Politics is a process by which collective decisions are made within groups. Although the term is generally applied to behavior within governments, politics is also observed in all human group interactions, including corporate, academic, and religious institutions. Sociologists generally use this meaning. A corporation is a legal entity (distinct from a natural person) that often has similar rights in law to those of a natural person. ... Plato is credited with the inception of academia: the body of knowledge, its development and transmission across generations. ... Fishers of men; Oil on panel by Adriaen van de Venne (1614) Religion (see etymology below) is commonly defined as a group of beliefs concerning the supernatural, sacred, or divine, and the moral codes, practices, values, institutions and rituals associated with such belief. ...

Politics is also defined as "the art and science of government."[1] Political science is the study of political behavior and examines the acquisition and application of power. Political science is a social science discipline that deals with the theory and practice of politics and the description and analysis of political systems and political behavior. ... Political power is a type of power held by a person or group in a society. ...

One theorist, Harold Lasswell, has defined politics as "who gets what, when, and how." This is a list of politics articles available for every country. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards and appeal to a wider international audience, this article may require cleanup. ... Political science is a social science discipline that deals with the theory and practice of politics and the description and analysis of political systems and political behavior. ... Political philosophy is the study of the fundamental questions about the state, government, politics, property, law and the enforcement of a legal code by authority: what they are, why they are needed, what makes a government legitimate, what rights and freedoms it should protect and why, what form it should... An ideology is an organized collection of ideas. ... The history of democracy traces back from its origins in prehistoric times to its reemergance from the 17th century to the present day. ... Direct democracy comprises a form of democracy and theory of civics wherein sovereignty was lodged in the assembly of all citizens. ... Representative democracy is a form of democracy founded on the exercise of popular sovereignty by the peoples representants. ... Participatory democracy is a broadly inclusive term for many kinds of consultative decision making which require consultation on important decisions by those who will carry out the decision. ... Soviet democracy is a form of democracy in which workers elect representatives in the organs of power called soviets (councils). ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... A referendum (plural: referendums or referenda) or plebiscite is a direct vote in which an entire electorate is asked to either accept or reject a particular proposal. ... The Elections and Parties Series Democracy Liberal democracy History of democracy Representative democracy Representation Voting Voting systems Elections Elections by country Elections by calender Electoral systems Politics Politics by country Political campaigns Political science Political philosophy Related topics Political parties Parties by country Parties by name Parties by ideology Representative... Voting is a method of decision making wherein a group such as a meeting or an electorate attempts to gauge its opinion—usually as a final step following discussions or debates. ... Announcement of elections in Brunate (near Como), Italy A voting system is a process that allows a group of individuals to choose between a number of options, and determines the preferred or winning option based on the number of votes each option receives. ... An election is a decision making process whereby people vote for preferred political candidates or parties to act as representatives in government. ... Elections by country gives information on elections. ... This electoral calendar lists the national/federal direct elections in the countries listed in the list of countries. ... A political party is an organization that seeks to attain political power within a government, usually by participating in electoral campaigns. ... This article is 200KB or more in size. ... Welcome to the index of political parties, an alphabetical list of (mainly) present-day political parties listed in the list of political parties. ... This is a list of political parties around the world by ideology. ... This is an overview of the ideologies of parties. ... Harold Dwight Lasswell (February 13, 1902 — December 18, 1978) was a leading American political scientist and communications theorist. ...

A natural state

In 1651, Thomas Hobbes published his most famous work, Leviathan, in which he proposed a model of early human development to justify the creation of a government. Hobbes described an ideal state of nature wherein every person had equal right to every resource in nature and was free to use any means to acquire those resources. He claimed that such an arrangement created a “war of all against all” (bellum omnium contra omnes). Further, he noted that men would enter into a social contract and would give up absolute rights for certain protections. Hobbes made a second claim: that the solution to the aggression problem was a centralized authoritarian state, which he called "Leviathan." Thomas Hobbes (April 5, 1588–December 4, 1679) was an English philosopher, whose famous 1651 book Leviathan set the agenda for nearly all subsequent Western political philosophy. ... Frontispiece of Leviathan Leviathan was a book written in 1651 by Thomas Hobbes, is one of the most famous and influential books of political philosophy. ... State of nature is a term in political philosophy used to describe the hypothetical or empirical condition of humanity when or if government did not exist. ... Bellum omnium contra omnes is Latin for the war of all against all. ... Social contract theory (or contractarianism) is a concept used in philosophy, political science and sociology to denote an implicit agreement within a state regarding the rights and responsibilities of the state and its citizens, or more generally a similar concord between a group and its members, or between individuals. ... A state is an organized political community, occupying a territory, and possessing internal and external sovereignty, which successfully claims the monopoly of the use of force. ... Frontispiece of Leviathan Leviathan was a book written in 1651 by Thomas Hobbes, is one of the most famous and influential books of political philosophy. ...

