STUDY UNIT 2
THE POLITICAL ARENA AND
POLITICAL BEHAVIOUR


Based on Learning objective

  1. Provide a definition of the state, explain its purpose and various functions, and identify several of its components.

  1. Explain how states and governments provide the arena in which political actors do politics and participate.
  1. Differentiate the concept of the state from those of government and nation.
  1. Identify, distinguish and explain various forms of political violence.
  1. Distinguish between state and civil society political actors.
  2. Identify, distinguish, and classify several forms of political participation or activity according to their actors, goals, and level of conventionality.

Civil society, Interest Groups and Political Parties

Interest group

  • A group that directly attempts to influence the allocation of public values or other actions of those in the political system.
  • It may undertake political action, provide goods or services to political actors, or provide data and information to those within the political system in its attempts to achieve its political objectives.

Types of interest groups

  • There are four main types, with one sub-type

Institutional Interest Groups

  • A group that has been formed to achieve goals other than political ones but who attempts to influence government for the direct benefit of its members.
    • For example, an organisation of legal professionals might lobby the government to ensure that the government budget includes a commitment to a new law school.

Nonassociational Interest Groups

  • A fluid group of individuals who are not associated with any formal or permanent organisation but who share a common interest in promoting or opposing a certain issue.
  • Once the interest group has achieved its goal or once the issue has been resolved, the group generally dissolves itself.
  • When the activities of such a nonassociational group become more sustained and more organised, they can be classified as a social movement.

Associational Interest Groups

  • A type of political interest group organised specifically to further the political objectives of its members.
  • A Singaporean example of an associational interest group is We Believe in Second Chances, a group of citizens that advocate for the abolition of the death penalty in Singapore.

Anomic Interest Groups

  • A “flash in the pan” interest group that, though sharing common political interests or grievances, is fairly spontaneous and involves little or no long-term planning.
  • A series of short-lived political demonstrations, such as the Population White Paper protests in 2013 at Hong Lim Park, is an example of such an interest group

Social Movements

  • Social movements consist of people from outside the main-stream who come together to seek a common objective through an unorthodox challenge to the existing political order.
  • They also “espouse a political style which distances them from established channels, thereby questioning the legitimacy as well as the decisions of the government. The members of social movements adopt nonconformist forms of participation such as demonstrations, sit-ins, boycotts and political strikes.”
  • One reason why social movements take such unconventional forms of engagement is due to their commonly held belief that the issue which is driving them into action has been left unaddressed through normal political channels, including through elected representatives.
    • Some famous social movements in history that were successful in bringing about change from outside of conventional channels were the American civil rights movement in the 1960s and the People Power movement in the Philippines in the 1980s

Political parties

  • The key difference between an interest group and a political party is that the political parties attempt to win political power, usually through the formal political process and elections.
  • • For political parties, the ultimate goal is not to simply influence government but to become the government making use of the state apparatus for its own objectives and interests.

Functions of a political party

Coordinating the actions of the government.

  • Leaders of several parties might form a coalition to secure majority support for certain policies. Such coalitions are especially important in legislatures in which no single party commands a majority.
  • Political parties can also establish forms of power-sharing in the conduct of government business.
    • For example, the parties can agree to formulate executive or legislative committees in a manner that reflects the political strength of the various parties.

Agents of Political socialization

  • A related activity of political parties is their socialization of people into the political culture.
  • The person’s political beliefs and actions are influenced by information that a political party provides or by the person’s perceptions of what the party supports.
  • Even if a person does not have a strong party identification, political parties can be an important source of his political knowledge because they provide easily understood reference points regarding politically relevant information.

Mobilization and recruitment of political activist

  • In many political systems, involvement with a political party is the primary mechanism through which individuals are drawn into roles, ultimately, as political leaders.
  • Often, political parties select the candidates for political positions or have the power to place people directly in positions within the political system.
  • most individuals in key executive and legislative positions have achieved these positions through recruitment and selection by a political party

Link between the individual and the political system

  • In its role as a linkage institution, a political party connects individuals and the political system.
    - Most individuals rely on political groups to represent their interests within the political system.
  • Political parties function to formulate, aggregate, and communicate a coherent package of demands and supports. If the party gains political power, it can attempt to implement those demands on behalf of the individuals whose interests it serves. Thus political parties greatly facilitate the individual’s sense of integration into the political process.

