POLITICAL ECONOMY

Political economy, in its most general sense, is the study of the interaction of politics and economics. The term may nevertheless refer to either a topic or a method. As a topic, political economy focuses on the relationship between states and markets. Although political economy, in this sense, encompasses a variety of perspectives and approaches, the term has sometimes been associated specifically with Marxism, born out of the tendency within Marxist analysis to link power to the ownership of wealth and to view politics as a reflection of the class system. As a method, political economy refers to the use of theories and approaches developed within economics to analyse politics, and includes rational-choice theory, public-choice theory, social-choice theory and game theory. What is called the ‘new political economy’ regards economic ideas and behaviour not as frameworks for analysis but as beliefs and actions that must themselves be explained (Mair, 1987).

Significance

The term political economy implies that the disciplinary separation of politics from economics is ultimately unsustainable. Political factors are crucial in determining economic outcomes, and economic factors are crucial in determining political outcomes. In short, there is no escaping political economy. While this lesson has been underlined by growing contemporary interest in political economy, not least in the emergence of the ‘new political economy’, it is one that has a long and respectable history dating back to Adam Smith (1723–90), David Ricardo (1772–1823) and Karl Marx (1818—83).

However, political economy encompasses a variety of perspectives, the main ones being state-centric political economy, classical/neo-classical political economy, and Marxist political economy. State-centric political economy developed out of mercantilism, which was most influential in Europe from the fifteenth to the late seventeenth centuries. This amounted to a form of economic nationalism that saw the state as a key to building national power, particularly through the use of protectionism. Classical political economy is based in liberal assumptions about human nature. Its central belief is that an unregulated market economy tends towards long-run equilibrium, in that the price mechanism – the ‘invisible hand’ of the market, as Smith put it – brings supply and demand into line with one another. This implies a policy of laissez-faire. Neo-classical political economy developed from the late nineteenth century onwards, drawing classical ideas and assumptions into more developed theories. Marxist political economy portrays capitalism as a system of class exploitation and treats social classes as the key economic actors. From the Marxist perspective, the relationship between the bourgeoisie (the ownership of productive wealth) and the proletariat (non-owners, who subsist through selling their labour power) is one of irreconcilable conflict, a flaw that dooms capitalism to inevitable collapse. However, political economy has been undermined in recent decades by the increasingly inward-looking character of economics as a discipline, and by its growing focus on technical matters.

POLITICAL PARTY

A political party is a group of people organized for the purpose of winning government power, by electoral or other means. Parties are often confused with pressure groups or social movements. Four characteristics usually distinguish parties from other groups. First, parties aim to exercise government power by winning office (though small parties may use elections more to gain a platform than to win power). Second, parties are organized bodies with a formal ‘card-carrying’ membership. This distinguishes them from broader and more diffuse social movements. Third, parties typically adopt a broad issue focus, addressing each of the major issues of government policy (small parties, however, may have a single-issue focus, thus resembling pressure groups). Fourth, to varying degrees, parties are united by shared political preferences and a general ideological identity.

However, political parties may be classified as mass and cadre parties, as representative and integrative parties, and as constitutional and revolutionary parties. A mass party places a heavy emphasis on broadening membership and constructing a wide electoral base, the earliest examples being European socialist parties, which aimed to mobilize working-class support, such as the UK Labour Party and the German Social Democratic Party (SPD). Such parties typically place heavier stress on recruitment and organization than on ideology and political conviction. Kirchheimer (1966) classified most modern parties as ‘catch-all parties’, emphasizing that they have reduced their ideological baggage dramatically to appeal to the largest number of voters. A cadre party, on the other hand, is dominated by trained and professional party members who are expected to exhibit a high level of political commitment and doctrinal discipline, as in the case of communist and fascist parties.

Neumann (1956) offered the alternative distinction between representative parties, which adopt a catch-all strategy and place pragmatism before principle, and integrative parties, which are proactive rather than reactive, and attempt to mobilize, educate and inspire the masses, instead of merely responding to their concerns. Occasionally, mass parties may exhibit mobilizing or integrative tendencies, as in the case of the UK Conservatives under Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s. Finally, parties can be classified as constitutional parties when they operate within a framework of constraints imposed by the existence of other parties, the rules of electoral competition and, crucially, a distinction between the party in power (the government of the day) and state institutions (the bureaucracy, judiciary, police and so on). Revolutionary parties, by contrast, adopt an anti-system or anti-constitutional stance, and when such parties win power they invariably become ‘ruling’ or regime parties, suppressing rival parties and establishing a permanent relationship with the state machinery.

Significance

The political party is the major organizing principle of modern politics. As political machines organized to win (by elections or otherwise), and wield government power, parties are virtually ubiquitous. The only parts of the world in which they do not exist are those where they are suppressed by dictatorship or military rule. Political parties are a vital link between the state and civil society, carrying out major functions such as representation, the formation and recruitment of political elites, the articulation and aggregation of interests, and the organization of government. However, the role and significance of parties varies according to the party system. In one-party systems they effectively substitute themselves for the government, creating a fused party–state apparatus. In two-party systems the larger of the major parties typically wields government power, while the other major party constitutes the opposition and operates as a ‘government in waiting’. In a multiparty system, the parties tend to act as brokers representing a narrower range of interests, and exert influence through the construction of more or less enduring electoral alliances or formal coalitions.

Criticisms of political parties have either stemmed from an early liberal fear that parties would promote conflict and destroy the underlying unity of society, and make the politics of individual conscience impossible, or that they are inherently elitist and bureaucratic bodies. The latter view was articulated most famously by Robert Michels (1911/1962) in the form of the ‘iron law of oligarchy’. Some modern parties, notably green parties, style themselves as ‘anti-party parties’, in that they set out to subvert traditional party politics by rejecting parliamentary compromise and emphasizing popular mobilization. Among the strongest supporters of the political party has been V. I. Lenin (1902/1968), who advocated the construction of a tightly knit revolutionary party, organized on the basis of democratic centralism, to serve as the ‘vanguard of the working class’. Nevertheless, the period since the late twentieth century has provided evidence of a ‘crisis of party politics’, reflected in a seemingly general decline in party membership and partisanship, and in the contrasting growth of single-issue protest groups and rise of new social movements. This has been explained on the basis that, as bureaucratized political machines, parties are unable to respond to the growing appetite for popular participation and activism; that their image as instruments of government means that they are inevitably associated with power, ambition and corruption; and that, given the growing complexity of modern societies and the decline of class and other traditional social identities, the social forces that once gave rise to parties have now weakened. Such factors are nevertheless more likely to lead to a transformation in the role of political parties and in the style of party politics, than to make them redundant.

POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

Philosophy, in general terms, is the search for wisdom and understanding using the techniques of critical reasoning. However, philosophy has also been seen more specifically as a second-order discipline, in contrast to first-order disciplines which deal with empirical subjects. In other words, philosophy is not so much concerned with revealing truth in the manner of science, as with asking secondary questions about how knowledge is acquired and understanding is expressed; it has thus been dubbed the science of questions. Philosophy has traditionally addressed questions related to the ultimate nature of reality (metaphysics), the grounds of knowledge (epistemology) and the basis of moral conduct (ethics).

Political philosophy is often viewed as a subfield of ethics or moral philosophy, in that it is preoccupied with essentially prescriptive or normative questions, reflecting a concern with what should, ought or must be brought about, rather than what is. Its central questions have included ‘Why should I obey the state?’, ‘Who should rule?’, ‘How should rewards be distributed?’ and ‘What should the limits be of individual freedom?’ Academic political philosophy addresses itself to two main tasks. First, it is concerned with the critical evaluation of political beliefs, paying attention to both inductive and deductive forms of reasoning. Second, it attempts to clarify and refine the concepts employed in political discourse. What this means is that, while political philosophy may be carried out critically and scrupulously, it cannot be objective in that it is inevitably concerned with justifying certain political viewpoints at the expense of others, and with upholding a particular understanding of a concept rather than alternative ones. Political philosophy is therefore clearly distinct from political science. Despite political philosophy often being used interchangeably with political theory, the former deals strictly with matters of evaluation and advocacy, while the latter is broader, in that it also includes explanation and analysis and thus cuts across the normative/empirical divide.

Significance

Political philosophy constitutes what is called the ‘traditional’ approach to politics. It dates back to Ancient Greece and the work of the founding fathers of political analysis, Plato (427–347 bce) and Aristotle (384–322 bce). Their ideas resurfaced in the writings of medieval thinkers such as Augustine (354–430 ce) and Aquinas (1224–74). In the early modern period, political philosophy was closely associated with the social contract theories of Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), John Locke (1632– 1704) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78), while in the nineteenth century it was advanced through J. S. Mill’s (1806–73) work on freedom and Karl Marx’s (1818–83) materialist conception of history. However, the status of political philosophy was gradually weakened from the late nineteenth century onwards by the rise of the empirical and scientific traditions, which led by the 1950s and 1960s to a frontal assault on the very basis of normative theorizing. Political philosophy was declared to be dead, on the grounds that its central principles, such as justice, rights, liberty and equality, are meaningless because they are not empirically verifiable entities. However, there has been a significant revival in political philosophy since the 1970s, and the tendency now is for political philosophy and political science to be seen less as distinct modes of political enquiry, and still less as rivals. Instead, they have come to be accepted simply as contrasting ways of disclosing political knowledge. This has occurred through disillusionment with behaviouralism and the recognition that values, hidden or otherwise, underpin all forms of political enquiry, and as a result of the emergence of new areas of philosophical debate, linked, for example, to feminism and to rivalry between liberalism and communitarianism.

POLITICAL SCIENCE

Science (from the Latin scientia, meaning knowledge) is a field of study that aims to develop reliable explanations of phenomena through repeatable experiments, observations and deductions. The ‘scientific method’, by which hypotheses are verified (proved true) by testing them against the available evidence, is therefore seen as a means of disclosing value-free and objective truth. Karl Popper (1902–94), however, suggested that science can only falsify hypotheses, since ‘facts’ can always be disproved by later experiments. Scientism is the belief that the scientific method is the only source of reliable knowledge, and so should be applied to fields such as philosophy, history and politics, as well as the natural sciences. Doctrines such as Marxism, utilitarianism and racialism are scientistic in this sense.

Political science can either be understood generally or more specifically. In general terms, it is an academic discipline which undertakes to describe, analyse and explain systematically the workings of government and the relationships between political and non-political institutions and processes. The traditional subject matter of political science, so defined, is the state, though this broadened during the twentieth century to include social, economic and other processes that influence the allocation of values and general resources. In this view, political science encompasses both descriptive and normative theory: the task of describing and analysing the operations of government institutions has often been linked to evaluative judgements about which ones work best. Defined more narrowly, political science sets out to study the traditional subject matter of politics using only the methods of the natural sciences. From this perspective, political science refers to a strictly empirical and value-free approach to political understanding that was the product of positivism, and reached its highest stage of development in the form of behaviouralism. This implies a sharp distinction between political science and political philosophy, reflecting the distinction between empirical and normative analysis. It may also, in its scientistic form, imply that the philosophical or normative approach to political understanding is, in the final analysis, worthless.

Significance

While it is widely accepted that the study of politics should be scientific in the broad sense of being rigorous and critical, the claim that it should be scientific in the stricter sense, that it can and should use the methodology of the natural sciences, is much more controversial. The attraction of a science of politics is clear. Most important, it promises an impartial and reliable means of distinguishing truth from falsehood, thereby giving us access to objective knowledge about the political world. The key to achieving this is to distinguish between ‘facts’ (empirical evidence) and ‘values’ (normative or ethical beliefs). Facts are objective in the sense that they can be demonstrated reliably and consistently; they can be proved. Values, in contrast, are inherently subjective; they are a matter of opinion.

However, any attempt to construct a science of politics meets with three difficulties. First, there is the problem of data. Human beings are not tadpoles that can be taken into a laboratory, or cells that can be observed under a microscope. We cannot get ‘inside’ a human being, or carry out repeatable experiments on human behaviour. What we can learn about individual behaviour is therefore limited and superficial. In the absence of exact data we have no reliable means of testing our hypotheses. Second, there are difficulties that stem from the existence of human values. The idea that models and theories of politics are entirely value-free is difficult to sustain when they are examined closely. Facts and values are so closely intertwined that it is often impossible to prise them apart. This is because theories are inevitably constructed on the basis of assumptions about human nature, society and the role of the state that have hidden political and ideological implications. Third, there is the myth of neutrality in the social sciences. Whereas natural scientists may be able to approach their studies in an objective and impartial manner, holding no presuppositions about what they are going to discover, this is difficult and perhaps impossible to achieve in politics. However politics is defined, it addresses questions relating to the structure and functioning of the society in which we live and have grown up. Family background, social experience, economic position, personal sympathies and so on thus build into each and every one of us a set of pre-conditions regarding politics and the world around us. Scientific objectivity, in the sense of absolute impartiality or neutrality, must therefore always remain an unachievable goal in political analysis.

POLITICAL THEORY

A theory is anything from a plan to a piece of abstract knowledge. In academic discourse, however, a theory is an explanatory proposition, an idea or set of ideas that in some way seeks to impose order or meaning on phenomena. As such, all enquiry proceeds through the construction of theories, sometimes thought of as hypotheses, explanatory propositions waiting to be tested. Political science, no less than the natural sciences and other social sciences, therefore has an important theoretical component. For example, theories such as that social class is the principal determinant of voting behaviour, and that revolutions occur at times of rising expectations, are essential if sense is to be made of empirical evidence. This is what is called empirical political theory.

Political theory is, however, usually regarded as a distinctive approach to the subject, even though, particularly in the USA, it is seen as a subfield of political science. Political theory involves the analytical study of ideas and doctrines that have been central to political thought. Traditionally, this has taken the form of a history of political thought, focusing on a collection of ‘major’ thinkers – for example, from Plato to Marx – and a canon of ‘classic’ texts. As it studies the ends and means of political action, political theory is concerned with ethical or normative questions, related to issues such as justice, freedom, equality and so on. This traditional approach is similar in character to literary analysis: it is interested primarily in examining what major thinkers said, how they developed or justified their views, and the intellectual context in which they worked. An alternative approach has been called formal political theory. This draws on the example of economic theory in building up models based on procedural rules, as in the case of rational choice theory. Despite political theory and political philosophy clearly overlapping (and the two terms are sometimes used interchangeably), a distinction can be drawn on the grounds that political theory may content itself with explanation and analysis, while political philosophy is inevitably involved at some level with evaluation and advocacy.

Significance

Political theory, as an approach to politics that embraces normative and philosophical analysis, can be seen as the longest and most clearly established tradition of political analysis. However, the status of political theory was seriously damaged in the twentieth century by the rise of positivism and its attack on the very normative concepts that had been its chief subject matter. While the notion that political theory was abandoned in the 1950s and 1960s is an exaggeration, the onset of the ‘behavioural revolution’ and the passion for all things scientific persuaded many political analysts to turn their backs on the entire tradition of normative thought. Since the 1960s, however, political theory has re-emerged with new vitality, and the previously sharp distinction between political science and political theory has faded. This occurred through the emergence of a new generation of political theorists, notably John Rawls (1971) and Robert Nozick (1974), but also through growing criticism of behaviouralism and the re-emergence of ideological divisions, brought about, for example, through anti-Vietnam war protest, the rise of feminism and the emergence of the New Right and New Left.

However, revived political theory differs in a number of respects from its earlier manifestations. One feature of modern political theory is that it places greater emphasis on the role of history and culture in shaping political understanding. While this does not imply that the study of ‘major’ thinkers and ‘classic’ texts is worthless, it does emphasize that any interpretation of such thinkers and texts must take into account context, and recognize that, to some extent, all interpretations are entangled with our own values and understanding. The second development is that political theory has become increasingly diffuse and diverse. This has occurred both through the fragmentation of liberalism and growing debate within a broad liberal tradition, but also through the emergence of new alternatives to liberal theory to add to its established Marxist and conservative rivals, the most obvious examples being feminism, communitarianism and ecologism. Finally, modern political theory has lost the bold self-confidence of earlier periods, in that it has effectively abandoned the ‘traditional’ search for universal values acceptable to everyone. This has occurred through a growing appreciation of the role of community and local identity in shaping values, brought about, in part, by the impact of postmodernism.

POLITICS

Politics, in its broadest sense, is the activity through which people make, preserve and amend the general rules under which they live. While politics is also an academic subject (sometimes indicated by the use of ‘Politics’ with a capital P), it is then clearly the study of this activity. Politics is thus inextricably linked to the phenomena of conflict and co-operation. On the one hand, the existence of rival opinions, different wants, competing needs and opposing interests guarantees disagreement about the rules under which people live. On the other hand, people recognize that, to influence these rules or ensure that they are upheld, they must work together with others – hence Hannah Arendt’s (1906–75) definition of political power as ‘acting in concert’. This is why the heart of politics is often portrayed as a process of conflict resolution, in which rival views or competing interests are reconciled with one another. However, politics in this broad sense is better thought of as a search for conflict resolution rather than its achievement, as not all conflicts are, or can be, resolved. From this perspective, politics arises from the facts of diversity (we are not all alike) and scarcity (there is never enough to go round).

However, four quite different notions of politics can be identified. First, it is associated specifically with the art of government and the activities of the state. This is perhaps the classical definition of politics, developed from the original meaning of the term in Ancient Greece (politics is derived from polis, literally meaning city-state). In this view, politics is an essentially state-bound activity, meaning that most people, most institutions and most social activities can be regarded as being ‘outside’ politics. Second, politics is viewed as a specifically ‘public’ activity in that it is associated with the conduct and management of the community’s affairs rather than with the ‘private’ concerns of the individual. Such a view can be traced back to Aristotle’s (384–322 bce) belief that it is only within a political community that human beings can live ‘the good life’. Third, politics is seen as a particular means of resolving conflict; that is, by compromise, conciliation and negotiation, rather than through force and naked power. This is what is implied when politics is portrayed as ‘the art of the possible’, and it suggests a distinction between ‘political’ solutions to problems involving peaceful debate and arbitration, and ‘military’ solutions. Fourth, politics is associated with the production, distribution and use of resources in the course of social existence. In this view politics is about power: the ability to achieve a desired outcome, through whatever means. Advocates of this view include feminists and Marxists.

Significance

The ‘what is politics?’ debate highlights quite different approaches to political analysis and exposes some of the deepest and most intractable conflicts in political thought. In the first place it determines the very subject matter and parameters of the discipline itself. The traditional view that politics boils down to ‘what concerns the state’ has been reflected in the tendency for academic study to focus on the personnel and machinery of government. To study politics is in essence to study government or, more broadly, to study what David Easton (1981) called the ‘authoritative allocation of values’. However, if the stuff of politics is power and the distribution of resources, politics is seen to take place in, for example, the family, the workplace, and schools and universities, and the focus of political analysis shifts from the state to society.

Moreover, different views of politics embody different conceptions of social order. Definitions of politics that relate it to the art of government, public affairs or peaceful compromise are based on an essentially consensus model of society, which portrays government as being basically benign and emphasizes the common interests of the community. However, views of politics that emphasize the distribution of power and resources tend to based on conflict models of society that stress structural inequalities and injustices. Karl Marx (1818–83) thus referred to political power as ‘merely the organized power of one class for oppressing another’, while the feminist author Kate Millett (1970) defined politics as ‘power-structured relationships, arrangements whereby one group of persons is controlled by another’. Finally, there is disagreement about the moral character of political activity and whether it can, or should, be brought to an end. On the one hand, to link politics to government is to regard it as, at worst, a necessary evil, and to associate politics with community activity and non-violent forms of conflict resolution is to portray it as positively worthwhile, even ennobling. On the other hand, those who link politics to oppression and subjugation often do so to expose structures of inequality and injustice in society, which, once overthrown, will result in the end of politics itself.

POPULISM

Populism (from the Latin populus, meaning ‘the people’) has been used to describe both a particular tradition of political thought, and distinctive political movements and forms of rule. As a political tradition, populism reflects the belief that the instincts and wishes of the people provide the principal legitimate guide to political action. Movements or parties described as populist have therefore been characterized by their claim to support the common people in the face of ‘corrupt’ economic or political elites. Populist politicians thus make a direct appeal to the people and claim to give expression to their deepest hopes and fears, all intermediary institutions being distrusted. Populism is therefore often viewed as a manifestation of anti-politics.