While it appears that social cooperation and dominance hierarchies predate human societies, Hobbes’s model illustrates a rationale for the creation of societies (polities). A dominance hierarchy is an organizational form by which individuals within a community control the distribution of resources (goods and services) within the community. ... A society is a group of people living or working together. ... Polity is a general term that refers to political organization of a group. ...

Early history

V.G. Childe describes the transformation of human society that took place around 6000 BCE as an urban revolution. Among the features of this new type of civilization were the institutionalization of social stratification, non-agricultural specialised crafts (including priests and lawyers), taxation, and writing. All of which require clusters of densely populated settlements - city-states. Vere Gordon Childe (April 14, 1892 - October 19, 1957) was an Australian archaeologist, perhaps best known for his excavation of the unique Neolithic site of Skara Brae in Orkney and for his Marxist views which informed his thinking about prehistory. ... (7th millennium BC – 6th millennium BC – 5th millennium BC – other millennia) Events c. ... A city-state is a region controlled exclusively by a city. ...

The word "Politics" is derived from the Greek word for city-state, "Polis". Corporate, religious, academic and every other polity, especially those constrained by limited resources, contain dominance hierarchy and therefore politics. Politics is most often studied in relation to the administration of governments. A polis (πολις) — plural: poleis (πολεις) — is a city, or a city-state. ...

The oldest form of government was tribal organization. Rule by elders was supplanted by monarchy, often aided by military conquest, led to a system of Feudalism as an arrangement where a single family dominated the political affairs of a community. Monarchies have existed in one form or another for the past 5000 years of human history. A monarchy, (from the Greek monos, one, and archein, to rule) is a form of government that has a monarch as Head of State. ... Roland pledges his fealty to Charlemagne; from a manuscript of a chanson de geste. ...

Definitions

• Power is the ability to impose one's will on another. It implies a capacity for force, i.e violence, as well as coercion and influence.
• Authority is the right to enforce laws, to exact obedience, to command, to determine, or to judge.
• A government is the body that has the authority to make and enforce rules or laws.
• Legitimacy is an attribute of government gained through the acquisition and application of power in accordance with recognized or accepted standards or principles.
• Sovereignty is the ability of a government to exert control over its territory free from outside influence.

Political power is a type of power held by a person or group in a society. ... In politics, authority generally refers to the ability to make laws, independent of the power to enforce them, or the ability to permit something. ... The word legitimacy comes from the Latin word legitimare and it has two uses: Legitimacy (political science) is whether or not people accept the validity of a law or ruling or the validity of a governing regime. ... ...

Theoretical view of political power

Many questions surround the political notion of power with both positive and negative aspects attached to it. Generally, power is considered integral in politics and is the subject of a great deal of debate and definitions have evolved over time. Many academics define political power by referring to various academic disciplines including politics, sociology, group psychology, economics, and other facets of society. The multiple notions of political power that are put forth range from conventional views that simply revolve around the actions of politicians to those who view political power as an insidious form of institutionalized social control - most notably "anarchists" and "radical capitalists". The main views of political power revolve around normative, post-modern, and sociological perspectives. Anarchism originated as a term of abuse first used against the working class sans-culottes during the French Revolution. ... Anarcho-capitalism refers to an anti-statist philosophy that embraces capitalism as one of its foundational principles. ... In philosophy, normative is usually contrasted with descriptive or explanatory when describing types of theories, beliefs, or statements. ... Postmodernism (sometimes abbreviated pomo) is a term applied to a wide-ranging set of developments in critical theory, philosophy, architecture, art, literature, and culture, which are generally characterized as either emerging from, in reaction to, or superseding, modernism. ... Sociology is the study of the social lives of humans, groups and societies. ...

