Basic Concepts

AUTHORITY

Authority, in its broadest sense, is a form of *power, sometimes thought of as ‘legitimate power’. Whereas power is the ability to influence the behaviour of others, authority is the right to do so. Authority is therefore based upon an acknowledged duty to obey rather than any form of coercion or manipulation. In this sense, authority is power cloaked in *legitimacy or rightfulness. However, authority may be used as either a normative or a descriptive term. As a normative term, used by political philosophers, it refers to a ‘right to rule’ and takes the form of a moral claim. This implies that it is less important that authority is obeyed than that it should be obeyed. Leaders, for example, could in this sense continue to claim the right to rule, on the basis of election results, constitutional rules, divine right or whatever, even though the majority of the population does not recognise that right.

Political scientists and sociologists, on the other hand, treat authority as a descriptive term. Max Weber (1864–1920) thus defined authority simply as a matter of people’s belief about its rightfulness, regardless of where that belief came from and whether or not it is morally justified. Authority, in this sense, is ‘legitimate power’. Weber distinguished between three kinds of authority, based upon the different grounds on which obedience can be established. Traditional authority, in this sense, is rooted in history and tradition; charismatic authority stems from the power of personality; and legal-rational authority is grounded in a set of impersonal rules associated with an office rather than the office holder. An alternative distinction can be made between de jure authority and de facto authority. De jure authority, or authority in law, operates according to a set of procedures or rules which designate who possesses authority and over what issues. People described as being ‘in authority’ can be said to possess de jure authority: their ‘powers’ can be traced back to a particular office. Both traditional and legal-rational authority

can therefore be viewed as forms of de jure authority. De facto authority, or authority in practice, operates in circumstances in which authority is exercised but cannot be traced back to a set of procedural rules. This includes all forms of charismatic authority, and also what is called expert authority, when a person is recognised as being ‘an authority’ by virtue of his or her specialist skills or knowledge.

Significance

Authority has been one of the most basic and enduring issues in political analysis. In a sense all studies of *government or the *state are really examinations of the nature and workings of political authority. Indeed, probably no system of rule could survive long without exercising some measure of authority, since to rule through power alone involves such a great expenditure of coercive resources as to be unsustainable. Nevertheless, there are recurrent debates about both the nature of authority and its value. Liberals and socialists tend to view authority as instrumental, believing that it arises ‘from below’ through the *consent of the governed. From this perspective, authority is rational, purposeful and limited, a view reflected in a preference for legal-rational authority and public *accountability. Conservatives, by contrast, see authority as arising from natural necessity, being exercised ‘from above’ by virtue of the unequal distribution of experience, social position and wisdom. Those who exercise authority do so for the benefit of others, but this does not set clear limits or checks upon authority, and it may blur the distinction between authority and *authoritarianism.

The justifications for authority include, most basically, that it is essential for the maintenance of *order and is thus the only means of escape from the barbarity and injustice of the ‘state of nature’, a society without political rule. Authority also establishes common norms and values that bind society together, and thereby gives individuals a social identity and sense of rootedness. Critics of authority, including, particularly, libertarians and anarchists, point out that authority is by definition the enemy of *freedom; that it threatens reason and critical understanding by demanding unquestioning obedience; and that it is psychologically, and perhaps morally, corrupting in that it accustoms people to controlling or dominating others.

CIVIL SOCIETY

Civil society has been defined in a variety of ways. Originally it meant a ‘political community’, a society governed by law, under the authority of a *state. More commonly, civil society is distinguished from the state, and is used to describe a realm of autonomous groups and associations, such as businesses, *pressure groups, clubs, families and so on. It thus consists of what Edmund Burke (1729–97) called the ‘little platoons’. In this sense the division between civil society and the state reflects a ‘private/public’ divide; civil society encompasses institutions that are ‘private’ in that they are independent from government and organised by individuals in pursuit of their own ends. G. W. F. Hegel (1770–1831), on the other hand, distinguished civil society not only from the state but also from the family. He viewed civil society as a sphere of ‘universal egoism’ in which individuals place their own interests before those of others, whereas the state and the family are characterised by ‘universal altruism’ and ‘particular altruism’ respectively.

