The term politics derives from the ancient Greek word polis, meaning "city-state," the main form of political community in ancient Greece. We continue to use the term even though few city-states remain in existence. A commonsense understanding of the term is illustrated by this analogy: Politics is to the polis what athletics is to athletes. Just as the world of athletics is subdivided into different types of sport, politics comes in numerous modes and orders: democratic, tyrannical, constitutionalist, oligarchic, theocratic, bureaucratic, fascist, authoritarian, and so on.
However, everyday language is not a reliable guide to defining politics, because we regularly apply the term to practices that are not political. We speak of office politics, locker-room politics, or the politics of high school cliques. These usages are too broad and fail to distinguish politics as a unique activity, distinct from business, sports, social interactions, and so on. In order to gain a more comprehensively scientific understanding of the meaning of politics, it is helpful to consider two basic components: (1) the character of political activity and (2) the scope of political activity.
THE CHARACTER OF POLITICAL ACTIVITY
Politics has been defined in numerous ways. The philosopher Plato (c. 428-348 BCE) defined it as the art of caring for souls, meaning that the duty of political rulers is to cultivate moral virtue or excellence in their citizens. Numerous thinkers throughout history have reiterated Plato’s view. The medieval theologian Saint Thomas Aquinas (c. 1224-1274), who closely studied the philosophy of Plato’s student Aristotle (384-322 BCE), characterized politics as the activity of bringing together diverse individuals and groups, including doctors, economists, professors, and priests, each with their own talents and characteristics, into a unity: "The object for which a community is gathered is to live a virtuous life. For men to consort together that they may thus attain a fullness of life which would not be possible to each living singly: and the full life is one which is lived according to virtue" (Fuller 2000, p. 85). Both Plato and Aquinas were concerned with cultivating virtue and living a good life. Aquinas further emphasizes the synthetic or "architectonic" dimension of politics as the activity of building coalitions and maintaining harmony among the constituent parts of political society. Politics for Plato and Aquinas reflects humanity’s sociable nature.
Ancient and medieval thinkers emphasized the moral purpose of politics (the why) and the means of reaching that purpose (the how), while modern thinkers, including contemporary political scientists, are more likely to emphasize only means (the how). For example, the Renaissance thinker Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527) wrote in The Prince that it is unrealistic for princes to provide moral guidance to citizens because politics requires rulers to perform unjust deeds to ensure the security and glory of the state, including such acts as treating one’s friends as subjects and killing family members if necessary. Machiavelli thus introduced what would later become known as the fact-value distinction into the study of politics. It states that facts are the only objects that can be analyzed empirically and with certainty, while values are less certain. Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) provided what in the early twenty-first century one would consider a more scientific understanding of politics. His method was to deduce political principles from general and abstract theories. In his view humans resembled atoms, and human behavior was "matter in motion," whose principle mode of behavior was self-preservation. Unlike Plato and Aquinas, Hobbes regarded humans not as social but as asocial. He sums this up in his famous formulation of human behavior:
So that in the first place, I put for a general inclination of all mankind, a perpetual and restless desire of power after power that ceaseth only in death. And the cause of this is not always that a man hopes for a more intensive delight than he has already attained to, or that he cannot be content with a moderate power, but because he cannot assure the power and means to live well, which he hath present, without the acquisition of more. (Hobbes 1996, p. 70)
This general principle of human behavior leads Hobbes to characterize the activity of politics as the pursuit of peace and security, not as the perfection of human social inclinations. While Hobbes was not what in the early twenty-first century one would call a liberal democrat, his theory laid the foundations for liberal democracy by making consent the basis of government. He also placed politics on a lower (and in his eyes, more stable) ground than earlier thinkers by making peace and security its purpose, not the cultivation of virtue and community.
Machiavelli and Hobbes’s distinction between the moral purpose of politics and the pragmatic pursuit of power can be seen in some twentieth-century definitions of politics, which deemphasize moral excellence in favor of the use of power and the distribution of goods within a community. The French thinker Bertrand de Jouvenel (1903-1987) defined politics as the activity of gathering and maintaining support for human projects: "We should regard as ‘political’ every systematic effort, performed at any place in the social field, to move other men in pursuit of some design cherished by the mover" (Jouvenel 1963, p. 30). Allan Ball emphasizes conflict in his definition: "[Politics] involves disagreements and the reconciliation of those disagreements, and therefore can occur at any level. Two children in a nursery with one toy which they both want at the same time present a political situation" (Ball 1971, p. 20). Harold Lasswell emphasizes distribution in his treatment of politics, as reflected in the title of his 1936 treatise Politics: Who Gets What, When, and How.
While these definitions have their benefits, they fail to distinguish political activity from other forms of activity. This is especially true for Ball’s definition, which provides little guidance on the difference between a nursery and a nation-state like the United States. More promising is Bernard Crick’s definition of politics as "the activity by which different interests within a given unit of rule are conciliated by giving them a share in power in proportion to their importance to the welfare and the survival of the whole community" (Crick 1972, p. 22). This definition recalls Aquinas’s characterization of politics as unifying different parts of society. By mentioning survival, Crick also alludes to the fact that a political society requires a large degree of autonomy, in a way that a smaller unit, such as a family, lacks. By mentioning welfare, which is broader than survival, he also indicates that a political society is organized around a set of goals and principles.
