CSS Political Science key facts

Foundations of political science

Nature, scope and approaches

• Aristotle called politics the 'master science' and compared the constitutions of many Greek city-states.
• Harold Lasswell: politics is 'who gets what, when, how' (book of 1936).
• David Easton: politics is 'the authoritative allocation of values for a society'; he applied the systems approach (inputs = demands and supports, outputs = decisions and policies, linked by feedback).
• Traditional approach: historical, legal-institutional and philosophical study; normative (asks what ought to be).
• Behavioural approach: observable behaviour, surveys, statistics, value-free study; pioneered by Charles Merriam and the Chicago school.
• Structural-functional approach: Gabriel Almond; asks what functions each structure performs.
• Post-behaviouralism (late 1960s, led by Easton): keep scientific method, but bring back values and relevance.

The state: elements, origin and sovereignty

• Elements of the state: population, territory, government, sovereignty. Sovereignty is what separates the state from every other association.
• State = permanent and abstract; government = its changing machinery; nation = cultural and psychological unity; society = wider than the state.
• Divine right: the ruler answers to God alone. Force theory: the state arose from war and conquest.
• Jean Bodin, 'Six Books of the Commonwealth' (1576): sovereignty is the absolute and perpetual power of a commonwealth.
• John Austin (monistic theory): law is the command of a determinate sovereign, backed by a sanction; sovereignty is indivisible and legally unlimited.
• Features of sovereignty: absolute, permanent, universal, inalienable, indivisible, exclusive.
• Kinds: legal and political (Dicey: Parliament and the electorate in Britain), de jure (by law) and de facto (in fact), titular and real, popular.

Power, authority, legitimacy and key concepts

• Weber: power is the chance to carry out one's will even against resistance; the state claims a monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a territory.
• Traditional authority rests on custom; charismatic on the leader's personal qualities; legal-rational on lawfully enacted rules and offices.
• Legality (made by the correct procedure) is not the same as legitimacy (accepted as rightful).
• Isaiah Berlin, 'Two Concepts of Liberty' (1958): negative liberty = freedom from interference; positive liberty = self-mastery, freedom to realise one's potential.
• J. S. Mill, 'On Liberty' (1859): the harm principle. John Rawls, 'A Theory of Justice' (1971): justice as fairness, the veil of ignorance.
• Kinds of equality: legal, political, social, economic, and equality of opportunity. Kinds of rights: natural, civil, political, economic and social.
• Every right implies a duty on others to respect it.

Political thought

Ancient and medieval thought

• Plato's classes and virtues: rulers (reason, wisdom), auxiliaries (spirit, courage), producers (appetite, moderation). Guardians hold no private property or private family.
• Aristotle: 'man is by nature a political animal'; the state exists for the good life.
• Aristotle's six forms. Rule for the common good: monarchy (one), aristocracy (few), polity (many). Perverted forms: tyranny, oligarchy, democracy.
• Aristotle on Plato: property held in common is neglected; private ownership with generous use is better.
• Augustine, 'The City of God': the heavenly city and the earthly city.
• Aquinas, 'Summa Theologica': joined Aristotle with Christian doctrine; four kinds of law (eternal, divine, natural, human).
• Marsilius of Padua, 'Defensor Pacis' (1324): the people are the source of law; the clergy have no coercive power.

Machiavelli and the social contract thinkers

• Machiavelli: 'The Prince' (written 1513) and 'Discourses on Livy'; politics separated from ethics and theology; safer to be feared than loved if one cannot be both.
• Hobbes, 'Leviathan' (1651): state of nature is a war of all against all; people give up their rights to a sovereign who is not a party to the contract; sovereignty absolute; no right of resistance except to save one's life.
• Locke, 'Two Treatises of Government' (published late 1689, title page dated 1690): state of nature has a law of nature but no impartial judge; natural rights to life, liberty and property; government is a trust; right to remove rulers who break it.
• Rousseau, 'The Social Contract' (1762): natural man is free and good; property brings inequality; each gives himself to the whole community.
• Rousseau: sovereignty lies in the general will, which aims at the common good; it cannot be given away or represented.
• Sovereignty in short: Hobbes = the ruler; Locke = limited, resting on the people's consent; Rousseau = the people as a whole.

Montesquieu, Bentham, Mill, Hegel and Marx

• Montesquieu, 'The Spirit of the Laws' (1748): separation of powers.
• Bentham: principle of utility; pleasures differ only in quantity. J. S. Mill: pleasures differ in quality too.
• Mill's works: 'On Liberty' (1859), 'Considerations on Representative Government' (1861), 'Utilitarianism', 'The Subjection of Women' (1869).
• Hegel, 'Philosophy of Right': the state as the realisation of freedom. His dialectic (progress through contradiction) is often summarised in textbooks as thesis, antithesis and synthesis, though Hegel did not use these terms himself.
• Marx: the economic base shapes the superstructure (law, politics, ideas). Stages: primitive communism, slavery, feudalism, capitalism, socialism, communism.
• Marx on the state: an instrument of the ruling class; after the revolution a dictatorship of the proletariat; then the state withers away.
• 'Communist Manifesto' (1848, with Engels); 'Das Kapital' (volume 1, 1867); surplus value = value created by workers beyond their wages.

