KEY CONCEPTS: THEIR MEANING AND SIGNIFICANCE
ABSOLUTISM
Absolutism is the theory or practice of absolute government. Government is ‘absolute’ in the sense that it possesses unfettered power: government cannot be constrained by a body external to itself. The most prominent manifestation of absolute government is the absolute monarchy. However, there is no necessary connection between monarchy and absolute government. Unfettered power can be placed in the hands of the monarch, but it can also be vested in a collective body such as the supreme legislature. Absolutism nevertheless differs from modern versions of dictatorship, notably totalitarianism. Whereas absolutist regimes aspire to a monopoly of political power, usually achieved by excluding the masses from politics, totalitarianism involves the establishment of ‘total power’ through the politicization of every aspect of social and personal existence. Absolutism thus differs significantly from, for example, fascism.
Significance
Absolutism was the dominant political form in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It was usually linked to the claim that sovereignty, representing unchallengeable and indivisible legal authority, resided in the monarchy. Absolutist rule was justified by both rationalist and theological theories. Rationalist theories of absolutism, such as those of Jean Bodin (1530–96) and Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), advanced the belief that only absolute government can guarantee order and social stability. Divided sovereignty or challengeable power is therefore a recipe for chaos and disorder. Theological theories of absolutism were based on the doctrine of divine right, according to which the absolute control a monarch exercises over his or her subjects derives from, and is analogous to, the power of God over His creation.
However, absolutist theories are now widely regarded as politically redundant and ideologically objectionable. They are politically redundant because the advance of constitutionalism and representation has fragmented power and resulted in a strengthening of checks and balances, and because, where dictatorship has survived, it has assumed a quite different political character. It is ideologically objectionable because absolutism serves as a cloak for tyranny and arbitrary government, and is, by definition, irreconcilable with ideas such as individual rights and democratic accountability. Nevertheless, a form of constitutional absolutism can be seen to survive in political systems based on respect for the principle of parliamentary sovereignty.
ACCOUNTABILITY
Accountability means answerability; it implies a duty to explain one’s conduct and be open to criticism by another. Accountability requires that the duties, powers and functions of government bodies are defined in such a way that the performance of subordinate ones can be monitored and evaluated by ‘higher’ bodies. In this sense, accountability can operate only in a context of constitutionalism; being accountable does not mean being subject to arbitrary authority or capricious punishment. However, accountability may also amount to a weak form of responsibility, since it establishes a duty to answer and explain one’s conduct, but not necessarily to bear guilt and accept punishment.
Significance
Accountability is an important feature of limited government, effective policy-making and democracy. It limits government power by establishing mechanisms of political control through which one institution oversees the working and performance of another. It can promote the quality of public policy by ensuring that policy proposals are carefully scrutinized and political performance is rigorously monitored. When this is achieved through regular and competitive elections, it amounts to a system of public control, public accountability being the practical face of democratic rule. However, accountability is effective only under certain circumstances. These include that the mechanisms for monitoring performance are rigorous; that ‘higher’ institutions or bodies have sufficient access to information to make critical and informed judgements; and that appropriate sanctions can be applied in the event of blunders or under-performance. The main drawback of accountability is that it may constrain independent judgement and action. For example, the accountability of civil servants to ministers can lead to politicization and allow bureaucratic power to be harnessed to the needs of the government of the day.
ANARCHISM
Anarchism is an ideology that is defined by the central belief that political authority in all its forms, and especially in the form of the state, is both evil and unnecessary (anarchy literally means ‘without rule’). Anarchists believe that the state is evil because, as a repository of sovereign, compulsory and coercive authority, it is an offence against the principles of freedom and equality, the core value of anarchism being unrestricted personal autonomy. The state and the accompanying institutions government and law are therefore rejected as corrupt and corrupting. However, the belief that the state is unnecessary is no less important to anarchism. Anarchists reject ‘political’ order but have considerable faith in ‘natural’ order and spontaneous social harmony, ultimately underpinned by optimistic assumptions about human nature. Government, in other words, is not the solution to the problem of order, but its cause.
Nevertheless, the anarchist preference for a stateless society in which free individuals manage their own affairs through voluntary agreement and cooperation has been developed on the basis of two rival traditions: socialist communitarianism and liberal individualism. Anarchism can thus be thought of as a point of intersection between socialism and liberalism, the point at which each ideology generates anti-statist conclusions. Anarchism has therefore been thought of as a combination of ‘ultra-socialism’ and ‘ultra-liberalism’, taking the form, respectively, of collectivist anarchism and individualist anarchism. Collectivist anarchism (sometimes called ‘classical’ anarchism or ‘social’ anarchism) is rooted in the idea of social solidarity, or what Pyotr Kropotkin (1842–1921) called ‘mutual aid’, the belief that the natural and proper relationship among people is one of sympathy, affection and harmony. Collectivist anarchists have typically stressed the importance of social equality and common ownership, supporting Pierre-Joseph Proudhon’s (1809–65) famous assertion that ‘Property is theft’, most radically expressed in the form of anarchocommunism. Individualist anarchism is based on the idea of the sovereign individual, the belief that individual conscience and the pursuit of self-interest should not be constrained by any collective body or public authority. Individualist anarchism overlaps with libertarianism and is usually linked to a strong belief in the market as a self-regulating mechanism, most obviously manifest in the form of anarcho-capitalism.
Significance
Anarchism is unusual among political ideologies in that it has never succeeded in winning power, at least at a national level. As no society or nation has been remodelled according to anarchist principles, it is tempting to regard anarchism as an ideology of lesser significance. As a political movement, anarchism has suffered from three major drawbacks. First, its goal, the overthrow of the state and all forms of political authority, is often considered to be simply unrealistic. The most common criticism of anarchism is that it is an example of utopianism in its negative sense, in that it places excessive faith in ‘human goodness’ or in the capacity of social institutions, such as the market or social ownership, to maintain order and stability. Second, in viewing government as corrupt and corrupting, anarchists have rejected the conventional means of political activism, such as forming political parties, standing for election and seeking public office, and have relied instead on the willingness and capacity of the masses to engage in spontaneous rebellion. Third, anarchism does not constitute a single, coherent set of political ideas: apart from anti-statism, anarchists disagree profoundly about the nature of an anarchic society and particularly about property rights and economic organisation.
However, the significance of anarchism is perhaps less that it has provided an ideological basis for acquiring and retaining political power, and more that it has challenged. and thereby fertilized, other political creeds. Anarchists have highlighted the coercive and destructive nature of political power, and in so doing have countered statist tendencies within other ideologies, notably liberalism, socialism and conservatism. In this sense, anarchism has had growing influence on modern political thought. Both the New Left and New Right, for instance, have exhibited libertarian tendencies, which bear the imprint of anarchist thinking. Indeed, the continuing importance of anarchism is perhaps merely concealed by its increasingly diverse character. In addition to, and in some ways in place of, established political and class struggles, anarchists address issues that range from ecology, transport and urban development to sexual relations, and they have been in the forefront in the campaign against neoliberal or ‘corporate’ globalization. To argue that anarchism is irrelevant because it has long since lost the potential to become a mass movement perhaps misses the point. As the world becomes increasingly complex and fragmented, it may be that it is mass politics itself that is dead.
ANARCHY
Anarchy literally means ‘without rule’, the absence of a supreme or sovereign power. In domestic politics, anarchy suggests there is no authority higher than the individual (or, possibly, the group). In international politics, anarchy suggests there is no authority higher than the nation-state. The term nevertheless generally carries heavily pejorative connotations, implying chaos, disorder and, not uncommonly, violence. In sharp contrast, within anarchism, anarchy is not only viewed as compatible with order, but it is taken to be the very foundation of stable and peaceful existence.
Significance
The concept of anarchy has played an important role in both mainstream political theory and international relations theory. In the former, it has been used to establish the legitimacy of the state and provide a basis for political obligation. Social-contract theorists, dating back to Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) and John Locke (1632–1704), have argued that citizens should behave as though the state had arisen out of a voluntary agreement, or social contract, made by individuals who recognized that only the establishment of a sovereign power could safeguard them from the insecurity, disorder and brutality of the ‘state of nature’ (a stateless or anarchic society). Without a state, individuals abuse, exploit and enslave one another; but with a state, order and civilized existence are guaranteed and liberty is protected. The obligation to obey and respect the state thus arises, ultimately, from self-interest and the awareness that anarchy would degenerate into a ‘civil war of each against all’ (Hobbes).
In a tradition that can be traced back to Thucydides (c. 460–406 bce), such thinking about the link between anarchy and disorder has been applied to relations between societies and not merely within societies, becoming a major component of international relations theory through the influence of realism. It nevertheless gained greater prominence from the 1970s onwards through the rise of neorealism or ‘structural realism’. Neorealists shifted their attention from the state to the international system, and placed primary emphasis on the implications of anarchy. The characteristics of international life were thus taken to stem from the fact that states (and other actors) operate within a domain that has no formal central authority. Neorealists argue that international anarchy necessarily tends towards tension, conflict and the unavoidable possibility of war, for two main reasons. In the first place, as states are separate, autonomous and formally equal political units, they must ultimately rely on their own resources to realize their interest. International anarchy therefore results in a system of ‘self-help’, because states cannot rely on anyone else to ‘take care of them’. Second, relationships between states are characterized by uncertainty and suspicion. This is best explained through the security dilemma. Uncertainty about motives therefore forces states to treat all other states as enemies, meaning that permanent insecurity is the inescapable consequence of living in conditions of anarchy.
ANIMAL RIGHTS
Animal rights are rights to which all animals, or certain categories of animals, are entitled. The idea underpinning animal rights is that the grounds for allocating rights to humans also applies to some or all non-human animals, and to deny rights to the latter amounts to ‘speciesism’, an arbitrary and irrational prejudice, akin to racism or sexism. As such, animal rights differ from ‘special’ rights, such as women’s rights and minority rights, which belong only to a specific group, and are based on the particular needs and interests of that group. A distinction should nevertheless be drawn between the notion of animal welfare and the more radical idea of animal rights. Animal welfare reflects an altruistic concern for the well-being of other species, but does not necessarily place them on the same level as humans. To view all or some animals as rights-holders endows them with a moral status in their own right, and so goes beyond the desire to treat animals with dignity and respect, which stems from human moral sensibilities, notably compassion. The latter position may, at times, be compatible with killing and eating animals, or holding them captive, actions that would clearly be ruled out by the former position.
Significance
The notion of animal rights surfaced in the early 1960s, alongside burgeoning interest in ‘green’ or environment issues. It gained particular prominence through the growth of the animal liberation movement (sometimes called the animal rights movement), which embraces a form of deep ecologism that extols the virtues of ‘bio-equality’ and rejects any form of anthropocentrism (human-centredness). The case for animal rights was put forward by Tom Regan (2004). In his view, all creatures that are ‘the subject of a life’ qualify for rights. This implies that, as the right to life is the most fundamental of rights, the killing of an animal, however painless, is as morally indefensible as the killing of a human being. Regan acknowledges, however, that in some cases rights are invested in human beings on very different grounds, notably that they, unlike animals, are capable of rational thought and moral judgement. Rights such as freedom of speech and freedom of worship, as well as the right to education or to political participation, would thus seem bizarre if they were invested in animals. Others nevertheless point out that, as we learn more about the capacity of higher primates in particular to reason and use language, the moral distinction between humans and animals becomes blurred.
Critics of animal rights tend to adopt one of two lines of attack. This first is that once we allow that the doctrine of rights can jump the species barrier, it is difficult to see how it can subsequently be confined. If the distinction between humans and animals is called into question, how adequate are the distinctions between mammals and fish, and between animals and trees and plants? Apart from anything else, if living is a sufficient basis for having, at a minimum, a right to life, it is difficult to see how the human species could long survive, or how rights could be denied to viruses and bacteria, say. The second line of attack is that, as human constructs, rights have been devised specifically to address predicaments that confront humans as morally self-conscious creatures, something that does not apply in the case of other species, despite the capacity they may possess to think and communicate. How meaningful is it, for example, to treat animals as rights holders when they are unaware that they possess such rights, have no ability to demand their rights, and cannot, in any reasonable sense, be expected to fulfil the duties that their rights may entail?
ANTI-POLITICS
Anti-politics refers to a rejection of, and/or alienation from, conventional politicians and political processes, especially mainstream political parties and established representative mechanisms. One aspect of anti-politics is a decline in civic engagement, as citizens turn away from politics and retreat into private existence. This is reflected most clearly in a fall in voter turnout and a decline in levels of both party membership and party activism, suggesting that political parties are failing in their traditional role as agents of popular mobilization and political participation. However, anti-politics does not only reflect a breakdown in trust between the public and the political elite; it has also spawned new forms of politics, which, in various ways, articulate resentment or hostility towards political structures and seek to offer more ‘authentic’ alternatives. These include ‘fringe’ parties, whose attraction is linked to their image as political ‘outsiders’ untainted by the exercise of power, and protest movements that embrace an activist-based style of politics, part of whose appeal is that they appear to resist compromise.
Significance
The rise of anti-politics is often seen as part of a malaise from which many, if not most, mature democracies have come to suffer. Evidence of this malaise can be found in a trend of declining political participation, particularly since the 1970s, in countries such as Canada and Japan, across much of Western Europe, and in parts of Latin America. The other manifestation of anti-politics is the emergence of populist leaders, movements and parties (‘anti-party’ parties) in many parts of the world, particularly since the early 2000s. However, even if anti-politics is taken to be a meaningful phenomenon in its own right, it is less clear why this is happening. Possible explanations or contributory factors include:
ARMS RACE
An arms race is a concerted military build-up that occurs as two or more states acquire weapons or increase their military capacity in response to each other. Classic examples include the UK–German arms race that preceded World War I, and the US–Soviet nuclear arms race during the Cold War. Arms races may be fuelled by defensive calculations or miscalculations (the security dilemma), or they may occur as one or more states seek military advantage in order to pursue offensive policies. Arms races often take place in a context of technological innovation, as new or more sophisticated weapons or weapons systems become available. However, arms races are seldom ‘pure’, or seldom remain ‘pure’ for very long, in the sense that they are driven by an essentially military or technological dynamic, as they invariably become entangled with institutional, political, ideological and other factors.
Significance
The central debate about the significance of arms races concerns their relationship to war. While arms races may increase the likelihood of war, by heightening fear and paranoia, and strengthening militarism and aggressive nationalism, they may also help to maintain an overall balance of power and so to ensure deterrence. The spread of nuclear weapons during the Cold War period, either by their acquisition by more states or other actors (horizontal proliferation), or their accumulation by established nuclear states (vertical proliferation), is often used as an example of how arms races can promote peace and stability. Not only did the vertical proliferation of nuclear arms tend to preserve the balance of power, albeit through a ‘balance of terror’, but the technological innovations that enabled such devastating weapons to be developed also made them, in effect, ‘unusable’. However, there was no guarantee that nuclear proliferation would preserve the Cold War balance of power, and the possibility that a temporary nuclear imbalance could have been exploited by an aggressive state could not have been ruled out. It is also possible that the dynamics usually associated with an arms race do not apply in the case of weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
AUTHORITARIANISM
Authoritarianism is a belief in, or the practice of, government ‘from above’, in which political rule is imposed on society regardless of its consent. Authoritarianism thus differs from authority. The latter rests on legitimacy, and in that sense arises ‘from below’. Authoritarianism is a very broad classification of government. It can be associated with monarchical absolutism, traditional dictatorships and most forms of military rule; and left-wing and right-wing versions of authoritarianism can be identified, associated, respectively, with communism and capitalism. However, authoritarianism is usually distinguished from totalitarianism, on the grounds that it is primarily concerned with the repression of opposition and political liberty, rather than with the more radical goal of obliterating the distinction between the state and civil society. Authoritarian regimes may therefore tolerate a significant range of economic, religious and other freedoms.
Significance
Authoritarianism was the dominant political form in pre-constitutional and pre-democratic societies, usually taking the form of monarchical rule and aristocratic privilege. Theories of authoritarianism can be traced back to thinkers such as Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821), who argued that the belief in the principle of authority, as opposed to individual freedom, is the only reliable means of securing order. In modern politics, however, authoritarianism is usually viewed as a regime type that differs from both democracy and totalitarianism. The value of the term is nevertheless limited by the fact that, while authoritarian regimes rely on command and obedience, they exhibit a wide range of political and ideological features. For example, so-called ‘old’ authoritarian regimes, such as General Franco’s Spain, were often conservative in that they set out to protect traditional elites and de-politicize the masses, while ‘new’ authoritarian regimes, commonly found in the developing world, aim to bring about economic mobilization and, to some extent, rely on political agitation. Indeed, such regimes may develop authoritarian-populist features which resemble Bonapartism (after Louis Napoleon’s regime in France, 1848–70), a style of government that fused personal leadership with conservative nationalism, or Peronism (after Juan Peron’s regime in Argentina, 1946–55), a dictatorship that based its support on the impoverished masses and the promise of economic and social progress.
However, the stark authoritarian/democratic distinction is often misleading because authoritarian traits can be identified in democratic regimes. Examples of this include the McCarthyite ‘witch hunts’ of the 1950s in the USA and Thatcherism in the UK – the latter a combination of neo-liberal economics and neo-conservative social policies that has been interpreted as a form of ‘authoritarian populism’ (Hall and Jacques, 1983). Finally, authoritarianism has also been viewed as a psychological or sociological phenomenon linked to a disposition to obey orders unthinkingly or a rigid insistence on obedience from subordinates. The classic contribution to this approach to authoritarianism was the idea of the ‘authoritarian personality’, developed by Adorno et al. (1950), which explains unquestioning obedience and rigidity of character in terms of an ‘extreme intolerance to ambiguity’; in other words, it is a response to deep insecurities precipitated by uncertainty and choice.
AUTHORITY
Authority, in its broadest sense, is a form of power, sometimes thought of as ‘legitimate power’. Whereas power is the ability to influence the behaviour of others, authority is the right to do so. Authority is therefore based on an acknowledged duty to obey rather than any form of coercion or manipulation. In this sense, authority is power cloaked in legitimacy or rightfulness. However, authority may be used as either a normative or a descriptive term. As a normative term, used by political philosophers, it refers to a ‘right to rule’ and takes the form of a moral claim. This implies that it is less important that authority is obeyed than that it should be obeyed. Leaders, for example, could in this sense continue to claim the right to rule, on the basis of election results, constitutional rules, divine right or whatever, even though the majority of the population does not recognize that right.
Political scientists and sociologists, on the other hand, treat authority as a descriptive term. Max Weber (1864–1920) defined authority simply as a matter of people’s belief about its rightfulness, regardless of where that belief came from and whether it is morally justified. Authority, in this sense, is ‘legitimate power’. Weber distinguished between three kinds of authority, based on the different grounds on which obedience can be established. Traditional authority, in this sense, is rooted in history and tradition; charismatic authority stems from the power of personality; and legal-rational authority is grounded in a set of impersonal rules associated with an office rather than the office holder. An alternative distinction can be made between de jure and de facto authority. De jure authority, or authority in law, operates according to a set of procedures or rules that designate who possesses authority and over what issues. People described as being ‘in authority’ can be said to possess de jure authority: their ‘powers’ can be traced back to a particular office. Both traditional and legal-rational authority can therefore be viewed as forms of de jure authority. De facto authority, or authority in practice, operates in circumstances in which authority is exercised but cannot be traced back to a set of procedural rules. This includes all forms of charismatic authority, and what is called expert authority, when a person is recognized as being ‘an authority’ by virtue of his or her specialist skills or knowledge.
Significance
Authority has been one of the most basic and enduring issues in political analysis. In a sense, all studies of government or the state are in fact examinations of the nature and workings of political authority. Indeed, probably no system of rule could survive long without exercising some measure of authority, since to rule through power alone involves such a great expenditure of coercive resources as to be unsustainable. Nevertheless, there are recurrent debates regarding both the nature of authority and its value. Liberals and socialists tend to view authority as being instrumental, believing that it arises ‘from below’ through the consent of the governed. From this perspective, authority is rational, purposeful and limited, a view reflected in a preference for legal-rational authority and public accountability. Conservatives, by contrast, see authority as arising from natural necessity, being exercised ‘from above’ by virtue of the unequal distribution of experience, social position and wisdom. Those who exercise authority do so for the benefit of others, but this does not set clear limits or checks on authority, and it may blur the distinction between authority and authoritarianism.
The justifications for authority include, most basically, that it is essential for the maintenance of order and is thus the only means of escape from the barbarity and injustice of the ‘state of nature’, a society without political rule. Authority also establishes common norms and values that bind society together, and thereby gives individuals a social identity and sense of rootedness. Critics of authority, including, in particular, libertarians and anarchists, point out that authority is by definition the enemy of freedom; that it threatens reason and critical understanding by demanding unquestioning obedience; and that it is psychologically, and perhaps morally, corrupting in that it accustoms people to controlling or dominating others.
AUTONOMY
Autonomy literally means self-rule or self-government. States, institutions or groups can be said to be autonomous if they enjoy a substantial degree of independence, though autonomy in this connection is sometimes taken to imply a high measure of self-government, rather than sovereign independence. Applied to the individual, autonomy is linked closely with freedom. However, since it suggests not merely being ‘left alone’ but being rationally self-willed, autonomy is best classified as a form of positive freedom. By responding to inner or ‘genuine’ drives, the autonomous individual is seen to achieve authenticity and personal fulfilment.
Significance
In international politics, autonomy is widely used as an index of sovereignty, autonomous states being independent and self-governing. However, it is now widely accepted that very few, if any, states are autonomous in this sense, and pluralist theorists in particular now use autonomy in a relative, not an absolute, sense. As a constitutional principle, referring to institutions or levels of government, autonomy is linked closely to decentralization. Autonomy in this context is justified through an essentially liberal belief in fragmenting power, though the checks and balances thus established imply interdependence as well as independence. The term is also used in the analysis of the state, the autonomy of the state implying that it articulates its own interests and is not merely an instrument or agent through which powerful groups act in society at large. Liberals have traditionally defended this image of state autonomy against the Marxist theory of the class state, even though modern Marxists are prepared to accept the ‘relative autonomy’ of the state. Finally, the ideal of personal autonomy can be seen as the underlying value of libertarian and anarchist thought, self-governing individuals needing little or no guidance in the form of political authority. Autonomy in this sense is often linked with democracy, but may nevertheless also limit the jurisdiction of democracy, as it emphasizes individuality rather than collective or majority rule.
