Key Concepts in Political Science

POL 101: Introduction to Political Science

Summer 2020
Md. Saidur Rahman
Government
■ The term government is usually used to describe the highest level of political
offices in a society: presidents, prime ministers, legislatures, governors, mayors,
and others at the apex of power.
■ But government actually consists of all organizations charged with reaching and
executing decisions for a community.
■ By this definition, the police, the military, bureaucrats, and judges are all part of
government, even if they do not come to office through the methods usually
associated with government, such as elections.
■ In this broader conception, government is the entire community of institutions
endowed with public authority.

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Governance
■ Where the concept of government suggests a rather static account based on
organizations, the concept of governance highlights the process and quality of collective
decision-making.
■ The emphasis is on the activity of governing, so that we can – for example – speak of
global governance: there is no such thing as a global government, but there is a large
community of international organizations (such as the United Nations), thousands of
treaties that form the basis of international law, and a constant interaction involving
governments, corporations, and interest groups, all of which amount to a process of
governance.
■ Governance directs our attention away from government’s command-and-control
function towards the broader task of public regulation, a role which ruling politicians in
democracies share with other bodies.
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LEGITIMACY

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Legitimacy
■ Legitimacy originally meant that the rightful king or queen was on the throne by
reason of “legitimate” birth.
■ Since the Middle Ages, the term has broadened to mean not only the “legal right to
govern” but also the “psychological right to govern”.
■ Legitimacy now refers to an attitude in people’s minds—in some countries strong,
in others weak—that the government’s rule is rightful.
■ Without legitimacy, governments are ineffective.

One quick test of legitimacy: How many police are there?

Few police, as in Sweden and Norway, indicates that little coercion is needed; legitimacy is high.
Many police, as in North Korea or Iraq, indicates that much coercion is needed; legitimacy is low.

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Sources of Legitimacy
1. Legitimacy by Results
■ A government may gain and retain legitimacy with its people by providing them
the things they most want:
○ security against physical assault
○ security in the borders against invasion
○ pride in their nation
○ economic security
■ If the government can provide these things, its legitimacy will be greatly
strengthened.

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Sources of Legitimacy
2. Legitimacy by Habit
■ Once a particular government has been in place for a while, and people have
developed the habit of obeying it, it no longer has to perpetually justify its
existence.
■ Rather, the burden of proof lies with whoever would propose an alternative
government.
■ The existing government remains legitimate unless and until a compelling
alternative comes along.

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Sources of Legitimacy
3. Legitimacy by Historical, Religious and Ethnic Identity
■ Many governments enhance their legitimacy by the ties that exist between
themselves and the people because of the government leaders’ past
accomplishments (their historic role) or because of the religious and/or
ethnic similarity between the government leaders and the people.
4. Legitimacy by Procedure
■ A government may strengthen its legitimacy by following certain procedures in
setting itself up – procedures in which many people have confidence, so that
they will start off with a fund of trust for any government that has been
established along these lines.

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SOVEREIGNTY

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Sovereignty
■ Sovereignty, in its simplest sense, is the principle of absolute and unlimited
power.
■ Sovereignty (from the Old French “to rule over”) originally meant the power of a
monarch over his or her kingdom. Later, the term broadened to mean national
control over the country’s territory, boss of one’s own turf.
■ Nations safeguard their sovereignty. They maintain armies to deter foreign
invasion; they control their borders with passports and visas; and they hunt
down terrorists.
■ Disputes over sovereignty are among the nastiest: Palestine, Chechnya, and Iraq
are examples. Sovereignty is sometimes a legal fiction. Iraq regained nominal
sovereignty in 2004 but was still under U.S. influence.
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Types Sovereignty
■ There are usually two types of sovereignty:

■ INTERNAL SOVEREIGNTY
within its own territory every state can act as it wishes and is independent
of other powers
■ EXTERNAL SOVEREIGNTY
the state is recognized as a state by other states

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Other Types Sovereignty
■ LEGAL SOVEREIGNTY
refers to supreme legal authority, defined in terms of the ‘right’ to command
compliance.
■ POLITICAL SOVEREIGNTY
refers to absolute political power, defined in terms of the ‘ability’ to command
compliance.