Broker policies

  • A crucial function of political parties is to aggregate and simplify social demands into clear policies.
  • To the extent that political parties are effective in this activity, they dramatically reduce the complexity and scale of the political process for the decision-maker, who must perceive and respond to the individual and group demands, and for the voter, who must select political leaders whose overall policy preferences are closest to his own.
  • Two kinds categories

Activities of an interest group

Ideological parties

  • Ideological parties hold major programmatic/ ideologically driven goals (e.g., egalitarianism, ethnic solidarity, Islamic fundamentalism) and are deeply committed to the full implementation of these goals.
  • Ideological parties are usually extreme within the context of their particular political culture.
    • The German Green Party, described is an example of an ideological party.

Pragmatic parties

  • pragmatic parties hold more flexible goals and are oriented toward moderate or incremental policy change.
  • To achieve electoral success, pragmatic parties might shift their position or expand the range of viewpoints they encompass.

Organised sources of opposition

  • Non-ruling parties serves as checks and balances which opposes but not obstruct the ruling party.

Provision of Material resources

  • Political interest groups can also provide goods or services to political actors.
  • Such a strategy assumes that providing goods and services will influence decision-makers to be more favourably disposed toward the interests of a group or that providing goods and services to policymakers who share the values of the group makes it more likely those values will be taken into account as policy is made.

Exchange of information

  • Providing data and information to those within the government is another activity performed by some interest groups.
  • The interest group may have specialized or expert information that policymakers would find difficult or impossible to collect themselves or obtain from other sources.
  • These private groups are stakeholders with a vested interest in the public policies that emerge
    (i.e. mandating airbags in the 80s)

Political Action

  • The most direct methods to achieve political objectives involve some form of political action.
  • Depending on the political system, this might entail voting and campaign activities to influence the selection and action of political authorities (i.e. vaires on conventionality).
  • Or the group might attempt to communicate its interest to political actors by techniques such as letters, personal contacts, petitions, rallies, or political violence.
  • Groups often raise money from their members or provide other resources, like volunteers, to help politicians who support their causes.

Cooperation

  • Major interest groups can also exert influence through their compliance or noncompliance with the government policy process.
  • In many countries, government actors understand that policy is implemented more successfully when it is acceptable to the affected interest groups.
  • There are many countries (especially industrial democracies such as France, Japan, South Korea, and Sweden) in which government cultivates a special relationship with the interest group representatives of major economic organizations such as business, labor, and farmers.

Legality

  • The line between legal and illegal provision of money and goods varies dramatically across political cultures.
  • What might be judged as an improper act of bribery in one political system might be an expected and perfectly acceptable payment in others.

What is a State

  • The state is defined as a
    sovereign entity capable of carrying out political decisions and enforcing the laws and rules of its own independent government
  • a state has the right to resist and reject any aggression, invasion, or intervention within its territorial borders

Function that must be performed in every state

  • The classic version of Almond’s structural–functional approach identifies eight functions that must be performed in every state
  • Interest articulation is the low-level communication by individuals and groups of what they need or want from the state
  • Interest aggregation is the transformation of all these political needs and wants into a smaller number of coherent alternatives.
  • Political communication is the mechanisms by which political information flows through society.
  • Policy making is the process by which the state establishes laws, policy decisions, and value allocations
  • Political recruitment is the processes through which people are drawn into roles
    as political actors
  • Policy implementation is the actual application of such laws and policy decisions
  • Political socialization is the processes through which individuals acquire their cognitive, affective, and evaluative orientations toward the political world
  • Policy adjudication is the interpretation and resolution of disagreements regarding what the policies mean and how they should be implemented.

Major Goals/Purpose of the state

  • There are three major goals of the state:
    • security,
    • stability, and
    • prosperity

2. Stability

Political development

  • Political development refers to the concentration of political authority in a state that has strong capabilities to make and enforce effective policies and to gain support from its citizens.

Democratization

  • Democratization is the process of institutionalizing a democratic system of governance, which is achieved by allowing free elections, limiting the actions of the rulers, and guaranteeing civil and political rights.

Order maintenance

  • Order maintenance is the capacity of the state to ensure social peace for its citizens through the prevention of individual and group violation of societal norms, especially those involving violence.
  • (Dont rock the boat)

3 Prosperity

Economic growth

  • Economic growth refers to the increasing scale, complexity, and specialization of the productive system and of the goods produced.

Welfare distribution

  • Welfare distribution refers to the private or public allocation of adequate and increasing levels of valued goods to enhance the quality of life of the citizenry.

Economic development

  • Economic development is the capacity of the political economy to obtain, manage, and transform resources into valued goods

1. Security

Influence

  • Influence involves the state’s ability to alter the actions of external actors in desired ways by means of persuasion or inducements.

Dominance

  • Dominance is the use of power or violence to enable the state to impose direct control over external actors.

