pog 100 - blackboard- september 25 2007
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POG 100: Introduction to Politics and
Governance, Section 1/2/3/4
F2007
September 25 2007
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September 25 2007
Review: Political Power
Political regimes
Approaches to the Study of Politics Ideas and ideologies
Film: The Bottom Line: Privatizingthe World
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Review: Power and Politics
Power as the ability to bring about desired outcome
Power as the ability to influence the actions of others
Power as coercion - using fear or threats to achieve outcomes
Power as the ability to impose one groups interests onothers - or to define them as the public interest
Power as the capacity to make decisions
Power to act - citizens
Power over others - subjects
Power as ubiquitous Michel Foucault Power runs through all social relations
Knowledge as power
Power and resistance
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Review: Power to and Power
overPower understood as:
Power to act: Being empowered to do something about events
around you, achieve collective goals People power - Gandhi and India, Philippines,Civilrights movements, feminist movement, socialmovements
Power over others: Being subject to constraints imposed by others
Citizen as subject
Oppressions - imperialism, patriarchy, colonialism
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The struggle over India
The case study of India in A force more powerful
Represents the biggest colonial revolt in humanhistory
Demonstrates the limits of imperial power or powerover and the possibilities of people power to act
Anti-colonial movement, like other social movementsarise out of compelling ideas that address specificmaterial conditions
Politics is about conflict and struggle Governance is possible only with the consent of the
governed
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Consent as basis for governance
Consent to govern derives from the People
People can give or withdraw consent
Governance depends on the tacit consent ofthe governed
Political and social orders are sustained by
dominant orders that use power to generate theconsent of the governed
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Consent and hegemony
Antonio Gramsci: How is consent achieved? Consent is achieved through proceses of hegemony making.
Hegemony represents a dominant political, social andeconomic order with ideological and material dimensions, inwhich one group in society achieves and maintains controlthrough processes ofcoercion and consent
Political society - institutions of the state and their agents arecentral to that process
Civil society institutions outside government such aschurches and social movements sometimes collaborate and atother times struggle against dominant structures and ideologiesthat are the basis for consent
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Hegemony
An order in which dominant ideas about the organization ofsociety and way of life are considered normal or natural
These ideas become normalized through processes that informthe commonsense notions of how a society should be run.
They represent the dominance of one world view and a singleway to explain human actions and what is good and evil A hegemonic order uses ideologies to explain the way the
world works, these eventually becoming the common senseway of thinking. In turn, they then influence political consentand public policy outcomes.
Its logic is diffused throughout society through all itsinstitutional and private manifestations, informing its tastes,morality, customs, religious and political principles, and allsocial relations, intellectual and moral connotations.
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Political Authority
Authorityrepresents the right to make decisions for apolitical community.
Political authority guarantees legitimacy meaning thatthe governed accept the process and decisions of thosein authority
Max Weber (1864-1920) Traditional authority invested in individuals by custom or heredity Charismatic authority derives from extraordinary personal qualities
of a leader and the ability to inspire a following
Legal rationalism authority defined by bureaucratic, proceduralstructures Modern liberal democratic institutions the emphasis is on expert knowledge corporatism
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Legitimacy
Legitimate authority is central to governance
Politics is often about maintaining legitimate authority
Effective governance depends on the legitimacy of thosewith power to get the people to act in ways that achieve
their objectives Legitimacy involves both consent and the
acknowledgement of coercive force
All governments depend on the inclination of the
population to obey the laws they pass but also rely oncoercion to a certain extent
Question: Should individuals fight in an unpopular war?