The Normative 'Faces of Power' Debate

The faces of power 'debate' has coalesced into a viable conception of three dimensions of power including decision-making, agenda-setting, and preference-shaping. The decision-making dimension was first put forth by Robert Dahl, who advocated the notion that political power is based in the formal political arena and is measured through voting patterns and the decisions made by politicians. This view was seen by many as simplistic and a second dimension to the notion of political power was added by academics Peter Bachrach and Morton Baratz involving agenda-setting. Bachrach and Baratz viewed power as involving both the formal political arena and behind the scenes agenda-setting by elite groups who could be either politicians and/or others (such as industrialists, campaign contributors, special interest groups and so on), often with a hidden agenda that most of the public may not be aware of. The third dimension of power was added by British academic Steven Lukes who felt that even with this second dimension, some other traits of political power needed to be addressed through the concept of 'preference-shaping'. This third dimension is inspired by many Neo-Gramscian views such as cultural hegemony and deals with how civil society and the general public have their preferences shaped for them by those in power through the use of propaganda or the media. Ultimately, this third dimension holds that the general public may not be aware of what decisions are actually in their interest due to the invisible power of elites who work to distort their perceptions. Critics of this view claim that such notions are themselves elitist, which Lukes then clearly admits as one problem of this view and yet clarifies that as long as those who make claims that preferences are being shaped explain their own interests etc., there is room for more transparency. Robert A. Dahl (b. ... Professor Steven Michael Lukes, D.Phil. ... Neo-Gramscianism is a relatively new approach to the study of International Relations (IR) and the Global Political Economy (GPE), breaking the decades-old stalemate between the so-called realist schools of thought, and the liberal theories. ... Cultural hegemony is the concept that a diverse culture can be ruled or dominated by one group or class, that everyday practices and shared beliefs provide the foundation for complex systems of domination. ... Civil society or civil institutions refers to the totality of voluntary civic and social organizations or institutions which form the basis of a functioning society as opposed to the force backed structures of a state (regardless of that states political system). ...

The Postmodern Challenge of Normative Views of Power

Some within the postmodern and post-structuralist field, claim that power is something that is not in the hands of the few and is rather dispersed throughout society in various ways and that power relationships are part of everyday life. This is part of French philosopher Michel Foucault's view, which he terms the microphysics of power and is part of a European debate over how to define power. Foucault seeks to convey a questioning of authority in various ways and also attempts to illustrate the repressive nature of power through societal controls which include institutional indoctrination (schools), surveillance (the police-state), and defining normal and abnormal behavior so as to stamp-out any challenges to the status quo. This view of power treads a line that leans more towards institutions as the basis of societal control (see New institutionalism) and ignores certain aspects of agency and ideational agendas. Power, according to Foucault, is 'ubiquitous' (everywhere in society) and cannot be easily measured or critiqued without a great deal of context. Critics such as Jurgen Habermas and Noam Chomsky charge that such views by Foucault and his followers are nihilistic and even supportive of conservative and Social Darwinism views of society and defend the status quo of inegalitarian societies, which Foucault claims is a misreading of both his intent and conclusions which are that power must be questioned in all of its forms and not simply those aspects that some might view as inegalitarian since even humanism can be a mask for those seeking power. Ultimately, this concept of power has helped political analysis to question both itself and the societal controls that permeate all aspects of society, but the ambiguity of the post-modern challenge has left many to use the methodology sparingly since measuring power from a post-structuralist perspective remains somewhat problematic."how can we help it that power likes to walk on crooked legs?" -Nietzsche Postmodernity (also called post-modernity or the postmodern condition) is a term used by philosophers, social scientists, art critics and social critics to refer to aspects of contemporary art, culture, economics and social conditions that are the result of the unique features of late 20th century and early 21st century... Post-structuralism is a body of work that followed in the wake of structuralism, and sought to understand the Western world as a network of structures, as in structuralism, but in which such structures are ordered primarily by local, shifting differences (as in deconstruction) rather than grand binary oppositions and... Michel Foucault Michel Foucault (October 15, 1926 – June 26, 1984) was a French philosopher who held a chair at the Collège de France, which he gave the title The History of Systems of Thought. ... New institutionalism is a social theory that focuses on developing a sociological view of institutions, the way they interact and the effects of institutions on society. ... Look up Agency in Wiktionary, the free dictionary In philosophy, law, and other fields, agency is the status of an agent. ... Ideation is the process of forming and relating ideas. ... Jürgen Habermas Jürgen Habermas (born June 18, 1929 in Düsseldorf, Germany) is a philosopher and social theorist in the tradition of critical theory. ... Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is the Institute Professor Emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. ... This article is about the Russian cultural and political movement. ... Conservatism or political conservatism is any of several historically related political philosophies or political ideologies. ... Social Darwinism is a term used to describe a style or trend in social theory which holds that Darwins theory of evolution of biological traits in a population by natural selection can also be applied to derive an ethic and underpin a political ideology and to critique human social...