Autonomy

  • Autonomy refers to the capacity of the state to act within its own boundaries without intervention in or control of its affairs by external actors.

Prestige

  • Prestige is the desirable situation wherein external actors admire and respect the state.

Survival

  • Survival is the fundamental element of security. It entails the very existence of the state, such that other states do not conquer it and that internal forces do not destroy it

Policy trade-off

  • A state must make difficult trade-offs when pursuing multiple goals.
    • For example, when a state makes a costly increase in the welfare goods and services allocated to its citizens, it uses resources that it might otherwise have reinvested in its economic system to facilitate economic growth

State sovereignty
According to Weber, state sovereignty can be understood as the following:

  • state’s ability to control the people and territories it claims to rule
  • Ability to defend itself against interference from other states
  • monopoly on the legitimate use of force/coercion in society

State and the Institutions

  • The state requires a set of institutional bodies which have the responsibility of protecting its territorial borders and ensuring no challenge to authority over matters which fall under its territorial jurisdiction.
  • sometimes referred to as
    the coercive apparatus of the state (i.e. police, military)

Function and purpose

  • state institutions are designed for the purposes of:
    • creating laws - whether for the purposes of social order or different conceptions of justice
    • reviewing laws
    • enforcing laws (parliaments, executives, judiciaries, police, and prisons).
    • economic and infrastructure development, welfare distribution, and the provision of public services (various ministries, hospitals, and schools)

What is a government

  • The government can be understood as a legitimate authority that lead and direct the state

Sub-groups of the government

  • Most governments can be divided into three branches, namely
    • executive
    • legislative
    • judicial
  • the executive is most important due to its function of approving laws and then seeing to their implementation once passed

Authority

  • Governments, particularly the executive branch, receive their power through a process of political legitimation.
  • The legitimate use of power recognised by society is referred to as authority.

Types of Authority

Traditional Authority

  • power is legitimized by heritage and traditions.
  • Reasons for the subscription to such authority includes a worldview based on legacy, history and monarchy rule.

  • Such authority is strong in countries with long histories, as time is required to solidify traditional authority.


  • For example, obedience to elders, respect for offices or titles, etc.

Charismatic Authority

  • Charismatic authority is based on charm and leadership of a specific leader and his or her ability to move and motivate people, provide direction and leadership, have people place trust and confidence in him or her. Charismatic leaders touch the feelings of people.


  • For Example:Lee Kuan Yew, Winston Churchill, some pop and rock stars, famous celebrities, etc. It is very common for competent leaders not to be charismatic. Such leaders would depend more on legal-rational authority – that is, the authority vested in their office by law.

Legal-Rational Authority

  • Where there is respect for law out of reason rather than tradition and personal relationships, there is legal- rational authority.

  • Legal-rational authority is based in the obedience to an impersonal rule of law that is accepted as reasonable and legitimate by the population, instead of obedience to any one person, group, or tradition.


  • For example: why there is relatively less corruption in Singapore as compared to other countries regionally is because the general respect for law has been inculcated in most Singaporeans.

Power, Legitimacy and authority

  • Though different, most countries’ executives receive their power through a process of political legitimation. In the language of political science, when such legitimacy is granted or, in other words, power is acceded to or accepted by those in the society that it will affect, power is translated into authority.

Difference between state and government

The government is:

  • the legitimate authorities that lead and direct this institutional machinery

Important to note: Governments can come and go (based on which political parties who form the government, win and lose the elections) but the state remains unchanged (i.e, the military, civil service/administration, police etc remain in place)

The state is:

  • the organised institutional machinery for making and carrying out the political decisions and for enforcing the rules of the government

Importance of distinguishing between government and state

  • In some cases, the government does not actually have control over the various state institutions and apparatuses
  • As a result of this, some forms of political activity occur between different state institutions and sometimes see other state institutions take direct action against the government
  • This can result in divided states/state fracture

State fracture

  • Occurs when different state institutions or bodies are acting against each other outside of what is constitutionally designed
    • I.e. Military coup
    • Police vs military

Fragile states

  • Fragile states are unable to guarantee even a minimum level of security and subsequent provisions are often referred to as fragile states (i.e. Syria, Afghanistan)

Contrasting between the concept of a nation from that of the state

Nation

  • A nation is defined as a set of people with a deeply shared fundamental identification
    • Different factors might be the basis of such identification: shared descent (belief in a common kinship or history), shared culture, shared geographic space, shared religion, shared language, or shared economic order.
  • In the political world, the concept of the nation has a psychological and emotional basis rather than a legal or functional basis (as the concept of the state does)

