Lecture 1
Politics, Political Science & Political Philosophy
What is Politics?
David Miller:
Politics may be defined briefly as a process whereby a group of people, whose opinions or interests are initially divergent, reach collective decisions which are generally regarded as binding on the group, and enforced as common policy.
Max Weber:
As an assocation called political if and only if the enforcement of its order is carried out continually within a given territorial area by the application and threat of physical force on the part of the administrative staff.
Harold Lasswell:
Study of the shaping and sharing of power.
(Who gets What, When and How.)
Robert Dahl:
A system as any persistent pattern of human relationships that involves, to a significant extent, control, influence, power or authority.
David Easton:
The authoritative allocation of values.
What should be the Boundary of Politics?
An Organizational Approach:
Behaviors of individuals and groups in matters that are likely to affect the course of state governing. It is a restricted approach.
Major Drawbacks
Function and scope of state varies everywhere, implies that research agenda will also ridiculously vary everywhere.
Under many theoretical perspectives, the very nature of state governing does not necessarily differ from other kinds of power domination.
Such a separation of state and society will also reinforce the continuous existence of many social injustices.
Marx’s critiques: it justifies domination of capital and prevents the state’s rectification actions.
A Social Approach:
Interactions between individuals and groups that involves the power dimension. It is an extended approach.
Major Drawbacks
Over-extended, nearly covers everything.
Tends to completely overlap the scope of the discipline with that of sociology.
The danger of over-politicization and unlimited intrusion of private life, the example of Cultural Revolution.
Political Philosophy versus Political Science
1) Political Studies: From Philosophy to Science
The origin of western political studies often date back to Ancient Greece and also the tradition of political philosophy.
The ancient Greek thinkers asked ethical, prescriptive, and normative questions, with a key concern of what “should” rather than what “is”.
Until the end of Middle Ages, in his famous work “The Prince”, Machiavelli tried to study statecraft and draw conclusions from empirical observations of what people actually did at his time, it is frequently regarded as a large step of political studies from philosophy to science.
17th Century - Empiricism: Experience was the only basis of knowledge.
19th Century - Growing impact of “Positivism”: Study should strictly adopt the methodology of natural science.’
Difference between natural science and social science
Natural science studies a physical world, while social science studies a human where men have free will.
The origin of studying of politics concerned the building of an ideal society. It is not a disinterested quest for knowledge alone. It is a discipline that aims at improving human society and life. In this quest, ideals and knowledge are closely related with each other. Studying of politics is then an unique discipline with philosophy and science these two components together.