Significance

The populist political tradition can be traced back to Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s (1712–78) notion of a ‘general will’ as the indivisible collective interest of society. Populism thus aims to establish an unmediated link between a leader and his or her people, through which the leader gives expression to the innermost hopes and dreams of the people. Populist leadership can be seen in its most developed form in totalitarian dictatorships that operate through the appeal of charismatic leaders, but it can also be found in democratic systems in which leaders cultivate a personal image and ideological vision separate from and ‘above’ parties, parliaments and other government institutions. Indeed, the wider use of focus groups and the increasing sophistication of political presentation and communication, particularly linked to the activities of so-called ‘spin doctors’, have provided greater impetus for populism in modern politics generally.

If populism is defended, it is on the basis that it constitutes a genuine form of democracy, intermediate institutions tending to pervert or misrepresent the people’s will. More commonly, however, populism is subject to criticism. Two main criticisms are made of it. First, populism is seen as implicitly authoritarian, on the grounds that it provides little basis for challenging the leader’s claim to articulate the genuine interests of the people. Second, it debases politics, both by giving expression to the crudest hopes and fears of the masses and by leaving no scope for deliberation and rational analysis. ‘Populist democracy’ is thus the enemy of both pluralist and parliamentary democracy.

POSITIVISM

Positivism is the doctrine that the social sciences, and, for that matter, all forms of philosophical enquiry, should adhere strictly to the methods of the natural sciences. The term was introduced by Claud-Henri Saint-Simon (1760–1825) and popularized by his follower, Auguste Comte (1789–1857). Positivism thus assumes that science holds a monopoly of knowledge. In the form of logical positivism, which was advanced in the 1920s and 1930s by a group of philosophers collectively known as the Vienna Circle, it rejected all propositions that are not empirically verifiable as being simply meaningless.

Significance

Positivism did much in the twentieth century to weaken the status of political philosophy and to underpin the emergence of political science. Normative concepts and theories were discarded as nonsense, on the grounds that they were ‘metaphysical’ and did not deal with what is externally measurable. Not only did this undermine the credentials of the philosophical approach to political analysis but it also encouraged philosophers to lose interest in moral and political issues. On the other hand, one of the chief legacies of positivism was the emergence of behaviouralism and the attempt to develop a value-free science of politics. However, the influence of positivism on philosophy and political analysis declined significantly in the second half of the twentieth century. This occurred partly because positivism was associated with a simplistic faith in science’s capacity to uncover truth that has come to be regarded as naive, and partly because, in rejecting completely the beliefs, attitudes and values of political actors, it drew politics towards dull and exclusively empirical analysis.

POSTCOLONIALISM

Postcolonialism is a theoretical stance that seeks to address the cultural conditions characteristic of newly independent societies. Postcolonial thinking originated as a trend in literary and cultural studies, but from the 1970s onwards it acquired an increasingly political orientation, focusing on exposing and overturning the cultural and psychological dimensions of colonial rule. Crucial to this has been the recognition that ‘inner’ subjugation can persist long after the political structures of colonialism have been removed. However, as it draws inspiration from indigenous religions, cultures and traditions, postcolonial theory tends to be highly disparate. For example, it has been reflected in Gandhi’s attempt to fuse Indian nationalism with an ethic of non-violence ultimately rooted in Hinduism, as well as in forms of religious fundamentalism, especially Islamic fundamentalism.

Significance

Postcolonialism has had an impact on political theory in two main areas. First, it helped to give the developing world a distinctive political voice separate from the universalist pretensions of Western thought, particularly as represented by liberalism and socialism. In this respect, it has encouraged a broader reassessment within political thought, in that, for example, Islamic and liberal ideas are increasingly considered to be equally legitimate in articulating the traditions and values of their own communities. Second, postcolonialism has served as a means of uncovering the cultural and other biases that operate within Western liberal thought. Edward Said (2003) thus developed the notion of ‘Orientalism’ to highlight the extent to which Western cultural and political hegemony over the rest of the world, but over the Orient in particular, has been maintained by elaborate stereotypical fictions that belittle and demean non-Western people and culture. Examples of such stereotypes include images of the ‘mysterious East’, ‘inscrutable Chinese’ and ‘lustful Turks’. Critics of postcolonialism nevertheless argue that, in turning its back on the Western intellectual tradition, it has abandoned progressive politics and been used, too often, as a justification for traditional values and authority structures. This has been evident, for example, in tension between the demands of cultural authenticity and calls for women’s rights.

POSTMODERNISM

Postmodernism is a controversial and confusing term that was first used to describe experimental movements in Western architecture and cultural development in general. Postmodern thought originated principally in continental Europe, especially France, and constitutes a challenge to the type of academic political theory that has come to be the norm in the Anglo-American world. Its basis lies in a perceived social shift – from modernity to postmodernity; and a related cultural and intellectual shift – from modernism to postmodernism. Modern societies are seen to have been structured by industrialization and class solidarity, social identity being largely determined by one’s position within the productive system. Postmodern societies, on the other hand, are increasingly fragmented and pluralistic ‘information societies’ in which individuals are transformed from being producers to being consumers, and individualism replaces class, religious and ethnic loyalties. Postmodernity is thus linked to post-industrialism, the development of a society no longer dependent on manufacturing industry, but more reliant on knowledge and communication.

The central theme of postmodernism is that there is no such thing as certainty: the idea of absolute and universal truth must be discarded as an arrogant pretence. While by its nature postmodernism does not constitute a unified body of thought, its critical attitude to claims of truth stems from the general assumption that all knowledge is partial and local, a view it shares with certain forms of communitarianism. Poststructuralism, a term sometimes used interchangeably with postmodernism, emphasizes that all ideas and concepts are expressed in language that is itself enmeshed in complex relations of power.

Significance

Since the 1970s, postmodern and poststructural political theories have become increasingly fashionable. In particular they have attacked all forms of political analysis that stem from modernism. Modernism, the cultural form of modernity, is seen to stem largely from Enlightenment ideas and theories, and has been expressed politically in ideological traditions that offer rival conceptions of the good life, notably liberalism and Marxism. The chief flaw of modernist thought, from the most postmodern perspective, is that it is characterized by foundationalism, the belief that it is possible to establish objective truths and universal values, usually associated with a strong faith in progress. Jean-François Lyotard (1984) expressed the postmodern stance most succinctly in defining it as ‘an incredulity towards metanarratives’. By this he meant scepticism regarding all creeds and ideologies that are based on universal theories of history that view society as a coherent totality.

Postmodernism has been criticized from two angles. In the first place it has been accused of relativism, in that it holds that different modes of knowing are equally valid, and thus rejects the idea that even science is able to distinguish reliably between truth and falsehood. Second, it has been charged with conservatism, on the grounds that a non-foundationalist political stance offers no perspective from which the existing order may be criticized, and no basis for the construction of an alternative social order. Nevertheless, the attraction of postmodern theory is its remorseless questioning of apparent solid realities and accepted beliefs. Its general emphasis on discourse, debate and democracy reflects the fact that to reject hierarchies of ideas is also to reject any political or social hierarchies.

POWER

Power can be defined broadly as the ability to achieve a desired outcome, sometimes referred to in terms of the ‘power to’ do something. This notion of power includes everything from the ability to keep oneself alive to the ability of government to promote economic growth. In political analysis, however, power is usually thought of as a relationship; that is, as the ability to influence the behaviour of others in a manner not of their choosing. It is referred to in terms of having ‘power over’ others. Power thus exists when A gets B to do something that B would not otherwise have done. Power is often distinguished from authority on the grounds that the former is based on the ‘ability’ to influence others, whereas the latter involves the ‘right’ to do so. Power may, more narrowly, be associated with the ability to punish and reward, bringing it close to force or manipulation, in contrast to ‘influence’, which also encompasses rational persuasion.

However, power can be exerted in various ways. This has resulted in the emergence of different conceptions of power, sometimes viewed as different dimensions or ‘faces’ of power. First, power is understood as decision-making: conscious judgements that in some way shape actions or influence decisions. This notion is analogous to the idea of physical or mechanical power, in that it implies that power involves being ‘pulled’ or ‘pushed’ against one’s will. Keith Boulding (1989) distinguished between three ways of influencing decisions: the use of force or intimidation (‘the stick’); productive exchanges involving mutual gain (‘the deal’); and the creation of obligations, loyalty and commitment (‘the kiss’). Second, power may take the form of agenda setting: the ability to prevent decisions being made; that is, in effect, non-decision-making. This involves the ability to prevent issues or proposals being aired; E. E. Schattschneider (1960) summed this up in his famous assertion that ‘organization is the mobilization of bias’. Third, power can take the form of thought control: the ability to influence another by shaping what he or she thinks, wants or needs. This is sometimes portrayed by Lukes (2004) as the ‘radical’ face of power because it exposes processes of cultural and psychological control in society and, more generally, highlights the impact of ideology. The hard/soft power distinction has become increasingly influential in the theory and practice of international politics.

Significance

There is a sense in which all politics is about power. The practice of politics is often portrayed as little more than the exercise of power, and the academic subject as, in essence, the study of power. Without doubt, students of politics are students of power: they seek to know who has it, how it is used and on what basis it is exercised. However, disagreements about the nature of power run deep and have significant implications for political analysis. While it would be wrong to suggest that different ‘faces’ of power necessarily result in different models of the distribution of power in society, power as decision-making is commonly linked to pluralism (because it tends to highlight the influence of a number of political actors), while power as agenda setting is often associated with elitism (because it exposes the capacity of vested interests to organize issues out of politics), and power as thought control is commonly linked to Marxism (because it draws attention to forms of ideological indoctrination that mask the reality of class rule).

The concept of power is accorded particular significance by analysts who subscribe to what is called ‘power politics’. Power politics is an approach to politics based on the assumption that the pursuit of power is the principal human goal. The term is generally used descriptively and is closely linked to realism. This is a tradition that can be traced back to Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) and his assertion that the basic human urge is to seek ‘power after power’. The theory of power politics portrays politics as nothing more than an arena of struggle or competition between differently interested actors. At the national level, ongoing struggle between individuals and groups is usually used to justify strong government, the virtue of government being that, as the supreme power, it alone is capable of establishing order. At the international level the power politics approach emphasizes the inherent instability of a world riven by competing national interests, and links the hope of peace to the establishment of a balance of power.

PRAGMATISM

Pragmatism, broadly defined, refers to behaviour that is shaped in accordance with practical circumstances and goals, rather than principles or ideological objectives. As a philosophical tradition, associated with ‘classical pragmatists’ such as William James (1842–1910) and John Dewey (1859–1952) pragmatism is used to settle metaphysical disputes that seek to clarify the meaning of concepts or propositions by identifying their practical consequences.

Significance

Pragmatism in politics has either been an ideological stance, usually associated with conservatism, or a strategy for practical politics aimed at nothing more than achieving and maintaining power. In relation to the former, it is based on the belief that the world is simply too complicated for human reason to grasp fully, in which case all abstract ideas or systems of thought are, at best, unreliable (because they claim to understand what is, ultimately, incomprehensible) and, at worst, dangerous (because they suggest solutions that may be worse than the problem being addressed). Pragmatism, in this sense, implies that the best guides to action are tradition, experience and history, relying on what ‘worked’ in the past. This has led to the belief, shared by many neo-revisionist socialists as well as traditional conservatives, that ‘what matters is what works’.

In relation to the latter, pragmatism reflects a tendency, in particular, to follow public opinion rather then lead it. Though this might always have applied, at some level, to practical politics, this tendency has become particularly prominent in the modern age of ‘de-ideologized’ party politics, in which parties of both the left and the right have become increasingly detached from their ideological roots. While pragmatism in this sense may be the epitome of economic democracy (as parties end up selling ‘products’ – leaders or policies – to the voters), it may also mean that party politics is robbed of any sense of purpose and direction, with members and supporters losing the basis for emotional attachment to their party. When politicians believe in nothing more than winning or retaining power, they appear to believe in nothing, a perception that, as it spreads, may help to explain the rise of anti-politics.

PRESIDENT

A president is a formal head of state, a title held in other states by a monarch or emperor. However, constitutional presidents differ from executive presidents. Constitutional presidents, or non-executive presidents (found in India, Israel and Germany, for example), are a feature of parliamentary government and have responsibilities that are largely confined to ceremonial duties. In these circumstances the president is a mere figurehead, and executive power is wielded by a prime minister and/or a cabinet. Executive presidents wear ‘two hats’, in that they combine the formal responsibilities of a head of state with the political power of a chief executive. Presidencies of this kind constitute the basis of presidential government and conform to the principles of the separation of powers.

Significance

US-style presidential government has spawned imitations throughout the world, mainly in Latin America and, more recently, in post-communist states such as Poland, the Czech Republic and Russia. In investing executive power in a presidency, the architects of the US Constitution were aware that they were, in effect, creating an ‘elective kingship’. The president was invested with an impressive range of powers, including those of head of state, chief executive, commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and chief diplomat, and was granted wide-ranging powers of patronage and the right to veto legislation. However, the modern presidency, in the USA and elsewhere, has been shaped by wider political developments as well as by formal constitutional rules. The most important of these developments have been growing government intervention in economic and social life, an increasingly interdependent or globalized international order, and the rise of the mass media, particularly television, as political institutions. Within the constraints of their political system, presidents have therefore become deliverers of national prosperity, world statesmen and national celebrities. By the 1970s this led to alarm, in the USA in particular, about the emergence of an ‘imperial presidency’, a presidency capable of emancipating itself from its traditional constitutional constraints. However, subsequent setbacks for presidents such as Nixon and Carter in the USA re-emphasized the enduring truth of Neustadt’s (1980) classic formulation of presidential power as the ‘power to persuade’; that is, the ability to bargain, encourage and even cajole, but not to dictate. While presidents appear to be more powerful than prime ministers, this is often an illusion. Combining state and governmental leadership in a single office perhaps so raises political expectations that it may make failure inevitable, and it should not disguise the fact that, unlike prime ministers, presidents do not wield direct legislative power.

Presidentialism has a number of clear advantages. Chief among these is that it makes personal leadership possible. Politics becomes more intelligible and engaging precisely because it takes a personal form: the public associates more readily with a person than it does with a political institution, such as a cabinet or political party. Linked to this is the capacity of a president to become a national figurehead, a symbol of the nation embodying both ceremonial and political authority. Presidents may thus have particularly pronounced mobilizing capacities, especially important in times of economic crisis and war. Finally, concentrating executive power in a single office ensures clarity and coherence, as opposed to the unsatisfactory and perhaps unprincipled compromises that are the stuff of collective cabinet government. On the other hand, presidentialism has its dangers. One of the most obvious of these is that personalizing politics risks devaluing it. Elections, for example, may turn into mere beauty contests and place greater emphasis on image and personal trivia than on ideas and policies. The other drawback of presidentialism is that it is based on a perhaps outdated notion of leadership, in that it implies that complex and pluralistic modern societies can be represented and mobilized through a single individual. If politics is ultimately about conciliation and bargaining, this may be better facilitated through a system of collective leadership rather than personal leadership.

PRESIDENTIAL GOVERNMENT

A presidential system of government (see Figure 11) is characterized by a constitutional and political separation of powers between the legislative and executive branches of government. Executive power is thus vested in an independently elected president who is not directly accountable to, or removable by, the assembly or parliament.

The principal features of presidential government are:

• The executive and the legislature are separately elected, and each is invested with a range of independent constitutional powers.
• There is a formal separation of personnel between the legislative and executive branches.
• The executive is not constitutionally responsible to the legislature and cannot be removed by it (except through the exceptional process of impeachment).
• The president or executive cannot ‘dissolve’ the legislature, meaning that the electoral terms of both branches are fixed.
• Executive authority is concentrated in the hands of the president – the cabinet and ministers merely being advisers responsible to the president.
• The roles of head of state and head of government are combined in the office of the presidency – the president ‘wears two hats’.

Presidential government can be distinguished clearly from parliamentary government. However, there are a number of hybrid systems that combine elements of the two, notably semi-presidential systems. Semi-presidential government operates on the basis of a ‘dual executive’, in which a separately elected president works in conjunction with a prime minister and cabinet drawn from and accountable to the parliament. In some cases, policy-making responsibilities are divided between the president and the cabinet, ensuring that the former is largely concerned with foreign affairs, while the latter deals primarily with domestic issues.

Figure 11  Presidential government

Significance

Presidential government is the principal alternative to parliamentary government in the liberal-democratic world. However, presidentialism is rarer than parliamentarianism. The USA is the classic example of a presidential system, and it is a model that has been adopted in many parts of Latin America. Semi-presidential systems can be found in states such as France and Finland. The principal strength of presidential government is that, by separating legislative from executive power, it creates internal tensions that help to protect individual rights and liberties. This, indeed, was the intention of the so-called ‘founding fathers’ of the US Constitution, who wished to prevent the presidency from assuming the mantle of the British monarchy. In the USA, the danger of executive domination is protected against by the range of powers vested in the Congress. For example, Congress has the right to declare war and raise taxes, the Senate may ratify treaties and confirm presidential appointments, and the two houses can combine to charge and impeach the president. Further advantages are that the president, as both head of state and head of government, and as the single politician who is nationally elected, serves as a strong focus for patriotic loyalty and national unity. The dispersal of power between the executive and the legislature also allows government to be more democratic in the sense that it is responsive to competing minorities.

However, presidential systems may also be ineffective and cumbersome, because they offer an ‘invitation to struggle’ to the executive and legislative branches. Critics of the US system, for example, argue that, since ‘the president proposes and Congress disposes’, it is nothing more than a recipe for institutional deadlock, or ‘government gridlock’. This may be more likely when the White House (the presidency) and Capitol Hill (Congress) are controlled by rival parties, but it can also occur, as the Carter administration (1977–81) demonstrated, when both branches are controlled by the same party. To some extent, semi-presidential systems were constructed to overcome this problem. However, similar institutional tensions have been generated in France when presidents have been forced to work with prime ministers and cabinets drawn from a rival party or parties, giving rise to the phenomenon of ‘cohabitation’.

PRESSURE GROUP

A pressure group or interest group (the terms are often, but not always, used interchangeably) is an organized association that aims to influence the policies or actions of government. Pressure groups differ from political parties in that they seek to exert influence from outside, rather than to win or exercise government power. Further, pressure groups typically focus on a narrow issue, in that they are usually concerned with a specific cause or the interests of a particular group, and seldom have the broader programmic or ideological features generally associated with political parties. Pressure groups are distinguished from social movements both by their greater degree of formal organization and by their methods of operation. Pressure groups that operate at the international level (particularly in relation to development and environmental issues) have increasingly been accorded formal recognition as non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Nevertheless, not all pressure groups have members in the formal sense; hence the preference of some commentators for the looser term ‘organized interests’.

Pressure groups appear in a variety of shapes and sizes. The two most common classifications of pressure groups are between sectional and promotional groups, and between ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ groups. Sectional groups (sometimes called protective, functional or interest groups) exist to advance or protect the (usually material) interests of their members. The ‘sectional’ character of such groups derives from the fact that they represent a section of society: workers, employers, consumers, an ethnic or religious group, and so on. In the USA, sectional groups are often classified as ‘private interest groups’, to stress that their principal concern is the betterment and well-being of their members, and not of society in general. Promotional groups (sometimes termed ‘cause’ or ‘attitude’ groups) are set up to advance shared values, ideals and principles. In the USA, promotional groups are dubbed ‘public interest groups’, to emphasize that they promote collective, rather than selective benefits; they aim to help groups other than their own members. Nevertheless, many pressure groups straddle the sectional/promotional divide, in that they both represent their members’ interests and are concerned with ideals and broader causes. Trade unions, for example, often address the issue of social justice as well as matters such as wages, conditions and job security.

Alternatively, pressure groups can be classified on the basis of their relationship to government. Insider groups enjoy privileged and usually institutionalized access to government through routine consultation and representation on government bodies. Such groups either tend to represent key economic interests or to possess specialist knowledge and information necessary to government in the process of policy formulation. Outsider groups, on the other hand, are either not consulted by government or consulted only irregularly, and not usually at a senior level. Lacking formal access to government, these groups are forced to ‘go public’ in the hope of exercising indirect influence on the policy process via media and public campaigns.

