‘Man’, the philosopher Aristotle asserted, ‘is a political animal.’ What he meant is that humans are by nature social, and tend to live and work together in groups, and in order to function properly, these groups need to have an underlying political system. Family groups have, over time, developed into tribal communities, villages, towns and eventually cities and states. In order for the members of these societies to function as a unit, there had to be some organization, and an authority to ensure the well-being of the group.
In primitive family groups – as with pack animals – the ruler was often the patriarch, the alpha male. As these groups became larger and more sophisticated, so too did the systems used to organize and regulate them; in addition to the single leader there developed ruling families and councils of elders. Some rulers inherited their position; others were appointed for their leadership qualities. Even before the founding of the first great civilizations, the elements of politics had begun to evolve.
Civilization came with the establishment of settled communities – towns and cities, and eventually nation states and empires. For these societies to thrive, they needed a more formal system of organization than the absolute rule of a tribal leader. This required formulating rules and regulations, and the means to enforce them – the business of government. Among other things, governments have the authority to make and enforce laws, collect taxes and order military forces. Who acquires and administers this power is the business of politics.
Modern societies are more often than not governed by a group of people. The notion of leadership runs deep in the human psyche, however, and there are still some states in the world ruled by a single leader, whether a benign monarch or tyrannical dictator. Even democracies with governments of elected representatives feel the need for a symbolic figurehead, and there is almost invariably a head of state in the form of a monarch, president or prime minister.
The larger and more sophisticated a society becomes, the more complex its organizational structures tend to be. Small tribal groups consisted simply of a single leader and his people – the ruler and the ruled – but modern nation states and even local communities have outgrown this simple model. Hierarchies of various sorts have evolved, with different levels of power and authority. A medieval monarch, for example, sat at the top of the pecking order, but between him and the ordinary serfs were the noble families of the aristocracy, given some power by the king in return for certain favours.
The pattern of hierarchies continues today in the pyramid-like structures of governments, with citizens forming the base, and layers of government such as civil servants, parliament and ministers above them, and at the apex the head of state. The effectiveness of such a political hierarchy is determined by how much power is imposed by any level on those below, and how much authority is given by the lower levels to those above.
It is something of a truism to say that political thought had its origins in Ancient Greece, and that classical Athenians ‘invented democracy’. But it would be more accurate to say that in the 6th century BCE, Athens had become the centre of a prosperous city-state, with an educated urban population. Philosophical debate flourished, including discussions of how the state should be governed, and in 510 BCE the ruling tyrant was deposed and political power was given to the people. Or, at least, some of the people.
Decisions about the running of the state were made by popular assembly, which all eligible male citizens were encouraged to attend. The fledgling democracy, the first of its kind, inspired ordinary citizens to consider what sort of society they would like to live in, and how it should be administered. At the same time, Athens fostered an atmosphere of intellectual enquiry, producing philosophers including Socrates, Plato and Aristotle – from which evolved the beginnings of political philosophy.
One of the first questions for the early Greek political philosophers was: what is the purpose of government? Until then, it had been taken for granted that a community should have a leader but, now power had been transferred to the people, Athenian thinkers began to ask what sort of society and what kind of government would be best. Plato, in his book Republic, argued that the role of government is to ensure that citizens are able to pursue a ‘good life’ – not simply one of pleasure or happiness, but also a virtuous one.
The only people with the insight needed to recognize and understand the virtues that constitute a good life, and the wisdom to put them into practice, however, are philosophers. Ordinary people have only a shadowy knowledge of these concepts and require guidance to lead a good life. This, Plato said, is the role of government, and the only people qualified to provide it are philosophers: government should therefore be in the hands of a guardian class of ‘philosopher-kings’.
Plato’s pupil Aristotle was altogether more methodical than his mentor in his approach to the question of government. First of all, he tried to determine all possible forms of government and then assess the merits of each to determine the optimum form. Aristotle used two criteria: who rules? and for whose benefit? In answer to the second question, he identified two possible answers. Either the government was in the interest of the state as a whole (what he called true government), or in the interest of those in power (corrupt government). As for the first question, he thought government could be by an individual ruler, a small ruling elite or the people. Aristotle settled on three possible forms of ‘true government’ (royalty, aristocracy or constitutional polity) and three ‘corrupt governments’ (tyranny, oligarchy and democracy). Of these, he considered government by the people for the common good as the most desirable, but distinguished this from his second-best choice – democracy – government by the people in their own individual interest.
Politics, contrary to the impression most people have, is not confined to the activities of political parties and the business of government. While government makes and administers the laws affecting society as a whole, there are also organizations, associations, communities and networks – separate from commercial business and the state – that form around a common interest or activity.
These social groups operate in the sphere between the individual and the state known as civil society. They include religious and charitable organizations, sporting and social associations, and local community groups, but also movements with more specific objectives. These are often referred to as NGOs (non-governmental organizations), and many of them campaign to influence government policy on specific issues, such as the environment, health or human rights. Some, such as Greenpeace and Oxfam, have become large international organizations, while others exert only local influence.