BALANCE OF POWER
The term ‘balance of power’ has been used in a wide variety of political contexts, but it features most prominently in international relations, where it has been accorded a number of meanings. As a policy, the balance of power refers to a deliberate attempt to promote a power equilibrium, using diplomacy, or possibly war, to prevent any individual state from achieving a predominant position. As a system, it refers to a condition in which no single state predominates over others, tending to create general equilibrium and curb the hegemonic ambitions of all states. Although such a balance of power may simply be fortuitous, neorealists argue that the international system tends naturally towards equilibrium because states are particularly fearful of a would-be hegemon, or dominant power, The term is also sometimes use to refer to power relationships generally, unconnected with the idea of equilibrium. This makes it possible to talk, for example, about ‘the changing balance of power’.
Significance
The idea of the balance of power has played a central role within realism, even being viewed by Kenneth Waltz (1979) as the theory of international relations. For realists, the balance of power is the principal means through which the tendencies within international politics towards conflict and war can be constrained. However, while classical realists treat the balance of power as a product of prudent statecraft, neorealists see it more as a consequence of structural interactions that take place within the international system, which are, in turn, shaped by the distribution of power (or capacities) between and among states. From the neorealist perspective, the likelihood of a balance of power, and therefore the prospect of war or peace, largely boil down to the number of great powers operating in the international system, or what is called polarity (the existence within a system of one or more significant actors, or ‘poles’). Bipolarity, as typified by the superpower rivalry of the Cold War period, is usually taken to be more favourable for the emergence of a balance of power than is multipolarity, the latter being biased in favour of fluidity and increasing the scope for great-power conflict.
However, liberals have generally been critical of the idea of the balance of power, believing that it legitimizes and entrenches power politics and international rivalry. This is because the basic premise of the balance of power is that other states, or coalitions of states, pose a threat to security, and this can only be contained through a build-up of power or the formation of a rival alliance. A balance-of-power mindset is therefore more likely to cause war than prevent it. Constructivists, for their part, have emphasized the extent to which any assessment of the balance of power is dependent on perception, ideas and beliefs. In short, paraphrasing Wendt’s (1992) oft-quoted assertion about anarchy, the balance of power is what states make of it.
BEHAVIOURALISM
Behaviouralism is the belief that social theories should be constructed only on the basis of observable behaviour (as opposed to behaviourism, which is the school of psychology that holds that human behaviour can ultimately be explained in terms of conditioned reactions or reflexes). The behavioural approach to political analysis developed out of positivism, adopting its assertion that scientific knowledge can be developed only on the basis of explanatory theories that are verifiable or falsifiable. Behavioural analysis typically involves the collection of quantifiable data through research surveys, statistical analysis and the construction of empirical theories that have predictive capacity.
Significance
The so-called ‘behavioural revolution’ of the 1950s made behaviouralism the dominant force in US political science and a powerful influence elsewhere, notably in the UK. The attraction of behaviouralism was that it allowed political analysis to break away from its concern with constitutions and normative theory, and gave the study of politics, perhaps for the first time, reliable scientific credentials. This fuelled the belief, expressed by political analysts such as David Easton (1979), that politics could adopt the methodology of the natural sciences through the use of quantitative research methods in areas such as voting behaviour and the behaviour of legislators, lobbyists and municipal politicians. Behaviouralism, however, came under growing pressure from the 1960s onwards. In the first place, it constrained the scope of political analysis significantly, preventing it going beyond what was directly observable. While behavioural analysis produced, and continues to produce, invaluable insights in fields such as voting studies, a narrow obsession with quantifiable data threatens to reduce the discipline of politics to little else.
Moreover, the scientific credentials of behaviouralism were called into question, in that its claim to be objective, reliable and ‘value-free’ is compromised by a range of unstated biases. For example, if democracy is redefined in terms of observable behaviour, it means what goes on in so-called democratic political systems in the developed West, and is disengaged from ideas such as popular participation and public accountability. Behaviouralism has, finally, been criticized for treating human behaviour as predictable and determined by the interaction of objective factors, when in fact it is shaped by a variable mix of psychological, social, cultural and historical circumstances. The now more common stance of post-behaviouralism differs from behaviouralism in that it goes further in recognizing the role of theory in imposing meaning on data, and acknowledges the degree to which theoretical perspectives may impinge on seemingly objective observations.
BICAMERALISM
Bicameralism is the fragmentation of legislative power, established through the existence of two chambers or houses in the parliament. Bicameral systems are usually classified according to the role, powers and composition of the ‘second’ chamber or ‘upper’ house. Most second chambers are constitutionally and politically subordinate to the first chamber, which is usually seen as the locus of popular authority. This is particularly the case in parliamentary systems in which government is generally responsible to, and drawn, largely or wholly, from the lower house. Second chambers often also exercise limited legislative power, meaning that they function essentially as ‘revising’ chambers. Not uncommonly, such weaker versions of bicameralism reflect the restrictive representative basis of the upper house, which may be selected through indirect elections, partial elections, appointment or, though rarely, inheritance. A stronger version of bicameralism is found in assemblies with two popularly elected chambers that have broadly equal powers. The US Congress is perhaps the only example of a legislative body that has a dominant upper chamber (while all taxation must be introduced in the House of Representatives, the Senate alone exercises ratification and confirmation powers).
Significance
Bicameralism is usually seen as a central principle of liberal constitutionalism. The chief benefits of bicameralism are that second chambers can check the power of first chambers and prevent majoritarian rule; that bicameral assemblies check the power of the executive more effectively; that the existence of two chambers widens the basis of representation and interest articulation; that the legislative burden of the first chamber can be relieved and legislation can be more thoroughly scrutinized; and that the second chamber can act as a constitutional safeguard, preventing or delaying the passage of controversial legislation. The representative advantages of bicameralism may be particularly important in systems in which federalism or devolution operate, as the second chamber can help to overcome conflict between the centre and the periphery by representing provincial or regional interests at the national level.
However, there was a clear trend towards unicameralism in the post-1945 period (with second chambers being abolished in New Zealand, Denmark and Sweden), and bicameralism has been criticized for a number of reasons. Unicameral assemblies may be more efficient, because the existence of a second chamber can make the legislative process unnecessarily complex and difficult. Second chambers may act as a check on democratic rule, particularly when their members are non-elected or indirectly elected. Bicameral parliaments may be a recipe for institutional conflict in the parliament, and may make strong or effective government impossible. The existence of two co-equal chambers may narrow access to policy-making by forcing joint committees to make decisions when there is disagreement between the chambers. Finally, second chambers may introduce a conservative political bias by upholding existing constitutional arrangements and, sometimes, the interests of social elites.
BILL OF RIGHTS
A bill of rights is a legal document that specifies the privileges, rights and liberties of the individual. As such, it defines the relationship between the state and the citizen, and establishes the legal extent of civil liberty. Bills of rights may either be entrenched or statutory. An entrenched bill of rights has the status of ‘higher’ or constitutional law and often comprises part of a written constitution. The first ten amendments of the US Constitution, which specify a collection of individual rights and freedoms, thus came to be known as the Bill of Rights, with the Fourteenth, Fifteenth and Nineteenth Amendments subsequently being accorded the same status. Entrenched rights are binding on the legislature, can usually be introduced, amended or removed only through a complex, constitutional process, and are ultimately upheld by a supreme or constitutional court. A statutory bill of rights has the same legal status as any other legislature-made law and can therefore be changed through the normal legislative process. Sometimes called a statute of rights, such a bill of rights can operate in the absence of a written constitution and a constitutional court, as in the case of the Human Rights Act 1998 in the UK, which incorporated the European Convention on Human Rights into British law. In other cases, advisory bills of rights may operate, which oblige government to consider individual rights formally in the process of policy formulation without being bound to respect them.
Significance
Bills of rights are often considered a valuable, and perhaps essential, means of guaranteeing limited government and of protecting freedom. Not only does a bill of rights provide the individual with a means of defence against overbearing public authority, but it also has an educational value in heightening sensitivity towards individual rights within government, among the judiciary and, most important, among the public at large. Underlying this argument is often a belief in the doctrine of human rights, the idea that there are certain fundamental, inviolable human rights to which all human beings are entitled, and that these should enjoy the protection of both international and state law. Opponents of this view may either question the validity of the idea of human rights or suggest that rights are adequately protected by common law and, in relation to entrenched bills of rights, by statute law. Other criticisms are that bills of rights compromise the neutrality of judges and inevitably draw them into political disputes; that rights are better left in the hands of elected politicians rather than non-elected judges; and that bills of rights legally embed ideological biases (for example, in relation to property rights) that are difficult to remove and may precipitate conflict.
BUREAUCRACY
Bureaucracy (literally ‘rule by officials’) is, in everyday language, a pejorative term meaning pointless administrative routine, or ‘red tape’. In the social sciences the concept of bureaucracy is used in a more specific and neutral sense, but refers to phenomena as different as rule by non-elected officials, the administrative machinery of government, and a rational mode of organization. Despite disagreement regarding its location and character, it is generally accepted that abstract organization and rule-governed professional administration are features of bureaucracy. There are fewer difficulties with the use of the term bureaucracy in the field of comparative government. Here, it refers to the administrative machinery of the state, bureaucrats being non-elected state officials or civil servants.
Significance
The core function of the bureaucracy is to implement or execute law and policy. The broadening of the responsibilities of government has therefore been accompanied by a general increase in the size of bureaucracies across the globe. However, the political significance of the bureaucracy largely stems from its role as the chief source of policy information and advice available to governments. The principal sources of bureaucratic power therefore include the ability of civil servants to control the flow of information and thus determine what their political masters know; the logistical advantages they enjoy as permanent and full-time public officials; and their status as experts and supposed custodians of the national interest. The growth in bureaucratic power since the early twentieth century is usually explained in terms of the increased premium put on expertise and specialist knowledge by the fact that the task of policy-making in modern societies has become increasingly complex and demanding. This has made the control of the bureaucracy an important issue in all political systems. The principal means through which this control is exerted include mechanisms of public accountability to ministers, assemblies, the courts or sometimes an ombudsman; the politicization (either formally or informally) of senior bureaucratic posts; and the construction of counter-bureaucracies that provide politicians with alternative sources of advice.
The political role and impact of bureaucracy has been the source of considerable debate. Max Weber’s (1864–1920) classic account of bureaucracy portrayed it as a reliable, efficient and, above all, rational means of social organization characterized by rule-governed behaviour, an ordered hierarchy, the use of written documents and a filing system, and an impersonal authority system in which appointment and advancement are based on professional criteria. Socialists, and particularly Marxists, on the other hand, have viewed bureaucracy as a power-bloc that can resist political control and reflects broader class interests, through either the social composition of the senior civil service or structural links between government departments and business interests. However, as communist regimes demonstrated, bureaucracy cannot be viewed as a narrowly capitalist phenomenon. Public choice theorists have interpreted bureaucracy in terms of career self-interest on the part of civil servants. In this view, the growth of government intervention is essentially a manifestation of bureaucratic power and the extent to which top bureaucrats are able to resist political control.
CABINET
A cabinet is a committee of senior ministers who represent the various government departments or ministries (this should not to be confused with cabinet, as used in France and the EU to denote groups of policy advisers who support individual ministers). In presidential systems the cabinet usually exists to serve the president by acting as a policy adviser rather than a policy-maker. Such cabinets function largely as an administrative tool and a ‘sounding board’, but are constitutionally subordinate to the president, who monopolizes formal policy-making responsibility. In contrast, the cabinet, in theory at least, is the apex of the executive in states that respect the principle of cabinet government. ‘Cabinet government’ is characterized by two features. First, the cabinet constitutes the principal link between the legislative and executive branches of government; its members are drawn from and accountable to the parliament, but also serve as the political heads of the various government departments. Second, the cabinet is the senior executive organ and policy-making responsibility is shared within it, the prime minister being merely ‘first’ in name only. This system is usually underpinned by collective responsibility – all cabinet ministers (and sometimes non-cabinet ministers) are required to ‘sing the same song’ and support official government policy.
Significance
The widespread use of cabinets reflects the political and administrative need for collective procedures within the political executive. In the first place, cabinets enable government to present a collective face to parliaments and the public. Without a cabinet, government could appear to be a personal tool wielded by a single individual. Second, cabinets are an administrative device designed to ensure the effective co-ordination of government policy. In short, in the absence of a cabinet, government would consist of rival bureaucratic empires each bent on self-aggrandisement. The virtues of cabinet government are therefore that it encourages full and frank policy debate within the democracy of a cabinet meeting, subjecting proposals to wide and effective scrutiny; and that it guarantees the unity and cohesion of government, since the cabinet makes decisions collectively, and collectively stands by them. Cabinet government has nevertheless been criticized because it acts as a cloak for prime-ministerial power by forcing dissenting ministers to support agreed government policy in public, and because it makes government policy incoherent and inconsistent, as decisions tend to be based on compromises between competing ministers and departmental interests.
Whether cabinets are invested with formal policy-making responsibility or not, they have struggled to maintain their political role and status. This is largely a consequence of the growing prominence of the chief executive (whether a president or prime minister), resulting from the media’s, and particularly television’s, tendency to focus on personality and image, and the need for clear policy leadership in an era of complex and widespread government intervention and global interdependence. Cabinets have also been weakened by the increased size and importance of government departments and other agencies, meaning that policy proposals emerge pre-packaged, with meaningful debate and scrutiny having happened elsewhere. However, cabinets continue to fulfil a residual and irreducible function as a means of policy co-ordination, and, particularly when they contain members with significant party or public support or when the chief executive’s authority is weak, they may exert decisive policy influence.
CAPITALISM
Capitalism is an economic system as well as a form of property ownership. Its central features include the following. First, it is based on generalized commodity production, a ‘commodity’ being a good or service produced for exchange – it has market value rather than use value. Second, productive wealth in a capitalist economy is predominantly held in private hands. Third, economic life is organized according to impersonal market forces, in particular the forces of demand (what consumers are willing and able to consume) and supply (what producers are willing and able to produce). Fourth, in a capitalist economy, material self-interest and profit maximization provide the main motivations for enterprise and hard work.
However, there is no such thing as a ‘pure’ capitalist system; that is, one not contaminated by socialist and other impurities, such as public ownership, economic management, or collective practices. Moreover, all economic systems are shaped by the historical, cultural and ideological context in which they operate. At least three types of capitalist system can therefore be identified in the modern world. Enterprise capitalism, or free-market capitalism (found in the USA and, since the 1980s, the UK), is characterized by faith in the untrammelled workings of market competition, minimal public ownership, safety-net welfare provision and weak trade unions. Social capitalism, or Rhine-Alpine capitalism (found throughout continental Europe, especially in Germany) is characterized by the idea of a social market; that is, it attempts to balance the disciplines of market competition against the need for social cohesion and solidarity guaranteed by economic and social intervention. Collective capitalism, or ‘tiger’ capitalism (found in East Asia generally, and increasingly in China) is characterized by what had been called ‘relational markets’: close connections between industry and finance, and between producers and government; and by an emphasis on collaborative effort sometimes dubbed ‘peoplism’.
Significance
Capitalist economic forms first emerged in seventeenth-century and eighteenth-century Europe, developing from within predominantly feudal societies. Capitalist practices initially took root in the form of commercial agriculture orientated towards the market, and increasingly relied on waged labour rather than bonded serfs. Developed or industrial capitalism started to emerge from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, first in the UK but soon in the USA and across Europe, with the advent of machine-based factory production and the gradual shift of populations from the land to the expanding towns and cities. Having defied socialist predictions about its inevitable demise, and withstood the twentieth-century ideological battle against communism, capitalism has, since the Eastern European Revolutions of 1989–91, emerged as a global system without serious rivals. The dual secrets of its success have been its flexibility, which has enabled it to absorb non-capitalist ‘impurities’ and adapt to a variety of cultures, and its seemingly relentless capacity to generate technological development, which has enabled it to deliver widespread, if uneven, prosperity.
Few issues have polarized political debate so effectively as capitalism; indeed, the left/right ideological divide is commonly interpreted as a battle between anti-capitalist and pro-capitalist positions. Three broad stances have been adopted in relation to capitalism. The first, taken up by fundamentalist socialists, rejects capitalism out of hand on the grounds that it amounts to a system of mass exploitation. Karl Marx (1818–83) was undoubtedly the foremost exponent of this view, arguing that capitalism, like all other class societies, is doomed because it is based on a fundamental contradiction between oppressors (the bourgeoisie) and the oppressed (the proletariat). The second stance, adopted in different ways by parliamentary socialists, modern liberals and paternalist conservatives, can be summed up in the assertion that capitalism is a good servant but a bad master. This view accepts that capitalism is the most reliable, perhaps the only reliable, mechanism for generating wealth, but emphasizes that unregulated capitalism is chronically unstable and prone to high unemployment and wide material inequalities. Associated with the ideas of J. M. Keynes (1883–1946), this perspective suggests that the issue is not so much capitalism but how and to what extent the capitalist system should be reformed or ‘humanized’. The third stance, adopted by classical liberals, the New Right and, in its most extreme form, by anarcho-capitalists, is that capitalism is a self-regulating mechanism and should therefore be encumbered as little as possible by external controls, an idea summed up in the principle of laissez-faire, literally meaning ‘leave to do’. The earliest and most influential exponent of this view was Adam Smith (1723–90), who argued that the market is regulated by ‘an invisible hand’ and so tends towards long-run equilibrium.
CENTRALIZATION/DECENTRALIZATION
Centralization is the concentration of political power or government authority within central institutions. These institutions are normally considered to be central because they operate at the national level; however, the term centralization is sometimes used to describe the concentration of power or authority within the national level of government, as, for example, when executives dominate legislatures or parliaments, or when cabinets are subordinate to chief executives. Decentralization is usually understood to refer to the expansion of local autonomy through the transfer of powers and responsibilities away from national bodies. Centralization and decentralization thus highlight different territorial divisions of power within the state between central (national) and peripheral (regional, provincial or local) institutions.
Significance
All modern states contain territorial divisions. The nature of these divisions nevertheless varies enormously. The divisions are structured by the constitutional framework within which centre–periphery relationships are conducted; the distribution of functions and responsibilities between the levels of government; the means by which their personnel are appointed and recruited; the political, economic, administrative and other powers the centre can use to control the periphery; and the independence that peripheral bodies enjoy. What is clear, however, is that neither central nor peripheral bodies can be dispensed with completely. In the absence of central government, a state would not be able to function as an actor on the international stage.
The case for centralization is that:
The case for decentralization includes the following:
CHECKS AND BALANCES
Checks and balances are a network of tensions within a system, usually a governmental system, that results from the fragmentation of power. While such a system may involve independence, its crucial feature is interdependence, ensuring that each element in it is able to check the power of other elements. Checks and balances can be found in all liberal political systems, each exhibiting some measure of institutional fragmentation, but the principle has been applied most rigorously to the US governmental system, where it amounted to, in effect, a constitutional blueprint. Not only do checks and balances operate among the legislature, executive and judicial branches (the separation of powers) but also between the two houses of the legislature (bicameralism), and between the national/federal government and the fifty states (federalism).
Significance
The principle of checks and balances is a cornerstone of liberal constitutionalism. It is based on the assumption that, as human beings are inherently self-interested, all systems of rule are likely to become tyrannical and oppressive. The purpose of checks and balances is therefore to safeguard liberty by creating internal tensions within the governmental system, thereby reducing its capacity to interfere in citizens’ private affairs. Individual freedom thus expands to the extent to which government is fragmented. Two main criticisms have been levelled at the principle of checks and balances. First, institutional checks and balances may lead to deadlock, preventing government from acting, even in areas where intervention is widely deemed to be legitimate or necessary. This can be seen in the recurrent tendency of the US system towards ‘government gridlock’. Second, ideological reservations have been expressed about the widespread use of checks and balances, on the grounds that this tends to minimize the role of the state, and so serves the interest of untrammelled capitalism.
CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY
Christian democracy is a political and ideological movement that advances a moderate and welfarist brand of conservatism. The origins of Christian democracy lie in Catholic social theory, which, in contrast to Protestantism’s stress on individualism, emphasizes the importance of social groups, in particular the family, and highlights a harmony of interests among these groups. While Christian democracy is ideologically vague and has adapted itself to different national cultures and political circumstances, two major themes have been recurrent. The first is a concern about the effects of unregulated market capitalism, reflected in a willingness to embrace Keynesian (see social democracy) and welfarist policies. The second is a fear of state control, reflected in a hostility to socialism in general and to communism in particular. The most influential of Christian democrat ideas, particularly associated with the German Christian Democratic Union (CDU), is the notion of the social market. A social market is an economy structured on market principles and largely free from government control, operating in the context of a society in which cohesion is maintained through a comprehensive welfare system and effective public services. The market is thus not so much an end in itself as a means of generating wealth to achieve broader social goals.
Significance
Christian democracy has been an important political movement in many parts of Europe in the post-World War II period. Its success has been associated in particular with the influence of Christian democratic parties in France during the Fourth Republic, Italy, Germany, Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands, and, to a lesser extent, in Latin America and post-communist Eastern Europe. The success of these parties stems partly from their centre-right political stance, which parallels that of paternalistic conservatism and consolidates middle-class support, but it is also because ‘Christian’ has served as a rallying cry against communism, while ‘democracy’ indicates a concern with the common good rather than with elite or aristocratic interests (thereby breaking with pre-war conservative parties). It is notable, for example, that Christian democratic parties generally resisted the New Right enthusiasms that characterized conservatism in the UK and the USA in the 1980s and 1990s. The chief threats to Christian democracy have come from the declining importance of religion as a source of political motivation; from the receding threat of communism since the Eastern European Revolutions of 1989– 91; and from the ideological ambiguities and uncertainties of Christian democracy itself. Since it both praises and warns against government intervention, it sometimes appears to be little more than a vehicle for winning or retaining government power.
CITIZENSHIP
Citizenship is a relationship between the individual and the state, in which the two are bound together by reciprocal rights and duties. Citizens differ from subjects and aliens in that they are full members of their political community, or state, by virtue of the possession of basic rights. Citizenship is viewed differently depending on whether it is shaped by individualism or communitarianism. The former, linked to liberalism, advances the principle of a ‘citizenship of rights’, and places particular stress on private entitlement and the status of the individual as an autonomous actor. There are socialist and conservative versions of communitarianism, but each advances the principle of a ‘citizenship of duty’, highlighting the importance of civic responsibility. Such theories tend to portray the state as a moral agency, and to underline the need for community and the role of social existence.
