Politics

SUMMARY OF CHAPTER 1

Understanding politics is a matter of self-interest. By exploring politics, we gain a better appreciation of what is—and what is not—in the public interest.

This chapter focuses on three fundamental concepts: power, order, and justice. It also explores the interrelationships between power and order, order and justice, and justice and power.

Political power can be defined as the capacity to maintain order in society. Whenever governments promulgate new laws or sign treaties or go to war, they are exercising political power. Whenever we pay our taxes, put money in a parking meter, or remove our shoes prior to boarding an airplane, we, in effect, bow to the power of government.

When governments exercise power, they often do it in the name of order. Power and authority are closely related: authority is the official exercise of power. If we accept the rules and the rulers who make and enforce them, then government also enjoys legitimacy.

Questions of justice are often embedded in political disputes. If the public interest is not advanced by a given policy or if society no longer accepts the authority of the government as legitimate, the resulting discontent can lead to political instability and even rebellion or revolution.

Political science seeks to discover the basic principles and processes at work in political life. Classical political theory points to moral and philosophical truths, political realism stresses the role of self-interest and rational action, and behaviorism attempts to find scientific answers through empirical research and data analysis. Most political scientists specialize in one or more subfields such as political theory, U.S. government and politics, comparative politics, international relations, political economy, public administration, or public policy.

Politics matters. This simple truth was tragically illustrated by the rise of Nazism in Germany. The bad news is that sometimes war is necessary to defeat a monstrous threat to world order and humanity. The good news is that there are often political or diplomatic solutions to conflict and injustice in human affairs. It is this fact that makes the study of politics forever obligatory and essential.

SUMMARY OF CHAPTER 2

Governments seek to attain certain social and economic goals in accordance with some concept of the public good. How vigorously, diligently, or honestly, they pursue these goals depends on a number of variables, including the ideology they claim to embrace. An ideology is a logically consistent set of propositions about the public good.

We can classify ideologies as antigovernment (anarchism, libertarianism), right-wing (monarchism, fascism), or left-wing (revolutionary communism, Democratic Socialism, radical egalitarianism). U.S. politics is dominated by two relatively moderate tendencies that are both offshoots of classical liberalism, which stresses individual rights and limited government. It is surprisingly difficult to differentiate clearly between these two viewpoints, principally because so-called liberals and conservatives in the United States often share fundamental values and assumptions. Conservatives stress economic rights; liberals emphasize civil rights. Conservatives are often associated with money and business, on the one hand, and religious fundamentalism, on the other; liberals are often associated with labor, minorities, gays and lesbians, feminists, intellectuals, and college professors. However, these stereotypes can be misleading: not everybody in the business world is conservative, and not all college professors are liberal.

Liberals look to the future, believing progress will ensure a better life for all; conservatives look to the past for guidance in dealing with problems. Liberals believe in the essential decency and potential goodness of human beings; conservatives take a less charitable view. These differences are reflected in the divergent public policy aims of the two ideological groups.