Significance

Pressure groups are found only in liberal-democratic political systems, in which the rights of political association and freedom of expression are respected. However, the role pressure groups play and the importance they exert varies considerably. Among the factors that enhance group influence are a political culture that recognizes them as legitimate actors and encourages membership and participation; a fragmented and decentralized institutional structure that gives groups various points of access to the policy process; a party system that facilitates links between major parties and organized interests; and an interventionist style of public policy that requires that the government consults and co-operates with key interests, often through the emergence of corporatism.

The most positive perspective on group politics is offered by pluralist theories. These not only see organized groups as the fundamental building blocks of the political process, but also portray them as a vital guarantee of liberty and democracy. Arguments in favour of pressure groups include the idea that they strengthen representation by articulating interests and advancing views ignored by political parties; that they promote debate and discussion and thus create a more informed electorate; that they broaden the scope of political participation; that they check government power and maintain a vigorous and healthy civil society; and that they promote political stability by providing a channel of communication between government and people. A more critical view of pressure groups is advanced by corporatist, New Right and Marxist theorists. Corporatism highlights the privileged position that certain groups enjoy in relation to government, and portrays pressure groups as being hierarchically ordered and dominated by leaders who are not directly accountable to members. The New Right draws attention to the threat that groups pose in terms of over-government and economic inefficiency. Marxists argue that group politics systematically advantages business and financial interests that control the crucial employment and investment decisions in a capitalist society, and that the state is biased in favour of such interests through its role in upholding the capitalist system they dominate.

PRIME MINISTER

A prime minister (sometimes referred to as a chancellor, as in Germany; a minister-president, as in the Netherlands; or called by a local title such as the Irish Taoiseach) is a head of government whose power derives from his or her leadership of the majority party, or a coalition of parties, in the parliament or assembly. Prime ministers are formal chief executives or heads of government, but their position differs from that of a president in a number of respects. First, prime ministers work within parliamentary systems of government, or semi-presidential ones, and therefore govern in and through the parliament and are not encumbered by a constitutional separation of powers. Second, prime ministers usually operate within a formal system of cabinet government, meaning that, in theory at least, executive authority is shared collectively within the cabinet. Third, prime ministers are invested with more modest constitutional powers than presidents, and are therefore typically more reliant on the exercise of informal powers, especially those linked to their role as party leaders. Fourth, because prime ministers are parliamentary officers they are not heads of state, the latter post generally being held by a non-executive president or a constitutional monarch.

Significance

As the job of prime minister can only have a loose constitutional description, there is some truth in the old adage that the post is what its holder chooses to make of it, or, more accurately, is able to make of it. In practice, prime-ministerial power is based on the use made of two sets of relationships. The first set includes the cabinet, individual ministers and government departments; the second set is his or her party and, through it, the parliament and the public. The support of the cabinet is particularly crucial to prime ministers who operate within a system of collective cabinet government. In these cases, their power is a reflection of the degree to which, by patronage, cabinet management and the control of the machinery of government, they can ensure that ministers serve ‘under’ them. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that the cornerstone of prime-ministerial power lies in his or her position as party leader. Indeed, the modern premiership is largely a product of the emergence of disciplined political parties. Not only is the post of prime minister allocated on the basis of party leadership, but it also provides its holder with a means of controlling the parliament and a base from which the image of national leader can be constructed. The degree of party unity, the parliamentary strength of the prime minister’s party (in particular, whether it rules alone or is a member of a coalition), and the authority vested in the parliament, or at least its first chamber, are therefore the key determinants of prime-ministerial power.

Most commentators agree that prime ministers have steadily become more significant political actors. This results in part from the tendency of the broadcast media in particular to focus on personalities, meaning that prime ministers become kinds of ‘brand images’ of their parties. The growth of international summitry and foreign visits has also provided prime ministers with opportunities to cultivate their states-manship, and given them scope to portray themselves as national leaders. In some cases this has led to the allegation that prime ministers have effectively emancipated themselves from cabinet constraints and established a form of prime-ministerial government. Prime-ministerial government has two key features. First, by controlling the parliament as well as the bureaucratic machine, the prime minister is the central link between the legislative and executive branches of government. Second, executive power is concentrated in the prime minister’s hands through the effective subordination of the cabinet and departmental ministers.

Such developments have led to the phenomenon of ‘creeping presidentialism’, in that prime ministers, under media and other pressures, have distanced themselves increasingly from their parties, cabinets and governments by cultivating a personal appeal based on their ability to articulate their own political and ideological vision. Nevertheless, though prime ministers who command cohesive parliamentary majorities and are supported by unified cabinets wield greater power than many a president, their power is always fragile because it can be exercised only in favourable political circumstances. Ultimately, prime ministers are vehicles through which parties win and retain power; prime ministers who fail in these tasks, or become unmindful of the role, rarely survive long.

PROPERTY

Property, in everyday usage, refers to inanimate objects or ‘things’. However, property is better thought of as a social institution, defined by custom, convention and, in most cases, by law. As a political principle, property draws attention to a relationship of ownership that exists between the object in question and the person or group to whom it belongs. In that sense there is a clear distinction between property and simply making use of an object as a possession. For example, to pick up a pebble from the beach, to borrow a pen, or to drive someone else’s car, does not establish ownership. Property is thus an established and enforceable claim to an object or possession; it is a right, not a ‘thing’. The ownership of property is therefore reflected in the existence of rights and powers over an object, and the acceptance of duties and liabilities in relation to it.

However, property can be conceived of as private, common or state property. Private property is the right of an individual or institution to exclude others from the use or benefit of something. The right to ‘exclude’ does not necessarily deny access, however. Someone else can use ‘my’ car – but only with my permission. Common property is based on a shared right of access to property among members of a collective body, none of whom can exercise a ‘right to exclude’, except in relation to non-members. State property is private property that belongs to the state. Ordinary citizens, for example, have no more right of access to state property such as police cars than they do to any other private vehicle. However, the notions of state property and common property are often confused. Terms such as ‘public ownership’ or ‘social ownership’ appear to refer to property owned collectively by all citizens, but in practice usually describe property that is owned and controlled by the state. ‘Nationalization’ similarly implies ownership by the nation, but it invariably operates through a system of state control.

Significance

The question of property has been one of the deepest and most divisive issues in political and ideological debate. Indeed, ideological divisions have traditionally amounted to where one stands on property, both left-wing and right-wing political creeds practising different forms of the politics of ownership. The clash between capitalism and socialism has thus been portrayed as a choice between two rival economic philosophies, the former based on private property and the latter on common ownership.

Liberals and conservatives have generally been strong supporters of private property; among their arguments are:

• Property is a right based on ‘self-ownership’ – because each person has exclusive rights over him/herself, it follows that such people have an exclusive right to the product of their labour; inanimate objects have been ‘mixed’ with human labour to create property rights (John Locke).
• It is an incentive to labour and thus serves as a guarantee of economic prosperity and efficiency.
• It enlarges individual freedom in the sense that it promotes independence and self-reliance – people can ‘stand on their own two feet’.
• It promotes important social values, because property owners have a ‘stake’ in society and are more likely to maintain order, to be law-abiding and to respect the property of others.
• It is a means of self-realization, an exteriorization of one’s personal identity – people ‘see’ themselves in what they own: their cars, houses, books and so on.

Socialists and communists, on the other hand, have advanced the following arguments in favour of common property:

• It reflects the fact that labour is generally a social and collective activity depending on co-operation rather than independent effort – what is produced in common should be owned in common.
• It strengthens community and social cohesion by ensuring that all members of society have a shared interest and a collective identity.
• It guarantees equality by preventing some from accumulating wealth while others are denied it.
• It allows people to escape from greed and materialism by defining happiness not in terms of its acquisition but on the basis of personal self-development.

Nevertheless, there are clear indications that the politics of ownership has declined in significance. Though its cause was revived in the 1980s by the New Right’s enthusiasm for privatization, the collapse of communism in the revolutions of 1989–91 and the de-radicalization of socialism have resulted in a widespread acceptance of at least the economic virtues of private property and therefore of the disadvantages of both common and state property.

PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION

Proportional representation (PR) is the principle that parties should be represented in the assembly or parliament in direct proportion to their electoral strength, their proportion of seats equalling their proportion of votes. The term is generally used not to refer to a single method of election but rather to a variety of electoral mechanisms – those able to secure proportional outcomes, or at least a high and reliable degree of proportionality. The most commonly used PR electoral system is the party list system (in which electors vote for parties, not candidates); other PR systems include the single transferable vote (STV) (which uses multi-member constituencies and a system of preferential voting) and the mixed member proportional (MMP) system (which combines the party list with the single-member plurality (SMP) system, or ‘first-past-the-post’).

Significance

Although the principle of PR has its origins in the late seventeenth century, PR electoral systems did not emerge until the advent of disciplined political parties in the late nineteenth century. Most modern democracies base at least lower-chamber parliamentary elections on PR, but because India and the USA in particular continue to use SMP, this does not translate into the majority of voters. The significance of PR nevertheless goes a long way beyond the issue of electoral fairness as, especially in parliamentary systems, it has an impact on the party system, the makeup of government and the relationship between the parliament and the executive. In particular, where PR is used, multiparty systems and coalition governments are more common, and the executive is less likely to be able to dominate the parliament. For supporters of PR, these tendencies bring wide-ranging benefits, not least in strengthening legitimacy, responsiveness and accountability, and helping to build a political culture based on consensus and partnership. Critics, on the other hand, associate PR with weak and unstable government, and warn that it can make small, and possibly extremist, parties disproportionately powerful.

PUNISHMENT

Punishment refers to a penalty inflicted on a person for a crime or offence. Unlike revenge, which can be random and arbitrary, punishment is formal in the sense that specific punishments are linked to particular kinds of offence. Moreover, punishment has a moral character that distinguishes it, for example, from simple vindictiveness. Punishment is not motivated by spite or the desire to inflict pain, discomfort or inconvenience for its own sake, but rather because a ‘wrong’ has been done. This is why what are thought of as cruel or inhuman punishments, such as torture and perhaps the death penalty, are often prohibited.

Significance

Apart from anarchists (and even they may be prepared to sanction social ostracism in some form), there is a general agreement that wrongdoing should be punished. However, there is considerable debate about the justification for punishment and the form it should take. Three key justifications for punishment have been advanced, based on the ideas of retribution, deterrence and rehabilitation, respectively. Retribution means to take vengeance against a wrongdoer. The idea is rooted in the religious notion of sin, the belief that there is a discernible quality of ‘evil’ about particular actions and, possibly, certain thoughts. Wrongdoers thus deserve to be punished; punishment is their ‘just deserts’. Such thinking suggests that, because punishment is vengeance, it should be proportional to the wrong done. In short, the punishment should ‘fit’ the crime, in the Old Testament sense of ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth’. Retribution theory provides a clear justification, for example, for the death penalty in the case of murder.

The idea of deterrence is concerned to use punishment to shape the future conduct of others. It sees punishment primarily as a device to deter people from crime or anti-social behaviour by making them aware of the consequences of their actions. In this view, punishment should be selected on the basis of its capacity to deter other potential wrongdoers. For this reason, deterrence theory may at times justify far stricter and even more cruel punishments than retribution ever can. To punish a wrongdoer is to ‘set an example’ to others; the more dramatic that example, the more effective its deterrence value. As such, the idea of deterrence may come close to divorcing the wrong that has been done from the punishment meted out, and so runs the risk of victimizing the initial wrongdoer. The final justification for punishment, rehabilitation, shifts responsibility for wrongdoing away from the individual and towards society. From this perspective, crime and disorder arise not from moral deficiencies or from calculations of self-interest; rather, they are ‘bred’ by social problems such as unemployment, poverty, poor housing and inequality. The purpose of punishment is therefore to educate rather than penalize, seeking, above all, to integrate wrongdoers back into society on their release. However, rehabilitation theory comes dangerously close to absolving the individual from any moral responsibility for the situation.

RACE/ETHNICITY

Race refers to physical or genetic differences among humankind that supposedly distinguish one group of people from another on biological grounds, such as skin and hair colour, physique and facial features. A race is thus a group of people who share a common ancestry and ‘one blood’. The term is, however, controversial, both scientifically and politically. Scientific evidence suggests that there is no such thing as ‘race’ in the sense of a species-type difference between peoples. Politically, racial categorization is commonly based on cultural stereotypes, and is simplistic at best and pernicious at worst. The term ethnicity is therefore sometimes preferred.

Ethnicity is the sentiment of loyalty towards a distinctive population, cultural group or territorial area. The term is complex because it has both cultural and racial overtones. The members of ethnic groups are often seen, correctly or incorrectly, to have descended from common ancestors, and the groups are thus thought of as extended kinship groups. More commonly, ethnicity is understood as a form of cultural identity, albeit one that operates at a deep and emotional level. An ‘ethnic’ culture encompasses values, traditions and practices but, crucially, also gives a people a common identity and sense of distinctiveness, usually by focusing on their origins and descent.

Significance

The link between race and politics was first established by the European racialism of the nineteenth century. This preached doctrines of racial superiority/inferiority and racial segregation, in the twentieth century mixing with fascism to produce Nazism, and helping to fuel right-wing nationalist or anti-immigration movements. The central idea behind such movements is that only a racially or ethnically unified society can be cohesive and successful, with multiculturalism and multiracialism always being sources of conflict and instability. Very different forms of racial or ethnic politics have developed out of the struggle against colonialism in particular, and as a result of racial discrimination and disadvantage in general. However, the conjunction of racial and social disadvantage has generated various styles of political activism.

These range from civil rights movements, such as that led in the USA in the 1960s by Martin Luther King, to militant and revolutionary movements, such as the Black Power movement and the Black Moslems (now the Nation of Islam) in the USA, and the struggle of the African National Congress (ANC) against apartheid in South Africa up to 1994. Ethnic politics, however, has become a more generalized phenomenon in the post-1945 period, associated with forms of nationalism based on ethnic consciousness and regional identity. This has been evident in the strengthening of centrifugal tendencies in states such as the UK, Belgium and Italy, and has been manifest in the rise of particularist nationalism. In the former USSR, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, it led to state collapse and the creation of a series of new nation-states. The two main forces fuelling such developments are uneven patterns of social development in so-called ‘core’ and ‘peripheral’ parts of the world, and the weakening of forms of ‘civic’ nationalism resulting from the impact of globalization.

RACIALISM/RACISM

Racialism is, broadly, the belief that political or social conclusions can be drawn from the idea that humankind is divided into biologically distinct races. Racialist theories are thus based on two assumptions. The first is that there are fundamental genetic, or species-type, differences among the peoples of the world – racial differences are meaningful. The second is that these genetic divisions are reflected in cultural, intellectual and/or moral differences, making them politically or socially significant. Political racialism is manifest in calls for racial segregation (for example, apartheid) and in doctrines of ‘blood’ superiority or inferiority (for example, Aryanism or anti-Semitism).

‘Racialism’ and ‘racism’ are commonly used interchangeably, but the latter is better used to refer to prejudice or hostility towards a people because of their racial origin, whether or not this is linked to a developed racial theory. ‘Institutionalized’ racism is racial prejudice that is entrenched in the norms and values of an organization or social system, and so is not dependent on conscious acts of discrimination or hostility. Nevertheless, the term is highly contentious and has been used, among other things, to refer to unwitting prejudice, insensitivity to the values and culture of minority groups, racist stereotyping, racism as a deliberate act of policy, and racial oppression as an ideological system (as in Nazism).

Significance

Racial theories of politics first emerged in the nineteenth century in the work of theorists such as Count Gobineau (1816–82) and H. S. Chamberlain (1855–1929). They developed through the combined impact of European imperialism and a growing interest in biological theories associated with Darwinism. By the late nineteenth century, the idea that there were racial differences between the ‘white’, ‘black’ and ‘yellow’ peoples of the world was widely accepted in European society, extending beyond the political right and including many liberals and even socialists. Overt political racialism has been most clearly associated with fascism in general and Nazism in particular. However, covert or implicit forms of racialism have operated more widely in campaigns against immigration by far-right groups and parties such as the French National Front and the British National Party (BNP). Anti-immigration racialism is based ideologically on conservative nationalism, in that it highlights the danger to social cohesion and national unity that is posed by multiculturalism. The attraction of racialism is that it offers a simple, firm and apparently scientific explanation for social divisions and national differences. However, racialism has little or no empirical basis, and it invariably serves as a thinly veiled justification for bigotry and oppression. Its political success is associated largely with its capacity to generate simple explanations and solutions, and to harness personal and social insecurities to political ends.

RATIONAL CHOICE

Rational choice is a broad theoretical approach to the study of politics whose principal subdivisions include public choice theory, social choice theory and game theory. Sometimes called formal political theory, it draws heavily on the example of economic theory in building up models based on procedural rules, usually about the rationally self-interested behaviour of individuals. Rational choice theorists use a method that dates back to Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) and is employed in utilitarianism, in assuming that political actors consistently choose the most efficient means to achieve their various ends. In the form of public choice theory it is concerned with the provision of so-called public goods, goods that are delivered by government rather than the market, because, as with clean air, their benefit cannot be withheld from individuals who choose not to contribute to their provision. In the form of social choice theory it examines the relationship between individuals’ preferences and social choices such as voting. In the form of game theory it has developed more from the field of mathematics than from the assumptions of neo-classical economics, and entails the use of first principles to analyse puzzles regarding individual behaviour. The best-known example of game theory is the ‘prisoners’ dilemma’, (see Figure 2), which demonstrates that rationally self-interested behaviour is generally less beneficial than co-operation.

Significance

Rational choice theory emerged as a tool of political analysis in the 1950s and gained greater prominence from the 1970s onwards. Most firmly established in the USA, and associated in particular with the so-called Virginia School, it has been used to provide insights into the actions of voters, lobbyists, bureaucrats and politicians. It has had its broadest impact on political analysis in the form of what is called institutional public choice theory. Supporters of rational choice theory argue that it has introduced greater rigour into the discussion of political phenomena, by allowing political analysts to develop explanatory models in the manner of economic theory. The rational choice approach to political analysis, however, has by no means been universally accepted.

It has been criticized for overestimating human rationality, in that it ignores the fact that people seldom possess clear sets of preferred goals and rarely make decisions in the light of full and accurate knowledge. Furthermore, in proceeding from an abstract model of the individual, rational choice theory pays insufficient attention to social and historical factors, failing to recognize, among other things, that human self-interestedness may be socially conditioned rather than innate. Finally, rational choice theory is sometimes seen to have a conservative value bias, stemming from its initial assumptions about human behaviour, and reflected in its use by theorists such as Buchanan and Tulloch (1962) to defend the free market and support a minimal state.

RATIONALISM

Rationalism is the belief that the world has a rational structure, and that this can be disclosed through the exercise of human reason and critical enquiry. As a philosophical theory, rationalism is the belief that knowledge flows from reason rather than experience, and thus it contrasts with empiricism. As a general principle, however, rationalism places a heavy emphasis on the capacity of human beings to understand and explain their world, and to find solutions to problems. While rationalism does not dictate the ends of human conduct, it certainly dictates how these ends should be pursued. It is associated with an emphasis on principle and reason-governed behaviour, as opposed to a reliance on custom or tradition, or non-rational drives and impulses.

Significance

Rationalism was one of the core features of the Enlightenment, the intellectual movement that reached its height in the eighteenth century and challenged traditional beliefs in religion, politics and learning generally in the name of reason. Enlightenment rationalism provided the basis for both liberalism and socialism, and established the intellectual framework within which conventional political and social analysis developed. Rationalist approaches to understanding have a number of characteristics. First, they tend to place a heavy emphasis on progress and reform. Reason not only enables people to understand and explain their world, but it also helps them to re-shape the world for the better. Rationalism thus promises to emancipate humankind from the grip of the past and the weight of custom and tradition. Each generation is able to advance beyond the previous one as the stock of human knowledge and understanding progressively increases. Second, rationalism is associated with the attempt to uncover values and structures that are universally applicable to humankind. Reason, in this sense, constitutes a higher reference point for human conduct than do the inherited values and norms of a particular society. Third, rationalism highlights the importance of debate and discussion over the use of force or aggression, and implies a broad faith in democracy. If people are reason-guided creatures they have both the ability to settle disputes through debate and negotiation, and a capacity to identify and express their own best interests.