Significance
The idea that citizenship is the proper end of government can be traced back to the political thought of Ancient Greece, and to the belief that an interest in public affairs is a basic feature of individual existence. Recurrent interest in citizenship therefore reflects an enduring concern for, and commitment to, the ‘public’ face of human life. Controversies about citizenship centre on the rights it implies and its value as a political principle. The political right tends to endorse a narrow view of citizenship that stresses only civil and political rights, the rights that are exercised within civil society and rights of participation. The political left, by contrast, tends to endorse ‘social citizenship’, the idea that citizens are entitled to a social minimum, expressed in terms of social and welfare rights. Opponents of the very idea of citizenship include libertarians who reject the notion that individuals have a broader social identity and responsibilities. Marxists may also criticize citizenship, on the grounds that it masks the reality of unequal class power, while feminists may do so because it does not take into account patriarchal oppression. Nevertheless, the rise of communitarianism and the emergence of ‘new’ social democracy has led to a revival of interest in citizenship, as an attempt to re-establish a ‘rights and responsibilities’ agenda and to counterbalance the market individualism of the New Right. This is usually associated with the idea of ‘active citizenship’, a notion that places particular emphasis on the social duties and moral responsibilities of citizens.
CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE
Civil disobedience is lawbreaking that is justified by reference to ‘higher’ religious, moral or political principles. Civil disobedience is an overt and public act; it aims to break the law to ‘make a point’, not to get away with illegal behaviour. Indeed, its moral force is based largely on the willing acceptance of the penalties that follow from lawbreaking. This both emphasizes the conscientious and principled nature of the act and provides evidence of the depth of feeling or commitment that lies behind it. In some cases, civil disobedience may involve the breaking of laws that are themselves considered to be wicked or unjust (such as those that uphold racial discrimination), while in other cases, it involves breaking the law to protest against a wider injustice, even though the law being broken may not in itself be objectionable. Finally, the moral character of civil disobedience is normally underlined by the strict avoidance of violence.
Significance
Civil disobedience has a long and respectable history, drawing as it does on the ideas of writers such as Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) and the example of political leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) and Martin Luther King (1929–68). Under Gandhi’s influence, non-violent civil disobedience (or satyagraha, literally meaning ‘defence of the truth’) became a powerful weapon in the campaign for Indian independence, finally granted in 1947. In the early 1960s, King adopted similar political tactics in the struggle for black civil rights in the Southern states of the USA. Since the 1960s, civil disobedience has become more widespread and politically acceptable.
Those who argue that civil disobedience is a legitimate political tactic maintain that there is a clear distinction between law and justice. At the heart of civil disobedience stands the belief that the individual, rather than government, is the ultimate moral authority; to believe otherwise would be to imply that all laws are just, and to reduce justice to mere legality. In the modern period, the distinction between law and justice has usually been based on the doctrine of human rights, asserting that there is a set of higher moral principles against which human law can be judged. Critics of civil disobedience hold that it brings with it a number of insidious dangers. The first of these is that, as civil disobedience becomes fashionable, it threatens to undermine respect for alternative, legal and democratic means of exerting influence. At a deeper level, the spread of civil disobedience may ultimately threaten the social order and political stability by eroding the fear of illegality. When people cease to obey the law automatically and only do so out of personal choice, the authority of the law itself is called into question.
CIVIL LIBERTY
Civil liberty is a ‘private’ sphere of existence that belongs to the citizen, not the state. Civil liberty therefore encompasses a range of ‘negative’ rights, usually rooted in the doctrine of human rights, which demand non-interference on the part of government. Classic civil liberties are usually thought to include the right to freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion and conscience, freedom of movement, and freedom of association. Civil liberties are often confused with civil rights. The former are freedoms from government, while the latter are generally ‘positive’ rights, in the sense that they are rights of participation and access to power. Civil rights campaigns thus typically call for a widening of voting and political rights, and for an end to discrimination, rather than for a broadening of civil liberty.
Significance
The maintenance of key civil liberties is generally seen as being vital to the functioning of liberal-democratic societies, since they provide the individual with protection against arbitrary government. In many cases, the principle of civil liberty is given constitutional expression through documents such as a bill of rights, and it is widely seen as a basic justification for judicial independence and a strict separation between law and politics. The clarity with which civil liberties are defined, and the effectiveness with which they are upheld, are therefore the crucial index of individual freedom from the liberal perspective. Reservations about civil liberty have nevertheless been expressed by both conservatives and socialists. Conservatives have argued that the strengthening of civil liberties tends to weaken government and, in particular, hamper the maintenance of domestic order. Socialists, on the other hand, have warned that the doctrine of civil liberty, especially when applied to property rights, can serve as a defence of social inequality and class oppression.
CIVIL SOCIETY
Civil society has been defined in a variety of ways. Originally it meant a ‘political community’, a society governed by law, under the authority of a state. More commonly, civil society is distinguished from the state, and is used to describe a realm of autonomous groups and associations, such as businesses, pressure groups, clubs, families and so on. It thus consists of what Edmund Burke (1729–97) called the ‘little platoons’. In this sense the division between civil society and the state reflects a ‘private/public’ divide; civil society encompasses institutions that are ‘private’ in that they are independent of government and organized by individuals in pursuit of their own ends. G. W. F. Hegel (1770–1831), on the other hand, distinguished civil society not only from the state but also from the family. He viewed civil society as a sphere of ‘universal egoism’ in which individuals place their own interests before those of others, whereas the state and the family are characterized by ‘universal altruism’ and ‘particular altruism’, respectively.
Significance
Civil society is widely used as a descriptive concept to assess the balance between state authority and private bodies and associations. For example, totalitarianism is defined by the abolition of civil society, and the growth of private associations and clubs, lobby groups and independent trade unions in post-communist societies is described as the re-emergence of civil society. In most cases, however, civil society is invested with normative and ideological significance. In the conventional, liberal view, civil society is identified as a realm of choice, personal freedom and individual responsibility. Whereas the state operates through compulsory and coercive authority, civil society allows individuals to shape their own destinies. This explains why a vigorous and healthy civil society is usually regarded as an essential feature of liberal democracy, and why classical liberals in particular have a moral preference for civil society over the state, reflected in a desire to minimize the scope of public authority and maximize the private sphere. In contrast, the Hegelian use of the term is negative in that it counterposes the egoism of civil society with the altruism that is fostered by the family and within the state. Marxists and socialists generally have viewed civil society unfavourably, associating it in particular with unequal class power and social injustice. Such views would justify either the overthrow of civil society as structured at present, or the contraction of civil society through the expansion of state control and regulation.
COALITION
A coalition is a grouping of rival political actors brought together either through the perception of a common threat, or the recognition that their goals cannot be achieved by working separately. Electoral coalitions are alliances through which political parties agree not to compete against one another with a view to maximizing their joint representation. Legislative coalitions are agreements between two or more parties to support a particular bill or programme. Government coalitions are formal agreements between two or more parties that involve a cross-party distribution of ministerial portfolios. A ‘grand coalition’ or ‘national government’ comprises all the major parties, but they are usually formed only at times of national crisis or economic emergency.
Significance
Most debate about the political impact of coalitions centres on the workings of government coalitions. These are usually formed to ensure majority control of the parliament, and are therefore usually found in political systems that employ proportional representation, or which have fragmented party systems. Coalitions have been criticized on the grounds that, as they do not command a unified parliamentary majority, they result in weak and ineffective government; that conflict between coalition partners tends to produce instability; and that they prevent the development of bold, if controversial, policy initiatives. However, coalition governments may have the advantage that they promote compromise and consensus-building across the political spectrum; that they command wide, if diverse, public support; and that they scrutinize policy proposals more rigorously and effectively. Successful coalition governments usually operate in the context of a broad ideological consensus, in which parties act as ‘brokers’ for particular interests and are accustomed to compromise and flexibility. Coalition government is often seen as being particularly appropriate for divided societies.
COLLECTIVE SECURITY
Collective security is the theory or practice of states pledging to defend one another to deter aggression or punish a transgressor if international order has been breached. Its key idea is that aggression can best be resisted by united action taken by a number of states, this being the only alternative to the insecurity and uncertainty of power politics. Collective security thus differs from ‘national’ security, the latter implying that states view security primarily in individual terms, with each state being responsible for maintaining its own security, and seeing other states as at least a potential threat to that security. An example of collective security can be found in Article 5 of the NATO Charter, which states that an attack on one or several members of the organization would be considered an attack on all.
Significance
Though the idea of collective or common security has a history that can be traced back to Ancient Greece, and can be found in the writings of thinkers such as Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) and Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832), the principle has only played a major role in the theory and practice of international relations since World War I. The goal of constructing a collective security system was a powerful factor underpinning the creation of both the League of Nations in 1919 and the United Nations in 1945. Collective security has two principal benefits. First, it promises to be more effective than national security in deterring war and expansionism, because potential aggressors are likely to be confronted by military resources greater than any single state could muster when acting alone. Second, by lowering states’ emphasis on ‘self-help’, collective security counters the tendencies inherent in international anarchy; and in particular reducing the extent to which state policy is driven by fear and anxiety.
Successful collective security nevertheless depends on three conditions. First, the states should be roughly equal, or at least there must be no preponderant power. Second, all states must be willing, as well as able, to bear the cost of defending one another. Third, collective security depends on the existence of an international body that has the moral authority and military capacity to take effective action. The difficulty of achieving these conditions has meant that collective security systems have often performed poorly in practice. The ill-starred League of Nations was, for example, nothing more than a bystander in the 1930s, as Imperial Japan, Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany embarked on programmes of expansion leading to the outbreak of World War II. The UN has been more effective, but its capacity to enforce collective security has been severely limited because it is essentially a creature of its members: it can do no more than its member states, and in particular the permanent members of the Security Council, permit. For realist theorists, such difficulties reflect flaws in the notion of collective security and not merely defects in the workings of particular institutions. These flaws stem from state egoism, and imply that, regardless of their notional obligations within international organizations, states will always be deeply reluctant to incur military and other costs in order to protect other states.
COLLECTIVISM
Collectivism is, broadly, the belief that collective human endeavour is of greater practical and moral value than individual self-striving. It reflects the idea that human nature has a social core, and implies that social groups, whether social classes, nations, races or whatever, are meaningful political entities. However, the term is used with little consistency. Mikhail Bakunin (1814–76) used collectivism to refer to self-governing associations of free individuals, describing his form of anarchism as collectivist anarchism. More commonly, collectivism is treated as the opposite of individualism, on the grounds that it implies that collective interests should prevail over individual ones. Collectivism in this sense is often linked to the state, as the mechanism through which collective interests are upheld against the individual interests of civil society. This suggests, in stark contrast to Bakunin’s use of the term, that the growth of state responsibilities marks the advance of collectivism. It also explains why collectivism is often confused with collectivization, the extension of state control over the economy (though collectivization may be seen as a means of advancing collectivist goals).
Significance
Collectivism has been one of the key components of socialist ideology. The socialist case for collectivism is both moral and economic. Morally, collective endeavour in the form of co-operation fosters social solidarity and a responsibility for fellow human beings, based on their common humanity. Economically, collectivism enables the collective energies of society to be harnessed in a rational and efficient fashion, by contrast with self-striving, which results in wasteful competition. This emphasis on collectivism is evident in a traditional socialist belief in equality, welfare and common ownership. Marxism indeed subscribes to a form of methodological collectivism, in that it treats social classes rather than individuals as the principal agents of historical change. However, collectivism is by no means linked exclusively to socialism, and forms of collectivism can be identified in, for example, nationalism, racialism and feminism. Two basic objections are usually made to collectivism, both rooted in the ideas of liberal individualism. The first is that collectivism stifles individuality and diversity by insisting on a common social identity and shared human interests. The second is that collectivism is necessarily, and not accidentally, linked to statism and the erosion of freedom, as there is no effective means to advance collective interests except through political authority.
COLLECTIVIZATION
Collectivization is a system in which property is owned and controlled by a collective body, usually through the mechanism of the state. Collectivization is therefore a comprehensive form of nationalization, in that it brings the entirety of economic life, and not merely selected industries, under state control. Collectivized economies are organized on the basis of planning rather than the market, and therefore seek to allocate resources on a rational basis in accordance with clearly defined goals.
Significance
The best examples of collectivization were found in orthodox communist states, such as the USSR, which operated a system of central planning. Collectivization was introduced in the USSR under Stalin through a series of Five Year Plans, the first of which was announced in 1928. All Soviet enterprises – factories, farms, shops and so on – were set planning targets, ultimately by Gosplan (the State Planning Committee), and these were administered by a collection of powerful economic ministries. The attraction of collectivization was that it promised to achieve an important range of socialist goals, notably to gear the economy to the wider needs of society, as opposed to private profit, and to ensure that material inequalities were abolished or substantially reduced. However, collectivization effectively collapsed with the Eastern European Revolutions of 1989–91 and, where communism survived, as in China and Cuba, it did so in part by abandoning collectivization. The major criticisms of collectivization are that it is inherently inefficient because it is not orientated towards profit and allows little scope for material incentives, and that it is implicitly totalitarian because state control of the economy is a fundamental threat to civil society, the absence of economic freedom imposing an inevitable threat to political freedom.
COMMITTEE
A committee is a small work group composed of members drawn from a larger body and charged with specific responsibilities. Whereas ad hoc committees are set up for a particular purpose, and disbanded when that task is completed, permanent or standing committees have enduring responsibilities and an institutional role. However, the responsibilities entrusted to committees range from formal decision-making (as in the case of some cabinets), policy analysis and debate, to administrative co-ordination and information exchange. Not uncommonly, committees operate within a larger committee system of specialist committees, co-ordinating committees and sub-committees.
Significance
Committee structures have become increasingly prominent in legislative and executive branches of government, as deliberative and consultative forums and as decision-making bodies. It is generally accepted that the wider and more formal use of committees has become an administrative necessity, given the size and complexity of modern government. The major advantages of committees include the following: they allow a range of views, opinions and interests to be represented; provide the opportunity for fuller, longer and more detailed debate; encourage decisions to be made more efficiently and speedily; and make possible a division of labour that encourages the accumulation of expertise and specialist knowledge. However, committees have also been criticized. For example, they can easily be manipulated by those who set up and staff them, and they can encourage centralization by allowing a chairperson to dominate proceedings behind a mask of consultation. Moreover, they may narrow the range of views and interests that are taken into account in decision-making, particularly as their members may become divorced from the larger body, creating a form of sham representation.
COMMUNISM
The term communism has been used in three different, if related, ways: as a political principle, as a social model or regime-type based on this principle, and as an ideological movement whose central purpose is to establish such a society or regime. As a political principle, communism stands for the communal organization of social existence and, in particular, the common or collective ownership of wealth. In The Communist Manifesto (Marx and Engels, 1848/1967), Karl Marx (1818–83) thus summed up the theory of communism as the ‘abolition of private property’. There are two versions of communism as a social model or regime-type. The first of these is a model of a future society described in the writings of Marx and Friedrich Engels (1820–95). Marx predicted that after the overthrow of capitalism there would be a transitionary ‘socialist’ stage of development, characterized by the ‘revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat’, which would, as class antagonisms abated, eventually lead to full communism. Although Marx refused to describe in detail this communist society, he envisaged that it would have the following features:
The second version of communism as a social model is based on the regimes that communist parties established when they gained power in the twentieth century, for example in the USSR and Eastern Europe, and in China, Cuba, Vietnam and elsewhere. Communism in this sense came to mean ‘actually existing socialism’, sometimes seen as ‘orthodox communism’. Orthodox communism amounted to a form of state socialism in which political control was in the hands of a monopolistic and hierarchical communist party, and the economy was organized on the basis of state collectivization and central planning.
As an ideological movement, communism is intrinsically linked to Marxism: the terms are either used interchangeably, or communism is viewed as operationalized Marxism, Marxism being the theory and communism the practice. However, communism in this sense is better linked to so-called orthodox Marxism, sometimes portrayed as ‘dialectical materialism’, because it was as much influenced by the ideas of Leninism and Stalinism as it was by the classical ideas of Marx. Just as Soviet communism became the dominant model of communist rule in the twentieth century, Marxism-Leninism became the ruling ideology of the communist world. Despite communist ideology being reinterpreted in different societies and by different leaders, it was characterized by a number of recurrent themes. The most important of these were a sometimes crude belief in the primacy of economics over other historical factors; strong support for revolution rather than reform; the identification of the proletariat as the revolutionary class; a belief in the communist party as the ‘vanguard of the working class’; support for socialist or proletarian internationalism; and a belief in comprehensive collectivization.
Significance
Communism as the principle of common ownership long pre-dates Marx and can be found in the writings of Plato (427–347 bce) and Thomas More (1478–1535); however, its modern significance is associated almost entirely with the theory and practice of Marxism. As an ideological movement, communism was one of the most powerful political forces of the twentieth century, though its influence was largely confined to the period 1917–91. However, during this time, communism presented the chief alternative to capitalism: it provided the basis for political and social reconstruction in what became known as the communist East, and constituted the principal oppositional force in many parts of the capitalist West. The ideological potency of communism stemmed from its stress on social equality and the common good, and its promise to bring to an end what Marx called ‘the exploitation of the many by the few’. Its political success was closely linked to its capacity to mobilize oppressed or disadvantaged classes in support of revolutionary leaders who were well organized and followed clear political strategies. Communism in power proved to be a formidable force: the construction of one-party states not only weakened ‘class enemies’ and opposition groups, but also allowed communist parties to operate as ‘ruling’ parties in the sense that they dominated all aspects of government, the military, the economy and the ideological apparatus. In practice, twentieth-century communism was largely a vehicle for modernization that was most successful in economically backward societies, where its success was ultimately judged in terms of its capacity to deliver social development.
Critics of communism have usually focused on the more unattractive aspects of orthodox communism, sometimes tracing these back to the classical ideas of Marx. In this light, communism is seen to be intrinsically dictatorial, if not implicitly total-itarian. The oppressive face of communism stems from the fact that it combines the ideas of concentrated political power and centralized state control (despite Marx’s doctrine of ‘withering away’), creating an all-powerful party-state apparatus, typically dominated by a charismatic leader. The dramatic collapse of communism in the Eastern European Revolutions of 1989–91, and the radical reforms that have occurred where communist parties have clung on to power, indicate a number of structural weaknesses within orthodox communism. The most important of these are the (arguably) inherent inefficiency of planning systems and the inability of communist states to match the economic prosperity enjoyed in capitalist states (and in particular, the failure to produce Western-style consumer goods); the tendency towards sclerosis in a political system that was dominated by entrenched party and bureaucratic interests; and the fact that communist political systems lacked the mechanisms through which elite groups could monitor and respond to popular pressures.
COMMUNITARIANISM
Communitarianism is the belief that the self or person is constituted through the community, in the sense that individuals are shaped by the communities to which they belong and thus owe them a debt of respect and consideration – there are no ‘unencumbered selves’. Communitarianism is not an ideology in its own right, but is, rather, a theoretical position that has been adopted by a variety of ideological traditions. Left-wing forms of communitarianism link the idea of community to the notions of unrestricted freedom and social equality (for example, anarchism and utopian socialism). Centrist forms of communitarianism hold that community is grounded in an acknowledgement of reciprocal rights and responsibilities (for example, social democracy and Tory paternalism). Right-wing forms of communitarianism hold that community requires respect for authority and established values (for example, neo-conservatism and, in its extreme form, fascism). In the 1980s and 1990s, communitarianism developed into a school of thought that articulates a particular political philosophy. In this form, associated with theorists such as Alasdair MacIntyre (1981) and Michael Sandel (1982), it advances a specific critique of liberalism, which highlights the damage done to the public culture of liberal societies by their emphasis on individual rights and liberties over the needs of the community. So-called ‘high’ and ‘low’ forms of communitarianism are sometimes identified. The former engages primarily in philosophical debate, while the latter, whose best known figure is Amitai Etzioni (1995), is more concerned with issues of public policy.
Significance
The origins of communitarianism lie in the nineteenth-century socialist utopianism of thinkers such as Robert Owen (1771–1858) and Pyotr Kropotkin (1842–1921). Indeed, a concern with community can be seen as one of the enduring themes in modern political thought, expressed variously in the socialist stress on fraternity and co-operation, the Marxist belief in a classless communist society, the conservative view of society as an organic whole, and even the fascist commitment to an indivisible national community.
Modern communitarianism emerged as a late-twentieth-century reaction against the imbalances in modern society and political thought that have occurred through the spread of liberal individualism. Communitarians warn that, unconstrained by social duty and a moral responsibility, individuals have been allowed or encouraged to take into account only their own interests and rights. In this moral vacuum, society, quite literally, disintegrates. The communitarian project thus attempts to restore to society its moral voice and, in a tradition dating back to Aristotle (384– 322 bce), to construct a ‘politics of the common good’. As a critique of laissez-faire capitalism, communitarianism has had a growing influence on modern liberalism and social democracy.
However, critics of communitarianism allege that it has both conservative and authoritarian implications. Communitarianism has a conservative disposition in that it amounts to a defence of existing social structures and moral codes. Feminists, for example, have criticized communitarianism for attempting to bolster traditional gender roles under the guise of defending the family. The authoritarian features of communitarianism stem from its tendency to emphasize the duties and responsibilities of the individual over his or her rights and entitlements.
COMMUNITY
A community, in everyday language, is a collection of people in a given location; that is, a village, town, city, or even country. As a political or social principle, however, the term community suggests a social group that possesses a strong collective identity based on the bonds of comradeship, loyalty and duty. Ferdinand Tönnies (1855–1936) distinguished between Gemeinschaft, or ‘community’, typically found in traditional societies and characterized by natural affection and mutual respect, and Gesellschaft, or ‘association’ – that is, the looser, artificial and contractual relationships typically found in urban and industrialized societies. Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) emphasized the degree to which community is based on the maintenance of social and moral codes. If these are weakened, this induces anomie, feelings of isolation, loneliness and meaninglessness, which Durkheim associated with the incidence of suicide.
