1. Politics and Government

2. Politics: Overview
A social institution that distributes power, sets a society’s goals, and makes decisions
Power: the ability to achieve desired ends despite resistance from others
Government: a formal organization that directs the political life of a society
Authority: power that people perceive as legitimate rather than coercive

3. Authority (Max Weber)
Traditional: power legitimized through respect for long-established cultural patterns, e.g., a monarchy
Rational-legal: power legitimized by legally enacted rules and regulations, e.g., lawful government
Charismatic: power legitimized through extraordinary personal abilities that inspire devotion and obedience
Read: The Anatomy of Charisma

4. Types of Political Systems
Monarchy: a single family rules over generations
Constitutional vs. Absolute Monarchy
Democracy: power is exercised by people as a whole
Limited by bureaucracy and economic inequality in society
Capitalist approach to political freedom is personal liberty and
Socialist approach is that economy meets basic needs

5. Political Systems (cont.)
Authoritarianism: denies popular participation in government
Totalitarianism: a highly centralized political system that extensively regulates people’s lives
A Global System?
United Nations
Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO): advance global issues, such as human rights and environment
Other ideas?

6. Politics in Canada
Individualism is tempered with a sense of communal responsibility
Shown by Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms
A larger budget for government services than the U.S.
Continuing debate about how much should government do and how much it should tax

7. Canada’s Political Parties
Organizations operating within the political system that seek control of the government
Federal level, 3 main national parties (Liberals, Conservatives, and NDP) and a regional one (Bloc Québécois).
Functions
Promote political pluralism
Increase political involvement
Select candidates
Forge political alliances
Maintain political stability

8. Political Ideology
Spectrum runs from communism (left) to extreme conservatism (right)
Left: Anti-big business, egalitarian, collectivist, and interventionist: supports a broad safety net
Right: Pro-big business, private enterprise, and free markets: supports deficit reduction and globalization

10. Where do you stand?
Go to The Political Compass at
The continuum shown on the previous slide is essentially an economic one. The Political Compass adds another dimension: the social one to help you see where you stand politically.
Take the test and save or printout your “certificate” showing your position.

11. Political Participation
Canadians are cynical about politics?
Voter turnout for federal elections in the past was over 70%, but lower in recent elections, and in 2006, it was 65%; U.S. is even lower
Only 26% of politicians at the federal level are women
Female representation has not improved much
Lack of financing, contacts
Lack of exemplars, socialization
Commute to Ottawa

12. Theoretical Analysis of Politics
Pluralist model: Power is dispersed among many competing interests groups, but powerful and wealthy elites are integrated
Structural finctionalist model
The power-elite model: “Real” power is concentrated among the very rich: Can the wealthiest ever encounter pressure to not act in their own best interests?
Social conflict model

13. Theoretical Analysis of Politics
Marxist model explains politics in terms of a society’s economic system: Power is divided along the lines of a capitalist economy.The majority are excluded, like majority of workers
Not a true communist model as Marx envisioned it.
In Canada: Canadians can participate and vote, but the system is much less democratic than people think

14. War
War = the pattern of large groups of people methodically trying to kill one another
armed conflict between two countries or groups within a country
includes undeclared battles, civil conflicts, guerrilla wars, covert operations, terrorism
relies on collective violence as opposed to interpersonal violence

15. War Societal warfare has replaced interstate war
Risk of war varies by:
Type of government (democratic, authoritarian, or intermediate)
Level of prosperity
Democracies and autocracies lower risk of war, but intermediate high because of lack of stable government ie Iraq now

16. Other Factors Related to War
In authoritarian states:
a secondary consequence of a military-state connection
is designed to engender patriotism and to justify penalizing political dissidents.
Decentralized leadership less likely to be warlike than is centralized leadership

17. Other factors Ideologies and religion also influence politics and war
Politics occur between states
World system theory (Wallerstein) and unequal relations between core and peripheral nations
Advances in military technology
Technology has made warfare more lethal
Human consequences
Ecological consequences

18. Power Beyond the Rules
Revolution: the overthrow of one political system to establish another occurs with these traits:
Rising expectations
Unresponsive government
Radical leadership by intellectuals and students
Establishing a new legitimacy, often difficult if deposed leaders are strong

19. Power Beyond (cont.)
Terrorism: Acts of violence, or the threat of violence, employed as a political strategy by an individual or group
Intent is to undermine legitimate political authority
Roots of terrorism often found in religious, ethnic nationalist, political, economic, and social differences
Used by governments as well as individuals
State Terrorism – use of violence generally without the support of law, by government officials, e.g., in Argentina ~30,000 people disappeared under military rule in the 1980’s
Democratic countries are especially vulnerable to terrorism because of civil liberties

20. The Take (2004) The Take: Occupy, Resist, Produce!
By Avi Lewis and Naomi Klein
A workers’ revolution: the National Movement for Recovered Factories
After a 2001 economic collapse in Argentina, the factory owners fled. Unemployment rose to 20%.
Worker co-operatives fought back, took over abandoned factories and re-started production.
By 2011, 200 factories employing 15,000 workers
Read Here’s the Chocolate Factory (Guardian 2011)