■ ECONOMIC SOVEREIGNTY
refers to the absolute authority of the state over national economic life, involving
independent control of fiscal and monetary policies, and control over trade and
capital flows.
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Other Types Sovereignty
PARLIAMENTARY SOVEREIGNTY POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY
The absolute and unlimited authority of a The principle that there is no higher authority
parliament or legislature, reflected in its ability than the will of the people (the basis of the
to make, amend or repeal any law it wishes. classical concept of democracy).
1. Parliamentary sovereignty is usually seen as the ■ Popular sovereignty ensures that
central principle of the UK constitution, and representatives are bound to the interests of
results from: their constituents, it tends to breed narrowness
a. the absence of a codified constitution, and foster conflict.
b. the supremacy of statute law over other ■ Because professional politicians are not trusted
forms of law, to exercise their own judgment, delegation
c. The absence of rival legislatures, and limits the scope for leadership and
d. The convention that no parliament can statesmanship.
bind its successors.
2. Parliamentary sovereignty is a strictly legal, and
not political, form of sovereignty.
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AUTHORITY

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Authority
■ Authority is the psychological ability of leaders to get others to obey
them.
■ It relies on a sense of obligation based on the legitimate power of office.
■ A private obeys a captain; a motorist obeys a state trooper; a student
obeys a professor. But not all people obey authority. Some privates are
insubordinate, some motorists are speeders, and some students neglect
the assigned reading.
■ Still, most people obey what they perceive as legitimate authority most of
the time. Some authority comes with the office, but it must also be
cultivated.
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Max Weber on Authority
■ Three ideal types of authority:

1. Charismatic
2. Traditional
3. Legal-Rational

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Charismatic Authority
■ The leader is believed to possess extraordinary personal qualities that
justify his or her rule.
■ This is not simply a matter of being talented, but of being uniquely gifted.
■ Such an embodiment in one person (e.g., the Dalai Lama) is often
explained by reference to the supernatural, the leader being chosen by
God, the Fates, or History—some force external to the society itself.

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Traditional Authority
■ This type of authority derives its legitimacy from its long history and
what Weber called a “habitual orientation to conform” .
■ Following customs or adhering to past practice is presented as a basis for
identifying the right course.
■ Hereditary monarchy is often cited as a political example of traditional
authority, but even within modern democracies, attachment to specific
institutions or symbols (e.g., the constitution, the flag, a particular
electoral system) may be as much about preserving tradition as anything
else.

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Legal-Rational Authority
■ Here legitimacy derives from “belief in the validity of legal statute and
functional ‘competence’ based on rationally created rules” .
■ For example, whether president or prime minister, that individual
exercises only the powers associated with that office, having come to that
position through a rule-governed process such as an election, and
exercises that authority for a fixed or limited period of time.
■ A special body of law may limit how the individual who is prime minister or
president uses the authority of their office, and even provide a process by
which a president o prime minister who exercises powers improperly may
be stripped of them.
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Comparisons between Different Types of Authority

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POWER

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Power: Definition and Characteristics
■ Power is the ability to influence an outcome to achieve an objective or
the ability to influence someone to act in a way contrary to the way he
or she would choose to act.
■ Power involves the exercise of volition (will).
■ Power over someone else involves altering his or her volition (will).
■ Power can be latent or manifest.
■ Different types of power are generally blended together when power is
made manifest.

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Biological Explanation
“Man is by nature a political animal” - Aristotle
■ Aristotle meant that humans live naturally in herds, like elephants or deer.
■ Biologically, they need each other for sustenance and survival. It is also
natural that they array themselves into ranks of leaders and followers, like
all herd animals.
■ Taking a cue from Aristotle, a modern biological explanation would say
that forming a political system and obeying its leaders is innate human
behavior, passed onto future generations with one’s genes.

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Biological Explanation
■ Some thinkers argue that human politics shows the same “dominance
hierarchies” that other mammals set up. Politicians tend to be “alpha
males”—or think they are.
■ If we grant that humans are naturally political, how do we explain the
instances when political groups fall apart and people disobey authority?
■ Perhaps we should modify the theory:

Humans are imperfectly political

(or social) animals.
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Psychological Explanation
■ Psychological explanations of politics and obedience are closely allied with
biological theories. Both posit needs derived from centuries of evolution in
the formation of political groups.
■ The psychologists have refined their views with empirical research.