Significance
An emphasis on community has been a recurrent theme in political thought and can be traced back to Aristotle’s assertion that human beings are essentially ‘political animals’, though the idea of community has often remained vague and ill-defined. Socialists and traditional conservatives have placed particular emphasis on community. For socialists, it implies co-operation and social responsibility and, in its most radical form, it has led to a preference for small, self-managing communities, or communes. For conservatives, it is linked to the need to give individuals a secure social identity and sense of rootedness. In the late twentieth century, the cause of community was advanced explicitly through the rise of communitarianism, which sets out to redress the ‘atomism’ that has resulted from the spread of liberal and individualist values.
Critics of the principle of community point out that it is either politically dangerous or intellectually bogus. The danger of community is that it can lead to individual rights and liberties being violated in the name of the collective body. This was demonstrated most graphically through Nazism’s emphasis on the Völksgemeinschaft, or ‘national community’, which aimed to dissolve individuality, and indeed personal experience, within the social whole. The intellectual limitations of community derive from its tendency to imply the existence of collective identities and social bonds which in fact do not exist. Liberals may therefore point out that there is no such thing as community, but only a collection of individuals. Terms such as ‘gay community’ and ‘black community’ have come in for particular criticism in this respect.
CONFLICT OF CIVILIZATIONS
The ‘conflict of civilizations’ thesis suggests that, in the post-Cold War world, conflict would not primarily be ideological but, rather, cultural in character. According to Samuel Huntington (1996), the emerging ‘world of civilizations’ would comprise nine major civilizations – Western, Sinic or Chinese, Japanese, Hindu, Islamic, Buddhist, African, Latin American and Orthodox Christian. Crucial to the thesis, however, is the assumption that a stronger sense of cultural belonging can only lead to tension and conflict. This is because cultures and civilizations are incommensurate: they establish quite different values and meanings. In Huntington’s view, cultural conflict is likely to occur at both ‘micro’ and ‘macro’ levels. ‘Micro-level’ conflict will emerge at the ‘fault-lines’ between civilizations, where one human ‘tribe’ clashes with another, possibly resulting in communal wars. In that sense, civilizations operate rather like ‘tectonic plates’ that rub up against one another at vulnerable points. At the ‘macro’ level, conflict may break out between the civilizations themselves, in all likelihood precipitated by clashes between their ‘core’ states.
Significance
The idea of a clash of civilizations attracted increasing attention during the 1990s, as international politics was shaken by an upsurge in ethnic conflict in the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda and elsewhere. However, the thesis had its greatest impact after 11 September 2001 (subsequently known as ‘9/11’), when it was widely used as an explanation of the changing nature of world order, and global terrorism was seen as a symptom of an emerging clash between Islam and the West. From the perspective of the clash of civilizations thesis, the origins of Islamic militancy derive from a basic incompatibility between Islamic values and those of the liberal-democratic West. Such thinking was evident both in the militant Islamist belief that the ‘godless’ West and Western values are corrupt and corrupting, and in the tendency of neo-conservatives in the USA and elsewhere to view Islam as inherently totalitarian as a result of its belief that social life and politics, and not just personal morality, should conform to Islamic values.
This account of emerging and seemingly irresistible civilizational conflict has been severely criticized, however. For example, Huntington’s ‘tectonic’ notion of civilizations presents them as being much more homogeneous, and therefore distinct from one another, than is in fact the case. In practice, civilizations have always interpenetrated one another, giving rise to blurred or hybrid cultural identities. Furthermore, in being founded on ‘culturalism’, which treats culture as the universal basis for personal and social identity, the thesis fails to recognize the extent to which cultural identities are shaped by political, economic and other circumstances. What appears to be a cultural conflict may therefore have a quite different, and more complex, explanation. The rise of militant Islamism may thus be better explained by tensions and crises in the Middle East in general, and in the Arab world in particular, linked to factors such as the inheritance of colonialism, the Arab–Israeli conflict, the survival of unpopular but often oil-rich autocratic regimes, and urban poverty and unemployment, rather than by cultural incompatibility between Western and Islamic value systems.
CONFUCIANISM
Confucianism is a system of ethics formulated by Confucius (Kong Fuzi) (551–479 bce) and his followers that was outlined primarily in the Analects. Confucian thought has concerned itself with the twin themes of human relations and the cultivation of the self. The emphasis on ren (‘humanity’ or ‘love’) has usually been interpreted as implying support for traditional ideas and values, notably filial piety, respect, loyalty and benevolence. The stress on junzi (the virtuous person) suggests a capacity for human development and potential for perfection, realized, in particular, through education. Confucianism offers the vision of a hierarchical society in which there is a well-defined role for every member. This is based on the belief that there are three categories of people – sages (who embody and transmit wisdom, but are very few in number); nobles or ‘gentlemen’ (who predominate in ‘dealings with the world’ and constantly strive to follow the path of self-cultivation); and the ‘small men’ (the mass of society, who have little concern for morality but will diligently follow the exemplary ruler). However, while this hierarchical model reflects the essentially conservative idea that moral responsibility increases with social status, it is founded on strictly meritocratic principles: Confucius believed that people are equal at birth and advocated a system of education that was open to all.
Significance
Confucianism was the dominant philosophical tradition in imperial China, shaping social structures, politics and almost every aspect of Chinese education until the early twentieth century. While Confucianism is often portrayed as one of the three great philosophical traditions in imperial China, the others being Buddhism and Daoism, there is little doubt that it was the most influential, even being seen by some as coexistent with Chinese civilization itself. Confucianism nevertheless came under attack from the Taiping Rebellion (1850–64) onwards, with criticism sharpening as a result of the rise of the May Fourth Movement (1915–19). Confucian thought was viewed increasingly as the source of China’s social and cultural stagnation, having been made an easier target by its association with complex but ultimately meaningless ritual and unquestioning obedience to authority. This line of criticism was intensified once the Chinese Communist Party came to power in 1949, as Confucianism was taken to be starkly incompatible with Marxism-Leninism. However, interest in Confucianism was revived during the 1980s and 1990s, through its link to the idea of ‘Asian values’, such as social harmony, respect for authority and a belief in the family, which supposedly underpinned that rapid economic emergence of Japan and the so-called Asian ‘tiger’ economies – Hong Kong, South Korea, Thailand and Singapore. Confucianism has also gained greater respectability within China alongside the process of ‘modernization’ since the 1980s, leading some to proclaim a ‘Confucian revival’, at least within academic and intellectual circles.
CONSENSUS
A consensus is an agreement, but it is an agreement of a particular kind. Consensus implies, first, a broad agreement, the terms of which are accepted by a wide range of individuals or groups. Second, it implies an agreement about fundamental or underlying principles, as opposed to a precise or exact agreement. In other words, a consensus permits disagreement on matters of emphasis or detail. The term ‘consensus politics’ may be used in two ways. A procedural consensus is a willingness to make decisions through consultation and bargaining, either between political parties or between government and major interests. A substantive consensus is an overlap in the ideological positions of two or more political parties, reflected in agreement about fundamental policy goals (as in the UK’s post-1945 social-democratic consensus, and Germany’s social-market consensus).
Significance
Consensus is often portrayed as the very stuff of politics. This is because politics, in one sense at least, is a specifically non-violent means of resolving conflict. Given that the differing interests of individuals and groups are a permanent feature of human life, peaceful coexistence can be achieved only through a process of negotiation, conciliation and compromise; in short, through consensus-building. Procedural consensuses therefore reflect the recognition that the alternative to bargaining and compromise is open conflict and possibly violence. Consensus politics is likely to be a feature of mature pluralist democracies, substantive consensuses often occurring in political systems in which electoral alliances and coalitions are commonplace. Consensus politics can nevertheless be criticized on the grounds that it fosters unprincipled compromise; that it discourages consideration of bold but controversial policy initiatives; and that it tends to entrench centrist ideological priorities.
CONSENT
To consent means to agree or to grant permission. As a political principle, consent is normally linked to authority, as a means through which people agree to be governed and thus to be bound by political obligation. In practical terms consent is often associated with elections. However, voters are generally thought to have consented to be governed not specifically through voting for the winning party or candidate, but through having participated in the electoral mechanism and thereby having accepted it as a legitimate means for selecting leaders or establishing a government.
Significance
Consent is an important principle of liberalism. In the liberal view, authority and social relationships should always be based on consent, representing the voluntary actions of free individuals. This ensures that authority arises ‘from below’, and is always grounded in legitimacy. The classic expression of this doctrine is that government must be based on the ‘consent of the governed’. Consent therefore disposes liberals to favour representation and democracy. However, they also believe that social bodies and associations should be based on consent, in that they are formed through contractual agreements entered into willingly by individuals intent on pursuing their own self-interest. In this light, political and other obligations are morally binding, because our voluntary agreement implies a promise to uphold them. Objections to the principle of consent stem from the grounds on which it can be demonstrated and the extent to which individuals can be regarded as free and self-willed actors. Is it, for example, reasonable to suggest that the act of voting amounts to the granting of consent on the part of the governed? Are those who vote obliged to respect their government and the laws it makes? Moreover, the idea of consent ignores the capacity of ideology and government propaganda to shape what people think, and thereby to influence their seemingly voluntary behaviour.
CONSERVATISM
Conservatism, as a political attitude, is defined by the desire to conserve and is reflected in a resistance to, or at least a suspicion of, change. However, while the desire to resist change may be the recurrent theme within conservatism, what distinguishes conservatism as an ideology from rival political creeds is the distinctive way in which this position is upheld. The central themes of conservative ideology are tradition, human imperfection, organic society, authority and property. For a conservative, tradition reflects the accumulated wisdom of the past, and institutions and practices that have been ‘tested by time’; it should be preserved for the benefit of the living and for generations yet to come. Conservatives view human nature pessimistically in at least three senses. First, human beings are limited, dependent and security-seeking creatures; second, they are morally corrupt, tainted by selfishness, greed and a thirst for power; third, human rationality is unable to cope with the infinite complexity of the world (hence conservatives’ faith in pragmatism and their preference for describing their beliefs as an ‘attitude of mind’ rather than an ideology). The belief that society should be viewed as an organic whole implies that institutions and values have arisen through natural necessity and should be preserved to safeguard the fragile ‘fabric of society’. Conservatives view authority as the basis for social cohesion, arguing that it gives people a sense of who they are and what is expected of them, and reflects the hierarchical nature of all social institutions. Conservatives value property because it gives people security and a measure of independence from government, and encourages them to respect the law and the property of others.
However, there are significant divisions within conservative thought. Authoritarian conservatism is starkly autocratic and reactionary, stressing that government ‘from above’ is the only means of establishing order, and thus contrasts with the more modest and pragmatic Anglo-American conservatism that stems from the writings of Edmund Burke (1729–97). Paternalistic conservatism draws on a combination of prudence and principle in arguing both that ‘reform from above’ is preferable to ‘revolution from below’, and that the wealthy have an obligation to look after the less well-off, duty being the price of privilege. Such ideas were expressed most influentially by Benjamin Disraeli (1804–81). This tradition is developed most fully in the form of One Nation conservatism, which advocates a ‘middle way’ approach to state–market relations, and gives qualified support to economic management and welfarism. Libertarian conservatism advocates the greatest possible economic liberty and the least possible government regulation of social life, echoing laissez-faire liberalism, but harnesses this to a belief in a more traditional, conservative social philosophy that stresses the importance of authority and duty. This tradition provided the basis for New Right theories and values.
Significance
Conservative ideas and doctrines first emerged in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, arising as a reaction against the growing pace of economic and social change, which was in many ways symbolized by the French Revolution, which began in 1789. In trying to resist the pressures unleashed by the growth of liberalism, socialism and nationalism, conservatism stood in defence of an increasingly embattled traditional social order. Authoritarian conservatism took root in continental Europe but was marginalized increasingly by the advance of constitutionalism and democracy, and eventually collapsed with the fall of fascism, with which it had often collaborated. The Disraelian form of conservatism ultimately proved to be more successful. Using Burke’s notion of ‘change in order to conserve’, it allowed conservatism to adapt values such as tradition, hierarchy and authority to the emerging conditions of mass politics, thereby broadening its social and electoral base. Conservatism’s remarkable resilience stems from its ideological caution and political flexibility, enabling it, at different times, to embrace welfarist and interventionist policies as manifestations of the One Nation ideal, and to advocate ‘rolling back the state’ as recommended by the New Right.
Conservative thought, however, has always been open to the charge that it amounts to nothing more than ruling-class ideology. In proclaiming the need to resist change, it legitimizes the status quo and defends the interests of dominant or elite groups. Other critics allege that divisions between traditional conservatism and the New Right run so deep that the conservative tradition has become entirely incoherent. In their defence, conservatives argue that they merely advance certain enduring, if at times unpalatable, truths about human nature and the societies we live in. That human beings are morally and intellectually imperfect, and seek the security that only tradition, authority and a shared culture can offer, merely underlines the wisdom of ‘travelling light’ in ideological terms. Experience and history, conservatives warn, will always provide a sounder basis for political action than will abstract principles such as freedom, equality and justice.
CONSOCIATIONALISM
Consociationalism is a form of government that contrasts with the majoritarianism of Westminster-style systems and is particularly suited to the needs of divided or plural societies. Lijphart (1977) identified two major features of what he called ‘consociational democracy’. The first is executive power-sharing, usually through a grand coalition that represents all significant segments of society, though in presidential systems this may be accomplished through the distribution of other high offices. The second is that the various segments of society enjoy a large measure of autonomy, guaranteed, for example, by territorial divisions such as federalism or devolution. Two more minor features may also be present. These are, first, representative mechanisms that ensure proportionality and guarantee that minorities have a political voice; and second, a minority veto to prevent the vital interests of small sections of society being violated by the will of the majority.
Significance
Consociationalism has been practised widely, particularly in continental Europe since 1945. Examples include Austria in the 1945–66 period, Belgium since 1918, Netherlands and Luxembourg in the 1917–67 period, and, in certain respects, modern-day Israel and Canada. The conditions that particularly favour consociationalism are the existence of a relatively small number (ideally between three and five) of roughly equal-sized and geographically concentrated segments; a disposition to seek national consensus based on overarching loyalties; the absence of major socio-economic inequalities; and a relatively small total population.
The strength of consociationalism is that it offers an institutional solution to the problems of divided societies that is both stable and democratic. This it achieves by balancing compromise against autonomy: matters of common or national concern are decided jointly by representatives of all key segments, while allowing the segments the greatest possible independence in relation to other concerns. Two main criticisms have been advanced of consociationalism. First, the combination of conditions that favour it is so complex that it is appropriate only to very particular societies, and for limited periods of time. In other words, it may not be a solution that is suitable for all divided societies. Second, consociationalism has been criticized as being inherently unstable, as its emphasis on power-sharing and the protection of minority interests has the potential to create an arena for struggle among rival segments rather than provide a basis for compromise.
CONSTITUTION
A constitution is, broadly, a set of rules that seek to establish the duties, powers and functions of the various institutions of government, regulate the relationships between them, and define the relationship between the state and the individual. Constitutions thus lay down certain meta-rules for the political system; in effect, these are rules that govern the government. Just as government establishes ordered rule in society at large, a constitution brings stability, predictability and order to the actions of government. The most common way of classifying constitutions is to distinguish between codified and uncodified, or written and unwritten, constitutions. Codified constitutions draw together key constitutional provisions within a single, legal document, popularly known as a ‘written’ constitution or ‘the constitution’. These documents are authoritative in the sense that they constitute ‘higher’ law – indeed, the highest law of the land. This, in turn, entrenches the provisions of the constitution, in that they can only be amended or abolished using a process more complicated than that employed for statute law. Finally, the logic of the codification dictates that, as the constitution sets out the duties, powers and functions of government institutions in terms of ‘higher’ law, it must be justiciable, meaning that all political bodies must be subject to the authority of the courts, and in particular a supreme or constitutional court.
Uncodified constitutions are now found in only two liberal democracies (Israel and the UK) and a handful of non-democratic states. In the absence of a ‘written’ constitution, uncodified constitutions draw on a variety of sources (in the UK these include statute law, common law, conventions, works of authority and EU law). Laws of constitutional significance are thus not entrenched: they may be changed through the ordinary legislative process. Most important, this means that sovereignty, or unchangeable legal authority, is vested in the parliament. The parliament has the right to make or unmake any law, and no body, including the courts, has the ability to override or set aside its laws. Alternative ways of classifying constitutions deal with the ease with which the constitution can be changed (whether it is rigid or flexible), the degree to which the constitution is observed in practice (whether it is effective, nominal or a façade constitution), or the basis of its contents (whether it is monarchical or republican, federal or unitary, parliamentary or presidential).
Significance
While the evolution of the British constitution is sometimes traced back to the Bill of Rights of 1689, or even the Magna Carta of 1215, it is more helpful to think of constitutions as late-eighteenth-century creations. The ‘age of constitutions’ was initiated by the enactment of the first ‘written’ constitutions: the US Constitution in 1787 and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen in 1789. Constitutions play a number of vital roles in the workings of modern political systems. The most basic of these is that they mark out the existence of a state and make claims concerning its sphere of independent authority. Constitutions also establish, implicitly or explicitly, a broader set of political values, ideals and goals (in the case of ‘written’ constitutions, this is usually accomplished in preambles that serve as statements of national ideals). Moreover, by serving as ‘organizational charts’ or ‘institutional blueprints’, constitutions introduce a measure of stability and predictability to the workings of government and enable conflicts to be resolved more speedily and efficiently.
However, constitutions are chiefly valued because they are a means of constraining government and protecting freedom. By laying down the relationship between the state and the individual, often through a bill of rights, they mark out their respective spheres of government authority and individual liberty. Nevertheless, the mere existence of the constitution does not guarantee constitutionalism. Constitutions are only a device of limited government when they fragment government authority and create effective checks and balances throughout the political system, and when, through whatever means, they ensure that civil liberty is clearly defined and legally upheld.
Other debates about the constitution focus on the implications of codification. Codified or written constitutions are seen to have the following strengths:
However, codification may also have drawbacks, the most important of which include the following:
CONSTITUTIONALISM
Constitutionalism, in a narrow sense, is the practice of limited government brought about through the existence of a constitution. Constitutionalism in this sense can be said to exist whenever government institutions and political processes are constrained effectively by constitutional rules. More broadly, constitutionalism refers to a set of political values and aspirations that reflect the desire to protect freedom through the establishment of internal and external checks on government power. Constitutionalism is typically expressed in support for constitutional provisions that establish this goal, notably a codified constitution, a bill of rights, the separation of powers, bicameralism, and federalism or decentralization.
Significance
Constitutionalism is one of the basic political values of liberalism and one of the key components of liberal democracy. Its importance rests on the underlying fear that government is always liable to become a tyranny against the individual, because power in itself is corrupting. Constitutionalism is thus a vital guarantee of liberty. The forms it takes may nevertheless vary considerably. Liberal constitutionalism is usually associated with a written or codified constitution, a system of checks and balances among government institutions, and formal, and usually entrenched, guarantees of civil liberty. Nevertheless, the UK system of government has sometimes been regarded as constitutional even though it has traditionally lacked each of these three features. Critics of constitutionalism have pointed out that it pays attention only to the formal and usually legal organization of government. For example, constitutions and institutional fragmentation may be less important in maintaining individual liberty than party competition and democracy. Constitutionalism has also been criticized by socialists as a means of constraining government power and thus of preventing meaningful reform of the capitalist system.
CONSTRUCTIVISM
Constructivism (sometimes called ‘social constructivism’) is an approach to social and political analysis that has been particularly influential in the field of international relations. Constructivism is based on the belief that there is no objective social or political reality independent of our understanding of it. Constructivists do not therefore regard the social world as something ‘out there’, in the sense of an external world of concrete objects; instead, it exists only ‘inside’, as a kind of inter-subjective awareness. In the final analysis, people, whether acting as individuals or as social groups, ‘construct’ the world in which they live and act according to those constructions. People’s beliefs and assumptions become particularly significant when they are widely shared, especially when they serve to give people, or a community, a sense of identity and distinctive interests. However, constructivist analysis in international relations can be systemic (focusing on the interaction of states in the international system); unit-level (focusing on how domestic social and legal norms shape the interests and identities of states); or holistic (focusing on the entire range of factors conditioning the identities and interests of states).
Significance
As an approach to international theory, constructivism has been paid significantly greater attention since the end of the Cold War. The failure of mainstream realist and liberal approaches to explain adequately why the Cold War ended, highlighted, in a sense, a missing dimension in international relations theory: the role played by ideas and perceptions, and in this case the changing social identity of the USSR. Instead of following mainstream theorists in treating political actors as though they have fixed or objective interests or identities, constructivists argue that these interests and ideas are fashioned by the traditions, values and sentiments that prevail in any given context. State interaction cannot therefore be explained essentially in terms of the rational pursuit of national interests (as some realists argue) or primarily in terms of interdependencies that operate at the international level (as some liberals argue).
However, the relationship between constructivism, on the one hand, and realism and liberalism, on the other, is a matter of debate. While ‘critical’ constructivism clearly goes beyond the positivism of mainstream theory in either denying the existence of the real world ‘out there’ (in common with postmodernism), or in arguing that it is buried under so many layers of conceptual and contextual meaning that we can never gain access to it, ‘conventional’ constructivism seeks to probe the inter-subjective content of events and episodes, but within a social-scientific methodology. As the latter position embraces only a weak form of post-positivism, it allows constructivism to be viewed as a means of refining or expanding mainstream analysis, rather than rejecting it. Critics of constructivism have nevertheless argued that it fails to recognize the extent to which beliefs are shaped by social, economic and political realities. In the final analysis, ideas do not ‘fall from the sky’ like rain. They are a product of complex social realities, and reflect an ongoing relationship between ideas and the material world.
CONSUMERISM
Consumerism is a psychic and social phenomenon whereby personal happiness is equated with the acquisition of material possessions. It is often associated with the emergence of a ‘consumer society’ or of ‘consumer capitalism’. Consumer capitalism was shaped by the development of new advertising and marketing techniques that took advantage of the growth of the mass media and the spread of mass affluence. A consumer society is one that is organized around the consumption rather than the production of goods and services, a shift that has important socio-economic and cultural implications. Whereas ‘productionist’ societies emphasize the values of discipline, duty and hard work (the Protestant work ethic, for example), consumer societies emphasize materialism, hedonism and immediate rather than delayed gratification.