The democracies of classical Greece and Rome were comparatively short-lived, and when their republics reverted to monarchies, philosophical discussion of different forms of government all but disappeared. The legitimacy of royal rule was eventually challenged, and with the Enlightenment came a new interest in political philosophy. The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes set the agenda by asking the fundamental question of why we need government at all. How, he asked, would we humans live in a ‘state of nature’? Having lived through the brutal English Civil War, he had a cynical view of human nature, and believed that left to their own devices humans would be in a state of continual conflict, and life would be ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.’ Government is necessary to prevent us reverting to this state of nature, and according to Hobbes should be in the form of an authoritarian ruler. Other political philosophers, such as John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, had a less jaundiced view of human nature, and the forms of government best suited to it.
Direct democracy, such as the government of classical Athens, is based on the idea that the people can all play an active part in the political process, each having an equal say in determining the rules governing their society. But while it is possible to call regular meetings of all citizens to decide matters in small communities, it is not a practicable system for governing a city, let alone a nation.
To overcome this problem, groups of citizens were given the right to elect someone to represent their views and act on their behalf, in meetings with representatives of other groups. From these meetings of representatives developed a more complex system of representative democracy, in which local areas elect representatives to regional assemblies and to national parliaments. The idea of direct democracy has not been completely superseded, however. On some issues of particular importance, the public is consulted as a whole and all eligible voters are asked for their opinion in a referendum.
Authority and legitimacy; power and accountability
The majority of political thinkers (with the notable exception of anarchists, see here) have acknowledged the necessity of some form of government. But a government can only rule effectively if its power is recognized and respected by the citizens. A government must have authority, but this alone does not make it a legitimate government – tyrannical dictators, for example, impose rule by force. In contrast, an elected government given a mandate by the electorate has effectively been granted the power to rule.
What’s more, if there are regular elections, or some other means of removing a government or its members from office, there is a system of accountability. The great majority of political systems worldwide are based on these principles of authority, legitimacy and accountability. The differences between them are a matter of degree – the amount of power granted by the people to their government, how much their authority is open to abuse, and how easily they can be removed.
The legitimate authority to rule within a territory that a government or ruler has is sometimes referred to as sovereignty: the right to govern. In the ancient world, an emperor was acknowledged as the absolute ruler, or sovereign power, and this concept was later transferred to the authority granted by a people to its government. But the notion of sovereignty has wider implications in international affairs. An agreement reached by European leaders in the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 established an important principle of sovereign government: that it should be allowed to have authority over its own territory and people without interference from outside. A sovereign government should be free to make and enforce laws within its own territories, and no outsider should attempt to disrupt a sovereign government, nor attempt to enter or cross any of its sovereign territory without permission. Opinions of what constitutes legitimate authority differ widely, however, as do justifications for interference in the internal affairs of other states.
In early societies, rulers were often both spiritual and political leaders, and the connection has persisted in some to this day. Medieval Europe was effectively ruled by the Christian church, led by a Pope and monarchs with a ‘divine right’ to rule; the Prophet Muhammad established an Islamic Empire as well as the religion of Islam. Religious differences have also shaped national borders – as when Orthodox and Catholic churches divided, in the partition of India, and the creation of the state of Israel — and have been the ostensible grounds for conflict. From the Renaissance period onwards, humanist ideas came to the fore, the old monarchies lost power to more democratic governments, and religion was seen as something separate from politics. Many new republics established in the 18th and 19th centuries were avowedly secular states (while advocating religious tolerance) and in some communist states of the 20th century religion was outlawed. Nevertheless, religious belief is a potent force – some nations have an official state religion; others, such as the UK, have an established Church.
Political ideologies: left and right
The Age of Enlightenment brought with it a renewed interest in political philosophy, as increasingly nations rejected monarchical models and sought to establish new forms of government. Inevitably, there was a wide range of opinions of how this was to be best achieved, and a number of distinct political ideologies developed. Some thinkers advocated radical changes, while others advised retaining tried and tested models. During the French Revolution, members of the parliament who supported the monarchy of the Ancien Régime sat to the right of the president, and those who sought a democratic republic on the left. This arrangement gave rise to the terms right-wing and left-wing to describe the conservative and progressive political movements respectively. Broadly speaking, the right wing favours policies based on protection of the freedoms of the individual, private ownership and minimal taxes and intervention. In contrast, the left wing is generally in favour of collectivity, equality, public ownership and the provision of social welfare through taxation.
Political ideologies: the political spectrum
The classification of political ideologies as either left- or right-wing, or at least as being at some point on a scale that ranges from communism at one end and fascism at the other, is, of course, an oversimplification. The criteria for determining a place on the political spectrum are both economic and social, and a political movement may be socially conservative and economically progressive, or vice versa.
Another factor that should perhaps be taken into account is the degree to which a political party dictates and interferes in the activities of the people – how authoritarian or libertarian it is. In the modern world, liberal democracies of one kind or another are the norm, with some form of social welfare, as well as a more or less laissez-faire attitude to free-market capitalism, and the predominant political ideologies are clustered around the centre of the left–right scale. The differences between them can be more clearly seen if each aspect of their policies is examined separately.