Muslim political thought

• Al-Farabi (d. 950), the 'Second Teacher': 'Al-Madina al-Fadila' (The Virtuous City), ruled by a philosopher-ruler.
• Al-Mawardi (d. 1058): 'Al-Ahkam al-Sultaniyya'; the caliph is chosen by qualified electors or nominated by his predecessor, and must have set qualifications.
• Al-Ghazali (1058 to 1111): 'Ihya Ulum al-Din', 'Nasihat al-Muluk' (Counsel for Kings), 'Tahafut al-Falasifa'; religion and political authority support each other.
• Ibn Taymiyyah (1263 to 1328): 'Al-Siyasa al-Shar'iyya'; authority is a trust; rulers must follow the Shariah.
• Ibn Khaldun (1332 to 1406): 'Muqaddimah', the introduction to 'Kitab al-Ibar'; dynasties rise through asabiyyah and decline as luxury weakens it.
• Shah Waliullah (1703 to 1762) of Delhi: 'Hujjat Allah al-Balighah'. Iqbal: khudi (selfhood); 'The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam' (lectures); ijtihad through an elected Muslim assembly.
• Maududi: founded the Jamaat-i-Islami in 1941; sovereignty belongs to God, the people are His vicegerents ('theo-democracy').

Ideologies and political concepts

Liberalism, conservatism and socialism

• Classical liberalism: John Locke (natural rights, consent); Adam Smith, 'The Wealth of Nations' (1776), the 'invisible hand'; J. S. Mill.
• Welfare (new, modern) liberalism: T. H. Green; the state removes obstacles to freedom. The Beveridge Report (1942) laid the basis of the British welfare state.
• Conservatism: Edmund Burke, 'Reflections on the Revolution in France' (1790); society as a partnership between generations.
• Utopian socialists (the label used by Marx and Engels): Robert Owen, Saint-Simon, Fourier.
• Democratic socialism: Fabian Society (founded 1884; leading members Sidney and Beatrice Webb), gradualism.
• Revisionism: Eduard Bernstein, 'Evolutionary Socialism' (1899); socialism by reform, not violent revolution.
• Test for telling them apart: classical liberalism = minimal state; welfare liberalism = state help, private ownership kept; democratic socialism = public ownership of major industries by constitutional means.

Communism, fascism and anarchism

• Lenin: 'What Is to Be Done?' (1902), the vanguard party; 'Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism' (written 1916, published 1917); 'The State and Revolution' (written 1917).
• The Bolsheviks under Lenin took power in Russia in October 1917 (old-style calendar; November in the modern calendar).
• Mussolini: founded Italian Fascism; came to power after the March on Rome, October 1922; 'everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state'.
• Hitler: leader of the Nazi party; 'Mein Kampf'; became Chancellor of Germany in January 1933.
• Proudhon: 'What Is Property?' (1840), 'Property is theft!'; first to call himself an anarchist.
• Bakunin: Russian anarchist; opposed Marx in the First International and was expelled in 1872.
• Marxists and anarchists share the goal of a stateless society but differ on the road to it.

Democracy, nationalism and secularism

• Lincoln, Gettysburg Address, 1863: government of the people, by the people, for the people.
• Principles of democracy: popular sovereignty, political equality, majority rule with minority rights, free and regular elections, free opposition and press.
• Tools of direct democracy: referendum (vote on a law or constitutional change), initiative (citizens propose a law), recall (voters remove an official before the term ends).
• Tyranny of the majority: the warning of Alexis de Tocqueville, later taken up by J. S. Mill.
• Merits: accountability, peaceful change of government, protection of rights. Demerits: slow decisions, cost, risk of demagogues and of majority pressure on minorities.
• Modern nationalism got its first great impulse from the French Revolution of 1789; Mazzini founded Young Italy in 1831.
• Islamic state in theory: sovereignty of Allah, law based on the Shariah, rule by consultation (shura), accountability of the ruler.

Government and institutions

Forms of government

• Unitary examples: United Kingdom, France, Japan. Federal examples: USA, Switzerland, India, Pakistan, Germany, Canada, Australia.
• Essentials of a federation: written constitution dividing powers, two levels of government, a court to settle disputes between them.
• Parliamentary (UK, India, Pakistan): separate head of state and head of government; cabinet falls on a vote of no confidence.
• Presidential (USA): president is both head of state and head of government, has a fixed term, and is not a member of the legislature.
• Monarchy: hereditary head of state (absolute, or constitutional where the monarch reigns but does not rule). Republic: head of state is elected, not hereditary.
• Oligarchy: rule by a few. Aristocracy: rule of the best (Greek aristos + kratos). Plutocracy: rule by the wealthy. Theocracy: rule by religious leaders in the name of God.
• Dictatorship: power held by one person or group without constitutional limits. Totalitarianism: one ideology controls political, economic, social and private life.

