Basic concepts and categories

Politics - is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. It consists of social relations involving authority or power and refers to the regulation of a political unit, and to the methods and tactics used to formulate and apply policy

Political system – is a system of state and non-state social institutes that fulfil certain political functions.

State - is an organised political community, living under a government; an organized social structure that controls some aspects of men`s behaviour and maintains the social order.

Civil society – is a society composed of the totality of voluntary civic and social organizations and institutions that form the basis of a functioning society as opposed to the force-backed structures of a state (regardless of that state's political system) and commercial institutions of the market.

Questions and tasks for self-control

1. What is the difference between politics and policy?

2. Is there any correspondence between state and civil society?

3. What are the main features of civil society?

4. The types of political system.

5. What are the major forms of monarchies?

6. Consider the basic forms of republic governing.

7. Why is the principle of separation of powers necessary for law-governed state?

8. What are the forms of state system?

Literature

Basic:

Safire, William Safire's Political Dictionary. Oxford University Press, 2008.

Supplementary:

Roberts and Hogwood, European Politics Today, Manchester University Press, 1997

Primary sources:

Aristotle. Politics. [Translated by Benjamin Jowett] // www.constitution.org/ari/polit_00.htm

Kant I. Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals. Cambridge University Press, 1987

Plato. Republic. translated by G.M.A. Grube – Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1992