Politics Defined - Source for Political Termonolgy Analysis and Defintions

Politics

Politics consists of activities associated with government or institutions of government. The adoption and execution of laws by a town, a province or state, a nation, or even an international body is one of the most common examples of politics. Public protest is also considered to be a form of politics.

The term politics also refers to beliefs, values or ideologies pertaining to law and government. It can refer to a person or organization's positions on particular issues of public concern, for example, taxation, freedom of speech, and foreign affairs. Politics also refers to broad, general beliefs about the design, purposes and ends of government. Differences about the purposes or ends of government are often discussed in terms of a political spectrum, where beliefs are categorized from left wing to right wing.

Since the 20th century, it has become increasingly common to speak of politics in contexts other than government, contexts which are not traditionally public. For example, one may speak of the politics of a family or the politics of a corporate office. In this sense, politics refers to how people use power within any social setting to gain or maintain status.

Finally, politics is an area of study and debate. In most colleges or universities, a wide variety of political topics are studied within the academic field of Political Science, as well as within most fields of social science and the humanities, for example, History, Sociology, Journalism and Communications, Economics and Philosophy.

History of politics

Pre-political Human Societies
All human societies throughout history have had some form of organization under a recognized authority, but not every society has practiced politics in any sense described above. In particular, a society may consist of an extensive network of kinship ties, organized under the authority of a patriarch.

Politics and Cities
Politics originated with cities and urban life. Historically, cities created the social conditions that made politics both possible and necessary.

The term "politics" survives from the Greek word for city, "Polis". The first expression of what Politics means is found in Hesoid where it is quoted, "How would men best dwell in cities, and with what observances?". (1) Paraphrased, it would read, "How shall man order his ways?". For the Greeks, it was the application of reason to life. Politics is an ordering of society by reason of attainment to some goal; such as harmony among the social classes as in Athens under Solon, or business and commerce, or for war such as the Doric Communities of Crete and Sparta.

The archaeologist V.G. Childe describes the transformation of human society that took place around 6000 BCE as an Urban Revolution. Among the features of this new type of civilization are: institutional social stratification(dominance hierarchy), non-agricultural specialised crafts (including priests and lawyers), taxation, and writing. All of which require densely populated settlements - cities.

Political writings

Strategy and philosophy
Political writings can be placed into two broad and overlapping categories. The first concerns itself primarily with the HOW of politics and the second with the WHY. Strategic writings (the how) include the works of Sun Tzu, Niccolo Machiavelli, and George Washington Plunkitt. Political philosophers seek to encourage the good in institutions and include Plato, Aristotle, Locke, Mills, Jefferson, Marx, and Mao.

At whatever scale, politics is the rather imperfect way that people coordinate individual actions for mutual (or strictly personal) gain. What distinguishes the political from the ethical or merely social is a much-debated question. Most theorists would acknowledge that to be political, a process has to involve at least some potential for use of force or violence - politics is about conflict that is about much more than theory and fashion. To win a political conflict always implies that one has taken power away from one group or faction to give it to another. Most would also acknowledge that political conflict can easily degrade to zero-sum games, with little learned or settled by conflict other than "who won and who lost":

Lenin said politics was about "who could do what to whom" (Russian "Kto-Kogo" for "Who-Whom"). As political scientist Harold Lasswell said, politics is "who gets what, when and how." It also concerns how we resolve moral conflicts that are sufficiently serious that they constitute a risk of social disruption - in which case commitment to a common process of arbitration or diplomacy tends to reduce violence - usually viewed as a key goal of civilization. Bernard Crick is a major theorist of this view and also of the idea that politics is itself simply "ethics done in public", where public institutions can agree, disagree, or intervene to achieve a desirable culmination or comprehensive (process) result.

In addition to government, journalists, religious groups, special interest groups, and economic systems and conditions may all have influence on decisions. Therefore, politics touches on all these subjects.

Authors of studies of politics have both reflected and influenced the political systems of the world. Niccolo Machiavelli wrote The Prince, an analysis of politics in a monarchy, in 1513, while living in a monarchy. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published "The Communist Manifesto" in 1848, a widely-read and highly influential pamphlet that formed the basis for Socialism and Communism throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.

Today, much study of politics focuses on democracies, and how their form affects the decisions they make.

Other lines of political inquiry attempt to answer philosophical questions such as;

is there a moral justification for government.

what is the purpose of government?

is there any possible empirical or more formal method for evaluating and quantifying ethicality and morality of human actions that could augment or replace religion or authority or political contention in deciding what political leaders "should" do?

is there an objective way to evaluate the quality of a decision, policy, leader or party?

These are ongoing debates that are millennia old.

Political science
Political scientists are academics who research the conduct of politics. They look at elections, public opinion, institutional activities (how legislatures act, the relative importance of various sources of political power etc), the ideologies behind various politicians and political organisations, how politicians achieve and wield their influence, and so on.

In American universities, the field of Political Science is divided into several subfields, typically American Politics, Comparative Politics, International Relations, Public Law, and Political Theory. Each subfield tends to overlap with other academic disciplines, such as philosophy, law, sociology, anthropology, and especially history.