Constitutions and separation of powers

• Written (codified): USA, drawn up at Philadelphia in 1787; also India and Pakistan. Unwritten (uncodified): United Kingdom.
• Flexible: amended like ordinary law, by simple majority (UK). Rigid: special procedure (USA: two-thirds of both houses of Congress to propose, three-quarters of the states to ratify).
• The flexible and rigid classification is associated with James Bryce.
• Conventions: unwritten rules of practice that are obeyed but not enforced by courts, e.g. royal assent to bills in Britain.
• Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws (1748): three powers, legislative, executive and judicial.
• Checks and balances in the USA: presidential veto, Congress overrides by two-thirds of both houses, Senate confirms appointments, impeachment.
• Judicial review in the USA was established by Marbury v. Madison (1803), Chief Justice John Marshall.

Legislature, executive and judiciary

• Bicameral: two chambers (UK, USA, India, Pakistan). Unicameral: one chamber (New Zealand, Denmark).
• The lower house is usually stronger in parliamentary systems because it is directly elected, controls money and can remove the government.
• Nominal executive: the head of state in whose name acts are done. Real executive: Prime Minister and cabinet in a parliamentary system.
• Delegated legislation: rules made by ministers or agencies under powers given by an Act of the legislature.
• Judicial independence is protected by security of tenure, fixed salaries and appointment free from political control.
• A. V. Dicey, Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution (1885).
• Dicey's rule of law: (1) supremacy of regular law, no arbitrary power, no punishment except for a breach of law proved in the ordinary courts; (2) equality before the law, officials and citizens under the same courts; (3) constitutional rights are the result of the ordinary law as decided by the courts.

Elections, parties and pressure groups

• First past the post (plurality): simple, one member per constituency, usually stable single-party government; but seats can differ widely from votes and small parties lose out.
• Proportional representation: seats match vote shares; usually multi-party parliaments and coalition governments. Forms: party list, single transferable vote (voters rank candidates).
• Duverger's law: plurality voting in single-member constituencies tends to produce a two-party system; proportional representation favours many parties.
• Free and fair election: universal adult suffrage, secret ballot, real choice of candidates, independent election authority, honest counting.
• Party: aims to govern, covers a broad range of policy, contests elections. Pressure group: aims to influence, usually narrow focus, contests no elections.
• Interest (sectional) groups defend their members, e.g. trade unions, chambers of commerce. Cause (promotional) groups promote an idea, e.g. environmental groups.
• Functions of pressure groups: interest articulation, giving information to government, a channel of participation between elections. Risk: wealthy groups gaining unequal or hidden influence.

Comparative politics and political change

Comparative government: UK, USA, France, Switzerland

• UK: parliamentary sovereignty (Parliament can make or unmake any law); Parliament = House of Commons (elected) and House of Lords (unelected, can delay but not finally block).
• USA: Congress = Senate (100 members, two per state, six-year terms) and House of Representatives (435 members, two-year terms).
• US President: chosen through the Electoral College (538 electors, 270 needed) for four years; cabinet secretaries are not members of Congress and answer to the President.
• The US Senate is a strong chamber, equal in legislation, with power to approve treaties and appointments; the House of Lords is far weaker.
• France: Fifth Republic founded in 1958 under Charles de Gaulle; President appoints the Prime Minister; Parliament = National Assembly and Senate.
• Switzerland: Federal Council of seven members elected by the Federal Assembly; the presidency rotates each year; Federal Assembly = National Council and Council of States; 26 cantons.
• Federal: USA, Switzerland. Unitary: UK, France.

Political culture, socialisation and development

• Almond and Verba, The Civic Culture (1963): parochial, subject and participant cultures.
• Parochial: little awareness of the national system. Subject: aware of government and obeys it, but takes no part. Participant: aware and active.
• Civic culture: a mixed culture in which participation is balanced by trust and deference to authority.
• Agents of socialisation: family (first and most influential), school, peer group, religion, mass media, political parties.
• Modernisation: industrialisation, urbanisation, literacy and mass media change society and raise political participation. Voting is the most common form of participation.
• S. M. Lipset: the more prosperous a nation, the greater its chance of sustaining democracy.
• Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (1968): when participation grows faster than institutions, the result is instability and political decay. Institutionalisation is how organisations acquire value and stability.

Bureaucracy, civil-military relations and revolution

• Weber's ideal type: hierarchy of offices, fixed written rules, division of labour by specialisation, appointment and promotion on merit, impersonality, written records, a salaried career.
• Impersonality: officials apply the rules to all alike, without personal favour. Red tape: excessive rules and paperwork that delay action.
• Civil servants in a parliamentary democracy are expected to be politically neutral, permanent and anonymous.
• Huntington, The Soldier and the State (1957): objective civilian control is achieved by maximising military professionalism and keeping the military out of politics.
• Praetorianism: the tendency of the military to dominate politics where civilian institutions are weak.
• Crane Brinton, The Anatomy of Revolution (1938): power passes from moderates to radicals, then a reaction (Thermidor). Ted Gurr, Why Men Rebel (1970): relative deprivation.
• Marxist view: revolution arises from class conflict rooted in the economic structure. Other cited causes: economic distress, inequality, a weak or illegitimate regime, defeat in war.