However, rationalistic approaches to political understanding have never been universally accepted. A form of anti-rationalism took root in the late nineteenth century as thinkers started to reflect on the limits of human reason and draw attention to other, perhaps more powerful, drives and impulses. For example, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) proposed that human beings are motivated by deep-seated emotions, their ‘will’ rather than the rational mind, and in particular by what he called the ‘will to power’. In their most extreme form, associated with fascism, such ideas were manifested in a reverence for strength and military power, and the rejection of intellectual enquiry as cold, dry and lifeless. In the form of traditional conservatism, they gave rise to the much more modest belief that tradition and history are surer guides for human conduct than reason and principle, because the world is simply too complicated for people to grasp fully. Faith in rationalism also waned, particularly in the final decades of the twentieth century. This occurred, among other things, because of a growing acceptance that particular individuals, groups and societies possess their own intrinsic values and that these are not susceptible to rational ordering, and through a recognition that rationalism is linked to Western values and that the Enlightenment project of which it is a part is merely a form of cultural imperialism. Such reservations about rationalism have been expressed by both communitarian and postmodern theorists.

REALISM

Realism, in its broadest sense, is a tradition of political theorizing that is ‘realistic’ in the sense that it is hard-headed and (as realists see it) devoid of wishful thinking and deluded moralizing. Key early thinkers in this tradition included Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527) and Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679). Realism has nevertheless had its greatest impact as a theory of international relations. Realist international theory is, primarily, about power and self-interest. The realist power-politics model of international politics is based on two core assumptions. First, human nature is characterized by selfishness and greed, meaning that states, the dominant actors on the international stage, exhibit essentially the same characteristics. Second, as states operate in a context of anarchy, they are forced to rely on self-help and so prioritize security and survival. Realist theory can therefore be summed up in the equation: egoism plus anarchy equals power politics.

Some have suggested that the formulation betrays a basic theoretical fault line within realism, dividing it into two distinct schools of thought. One of these – classical realism – explains power politics in terms of egoism, while the other – neorealism, or structural realism – explains it in terms of anarchy. However, these alternative approaches reflect more a difference of emphasis within realism rather than a division into rival ‘schools’, as the central assumptions of realism are common to most realist theorists, even though they may disagree about which factors are ultimately the most important. By no means, however, do realists assume that the combination of egoism and anarchy must result in restless conflict and unending war. Instead, realists insist that the pattern of conflict and co-operation within the international system conforms largely to the requirements of the balance of power.

Significance

Realism can claim to be the oldest theory of international politics. It can be traced back to Thucydides’ account of the Peloponnesian War (431–404 bce), and to Sun Tzu’s classic work on strategy, The Art of War, written at roughly the same time in China. However, as a theory of international relations, realism took shape from the 1930s onwards as a critique of the then-dominant liberal internationalism, dismissed by some realists as ‘utopianism’. With the end of World War II and the onset of the Cold War, realism became the pre-eminent theory of international relations during the Cold War period. Among the reasons for realism’s dominance was that the Cold War, characterized as it was by superpower rivalry and a nuclear arms race, made the politics of power and security appear to be undeniably relevant and insightful.

However, in a process that began during the 1970s, but was significantly accelerated by the end of the Cold War, more and more aspects of world politics came to be shaped by developments that either ran counter to realist expectations or highlighted the limitations of realist analysis. These included the end of the Cold War itself, the growing impact of non-state actors, the advance of globalization and the increased significance of human rights. Critics of realism have also objected to its tendency to divorce politics from morality, arguing that this has tended to legitimize military escalation and the hegemonic ambitions of great powers. Nevertheless, realism continues to form a part of the analytical toolkit of most serious students of international politics. This applies, in part, because the acceptance that anarchy (albeit modified by other developments) remains the basic feature of world politics extends well beyond realism. Neorealist thinking about the structural dynamics of the international system is therefore seldom dismissed out of hand.

REFERENDUM

A referendum is a vote in which the electorate can express a view on a particular issue of public policy. It differs from an election in that the latter is essentially a means of filling a public office and does not provide a direct or reliable method of influencing the content of policy. The referendum is therefore a device of direct democracy. However, it is typically used not to replace representative institutions, but to supplement them. Referendums may either be advisory or binding; they may also raise issues for discussion, or be used to decide or confirm policy questions (propositions or plebiscites). Whereas most referendums are called by the government, initiatives (used especially in Switzerland and California) are placed on the ballot through some form of popular petition.

Significance

The use of the referendum can be traced back to sixteenth-century Switzerland. However, referendums have always had a dual character. On the one hand, they are a form of popular government in that they give expression to ‘bottom-up’ pressures within the political system. On the other hand, they have also been used as ‘top-down’ instruments of political control. This was seen most clearly in the case of Hitler and other 1930s dictators, who used plebiscites as a means of legitimizing dictatorship, but it has also applied to democratic politicians who wish to neutralize opposition within representative institutions.

The wider use of referendums is supported for a number of reasons, including:

• They strengthen democracy by allowing the public to speak for themselves rather than through the inevitably distorted views of their representatives.
• They check the power of elected governments, keeping them in line with public opinion between elections.
• They promote political participation, thus helping to create a more engaged, better-educated and better-informed electorate.
• Unlike elections, they provide the public with a way of expressing their views on specific issues.
• They provide a means of settling major constitutional questions.

On the other hand, referendums have been associated with the following disadvantages and dangers:

• They place political decisions in the hands of those who have the least education and experience, and are most susceptible to media and other influences.
• They provide, at best, only a snapshot of public opinion at a single point in time.
• They allow politicians to absolve themselves of responsibility for making difficult decisions.
• They enable leaders to manipulate the political agenda (especially when governments call referendums and can use public resources and their publicity machine to back their preferred outcome).
• They tend to simplify and distort political issues, reducing them to questions that have a simple yes/no answer.

REFORM

Reform means, most basically, to create a new form of something, to make it anew. The term ‘reform’ nevertheless always carries positive overtones, implying betterment or improvement. Strictly speaking, therefore, it is contradictory to condemn or criticize what is acknowledged to be a reform. However, reform denotes improvement of a particular kind, in at least two senses. First, reform indicates changes within a person, institution or system that may remove their undesirable qualities, but do not alter their fundamental character: in essence, they remain the same person, institution and system. Reform thus endorses change while maintaining continuity. Second, the change that reform stands for tends to have piecemeal character: it advances bit by bit, rather than through a sudden or dramatic upheaval. As a longer-term and gradual process of change, reform differs markedly from revolution.

Significance

As a style of political change, reform is linked, most commonly, to liberalism and parliamentary socialism. Liberal reformism is often associated with utilitarianism. Founded on the assumption that all individuals seek to maximize their own happiness, and applying the principle of general utility – ‘the greatest happiness for the greatest number’– utilitarian thinkers advocated a wide range of legal, economic and political reforms, following the lead of Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832). These reforms included the codification of the legal system, the removal of barriers to trade and economic competition, and the extension of democracy. Socialist reformism, which emerged towards the end of the nineteenth century, consciously built on these liberal foundations. In the UK, this was reflected in the Fabian Society’s faith in ‘the inevitability of gradualism’. Openly rejecting the ideas of revolutionary socialism, as represented by Marxism, Fabian socialists proposed instead that a socialist society would gradually emerge out of liberal capitalism through a process of incremental and deliberate reform. Similar thinking was advanced in Eduard Bernstein’s Evolutionary Socialism (1898/1962), which championed the idea of a gradual and peaceful transition from capitalism to socialism.

Reform has two key advantages. In the first place, by trying to balance change against continuity, reform can usually be brought about peacefully and without disrupting social cohesion. Even when the cumulative effect of reform amounts to fundamental change, because it is brought about in a piecemeal fashion, and over an extended period, it is more likely to be acceptable, even to those who are at first unsympathetic. Second, reform is founded on the best empirical traditions of scientific enquiry. As an incremental process, reform advances through ‘trial and error’: the impact of earlier reforms can be assessed and adjustments can be made through a further set of reforms, as necessary. Critics of reform have nevertheless condemned it as little more than a sham. This is because it serves to perpetuate what it appears to oppose. Revolutionary socialists, for example, have alleged that that reform may actually have strengthened capitalism; indeed that capitalism’s susceptibility to reform may be the secret of its survival.

REGIONALISM

Regionalism, broadly, is a process through which geographical regions become significant political and/or economic units, serving as the basis for co-operation and, possibly, identity. At the institutional level, regionalism involves the growth of norms, rules and formal structures through which this co-operation is brought about. Regionalism has two faces, however. In the first place it is a sub-national phenomenon, a process that takes place within countries. As such, regionalism implies decentralization, but without calling the integrity of the state and the final authority of national government into question. Regionalism, in this sense, may take the form of devolution, in either its administrative or its legislative guise, or it may involve federalism, in which case regional or provincial bodies are constitutionally entrenched and exercise a share of sovereignty. The second face of regionalism is international rather than sub-national. Regionalism, in this sense, refers to a process of co-operation or integration between countries in the same region of the world. Regionalism at an international level may take the form of intergovernmentalism or supranationalism.

Significance

Sub-national regionalism has generally become more respectable and has, in states ranging from the UK, France and Spain to Canada and India, become a more powerful political movement since the 1960s. The forces supporting regionalism include the growth of ethnic and cultural nationalism, and the declining capacity of the nation-state to maintain a high level of political allegiance in an increasingly globalized world. In that sense, regionalism may be a counterpart to globalization. However, it is sometimes argued that regionalism is only appropriate to certain states, notably to relatively large and culturally diverse states in which there are strong and meaningful traditions of regional political loyalty. Criticisms of this form of regionalism usually focus on one of two issues. Regionalism is seen either as a threat to the nation’s territorial integrity, in that it strengthens regional loyalties and identities at the expense of national ones, or, from a separatist perspective, as a device employed by central government to contain and control centrifugal pressures within the state. This latter view implies that regionalism may take the form of ‘regionalization’, the process by which central authorities respond to regional demand without redistributing policy-making power.

International regional organizations have sprung up in all parts of the world since 1945. The first phase of this process peaked in the 1960s, but the advance of regionalism has been particularly notable since the late 1980s. This has given rise to the phenomenon of ‘new’ regionalism. Whereas earlier forms of regionalism had promoted regional co-operation over a range of issues – security, political and economic issues and so on – ‘new’ regionalism has been reflected in the creation of new regional trading blocs, or the strengthening of existing ones, largely, once again, in response to challenges linked to globalization. Some, as a result, have drawn attention to an emerging ‘world of regions’, arguing that regionalism may be both the successor to the nation-state and an alternative to globalization. Others, however, point out both that there is no evidence that regionalism can rival nationalism’s capacity to generate identity and belonging, and that, far from being an alternative to globalization, regionalism has generally been used by states as a means of engaging more effectively with the global economy.

RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISM

Fundamentalism (from the Latin fundamentum, meaning ‘base’) is a style of ideological thought in which certain principles are recognized as essential ‘truths’ that have unchallengeable and overriding authority, regardless of their content. Substantive fundamentalisms therefore have little or nothing in common except that their supporters tend to evince an earnestness or fervour born out of doctrinal certainty. Fundamentalism in this sense can be found in a variety of political creeds. For example, Marxism and communism are sometimes viewed as forms of fundamentalist socialism (as opposed to the revisionist socialism endorsed by social democracy), on the grounds of their absolute and unequivocal rejection of capitalism. Even liberal scepticism can be said to incorporate the fundamental belief that all theories should be doubted (apart from this one). Though the term is often used pejoratively to imply inflexibility, dogmatism and authoritarianism (and may therefore be avoided by fundamentalists themselves), fundamentalism may suggest selflessness and a devotion to principle.

Religious fundamentalism is characterized by a rejection of the distinction between religion and politics – ‘politics is religion’. This implies that religious principles are not restricted to personal or ‘private’ life, but are also seen as the organizing principles of ‘public’ existence, including law, social conduct and the economy as well as politics. The fundamentalist impulse therefore contrasts sharply with secularism, the belief that religion should not intrude into secular (worldly) affairs, reflected in the separation of church from state. While some forms of religious fundamentalism coexist with pluralism (for example, Christian fundamentalism in the USA and Jewish fundamentalism in Israel) because their goals are limited and specific, other forms are revolutionary (for example, Islamic fundamentalism, or Islamism, in Iran, Pakistan and Sudan) in that they aim to construct a theocracy in which the state is reconstructed on the basis of religious principles, and political position is linked to one’s place within a religious hierarchy. In some cases, but not necessarily, religious fundamentalism is defined by a belief in the literal truth of sacred texts.

Significance

Religious fundamentalism has been a growing political force since the 1970s. Its most important form has been Islamic fundamentalism, associated most closely with the ‘Islamic revolution’ in Iran since 1979 but also evident throughout the Middle East and in parts of north Africa and Asia. However, forms of Christian fundamentalism (USA), Jewish fundamentalism (Israel), Hindu fundamentalism and Sikh fundamentalism (India), and even Buddhist fundamentalism (Sri Lanka) have also emerged. It is difficult to generalize about the causes of this fundamentalist upsurge, because in different parts of the world it has taken different doctrinal forms and displayed different ideological features. What is clear, however, is that fundamentalism arises in deeply troubled societies, particularly societies afflicted by an actual or perceived crisis of identity. Among the factors that have contributed to such crises since the final decades of the twentieth century have been secularization and the apparent weakening of society’s ‘moral fabric’; the search in post-colonial states for a non-Western and perhaps anti-Western political identity; the declining status of revolutionary socialism; and the tendency of globalization to weaken ‘civic’ nationalism and stimulate the emergence of forms of ‘ethnic’ nationalism. There is nevertheless considerable debate about the long-term significance of religious fundamentalism. One view is that fundamentalist religion is merely a symptom of the difficult adjustments that modernization brings about, but it is ultimately doomed because it is out of step with the secularism and liberal values that are implicit in the modernization process. The rival view holds that secularism and liberal culture are in crisis, and that fundamentalism exposes their failure to address deeper human needs and their inability to establish authoritative values that give social order a moral foundation.

The great strength of fundamentalism is its capacity to generate political activism and mobilize the faithful. Fundamentalism operates on both psychological and social levels. Psychologically, its appeal is based on its capacity to offer certainty in an uncertain world. Being religious, it addresses some of the deepest and most perplexing problems confronting humankind; and being fundamentalist, it provides solutions that are straightforward, practical and, above all, absolute. Socially, while its appeal has extended to the educated and professional classes, religious fundamentalism has been particularly successful in addressing the aspirations of the economically and politically marginalized.

The main criticisms of religious fundamentalism are that it breeds, or legitimizes, political extremism, and that it is implicitly oppressive, even totalitarian. While the popular image of fundamentalists as bombers and terrorists is unbalanced and misleading, it is impossible to deny that some forms of religious fundamentalism have expressed themselves through militancy and violence. The most common fundamentalist justification for such acts is that, as they are intended to eradicate evil, they fulfil the will of God. The association between fundamentalism and oppression derives from its insistence on a single, unquestionable truth and a single, unchallengeable source of political authority. This creates profound tension between religious fundamentalism and core features of the Western political tradition such as pluralism and liberal democracy.

REPRESENTATION

To represent means, in everyday language, to ‘portray’ or ‘make present’, as when a picture is said to represent a scene or a person. As a political principle, representation is a relationship through which an individual or group stands for, or acts on behalf of, a larger body of people. Representation differs from democracy in that, while the former acknowledges a distinction between government and the governed, the latter, at least in its classical sense, aspires to abolish this distinction and establish popular self-government. Representative democracy may nevertheless constitute a limited and indirect form of democratic rule, provided that representation links government and the governed in such a way that the people’s views are effectively articulated or their interests secured.

However, there is no single, agreed theory of representation. The term may have one of four sets of implications. First, a representative may be a trustee, a person who is vested with formal responsibility for another’s property or affairs. This was classically expressed by Edmund Burke (1729–97), who argued that representatives serve their constituents by thinking for themselves and using their own mature judgement. Second, a representative may be a delegate, a person who is chosen to act for another on the basis of clear guidance or instructions. Delegation implies acting as a conduit conveying the views of others, without expressing one’s own views or opinions; examples include sales representatives and ambassadors. Third, a representative may be a person who carries out a mandate, in the sense that such people are obliged to carry out the promises on which they fought an election. This theory implies that political parties rather than individual politicians are the principal agents of representation. Fourth, a representative may typify or resemble the group he or she claims to represent, usually coming from the group itself. This notion is embodied in the idea of a ‘representative cross-section’, and implies that a representative government or parliament would constitute a microcosm of the larger society, containing members drawn from all groups and sections in society, and in numbers that are proportional to the size of the groups in society at large.

Significance

Representation is widely viewed as the only practicable form of democracy in modern circumstances. Interest in it developed alongside the wider use of popular election as the principal means of political recruitment, though pre-democratic forms of representation supposedly operated through, for example, the obligation of monarchs to consult major landed, clerical and other interests. The general benefits of representation are that it provides the people with a mechanism through which they can replace unpopular politicians or unsuccessful governments, while relieving ordinary citizens of the everyday burdens of decision-making, thus making possible a division of labour in politics. Representation therefore allows government to be placed in the hands of those with better education, expert knowledge and greater experience.

Nevertheless, there are very different views about what representation does, or should, imply in practice. Burke’s model of trusteeship, for example, views representation as a moral duty that can be invested in an educated and social elite. Its virtue is that it does not bind representatives to the ill-considered and ignorant views of their constituents, but its disadvantage is that it may allow representatives to advance their own interests or defend the general interests of the social elite. Representation as delegations emerged specifically to counter such tendencies by realizing the ideal of popular sovereignty; however, it appears to rob governments and parliaments of their vital deliberative function as forums of debate and discussion. The doctrine of the mandate has the advantage that it helps to imbue elections with meaning by authorizing governments only to carry out policies that have been properly endorsed, but it is questionable whether voters are influenced by issues or policies, and, as with delegation, it allows governments little freedom of debate or manoeuvre. The resemblance model supposedly ensures that representatives can fully identify with the group they represent because they have a common background and shared experiences, but the idea that only a woman can represent women, or only a black person can represent other black people, is perhaps unnecessarily narrow as well as simplistic. Others, however, question the very idea of representation. This is done most commonly by those who argue that representation is simply a substitute for democracy, in that the former always has elitist implications because government is carried out by a small group of professional politicians and the people are kept at arm’s length from political power.

REPUBLICANISM

Republicanism refers, most simply, to a preference for a republic over a monarchy. However, the term republic suggests not merely the absence of a monarch but, in the light of its Latin root, res publica (meaning common or collective affairs), it implies a distinctively public arena and popular rule. Republicanism has thus developed into a broader school of political theory that advocates certain moral precepts and institutional structures. The moral concern of republicanism is expressed in a belief in civic virtue, understood to include public-spiritedness, honour and patriotism. Above all, it is linked to a stress on public over private activity. The institutional focus of republicanism has, however, shifted its emphasis over time. Whereas classical republicanism was usually associated with mixed government that combined monarchical, aristocratic and democratic elements, the American and French revolutions reshaped republicanism by applying it to whole nations rather than small communities, and by endorsing the implications of modern democratic government. In the US version this means an acceptance of divided government achieved through federalism and the separation of powers; but in the French version it is associated more closely with radical democracy and the idea of the ‘general will’.

Significance

Republican political ideas can be traced back to the ancient Roman Republic, its earliest version being Cicero’s (106–43 bce) defence of mixed government developed in The Republic (2008). It was revived in Renaissance Italy as a model for the organization of Italian city-states that supposedly balanced civic freedom against political stability. Further forms of republicanism were born out of the English, American and French revolutions. The major defence of republican forms of government, particularly in their anti-monarchical form, is their emphasis on civic freedom. Republican freedom combines liberty, in the sense of protection against arbitrary and tyrannical government, with the full and active participation of citizens in public and political life. In the form of ‘civic republicanism’, advocated since the 1960s by communitarian thinkers in particular, it amounts to the attempt to re-establish the public domain as the principal source of personal fulfilment, and thus rejects the tendency towards privatization and the ‘rolling back’ of the political sphere, as advocated by the New Right. Republicanism is therefore associated with the notion of active citizenship. The main criticisms of republicanism are that it is politically incoherent, in that it has been associated with such a wide variety of political forms; and that it is illiberal, in that it rejects the idea of freedom as privacy and non-interference, and has been used to justify the expansion of government responsibilities.

