Political Ideas and Ideologies

This comprehensive set of flashcards covers various political concepts and ideologies, key thinkers, and their impact on political analysis. It's designed to help students review lecture notes and prepare for upcoming exams efficiently.

Politics

Activity through which people make, preserve, and amend the general rules under which they live.

Politics - Example

Example: Debates over healthcare policies illustrate politics in action.

Conflict

Competition between opposing forces, reflecting a diversity of opinions, preferences, needs, or interests.

Conflict - Example

Example: Disputes over resource allocation or ideological differences can lead to conflict.

Cooperation

Working together; achieving goals through collective action.

Cooperation - Example

Example: International collaborations to address climate change demonstrate cooperation.

Polis

City-state; classically understood to imply the highest or most desirable form of social organization.

Authority

Legitimate power.

Polity

A society organized through the exercise of political authority; for Aristotle, rule by the many in the interests of all.

Anti-politics

Disillusionment with formal or established political processes, reflected in non-participation, support for anti-system parties, or the use of direct action.

Power

The ability to achieve a desired outcome, sometimes seen as the ‘power to’ do something.

Civil society

Originally meant a ‘political community’. The term is now more commonly distinguished from the state, and is used to describe institutions that are ‘private’, in that they are independent from government and organized by individuals in pursuit of their own ends.

Consensus

Agreement about fundamental or underlying principles, as opposed to a precise or exact agreement.

Science

A field of study that aims to develop reliable explanations of phenomena through repeatable experiments, observation, and deduction.

Normative

The prescription of values and standards of conduct; what ‘should be’ rather than what ‘is’.

Objective

External to the observer, demonstrable; untainted by feelings, values, or bias.

Empirical

Based on observation and experiment; empirical knowledge is derived from sense data and experience.

Positivism

The theory that social, and indeed all forms of, enquiry should adhere strictly to the methods of the natural sciences.

Behaviouralism

The belief that social theories should be constructed only on the basis of observable behaviour, providing quantifiable data for research.

Institution

A well-established body with a formal role and status; more broadly, a set of rules that ensure regular and predictable behaviour, the ‘rules of the game’.

Constructivism

An approach to analysis that is based on the belief that there is no objective social or political reality independent of our understanding of it.

Discourse

Human interaction, especially communication; discourse may disclose or illustrate power relations.

Deconstruction

A close reading of philosophical or other texts with an eye to their various blind spots and/or contradictions.

Postmodernism

A term that was first used to describe experimental movements in western arts, architecture and cultural development in general. As a tool of social and political analysis, postmodernism highlights the shift away from societies structured by industrialization and class solidarity to increasingly fragmented and pluralistic ‘information’ societies.

Model

A theoretical representation of empirical data that aims to advance understanding by highlighting significant relationships and interactions.

Theory

A systematic explanation of empirical data, usually (unlike a hypothesis) presented as reliable knowledge.

Paradigm

A pattern or model that highlights relevant features of a particular phenomenon

Transnational

Configuration, which may apply to events, people, groups or organizations, that takes little or no account of national governments or state borders.

Ideology

A more or less coherent set of ideas that provides a basis for organized political action, whether this is intended to preserve, modify or overthrow the existing system of power relationships.

Meta-ideology

A higher or second-order ideology that lays down the grounds on which ideological debate can take place.

Individualism

The belief in the supreme importance of the human individual as opposed to any social group or collective body.

Freedom

Individual freedom, or liberty is the core value of liberalism.

Progress

Moving forwards; the belief that history is characterized by human advancement based on the accumulation of knowledge and wisdom.

Equality

Individuals are ‘born equal’, at least in terms of moral worth.

Meritocracy

Rule by the talented; the principle that rewards and positions should be distributed on the basis of ability.

Toleration

Forbearance: the willingness of people to allow others to think, speak and act in ways of which they disapprove

Consent

Authority and social relationships should always be based on consent or willing agreement.

Constitutionalism

Government as a vital guarantee of order and stability in society are aware of the danger that government may become a tyranny against the individual

Classical liberalism

A commitment to an extreme form of individualism. Human beings are seen as egoistical, self-seeking and largely self-reliant creatures.

Atomism

The belief that society is made up of a collection of largely self-sufficient individuals who owe little or nothing to one another.

Negative liberty

Meaning Non-interference, or the absence of external constraints on the individual. This implies a deeply unsym- pathetic attitude towards the state and all forms of government intervention.

Economic liberalism

A belief in the market as a self-regulating mechanism tending naturally to deliver general prosperity and opportunities for all.

Modern liberalism

Is characterized by a more sympathetic attitude towards state intervention.

Big government

Interventionist government, usually understood to imply economic management and social regulation.

Redistribution

A narrowing of material inequalities brought about through a combination of progressive taxation and welfare provision.

Tradition

The central theme of conservative thought, ‘the desire to conserve’, is closely linked to the perceived virtues of tradition.