Identity politics

  • Identity politics is a concept wherein certain shared trait(s) (i.e. culture) lead a significant group of people to see themselves as being distinctive, with a shared political agenda that might shape their political beliefs or motivate their actions

Nation based identity

  • The strength of a person’s primary nation-based identity depends on
    • the relative importance he places on various identities and
    • the extent to which the most important identities reinforce the basic conception of “us” versus “them

Nationalism

  • nationalism—a powerful commitment to the advancement of the interests and welfare of an individual’s own nation, usually with minimal concern about benefitting the conditions of those outside the nation

Nation-state and multinational state

Nation-state

  • a nation-state is an area that has both the territorial borders of a single state and a citizenry who all share the same primary national identity.
  • Example: Japan

Multinational state

  • multinational states, include significant groups whose fundamental identities are associated with different nations
  • For example USSR

Political system

  • A political system comprises of a series of components that operate together and are interrelated, such that change in any one component can affect other components.
    • at its core, it can be conceptualised as a system of human behavior with multiple components.
  • The political system sets the tone for which politcal actors operate

Unpacking the definition of a political system

  • This means that the political system sets the direction for policy decisions (allocations) that are binding (based on its authority - i.e. constitiitional) with regard to things that have importance (values) to the people it serves (the collective).

2. Allocation

  • Allocation refers to the process by which decisions and actions are taken to grant values to some and deny values to others.
  • Value allocations occur at every moment when decisions are made to alter or even to sustain the existing distribution of values.
  • Making these decisions and actions in the face of competition and conflict over values is a central aspect of politics.

3. Authoritative

  • Value allocations are authoritative when the decisions are accepted as binding by those people affected by the decisions.

1. Values

  • Values are those things that have great significance and importance to people

Political values

  • Political value concerns things that are deemed as significant to the public domain. It may take several forms, i.e.:
    • Material goods (roads, infrastructures)
    • Symbolic goods (Status)
    • Services (Education, healthcare)
    • Conditions (Environment, security)

4.The collective.

  • The domain of activity for the political system is all those areas in which it makes authoritative decisions that affect people’s lives.
  • In Easton’s classic definition, a political system functions “for a society.”
    • A more generalized definition of the political system is “the authoritative allocation of values for a collectivity.”

Conceptualization of the Political System: Inputs and Outputs

  • The political system exists within a larger environment that includes other systems, the economic system, the cultural system.
  • The environment of the political system refers to all those activities that are not part of the political system’s activity domain. These are activities that occur around the political system and provide both opportunities and constraints on its functioning

.

Inputs, Conversions and Outputs

  • This broader environment generates many inputs, called demands and supports, which the actors in the political system consider.
  • The political actors, through conversion, then produce outputs, the decisions and actions that allocate values
    • If these outputs have an effect on the environment, this might produce new demands and supports. This processing system becomes a continuing cycle.

Inputs

Demands

  • Demands are wants or desires for particular value allocations. Demands might come from individuals, groups, or systems either within or outside the society.
    • For example, when a citizen or interest group expresses a preference for lower taxes, more expenditure on health care, or greater regulation of corporations, this becomes a demand on the political system.

Supports

  • Supports are actions by individuals or groups that indicate either favourable or unfavourable orientations toward the political system.
  • These actions can be directed toward any actor in the political system,
    • from a major figure like the president
    • to a low-level bureaucrat
    • to a governmental body like the legislature
    • to a political symbol like the country’s flag

Conversion

  • Conversion is the process by which political actors assess demands and supports within the context of the relevant environmental forces and then determine what values will be allocated to whom

Policy decisions

  • There are three general explanations of how the political system makes policy decisions:
    • the class approach
    • the elite approach
    • the pluralist approach

Outputs

  • Once policy decisions have been made and implemented, they become outputs of the political system.
  • Some outputs are visible and obvious,
    • i.e. the political system authorizes the building of a new nuclear power plant, spends the money to build it, and then puts it online producing energy.
  • But it is sometimes difficult to identify the decisions (outputs) because they might involve subtle actions, secret policies, or even “nondecisions”
    • For example, if some people demand new government subsidies for small farmers and the government does nothing, there has been an allocation decision—even though no visible policy action can be identified

Outcome

  • Outcomes refer to the impacts of the decisions taken and implemented by the political system.
  • Ultimately, it is the impacts of the political system’s policy choices that really affect people’s lives.
    • The essential question is: What difference did that policy choice (that value allocation) make

Political violence, State Fracture and State Fragility

State fracture

  • Refers to a situation in which different state institutions or bodies are acting against each other outside of what is constitutionally designed

coups d’état

  • Refers to a situation whereby members the state’s coercive apparatus including the military or the police overthrow or help to overthrow the elected government