Significance
Consumerism has become an increasingly prominent feature of capitalist economies since the 1950s, reflecting the recognition that business growth and the expansion of corporate profits are reliant on ever-higher levels of consumption. Devices and strategies therefore had to be devised to ensure that consumers consume. Goods, for example, were transformed into ‘brands’, symbolic constructs, typically consisting of a name, logo or symbol, which conveys the promise, ‘personality’ or image of a product or group of products. This process was considerably boosted by the advent of globalization and the emergence of global goods and global brands, which came to dominate economic markets in more and more parts of the world. Global consumerism gave rise to what Benjamin Barber (2003) called ‘McWorld’, a world of ‘fast music, fast compters and fast food – MTV, Macintosh and McDonald’s – pressing nations into one homogeneous theme park’.
However, there is significance disagreement over the nature and implications of consumerism. The desire for wealth and the pleasure derived from material acquisition have been viewed as nothing more than expressions of human nature. For example, utilitarianism, the most widely accepted tradition of moral philosophy, assumes that individuals act to maximize pleasure and minimize pain, these being calculated in terms of utility or use-value, usually seen as satisfaction derived from material consumption. The global spread of consumerist ethics is therefore merely evidence of deep-seated material appetites on the part of humankind. Consumerism has nevertheless become one of the key targets of anti-corporate or anti-globalization criticism. The core theme of anti-consumerism is that advertising and marketing in their myriad forms create ‘false’ needs that serve the interests of corporate profit, and often, in the process, undermining psychological and emotional well-being. By creating ever-greater material desires, they leave consumers in a constant state of dissatisfaction because, however much they acquire and consume, they always want more. Consumerism thus works not through the satisfaction of desires, but through the generation of new desires, keeping people in a state of constant neediness, aspiration and want. A further criticism of consumerism is that it poses major environmental challenges, particularly through fuelling ecologically unsustainable levels of economic growth. Some would nevertheless argue that the image of consumerism as a tyrannical and unchecked force should be modified in the light of the progress made by consumer movements in recent decades in securing legal and regulatory protections for consumers.
CORPORATISM
Corporatism, in its broader sense, is a means of incorporating organized interests into the processes of government. The core bases of corporatism are therefore a recognition of the political significance of functional or socio-economic divisions in society, and the notion that these divisions can be reconciled through institutions that aim to map out a higher national interest. However, there are two faces of corporatism: authoritarian and liberal. Authoritarian corporatism (sometimes termed state corporatism) is an ideology or economic form closely associated with Italian fascism. It set out to establish what Mussolini called a ‘corporate state’, which claimed to embody the organic unity of Italian society but, in practice, operated through the political intimidation of industry and the destruction of independent trade unions. Liberal corporatism (sometimes termed ‘societal’ corporatism or neo-corporatism) refers to the tendency found in mature liberal democracies for organized interests to be granted privileged and institutionalized access to policy formulation. The mechanisms through which this form of group politics is achieved vary considerably, as does the degree of integration between groups and government. In contrast to its authoritarian variant, liberal corporatism is often viewed as a ‘bottom-up’ form of corporatism that strengthens groups in relation to government, not the other way round.
Significance
The idea of corporatism originated in Benito Mussolini’s Italy and was associated with a fascist version of Catholic social theory. This emphasized the importance of groups rather than individuals, and stressed the need for social balance or harmony. In practice, however, fascist corporatism amounted to little more than a means through which the Mussolini state could exercise control over the Italian economy. Attempts to export this authoritarian model of corporatism to António Salazar’s Portugal or to post-1964 Brazil, Mexico and Peru proved to be similarly short-lived and unsuccessful, at least in terms of promoting economic growth.
Liberal corporatism, on the other hand, proved to be politically much more significant, especially in the early post-1945 period. Some commentators regard corporatism as a state-specific phenomenon, shaped by particular historical and political circumstances. They thus associated it with countries such as Austria, Sweden and the Netherlands and, to some extent, Germany and Japan, in which the government has customarily practised a form of economic management. Others, however, view corporatism as a general phenomenon that stems from tendencies implicit in economic and social development, and therefore believe that it is manifest, in some form or other, in all advanced industrial societies. From this perspective, corporatist tendencies may merely reflect the symbiotic relationship that exists between groups and government. Groups seek ‘insider’ status because it gives them access to policy formulation, which enables them to better defend the interests of their members. Government, for its part, needs groups both as a source of knowledge and information, and because the compliance of major economic interests is essential if policy is to be workable. Supporters of corporatism have thus argued that a close relationship between groups and government facilitates both social stability and economic development.
However, the general drift towards corporatism in advanced capitalist states has been reversed since the 1970s, with corporatist ideas and structures being subject to growing criticism. Concerns about corporatism have been many and various. It has been criticized for narrowing the basis of representation by leading to a form of tripartitism that binds together government, business and the unions, but leaves consumer and promotional groups out in the cold and restricts institutionalized access to so-called ‘peak’ associations. A second problem is that the distinction between liberal and authoritarian corporatism may be more apparent than real, in that the price that group leaders pay for privileged access to government is a willingness to deliver the compliance of their members. Third, corporatism may weaken the formal processes of representation by allowing decisions to be made outside the reach of democratic control and through a process of bargaining that is in no way subject to political scrutiny. Finally, New Right theorists argue that corporatism is responsible for the problem of government ‘overload’, in which government is effectively ‘captured’ by consulted groups and is unable to resist their demands. Corporatism thus fuels interventionism, which, in turn, stifles competition and the natural vigour of the market.
COSMOPOLITANISM
Cosmopolitanism literally means a belief in a cosmopolis or ‘world state’. Moral cosmopolitanism is the belief that the world constitutes a single moral community, in that people have obligations towards (potentially) all people in the world, regardless of nationality, religion, ethnicity and so on. Political cosmopolitanism (sometimes called ‘legal’ or ‘institutional’ cosmopolitanism) is the belief that there should be global political institutions, and possibly a world government. However, most modern political cosmopolitans tend to favour a system in which authority is shared between global, state and sub-state levels, with no single level enjoying dominance over the others.
Cosmopolitan thinking has drawn, variously, on Kantianism, utilitarianism and the doctrine of human rights. For Kant (1724–1804), the categorical imperative to treat people as ‘ends in themselves’ and not merely as means for the achievement of the ends of others implies that we have a universal duty of hospitality towards foreigners, recognizing that, as citizens of the world, we should treat every human being with consideration and respect. The cosmopolitan implications of utilitarianism derive from the belief that, in making moral judgements on the basis of maximizing happiness, ‘everybody counts as one, nobody as more than one’. The principle of utility is therefore no respecter of borders, a stance that has, for example, underpinned calls for the eradication of world poverty. Most contemporary cosmopolitan theorizing is nevertheless based on the doctrine of human rights. Human rights have cosmopolitan implications because they emphasize that rights are fundamental and universal. Such thinking has, among other things, underpinned the idea of global justice, and provided a justification for humanitarian intervention.
Significance
Cosmopolitanism can be traced back to the Cynic movement in Ancient Greece, and the assertion by Diogenes of Sinope (400–323 bce) that he was a ‘citizen of the world’. Interest in cosmopolitan themes revived during the Enlightenment and was expressed most influentially in Kant’s Perpetual Peace (1795/1970), which outlined the proposal for a ‘league of nations’. While contemporary cosmopolitanism has primarily a moral orientation, it also deals with political and institutional themes, not least the need to reform the existing system of global governance to bring it into line with cosmopolitan moral principles. As such, cosmopolitanism provides the anti-globalization or anti-corporate movement with its core moral and ideological orientation. Cosmopolitanism has many detractors, however. For example, communitarians and others have taken issue with the moral universalism that underpins cosmopolitanism, arguing that moral systems are only workable when they operate within a cultural or national context. From this perspective, any assistance that is provided to ‘strangers’ is based on charity alone and cannot be viewed as a moral obligation. Others have argued that moral cosmopolitanism amounts to little more than ‘wishful thinking’ in a world that lacks an institutional framework capable of upholding its principles. This problem is compounded by the fact that it is difficult to see how such a framework, even if it could be established, could either enjoy a meaningful degree of democratic legitimacy or avoid turning into an emergent world government.
CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY
The 1945 Nuremberg Charter outlined three characteristics of crimes against humanity. These crimes must:
The Charter also distinguished between war crimes (‘violations of the laws and customs of war’) and crimes against humanity. Nevertheless, the most detailed and ambitious attempt to codify the crimes that can be categorized as crimes against humanity was undertaken in the 1998 Rome Statute, which established the International Criminal Court (ICC). This highlights crimes including murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, torture, rape or sexual slavery, racial and other forms of persecution, and the crime of apartheid. Though genocide (the attempt to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group) is clearly a crime against humanity in a general sense, it is treated as a separate category of crime, indeed as the ‘crime of crimes’, by the Genocide Convention (1948) and in the Rome Statute.
Significance
The idea that heinous or inhuman acts might be considered crimes first emerged in response to what was later called the ‘Armenian genocide’ (1915–17) and was subsequently extended in response to the atrocities that took place during World War II. The virtue of incorporating the concepts of crimes against humanity and genocide into international law is that they attempt to deal with the issue of widespread cruelty and barbarity by establishing individual responsibility for actions that may not conform to the conventional notion of a war crime. The concept of crimes against humanity is underpinned in particular by a form of moral cosmopolitanism which holds that the proper stance towards humanity is one of respect, protection and succour, humanity being indivisible. Critics of the concept have nevertheless questioned whether such a broad category of crime can ever be meaningful, and have also raised doubts about the supposedly universal moral principles on which it is based. These and other concerns about international humanitarian law have become more acute as a result of steps to anchor individual responsibility for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide through establishing international criminal tribunals for former Yugoslavia, Rwanda and elsewhere, and the ICC.
CRITICAL THEORY
Critical theory (sometimes called ‘Frankfurt School critical theory’) is a broadly Marxist-inspired approach to social and political theorizing. While critical theory does not constitute, and has never constituted, a unified body of work, it tends to be distinguished by certain general themes. The original intellectual and political inspiration for critical theory was Marxism. However, critical theorists were repelled by Stalinism, criticized the determinist and scientistic tendencies in orthodox Marxism, and were disillusioned by the failure of Marx’s predictions regarding the inevitable collapse of capitalism. Critical theorists developed a form of neo-Marxism that focused more heavily on the analysis of ideology than on economics, and no longer treated the proletariat as the revolutionary agent. Critical theory is characterized by the attempt to extend the notion of critique to all social practices by linking substantive social research to philosophy. In doing so, it does not merely look beyond the classical principles and methodology of Marxism but also cuts across a range of traditionally discrete disciplines, including economics, sociology, philosophy, psychology and literary criticism.
While early Frankfurt thinkers were concerned primarily with the analysis of discrete societies, later theorists have often applied critical theory to the study of international politics, in at least three ways. First, critical theorists have underlined the linkage between knowledge and politics in international affairs, emphasizing the extent to which theories and understandings are embedded in a framework of values and interests. Second, critical theorists have adopted an explicit commitment to emancipatory politics: they are concerned to uncover structures of oppression and injustice in world politics in order to advance the cause of individual or collective freedom. Third, critical theorists have questioned the conventional association within international theory between political community and the state, and in doing so opened up the possibility of a more inclusive, and perhaps even cosmopolitan, notion of political identity.
Significance
Critical theory originated in the thinking of the so-called Frankfurt School, the Institute of Social Research, which was established in Frankfurt in 1923, relocated to the USA in the 1930s, and was re-established in Frankfurt in the early 1950s. The Institute was dissolved in 1969. Two phases in the development of critical theory can be identified. The first was associated with the theorists who dominated the Institute’s work in the pre-war and early post-war period, notably Max Horkheimer (1895–1973), Theodor Adorno (1903–69) and Herbert Marcuse (1889–1979). The second phase stems from the work of the major post-war exponent of critical theory, Jürgen Habermas (1929–).
Critical theory has brought about important political and social insights through the cross-fertilization of academic disciplines and by straddling the divide between Marxism and conventional social theory. It has also provided a continuing fertile and imaginative perspective from which the problems and contradictions of existing society can be explored. During the 1960s and early 1970s, together with anarchism, critical theory played a major role in shaping New Left thinking and, through this, had an impact on the emergence of the ‘new’ social movements of the period. Since the end of the Cold War, critical theory has developed into one of the most influential currents of Marxist-inspired international theory. Critical theory has also attracted criticism, however. ‘First-generation’ Frankfurt thinkers in particular were criticized for advancing a theory of social transformation that was often disengaged from the ongoing social struggle. Moreover, they were accused of over-emphasizing the capacity of capitalism to absorb oppositional forces, and thus of underestimating the crisis tendencies within capitalist society.
CROSS-GENERATIONAL JUSTICE
Cross-generational justice is the idea that that the present generation (the living) have obligations towards future generations (those who are yet to be born). Justice should therefore be extended to take into account ‘futurity’, a concern about the future, implying that moral judgements about actions in the present should take into account their impact on posterity. ‘Futurity’ has been justified in different ways. Care for and obligations towards future generations have sometimes been seen as a ‘natural duty’, an extension of a moral concern for our children and, by extension, their children, and so on. A concern for future generations has also been linked to the idea of ‘stewardship’. This is the notion that the present generation is merely the ‘custodian’ of the wealth and resources that have been generated by past generations and so should be conserved for the benefit of future generations. The most radical basis for cross-generational justice is nevertheless that future generations are entitled to rights on essentially the same grounds as people who are currently alive; their only problem is that they are unable to secure these rights themselves.
Significance
The idea that, in deciding how we should act, we should take into account the needs and interests of people who have not yet been born became politically prominent only with the emergence of green or environmental concerns in the 1960s. It has received particular attention since the 1990s, however, through a rising concern about the issue of climate change. This has occurred because it is in the nature of environmental matters that many of the consequences of our actions might well not be felt for decades, or even centuries. Industrialization, for example, had advanced for some 200 years before concerns were raised about the depletion of finite stocks of oil, gas or coal resources, or about the increase in greenhouse gas emissions. This creates the problem that each successive generation can act as a ‘free rider’, able to enjoy the benefits of economic growth, while leaving future generations to deal with its consequences. Apart from the stark inter-generational unfairness that this implies, such a situation is clearly unsustainable in the long run.
However, the idea of cross-generational justice has also been criticized. Some argue that all rights depend on reciprocity (rights are respected because of something that is done, or not done, in return), in which case it is absurd to endow people who have yet to be born with rights that impose duties on people who are currently alive. Moreover, in view of the potentially unlimited size of future generations, the burdens imposed by ‘futurity’ are, in practical terms, incalculable. Present generations may either be making sacrifices for the benefit of future generations that may prove to be much wealthier, or their sacrifices may be entirely inadequate to meet future needs.
DEMOCRACY
Democracy literally means rule by the demos or people (though the Greeks originally used demos to mean ‘the poor’ or ‘the many’). However, the simple notion of ‘rule by the people’ is vague and has been subject to a bewildering variety of interpretations (indeed, democracy may equally be treated as a ‘contested’ value or be taken to stand for a variety of systems). Perhaps a more helpful starting point is Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, delivered in 1863, which extolled the virtues of what he called ‘government of the people, by the people and for the people’. This highlights the importance of three core features of democracy. First, the stress on ‘the people’ implies political equality, an equal distribution of political power and influence. Second, government ‘by’ the people emphasizes the importance of popular participation. Third, government ‘for’ the people highlights the fact that democracy suggests ruling in the public interest.
However, there are a number of models of democracy. The most important distinction is between direct and representative democracy. Direct democracy (a term that overlaps with classical democracy, radical democracy and participa-tory democracy) is based on the direct, unmediated and continuous participation of citizens in the tasks of government. Direct democracy thus obliterates the distinction between government and governed, and between the state and civil society; it is a system of popular self-government. It was achieved in ancient Athens through a form of government by mass meeting (Athenian democracy), and its most common modern manifestation is in the use of referendums. Representative democracy (whose most common form is liberal democracy) is a limited and indirect form of democracy. It is limited in that popular participation in government is infrequent and brief, being restricted to the act of voting every few years, and it is indirect in that the public do not exercise power themselves; they merely select those who will rule on their behalf. This form of rule is democratic only in so far as representation establishes a reliable and effective link between government and governed. This is sometimes expressed in the notion of an electoral mandate.
Significance
The mass conversion of politicians and political thinkers to the cause of democracy was one of the most dramatic and significant events in political history. Well into the nineteenth century the term continued to have pejorative implications, suggesting a system of ‘mob rule’. Now, however, we are all democrats. Liberals, conservatives, socialists, communists, anarchists and even fascists are eager to proclaim the virtues of democracy and to demonstrate their democratic credentials. Indeed, ‘end of history’ theorists interpreted the collapse of communism in the late twentieth century as implying the worldwide, and final, triumph of liberal democracy. Democratic processes and practices have displaced authoritarianism, basically because political stability in complex, and highly differentiated modern societies can be maintained only through a diffusion of power, a tendency that is strengthened by the development of a better-educated, better-informed and more politically sophisticated citizenry. Overwhelmingly, where democracy has triumphed it has done so in its more practicable, representative form; however, developments in information technology have increasingly made direct democracy more viable, particularly in small communities.
Most of the debates about democracy stem from rivalries between different theories or models of democracy, and concern how, and to what extent, democratic practices should be applied. The most common of these deal with the adequacy of representative democracy and, in particular, the link between elections and democracy, and whether democratic principles should be confined narrowly to political matters or extended more widely to cover, say, the family, the workplace and the distribution of economic power. Nevertheless, key debates regarding the virtues and vices of democracy remain relevant. Among the advantages that have been claimed for democracy are:
Among the criticisms that have been made of democracy are:
DEMOCRATIC PEACE
The ‘democratic peace’ thesis is a notion that there is an intrinsic link between peace and democracy, in particular in the sense that democratic states do not go to war against one another. Such thinking is grounded in a tradition of republican liberalism that can be traced back to Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924), if not to Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), which holds that the external behaviour of a state is crucially influenced by its political and constitutional make-up. In particular, while autocratic or authoritarian states are seen as being inherently militaristic and aggressive, democratic states are viewed as being naturally peaceful, especially in their dealings with other democratic states (Doyle, 1986).
Significance
The democratic peace thesis resurfaced with particular force in the aftermath of the collapse of communism, as the wider acceptance of liberal-democratic principles and structures was seen to promise the emergence of a more stable and peaceful global order (Fukuyama, 1992). Much of the basis for this view derives from empirical analysis. The advance of democratization has led to the emergence of ‘zones of peace’, in which military conflict has become virtually unthinkable. This certainly applies to Western and Central Europe (previously riven by war and conflict), North America and Australasia. Such a development has been explained in at least three ways. First, liberals have argued that states become less warlike to the extent that their governments are subject to popular control, as it is the citizens themselves who are likely to be war’s victims. Second, democratic states operate on the basis of non-violent means of conflict resolution, and are inclined to apply these to foreign as well as domestic policy. Third, cultural ties tend to develop among democratic states, which encourages the states to view each other as friends rather than enemies.
However, realists and others have cast doubt on the notion of democratic peace. For example, the idea that democracies are inherently peaceful is undermined by continued evidence of war between democratic and authoritarian states. Moreover, empirical evidence to support the thesis is bedevilled by confusion over which states qualify as ‘democracies’. If, for example, universal suffrage and multi-party elections are the features of democratic governance, NATO’s bombardment of Serb forces in Kosovo in 1999, and Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008, are both exceptions to the democratic peace thesis. Realists argue, moreover, that the thesis significantly over-estimates the degree to which a state’s constitutional make-up affects its external actions, as these are shaped more by the fear and suspicion that are the consequence of international anarchy. Finally, if there is a tendency towards peace between democracies, it may be better explained by factors such as the economic interdependence that results from free trade, than by any political and constitutional similarities these states may have.
DEMOCRATIZATION
Democratization refers to the process of transition from authoritarianism to liberal democracy. Democratization encompasses three sometimes overlapping processes:
Significance
Since the early nineteenth century, the process of democratization has transformed the political complexion of the world to such an extent that, by 2003, 63 per cent of states, accounting for about 70 per cent of the world’s population, exhibited some of the key features of liberal-democratic governance. This is often seen as having occurred through three ‘waves of democratization’ (Huntington, 1991). The first took place between 1828 and 1926, and involved countries such as the USA, France and the UK; the second occurred between 1943 and 1962, and involved countries such as West Germany, Italy, Japan and India; and the third began in 1974 with the overthrow of right-wing dictatorships in Greece, Portugal and Spain, and the retreat of the generals in Latin America, but was greatly accelerated by the fall of communism during 1989–91. This process has not merely altered governance arrangements across most of the globe, but it has also been claimed to have had wider ramifications, including extending the scope for market-based economics (on the grounds that liberal democracy and capitalism are intrinsically linked), weakening traditional social bonds (on the grounds that democratic societies tend to strengthen individualism) and leading to a decline in large-scale state war (on the grounds of the democratic peace thesis).
Some have portrayed democratization as an inevitable process that is destined to continue, based on the belief that democracy is the highest form of human governance. The unique strength of democracy, from this viewpoint, is that it is able to address the central challenge of politics – the existence of rival views and interests within the same society – while containing the tendency towards bloodshed and violence. In short, only democratic societies are enduringly stable and peaceful. Further advantages of democracy include that, in being based on popular accountability and a system of checks and balances, it keeps tyranny at bay and widens the realm of freedom. However, democratization has also been viewed in a more pessimistic light. For example, far from delivering peace and harmony, democratization may deepen tribal, regional and ethnic tensions, and strengthen the tendency towards charismatic leadership and authoritarianism. Democratization therefore does not operate on the basis of a remorseless logic, as many ‘transition states’ have demonstrated in routinely allowing oppositional forces to be intimidated and basic freedoms to be curtailed despite that persistence of electoral democracy.
DETERRENCE
Deterrence is a theory of social control in which punishment is used to shape the future conduct of others. As a simple, two-person relationship, it involves A threatening to punish B should B act in an unacceptable fashion. As such, deterrence has a number of features. First, as it is based on the ability to provoke fear and inflict harm, it is a negative form of social control. Second, it operates on the basis of an unequal relationship between the parties concerned, in that (using the terminology above) A must have a greater capacity to cause harm than does B. Third, A must not only have the ability to impose its will on B but also be willingness to do so; threats must be credible. Fourth, deterrence relies on rational decision-making, and especially on the ability of B to calculate, and act in accordance with, its own best interests.