Significance

Civil society is widely used as a descriptive concept to assess the balance between state authority and private bodies and associations. For instance, *totalitarianism is defined by the abolition of civil society, and the growth of private associations and clubs, lobby groups and independent trade unions in post-communist societies is described as the re-emergence of civil society. In most cases, however, civil society is invested with normative and ideological significance. In the conventional, liberal view, civil society is identified as a realm of choice, personal *freedom and individual responsibility. Whereas the state operates through compulsory and coercive authority, civil society allows individuals to shape their own destinies. This explains why a vigorous and healthy civil society is usually regarded as an essential feature of *liberal democracy, and why classical liberals in particular have a moral preference for civil society over the state, reflected in a desire to minimise the scope of public authority and maximise the private sphere. In contrast, the Hegelian use of the term is negative in that it counterposes the egoism of civil society with the altruism that is fostered by the family

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and within the state. Marxists and socialists generally have viewed civil society unfavourably, associating it in particular with unequal class power and social injustice. Such views would justify either the overthrow of civil society as presently structured, or the contraction of civil society through the expansion of state control and regulation.

CONSENSUS

A consensus is an agreement, but it is an agreement of a particular kind. Consensus implies, first, a broad agreement, the terms of which are accepted by a wide range of individuals or groups. Second, it implies an agreement about fundamental or underlying principles, as opposed to a precise or exact agreement. In other words, a consensus permits disagreement on matters of emphasis or detail. The term ‘consensus politics’ may be used in two ways. A procedural consensus is a willingness to make decisions through consultation and bargaining, either between *political parties or between *government and major interests. A substantive consensus is an overlap in the ideological positions of two or more political parties, reflected in agreement about fundamental policy goals (as in the UK’s post-1945 social-democratic consensus, and Germany’s social-market consensus).

Significance

Consensus is often portrayed as the very stuff of *politics. This is because politics, in one sense at least, is a specifically non-violent means of resolving conflict. Given that the differing interests of individuals and groups are a permanent feature of human life, peaceful co-existence can be achieved only through a process of negotiation, conciliation and compromise; in short, through consensus-building. Procedural consensuses therefore reflect the recognition that the alternative to bargaining and compromise is open conflict and possibly violence. Consensus politics is likely to be a feature of mature pluralist democracies, substantive consensuses often occurring in political systems in which electoral alliances and *coalitions are commonplace. Consensus politics can nevertheless be criticised on the grounds that it fosters unprincipled compromise; that it discourages consideration of bold but controversial policy initiatives; and that it tends to entrench centrist ideological priorities.

GOVERNMENT/GOVERNANCE

In its broadest sense to govern means to rule or control others. Government can therefore be taken to include any mechanism through which ordered rule is maintained, its central features being the ability to make collective decisions and the capacity to enforce them. A form of government can thus be identified in almost all social institutions: families, schools, businesses, trade unions and so on. However, ‘government’ is more commonly understood to refer to the formal and institutional processes which operate at the national level to maintain order and facilitate collective action. The core functions of government are thus to make law (legislation), implement law (execution) and interpret law (adjudication). In some cases the political *executive alone is referred to as ‘the Government’, making it equivalent to ‘the Administration’ in presidential systems. Governmental processes also operate at supranational, regional and local levels.

‘Governance’ is a broader term than ‘government’. It refers, in its widest sense, to the various way through which social life is coordinated. Government can therefore be seen as one of the organisations involved in governance; it is possible, in other words, to have ‘governance without government’. The principal modes of governance are *markets, hierarchies and networks. Markets coordinate social life through a price mechanism which is structured by the forces of supply and demand. Hierarchies, which include *bureaucracy and thus traditional forms of government organisation, operate through ‘top-down’ authority systems. Networks are ‘flat’ organisational forms that are characterised by informal relationships between essentially equal agents or social agencies.

Significance

Government has traditionally been the principal object of political analysis. Some, indeed, identify *politics with government in treating political activity as the art of government, the exercise of control within society through the making and enforcement of collective

decisions. This overriding concern with government has been evident in both *political philosophy and *political science. Political philosophers from Aristotle (384–22 BCE) onwards have evaluated forms of government on normative grounds in the hope of identifying the ‘ideal’ *constitution. Similarly, social contract theorists focused political analysis on the nature of governmental authority and the basis of citizens’ *obligation to government. Political scientists who adopt the once dominant but still influential constitutional–institutional approach to the discipline also accord government central importance. This involves either analysing the legislative, executive and judicial processes of government and examining the relationships between and amongst different levels of government, or comparing systems of government with a view to developing a broader classification or highlighting the distinctive features of each system.