RESPONSIBILITY

Responsibility can be understood in three contrasting ways. First, it means to have control or authority, in the sense of being responsible for something or someone. Personal responsibility thus implies being responsible for oneself and one’s own economic and social circumstances, while social responsibility implies being responsible for others. Second, responsibility means accountability or answerability, in the sense of being responsible to someone. This suggests the existence of a higher authority to which an individual or body is subject, and by which it can be controlled. Government is responsible in this sense if its actions are open to scrutiny and criticism by a parliament or assembly that has the ability to remove it from power. This also has an important moral dimension: it implies that the government is willing to accept blame and bear an appropriate penalty. Third, responsibility means to act in a sensible, reasonable or morally correct fashion, often in the face of pressure to behave otherwise. A government may thus claim to be responsible when it resists electoral pressures, and risks unpopularity by pursuing policies designed to meet long-term public interests.

Significance

Responsibility, as it applies to individuals, has different implications depending on what citizens are deemed to be responsible for, and to whom. However, the idea of responsible government has clearer applications, linked to the wider use of electoral and democratic procedures. Responsible government, in the sense of accountable government, is usually associated with two important benefits. The first is that it facilitates representation by binding government to the electorate viewed as a higher authority. Responsible government thus means that the government is responsible to, and removable by, the public, presumably through the mechanism of competitive elections. The second advantage is that it exposes government to scrutiny and oversight, checking the exercise of its power and exposing its policies to analysis and debate. This is a function that is usually vested in the parliament; it is carried out through procedures for debate and questioning and, in a more specific manner, by the use of committee.

In the UK system, responsible government has been elaborated into the conventions of collective and individual ministerial responsibility. Collective responsibility obliges all ministers to ‘sing the same song’, on the grounds that they are collectively responsible to and removable by Parliament. Individual responsibility holds that ministers are personally responsible to Parliament for departmental blunders or policy failures. Nevertheless, the adequacy of responsible government has been widely doubted. This occurs when doctrines of responsibility lose their political edge and become mere constitutional principles. For example, UK governments have little fear of collective responsibility so long as they have majority control of the House of Commons; and individual responsibility no longer, at least in its traditional form, results in minis-terial resignations. Responsibility in the sense of governments acting in a morally correct fashion has always been deeply controversial. Its danger is that, by contrast with the idea of accountability, it divorces government from the people by suggesting that only the former has the ability to judge the best interests of the latter. Doubtless, all governments would view themselves as being responsible in this sense, supported by the knowledge that no other body could challenge this designation.

REVOLUTION

The term revolution, in its earliest usage, meant cyclical change (from the verb ‘to revolve’), as in the restoration of ‘proper’ political order in the so-called Glorious Revolution of 1688 in England. The French Revolution (1789), however, established the modern concept of revolution as a process of dramatic and far-reaching change, involving the destruction and replacement of the old order. Revolutions nevertheless may have a political, social or cultural character.

Political revolutions are popular uprisings involving extra-legal mass actions; they are often, though not necessarily, violent in character. This distinguishes a revolution from a coup d’état, which is a seizure of power by a small group. Revolutions differ from rebellions and revolts in that they bring about fundamental change, a change in the political system itself, as opposed to merely the displacement of a governing elite or a change of policy. Social revolutions are changes in the system of ownership or the economic system; in Marxist theory they are changes in the ‘mode of production’, as when capitalism replaced feudalism and when communism would replace capitalism. For Marxists, social revolutions are more fundamental than political ones, the latter being the political manifestation of a deeper and more long-term transformation of the class system. Cultural revolutions involve the rooting out of values, doctrines and beliefs that supported the old order, and the establishment in their place of a set of new ones. All revolutions have a crucial cultural dimension, reflecting the fact that any stable system of rule must, to some extent, be culturally and ideologically embedded. Many political revolutions are consolidated through a conscious process of re-education to establish a new set of system-sustaining values and aspirations.

Significance

The modern world has been formed through a series of crucial revolutions. These began with the English Revolution of the 1640s and 1650s, which overthrew monarchical absolutism and established early principles of constitutionalism and parliamentary government. The American Revolution (1776) led to the creation of a constitutional republic independent of Britain, and gave practical expression to the principle of representation. The French Revolution set out to destroy the old order under the banner of ‘liberty, equality and fraternity’, advanced democratic ideals and sparked an ‘age of revolution’ in early-nineteenth-century Europe. The Russian Revolution (1917), the first ‘communist’ revolution, provided a model for many of the subsequent twentieth-century revolutions, including the Chinese Revolution (1949), the Cuban Revolution (1959), the Vietnamese Revolution (1975) and the Nicaraguan Revolution (1979).

Debate about revolutions centres on their causes and their consequences. Among the general theories of revolutions are the following. The Marxist theory of revolution holds that they are essentially social phenomena arising out of contradictions that exist in all class societies. Systems theorists argue that revolution results from ‘disequilibrium’ in the political system, brought about by economic, social, cultural or international changes to which the system itself is incapable of responding – the ‘outputs’ of government become structurally out of line with the ‘inputs’. The idea of a ‘revolution of rising expectations’ suggests that revolutions occur when a period of economic and social development is abruptly reversed, creating a widening gap between popular expectations and the capabilities of government. The social-structural explanation implies that regimes usually succumb to revolution when, through international weakness and/or domestic ineffectiveness, they lose the ability, or the political will, to maintain control through the exercise of coercive power.

The consequences of revolution also cause deep disagreement. Revolutionaries themselves argue that revolution is by its nature a popular phenomenon, the unleashing of naked democratic pressure. They also tend to portray revolution as a purifying and ennobling struggle, a rooting-out of corruption, injustice and oppression; for this reason, revolutionary movements usually subscribed to some form of utopianism. Critics of revolution, however, point out that revolutions in practice invariably fail to live up to the high ideals of their perpetrators. This occurs for a variety of reasons, including that, despite the image of popular revolt, revolutions are invariably brought about by small cliques that are typically unwilling to relinquish their newly won power; that any regime that is established through the use of force and violence is compelled to continue using them and is thus forced down the road of authoritarianism; and that revolutions dismantle or crucially weaken institutions and governmental structures, leaving revolutionary leaders with potentially unchecked power.

RIGHTS

A right is an entitlement to act or be treated in a particular way (though in its original meaning it stood for a power or privilege, as in the rights of the nobility or divine right). Rights, however, can be either legal or moral in character. Legal rights are laid down in law or in a system of formal rules and so are enforceable. Moral rights, in contrast, exist only as moral claims or philosophical assertions. Human rights, and their predecessors, natural rights, are essentially moral rights, despite their having been translated increasingly into international law and sometimes domestic law. A further distinction can be made between negative and positive rights. Negative rights are rights that mark out a realm of unconstrained action, and thus impose restrictions on the behaviour of others, particularly the government. Traditional civil liberties, such as freedom of speech and freedom of movement, are therefore negative rights; our exercise of them requires that government and fellow citizens leave us alone. Positive rights are rights that impose demands on others, and particularly government, in terms of the provision of resources or supports, and thus extend their responsibilities. Social or welfare rights, such as the right to education or the right to benefits, are positive rights. Our exercise of them requires that the government provides services and guarantees social support.

Significance

The doctrine of rights emerged in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries through the idea of natural or God-given rights, particularly as used by social contract theorists. Rights thus developed as, and in an important sense, remain, an expression of liberal individualism. However, the language of rights has come to be adopted by almost all political traditions and thinkers, meaning that political debate is littered with assertions of rights – the right to education, the right to free speech, the right to abortion, the rights of animals and so on. This reflects the fact that rights are the most convenient means of translating political commitments into principled claims. The most significant divisions over rights therefore focus not on whether or not they exist, but on which rights should be given priority and with what implications. Negative rights, for example, have traditionally been supported by liberals, who see them as a means of defending the individual from arbitrary government, but have been attacked by socialists on the grounds that they may merely uphold private property and thus class inequality. Positive rights, on the other hand, are favoured by socialists who wish to defend welfare provision and economic intervention, but are condemned by some liberals and supporters of the New Right because they breed dependency and weaken self-reliance.

Moreover, whereas liberals treat rights as being strictly individual entitlements, others have developed the idea of group rights, as in the case of socialist support for trade union rights and the nationalist emphasis on the rights of national self-determination. The idea of minority rights, in reference to the rights of groups such as women (a minority, of course, only in terms of elite representation), homosexuals, disabled people, children and ethnic minorities, has provoked particular debate. In many cases these are rights of equality; demands, in other words, for equal treatment on behalf of people who suffer from some form of discrimination or social disadvantage. In other cases, minority rights articulate demands that arise from the special needs of particular groups, examples including contraception and abortion rights for women, and mobility rights for people who use wheelchairs. Further controversy has arisen as a result of attempts to apply rights to non-humans, most obviously in the form of animal rights, but also more generally in the idea of the rights of the planet.

Nevertheless, some thinkers object to the very idea of rights. Marxists have traditionally portrayed rights as an example of bourgeois ideology, in that they establish a bogus equality that disguises the workings of the capitalist class system; utilitarians reject rights as nonsense, on the grounds that they constitute untestable philosophical assertions; and conservatives and some communitarians have warned that a ‘culture of rights’ breeds egoism and weakens social norms, an obsession with individual rights being a threat to the idea of what is morally right.

RULE OF LAW

The rule of law is the principle that the law should ‘rule’, in the sense that it establishes a framework within which all citizens should act and beyond which no one, neither private citizen nor government official, should go. This principle is enshrined in the German concept of the Rechtsstaat, a state based on law, which encouraged the development of codified constitutional systems across much of continental Europe. In the USA, the rule of law is linked to the doctrine of ‘due process’, which both restricts the discretionary power of public officials and establishes key individual rights, including the right to a fair trial and to equal treatment under the law. The UK has traditionally been taken to represent an alternative conception of the rule of law. As outlined in A. V. Dicey (1835–1922), it embraces four features:

• No one should be punished except for breaches of the law
• Equality before the law
• When the law is broken there must be a certainty of punishment
• The rights and liberties of the individual are embodied in the ‘ordinary law’ of the land (though this may have been superseded in the UK by the passage of the Human Rights Act 1998, which enjoys a semi-entrenched status).

Significance

In its broad sense, the rule of law is a core liberal-democratic principle, embodying ideas such as constitutionalism and limited government to which most modern states aspire. In particular, the rule of law imposes significant constraints on how law is made and how it is adjudicated. For example, it suggests that all laws should be ‘general’, in the sense that they do not select particular individuals or groups for special treatment, for good or ill. Further, it is vital that citizens know ‘where they stand’; laws should therefore be framed precisely and accessible to the public. Retrospective legislation, for example, is clearly unacceptable on such grounds, as it allows citizens to be punished for actions that were legal at the time they occurred. Above all, the principle implies that the courts should be impartial and accessible to all. This can only be achieved if the judiciary enjoys independence from government.

Nevertheless, the rule of law also has its critics. Some have, for example, suggested that it is possible to claim that the rule of law was observed in the Third Reich and in the USSR, simply on the grounds that in these cases oppression wore the cloak of legality. Marxist critics go further, however, arguing that, as law reflects the economic structure of society, the rule of law effectively protects private property, social inequality and class domination. Feminists have also drawn attention to biases that operate through the system of law, in this case biases that favour the interests of men at the expense of women, as a result, for example, of a predominantly male judiciary and legal profession. Multicultural theorists, for their part, have argued that law reflects the values and attitudes of the dominant cultural group and so is insensitive to the values and concerns of minority groups.

SECURITY

Security is the condition of being safe from (usually physical) harm; it therefore consists in being free from threat, intimidation and violence. However, a distinction is commonly drawn between the maintenance of security in the domestic sphere and its maintenance in the international sphere. In a domestic context, security refers to the state’s capacity to uphold order within its own borders, using the instruments of the coercive state, the police and, at times, the military. In an international context, security refers to the capacity of the state to provide protection against threats from beyond its borders, especially the ability of its armed forces to fight wars and resist military attack.

Significance

Security is widely viewed as being the deepest and most abiding issue in politics. This is because insecurity and fear make a decent and worthwhile existence impossible. High-sounding values such as freedom, justice and toleration thus only merit consideration once security is upheld. However, the issue of security is often thought of as being especially pressing in international politics because, while the domestic sphere is ordered and stable, by virtue of the existence of a sovereign state, the international sphere is anarchical and therefore threatening and unstable by its nature. There is nevertheless considerable debate about how security in international affairs can and should be upheld. Realists understand security primarily in terms of ‘national’ security. In a world of self-help, all states are under at least potential threat from all other states, so each state must have the capacity for self-defence. National security therefore places a premium on military power, reflecting the assumption that the more militarily powerful a state is, the more secure it is likely to be. However, this focus on military security draws states into dynamic, competitive relationships with one another, based on what is called the security dilemma.

The state-centric idea of national security has nevertheless been challenged. Liberals, for example, have long supported the notion of ‘collective’ security, reflecting the belief that aggression can best be resisted by united action taken by a number of states, often acting under the auspices of international bodies such as the United Nations or NATO. Furthermore, the advent of new security threats, and particularly the emergence of transnational terrorism, has encouraged some to argue that security should be recast in terms of ‘global’ security. This has happened as a result of trends and development, not least those associated with globalization, that has seen a substantial growth of cross-border movements of people, goods, money and ideas, perhaps rendering the distinction between security in the domestic and international spheres irrelevant. A final development has been the tendency to rethink the concept of security at a still deeper level, usually linked to the notion of ‘human security’, which brings a wide variety of other threats into focus, elated to poverty, environmental degradation, lack of food, lack of healthcare and so on.

SECURITY DILEMMA

The security dilemma describes a condition in which a military build-up for defensive purposes by one state is always liable to be interpreted by other states as potentially or actually aggressive, leading to retaliatory military build-ups and so on. This formulation reflects two component dilemmas (Booth and Wheeler, 2008). First, there is a dilemma of interpretation – what are the motives, intentions and capabilities of others in building up military power? As weapons are inherently ambiguous symbols (they can be either defensive or aggressive), there is irresolvable uncertainty about these matters. Second, there is a dilemma of response – should they react in kind, in a militarily confrontational manner, or should they seek to signal reassurance and attempt to defuse tension? Misperception here may lead either to an unintended arms race or to national disaster.

Significance

The security dilemma has been viewed as the quintessential dilemma of international politics. For realist theorists in particular, it is one of the key reasons why relations between states are characterized by permanent insecurity and an inescapable tendency towards war. This is because uncertainty about motives forces states to treat all other states as enemies. However, while liberal theorists may accept that co-operation and trust are always fragile in the international sphere, they are more optimistic than realists about the extent to which the impact of the security dilemma can be mitigated by, for example, synchronized diplomacy, institutions of collective security and international organizations such as the United Nations. Constructivists, for their part, emphasize the way that states interpret and respond to the actions of other states depends not just on the remorseless logic of the security dilemma, but also on how these other states are perceived in terms of their identities and interests, and, crucially, whether they are viewed as friends or enemies.

SEPARATION OF POWERS

The separation of powers (see Figure 12) is a doctrine proposing that the three chief functions of government (legislation, execution and adjudication) should be entrusted to separate branches of government (the legislature, the executive and the judiciary, respectively). In its formal sense the separation of powers demands independence, in that there should be no overlap of personnel between the branches. However, it also implies interdependence, in the form of shared powers to ensure that there are checks and balances. The separation of powers is applied most strictly in presidential systems of government, as in the USA, where it is the basis of the constitution, but the principle is respected in some form in all liberal democracies, notably in the principle of judicial independence. A full separation of powers requires the existence of a written constitution to define the formal powers and responsibilities of each of the branches of government.

Figure 12  Separation of powers

Significance

The principle of the separation of power can be found in the writings of John Locke (1632–1704) but was more fully elaborated by C.-L. Montesquieu (1689–1775). The separation of powers is one of the classic means of fragmenting government power in order to defend liberty and keep tyranny at bay. An important feature of liberal constitutionalism, its advantages are that it both cuts the power of any branch of government down to size and establishes a network of internal tensions that ensure the exercise of power is never unchecked. This is evident in Richard Neustadt’s (1980) description of the US system as ‘separated institutions sharing powers’. However, few liberal democracies operate on the basis of a strict separation of powers. Its major drawback is that it offers an ‘invitation to struggle’ to the executive and legislative branches of government. It may therefore be nothing more than a recipe for institutional conflict, or ‘government gridlock’. From this point of view it is a device that may suit only large and highly differentiated societies such as the USA, in which political stability requires that competing groups and interests have a wide variety of access points to government. Elsewhere, institutionalized links have been forged between the legislature and executive through parliamentary systems or hybrid semi-presidential systems.

SOCIAL CLASS

A social class is, broadly, a group of people who share a similar social and economic position. For Marxists, class is linked to economic power, which is defined by the individual’s relationship to the means of production. From this perspective, class divisions are divisions between capital and labour, that is, between the owners of productive wealth (the bourgeoisie) and those who live off the sale of their labour power (the proletariat). Non-Marxist definitions of class are usually based on income and status differences between occupational groups. The most common notion of occupational class distinguishes between ‘middle’ class, white-collar (or non-manual) workers, and ‘working’ class, blue-collar (or manual) workers. A more sophisticated marketing-based distinction, used, with variations, by sociologists and political scientists, is made between higher professionals (class A), professionals (B), clerical workers (C1), skilled manual workers (C2), semi-skilled and unskilled workers (D), and those who are unemployed, unavailable for work or unable to work (E).

Significance

The leading proponents of the theory of class politics have been Marxists. Marxists regard social class as the most fundamental, and politically the most significant, social division. In Karl Marx’s (1818–83) view, classes are the key actors on the political stage, and they have the ability to make history. The proletariat was destined to be the ‘grave digger’ of capitalism. It would fulfil this destiny once it had achieved ‘class consciousness’ and became aware of its genuine class interests, thus recognizing the fact of its own exploitation. The proletariat would therefore be transformed from a ‘class in-itself’ (an economically defined category) to a ‘class for-itself’ (a revolutionary force). This, Marx believed, would be a consequence of the deepening crisis of capitalism and the declining material conditions, or immiseration, of the working class. The Marxist two-class model has, however, been discredited by the failure of Marx’s predictions to materialize, and by declining evidence of class struggle, at least in advanced capitalist societies. Modern Marxists have attempted to refine the crude two-class model, while still emphasizing the importance of wealth ownership, accepting, for example, that an ‘intermediate’ class of managers and technicians has emerged, and that there are internal divisions within both the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.

The decline in class politics is usually linked to the emergence of a post-industrial society, a society no longer dependent on manufacturing industry, but more reliant on knowledge and communication. The solidaristic class culture that was rooted in clear political loyalties and, usually, strong union organization, has thus been displaced by more individualistic and instrumentalist attitudes. For some, this is reflected in a transition from a ‘Fordist’ to a ‘post-Fordist’ era, from a system of mass production and mass consumption to one characterized by social and political fragmentation. One aspect of this has been the phenomenon of class de-alignment, the weakening of the relationship between social class and party support, evident in the UK, the USA and elsewhere since the 1970s. Another aspect is growing political interest in the so-called ‘underclass’ – those who suffer from multiple deprivation (unemployment or low pay, poor housing, inadequate education and so on) and are socially marginalized – ‘the excluded’. However, whereas left-wing commentators define the underclass in terms of structural disadvantage and the changing balance of the global economy, right-wing commentators tend to explain the emergence of the underclass largely in terms of welfare dependency and personal inadequacy.

SOCIAL DEMOCRACY

Social democracy is an ideological position, usually, but not necessarily, associated with democratic socialism, which endorses a reformed or ‘humanized’ capitalist system though the term was originally used by Marxists to distinguish between the narrow goal of political democracy and the more radical task of collectivizing, or democratizing, productive wealth). Social democracy therefore advocates a balance between the market and the state, and between the individual and the community. At the heart of the social democratic position is an attempt to establish a compromise between, on the one hand, an acceptance of capitalism as the only reliable mechanism for generating wealth, and, on the other, a desire to distribute social rewards in accordance with moral, rather than market, principles. The chief characteristic of social democracy is thus a belief in reform within capitalism, underpinned by a general concern for the underdogs in society, the weak and vulnerable.

