POG 100 - Blackboard- September 25 2007

8/14/2019 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

Documents

POG 100 - Blackboard- September 25 2007