What is Politics?
Politics is a field of study, an approach to understanding society and the institutions that make up public life. It also encompasses methods of inquiry, and ways of thinking about how people interact with one another and their environment. The term is used both descriptively, to refer to a process that is conflictual and partisan, and normatively, to describe a system of government or the behaviour of people in a particular political situation.
Politics focuses on the activities and institutions that govern a country. It also deals with the interrelationships of people, and the allocation of resources and rights. Governments exist to regulate and protect their citizens, and they often work in conjunction with other governments to regulate issues that transcend borders.
Often, however, the political process is messy and contentious. The incompetence of some politicians (such as the many ‘Bush-isms’ that have been so popularly lampooned) or the corruption and nepotism that are rife in many parts of the world lead to low levels of trust between citizens and the political class. Many people feel that the world would be a better place without politics, and the term has come to have negative connotations.
For some, the answer to this question lies in the definition of politics itself. As a very broad brushstroke, it includes all the activities that concern the state, but many people think this is too narrow a definition. It excludes the huge range of activities that do not involve the state, such as people choosing and supporting leaders to represent them in a given institution, such as school, work or the church, or in a specific context, such as the global anti-war protests of the 1990s or the more recent Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel.
A more helpful way to understand the complexity of politics is to see it as a set of methods for resolving conflicts. As such, politics is a process by which people attempt to reconcile their differing interests, and it may be that the end result of this struggle, a decision or a policy, favours some over others.
As long as humans have been faced with scarcity and had different beliefs and preferences, they have needed to resolve these differences while allocating scarce resources. As a result, politics has always existed and will continue to exist. Politics exists in all human societies, from the most primitive chiefdom to the most sophisticated democratic republic. It has a multitude of forms and shapes, and will continue to change and evolve as new challenges and opportunities arise.
Politics is a field of study, an approach to understanding society and the institutions that make up public life. It also encompasses methods of inquiry, and ways of thinking about how people interact with one another and their environment. The term is used both descriptively, to refer to a process that is conflictual and partisan, and normatively, to describe a system of government or the behaviour of people in a particular political situation. Politics focuses on the activities and institutions that govern a country. It also deals with the interrelationships of people, and the allocation of resources and rights. Governments exist to regulate and protect their citizens, and they often work in conjunction with other governments to regulate issues that transcend borders. Often, however, the political process is messy and contentious. The incompetence of some politicians (such as the many ‘Bush-isms’ that have been so popularly lampooned) or the corruption and nepotism that are rife in many parts of the world lead to low levels of trust between citizens and the political class. Many people feel that the world would be a better place without politics, and the term has come to have negative connotations. For some, the answer to this question lies in the definition of politics itself. As a very broad brushstroke, it includes all the activities that concern the state, but many people think this is too narrow a definition. It excludes the huge range of activities that do not involve the state, such as people choosing and supporting leaders to represent them in a given institution, such as school, work or the church, or in a specific context, such as the global anti-war protests of the 1990s or the more recent Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel. A more helpful way to understand the complexity of politics is to see it as a set of methods for resolving conflicts. As such, politics is a process by which people attempt to reconcile their differing interests, and it may be that the end result of this struggle, a decision or a policy, favours some over others. As long as humans have been faced with scarcity and had different beliefs and preferences, they have needed to resolve these differences while allocating scarce resources. As a result, politics has always existed and will continue to exist. Politics exists in all human societies, from the most primitive chiefdom to the most sophisticated democratic republic. It has a multitude of forms and shapes, and will continue to change and evolve as new challenges and opportunities arise.