with many conflicting analyses of its varied intricacies. To effectively study politics, meaningful understanding of differing political perspectives, processes, institutions, and outcomes requires theoretical approaches and methodologies that are the same as those used in studying the broader social sciences, though they are adapted to be more specific to the political sphere. The different theoretical approaches help researchers identify which is the right question to ask and in what context, and then how to go about framing the answer. Aristotle’s attempt at political classification was merely a typology, and did not address issues of “how” and “why”. It was useful, however, in birthing the idea of political study. Today, researchers employ methods that examine politics from qualitative to quantitative viewpoints framed within theories that explore specific angles. An institutional approach, which is important in the study of comparative government at an institutional level, is quite different to a behavioural approach, which is dependent more on narrow statistical data and examines politics at an individual level. The rational choice approach overlaps with the study of economics, the interpretative approach overlaps with sociology in the study of political ideology, and structural approach has its roots in history as it studies the political networks and relationships that are establish and destroyed over time. As with the many of the other social sciences, without these defined theoretical approaches, the subject would become too vague and amorphous to understand with the depth these approaches allow, therefore the abstract in the above question is an accurate one when applied to the effective study of politics.