MILGRAM STUDY
Most of the subjects disliked hurting the victim, but they rationalized
that they were just following orders and that any harm done to the
victim was really the professor’s responsibility.

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Psychological Explanation
■ Psychological studies also show that most people are naturally
conformist. Most members of a group see things the group’s way.
■ Psychologist Irving Janis found many foreign policy mistakes were made in
a climate of “groupthink,” in which a leadership team tells itself that all is
well and that the present policy is working.
■ Groups ignore doubters who tell them, for instance, that the Japanese will
attack Pearl Harbor in 1941 or that the 1961 Bay of Pigs landing of Cuban
exiles will fail.

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Cultural Explanation
■ Anthropologists concluded that all differences in behavior were cultural:
Cooperative and peaceful societies raise their children that way.
■ Political communities are formed and held together on the basis of cultural
values transmitted by parents, schools, churches, and the mass media.
■ Political science developed an interesting subfield, political culture , whose
researchers found that a country’s political culture was formed by many
long-term factors: religion, child rearing, land tenure, and economic
development.

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Cultural Explanation
■ The cultural approach to political life holds some optimism. If all human
behavior is learned, bad behavior can be unlearned and society improved.
■ Educating young people to be tolerant, cooperative, and just will gradually
change a society’s culture for the better, according to this view.

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Rational Explanation
■ Another school of thought approaches politics as a rational thing; that is, people
know what they want most of the time, and they have good reasons for doing
what they do.
■ Classic political theorists, such as Hobbes and Locke, held that humans form “civil
society” because their powers of reason tell them that it is much better than
anarchy.
■ To safeguard life and property, people form governments. If those governments
become abusive, the people have the right to dissolve them and start anew.
■ The biological, psychological, and cultural schools downplay human reason,
claiming that people are either born or conditioned to certain behavior, and
individuals seldom think rationally.
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Rational Explanation

■ If leaders believe that people obey out of biological inheritance or cultural

conditioning, they will think they can get away with all manner of corruption and
misrule.
■ If, on the other hand, rulers fear that people are rational, they will respect the
public’s ability to discern wrongdoing.

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Irrational Explanation
■ Late in the nineteenth century, a group of thinkers expounded the view that people
are basically irrational, especially when it comes to political power.
■ They are emotional, dominated by myths and stereotypes, and politics is really the
manipulation of symbols.

A crowd is like a wild beast that can be whipped up by charismatic leaders to

do their bidding. What people regard as rational is really myth; just keep
feeding the people myths to control them.
■ The first practitioner of this school was Mussolini, founder of fascism in Italy,
followed by Hitler in Germany.
■ Leaders who use irrationalist techniques start believing their own propaganda and
lead their nations to war, economic ruin, or tyranny.
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Types of Power
■ FORCE is power involving physical means.
Examples: physical sabotage of resources, conducting war, embargoes and
boycotts (which deny physical access to resources), blockades and barricades
(which deny physical access to a place), or revolutions and riots (which physically
mobilize groups in support of or opposition to a government or policy), blocking
access to a courthouse, voting booth, public school, or abortion facility.
■ PERSUASION is nonphysical power in which the agent using power
makes its use of power clear and known to the agent over whom power
is exercised.
Examples: lobbying, speechmaking, debating, writing letters, issuing position
papers, and making proclamations in the form of court decisions, executive orders,
laws, and policies.
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Types of Power
■ MANIPULATION is nonphysical power in which the agent using power
conceals the use of power.
Examples: issue press releases highlighting certain items in the poll and playing
down less attractive ones; convince journalists to publish articles critical of
opponents

■ EXCHANGE is the use of power through incentives.

Examples: bribe, logrolling

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Reference
■ Grigsby, E. (2012). Analyzing Politics: An Introduction to Political Science.
Belmont, California: Wadsworth.
[Chapter 2 : Page 42-58; 64-65]

■ Roskin, M. G., Cord, R. L., Medeiros, J. A., & Jones, W. S. (2016). Political Science:
An Introduction. Upper Saddle River: Pearson.
[Chapter 1: Page: 4-8]

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