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Citizen as sovereign
Citizen as the source oflegitimacy for government
Socrates: Human beings become central to governance whenthey can give direction to their lives No longer instruments of Gods and deities but self-determining
This was the great escape that made human civilization possible The autonomy of the individual citizen to make decisions that affect
his/her life
Citizen as an individual and a persistent critic of societybecause of concern about the common good
Citizen should question received truths from power andauthority
Citizen as the primary client or customer of government
Government as the citizens instrument to address powerimbalances in society
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Political regimes
Human beings are organized in groupings to ensuresurvival, to reproduce and to develop and transmitculture
There are discernable patterns of authority which
direct the process of decision making about thesesocial objectives
They involve politics, power and forms ofgovernance - representing the organized process by
which the capacity to make decisions is actualized The study of politics involves categorizing thevarious forms governance takes - as regimes
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Political regimes
Regime can be defined as a form of rule
Brodie (Text, 2005:90) refers to regimes also as a modeof governance over the organized activity of a socialformation within and across a particular
configuration of society, state, market and globalinsertion
Regime contains four spheres, all of which areinterrelated and interlocking:
State Society
Market
Globalization
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Spheres of regimes: State
State: A country is often referred to as a nation-statebecause it represents a form of social organizationsustained by a defined territory, population, sharedhistory and a central authority often called government
The government has sovereign control and the exclusivecapacity to make decisions and to use coercive power toenforce them.
There are over 184 such entities in the world today.
The state represents a key unit of analysis in politicalscience. It is the realm which has preoccupied politicalinquiry the most because of its institutions and relations.
States affect the daily lives of peoples in many ways
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Spheres of regimes: Society
The state is related to and in many cases determined by the valuesof a society - a system of interrelated groups and structures.
According to Webber, a society dominated by traditional valuesand peasants would likely have a feudal form of governance and amonarchy while a society with more urban values andindustrialization and a working class (proletariat) would likely be
a liberal democracy According to Marxs approach called political economy, the most
fundamental activity human beings engage in is economicproduction of means for life - hunting, gathering, agriculture,industry. So the organization of labour determines the values andtype of society.
The relationship between social classes such as slaves, serfs,peasants, landlords, workers, capitalists, are determined by theirrole in production and their control over the means of production.The state is thepolitical expression of those social relationships andtheir guarantor - the executive committee of the ruling class
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Spheres of regimes: Market
Market: Over three or more centuries of capitalist organization of nationaland global economies have entrenched the processes of production,exchange and distribution associated with that mode of economicorganization as a dominant sphere of regimes.
The market includes relations of property ownership and production, aswell as its political orders and identity
Key market principles include: private ownership of the means ofproduction, price mechanism, income, and the invisible hand thatorganizes the market through its control over supply and demand.
Because the market is where production and accumulation occur, wealthand power are determined within this sphere
Some theorists use the concept of regimes of accumulation to capturethe social, economic, political dimensions of the market sphere
Increasingly, market decisions have come to supercede political decisionsleading some to refer to the current period in history - the period ofglobalization, as market civilization
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Spheres of regimes: Globalization
Brodie (text, 2005:89) refers to this sphere as one ofGlobalinsertion.
It defines the interrelationships of societies and states through theprocess of the global market or global economy and theinternational state system.
It covers international relations - the domain of states dominated bygreat powers as well as the global economy, the domain oftransnational corporations and other non-state actors
Foreign policy, international trade, war and peace, internationalorganizations such as the United Nations Organization, IMF, WorldBank, WTO
Wallerstein (1984) argues that these constitute a world system. Itis one that is hierarchical, with a core (around which it revolves) anda periphery. These unequal divisions once translated into the First,second and Third World. Today they appear as the Global Northand South arising out of a history of colonialism and imperialism
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Regime Typologies
The study of regimes has been enhanced by the use oftypologies to categorize the various forms ofgovernance in history and around the world
The differences derive from different histories,various processes of nation-state formation -nationalism, imperialism, colonialism
They also derive from different ways of organizing
production - feudalism, mercantilism, capitalism,socialism, communism, and more recentlyglobalization
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Typologies and Ideal-types
To construct typologies, we lean heavily on an ideapopularized by Max Webber (1864-1920).
Webber advocated the use of what is known as ideal-types todistinguish between social or political orders.