Significance
The idea of deterrence has been applied in circumstances ranging from child-rearing to criminal justice, but it has received the greatest attention within the field of international relations. In an international context, deterrence is a tactic or strategy designed to prevent aggression by emphasizing the scale of the likely military response. The cost of the attack must therefore be greater than any benefit it may bring. However, if a military build-up designed to deter aggression is itself perceived as being aggressive, such a deterrence strategy may be counter-productive, provoking an arms race and increasing the chance of war. Such a possibility is highlighted by the security dilemma. A further limitation of deterrence theory is that international relations cannot always be relied on to operate on the basis of rational calculation. Not only may international actors fall prey to expansionist and aggressive political doctrines that blind them to the likely consequences of their actions, but as deterrence sets out to provoke fear, it may simply generate stress or anxiety among policy-makers, thus impairing their ability to make sober and balanced decisions.
The advent of nuclear weapons in 1945 gave debates about deterrence a sharper focus. This is because nuclear weapons have sometimes been seen as being especially well-suited to a deterrence role, both because of their enormous destructive potential and because they are relatively ineffective as defensive weapons. During the Cold War, the USA and the USSR both quickly developed a massive ‘first-strike’ nuclear capability, but they also acquired ‘second-strike’ capabilities that would enable them to withstand an enemy attack and still destroy major strategic targets and population centres. By the early 1960s, both superpowers had an invulnerable ‘second-strike’ capability, which ensured that nuclear war would result in mutually assured destruction (MAD). This system of nuclear deterrence led to a ‘balance of terror’ that some have viewed as being the key factor behind the ‘long peace’ of the Cold War era. The theory of nuclear deterrence nevertheless has its drawbacks. These include the fact that the awesome destructive power of nuclear weapons means that they are widely seen as ‘unusable’, and so cannot be a credible deterrent.
DEVELOPMENT
Development, in its simplest sense, means growth – the act of improving, enlarging or refining. In political analysis, development is conventionally understood in economic or material terms; and as such, it implies that the primary difference between ‘under-developed/developing’ countries or regions and ‘developed’ ones is their level of wealth or affluence. The process of development is therefore closely linked to the alleviation of poverty. However, the concept of development is contested and controversial. Not only are there variant forms of the term, associated, for example, with ideas such as human development and sustainable development, but the notion of development is invariably enmeshed in ideological assumptions, especially about its relationship to a distinctively Western form of modernization.
Significance
Development has featured with increasing prominence on the international political agenda since 1945, as concern has focused on the plight of what used to be called the ‘Third World’ (by contrast with the rich, capitalist ‘First World’ and the less rich, communist ‘Second World’), and is now more commonly dubbed the ‘global South’ (from the ‘North–South divide’ – a term popularized by the Brandt Report (1980)). Since the 1960s, development and poverty reduction have been a major responsibility of the World Bank, and a growing concern of the United Nations. The ‘mainstream’ or ‘orthodox’ view of development is rooted firmly in the ideas of economic liberalism. From this perspective, the key to development is the ability to foster economic growth through market reform (privatization, financial deregulation, labour flexibility, tax cuts and so on) and the integration of the national economy into the global capitalist economy (free trade and an open economy). Despite the orthodox view dominating thinking on matters related to poverty and development since 1945, its influence has expanded through the conversion, from the 1980s onwards, of the institutions of global economic governance and a growing number of states, led by the USA, to a pro-market economic agenda, often called the ‘Washington Consensus’.
Very different thinking has nevertheless emerged from the ‘critical’ or ‘alternative’ view of development, which has become more prominent since the 1980s. Much of this has been based on neo-Marxist theories that portray the global capitalist system not as the solution to the problem of development but as an obstacle to it. Dependency theorists have thus argued that, despite the advance of decolonization, states in the developing world continue to be subject to economic dependency through, for example, unequal trade relations, the impact of transnational corporations, and biases that operate within bodies such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank that favour the interests of industrially advanced states. World-system theorists, for their part, explain global inequality in terms of the division of the world into ‘core’, ‘peripheral’ and ‘semi-peripheral’ areas. In this, economically advanced and politically stable core areas dominate and exploit peripheral areas that are characterized by low wages, rudimentary technology and a dependence on agriculture or primary production.
DEVOLUTION
Devolution is the transfer of power from central government to subordinate regional institutions (to ‘devolve’ means to pass powers or duties down from a higher authority to a lower one). Devolved bodies thus constitute an intermediate level of government between central and local government. Devolution differs from federalism in that, while their territorial jurisdiction may be similar, devolved bodies have no share in sovereignty; their responsibilities and powers are devolved from, and are conferred by, the centre. In its weakest form, that of administrative devolution, devolution implies only that regional institutions implement policies decided elsewhere. In the form of legislative devolution (sometimes called ‘home rule’), devolution involves the establishment of elected regional assemblies invested with policy-making responsibilities and, usually, a measure of fiscal independence.
Significance
Devolution, at least in its legislative form, establishes the greatest possible measure of decentralization within a unitary system of government; that is, one in which sovereign power is vested in a single, national institution. Devolved assemblies have usually been created in response to increasing centrifugal tensions within a state, and as an attempt, in particular, to conciliate growing regional and sometimes nationalist pressures. Spain and France both adopted forms of devolved government in the 1970s and 1980s, and, in the UK, the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and the Northern Ireland Assembly assumed devolved powers in 1999. Despite their lack of entrenched power, once devolved institutions acquire a political identity of their own, and possess a measure of democratic legitimacy; they are very difficult to weaken and, in normal circumstances, impossible to abolish. Northern Ireland’s Stormont Parliament was suspended in 1972, but only when it became apparent that its domination by the predominantly Protestant Unionist parties prevented it from stemming the rising tide of communal violence in the province. The newly created Northern Ireland Assembly was also suspended temporarily in the early 2000s.
The central issue in evaluating devolution is its impact on the integrity of the state and the strength of centrifugal pressures. Its supporters argue that devolution satisfies the desire of regional or ethnic groups or constituent nations for a distinctive political identity while (unlike federalism) upholding the larger unity of the state by maintaining a single source of sovereignty. Critics, however, warn that devolution may fuel centrifugal pressures by strengthening regional, ethnic and national identities, leading to federalism or even to state breakdown. What is clear is that devolution is a process and not an event, in the sense that it sets in train a re-working of political identities and relationships whose ultimate shape may not emerge for several years or perhaps even generations. A further factor is the potential for institutionalized conflict between the national government and devolved bodies. While the constitutional supremacy of the centre ultimately enables it to resolve disputes in its favour, the fact that devolved bodies may exercise significant legislative and fiscal powers, and enjoy political entrenchment through their democratic legitimacy, means that the system as a whole may acquire a quasi-federal character, requiring the development of linking institutions to foster co-operation between the two levels.
DIALECTIC
A dialectic is a process of development brought about by conflict between two opposing forces. Plato’s (427–347 bce) method of developing a philosophical argument by means of a dialogue between Socrates and a protagonist is thus referred to as dialectical. G. W. F. Hegel (1770–1831) explained the process of reasoning and both human and natural history in terms of a theory of the dialectic. According to this, both thought and reality develop towards a determinant end-point through conflict between a ‘thesis’ and the negation it embodies, the ‘antithesis’, producing a higher stage of development, the ‘synthesis’, which, in turn, serves as a new ‘thesis’. By contrast with Hegel’s idealism, Karl Marx (1818–83) gave the dialectic a materialist interpretation in identifying the driving force of history as internal contradictions within class society that are manifest in the form of class conflict.
Significance
The strength of the dialectical method is that it draws attention to tensions or contradictions within belief systems and social structures, often providing important insights into the nature of change. In addition, in emphasizing relationships and interdependence, dialectics can feature as part of a holistic perspective and be used to analyse ecological processes. Nevertheless, dialectical thinking plays little part in conventional social and political analysis. Its main drawbacks are that, in always linking change to internal contradictions, it over-emphasizes conflict in society and elsewhere, and, as in the writings of Hegel and, later, Friedrich Engels (1820–95), the dialectic has been elaborated into a metaphysical system supposedly operating in nature as well as in human society. ‘Dialectical materialism’ (a term coined by the Russian Marxist, Georgi Plekhanov (1856–1918), not Marx), refers to a crude and deterministic form of Marxism that dominated intellectual life in orthodox communist states.
DICTATORSHIP
A dictatorship is, strictly, a form of rule in which absolute power is vested in a single individual; in this sense, dictatorship is synonymous with autocracy. Originally, the term was associated with the unrestricted emergency powers granted to a supreme magistrate in the early Roman Republic, which created a form of constitutional dictatorship. In the modern usage of the term, however, dictators are seen as being above the law and acting beyond constitutional constraints. More generally, dictatorship is characterized by the arbitrary and unchecked exercise of power, as in the ideas of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’, ‘military dictatorship’ and ‘personal dictatorship’. A distinction is sometimes drawn between traditional and totalitarian dictatorships. Traditional dictatorships aim to monopolize government power and conform to the principles of authoritarianism, while totalitarian dictatorships seek ‘total power’ and extend political control to all aspects of social and personal existence.
Significance
Dictators have been found throughout political history. Classic examples include Sulla, Julius Caesar and Augustus Caesar in Rome; Oliver Cromwell after the dissolution of Parliament in 1653; Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon III and Otto von Bismarck in the nineteenth century, and in the twentieth century Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong. While all dictators depend on fear and operate through the control of coercive power, the modern phenomenon of dictatorship is often linked to charismatic leadership and the idea that the leader in some way embodies the destiny or ‘general will’ of the people. Totalitarian dictatorships may thus masquerade as ‘perfect democracies’ and enjoy a significant measure of popular support based, crucially, on strict control of the means of mass communication. However, the personal aspect of dictatorship should not be over-emphasized, as most modern dictatorships are usually military dictatorships or operate through a monopolistic party. In these cases, unrestrained power is vested in the armed forces or the party–state apparatus (or a combination of the two), with leadership sometimes being shared among a group of people, the classic example of which is the military junta. There are indications, nevertheless, that dictatorship as the principal alternative to democracy is of declining significance. Its impact on the twentieth century was linked to the, now largely spent, ideological forces of fascism and communism, meaning that dictatorship has become mainly a developing-world phenomenon. On the other hand, the rising power of China and Russia in the twenty-first century has sometimes been interpreted as evidence of the re-emergence of dictatorship as a serious rival to democracy (Kagan, 2008). The glaring moral defect of dictatorship is its link to repression and tyranny; its major structural defect is its inability to generate or deal with the pressures generated by social and economic development.
DIPLOMACY
The term diplomacy is sometimes (but unhelpfully) treated as being synonymous with foreign policy, in which case it covers attempts by governments to influence or manage events beyond their states’ borders, usually, but not exclusively, through their relations with foreign governments. Diplomacy, however, is usually defined more narrowly: it is confined to peaceful means of securing foreign-policy goals (diplomacy thus differs from war), and it is conducted only by personnel who are official agents of a state or an international organization. In everyday language, diplomacy also implies the use of tact or subtlety (‘the application of intelligence’), but diplomats who are tactless or unintelligent do not thereby cease to be diplomats (Bull, 2012).
Significance
A system of diplomatic relations (involving ambassadors, embassies and established rules, including ‘diplomatic immunity’) developed in a piecemeal fashion between the fifteenth and twentieth centuries, the core of traditional diplomacy being based in the official relationships between sovereign states. Diplomacy has five main functions:
Those who emphasize the importance of diplomacy highlight its capacity to uphold international order and to reduce the use of military power in world affairs. This stems from the ability of diplomatic relations to build trust between international actors and to prevent, or at least to minimize, misunderstanding or misperception. If ‘friction’ in international relations is unavoidable, diplomacy at least provides states with mechanisms through which they can negotiate and bargain, allowing them to explore non-violent ways of resolving conflicts. Realists nevertheless stress that the capacity of diplomacy to balance various national interests is restricted by the fact that world politics is a self-help system in which states must ultimately rely on their own military resources to achieve their ends. Finally, the traditional model of inter-state diplomacy has become less relevant as a result of the growing prominence of international organizations and the emergence of a system of global governance.
DISCOURSE
Discourse, in everyday language, refers to verbal communication, talk or conversation. However, discourse has been adopted as an analytical concept or theoretical approach by a variety of academic disciplines, including linguistics, literature, philosophy and, most enthusiastically, cultural studies. In its technical sense, a discourse is a specialist system of knowledge embodied in a particular language, a kind of mind-set that structures understanding and behaviour (examples could range from legal jargon and religious rituals to ideological traditions). Discourse theory thus uncovers meaning in objects and practices by recognizing their discursive character and analysing the part they play in particular discourses and within a wider framework of meaning. Following Michel Foucault (1926–84), an emphasis on discourse, or what he called ‘discursive formation’, reflects the belief that knowledge is deeply enmeshed in power, with truth always being a social construct.
Significance
Political and social theorists sympathetic to postmodernism have been attracted to discourse theory for a number of reasons. These include that it recognizes that meaning is not implicit in social objects and practices but is historically and politically constructed, and that it can uncover social antagonisms and struggles for hegemony that conventional theory ignores.
Criticisms of discourse theory are either philosophical or substantive. Philosophically, an emphasis on discourse may reduce everything to thought or language and deny that there is a reality independent of our ideas or conceptions. It may also imply that everything is relative because truth or falsity can be asserted only in relation to particular discourses. Substantive criticisms include that discourse theory limits or discourages the analysis of political and social institutions, and that, in so far as discourse displaces the concept of ideology, it shifts the attention of political analysis away from issues of truth and falsity.
ECOLOGISM
The central feature of ecologism is the belief that nature is an interconnected whole, embracing humans and non-humans as well as the inanimate world (the term ‘ecology’ means the study of organisms ‘at home’ or ‘in their habitats’). A distinction is often drawn between ecologism and environmentalism. Environmentalism refers to a moderate or reformist approach to the environment that responds to ecological crises but without fundamentally questioning conventional assumptions about the natural world. It thus includes the activities of most environmental pressure groups and is a stance that may be adopted by a range of political parties. Ecologism, in contrast, is an ideology in its own right, in that it adopts an ecocentric or biocentric perspective that accords priority to nature or the planet, and thus differs from the anthropocentric or human-centred perspectives of conventional ideological traditions. Nevertheless, two strains of ecologism are normally identified. ‘Deep ecology’ completely rejects any lingering belief that the human species is in some way superior to, or more important than, any other species – or, indeed, nature itself. ‘Shallow ecology’, on the other hand, accepts the lessons of ecology but harnesses them to human needs and ends. In other words, it preaches that if we can serve and cherish the natural world, it will, in turn, continue to sustain human life.
A variety of hybrid forms of ecologism have emerged. Eco-socialism, usually influenced by modern Marxism, explains environmental destruction in terms of capitalism’s rapacious quest for profit. Eco-anarchism draws parallels between natural equilibrium in nature and in human communities, using the idea of ‘social ecology’. Eco-feminism portrays patriarchy as the chief source of environmental destruction, and usually believes that women are naturally ecological. Reactionary ecologism links the conservation of nature to the defence of the traditional social order, and was expressed most radically in the ‘blood and soil’ ideas of Nazism. However, ‘deep’ ecology rejects all conventional political creeds. It tends to regard both capitalism and socialism as examples of the ‘super-ideology’ of industrialism, characterized by large-scale production, the accumulation of capital, and relentless growth. It supports bio-centric equality, holding that the rights of animals have the same moral status as those of humans, and portrays nature as an ethical community within which human beings are merely ‘plain citizens’.
Significance
Ecological or green political ideas can be traced back to the nineteenth-century backlash against the spread of industrialization and urbanization. Modern ecologism emerged during the 1960s, along with renewed concern regarding the damage done to the environment by pollution, resource depletion, over-population and so on. Such concerns have been articulated politically by a growing number of ‘green’ parties which now operate in most developed societies and, at least in the case of the Greens in Germany, have shared government power, and through the influence of a powerful environmentalist lobby whose philosophy is ‘think globally, act locally’. Despite, in origin at least, green parties styling themselves as ‘anti-party parties’ and adopting radical ecological perspectives, environmental pressure groups generally practise ‘shallow’ ecologism.
However, the spread of ecologism has been hampered by a number of factors. These include the limited attraction of its anti-growth, or at least sustainable growth, economic model, and that its critique of industrial society is sometimes advanced from a pastoral and anti-technology perspective that is out of step with the modern world. Some, as a result, dismiss ecologism simply as an urban fad, a form of post-industrial romanticism. Ecologism nevertheless has at least two major strengths. First, it draws attention to an imbalance in the relationship between humans and the natural world that is manifest in a growing catalogue of threats to the well-being of both. Second, ecologism has gone further than any other ideological tradition in questioning and transcending the limited focus of Western political thought. In keeping with globalization, it is the nearest thing that political theory has to a world philosophy.
ELECTION
An election is a device for filling an office or post through choices made by a designated body of people, the electorate. Elections may nevertheless be either democratic or non-democratic. Democratic elections are conducted according to the following principles: universal adult suffrage (however ‘adult’ is defined); ‘one person, one vote’, ‘one vote, one value’; the secret ballot; and electoral choice offered by competition between both candidates and political parties. Non-democratic elections may therefore exhibit any of the following features: the right to vote is restricted on grounds such as property ownership, education, gender or racial origin; a system of plural voting is in operation or constituency sizes vary significantly; voters are subject to pressure or intimidation; or only a single candidate or single party can contest the election.
There are, however, a variety of democratic electoral systems. These differ in a variety of ways. Voters may be asked to choose between candidates or between parties; they may either select a single candidate, or vote preferentially, ranking the candidates they wish to support in order; the electorate may or may not be grouped into electoral units or constituencies; constituencies may return a single member or a number of members; and the level of support needed to elect a candidate may vary from a plurality (the largest single number of votes or a ‘relative’ majority) to an overall or ‘absolute’ majority or a quota of some kind. However, the most common way of distinguishing between electoral systems is on the basis of how they convert votes into seats.
Majoritarian (or non-proportional) systems enable larger parties to win a significantly higher proportion of seats than the proportion of votes they gain in the election. This increases the chances of a single party gaining a parliamentary majority and being able to govern on its own. Examples of majoritarian systems include the simple plurality system (‘first-past-the-post’), the second ballot system and the alternative vote (AV). Proportional systems guarantee an equal, or at least more equal, relationship between seats and votes. In a pure system of proportional representation (PR), a party that gains 45 per cent of the votes would win exactly 45 per cent of the seats. Examples of proportional systems include the party list system, single transferable vote (STV) and the additional member system (AMS).
Significance
Elections are often seen as nothing less than democracy in practice. The conventional view is that elections, when they are fair and competitive, are a mechanism through which politicians can be called to account and forced to introduce policies that in some way reflect public opinion. This emphasises the ‘bottom-up’ functions of elections. In this view, elections are the major source of political recruitment, a means of making governments and of transferring government power, a guarantee of representation, and a major determinant of government policy. On the other hand, the ‘radical’ view of elections portrays them as being largely a mechanism through which governments and political elites can exercise control over their populations. This view emphasizes the ‘top-down’ functions of elections. These are that they have the capacity to build legitimacy for the regime, to enable the government to ‘educate’ the electorate and shape public opinion, and to neutralize political discontent and opposition by channelling them in a constitutional direction. In reality, however, elections have no single character: they are neither simply mechanisms of public accountability nor a means of ensuring political control. Like all channels of political communication, elections are a ‘two-way street’ that provide the government and the people, the elite and the mass, with the opportunity to influence one another.
Much of the debate regarding elections centres on the merits of different electoral systems, and in particular the choice between majoritarian and proportional systems. Majoritarian systems have the advantage that they allow governments to be formed that have a clear mandate from the electorate. They also increase the likelihood of strong and effective government, in that a single party usually has majority control of the parliament, and produce stable government because single-party governments rarely collapse through internal disunity. In contrast, proportional systems are ‘fairer’ in that party representation is linked reliably to electoral support, and ensure that governments have broader and usually majority support among the electorate. Moreover, by increasing the likelihood of coalition government, they institutionalize checks on power and encourage policy to be made through a process of bargaining and consensus-building. Nevertheless, there is no such thing as a ‘best’ electoral system. The electoral systems debate is, at heart, a debate about the desirable nature of government, and the respective merits of ‘representative’ and ‘effective’ government. Finally, the impact of particular electoral systems will vary from state to state, and possibly over time, depending on factors such as the political culture, the nature of the party system and the economic and social context within which politics is conducted.
ELITISM
The term elite originally meant, and can still mean, the highest, the best or the most excellent. Used in a neutral or empirical sense, however, it refers to a minority in whose hands power, wealth or privilege is concentrated, justifiably or otherwise. Elitism is a belief in, or practice of, rule by an elite or minority. At least three forms of elitism can exist. Normative elitism is a political theory which suggests that elite rule is desirable, usually on the grounds that power should be vested in the hands of a wise or enlightened minority (in this sense, elitism could be regarded as a value or even an ideology). This implies that democracy is undesirable, and is, for example, evident in Plato’s (427–347 bce) belief in rule by a class of benign philosopher-kings. Classical elitism claimed to be empirical (though normative beliefs often intruded), and saw elite rule as being inevitable, an unchangeable fact of social existence. This implies that egalitarian ideas such as democracy and socialism are impossible. The chief exponents of this view were Vilfredo Pareto (1848–1923), Gaetano Mosca (1857–1941) and Robert Michels (1876–1936). Modern elitism has also developed an empirical analysis, but it is more critical and discriminating regarding the causes of elite rule, usually linking these to particular economic and political structures rather than the inevitable structure of society. Modern elitists, such as C. Wright Mills (1916–62) have often been concerned to highlight elite rule in the hope of both explaining and challenging it. What is called variously ‘pluralist’, ‘competitive’ or ‘democratic’ elitism is a development within modern elitism that acknowledges that modern elites are typically fractured or divided rather than unified and coherent, and that rivalry among elites can, to some extent, ensure that non-elite groups are given a political voice.