THE SCOPE OF POLITICAL ACTIVITY
The activity of politics, then, consists of a continuous attempt to fashion a unity from a diverse set of competing interests and talents. Beyond this, any analysis of politics needs to move to a more concrete level. Politics, as the activity of the polis, depends on the form the political community takes. Political actions such as the conciliation of interests would take different forms in Nazi Germany, for example, and a liberal democracy like the United States. In the former, power is based on a personality cult surrounding Adolf Hitler for the purpose of furthering the utopian ideal of a Third Reich. In the latter, coalitions of interests form and compete with one another in a law-based constitutional system. In the former, politics is seen as something that will in fact cease once the utopia is reached (this is true of any utopian system). In the latter, politics is assumed to be a never-ending activity of negotiation and bargaining, on the assumption that a diversity of opinions and interests will always exist.
Political thinkers have devised a variety of methods for evaluating the differences among political systems. Plato distinguished five regimes, ranked according to the degree to which each is just. In descending order, they are the just city governed by philosopher kings, timocracy (ruled by warriors), oligarchy (ruled by the wealthy), democracy (ruled by the many), and tyranny (Plato 1991, pp. 449a-592b). Aristotle distinguished six different regimes according to who rules and for what purpose. He identified three good and three corrupt systems: (1) monarchy and tyranny, (2) aristocracy and oligarchy, (3) polity, or constitutional democracy, and mass democracy (Aristotle 1984, pp. 1288b10-1296b15).
Plato and Aristotle’s typologies are based on the polis. Modern scholars have developed typologies that attempt to organize the different forms the modern state takes. Three separate axes can be identified: (1) the interpenetra-tion of state and society, (2) whether the state is presidential or parliamentary, and (3) whether the state is federal or unitary (Dickerson and Flanagan 1998, pp. 209-310; Finer 1999, pp. 1473-1484).
The first axis considers the extent to which state institutions and civil society are autonomous. For example, liberal democracies prize pluralism, which requires a multiplicity of political parties competing for power as well as a wide array of independent schools, newspapers, and other sources of opinion. Totalitarian governments—for example, that of Hitler—attempt to control all facets of society, including universities, newspapers, unions, and businesses. Totalitarian states permit only one party, which purportedly speaks for the nation.
The second axis considers the composition of the representative institutions. In a presidential system like the United States, the central government is divided into three branches: executive (the president), legislative (Congress), and judicial (the Supreme Court). These three branches balance one another to ensure that no single branch of government possesses complete power. In a parliamentary system like that of Great Britain, executive power (the prime minister and cabinet) is more fused with legislative (the House of Commons). According to the doctrine of responsible government, the prime minister and cabinet must continually maintain the confidence of the House of Commons, which has the power to dissolve the government. Dissolution can occur at any time, in contrast to the U.S. presidential system, where members can only be removed by election or, in extreme circumstances, by impeachment.
The third axis reflects the territorial size of a society. In ancient Greece the polis was not divided into states or provinces because city-states were small enough for government to exert control over its territory and maintain solidarity among its citizens. Modern nation-states are considerably larger in size, which poses special challenges for controlling territory and promoting social solidarity. A federal state splits up the nation-state into states or provinces and hands over to those small units specific powers appropriate to them while maintaining the powers necessary to address national concerns. Large nations such as the United States and Canada have a federal system, while smaller nations such as Great Britain are unitary. Federal systems are based on the view that citizens will have greater solidarity with those who live nearby and who share common ways of life, though this view is less salient when a society has a highly mobile population.
THE STUDY OF POLITICS
The political analysis of major thinkers like Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, and Hobbes attempted to combine the empirical study of politics with normative concerns, though the latter two dissolve that combination somewhat. Politics is studied in the early twenty-first century at the academic level in departments of political science. While the term political science is a translation of Aristotle’s politike episteme, modern usage, with the emphasis on "science," reflects the attempt, begun by Hobbes, to study politics according to the methodologies of the physical sciences.
The division of most departments of political science into four subfields of analysis reflect this methodology. Political philosophy, which focuses on normative questions of political life, is one subfield. International relations considers the complexities of the international order, including law, organizations, war, and political economy. Comparative politics examines the politics of various countries and regions of the world. A fourth subfield examines the politics of the native country, so, for instance, every political science department in the United States has an American politics subfield, and their counterparts in Canada have Canadian politics subfields.
Political scientists frequently step outside of their subfields. This is most true of political philosophy and its relation to other fields, as few political phenomena can be separated from their normative dimensions. For instance, the study of power requires one to consider why a political actor seeks power, and these reasons usually depend on that actor’s particular understanding of justice. As a result, political science involves the study of the good society, just as it did for Plato 2,500 years ago.