Ideal-types are artificially constructed or abstract conceptsused to describe the most ideal form of social organization. The characteristics attributed to ideal-types are often not fully
realized in actual life examples but approximate them socialdemocracy, communism, capitalism, liberal democracy,market economy as examples of ideal-types
The use of ideal-types in the social sciences is similar to theuse of experiments in the natural sciences. Its application isaimed at generalizing social behaviour
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Ideal-types and social formations
Critique: Ideal types suggest a static form of order. However,human beings are dynamic and the organization of humansocieties changes with time
Karl Marx (1818-1883), building on Webbers ideas
developed the concept ofsocial formations which suggeststhat society is organized through flexible social, economical,
political and cultural processes that allow it to achievecoherence over time
Social formations are systems with interlocking and
interacting dimensions
This approach speaks to the ability of social organizations tochange while also maintaining stability
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Regime typology
The classic regime typology includes three forms: Authoritarian Democratic Revolutionary
More recently, the questions raised about the extent towhich regimes are subject to the power of institutionssuch as corporations
Others argue that not all democratic regimes are thesame they show significant variation and diversity
Theorists have suggested a new formulations that seekto address the influence of corporations on moderngovernments/societies Corporatist regime
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Authoritarian regimes
Characterized by rule by the few Force or threat of use of force used implicitly or explicitly
to maintain order There is a continuum of authoritarian regimes that runs
from benevolent dictatorships to totalitarian andgoverned by adherence to strict ideological or religiousbeliefs - theocracy, communism, fascism
Bureaucratic-authoritarianism describes militarydictatorships whose project was nation building and stateled development in post-colonial periods in LatinAmerica, Asia, Africa and the Middle East
Many were able to survive because of support fromsuper powers who used them a satellite states
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Democratic Regimes
Characterized as rule by the people (as self-determining citizens)
Majority consent is the basis for legitimacy Majority benefit from and support the political order
Include representative, social democratic, socialist, oligarchic, dependent,limited democracies
In reality, these regimes are more representative and pluralist, thanparticipatory procedures exist to facilitate participation but otherstructures limit participation to small majorities
Individuals have rights of citizenship and civic responsibilities, chiefamong them is the electoral process that determines who governs
They are said to be the form of government most closely identified with the
capitalist mode of production. Some have suggested that they represent the interests of ruling elites -
oligarchies dominate decision making at the expense of the masses Examples: Canada, USA, Sweden, France, Great Britain, Chile, Brazil
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Revolutionary regimes
Characterized by the overthrow of the preceding socio-political and economic order by a few or many (class orvanguard rule).
Most are born out of violence and tend to have a disciplinarydimension to them
Rarely are they pluralist and they often become totalitarian Founded on ideologies that represent radical idea of how to
organize society - radical transformation of the society, itssocial relations and the state
Marxists, communist, Anti-colonialist, nationalist, Islamic Examples include: Russia, China, Vietnam, Iran
People power in Philippines, Bolivia, South Africademonstrate that they are not necessarily violent overthrows.
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Corporatist regimes
Decision making is state directed, with the cooperation ofkey institutions e.g: business and labour in Europe
Decision making is directed by powerful national ortransnational interests representing
Has its roots in the C18th with the writing of suchtheorists as Emile Durkheim
Argued for the most efficient form of governance Lead to an over reliance on expert class or technocracy
for rational decision making and implementation
Public accountability is limited because most decisionsare not subject to political debate Potential for alienation of citizens over time
Historical examples include fascist Italy under Mussolini
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Corporatism
Corporatist movement in the 1920s France, Italy,Germany
Emile Durkheim (C19th):
The corporation was to become the elementary division
of the state, its fundamental political unit Obliterates the distinction between public and private
Challenges the idea of the public interest
Through the corporation, scientific rationality achieves its
rightful place as the creator of collective reality Philippe Schmitter (1970)
Neo-Corporatism: A form of benign dictatorship
Interest representation seen as a form of corporatism
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Critique of Corporatism
Corporate rule undermines the role of the
individual in liberal democracy
Leads to worship of self-interest and denies the
public good Claims rationality as the virtue that directs its
form of governance
Imposes conformity and passivity on individuals Corporate rule secures for the state the
deference of citizens