Significance
Normative elitism has largely been abandoned, given the advance of democratic values and practices, though representative democracy can be seen to embody residual elitist assumptions in that it ensures that government decisions are made by educated and well-informed professional politicians rather than by the public directly. Classical elitism has had a considerable impact on social and political theory, being used, among other things, to reject the Marxist idea of a classless, communist society. Mosca argued that the resources or attributes that are necessary for rule are always unequally distributed, and that a cohesive minority will always be able to manipulate and control the masses, even in a parliamentary democracy. Pareto linked elite rule to two psychological types: ‘foxes’, who rule by cunning and manipulation; and ‘lions’, who dominate through coercion and violence. Michels developed what he termed the ‘iron law of oligarchy’, the idea that in all organizations power is concentrated in the hands of a small group of leaders. However, such arguments have been criticized for generalizing on the basis of assumptions about human nature or organization, and because they are difficult to reconcile with modern democratic practices.
Modern elitism nevertheless offers an important critique of both pluralism and democracy. The democratic elitism of Joseph Schumpeter (1883–1950) offered a ‘realistic’ model of democracy, which emphasized that, while elections can decide which elite rules, they cannot change the fact that power is always exercised by an elite. This gave rise to the ‘economic theory of democracy’, which applies rational choice theories to politics by treating electoral competition as a political market. The ‘power elite’ model advanced by theorists such as Mills (1956) departed from Marxism in so far as it rejected the idea of an economically defined ‘ruling class’, but nevertheless drew attention to the disproportionate influence of the military–industrial complex. Attempts to provide empirical support for elite theory have been provided by a variety of community power studies. However, despite it still being influential in the USA in particular, the elitist position has its drawbacks. These include that it is less theoretically sophisticated than, say, Marxism or pluralism, and that empirical evidence to sustain elitist conclusions, especially concerning the distribution of power at the national level, is as yet unconvincing.
EMPIRICISM
Empiricism is the doctrine that sense-experience is the only basis of knowledge, and that therefore all hypotheses and theories should be tested by a process of observation and experiment. This was evident in John Locke’s (1632–1704) belief that the mind is a tabula rasa (blank tablet) on which information is imprinted by the senses in the form of sense-data. For David Hume (1711–76), empiricism also implied a deep scepticism which, in its extreme form, should lead us to doubt the existence of objects independent of our perception of them – for example, does a tree exist if no one can see it, touch it and so on? Since the early twentieth century, empiricism has been closely associated with pragmatism, as an epistemological theory. Philosophical pragmatism is the belief that the only way of establishing truth is through practical application, by establishing ‘what works out most effectively’. All forms of empiricism draw a clear distinction between ‘facts’, propositions that have been verified by experience, observation and experiment, and ‘values’, which as subjective beliefs or opinions are always to be distrusted.
Significance
An empirical tradition can be traced back to the earliest days of political thought. It can be seen in Aristotle’s (384–22 bce) attempt to classify constitutions, in Machiavelli’s (1469–1527) realistic account of statecraft, and in C.-L. Montesquieu’s (1689–1775) sociological theory of government and law. In many ways, such writings constitute the basis of what is now called comparative government, and gave rise to an essentially institutional approach to the discipline. The empirical approach to political analysis is characterized by the attempt to offer a dispassionate and impartial account of political reality. It is ‘descriptive’ in that it seeks to analyse and explain, whereas the normative approach is ‘prescriptive’ in the sense that it makes judgements and offers recommendations. Empiricism thus provided the basis for positivism and, later, behaviouralism. However, the high point of philosophical empiricism was reached in the early twentieth century and it has subsequently been subjected to considerable attack. Strict empiricism has been criticized because it is linked to a simplistic model of science that has been badly damaged by advances in the philosophy of science. It also fails to recognize the extent to which human perception and sense-experience are structured by concepts and theories, and is of limited value in dealing with matters that are ethical or normative in character.
EQUALITY
Equality is the principle of uniform apportionment; it does not imply identity or sameness. Equality, however, is meaningless unless we can answer the question: equal in what? The term equality has very different implications, depending on what is being apportioned. Foundational equality is the idea that human beings are ‘born equal’ in the sense that their lives are of equal moral value. Formal equality refers to the formal status of individuals in society in terms of their rights and entitlements; its clearest expression is in the form of legal equality (‘equality before the law’) and political equality (universal suffrage and one person, one vote; one vote, one value). Equality of opportunity means that everyone has the same starting point, or equal life chances. This distinguishes between inequalities that result from unequal social treatment (which are non-legitimate) and ones that result from an unequal distribution of merit, talent and the willingness to work (which are legitimate). Equality of outcome refers to an equal distribution of rewards; it is usually reflected in social equality, an equal distribution of income, wealth and other social goods. These different views of equality are sometimes mutually incompatible. For example, equality of opportunity may justify unequal social outcomes on the grounds of meritocracy and the need for incentives.
Significance
The idea of equality is perhaps the defining feature of modern political thought. Whereas classical and medieval thinkers took it for granted that hierarchy was natural or inevitable, few modern ones have not been willing to support equality in one of its various forms. In a sense we are all egalitarians now. The modern battle about equality is therefore fought not between those who support the principle and those who reject it, but between different views as to where and how equality should be applied. Despite foundational equality as a philosophical principle, and formal equality as a legal and political principle, being widely accepted, at least in liberal-democratic societies, deep controversy continues to surround the idea of equality of outcome or rewards. Indeed, many treat the left/ right political spectrum as a reflection of differing attitudes towards social equality, with left-wingers broadly supporting it, while right-wingers question or oppose it.
Among the arguments in favour of social or material equality are:
Among the arguments against social equality are:
EXECUTIVE
The executive, in its broadest sense, is the branch of government responsible for the implementation of laws and policies made by the parliament. The executive branch extends from the head of government, or chief executive, to the members of enforcement agencies such as the police and the military, and includes both ministers and civil servants. More commonly, the term is now used in a narrower sense to describe the smaller body of decision-makers who take overall responsibility for the direction and co-ordination of government policy. This core of senior figures is often called the political executive (roughly equivalent to the ‘government of the day’, or, in presidential systems, ‘the administration’), as opposed to the official executive, or bureaucracy. The term ‘core executive’ is sometimes used to refer to the co-ordinating and arbitrating mechanisms that lie at the heart of central government and straddle the ‘political/official’ divide by including the chief executive, the cabinet, senior officials in key government departments and the security and intelligence services, and networks of political advisers.
However, the organization of the political executive differs significantly depending on whether it operates in a parliamentary or a presidential system of government. Parliamentary executives have the following features:
Presidential executives are characterized by the following features:
Semi-presidential executives are headed by a separately elected president who presides over a government drawn from, and accountable to, the parliament. The balance of power between the president and the prime minister in such circumstances depends on factors such as the formal powers of the presidency, which may include the ability to dissolve the parliament, and the party composition of both institutions.
Significance
The executive is the irreducible core of government. Political systems can operate without constitutions, parliaments, judiciaries and even political parties, but they cannot survive without an executive branch. This is because the key function of the political executive is to direct and control the policy process, both in formulating government policy and ensuring that it is implemented. In short, the executive is expected to ‘govern’. The political executive is expected, in particular, to develop coherent economic and social programmes that meet the needs of complex and politically sophisticated societies, and to control the state’s various external relationships in an increasingly interdependent world. One important consequence of this has been the growth of the executive’s legislative powers, and its encroachment on the traditional responsibilities of the parliament. Other important functions of the political executive include overseeing the implementation of policy and strategic control of the bureaucratic machinery of government, the provision of leadership in the event of either domestic or international crises, and the carrying out of various ceremonial and diplomatic responsibilities in which heads of state, chief executives and, to a lesser extent, senior ministers ‘stand for’ the state. Moreover, the popularity of the political executive, more than any other part of the political system, is crucial to the character and stability of the regime as a whole. The ability of the executive to mobilize support ensures the compliance and co-operation of the general public, and, more important, the political executive’s popularity is a crucial determinant of the legitimacy of the broader regime.
Such is the potential power of executives that much of political development has taken the form of attempts to check or constrain them, either by forcing them to operate within a constitutional framework, or by making them accountable to a popularly elected parliament or democratic electorate. Nevertheless, as the source of political leadership, the executive’s role has been greatly enhanced by the widening responsibilities of the state in both domestic and international realms, and the media’s tendency to portray politics in terms of personalities. This, in turn, has led to contradictory shifts in the location of executive power. The official executive, as the source of expertise and specialist knowledge, has been strengthened at the expense of the political executive, but, regardless of the parliamentary/presidential distinction, power has also been concentrated in the hands of the chief executive as the popular face of modern politics. However, the hopes and expectations focused on executives may also prove to be their undoing. In many political systems, leaders are finding it increasingly difficult to ‘deliver the goods’. This is linked both to the growing complexity of modern society and to the fact that, through the impact of globalization, the capacity of national governments to solve problems has declined.
FAILED STATE
A failed state (sometimes called a ‘quasi-state’ or a ‘weak state’) is a state that is unable to perform its key role of ensuring domestic order by monopolizing the use of legitimate force within its borders. (Technically, failed states cease to be states, since they lack meaningful sovereignty.) Some examples of failed states in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries include Haiti, Rwanda, Liberia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Somalia, Libya, Syria and Iraq. Failed states are no longer able to act as viable political units, in that they lack a credible system of law and order, often being gripped by civil war or warlordism (a condition in which, in the absence of a sovereign state, locally-based militarized bands vie for power). They are also no longer able to act as viable economic units, in that they are incapable of providing for their citizens and have no functioning infrastructure. While relatively few states collapse completely, a much larger number are barely functioning and dangerously close to collapse.
Significance
Failed states are characterized by recurrent civil strife, and even civil war, in line with the tendencies usually associated with anarchy. Failed states, nevertheless, are not only a domestic problem. They often have a wider impact through, for example, precipitating refugee crises; providing a refuge for drug dealers, arms smugglers and terrorist organizations; generating regional instability; and provoking external intervention to provide humanitarian relief and to keep the peace. The failure of such states stems primarily from the experience of colonialism. The colonial inheritance tends not only to include a lack of political, economic, social and educational development, but also deep ethnic, religious and tribal divisions. Nevertheless, colonialism does not, on its own, explain the weakness or failure of post-colonial states. Other sources of state failure include internal factors, such as the existence of social elites, backward institutions and parochial value systems that block the transition from pre-industrial, agrarian societies to modern industrial ones, and external factors such as the impact of transnational corporations and neo-colonialism.
The issue of how to deal with the problem of failed states has been no less troubling, especially in the light of attempts by the international community to intervene in order to promote ‘state-building’, as in Iraq and Afghanistan. To date, the record of state-building has been, at best, patchy, with at least three challenges standing in its way. The first is that new or reformed institutions and structures have to be constructed in a context of often deep political and ethnic tension and endemic poverty. Second, the democratization usually deemed necessary to invest these structures with legitimacy may both bring ethnic and other tensions to the surface and expose the flaws and failings of emergent institutions. Third, state-building may involve the imposition of an essentially Western model of political development that is unsuited to the needs of developing counties.
FASCISM
Fascism is a political ideology whose core theme is the idea of an organically unified national community, embodied in a belief in ‘strength through unity’. The individual, in a literal sense, is nothing; individual identity must be entirely absorbed into the community or social group. The fascist ideal is that of the ‘new man’, a hero, motivated by duty, honour and self-sacrifice, prepared to dedicate his life to the glory of his nation or race, and to give unquestioning obedience to a supreme leader. In many respects, fascism constitutes a revolt against the ideas and values that dominated Western political thought from the French Revolution onwards; in the words of the Italian fascist slogan: ‘1789 is dead’. Values such as rationalism, progress, freedom and equality were thus overturned in the name of struggle, leadership, power, heroism and war. In this sense, fascism has an ‘anti-character’. It is defined largely by what it opposes: it is anti-rational, anti-liberal, anti-conservative, anti-capitalist, anti-bourgeois, anti-communist and so on. Fascism represents the darker side of the Western political tradition, the central values of which it transformed rather than abandoned. For fascists, freedom means complete submission, democracy is equated with dictatorship, progress implies constant struggle and war, and creation is fused with destruction.
Fascism has nevertheless been a complex historical phenomenon, and it is difficult to identify its core principles or a ‘fascist minimum’. For example, while most commentators treat Mussolini’s fascist dictatorship in Italy and Hitler’s Nazi dictatorship in Germany as the two principal manifestations of fascism, others regard fascism and Nazism as distinct ideological traditions. Italian fascism was essentially an extreme form of statism that was based on unquestioning respect and absolute loyalty towards a ‘totalitarian’ state. As the fascist philosopher, Giovanni Gentile (1875–1944), put it, ‘everything for the state; nothing against the state; nothing outside the state’. German Nazism, on the other hand, was constructed largely on the basis of racialism. Its two core theories were Aryanism (the belief that the German people constituted a ‘master race’ and were destined for world domination) and a virulent form of anti-Semitism that portrayed the Jews as inherently evil and aimed at their eradication. Neo-fascism or ‘democratic fascism’ claims to have distanced itself from principles such as charismatic leadership, totalitarianism and overt racialism. It is a form of fascism that is often linked to anti-immigration campaigns and is associated with the growth of insular, ethnically or racially based forms of nationalism that have sprung up as a reaction against globalization and supranationalism.
Significance
While the major ideas and doctrines of fascism can be traced back to the nineteenth century, they were fused together and shaped by World War I and its aftermath, and in particular by a potent mixture of war and revolution. Fascism emerged most dramatically in Italy and Germany, manifesting respectively in the Mussolini regime (1922–43) and the Hitler regime (1933–45). Some historians regard fascism as a specifically inter-war phenomenon, linked to a historically unique set of circumstances. These circumstances included World War I’s legacy of disruption, lingering militarism and frustrated nationalism; the fact that in many parts of Europe democratic values had yet to replace older, autocratic ones; the threat to the lower middle classes of the growing might of big business and organized labour; the fears generated among propertied classes generally, and elite groups in particular, by the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia; and the economic insecurity of the 1920s that deepened with the full-scale world economic crisis of the early 1930s. According to this view, fascism died in 1945 with the final collapse of the Hitler and Mussolini regimes, and it has been suppressed ever since by a combination of political stability and economic security. The late twentieth century nevertheless witnessed a renewal of fascism in the form of neo-fascism. Neo-fascism has been particularly influential in Eastern Europe, where it has sought to revive national rivalries and racial hatreds, and has taken advantage of the political instability resulting from the collapse of communism. However, it is questionable whether fascism can meaningfully adopt a ‘democratic’ face, since this implies an accommodation with principles such as pluralism, toleration and individualism.
FEDERALISM
Federalism (from the Latin foedus, meaning ‘pact’, or ‘covenant’) refers to the legal and political structures that distribute power between two distinct levels of govern- ment, neither of which is subordinate to the other. Its central feature is therefore the notion of shared sovereignty, under which each level of government exercises supreme and autonomous control over a specific range of issues. On the basis of this definition, ‘classical’ federations are few in number: the USA, Switzerland, Belgium, Canada and Australia. However, many more states have federal-type features. Federalism differs from devolution in that devolved bodies have no share in sovereignty, and it differs from confederations in that the latter are qualified unions of states in which each state retains its independence, typically guaranteed by a system of unanimous decision-making. Federalism also has an international dimension, in which case it is characterized by the ‘pooling’ of sovereignty in designated areas, meaning that supranational governance coexists with a delimited form of national sovereignty. The clearest example of this is found in the European Union (EU), though it is perhaps more accurate to talk of a ‘federalizing Europe’ than a ‘federal Europe’.
There are differences within federalism, between federal states that operate a separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches of government (typified by the US presidential system), and parliamentary systems, in which executive and legislative power is ‘fused’. The former tend to ensure that government power is diffused both territorially and functionally, meaning that there are multiple points of contact between the two levels of government. Parliamentary systems, however, often produce what is called executive federalism (notably in Canada and Australia) in which the federal balance is largely determined by the relationship between the executives of each level of government. In states such as Germany and Austria, so-called administrative federalism operates, in which central government is the key policy-maker, and provincial government is charged with the responsibility for the details of policy implementation.
Nevertheless, certain features are common to most, if not all, federal states (see Figure 1).
Figure 1 Federal states
Significance
It is widely argued that the federal principle is more applicable to some states than to others. In the first place, federations have often been formed by the coming together of a number of established political communities which nevertheless wish to preserve their separate identities and, to some extent, their autonomy. This clearly applies in the case of the world’s first federal state, the USA, formed by former colonies that each possessed a distinctive political identity but jointly recognized their need for a new and more centralized constitutional framework. The second factor influencing the formation of federations is the existence of an external threat or a desire to play a more effective role in international affairs. Small, strategically vulnerable states, for example, have a powerful incentive to enter broader political unions. The drift towards the construction of a ‘federal Europe’ was thus, in part, brought about by a fear of Soviet aggression and by a perceived loss of European influence in the emerging bipolar world order. A third factor is geographical size. It is no coincidence that many of the territorially larger states in the world – the USA, Canada, Brazil, Australia, Mexico and India – have opted to introduce federal systems. The final factor encouraging the adoption of federalism is cultural and ethnic heterogeneity. Federalism, in short, has often been seen as an institutional response to societal divisions and diversity.
One of the chief strengths of federal systems is that, unlike unitary systems in which sovereignty is concentrated in a single, central body, they give regional and local interests a constitutionally guaranteed political voice. The states and provinces exercise a range of autonomous powers and enjoy some measure of representation in central government, usually through the second chamber of the federal legislature. The second advantage of federalism is that, in diffusing government power, it creates a network of checks and balances that help to protect individual liberty. Third, federalism has provided an institutional mechanism through which fractured societies maintain unity and coherence. In this respect, the federal solution may be appropriate only to a limited number of ethnically diverse and regionally divided societies; but in these cases it may be absolutely vital.
On the other hand, critics argue that federalism often proves to be an ineffective check on centralization, and may even foster the trend. This applies in the case of the USA, which, despite the principle of each state’s rights being enshrined in the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution, has witnessed a steady growth in the powers of federal government, dating back to the 1930s. Eurosceptics, for their part, warn that ‘pooled’ sovereignty within the EU is a recipe for the progressive erosion of the autonomy of member states. A further charge made against federalism is that structures intended to create healthy tension within a system of government may, in practice, generate frustration and paralysis, making it difficult, if not impossible, for bold economic or social programmes to be implemented. At the heart of this criticism lies the belief that shared sovereignty is a contradiction in terms: sovereignty is only meaningful if it is single and indivisible.
FEMINISM
Feminism is a political movement and ideology that aims to advance the social role of women. Feminists have highlighted what they see as the political relationship between the sexes: the supremacy of men and the subjection of women in most, if not all, societies. Feminist ideology is therefore characterized by two basic beliefs. First, women and men are treated differently because of their sex; and second, this unequal treatment can and should be overturned. while most feminists therefore embrace the goal of sexual equality, it is misleading to define feminism in terms of this goal, as some feminists distinguish between liberation and equality, arguing that the latter implies that women should be ‘like men’. The central concept in feminist analysis is patriarchy, which draws attention to the totality of oppression and exploitation to which women are subject. This, in turn, highlights the political importance of gender, understood to refer to socially imposed rather than biological differences between women and men. Most feminists view gender as a political construct, usually based on stereotypes of ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’ behaviour and social roles.
Feminist theory and practice is highly diverse, however. Distinctive liberal, socialist/Marxist and radical forms of feminism are conventionally identified. Liberal feminism reflects a commitment to individualism and formal equality, and is characterized by the quest for equal rights and opportunities in ‘public’ and political life. Socialist feminism, largely derived from Marxism, highlights links between female subordination and the capitalist mode of production, drawing attention to the economic significance of women being confined to the family or domestic life. Radical feminism goes beyond the perspectives of established political traditions in portraying gender divisions as the most fundamental and politically significant cleavages in society, and in calling for the radical, even revolutionary, restructuring of personal, domestic and family life. Radical feminists proclaim that ‘the personal is the political’. However, the breakdown of feminism into three traditions – liberal, socialist and radical – has become increasingly redundant since the 1970s, as feminism has become yet more sophisticated and diverse. Among its more recent forms have been black feminism, psychoanalytic feminism, eco-feminism and postmodern feminism.
Significance
The so-called ‘first wave’ of feminism was associated closely with the women’s suffrage movement, which emerged in the 1840s and 1850s. The achievement of female suffrage in most Western countries in the early twentieth century meant that the campaign for legal and civil rights assumed a lower profile and deprived the women’s movement of a unifying focus. The ‘second wave’ of feminism arose during the 1960s and expressed, in addition to the established concern with equal rights, the more radical and revolutionary demands of the growing women’s liberation movement. Since the early 1970s, feminism has undergone a process of deradicalization, leading some to proclaim the emergence of ‘post-feminism’. This was undoubtedly linked to a growing backlash against feminism, associated with the rise of the New Right, but it also reflected the emergence of more individualized and conventionalized forms of feminism, characterized by an unwillingness to view women any longer as ‘victims’. The term ‘third-wave’ feminism has increasingly been adopted since the 1990s by a younger generation of feminist theorists for whom the campaigns and demands of the 1960s and 1970s women’s movement seem to be of limited relevance. This form of feminism has generally favoured a more radical engagement with the politics of difference, bringing into focus not only differences between women and men but also differences among women themselves.
The major strength of feminist ideology is that it has exposed and challenged the gender biases that pervade society, and which have been ignored by conventional political thought. As such, feminism has gained growing respectability as a distinctive school of political thought. It has shed new light on established concepts such as power, domination and equality, but also introduced a new sensitivity and language into politics related to ideas such as connection, voice and difference. Feminism has nevertheless been criticized on the grounds that its internal divisions are now so sharp that feminist theory has lost all coherence and unity. Postmodern feminists, for example, even question whether ‘woman’ is a meaningful category. Others suggest that feminism has become disengaged from a society that is increasingly post-feminist, in that, largely thanks to the women’s movement, the domestic, professional and public roles of women, at least in developed societies, have undergone a major transformation.
FREE TRADE
Free trade refers to a condition in which the free flow of goods and services in international exchange is neither restricted nor encouraged by direct government intervention. Free trade thus requires the absence of tariffs (taxes on imports), quotas (restrictions on the quantity of imports), subsidies (aid designed to reduce the price of exports) or other forms of protectionism, such as regulatory barriers. Free trade can be promoted either by bilateral trade agreements or through the establishment of ‘free trade areas’ – areas within which states agree to reduce tariffs and other barriers to trade. Free trade is nevertheless a relative, rather than an absolute term, as all modern governments are involved, to some degree, in regulating foreign trade.