However, social democracy can take a variety of forms. In its classical form, associated with ethical socialism, it embodies an underlying commitment to equality and the politics of social justice. Nevertheless, social democracy may also be informed by modern liberal ideas, such as positive freedom and even by a paternal-istic conservative emphasis on social duty, as in the case of the One Nation tradition. In terms of public policy, the three traditional pillars of social democracy have been the mixed economy (and therefore selective nationalization), economic management (usually in the form of Keynesianism – the use of fiscal policies to achieve the goal of full employment, as recommended by J. M. Keynes (1883–1946), and the welfare state (serving as a redistributive mechanism). Modernized or ‘new’ social democracy is usually associated with a fuller acceptance of market economics, and with sympathy for communitarian ideas such as mutual obligations and responsibility, breaking, or at least weakening, the traditional link between social democracy and egalitarianism.

Significance

Social democratic ideas and policies had their greatest impact in the early post-1945 period. Advanced by socialist and sometimes liberal and conservative parties, they resulted in the extension of economic and social intervention in most Western states. Social democracy has therefore often been credited with having contained the vagaries of capitalism and delivering wider prosperity and general social stability. However, the ‘forward march’ of social democracy went hand-in-hand with the ‘long boom’ of the post-war period, and, when this came to an end with the recessions of the 1970s and 1980s, the underlying contradiction of social democracy (between maintaining capitalism and promoting equality) came to the surface. This has resulted in a widespread abandonment of traditional social democratic positions and the adoption of more market-orientated values and policies. However, just as the flaws of the social democratic pro-state position created opportunities for the New Right in the 1980s, growing doubts about the New Right’s pro-market position may open up fresh opportunities for modernized or ‘new’ social democracy.

The attraction of social democracy is that it has kept alive the humanist tradition, within socialist thought in particular. Its attempt to achieve a balance between efficiency and equality has been, the centre ground to which politics in most developed societies has tended to gravitate, regardless of whether socialist, liberal or conservative governments are in power. From the Marxist perspective, however, social democracy amounts to a betrayal of socialist principles, and attempts to prop up a defective capitalist system in the name of socialist ideals. Nevertheless, social democracy’s central weakness is its lack of firm theoretical roots. While social democrats have an enduring commitment to equality and social justice, the kind and extent of equality they support, and the specific meanings they have given to social justice, have constantly been revised. For example, to the extent that social democracy has been recast in terms of the politics of community, it can be said to have assumed an essentially conservative character. Instead of being a vehicle for social transformation, it has developed into a defence of duty and responsibility, and so serves to uphold established institutions and ways of life.

SOCIAL JUSTICE

Social justice refers to a morally defensible distribution of benefits or rewards in society, evaluated in terms of wages, profits, housing, medical care, welfare benefits and so on. Social justice is therefore about ‘who should get what’. In the view of some commentators, however, the very notion of social justice is mistaken. They argue that the distribution of material benefits has nothing to do with moral principles such as justice, but can only be evaluated in the light of economic criteria, such as efficiency and growth.

Significance

A distinctive concept of social justice, as opposed to the more ancient ideal of justice, first emerged in the early nineteenth century. This reflected both the fact that the onset of industrialization made it possible, perhaps for the first time, to envisage the eradication of poverty, and that the issue of social justice has always been linked to debates about the impact, for good or ill, of capitalism on material distribution. The issue, however, has been concerned less with whether social questions can be evaluated in moral terms – since most people are unwilling to reduce material distribution to mere economics – and more with how social justice should be conceived. Competing conceptions of social justice have thus developed, and these have been based, respectively, on the ideas of needs, rights and deserts.

The idea that material benefits should be distributed on the basis of needs has been proposed most commonly by socialist thinkers, for whom needs, unlike wants or preferences, reflect the fundamental requirements of the human condition. Any needs-based theory of social justice clearly has egalitarian implications, as the needs of one person (for food, water, clothing, health care, personal security and so on) are broadly the same as those of any other person. That said, for modern social democrats, social justice is associated with the goal of relative equality, particularly linked to equality of opportunity, rather than absolute equality, a stance associated not with the abolition of the capitalist system, but with its reform. The idea of rights, which has been favoured by many liberal and libertarian thinkers, serves, by contrast, to justify higher levels of social inequality and lower levels of social intervention. It does this by endorsing meritocracy, thereby implying that those who are talented and hard-working should be rewarded at the expense of the lazy and feckless. Finally, the idea of deserts, which has attracted support among traditional conservatives in particular, has also been used to uphold social equality, but it has done this by suggesting that justice reflects the ‘natural order of things’, rather than principles dreamed up by philosophers or social theorists.

SOCIAL MOVEMENT

A social movement is a particular form of collective behaviour in which the motive to act springs largely from the attitudes and aspirations of members, typically acting within a loose organizational framework. Being part of a social movement requires a level of commitment and political activism, rather than formal or card-carrying membership; above all, movements move. A movement is different from spontaneous mass action (such as an uprising or rebellion) in that it implies a measure of intended or planned action in pursuit of a recognized social goal. Not uncommonly, social movements embrace pressure groups and may even spawn political parties; trade unions and socialist parties, for example, can be seen as part of a broader labour movement. So-called new social movements – the women’s movement, the ecological or green movement, the peace movement, and so on – differ from more traditional social movements in three respects. First, they typically attract support from the young, the better-educated and the relatively affluent, rather than the oppressed or disadvantaged. Second, they usually have a post-material orientation, being more concerned with ‘quality of life’ issues than with material advancement. Third, while traditional movements had little in common and seldom worked in tandem, new social movements subscribe to a common, if not always clearly defined, set of New Left values and beliefs.

Significance

Social movements can be traced back to the early nineteenth century. The earliest were the labour movement, which campaigned for improved conditions for the growing working class; various nationalist movements, usually struggling for independence from multinational European empires; and, in central Europe in particular, a Catholic movement that fought for emancipation through the granting of legal and political rights to Catholics. In the twentieth century it was also common for fascist and right-wing authoritarian groups to be seen as movements rather than as conventional political parties. However, the experience of totalitarianism in the inter-war period encouraged mass society theorists such as Erich Fromm (1900–80) and Hannah Arendt (1906–75) to see movements in distinctly negative terms. From the mass society perspective, social movements reflect a ‘flight from freedom’, an attempt by alienated individuals to achieve security and identity through fanatical commitment to a cause, and obedience to a (usually fascist) leader.

In contrast, new social movements are generally interpreted as rational and instrumental actors, whose use of informal and unconventional means merely reflects the resources available to them. The emergence of new social movements is widely seen as evidence of the fact that power in postindustrial societies is increasingly dispersed and fragmented. The class politics of old has thus been replaced by a ‘new politics’, which turns away from ‘established’ parties, pressure groups and representative processes towards a more innovative and theatrical form of protest politics. Not only do new movements offer new and rival centres of power, but they also diffuse power more effectively by resisting bureaucratization and developing more spontaneous, effective and decentralized forms of organization. Nevertheless, while the impact of movements such as the women’s movement and the gay and lesbian movement cannot be doubted, it is difficult to assess in practical terms because of the broad nature of their goals and the less tangible character of the cultural strategies they tend to adopt.

SOCIALISM

Socialism is an ideology defined by its opposition to capitalism and its attempts to provide a more humane and socially worthwhile alternative. The core of socialism is a vision of human beings as social creatures united by their common humanity; as the poet John Donne put it, ‘No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.’ This highlights the degree to which individual identity is fashioned by social interaction and the membership of social groups and collective bodies. Socialists therefore prefer co-operation to competition, and favour collectivism over individualism. The central, and some would say defining, value of socialism is equality, socialism sometimes being portrayed as a form of egalitarianism. Socialists believe that a measure of social equality is the essential guarantee of social stability and cohesion, and that it promotes freedom in the sense that it satisfies material needs and provides the basis for personal development. The socialist movement has traditionally articulated the interests of the industrial working class, seen as being systematically oppressed or structurally disadvantaged within the capitalist system. The goal of socialism is thus to reduce or abolish class divisions.

Socialism, however, contains a bewildering variety of divisions and rival traditions. Ethical socialism, or utopian socialism, advances an essentially moral critique of capitalism. In short, socialism is portrayed as being morally superior to capitalism because human beings are ethical creatures, bound to one another by the ties of love, sympathy and compassion. Scientific socialism undertakes a scientific analysis of historical and social development which, in the form of Marxism, does not suggest that socialism should replace capitalism, but predicts that, inevitably, it would replace capitalism.

A second distinction is regarding the ‘means’ of achieving socialism, namely the difference between revolution and reform. Revolutionary socialism, reflected most clearly in the communist tradition, holds that socialism can only be introduced by the revolutionary overthrow of the existing political and social system, usually based on the belief that existing state structures are irredeemably linked to capitalism and the interests of the ruling class. Reformist socialism (sometimes termed evolutionary, parliamentary or democratic socialism), on the other hand, believes in ‘socialism through the ballot box’, and thus accepts basic liberal democratic principles such as consent, constitutionalism and party competition. Finally, there are profound divisions over the ‘end’ of socialism; that is, the nature of the socialist project. Fundamentalist socialism aims to abolish and replace the capitalist system, viewing socialism as qualitatively different from capitalism. Fundamentalist socialists, such as Marxists and communists, generally equate socialism with common ownership in some form. Revisionist socialism aims not to abolish capitalism but to reform it, looking to reach an accommodation between the efficiency of the market and the enduring moral vision of socialism. This is expressed most clearly in social democracy.

Significance

Socialism arose as a reaction to the social and economic conditions generated in Europe by the growth of industrial capitalism. The birth of socialist ideas was closely linked to the development of a new but growing class of industrial workers, who suffered the poverty and degradation that are so often a feature of early industrialization. For over 200 years socialism has constituted the principal oppositional force within capitalist societies, and has articulated the interests of oppressed and disadvantaged peoples in many parts of the world. The principal impact of socialism has been in the form of the twentieth-century communist and social-democratic movements. However, since the late twentieth century socialism has suffered a number of major reverses, leading some to proclaim the ‘death of socialism’. The most spectacular of these was the collapse of communism in the Eastern European Revolutions of 1989–91. Partly in response to this, and partly as a result of globalization and changing social structures, parliamentary socialist parties in many parts of the world have re-examined, and sometimes rejected, traditional socialist principles.

The moral strength of socialism derives not from its concern with what people are like, but with what they have the capacity to become. This has led socialists to develop utopian visions of a better society in which human beings can achieve genuine emancipation and fulfilment as members of a community. In that sense, despite its late-twentieth-century setbacks, socialism is destined to survive if only because it serves as a reminder that human development can extend beyond market individualism. Critics of socialism nevertheless advance one of two lines of argument. The first is that socialism is irrevocably tainted by its association with statism. The emphasis on collectivism leads to an endorsement of the state as the embodiment of the public interest. Both communism and social democracy are in that sense ‘top-down’ versions of socialism, meaning that socialism amounts to an extension of state control and a restriction of freedom. The second line of argument highlights the incoherence and confusion inherent in modern socialist theory. In this view socialism was only ever meaningful as a critique of, or alternative to, capitalism. The acceptance by socialists of market principles therefore demonstrates either that socialism itself is flawed or that their analysis is no longer rooted in genuinely socialist ideas and theories.

SOVEREIGNTY

Sovereignty, in its simplest sense, is the principle of absolute and unlimited power. However, a distinction is commonly made between legal and political sovereignty. Legal sovereignty refers to supreme legal authority; that is, an unchallengeable right to demand compliance, as defined by law. Political sovereignty, in contrast, refers to unlimited political power; that is, the ability to command obedience, which is typically ensured by a monopoly of coercive force. The term sovereignty is used in two distinct though related senses, usually understood as external and internal sovereignty. External sovereignty relates to a state’s place in the international order and its capacity to act as an independent and autonomous entity. This is what is meant by terms such as ‘national sovereignty’ and ‘sovereign state’. Internal sovereignty is the notion of a supreme power/authority within the state, located in the body that makes decisions that are binding on all citizens, groups and institutions within the state’s territorial boundaries. This is how the term is used in cases such as ‘parliamentary sovereignty’ and ‘popular sovereignty’.

Significance

The concept of sovereignty emerged in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as a result of the development in Europe of the modern state. As the authority of transnational institutions, such as the Catholic Church and the Holy Roman Empire faded, centralizing monarchs in England, France, Spain and elsewhere were able to claim to exercise supreme power, and they did this in a new language of sovereignty. In the writings of Jean Bodin (1530–96) and Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), sovereignty was used as a justification for monarchical absolutism. For Bodin, law amounted to little more than the command of the sovereign, and subjects were required simply to obey. However, whereas Bodin accepted that the sovereign monarch was constrained by the will of God or natural law, Hobbes defined sovereignty as a monopoly of coercive power and advocated that it be vested in the hands of a single, unchallengeable rule. The basic justification for internal sovereignty as developed by Bodin and Hobbes is that the existence of a single focus of allegiance and a supreme source of law within a state is the only sure guarantee of order and stability. Hobbes in particular offered citizens a stark choice between absolutism and anarchy.

Other versions of internal sovereignty, such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s (1712–78) notion of popular sovereignty, expressed in the idea of the ‘general will’, and John Austin’s (1790–1859) doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty, viewed as the ‘monarch in Parliament’, linked sovereignty to democracy and constitutionalism, respectively. What all such thinkers, however, had in common is that they believed that sovereignty could be, and should be, located in a determinate body. In an age of pluralistic and democratic government this ‘traditional’ doctrine of sovereignty has attracted growing criticism. Its opponents argue either that it is intrinsically linked to its absolutist past, and if so is frankly undesirable, or that it is no longer applicable to modern systems of government, which operate according to networks of checks and balances. It has been suggested, for example, that liberal democratic principles are the very antithesis of sovereignty in that they argue for a distribution of power among a number of institutions, none of which can meaningfully claim to be sovereign. This is particularly evident in the case of federalism, which is based on the paradoxical notion of shared sovereignty.

While questions about internal sovereignty have appeared increasingly outdated in a democratic age, the issue of external sovereignty has become absolutely vital. Indeed, some of the deepest divisions in modern politics, from the Arab–Israeli conflict to tensions in former Yugoslavia, involve disputed claims to such sovereignty. Historically, the notion of external sovereignty has been closely linked to the struggle for popular government, the two ideas fusing to create the modern notion of ‘national sovereignty’. External sovereignty has thus come to embody the principles of national independence and self-government. Only if a nation is sovereign are its people capable of fashioning their own destiny according to their particular needs and interests. To ask a nation to surrender its sovereignty is tantamount to asking its people to give up their freedom. This is why external or national sovereignty is so keenly felt and, when it is threatened, so fiercely defended. The potent appeal of political nationalism is the best evidence of this. However, external sovereignty has been criticized on both moral and theoretical grounds. Moral concerns about external sovereignty arise from its capacity to block interference in the affairs of other states, even when they are violating the natural rights of their citizens. Theoretical problems stem from the fact that the notion of an independent or sovereign state may no longer be meaningful in an increasingly interdependent world. Globalization, for example, may mean that political sovereignty is impossible, while legal sovereignty has been reduced to merely a diplomatic nicety.

STATE

The state can, most simply, be defined as a political association that establishes sovereign jurisdiction within defined territorial borders and exercises authority via a set of permanent institutions. It is possible to identify five key features of the state. First, the state exercises sovereignty – it exercises absolute and unrestricted power in that it stands above all other associations and groups in society; Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), for this reason, portrayed the state as a ‘leviathan’, a gigantic monster. Second, state institutions are recognizably ‘public’, in contrast to the ‘private’ institutions of civil society – state bodies are responsible for making and enforcing collective decisions in society and are funded at the public’s expense. Third, the state is an exercise in legitimation – its decisions are usually (though not necessarily) accepted as being binding on its citizens, because, it is claimed, it reflects the permanent interests of society. Fourth, the state is an instrument in domination – it possesses the coercive power to ensure that its laws are obeyed and that transgressors are punished; as Max Weber (1864–1920) put it, the state has a monopoly of the means of ‘legitimate violence’. Fifth, the state is a territorial association – it exercises jurisdiction within geographically defined borders. In international politics, however, the state is usually defined from an external perspective, and so embraces civil society. In this view, the state is characterized by four features: a defined territory; a permanent population; an effective government; and sovereignty.

States nevertheless come in different shapes and sizes. Minimal states or ‘night-watchman’ states, advocated by classical liberals and the New Right, are merely protective bodies whose sole function is to provide a framework of peace and social order within which citizens can conduct their lives as they think best. Developmental states, found, for example, in the ‘tiger’ economies of East and Southeast Asia, operate through a close relationship between the state and major economic interests, notably big business, and aim to develop strategies for national prosperity in a context of transnational competition. Social-democratic states, the ideal of both modern liberals and democratic socialists, intervene widely in economic and social life to promote growth and maintain full employment, reduce poverty and bring about a more equitable distribution of social rewards. Collectivized states, found in orthodox communist countries, abolished private enterprise completely and set up centrally planned economies administered by a network of economic ministries and planning committees. Totalitarian states, often associated with the state form found as constructed in Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s USSR, penetrate every aspect of human existence through a combination of comprehensive surveillance and terroristic policing, and a pervasive system of ideological manipulation and control.

Significance

The state has always been central to political analysis, to such an extent that politics is often understood as the study of the state. This is evident in two key debates. The first and most fundamental of these focuses on the need for the state and the basis of political obligation. The classic justification for the state is provided by social contract theory, which constructs a picture of what life would be like in a stateless society, a so-called ‘state of nature’. In the view of thinkers such as Hobbes and John Locke (1632–1704), as the state of nature would be characterized by an unending civil war of each against all, people would be prepared to enter into an agreement – a social contract – through which they would sacrifice a portion of their liberty to create a sovereign body without which orderly and stable existence would be impossible. In the final analysis, then, individuals should obey the state because it is the only safeguard they have against disorder and chaos. The rival view, advanced by anarchism, is based on markedly more optimistic assumptions about human nature, and places a heavier emphasis on natural order and spontaneous co-operation among individuals. Anarchists have also looked to a range of social institutions, such as common ownership or the market mechanism, to underpin social stability in the absence of a state.

The second area of debate concerns the nature of state power. Much of political theory deals specifically with rival theories of the state. The major positions in this debate can be summarized as follows. Liberals view the state as a neutral arbiter among competing interests and groups in society, a vital guarantee of social order; the state is at worst a ‘necessary evil’. Marxists have portrayed the state as an instrument of class oppression, a ‘bourgeois’ state, or, allowing for its ‘relative autonomy’ from the ruling class, have emphasized that its role is to maintain stability within a system of unequal class power. Democratic socialists often regard the state as an embodiment of the common good, highlighting its capacity to rectify the injustices of the class system. Conservatives have generally linked the state to the need for authority and discipline to protect society from incipient disorder, hence their traditional preference for a strong state. The New Right has highlighted the non-legitimate character of the state by drawing attention to the extent to which it articulates its own interests separately from those of the larger society and often to the detriment of the economic performance. Feminists have viewed the state as an instrument of male power, the ‘patriarchal’ state serving to exclude women from, or subordinate them within, the ‘public’ or political sphere of life. Finally, anarchists argue that the state is nothing less than legalized oppression operating in the interests of the powerful, propertied and privileged.

Since the late 1980s, however, debate about the state has been overshadowed by assertions about its ‘retreat’ or ‘decline’. The once-mighty leviathan – widely seen to have been co-extensive with politics itself – had seemingly been humbled, state authority having been undermined by the growing importance of, among other things, the global economy, the market, transnational corporations, non-state actors of various kinds, and international organizations. The clamour for ‘state-centric’ approaches to domestic and international politics to be rethought, or abandoned completely, therefore grew. Nevertheless, a simple choice between ‘state-centrism’ and ‘retreat-ism’ is, at best, misleading. For example, while states and markets are commonly portrayed as being rival forces, they also interlock and complement each other. Apart from anything else, markets cannot function without a system of property rights that only the state can establish and preserve. Moreover, though states may have lost authority in recent decades in certain respects, in relation to matters such as war-making and homeland security (in the aftermath of 9/11) and financial and banking regulation (in the aftermath of the 2007–09 global financial crisis), they may have become stronger.