Intra/inter conflict

  • Rather, not only is it possible for different state bodies and institutions to be in conflict with each other, but it is also possible for there to be conflict within such bodies themselves, for example, within the military, the police, or the civil service

Political violence

Types of Political Violence

  • There are several types of violent political activities.
  • These various actions can typically be distinguished from each other according to:
    • the actors carrying out the act,
    • the number of actors involved, and
    • the action’s end goal or objective

Riots

  • Riots are spontaneous and relatively disorganised group violence against property, agents of the political system, perceived opponents in the society, or random targets
  • Riots are often triggered by specific incidents such as police shooting

Rebellion

  • Violent protests or riots “turn into rebellion when there is more frequent, premeditated, and widespread violence involving more people.
  • At this point, many of those engaged in violence no longer believe the system will respond to their problems
    • Example: Arab Spring

Revolution

  • A revolution is a rapid and fundamental transformation of the state organisation and the class structure.
  • In contrast to the other forms of political violence against the state, the explicit objective of the revolution is to destroy the existing political system and establish a new one with fundamentally different distribution of power and value allocations.
    Example: Iranian Revolution

Terrorism

  • Premeditated violence serving an underlying political objective, in which the target of violence is a ‘non-combatant’.
  • Those engaged in terrorism can have a variety of political objectives, such as the promotion of a cause, revenge, or extraction of resources.
  • As a revolutionary strategy, terrorism involves selective acts of violence, usually by small, organised cells of political activists.
  1. Discuss several reasons why levels of political activity and participation differ across different states and societies.

Factors affecting levels of Political participation/ Engagement

  • not every country is the same when it comes to the political participation of its citizens. This is due to several reasons.

Apathy

  • Being politically apathetic means not caring about politics.
  • Scholars have often attributed political apathy to such factors as:
    • a gradual loss of interest in public life
    • the rise of individualism
    • the lack of faith in the political system, its institutions, and its leaders.

Culture

  • Political culture has often been one reason given for a lack of political participation in politics.
    • For example, in societies that have, in their recent history, experienced authoritarian or dictatorial government, there is often the existence of a civil society vacuum. With the citizenry being used to relying on the authorities for political decisions, there is less familiarity with civil society to direct political participation.

Repression/De-participation

  • Repression
    • Most countries that do not have democratic credentials prevent their citizens from lawful political participation. Even in countries with democratic credentials, there have been cases in which the authorities used establishment violence.
    • Sometimes, the difficult job in such instances is to establish what instances are those of establishment violence and which instances are those of order maintenance.
  • De-participation .
    • In other cases, there is another grey area due to instances of what can be called de-participation.
    • In such instances, though not conducted through outright violence, certain mechanisms or avenues for participation in politics have been taken away or highly limited by the authorities, once again through the justification of order maintenance.

Establishment violence

  • Refers to violent repression upon participants who were opposing them.
  • This could include the police arresting the leaders of an opposition party before a major election or a military crackdown on a lawful protest

Civil Society and Types of Political Participation

Civil Society

  • Refers to the totality of institutions, organisations, and associations operating in the public sphere with relative autonomy from the state, established at the grassroots level, and usually characterised by voluntary member participation.
  • i.e Non Governmental Organisation

Levels of Political participation

  • Political participation occurs when these non-state actors engage in political activity, usually for the purposes of influencing the government’s decisions.
  • we can list several forms of political participation conducted by civil society actors, from a level of high conventionality to high unconventionality:

Voting

  • An activity wherein citizens cast a vote for a political leader or party in an election or with regard to one issue (in a referendum vote).

Contacting a Civil Servant or Politician

  • A citizen contacts his or her government representative or one government ministry directly to speak to them about an issue of importance

Donating Money to a Politician, Party, Issue, or Movement

  • A citizen provides monetary support to a person or group of people, either to support an election campaign, a political organisation’s daily operations, or a single-issue campaign

Attending a Political Meeting, Rally, or Election Campaign

  • A citizen publically shows his or her support for a party, issue, or movement by physically attending a rally or discussing and planning the group’s direction in meetings.

Taking Part in a Demonstration

  • A citizen publically shows his or her opposition to a policy or other government action by standing in solidarity with others in a public place, including the street, a square, or a park.

Taking Part in an Occupation, Sit-in, or Political Strike

  • A citizen publically shows his or her opposition to a government policy or action conducted by a state authority by interrupting the usual flow of socio-economic or political life in an effort to force the government or relevant authority to negotiate and potentially back down from their original policy or action.