Significance
Advocates of free trade argue that it brings massive economic and political benefits. The key economic argument in favour of free trade, which can be traced back to Adam Smith (1723–90) and David Ricardo (1772–1823), is the theory of comparative advantage. This suggests that international trade benefits all countries because it allows each to specialize in the production of the goods and services it is best suited to produce (in view of its natural resources, climate, size of population and so on). Free trade thus draws economic resources, at the international level, to their most profitable use, and so delivers general prosperity. Other economic advantages of free trade include the fact that specialization allows production to be carried out on a larger scale, so allowing for economies of scale. Such thinking helps to explain the widespread belief that the success of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), and of its successor, the World Trade Organization (WTO), founded in 1995, in countering protectionism has underpinned growth in the world economy since 1945. The central political argument in favour of free trade is that it promotes international peace and harmony, by generating economic interdependence and strengthening social intercourse, and therefore understanding, between states.
Nevertheless, free trade has its critics. Some, for example, argue that free trade benefits industrialized and economically advanced countries at the expense of poor and developing ones. The latter are locked into the production of food and raw materials (for which prices are volatile with value being added to them outside the producing country), thereby preventing them from making economic progress. In this way, free trade entrenches divisions between prosperous ‘core’ and poorer ‘peripheral’ areas. Similarly, the strategic use of protectionist measures may help to create a domestic economic environment more favourable to growth, particularly by ensuring that fragile economies and so-called ‘infant’ industries are not exposed to the full force of international competition, and so never develop further. Finally, the chief political argument against free trade is that national security requires countries to maintain their own agriculture and energy supply, in particular, for fear that foreign supplies of vital goods may be curtailed as a result of international crises or war.
FREEDOM
Freedom or liberty (the two terms are best used interchangeably) is, in its broadest sense, the ability to think or act as one wishes. An important distinction is nevertheless made between negative and positive freedom (Berlin, 1958). Negative freedom means non-interference: the absence of external constraints on the individual. The individual is thus ‘at liberty’ to act as he or she wishes. The clearest manifestations of negative freedom are in the form of freedom of choice, civil liberty and privacy. Positive freedom is linked to the achievement of some identifiable goal or benefit, usually personal development or self-realization, though Berlin defined it as self-mastery and linked it to democracy. For Berlin, the negative/positive distinction was reflected in the difference between being free from something and being free to do something. However, the ‘freedom from’ and ‘freedom to’ distinction is misleading, because every example of freedom can be described in both ways. For example, being free from ignorance means being free to gain an education. G. C. MacCallum (1991) proposed a single, value-free concept of freedom in the form: ‘X is free from Y to do or be Z’. This suggests that the apparently deep question ‘Are we free?’ is meaningless, and should be replaced by a more complete and specific statement about what we are free from, and what we are free to do.
Significance
Freedom is often considered to be the supreme political value in Western liberal societies. Its virtue is that, attached to the idea that human beings are rationally self-willed creatures, it promises the satisfaction of human interests or the realization of human potential. In short, freedom is the basis for happiness and well-being. However, despite its popularity, different political thinkers and traditions draw quite different conclusions from their belief in freedom. For classical liberals and supporters of the New Right, who view freedom in strictly negative terms, it implies rolling back the state and minimizing the realm of political authority. Indeed, for anarchists, who alone regard freedom as an absolute value, it is irreconcilable with any form of political authority. On the other hand, modern liberals and socialists have tended to subscribe to a positive view of freedom that justifies widening the responsibilities of the state, particularly in relation to welfare and economic management. The state is regarded as the enemy of freedom when it is viewed as an external constraint on the individual, but as a guarantee of freedom when it lays down the conditions for personal development and self-realization. Conservatives, for their part, have traditionally endorsed a weak view of freedom as the willing recognition of duties and responsibilities. This position is taken to its extreme by fascists, who portrayed ‘true’ freedom as unquestioning obedience to the leader and the absorption of the individual into the national community.
Nevertheless, with the exception of anarchism, freedom is not regarded as an unqualified blessing. This is reflected in the widely accepted distinction between liberty and licence, the former referring to morally acceptable forms of freedom, and the latter to the abuse of freedom or excessive freedom. As R. H. Tawney (1880– 1962) put it, ‘The freedom of the pike is death to the minnows.’ Above all, freedom must be balanced against order, and the nature of this balance has been one of the central themes in political theory. Those who believe that this balance should favour freedom, such as liberals and socialists, generally regard human beings as rational and enlightened creatures, capable of making wise decisions in their own interests. Those, in contrast, who emphasize order over freedom, such as traditional conservatives, usually regard human beings as weak, limited or even corrupt creatures, who need authority to be exercised over them.
In addition to philosophical debates about freedom, political thinkers have sometimes discussed its psychological impact. In sharp contrast to the optimistic expectations of liberal thinkers such as J. S. Mill (1806–73) that freedom will result in human flourishing, writers such as Erich Fromm (1984) have drawn attention to the ‘fear of freedom’. This is the idea that freedom entails psychological burdens in terms of choice and uncertainty, which at times of political instability and economic crisis may incline people to flee from freedom and seek security in submission to an all-powerful leader or totalitarian state. This has been used as an explanation for the rise of fascism and religious fundamentalism.
FUNCTIONALISM
Functionalism is the doctrine stating that social institutions and practices can be understood in terms of the functions they carry out in sustaining the larger social system. As functions are the actions or impacts that one thing has on other things, functionalism suggests that social and political phenomena should be understood in terms of their consequences rather than their causes. In the functionalist view, the whole is more than merely a collection of its parts, in the sense that the various parts are structured according to the ‘needs’ of the whole. A variety of political theories have adopted a functionalist methodology. These include the tendency of historical materialism to interpret the state, law and ideology in terms of their function in sustaining the class system, and the general systems theory approach to political analysis.
Significance
While a willingness to use aspects of a functional approach to understand political processes has a long heritage, functionalism has never enjoyed the academic status in political analysis that it did in sociology in the 1950s and 1960s, when it was accepted, in the USA in particular, as the dominant theoretical perspective. Nevertheless, an important application of functionalist thinking has been in the traditional conservative notion of an organic society. This is based on an organic analogy that draws parallels between society and living entities. In this view, society and social institutions arise out of natural necessity, and each part of society – family, church, business, government and so on – plays a particular role in sustaining the whole and maintaining the ‘health’ of society. Functionalism’s impact on academic political analysis was greatest in the early post-1945 period, when it was linked to the application of the systems model of political interaction, and widely used in analysing institutional relationships and performance.
However, the star of functionalism has faded since the 1960s, in political analysis as in sociology. Functionalism has been criticized in two main ways. First, it has been accused of reductionism in that it appears to deprive the state and political institutions of meaning in their own right, and interprets them only in terms of their role in relation to the whole political system. Second, functionalism is implicitly, and sometimes explicitly, conservative. If what is important about institutions is their function in maintaining society, all existing institutions must play a worth-while role in this respect and the value of maintaining the existing social order is taken for granted. For example, the very survival of the monarchy becomes its defence – it has survived because of its capacity to generate social cohesion, national unity or whatever, and it should therefore be preserved for the benefit of present society and future generations.
GAME THEORY
Game theory is a branch of mathematics that analyses competitive situations whose outcomes depend on choices made by all ‘players’, and these are, in turn, influenced by attempts to anticipate the choices of others. Game theory therefore focuses on a series of interdependent strategic calculations. The best known example of game theory is the prisoners’ dilemma (PD). In this, two prisoners, held in separate cells, are faced with a choice of ‘squealing’ or ‘not squealing’ on one another. If one of them confesses, but provides evidence to convict the other, he will be released without any charge, while his partner will take the whole blame and be jailed for ten years. If both prisoners confess, they will be jailed for six years. If both refuse to confess, they will only be convicted of a minor crime, and they will each receive a one-year sentence. Figure 2 shows the options available to the prisoners and their consequences in terms of jail sentences.
Significance
Game theory has been used to inject increased analytical rigour into the study of political behaviour, most influentially in the field of international relations. Game theory has often been used to draw attention to the way in which individually rational strategies generate collectively irrational (or sub-optimal) outcomes. In the case of PD, for example, it is likely that both prisoners will confess (and jointly serve a total of 12 years in jail), fearing that if they do not the other will ‘squeal’ and they will receive the maximum sentence. Realist theorists have thus used game theory as a means of explaining the tendency towards conflict in an international system dominated by suspicion and distrust. Liberal institutionalists, by contrast, have argued that game theory can uncover a disposition towards co-operation, helping, in part, to explain the growing prominence of international organizations. Among other things, this is because, in economics and other areas, international relations may be a ‘positive-sum’ rather than a ‘zero-sum’ game (states achieving mutual benefit, rather than benefiting only at the expense of other states); international organizations serve to improve communication between states and thereby counter distrust; and, as games in international politics tend to be ‘repeat-play’, rather than ‘single-play’, games, states become more aware of the costs of ‘defection’ over time. Those who reject game theory completely tend to emphasize either that (as with rational choice theory, with which it has much in common) the assumption that behaviour is always rationally self-interested introduces an ideological bias into game theory, or that game theory is flawed because it ignores the processes through which interests and perceptions are determined.
Figure 2 Options in the prisoners’ dilemma
GENDER
Gender refers to distinctions between males and females in terms of their social roles and status. While the terms gender and sex are often used interchangeably in everyday language, the distinction between them is crucial to social and political analysis. Gender highlights social or cultural differences between women and men, while sex denotes biological differences. Gender is thus a social construct and usually operates through stereotypes of ‘femininity’ and ‘masculinity’.
Significance
Gender was largely ignored by political thinkers until the re-emergence of the women’s movement and the revival of feminism in the 1960s. Since then, it has become a central concept in feminist theory and has received wider attention in mainstream political analysis. For most feminists, gender highlights that biological or physical differences between women and men (‘sexual’ differences) do not imply, or legitimize, their different social roles and positions (‘gender’ differences). In short, the quest for gender equality, which is basic to most forms of feminism, reflects the belief that sexual differences have no political or social significance; biology is not destiny. Radical feminists view gender divisions as the deepest and most politically significant of all social cleavages; gender is thus a ‘political’ category imposed by patriarchy and reproduced through a process of conditioning that operates mainly through the family. Gender, for radical feminists, plays a similar role as does social class in Marxist analysis, ‘sisterhood’ being equivalent to ‘class consciousness’. Socialist feminists, on the other hand, argue that gender divisions are intrinsically linked to capitalism, and therefore treat gender and class as interrelated social cleavages. Liberal feminists and mainstream political analysts understand gender divisions less in terms of structural oppression and more as an unequal distribution of rights and opportunities that prevents the full participation of women in the ‘public’ realm. From this perspective, gender politics draws attention to issues such as women’s rights and the under-representation of women in politics and in general professional and managerial positions.
GEOPOLITICS
Geopolitics is an approach to foreign policy analysis that understands the actions, relationships and significance of states in terms of geographical factors, such as location, climate, natural resources, physical terrain and population. The field of geopolitics was shaped significantly by Alfred Mahan (1840–1914), who argued that states that control the seas control world politics, and Halford Mackinder (1861–1947), who suggested, by contrast, that control of the land mass between Germany and central Siberia is the key to controlling world politics.
Significance
Though the subject of geopolitics has played a central role in mainstream international relations, traditional approaches to the discipline have been shaped in significant ways by geopolitical assumptions. Thus, while the key elements of national power were, especially in realist analysis, taken to be military strength and economic development, these were underpinned by factors such as population and geography. For example, a large population has been seen as economically and militarily beneficial, in that it gives a state a sizeable workforce and the potential to develop a large army. The geographical factors that have been accepted as bolstering state power have included access to the sea (for trading and military purposes); a temperate climate away from earthquake zones and areas where tropical storms are frequent; navigable rivers for transport, trade and energy production; arable land for farming; and access to mineral and energy resources. Critics of geopolitics have usually objected to geographical determinism, which appears to imply that in international politics ‘geography is destiny’. The rise of globalization, geopolitics is also sometimes seen to have made geopolitics obsolete, geographical location being of limited importance in an era of ‘time/space compression’, in which social and economic interactions cease to be constrained by spatial barriers and distance. On the other hand, concerns about ‘resource security’ have helped to ensure that geopolitical considerations continue to remain relevant to modern world politics.
GLOBAL CIVIL SOCIETY
Global civil society refers to an arena in which transnational non-governmental groups and associations interact. Civil society groups are typically private, self-governing, voluntary and non-profit-making, setting them apart from transnational corporations (TNCs). However, the term ‘global civil society’ is complex and contested. In its ‘activist’ version, transnational social movements are seen as the key agents of global civil society, giving it an ‘outsider’ orientation and a strong focus on humanitarian goals and cosmopolitan ideals. In its ‘policy’ version, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are viewed as the key agents of global civil society, giving it an ‘insider’ orientation and meaning that overlaps with the notion of global governance.
Significance
Interest in the idea of global civil society grew during the 1990s, as a mosaic of new groups, organizations and movements started to appear, which both sought to challenge or resist what was seen as ‘corporate’ globalization and articulate alternative models of social, economic and political development. This happened against a backdrop of the spread of demands for democratization around the world, in the aftermath of the Cold War, and in the light of the intensifying of the process of global interconnectedness. In some cases, these groups and organizations rejected globalization completely, styling themselves as part of an ‘anti-globalization’ movement, but in other cases they supported a reformed model of globalization, sometimes seen as ‘social democratic’ or ‘cosmopolitan’ globalization. The ideological orientation of most of these new groups and movements broadly favours a global justice or world ethics agenda, reflected in a desire to extend the impact and efficacy of human rights, deepen international law and develop citizen networks to monitor and put pressure on states and international organizations.
Optimists about global civil society argue that it has two main advantages. It provides a necessary counterbalance to corporate power. Until the 1990s, the advance of TNC interests met with little effective resistance, meaning that international organizations in particular fell too easily under the sway of a neoliberal agenda committed to free markets and free trade. In addition, global civil society is often seen as the basis for a fledgling democratic global politics. This has occurred because civil society bodies have articulated the interests of people and groups disempowered by the globalization process, acting as a kind of counter-hegemonic force. However, global civil society also has its critics. In the first place, the democratic credentials of NGOs and, for that matter, social movements, may be entirely bogus. For example, how can NGOs be in the forefront of democratization when they are entirely non-elected and self-appointed bodies? Second, the tactics of popular activism and direct action, so clearly associated with social movements and certain NGOs, have arguably alienated many potential supporters and given wider global civil society an image of recklessness and irresponsibility. Finally, NGOs and social movements tend to distort national and global political agendas through their fixation on gaining media attention, both as the principal means of exerting pressure and in order to attract support and funding.
GLOBAL GOVERNANCE
Global governance is a broad, dynamic and complex process of interactive decision-making at the global level that involves formal and informal mechanisms as well as governmental and non-governmental bodies. Nevertheless, being more a field than an object of study, global governance defies simple definitions or explanations. While it can be associated with particular institutions and identifiable actors (not least the international organizations that are currently in existence), global governance is essentially a process or a complex of processes, with the following features. First, global governance is multiple rather than singular: despite the UN’s overarching role within the modern global governance system, it comprises different institutional frameworks and decision-making mechanism in different issue areas. Second, states and national governments retain considerable influence within the global governance system, reflecting international organizations’ general disposition towards consensual decision-making and their usually weak powers of enforcement. Third, in common with governance at the national level, global governance blurs the public/private divide, in that it embraces non-governmental organizations and other institutions of so-called global civil society. Finally, global governance does not operate only at the global level; it also features interactions between groups and institutions at various levels (sub-national, national, regional and global), with no single level predominating over the others.
Significance
The notion of global governance emerged in the context of the growing importance, especially since 1945, of organizations such as the United Nations (UN), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Word Trade Organization (WTO), the European Union (EU) and so on. It has assumed particular prominence since the end of the Cold War, especially in response to, but also, to some extent, in an attempt to shape, the process of globalization. As the significance of international institutions expanded, the traditional assumption that international politics operates in a context of anarchy, with no authority being higher than the nation-state, became more difficult to sustain. On the other hand, global governance stops well short of world government, in which all of humankind is united under a common political authority. Global governance can thus be understood as the management of international politics in the absence of world government.
Global governance has nevertheless been at the heart of both empirical and normative debates. Empirical controversy focuses on its practical significance for global governance. Some argue that the unmistakable growth in the number and importance of international organizations since 1945 provides irrefutable evidence of a greater willingness among states to co-operate and engage in collective action. Others, however, suggest that, to the extent that states maintain sovereignty despite the paraphernalia of global governance, international anarchy continues to reign. In short, states pursue self-interest regardless of the context in which they operate. Normative debates have raged over whether the advance of global governance should be welcomed or feared. Liberals have supported global governance on the grounds that it provides a mechanism through which states can co-operate without, it seems, abandoning sovereignty, helping, in the process, to reduce levels of suspicion and distrust in the international system. Realists, by contrast, have warned that international organizations inevitably develop interests separate from those of their state members, in which case global governance amounts to a form of proto-world government.
GLOBAL JUSTICE
Global justice refers to a morally justifiable distribution of rewards and punishments at the global level, with particular reference to material or social rewards, such as wealth, income and social status. At the heart of global justice is the notion of universal rights and obligations stretching across the globe, establishing ‘justice beyond borders’. However, two contrasting principles of global justice have been advanced. The first is grounded in humanitarianism and reflects a basic moral duty to alleviate suffering and attend to those in severe need. This ‘humanitarian’ model of social justice focuses on the limited, if politically pressing, task of eradicating poverty. The second conception of global justice is rooted in cosmopolitanism and goes beyond the problem of poverty by seeking to reduce, or perhaps remove, global inequality. The ‘cosmopolitan’ model of social justice is therefore linked to a substantial redistribution of wealth and resources from rich to poor countries.
Significance
Theories of justice have traditionally focused almost entirely on justice within particular states or communities. Since the 1980s, however, attempts have been made to extend arguments for justice, in particular social justice, originally conceived for the limited context of the nation-state, to the global arena. This has happened against the backdrop of ‘accelerated’ globalization, especially in view of the perception that economic globalization has deepened global inequality. Advocates of global justice, who claim that moral obligations extend to the whole of humanity, tend to base their claims on one of three arguments. The first uses the doctrine of human rights to demonstrate that there is just a single moral community, and that is humankind. Human rights are therefore fundamental and universal rights. The second focuses on the extent to which increased cross-border information and communication flows have globalized moral sensibilities by reducing the ‘strangeness’ and unfamiliarity of people on the other side of the globe. The third argument emphasizes that, thanks to globalization, we now live in a world of global cause and effect, in which our actions have moral consequences, potentially, for people everywhere.
The notion of global justice has attracted significant criticism, however. For example, some have dismissed the idea on the grounds that social justice is only meaningful if it is applied to a substantive political community, usually a nation-state. Rawls (1971) thus applied his theory of justice only to the state, on the grounds that it constitutes a closed and self-sufficient system of social co-operation. Moreover, even if global justice was deemed to be desirable, it is entirely unfeasible in that rich countries have never shown a willingness to make the sacrifices that it implies. Finally, the principle of global justice perpetuates the idea that poor countries are in some way ‘victims’ of global injustice, who need to be rescued by others, rather than being masters of their own destinies.
GLOBALIZATION
Globalization is the emergence of a complex web of interconnectedness which means that our lives are shaped increasingly by events that occur, and decisions that are made, at a great distance from us. The central feature of globalization is therefore that geographical distance is of declining relevance, and that territorial boundaries, such as those between nation-states, are becoming less significant. By no means, however, does globalization imply that ‘the local’ and ‘the national’ are subordinate to ‘the global’. Rather, it highlights the deepening as well as the broadening of the political process, in the sense that local, national and global events (or perhaps local, regional, national, international and global events) constantly interact, as indicated in Figure 3. Globalization has nevertheless been interpreted in three ways:
Significance
The term globalization is used to draw attention to a set of complex and multi-faceted changes that began to take place in the second half of the twentieth century. In the first place, global interdependence was one of the results of the superpower rivalry that characterized the Cold War period. The capabilities and resources of the post-1945 superpowers (the USA and the USSR) were so overwhelming that they were able to extend their influence into virtually every region of the world. Second, the spread of international trade and the transnational character of modern business organizations brought a global economy into existence. In particular, the collapse of communism gave impetus to the emergence of a global capitalist system. Third, globalization has been fuelled by technological innovation. This has affected almost every realm of existence, ranging from the development of nuclear weapons and the emergence of global pollution problems, such as acid rain and ozone depletion, to the introduction of international telephone links, satellite television and the internet. Fourth, globalization has an important politico-ideological dimension. One aspect of this has been the spread of Western liberal political values, sometimes portrayed as the worldwide triumph of liberal democracy, but it is also linked to the growth of Islam as a transnational political creed and to burgeoning interest in green ideas and philosophies.
Figure 3 Global interdependencies
Much of the debate about globalization focuses on its impact on the state and its implication for national politics. Some have argued that globalization implies the ‘death of politics’ and the irrelevance of the state. If national economies have been absorbed effectively into a larger global economy, and if information and cultural exchanges are now routinely transnational, national government is perhaps an anachronism, even though effective supranational bodies have yet to emerge. The alternative interpretation is not that the state has become irrelevant, but that its functions have changed. In this view, economic globalization has fostered the emergence of ‘competition states’, states whose role is primarily to develop strategies for national prosperity in a context of intensifying transnational competition. Globalization is also significant because it has unleashed countervailing forces, in the form of ethnic politics and particularist nationalism. In an increasingly globalized world, ethnicity may replace nationality as the principal source of social integration, its virtue being that, whereas nations are bound together by ‘civic’ loyalties, ethnic and regional groups are able to generate a deeper sense of ‘organic’ identity.
Finally, there is debate about whether globalization should be embraced or resisted. Its supporters associate globalization with rising prosperity, the spread of democracy and the declining incidence of war; in this view, the only societies that suffer are those that do not participate in globalization. Its opponents nevertheless warn against the spread of capitalist values, the deepening of inequality and loss of identity. Some, indeed, suggest that globalization is largely a myth, exaggerated by politicians who wish to portray market-driven shifts in economic policy as being necessary or inevitable.