SUBSIDIARITY

Subsidiarity (from the Latin subsidiarii, meaning a contingent of supplementary troops) is, broadly, the devolution of decision-making from the centre to lower levels. However, it is understood in two crucially different ways. In federal states such as Germany, subsidiarity is understood as a political principle that implies decentralization and popular participation, benefiting local and provincial institutions often at the expense of national ones. This is expressed in the idea that decisions should be ‘taken as closely as possible to the citizen’. However, subsidiarity is also interpreted as a constitutional principle that defends national sovereignty against the encroachment of supranational bodies. This is expressed in the commitment that the competence of supranational bodies should be restricted to those actions that cannot be sufficiently achieved sufficiently well by nation-states.

Significance

The principle of subsidiarity is important because it addresses the question of the most appropriate level within a political system at which decisions should be made. In advocating that political decisions should always be made at the lowest possible level of government, it clearly endorses decentralization. However, it is better thought of as providing a test of appropriateness: if a governmental function can be carried out as efficiently or effectively by smaller or lower bodies, then it should be devolved, otherwise larger or higher bodies should take responsibility. The notion of subsidiarity is established most firmly established in federal systems such as those in Germany and Switzerland, where it has been used in its political sense in allocating powers appropriately between federal government and provincial bodies, and sometimes between provincial bodies and local government. The term has gained a wider currency, however, since its use in the Treaty of the European Union (Maastricht Treaty) of 1993. Opponents of Euro-federalism have used subsidiarity in a narrow constitutional sense as an embodiment of the rights of member states, and as a defence against the growth of a European ‘super-state’.

SUPERPOWER

A superpower, in simply terms, is a power that is greater than a traditional great power. According to Fox (1944), superpowers possess great power ‘plus great mobility of power’. As the term tended to be used to refer specifically to the USA and the USSR during the Cold War period, it is of more historical than conceptual significance. To describe the USA and the USSR as superpowers implied that they possessed:

• A global reach
• A predominant economic and strategic role within their respective ideological bloc or sphere of influence
• Preponderant military capacity, especially in terms of nuclear weaponry.

Significance

The term ‘superpower’ was born in the final phase of World War II, and reflected the reconfiguration of global power that the war had brought about. The USA and the USSR emerged as the preponderant actors on the world stage through the decisive role each had played in defeating the Axis powers, their status later being enhanced by the onset of the Cold War and the emergence of tensions between an increasingly US-dominated West and a Soviet-dominated East. By comparison with the USA and the USSR, the great powers of the pre-war period – France, the UK, Germany, Japan and so on – had thus been relegated to second-order status. However, the notion that the Cold War amounted to a ‘superpower era’ may conceal as much as it reveals. For example, to consider the USA and the USSR as super-powers is to suggest a broad equivalence of power between them that may never have existed. In particular, the USSR was never a superpower in economic terms (despite perceptions to the contrary that lingered long in the West). The gulf in productive capacity between the USA and the USSR widened consistently from the 1960s onwards, to such an extent that Soviet attempts to match increased US military spending under President Reagan in the 1980s threatened to bring about economic collapse and contributed to the USSR’s eventual demise. In addition, the concept of a superpower has shifted over time, first through the tendency to refer to Japan and Germany from the 1980s onwards, and to China from the 2000s onwards, as ‘economic’ superpowers, and second through the emergence of the USA in the post-Cold War period as the world’s sole superpower, often seen as a ‘hyperpower’ or a ‘global hegemon’.

SUPRANATIONALISM

Supranationalism is the existence of an authority that is ‘higher’ than that of the nation-state and capable of imposing its will on it. Supranationalism thus differs from intergovernmentalism in that the latter allows for international co-operation only on the basis of the sovereign independence of individual states. While, strictly speaking, empires are supranational bodies, being structures of political domination that comprise a diverse collection of cultures, ethnic groups and nationalities, supranationalism usually refers to international bodies that have been established by voluntary agreement among states, and which serve limited and specific functions. The best examples of supranational bodies are therefore international federations, such as the European Union (EU), in which sovereignty is shared between central and peripheral bodies. However, the EU is a difficult body to categorize, as it encompasses a mixture of intergovernmental and supranational elements and is thus more accurately described as a federalizing than a federal body.

Significance

The advance of supranationalism has been one of the most prominent features of post-1945 world politics. It reflects the growing interdependence of states, particularly in relation to economic and security decision-making, but also in matters such as environmental protection, and the recognition that globalization has perhaps made the notion of state sovereignty irrelevant. From this point of view, the shift from intergovernmentalism to supranationalism is likely to be a continuing trend, as intergovern-mental action requires unanimous agreement and does not allow for action to be taken against recalcitrant states. For example, the United Nations (UN), strictly speaking an intergovernmental body, acted in a supranational capacity during the Gulf War of 1991 by sanctioning military action against one of its member states, Iraq. This drift towards supranationalism is supported by those who warn that respect for state sovereignty is simply misguided, or that it is dangerous in that it allows states to treat their citizens however in whatever way they wish, and produces an anarchical international order that is prone to conflict and war. Supranationalism is therefore one of the faces of internationalism. Opponents of supranationalism continue, on the other hand, to stand by the principle of the nation-state, and argue that supranational bodies have not, and can never can, rival the nation-state’s capacity to generate political allegiance and ensure democratic accountability.

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

Sustainable development is development that respects the requirements of ecological sustainability, and so has the capacity to continue in existence for an extended period of time. The Brundtland Report’s (1987) highly influential definition of the term is:

Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. It contains two key concepts:

• The concept of need, in particular the essential needs of the world’s poor, to which overriding priority should be given
• The concept of limitations, imposed by the state of technology and social organization on the environment’s ability to meet present and future needs.

Significance

Since the 1980s, sustainable development is the watchword of reformist ecologism. It reflects the recognition that there are ‘limits to growth’, in that environmental degradation (in the form of, for example, pollution or the use of non-renewable resources) ultimately threatens prosperity and economic performance. From this perspective, ‘growthism’, placing priority on economic growth over all other considerations, is ultimately self-defeating. ‘Getting rich slower’ therefore makes economic as well as ecological sense. However, despite near universal rhetorical support for the principle of sustainable development, the extent to which development goals and strategies have in practice been modified in the light of ecological concerns has been limited. This is because electoral and other pressures on societies, rich and poor, to deliver economic growth have often proved to be irresistible. Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to assume that all ecologists endorse the idea of sustainable development. Radical ecologists, and in particular deep ecologists, have challenged the notion of a compromise between economic and ecological goals, and see these, instead, as being incompatible. In this anti-growth view, sustainable development is a contradiction in terms.

SYSTEMS THEORY

Systems theory sets out to explain the entire political process, as well as the function of major political actors, through the application of systems analysis. A ‘system’ is an organized or complex whole, a set of interrelated and interdependent parts that form a collective entity. To analyse politics from this perspective is to construct the model of a political system. A political system consists of linkages between what are viewed as ‘inputs’ and ‘outputs’ (see Figure 13). Inputs into the political system consist of demands and supports from the general public. Demands can range from pressure for higher living standards, improved employment prospects and more generous welfare payments, to greater protection for minority and individual rights. Supports, on the other hand, are ways in which the public contributes to the political system by paying taxes, offering compliance and being willing to participate in public life. Outputs consist of the decisions and actions of government, including the making of policy, the passing of laws, the imposition of taxes, and the allocation of public funds. These outputs generate ‘feedback’, which in turn shapes further demands and supports. The key insight offered by the systems model is that the political system tends towards long-term equilibrium or political stability, as its survival depends on outputs being brought into line with inputs.

Figure 13  The political system

Significance

Systems analysis was first employed in political science in the 1950s, the pioneering work having been done by Easton (1953/1981). Linked to behaviouralism, the systems approach was part of the attempt to introduce more scientific rigour into the study of politics, in this case through the application of models of ecological systems from biology. Systems theory has provided a rich source of insights into, for example, the role of ‘gatekeepers’ such as political parties and pressure groups, which regulate the flow of inputs into the political system, and into the general policy process and the nature of its outputs. Its strengths include the breadth of its scope, which extends well beyond state institutions, and even the class system, to include all politically significant actors, and its tendency to foster holistic thinking. However, the systems model is at best a device for drawing out understanding; it does not in itself constitute reliable knowledge. For example, institutions such as parties and pressure groups are more interesting and complex than their designation as ‘gatekeepers’ suggests; for example, they play an important role in managing public perceptions and thus help to shape the nature of public demands. Moreover, the systems model is more effective in explaining how and why political systems respond to popular pressures than in explaining why they employ repression and coercion, as, to some degree, all do. Finally, the systems model is implicitly conservative, in that it highlights the responsiveness and inherent stability of liberal democracy, thereby arguably concealing its structural weaknesses and inherent contradictions.

TERRORISM

Terrorism is a form of political violence that aims to achieve its objectives by creating a climate of fear and apprehension. As such, it uses violence in a very particular way: not primarily to bring about death and destruction, but rather to create unease and anxiety about possible future attacks. Terrorist violence is therefore clandestine and involves an element of surprise, if not arbitrariness, designed to create uncertainty and widening apprehension. Terrorism therefore often takes the form of seemingly indiscriminate attacks on civilian targets, though attacks on symbols of power and prestige, and the kidnapping or murder of prominent businessmen, senior government officials and political leaders, are usually also viewed as acts of terrorism. Different forms of terrorism have nevertheless been identified:

• Insurrectionary terrorism – aimed at the revolutionary overthrow of a state (examples include anarchist and revolutionary communist terrorism)
• Loner or issue terrorism – aimed at the promotion of a single cause (examples include the 1995 sarin nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway by the religious cult Aum Shinryko)
• Nationalist terrorism – this aims to overthrow colonial rule or occupation, often with the goal of gaining independence for an ethnic, religious or national group (examples include the FLN in Algeria, and the Tamil Tigers of Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka)
• Transnational or global terrorism – this aims to inflict damage and humiliation on a global power or at transforming global civilizational relations (examples include al-Qaeda and other forms of Islamist terrorism).

However, the term ‘terrorism’ is ideologically contested and emotionally charged; some even refuse to use it on the grounds that it is either hopelessly vague or carries unhelpful pejorative implications. Its negative associations mean that the word is almost always applied to the acts of one’s opponents, and almost never to similar acts carried out by one’s own group or a group one supports. Terrorism thus tends to be used as a political tool, a means of determining the legitimacy, or illegitimacy, of a group or political movement under consideration. This also raises questions as to whether terrorism is evil in itself and beyond moral justification. Whereas mainstream approaches to terrorism usually view it as an attack on civilized or humanitarian values, even as an example of nihilism (literally a belief in nothing), radical scholars sometimes argue that terrorism and other forms of political violence may advance the cause of political justice and counter other, more widespread, forms of violence or abuse, suggesting that they are justifiable (Honderich, 1989).

Significance

The attacks on New York and Washington on 11 September 2001 (9/11) are widely believed to have brought about a profound shift in the significance of terrorism, even having established terrorism as the pre-eminent security threat in the twenty-first century. This has occurred for at least three reasons. First, thanks largely to globalization, terrorism has acquired a genuinely transnational if not global character. Together with other non-state groups, terrorist organizations have proved to be particularly adept at exploiting the potential of the modern, hyper-mobile world with its ‘porous’ borders, creating the impression that they can strike anywhere, at any time. Second, the potential scope and scale of terrorism has greatly increased as a result of modern technology, and in particular the prospect of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) falling into the hands of terrorists. Specifically, concern has been expressed about the possibility of nuclear terrorism. Third, some argue that modern terrorists, increasingly inspired by a radical politico-religious ideology, such as Islamism, are more willing to countenance widespread death and destruction than the largely secular terrorist of old. Terrorism has thus become a religious imperative, even a sacred duty, rather than a pragmatically selected political strategy.

However, the threat of terrorism, even of global terrorism, may have been greatly overstated. For example, there are doubts about its military effectiveness. While particular terrorist attacks may have a devastating impact, by its nature terrorism consists of a series of sporadic attacks on a variety of targets, which is very different from the concerted, sustained and systematic destruction that is wreaked by mass warfare conducted between states. Moreover, where terrorist campaigns have been successful, they have usually been linked to attempts to advance or defend the interests of a national or ethnic group, in which case its goals have enjoyed a significant measure of popular support. Where this is not the case, terrorism may well be counter-productive, provoking popular hostility and outrage (rather than fear and apprehension) among the civilian population, as well as military retaliation from the government. Finally, fears about terrorism may be exaggerated because they are based on the idea of a conflict of civilization between Islam and the West that do not stand up to examination.

THIRD WAY

The ‘third way’ is a slogan that encapsulates the idea of an alternative to both capitalism and socialism. It draws attention to an ideological position that has attracted political thinkers from various traditions. The term originated within Italian fascism and was first used publicly by Mussolini (who claimed to have coined it). The fascist ‘Third Way’ took the form of corporatism, a politico-economic system in which major economic interests are bound together under the auspices of the state. The organic unity of fascist corporatism was supposedly superior to the rampant individualism of profit-orientated capitalism and the stultifying state control of communism. In the post-1945 period a very different ‘third way’ was developed in relation to Keynesian social democracy, found in its most developed form in Sweden. The Swedish economic model attempted to combine elements of both socialism and capitalism. Productive wealth was concentrated largely in private hands, but social justice was maintained through a comprehensive welfare system funded by a steeply progressive tax regime. More recently, the idea of the ‘third way’ has resurfaced in association with ‘new’ social democratic or post-socialist thought. Widely associated with the government of Tony Blair and ‘new’ Labour in the UK, but also influenced by the Bill Clinton administration in the USA, this ‘third way’ is defined as an alternative to ‘top-down’ state intervention (and therefore traditional social democracy) and free-market capitalism (and therefore Thatcherism or Reaganism). The ideological character of this post-social democratic ‘third way’ is, however, unclear. In most forms it involves a general acceptance of the market and of globalized capitalism, qualified by a communitarian emphasis on social duty and the reciprocal nature of rights and responsibilities.

Significance

The recurrence of the idea of a ‘third way’ highlights deep, but perhaps incoherent, dissatisfaction with the two dominant twentieth-century models of economic organization: market capitalism and state socialism. Proponents of ‘third way’ politics in effect attempt to develop a non-socialist critique of an unregulated market economy. While the philosophical and ideological basis of this critique changes, the major reservations about capitalism remain remarkably similar: a concern about the random and often immoral implications of market competition. The flaw of capitalism, from this point of view, is that it is a constant threat to social cohesion and stability. At the same time, however, ‘third way’ thinkers reject socialism because of its association with state control and because they believe that collectivization and planning fail to provide a viable alternative to the capitalist market. Two key criticisms are advanced of ‘Third Way’ politics. The first is that the idea of the ‘third way’ is merely a populist slogan devoid of political or economic content. The second is that ‘third way’ theories are inherently contradictory because, while criticizing competition and market individualism, they are not capable of looking beyond a capitalist model of economic organization.

TOLERATION

Toleration means forbearance, a willingness to accept views or actions with which one disagrees or of which one disapproves. Toleration should therefore be distinguished from both permissiveness and indifference. Permissiveness is a social attitude that allows people to act as they wish or as they choose; it reflects either moral indifference (the belief that the actions in question cannot be judged in moral terms) or moral relativism (the belief that moral judgements can be made only from the perspective of the individuals concerned). Toleration, on the other hand, is based on two separate moral judgements. The first is disapproval of a form of behaviour or set of beliefs; the second is a deliberate refusal to impose one’s own views on others. Toleration thus does not simply mean ‘putting up with’ what cannot be changed – for example, a battered wife who stays with her abusive husband out of fear can hardly be said to ‘tolerate’ his behaviour. Moreover, toleration does not imply noninterference. While toleration does not allow for interference with, or constraint on, others, it allows influence to be exerted through moral example and rational persuasion. A distinction is sometimes made between ‘negative’ toleration, a passive acceptance of diversity or willingness to ‘live and let live’, and ‘positive’ toleration, a celebration of diversity and pluralism viewed as enriching for all.

Significance

Toleration is a core principle of liberalism and one of the central values of liberal democracy. Liberals have usually viewed toleration as a guarantee of individual freedom and a means of social enrichment. John Locke (1632–1704) defended toleration, particularly religious toleration, on the grounds that the state has no right to meddle in ‘the care of men’s souls’. However, his central argument was based on a belief in human rationality. ‘Truth’ will only emerge out of free competition among ideas and beliefs and therefore must be left to ‘shift for herself’. J. S. Mill (1806–73) treated toleration as one of the faces of individual liberty, suggesting that it represents the goal of personal autonomy, and that, in promoting debate and argument, it stimulates the intellectual development and moral health of society at large. Such views are consistent with support for pluralism in its moral, cultural and political forms.

Nevertheless, even liberals recognize the limits of toleration, particularly in the need to protect toleration from the intolerant. This may, for example, provide a justification for banning anti-democratic and anti-constitutional political parties, on the grounds that, if they came to power, they would establish dictatorial rule and abolish toleration. Other concerns about toleration include that it places a heavy, perhaps over-heavy, faith on rationalism and the ability of people to resist ‘bad’ ideas; that it may allow groups with offensive views, such as racists and fascists, to operate legally and gain respectability; and that it weakens society in the sense that it makes it impossible to develop shared values and a common culture.

TORYISM

‘Tory’ was used in eighteenth-century Britain to refer to a parliamentary faction that (as opposed to the Whigs) supported monarchical power and the Church of England, and represented the landed gentry; in the USA it implied loyalty to the British crown. In the mid-nineteenth century the British Conservative Party emerged out of the Tories, and in the UK ‘Tory’ is still widely (but unhelpfully) used as a synonym for Conservative, but Toryism is best understood as a distinctive ideological stance within broader conservatism. Its characteristic features are a belief in hierarchy, tradition, duty and an organic society. While ‘high’ Toryism articulates a neo-feudal belief in a ruling class and a pre-democratic faith in established institutions, the Tory tradition is also hospitable to welfarist and reformist ideas, provided these serve the cause of social and institutional continuity. One Nation conservatism can thus be seen as a form of ‘welfare Toryism’ or ‘Tory democracy’. Tory democracy is an idea developed in the late nineteenth century by Randolph Churchill, who proclaimed that the way to generate wider popular support for traditional institutions was through advancing the cause of social reform.

Significance

Toryism amounts to the vestiges of the feudal political tradition, the remnants of the ideological stance of the landed aristocracy. Tory ideas survived because they were absorbed into conservative ideology, their attraction being both that they served the interests of new capitalist elites and, because they are not expressed in terms of abstract principles, they proved to be ideologically flexible and adaptable. However, the match between Toryism and conservatism has always been imperfect, as the latter has accommodated, to a greater or lesser extent, capitalist values such as individualism, self-striving and competition. The rise of the New Right in the 1970s pushed Toryism, and its associated One Nation ideals, to the margins of conservative politics. The attraction of Toryism is that it advances a vision of a stable, if hierarchical, social order, in which the strong take some responsibility for the weak and vulnerable. The disadvantages of Toryism are that it legitimizes the class system and articulates values that are entirely out of step with a modern, meritocratic society.

TOTALITARIANISM

Totalitarianism is an all-encompassing system of political rule that is typically established by pervasive ideological manipulation and open terror and brutality. Totalitarianism differs from both autocracy and authoritarianism, in that it seeks ‘total power’ through the politicization of every aspect of social and personal existence. Totalitarianism thus implies the outright abolition of civil society: the abolition of ‘the private’. Friedrich and Brzezinski (1966) defined totalitarianism in terms of a six-point ‘syndrome of interrelated traits and characteristics’:

• The existence of an ‘official’ ideology
• A one-party state, usually led by an all-powerful leader
• A system of terroristic policing
• A monopoly of the means of mass communication
• A monopoly of the means of armed combat
• State control of all aspects of economic life.