Pragmatic view of power

Samuel Gompers’ often paraphrased maxim,"Reward your friends and punish your enemies," hints at two of the five types of power recognized by social psychologists: incentive power (the power to reward) and coercive power (the power to punish). Arguably the other three grow out of these two. Samuel Gompers (January 27, 1850–December 13, 1924) was the long-time leader of the American Federation of Labor who helped define the structure and the economic and political goals of the American labor movement. ... This article is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ...

Legitimate power, the power of the policeman or the referee, is the power given to an individual by a recognized authority to enforce standards of behavior. Legitimate power is similar to coercive power in that unacceptable behavior is punished by fine or penalty. Some political ideologies, notably anarchism, deny the existence of legitimate power. Anarcho-capitalists give legitimate power to property owners and private arbitrators but do not grant it to the coercive state. Anarchism originated as a term of abuse first used against the working class sans-culottes during the French Revolution. ... Anarcho-capitalism refers to an anti-statist philosophy that embraces capitalism as one of its foundational principles. ...

Referent power is bestowed upon individuals by virtue of accomplishment or attitude. Fulfillment of the desire to feel similar to a celebrity or a hero is the reward for obedience.

Expert power springs from education or experience. Following the lead of an experienced coach is often rewarded with success. Expert power is conditional to the circumstances. A brain surgeon is no help when your pipes are leaking.

Authority and legitimacy

Max Weber identified three sources of legitimacy for authority known as (tripartite classification of authority). He proposed three reasons why people followed the orders of those who gave them: Maximilian Weber (April 21, 1864 – June 14, 1920) was a German political economist and sociologist who is considered one of the founders of the modern, antipositivistic study of sociology and public administration. ... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ...

Traditional

Traditional authorities receive loyalty because they continue and support the preservation of existing values, the status quo. Traditional authority has the longest history. Patriarchal (and more rarely Matriarchal) societies gave rise to hereditary monarchies where authority was given to descendants of previous leaders. Followers submit to this authority because "we've always done it that way." Examples of traditional authoritarians include kings and queens. Traditional authority (also known as traditional domination) is a form of leadership in which the authority of an organization or a ruling regime is largely tied to the tradition. ...

Charismatic

Charismatic authority grows out of the personal charm or the strength of an individual personality (see cult of personality for the most extreme version). Charismatic regimes are often short-lived, seldom outliving the charismatic figure that leads them. This article needs cleanup. ... Joseph Stalin is often credited with creating the first modern-day cult of personality. ...

Examples of Charismatic regimes include: Hitler, Napoleon, Mao, and Fidel Castro. Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler (April 20, 1889 – April 30, 1945, standard German pronunciation in the IPA) was the Führer (leader) of the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazi Party) and of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. ... For other uses, see Napoleon (disambiguation). ... (help· info) (December 26, 1893 – September 9, 1976; Mao Tse-tung in Wade-Giles) was the chairman of the Politburo of the Communist Party of China from 1943 and the chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China from 1945 until his death. ... Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (pron. ...

Legal-rational

Legal-Rational authorities receive their ability to compel behavior by virtue of the office that they hold. It is the authority that demands obedience to the office rather than the office holder. Modern democracies are examples of legal-rational regimes. People also abide by legal-rational authority because it makes sense to do so for the greater good of society. Rational-legal authority (also known as rational authority, legal authority, rational domination, legal domination) is a form of leadership in which the authority of an organization or a ruling regime is largely tied to legal rationality, legal legitimacy and bureaucracy. ...

References

• Samuel Gompers; “Men of Labor! Be Up and Doing,” editorial, American Federationist, May 1906, p. 319

See also

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