Everyone is involved in politics everyday, we are
immersed in the cause and effects.
The decisions that are made effect us everyday; school,
work, recreation. Our every action is legislated.
Governments need to balance Power and Security.
Power
Security
English political philosopher Thomas Hobbes is best
known for his treatise Leviathan. Written during the mid17th century amidst the tumult of the English Revolution,
Leviathan outlines Hobbes’s theory of sovereignty
(political authority).
He believed that people got organized for security and to
prevent all out wars.
Hobbes held that since people are fearful and predatory
they must submit to the absolute supremacy of the state,
in both secular and religious matters, in order to live by
reason and gain lasting preservation.
John Locke's views, in his Two Treatises of
Government (1690), attacked the theory of divine right
of kings and the nature of the state as conceived by the
English philosopher and political theorist Thomas
Hobbes. In brief, Locke argued that sovereignty did
not reside in the state but with the people, and that
the state is supreme, but only if it is bound by civil
and what he called “natural” law. Many of Locke's
political ideas, such as those relating to natural rights,
property rights, the duty of the government to protect
these rights, and the rule of the majority, were later
embodied in the U.S. Constitution.
He believed that political organizations allowed people to
pursue their own interests.
Dictator, title of a magistrate in ancient Rome,
appointed by the Senate in times of emergency
Dictator, those who have assumed sole power over the
state have been called dictators
Autocracy, political system under which one ruler
wields unlimited power, restricted by no constitutional
provisions or effective political opposition.
Totalitarianism, in political science, system of
government and ideology in which all social, political,
economic, intellectual, cultural, and spiritual activities are
subordinated to the purposes of the rulers of a state.
Several important features distinguish totalitarianism, a
form of autocracy peculiar to the 20th century, from such
older forms as despotism, absolutism, and tyranny.
Types of Dictatorships
Military
• The leader is in control of the armed forces.
• The military ensures that the laws, courts, and police
carry out the will of the leader.
• It has the appearance of a parliamentary or presidential
type of government, but citizens have no say in
government.
• Chile and Argentina at various times have been military
dictatorships.
Traditional Absolute Monarchy
• It is a government where one individual has total control.
• The leader has the ability to pass power on to his heirs.
• It is usually a feature of a traditional type of society.
• An example is Saudi Arabia.
Ideological One-Party State
• One small political group is in power.
• No dissent or opposition is allowed.
• Government policy is based upon a system of
doctrines.
• Only the small elite has the right to carry out the aims
of those doctrines.
• It often appears in under-developed societies that wish
to industrialize.
• An example would be the government of China
Nationalist One-Party State
• It is a single mass party under one leader.
• It is extremely nationalistic.
• It appears in advanced and industrial societies.
• It has racist policies.
• It is very imperialistic.
• It is militarist.
• Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy are common
examples.
Anarchism, political theory that is opposed to all forms
of government. Anarchists believe that the highest
attainment of humanity is the freedom of individuals to
express themselves, unhindered by any form of
repression or control from without.
Liberalism, attitude, philosophy, or movement that has
as its basic concern the development of personal
freedom and social progress. Liberalism and democracy
are now usually thought to have common aims, but in
the past many liberals considered democracy unhealthy
because it encouraged mass participation in politics.
Karl Marx, along with Friedrich Engels, defined
communism. Their most famous work was the
Communist Manifesto (1848), in which they argued that
the working class should rebel and build a Communist
society.
Engels
Marx
Marxism (Scientific Socialism), communism sought to
overthrow capitalism through a workers’ revolution and
establish a system in which property is owned by the
community as a whole rather than by individuals. In
theory, communism would create a classless society of
abundance and freedom, in which all people enjoy equal
social and economic status.
In all ideologies there are some laws used to monitor
appropriate and inappropriate behavior.
In every society, culturally unique ways of thinking about
the world unite people in their behavior. Anthropologists
often refer to the body of ideas that people share as
ideology. Ideology can be broken down into at least
three specific categories: beliefs, values, and ideals.
People’s beliefs give them an understanding of how the
world works and how they should respond to the actions
of others and their environments. Particular beliefs often
tie in closely with the daily concerns of domestic life,
such as making a living, health and sickness, happiness
and sadness, interpersonal relationships, and death.
People’s values tell them the differences between right
and wrong or good and bad. Ideals serve as models for
what people hope to achieve in life.
Destutt de Tracy, Philosopher in 1796 who first used
the word Ideology to describe the rational study of the
science of ideas.
Ideology, a structure of beliefs and a pattern of thinking
that motivates human and social political action.
1. People may consciously choose a set of beliefs to
guide decisions they make.
2. People make decisions based on unconscious values.
Ideologies are a system of beliefs that can
sometimes cause conflict between groups with
different beliefs !
Apartheid, policy of racial segregation formerly followed
in South Africa. The word apartheid means
“separateness” in the Afrikaans language and it
described the rigid racial division between the governing
white minority population and the nonwhite majority
population.
Presidents
Wife
Beginning in the 1950s, the government of South Africa
divided the black population into ethnic groups and
assigned each group to a separate territory, or
bantustan. A total of ten bantustans, called homelands
by the government, were created as part of the system
of apartheid, or separation of the races. The bantustans
consisted of many fragments of land and could not
support the populations assigned to them. They were
reintegrated into the rest of South Africa in 1994.
The Oka Crisis was a land dispute between the Mohawk
nation and the town of Oka, Quebec which began on
March 11, 1990, and lasted until September 26, 1990. It
resulted in massive traffic jams and three deaths.
The crisis developed from a dispute between the town of
Oka and the Mohawk reserve of Kanesatake. For 260
years, the Mohawk nation had been pursuing a land
claim which included a burial ground and a sacred grove
of pine trees near Kanesatake, which is one of the oldest
hand-planted stands in North America, created by the
Mohawks' ancestors. This brought them into conflict with
the town of Oka, which was developing plans to expand
a golf course onto the disputed land.
Oka Crisis