Some political thinkers have nevertheless questioned whether government is centrally important to politics. In the case of *anarchism, government is rejected as fundamentally evil and unnecessary, political activity focusing upon strategies for its abolition. Liberals, who accept that government is vital, place a heavy emphasis upon the need to check or limit government in view of the potential tyranny it embodies. Marxists and feminists, for their part, tend to treat government as a secondary political formation derived from, or operating within, a wider system of, respectively, class politics or sexual politics. Academic political scientists have also in some ways looked beyond government. *Systems theory, for instance, examines not the mechanisms of government, but the structures and processes through which these interact with the larger society, while political sociology interprets the working of government in terms of wider social structures and power systems.

Governance has become an increasingly popular, if imprecise, term since the 1980s. This reflects a series of changes that have taken place within government as well as in the larger society. These include the development of new forms of public management in which government is increasingly confined to ‘steering’ (that is, setting targets and strategic objectives) as opposed to ‘rowing’ (that is, administration or service delivery); the blurring of the distinction between government and markets through the growth of public/ private partnerships and the introduction of ‘internal markets’; the recognition of the importance to policy formulation of so-called policy networks; and the emergence of multi-level governmental systems through the impact of *supranationalism and *devolution or *federalism. However, the term ‘governance’ still has no settled or agreed definition, and, for some, it conveys an ideological preference for a minimal state or ‘less government’.

HUMAN NATURE

Human nature refers to the essential and immutable character of all human beings. It highlights what is innate and ‘natural’ about human life, as opposed to what human beings have gained from education or through social experience. This does not, however, mean that those who believe that human behaviour is shaped more by society than it is by unchanging and inborn characteristics have abandoned the idea of human nature. Rather, such a view makes clear assumptions about innate human qualities; in this case, the capacity to be shaped or moulded by external factors. Moreover, a concept of human nature does not reduce human life to a one dimensional caricature. Most political thinkers are aware that human beings are complex, multi-faceted creatures, made up of biological, physical, psychological, intellectual, social and perhaps spiritual elements. The concept of human nature does not conceal or overlook this complexity so much as attempt to impose order upon it by designating certain features as natural or ‘essential’. Although this human ‘core’ will usually be manifest in human behaviour, this is not necessarily the case. Human beings may, for instance, be encouraged to deny their ‘true’ natures through the influence of a corrupt society.

Significance

Almost all political doctrines and beliefs are based upon some kind of theory of human nature, sometimes explicitly formulated but in many cases simply implied. Assumptions about the content of human nature structure political enquiry in a number of important ways. The most obvious of these is the so-called ‘nurture/ nature’ debate, the question of whether the essential core of human nature is fixed or given, fashioned by ‘nature’, or whether it is moulded or structured through social experience or ‘nurture’. An emphasis upon nature, as adopted, for instance, by most liberals and conservatives, suggests that the individual is the key to the understanding of society: social and political life ultimately reflect characteristics and behavioural patterns that are innate within each human being. This is evident in methodological *individualism. On the other hand, nurture theorists, including most socialists, communists and anarchists, argue that as human nature is ‘plastic’, the human character and sensibilities can be developed through the reconstruction of society. In this case, society provides the key to the understanding of the individual.

Another important debate about human nature centres upon the relative importance of competition and cooperation. Much of liberal *ideology and many of the ideas of conventional social and *political science reflect assumptions about self-seeking and egotistical human behaviour. If human beings are essentially greedy and competitive, a capitalist economic system is natural and inevitable. However, socialists have traditionally stressed that human beings are naturally sociable, cooperative and gregarious, motivated by altruism and a sense of social responsibility. From this perspective, *capitalism merely serves to corrupt human nature by suppressing our inclination towards collective human endeavour and *equality. Only a limited number of political thinkers have openly rejected the idea of human nature. Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–80), however, argued that ‘existence comes before essence’, meaning that human beings enjoy the *freedom to define themselves through their own actions and deeds. If this is so, the assertion of any concept of human nature is an affront to that freedom.