Politics

Politics from devloping decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as a distribution of resources or status. a branch of social science that studies politics in addition to government is identified to as political science.

It may be used positively in the context of a "political solution" which is compromising and nonviolent, or descriptively as "the art or science of government", but also often carries a negative connotation. For example, abolitionist Wendell Phillips declared that "we pretend not play politics; anti-slavery is no half-jest with us." The concept has been defined in various ways, and different approaches work fundamentally differing views on whether it should be used extensively or limitedly, empirically or normatively, and on whether clash or co-operation is more necessary to it.

A vintage of methods are deployed in politics, which add promoting one's own political views among people, negotiation with other political subjects, making laws, and exercising force, including warfare against adversaries. Politics is exercised on a wide range of social levels, from clans and tribes of traditional societies, through sophisticated local governments, companies and institutions up to sovereign states, to the international level. In modern nation states, people often form political parties to cost their ideas. Members of a party often agree to take the same position on many issues and agree to help the same reconstruct to law and the same leaders. An election is commonly a competition between different parties.

A political system is a model which defines acceptable political methods within a society. The history of political thought can be traced back to early antiquity, with seminal works such as Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Politics in the West, and Confucius's political manuscripts and Chanakya's Arthashastra in the East.

Approaches

There are several ways in which approaching politics has been conceptualized.

Adrian Leftwich has differentiated views of politics based on how extensive or limited their perception of what accounts as 'political' is. The extensive idea sees politics as submitted across the sphere of human social relations, while the limited concepts restricts it tocontexts. For example, in a more restrictive way, politics may be viewed as primarily about governance, while a feminist perspective could argue that sites which have been viewed traditionally as non-political, should indeed be viewed as political as well. This latter position is encapsulated in the slogan the personal is political, which disputes the distinction between private and public issues. Instead, politics may be defined by the ownership of power, as has been argued by Robert A. Dahl.

Some perspectives on politics view it empirically as an spokesperson of power, while others see it as a social function with a normative basis. This distinction has been called the difference between political moralism and political realism. For moralists, politics is closely linked to ethics, and is at its extreme in utopian thinking. For example, according to Hannah Arendt, the view of Aristotle was that "to be political…meant that everything was decided through words and persuasion and not through violence;" while according to Bernard Crick "[p]olitics is the way in which free societies are governed. Politics is politics and other forms of domination are something else." In contrast, for realists, represented by those such(a) as Niccolò Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes, and Harold Lasswell, politics is based on the ownership of power, irrespective of the ends being pursued.

Agonism argues that politics essentially comes down to clash between conflicting interests. Political scientist Elmer Schattschneider argued that "at the root of any politics is the universal language of conflict," while for Carl Schmitt the essence of politics is the distinction of 'friend' from foe'. This is in direct contrast to the more co-operative views of politics by Aristotle and Crick. However, a more mixed view between these extremes is provided by Irish political scientist Michael Laver, who refers that:

Politics is approximately the characteristic blend of conflict and co-operation that can be found so often in human interactions. Pure conflict is war. Pure co-operation is true love. Politics is a mixture of both.