The Concise Oxford Dictionary has more than one definition for politics. Each different definition however mentions authority or government. For example, “the art and science of government”. To understand politics we will need to understand government’s role. Government is the authority in society. It is the system by which a society is governed. This suggests that without government, society would be chaos?
A society can be ran in many different ways, for example, democracy, theocracy or autocracy. These are types of “government”. Each one of these ways is each quite different, but still in each one politics is involved. In every type of “government”, the person or people who hold authority were somehow “given” this authority. Politics decides who gets authority and how they get it. When the authority is allocated, politics decides how the governments should be conducted and what the government does with its authority. To conclude on what politics is, I think it could be put in a few sentences.
“What government does to hold society together.”
“Who gets what, when and how.” – Harold Laski.
“The resolution of conflict.”
Politics is sometimes described as “The Analysis of power”, but what is power? To understand politics do we need to understand power?
If you look power up in the Concise Oxford Dictionary, you will find that is has a lot of meanings, try, around 20. Already we can see that power is difficult to define. The first thing to do when looking to define power, is turn to the experts. Firstly Weber, he says the power falls into two areas, coercion and authority. This shows us that authority might not actually be power, but at least has something to do with it. Weber apart from dividing authority into three categories, states that authority is accepted because it is legitimate. A good example of this is that in England, parliaments decisions are excepted because they are regarded by society as lawful. His second area of power, coercion, is stated as being “not legitimate by those subject to it”. People ruling coercively, may use force to keep themselves in power. A good example of coercive power would be what the black people in South Africa suffered before the time of Nelson Mandella. So do we have power defined, according to one person we do, but not according to other people, who seem to have different ideas and theories on power.
One of these people was Karl Marx; Marx was a German economist who lived at the end of the 19th century. Marx believed that the Economic system determined the political system. He thought that the people who control the means of production, distribution and exchange were the people who held the power. So the power didn’t lie with any one person it lay with the people, with the attainment of a classless communist society.
There is however a theory of power completely different to Karl Marx’s. This theory of power is known as Elitism and was developed by two Italian Political scientists, Pareto and Mosca. They believed that power lay with an Elite over the powerless minority. An elite would be someone with supreme psychological characteristics; historical examples of elites are Adolph Hitler and Mussolini.
Another theory on power is that of pluralism. Robert Darhl developed the theory of pluralism; Darhl was an American social scientist. He believed that power was dispersed amongst different groups; society was the plurality of groups. All these groups compete for power and no group will dominate. This theory strongly revolved around politics and different political parties.
So to define power we have turned to the experts, 5 different experts and 4 different theories on power. Power is looking hard to define simply because it seems to be very multi-facetted. If we simplify, power can be coercive or non-coercive, but it can also fall into different areas depending on the society someone lives in. For example in England, we are “run” by a democratic government that is non-coercive. However in Iraq, the people live under an autocracy that is coercive. Both of these examples show power running a country, both types of power however are very different. One is a legitimate authority and the other is an Elite ruling a minority through coercion.
To conclude power is hard to define, as it can be different depending on a society and its government. We could relate this to a saying “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”, it could be argued that power is different according to whoever has the power. Power can be exercised in many different ways; it all depends on whoever “wields” it and the people it is being “wielded” at.
In my opinion Marx had the best theory, I do not believe however that it could ever work, but it was a good idea. This is because the person, who “runs” the communist state is always going to have the power, be it coercive or not. Good examples of this are communist Russia ran by Stalin or communist Cuba ran by Fidel Castro. It would be nice to believe that coercive power should never be needed and democracy existed world wide, but its not going to happen. Also is democracy the only answer, as with democracy there is always going to be a “minority” that is overruled, so at any one point, not everyone is going to be happy. To answer my own question I asked earlier “without government, society would be chaos?” yes, I think it would. I don’t feel qualified to state what would solve all the worlds’ political problems, but I do feel qualified to say that there is always going to be someone who is unhappy, so do we try and make them happy and make someone else unhappy, or do we just go with it and try and make as many people happy as possible and say “tough luck” to the minority?
