1. What is Politics?
An Introduction

2. To define the features of politics
Learning Objectives
To define the features of politics
To learn how politics has been understood by various thinkers and traditions

3. Defining politics 1
Politics, in its broadest sense, is the activity through which people make, preserve, and amend the general rules under which they live... Politics is thus inextricably linked to the phenomena of conflict and cooperation.
- Heywood, Politics (2007: 4)

4. Different views of politics
Politics as the art of government
Politics as public affairs
Politics as compromise and consensus
Politics as power and the distribution of resources

5. Politics as the art of government
Derived from polis (Greek city-state)
‘what concerns the state’/to study government/to study the exercise of authority
‘authoritative allocation of values’ (David Easton, 1979, 1981); associate with ‘policy’
Politics takes place within a polity, a system of social organization centred upon the machinery of government.

6. Politics as the art of government
‘political’ vs. ‘nonpolitical’
the phenomena of anti-politics
Niccolo Machiavelli (The Prince, 1531) developed a realistic account of politics (‘realpolitik’)
‘Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely’ (Lord Acton).

7. Politics as public affairs
Public (the state: apparatus of government; politics, commerce, work, art, culture, and so on)
Private (civil society: autonomous bodies, businesses, trade unions, clubs, families, and so on; family and domestic life)

8. Politics as compromise and consensus
‘that solution to the problem of order which chooses conciliation rather than violence and coercion’ (Crick, In Defence of Politcs,1962)
‘consensus politics’

9. Politics as power
Power, in its broadest sense, is the ability to achieve a desired outcome or the ‘power to’ do something.
In politics, power is usually thought of as a relationship:
- the ability to influence the behavior of others in a manner not of their choosing; or
- the ability to punish or reward (force or manipulation)

10. Politics as power
Politics is, in essence, power: the ability to achieve a desired outcome, through whatever means.
Politics is the struggle over scarce resources, and power is the means through which this struggle is conducted (Harold Laswell, Politics: Who Gets What, When, How?, 1936).
Advocates include feminists and Marxists

11. Politics as power... ‘Faces’ of power
Power as decision-making
Power as agenda-setting
Power as thought control

12. Points of Discussion:
Why has politics so often carried negative associations?
How could you defend politics as a worthwhile and ennobling activity?
Source: Heywood, A Politics 4th Ed. New York: Palgrave