Significance

The phenomenon of totalitarianism is usually believed to have arisen in the twentieth century, pervasive ideological manipulation and systematic terror requiring the resources of a modern industrialized state. The idea of totalitarianism originated in fascist Italy as a belief in the state as an all-consuming ‘ethical community’ that reflects the altruism and mutual sympathy of its members. This was developed into the doctrine: ‘everything for the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state’. The term was subsequently adopted to describe the perhaps uniquely oppressive character of twentieth-century dictatorships, in particular Adolf Hitler’s Germany and Joseph Stalin’s USSR. Totalitarian analysis achieved its greatest prominence in the 1950s and 1960s, when it was widely used to highlight totalitarian parallels between fascism and communism, and to divide the world into rival democratic (liberal democratic) and totalitarian states.

However, the totalitarian classification has a number of drawbacks. First, it became part of Cold War ideology and was used as a sometimes crude form of anti-communist propaganda. Second, it tended to obscure important differences between fascism and communism, particularly in relation to their ideological orientation and the degree to which they tolerated capitalism. Third, the idea of ‘total’ state power is misleading, because some form of resistance or opposition always persists, even in the most technologically advanced and brutal of states. Nevertheless, even though the apparent precision of the six-point syndrome is misleading, the concept of totalitarianism is useful in highlighting distinctions between modern and traditional dictatorships, and in drawing attention to the importance of charismatic leadership. The latter consideration has given rise to the idea of ‘totalitarian democracy’, the phenomenon whereby a leader justifies his or her unchecked power through a claim to possess a monopoly of ideological wisdom and to articulate the ‘true’ interests of his/her people. A very different theory of totalitarianism was advanced by Herbert Marcuse (1964), who identified totalitarian tendencies in advanced industrial societies, viewing them as ‘one-dimensional societies’ in which rising affluence helps to subdue argument and debate and absorb all forms of opposition.

TRADITION

Tradition refers to ideas, practices or institutions that have endured through time and have therefore been inherited from an earlier period. However, it is difficult to determine precisely how long something has to survive before it can be regarded as a tradition. Tradition is usually thought to denote continuity between generations; traditions are things that have been transmitted from one generation to the next. However, the line between the traditional and the merely fashionable is often indistinct. Tradition should nevertheless be distinguished from both progress and reaction. Whereas progress implies a movement forward, building on the past, and reaction suggests ‘turning the clock back’, reclaiming the past, tradition stands for continuity or conservation: the absence of change.

Significance

Tradition is one of the key principles, some would say the defining principle, of conservatism. The original conservative justification for tradition rested on the idea of natural order and the belief that tradition reflected God-given institutions and practices has now effectively been abandoned except by religious fundamentalists. The remaining conservative case for tradition is twofold. First, tradition reflects the accumulated wisdom of the past, institutions and practices that have been ‘tested by time’ and should be preserved for the benefit of the living and for generations to come. This is embodied in Edmund Burke’s (1729–97) assertion that society is a partnership between ‘those who are living, those who are dead and those who are to be born’. Second, tradition engenders a sense of belonging and identity in the individual that is rooted in history, as well as fostering social cohesion by establishing in society a moral and cultural bedrock. Tradition thus gives people, individually and collectively, a sense of who they are.

However, developments in modern society have generally eroded respect for tradition, with lingering forms of traditionalism, such as the neo-conservative defence of traditional values, often being seen as part of the difficult adjustment to a post-traditional society. The most important of these developments has been the accelerating pace of change in technologically advanced societies, and the spread of rationalism, suggesting that reason and critical understanding are a better test of ‘value’ than mere survival. The two most common criticisms of tradition are that it amounts to the ‘despotism of custom’ (J. S. Mill), in that it enslaves the present generation to the past and denies the possibility of progress, and that tradition serves the interests not of the many but of the few, the elite groups that dominated past societies.

TRANSNATIONAL CORPORATION

A transnational corporation (TNC) is a company that controls economic activity in two or more countries. The ‘parent’ company is usually incorporated in one state (the ‘home’), with ‘subsidiaries’ in others (the ‘hosts’), though subsidiaries may be separately incorporated affiliates. Such companies are now generally referred to as transnational corporations rather than multinational corporations –TNCs as opposed to MNCs – to reflect the extent to which their corporate strategies and processes transcend national borders rather than merely crossing them. As such, TNCs are the principal economic face of transnationalism. Integration across economic sectors and the growing importance of intra-firm trade has allowed TNCs to operate, in effect, as economies in their own right.

Significance

Some early transnational corporations developed in association with the spread of European colonialism, the classic example being the Dutch East India Company, established in 1602. However, the period since 1945 has witnessed a dramatic growth in the number, size and global reach of TNCs. The number of powerful companies with subsidiaries in several countries has risen from 7,000 in 1970 to 38,000 in 2009. TNCs currently account for about 50 per cent of world manufacturing production and over 70 per cent of world trade, often dwarfing states in terms of their economic size. Based on a comparison between corporate sales and countries’ GDP, 51 of the world’s 100 largest economies are corporations; only 49 of them are countries. However, economic size does not necessarily translate into political power or influence; states, after all, can do things that TNCs can only dream about, such as make laws and raise armies. What gives TNCs their strategic advantage over national governments is their ability to transcends territory through the growth of ‘trans-border’, even ‘trans-global’, communications and interactions, reflected, in particular, in the flexibility they enjoy over the location of production and investment. TNCs can, in effect, ‘shop around’, looking for circumstances that are conducive to profitability. This creates a relationship of structural dependency between governments and TNCs whereby governments rely on TNCs to provide jobs and capital inflows, but can only attract them by providing circumstances favourable to their interests.

Defenders of TNCs argue that they bring massive economic benefits and that they have been ‘demonized’ by the anti-globalization movement, which has greatly exaggerated their political influence From this perspective, TNCs have been successful because they have worked. Their two huge economic benefits are their efficiency and their high level of consumer responsiveness. Greater efficiency has resulted from their historically unprecedented ability to reap the benefits from economies of scale, and from the development of new productive methods and the application of new technologies. The consumer responsiveness of TNCs is demonstrated by their huge investment in research and development (R&D) and product innovation. Critics nevertheless portray a much more sinister image of TNCs, arguing that they distort markets through their disproportionate economic power, exert undue political influence by the impact their policies have on employment and investment levels, and uphold a ‘brand culture’ that pollutes the public sphere through the proliferation of commercial images, and manipulates personal preferences. The influence of TNCs on the developing world has attracted particular criticism, with allegations ranging from the exploitation of workers through low wages and bans on union organization to the disruption of production patterns that had previously been geared to meeting local needs.

TRANSNATIONALISM

Transnationalism refers to sustained relationships, patterns of exchange, affiliations and social formations that cross national borders. As such, transnationalism implies that the domestic/international divide in politics has been fatally undermined, casting doubt on the continuing importance of both sovereignty and the state. Transnationalism differs from internationalism, in that the latter implies co-operation or solidarity between established nations (and so is compatible with nationalism), rather than the removal or abandonment of national identities completely.

Significance

Transnationalism comes in a variety of shapes and forms, and is more relevant to some areas of human existence than to others. Most debate about transnationalism centres on its relationship to globalization, which is commonly viewed either as the chief cause of transnationalism or as its primary manifestation. Indeed, in absorbing national economies, to a greater or lesser extent, into an interlocking global economy, globalization can be thought of as a comprehensive system of economic transnationalism. Among the implications of this is the changing balance between the power of territorial states and ‘deterritorialized’ transnational corporations, which can switch investment and production to other parts of the world if state policy is not conducive to profit maximization and the pursuit of corporate interests. Economic sovereignty, then, may no longer be meaningful in what Ohmae (1990) called a ‘borderless world’. However, the rhetoric of a ‘borderless’ global economy can be taken too far. For example, there is evidence that, while globalization may have changed the strategies that states adopt to ensure economic success, it has by no means rendered the state redundant as an economic actor. Indeed, rather than globalization having been foisted on unwilling states by forces beyond their control, economic globalization has largely been created by states and for states.

An alternative form of transnationalism has emerged from the upsurge in recent decades, partly fuelled by globalization, of international migration. This has led to speculation about the growth of ‘transnational communities’ or diasporas. A transnational community is a community whose cultural identity, political allegiances and psychological orientations cut across national borders; they are often thought of as ‘deterritorialized nations’ or ‘global tribes’. For a transnational community to be established, an immigrant group must forge and, crucially, sustain relations that link its society of origin and its society of settlement, something that has been made substantially easier through the advent of cheap transport and improved communications, not least the internet and the mobile phone. Nevertheless. it is by no means clear that transnational loyalties are as stable and enduring as those built around the nation. This is because social ties that are not territorially rooted and geographically defined may not prove to be viable in the long term. Moreover, the social and cultural cohesion of transnational communities should not be over-stated, as, albeit to differing degrees, they encompass divisions based on factors such as gender, social class, ethnicity, religion, age and generation.

UTILITARIANISM

Utilitarianism is a moral philosophy that suggests that the ‘rightness’ of an action, policy or institution can be established by its tendency to promote happiness. This is based on the assumption that individuals are motivated by self-interest and that these interests can be defined as the desire for pleasure, or happiness, and the wish to avoid pain or unhappiness. Individuals thus calculate the quantities of pleasure and pain each possible action would generate and choose whichever course promises the greatest pleasure over pain. Utilitarian thinkers believe that it is possible to quantify pleasure and pain in terms of ‘utility’, taking into account their intensity, duration and so on. Human beings are therefore utility maximizers, who seek the greatest possible pleasure and the least possible pain. The principle of utility can be applied to society at large using Jeremy Bentham’s (1748–1832) classic formula: ‘the greatest happiness of the greatest number’.

Utilitarianism, however, has developed into a cluster of theories. Classical utilitarianism is act-utilitarianism, in that it judges an act to be right if its consequences produce at least as much pleasure-over-pain as those of any alternative act. Rule-utilitarianism, in contrast, judges an act to be right if it conforms to a rule which, if generally followed, would produce good consequences. What is called utilitarian generalization assesses an act’s rightfulness, not in terms of its own consequences but on the basis of its consequences if the act were to be performed generally. Motive-utilitarianism places emphasis on the intentions of the actor rather than on the consequences of each action.

Significance

Utilitarian theory emerged in the late eighteenth century as a supposedly scientific alternative to natural rights theories. In the UK, during the nineteenth century, utilitarianism provided the basis for a wide range of social, political and legal reforms, advanced by the so-called philosophic radicals. It provided one of the major foundations for classical liberalism and remains perhaps the most important branch of moral philosophy, certainly in terms of its impact on political issues.

The attraction of utilitarianism is its capacity to establish supposedly objective grounds on which moral judgements can be made. Rather than imposing values on society, it allows each individual to make his or her own moral judgement as each alone is able to define what is pleasurable and what is painful. Utilitarian theory thus upholds diversity and freedom, and demands that we respect others as pleasure-seeking creatures. Its drawbacks are philosophical and moral. Philosophically, utilitarianism is based on a highly individualistic view of human nature that is both asocial and ahistorical. It is by no means certain, for example, that consistently self-interested behaviour is a universal feature of human society. Morally, utilitarianism may be nothing more than crass hedonism, a view expressed by J. S. Mill (1806–73) in his declaration that he would rather be ‘Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied’ (though Mill himself subscribed to a modified form of utilitarianism). Utilitarianism has also been criticized for endorsing acts that are widely considered to be wrong, such as the violation of basic human rights, if they serve to maximize the general utility of society.

UTOPIANISM

A utopia (from the Greek utopia, meaning ‘no place’, or the Greek eutopia, meaning ‘good place’) is literally an ideal or perfect society. The term was coined by Thomas More (1478–1535), and was first used in his Utopia (1516/1965). Utopianism is a style of social theorizing that develops a critique of the existing order by constructing a model of an ideal or perfect alternative. As such, it usually exhibits three features. First, it embodies a radical and comprehensive rejection of the status quo; present social and political arrangements are deemed to be fundamentally defective and in need of root-and-branch change. Second, utopian thought highlights the potential for human self-development, based either on highly optimistic assumptions about human nature or optimistic assumptions regarding the capacity of economic, social and political institutions to ameliorate baser human drives and instincts. Third, utopianism usually transcends the ‘public/private’ divide in that it suggests the possibility of complete or near-complete personal fulfilment. For an alternative society to be ideal, it must offer the prospect of emancipation in the personal realm as well as in the political or public realms.

However, utopianism is not a political philosophy or an ideology. Substantive utopias differ from one another, and utopian thinkers have not advanced a common conception of the good life. Nevertheless, most utopias are characterized by the abolition of want, the absence of conflict and the avoidance of violence and oppression. Socialism in general, and anarchism and Marxism in particular, have a marked disposition towards utopianism, reflecting their belief in the human potential for sociable, co-operative and gregarious behaviour. Socialist utopias, as a result, are strongly egalitarian and typically characterized by collective property ownership and a reduction in, or eradication of, political authority. Feminism and ecologism have also spawned utopian theories. Liberalism’s capacity to generate utopian thought is restricted by its stress on human self-interestedness and competition; however, an extreme belief in free-market capitalism can be viewed as a form of market utopianism. Other utopias have been based on faith in the benign influence of government and political authority. More’s society, for example, was hierarchical, authoritarian and patriarchal, albeit within a context of economic equality.

Significance

The utopian approach to political understanding was most popular in the nineteenth century, generally stimulated by the immense political and social upheavals generated by industrialization. Since the early twentieth century, however, utopianism has become distinctly unfashionable. Criticisms of utopian thought fall into two categories. The first (in line with the pejorative, everyday use of the term ‘utopian’) suggests that utopianism is deluded or fanciful thinking, a belief in an unrealistic and unachievable goal. Karl Marx (1818–83), for example, denounced ‘utopian socialism’ on the grounds that it advances a moral vision that is in no way grounded in historical and social realities. By contrast, ‘scientific socialism’ sought to explain how and why a socialist society would come into being (Marxism’s utopian character is nevertheless evident in the nature of its ultimate goal: the construction of a classless, communist society). The second category of criticisms holds that utopianism is implicitly totalitarian, in that it promotes a single set of indisputable values and so is intolerant of free debate and diversity.

However, a revival of utopianism has occurred since the 1960s, associated with the rise of New Left and the writings of thinkers such as Herbert Marcuse (1898– 1979), Ernst Bloch (1885–1977) and Paul Goodman (1911–72). The strength of utopianism is that it enables political theory to think beyond the present and to challenge the ‘boundaries of the possible’. The establishment of ‘concrete’ utopias is a way of uncovering the potential for growth and development within existing circumstances. Without a vision of what could be, political theory may simply be overwhelmed by what is, and thereby lose its critical edge.

WAR

War is a condition of armed conflict between two or more political groups. It has been distinguished from other forms of violence by at least four factors. First, wars have traditionally been fought by states, with inter-state war, often over territory or resources – ‘wars of plunder’ – being thought of as the archetypal form of war. However, inter-state war has become significantly less common in recent years, most modern wars (sometimes called ‘new’ wars), being civil wars, featuring the involvement of non-state actors such as guerrilla groups, resistance movements and terrorist organizations. Second, conventional warfare is a highly organized affair. It is carried out by armed forces or trained fighters who are subject to uniforms, drills, saluting and ranks, and who operate according a strategy of some sort, as opposed to carrying out random and sporadic attacks. Modern warfare has nevertheless become a less organized affair, often involving irregular fighters who may be difficult to distinguish from the civilian population, and employing improvised tactics.

Third, war is usually distinguished by its scale or magnitude. A series of small-scale attacks involve only a handful of deaths is seldom referred to as a war. The United Nations thus defines a ‘major conflict’ as one in which at least 1,000 deaths occur annually. However, this figure is arbitrary, and would, for example, exclude the Falklands War of 1982, which is widely regarded as a war. Finally, as they involve a series of battles or attacks, wars usually take place over a significant period of time. That said, some wars are very short, such as the Six-Day War of 1967 between Israel and the neighbouring states of Egypt, Syria and Jordan. Other wars are nevertheless so protracted, sometimes involving lengthy periods of peace, that there may be confusion about exactly when a war starts and ends. For example, though World War I and World War II are usually portrayed as separate conflicts, some historians prefer to view them as part of a single conflict interrupted by a 20-year truce. Confusion about the beginning and end of a war has, indeed, become more common in recent years, as the declining use of formal ‘declarations of war’ has meant that it is often difficult to determine when an armed conflict has become a war.

Significance

War has traditionally been the principal way in which states establish their place within the hierarchy of states. Warfare both enables a state to protect its territory and people from external aggression, and to pursue its interests abroad through conquest and expansion. Recent decades have nevertheless witnessed a marked decline in warfare in many parts of the world, a trend that certainly applies to large-scale, high-intensity military conflict. This has encouraged liberals in particular to declare that war is becoming obsolete as a means of determining international and global outcomes. At least four factors have been associated with this development. These are: the spread of democratic governance, in line with the democratic peace thesis; the expansion of free trade and the emergence of an alternative, non-military route to national prosperity; the growth of a system of international law and changed moral attitudes to the use of force; and the development of nuclear weapons, which have dramatically intensified fears about the escalation of war.

However, the decline of traditional inter-state war does not mean that the world has become a safer place. Rather, new, and in some ways more challenging security threats have emerged, not least related to terrorism. War and warfare have not ended, but, as demonstrated by the counter-insurgency wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, their form has clearly changed. Moreover, the decline of inter-state war may prove to be a temporary phenomenon. This is a warning associated most clearly with realist theorists, who emphasize that the underlying biases within the international system continue to favour conflict over co-operation. These biases may have been kept in check in recent years by factors such as the advance of globalization and the USA’s massive military predominance, but there is no guarantee that these will persist. The revived prospect of inter-state war, and even of great-power war, is most often linked to rising multipolarity and the increased instability and fluidity it may bring in its wake

WELFARE

Welfare, in its simplest form, means happiness, prosperity or well-being in general; it implies not merely physical survival but also some measure of health and contentment. As a political principle, however, welfare stands for a particular means through which social well-being is maintained: collectively provided welfare, delivered by government, through what is termed a welfare state. The term ‘welfare state’ is used either to refer to a state that assumes broad responsibilities for the social well-being of its citizens, or, more narrowly, to the health, education, housing and social security systems through which these responsibilities are carried out. Welfare states nevertheless come in many different shapes and forms. Esping-Andersen (1990) distinguished between three types of welfare state: liberal or ‘limited’ welfare states (as in the USA and Australia) aim to provide little more than a ‘safety net’ for those in need; conservative or ‘corporate’ welfare states (as in Germany) provide a comprehensive range of services that depend heavily on the ‘paying-in’ principle and link benefits closely to jobs; and social democratic or ‘Beveridge’ welfare states (as traditionally existed in Sweden and the UK, modelled on the 1942 Beveridge Report) incorporate a system of universal benefits and are based on national insurance and full employment.

Significance

Interest in welfare emerged during the nineteenth century as industrialization created a spectre of urban poverty and social division that, in different ways, disturbed conservative, liberal and socialist politicians alike. Early support for social reform and welfare reflected elite fears about the danger of social revolution and the desire to promote national efficiency in both economic and military terms, as well as the more radical wish to abolish poverty and counter the injustices of the capitalist system. This, in turn, gave rise to quite different forms of welfare support in different states. While a welfare consensus developed in the early post-1945 period as paternalistic conservatives, modern liberals and social democrats unified in support for at least the principle of welfare, the 1980s and 1990s witnessed a general retreat from welfare, even among socialists, brought about in part by the pressures of economic globalization. Nevertheless, welfare remains one of the central fault lines in ideological debate, dividing pro-welfarist social democrats and modern liberals from anti-welfarist libertarians and supporters of the New Right. Among the arguments in favour of welfare are:

• It promotes social cohesion and national unity, in that it gives all citizens a ‘stake’ in society and guarantees at least basic social support.
• It enlarges freedom in the sense that it safeguards people from poverty and provides conditions in which they can develop and realize their potential.
• It ensures prosperity by countering the effects of social deprivation and helping those who cannot help themselves.
• It serves as a redistributive mechanism that promotes greater equality and strengthens a sense of social responsibility.

Arguments against welfare include:

• It creates a culture of dependency and so restricts freedom in the sense of individual responsibility and self-reliance.
• It amounts to legalized theft, and so is unjust, in that it transfers resources from the prosperous to the lazy without the formers’ consent.
• It is economically damaging because welfare spending pushes up taxes and fuels inflation.
• It is inefficient because it is provided through monopolistic public bureaucracies that are not driven by a profit motive.