Pragmatism

Conservatives have traditionally emphasized the limitations of human rationality, which arise from the infinite complexity of the world in which we live

Human imperfection

The conservative view of human nature is broadly pessimistic. In this view, human beings are limited, dependent, and security-seeking creatures, drawn to the familiar and the tried and tested, and needing to live in stable and orderly communities.

Organicism

Instead of seeing society as an artefact that is a product of human ingenuity, conservatives have traditionally viewed society as an organic whole, or living entity.

Hierarchy

In the conservative view, gradations of social position and status are natural and inevitable in an organic society.

Authority

Conservatives hold that, to some degree, authority is always exercised ‘from above’

Natural aristocracy

Talent and leadership are innate or inbred qualities that cannot be acquired through effort or self-advancement.

Property

Conservatives see property ownership as being vital because it gives people security and a measure of independence from government

Ancien régime

Literally, ‘old order’; usually linked with the absolutist structures that predated the French Revolution.

Paternalism

Demonstrates care or concern for those unable to help themselves, the (supposed) relationship between a father and a child.

Noblesse oblige

(French) Literally, the ‘obligations of the nobility’; in general terms, the responsibility to guide or protect those less fortunate or less privileged.

Toryism

Hierarcy, an emphasis on tradition, duty and organicism.

Christian democracy

An ideological tendency within European conservatism, characterized by commitment to social market principles and qualified interventionism.

Neoliberalism

An updated version of classical political economy that was developed in the writings of free-market economists

Nanny state

A state with extensive social responsibilities; the term implies that welfare programmes are unwarranted and demeaning to the individual.

Neoconservatism

Reasserts nineteenth century conservative social principles.

Permissiveness

The willingness to allow people to make their own moral choices; permissiveness suggests that there are no authoritative values.

Community

The core of socialism is the vision of human beings as social creatures linked by the existence of a common humanity.

Fraternity

Human beings share a common humanity, they are bound together by a sense of comradeship or fraternity

Social equality

Equality is the central value of socialism.

Need

That material benefits should be distributed on the basis of need, rather than simply on the basis of merit or work

Social class

A form of class politics.

Common ownership

The relationship between socialism and common ownership has been deeply controversial.

Revisionism

The modification of original or established beliefs; revisionism can imply the abandonment of principle or a loss of conviction.

Historical materialism

Using his so-called ‘materialist conception of history’ (see pp. 40–1), Marx strove to uncover the driving force of historical development.

Dictatorship of the proletariat

A temporary proletarian state, established to prevent counter-revolution and oversee the transition from capitalism to communism.

Leninism

Lenin’s theoretical contributions to Marxism, notably his belief in the need for a ‘vanguard’ party to raise the proletariat to class consciousness.

Stalinism

The structures of Stalin’s USSR, especially a centrally placed economy linked to systematic and brutal political oppression.

Dialectical materialism

The crude and deterministic form of Marxism that dominated intellectual life in orthodox communist states.

Perestroika

(Russian) Literally, ‘restructuring’; a slogan that refers to the attempt to liberalize and democratize the Soviet system within a communist framework.

Neo-Marxism

A socialist tradition draws heavily on Hegel and Freud. Marcuse came to prominence in the 1960s as a leading thinker of the New Left and a ‘guru’ of the student movement.

New social democracy

is a term that refers to a variety of attempts by social-democratic parties to reconcile old-style social democracy with, at least, the electorally-attractive aspects of neoliberalism.

Third way

Encapulates the idea of an alternative to both capitalism and socialism.

Hitler views

Hitler, Mein Kampf, the jews and germans, endless historical struggle.

Anarcho-capitalism

Literally, ‘without rule’

Mutualism

A system of fair and equitable exchange, in which individuals or groups trade goods and services with one another without profiteering or exploitation.

Anarcho-communism

Anarcho-communism is on the belief that takes common ownership to be the sole reliable basis for social solidarity, thereby linking statelessness to classlessness.

Liberal feminism

A feminist tradition whose core goal is equal access for women and men to the public realm, based on a belief of genderless personhood.

Feminism

Radical transformation, overturning patriarchal dominance.

Socialist feminism

Seeks to restructure economic life to achieve gender equality, based in links between patriarchy and capitalism.

Patriarchy

Literally, ‘rule by the father

Critical Theory

Holism to political and social understanding

Transnational

Configuration which may apply to

Ideology

From social-scientific point of view

Anthropocentrism

The belief that human needs and interests are of overriding moral and philosophical importance; the opposite of ecocentrism.

Holism

The belief that the whole is more important than its parts, implying that understanding is gained only by studying relationships among its parts.

Ideal type

(Sometimes ‘pure type’) is a mental construct in which an attempt is made to draw out meaning from an otherwise almost infinitely complex reality through the presentation of a logical extreme.

Transnational

Which may apply to events, people, groups or organisations. That takes little or no account of national governments or state borders

Ideology

From action oriented belief sytem