SMU: PLSC-1360 - Final Exam Review

PLSC-1360 - Final Exam Review

Thomas Hobbes (Text)

The Leviathan.

John Locke (Text)

Second Treatise of Government.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Text)

Second Discorse.

Carole Pateman (Text)

The Sexual Contract.

Charles Mills (Text)

The Racial Contract.

Thucydides (Text)

The Peloponnesian War.

Aristotle (Text)

Politics.

Plato (Text)

Protagoras.

Plato (Text) (Ancient Critique)

Republic.

Bernard Manin (Text)

The Principles of Representative Government.

Hannah Pitkin

The Concept of Representation.

Jane Mansbridge (Text)

Does Participation Make Better Citizens?

Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson (Text)

Why Deliberative Democracy?

Nadia Urbinati (Text)

Political Theory of Populism.

Achen and Bartels (Text)

Democracy for Realists.

Leigh K. Jenco, Murad Idris, Megan C. Thomas (Text)

Article: Comparison, Connectivity, and Disconnection.

Timothy Reagan (Text)

A Wise Child is Talked to in Proverbs.

Tongdong Bai (Text)

Against Political Equality: The Confucian Case.

Thomas Hobbes (Social Contract Tradition)

• The Leviathan.

• The State of Nature as a thought experiment: Asks us to imagine how humans might behave and how society would look before the state. “Poor, nasty, brutish, and short”.

• The state of nature is a state of WAR (THE POSSIBILITY OF WAR). A war of all against all.

• Reasons for conflict: Competition, diffidence (mistrust), glory.

• Competition = Limited amount of resources.

• Diffidence = Mistrust

• Glory = Humans value of themselves not aligning with others’ external percepted value of them causes conflict.

• The state of nature is a state of equality. However this is not a moral equality, but an equality in the capacity to harm. We are all equally vulnerable.

Thomas Hobbes’s Laws of Nature.

Only first two mentioned:

First Law: To seek peace and follow it. Also, the right to defend ourselves.

Second Law: The Golden Rule - Do unto others as you would have done unto yourself.

To get peace, we must give up certain liberties and abide by the laws established for social order.

Hobbes’s Solution to the State of Nature.

• The mutual transferring of rights to a sovereign authority, the Leviathan. This sovereign enforces laws and social order to maintain peace and prevent conflict.

• We are uniting from the state of nature into a single entity so we can live in peace.

Hobbes’s Sovereign.

• Because the subjects created the sovereign, nothing the sovereign does to any of his subjects can be considered an injustice.

• The sovereign has the absolute right to anything necessary for the preservation of peace.

Rights of Citizens under The Leviathan

• NEGATIVE FREEDOM

• Freedom to do as they like within the laws.

• Property rights.

• Can resist arrest and death from the sovereign.

• They lack: Religious freedom, freedom of assembly, no real right of resistance.

John Locke (Social Contract Tradition).

• The State of Nature is historical, NOT hypothetical.

• Defined by a LACK of a common judge.

• NOT a state of war.

• We are all created equally by God.

• Freedom to do as one wishes within the boundaries of Nature (interesting play on Negative Freedom)

• The State of Nature is a State of LIBERTY not a State of License.

• Every person has a right to punish any violation or transgression of the laws of nature.

• Reason for Exiting: Property. Similar to Hobbes.

Key distinction between Hobbes and Locke.

Hobbes: Nature as a state of scarcity

Locke: Nature as a state of abundance.

Locke (Property)

• Humans have a natural right to private property.

• In order to ensure self preservation, humans must be able to use natural resources.

• CUE LABOR ADMIXTURE PRINCIPLE.

Lockean Proviso.

We must leave enough and as good to others. Tie to Robert Nozick’s principle of distributive justice?

Locke (Civil/Political Society)

• CONSENT is the main creation of a political society.

• AGAINST absolutism (Leviathan for Example). Legitimate civil society depends on the consent of the subject.

• Acknowledges the potential for the abuse of power. “Absolute monarchs are but men”.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Social Contract Tradition)

• AGREE WITH ROUSSEAU

• State of Nature as a HYPOTHETICAL.

• Claims that when philosophers try to put man out of society, they end up putting modern, civilized men in nature. Selfishness and evil developed as a result of society.

• HOWEVER, humans in nature are:

  • They have basic needs they can easily fulfil.

  • Natural freedom

  • Limited interactions.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Transfer out of the “state of nature”)

• Man overcomes animals and becomes aware of his superiority.

• Start of basic cooperation.

• The creation of families.

• Leisure (The first yoke): We have domesticated ourselves with conveniences and reliance, resulting in more complex needs.

• Humans form large societies and thus: Comparison, jealousy, aesthetics, SONGS AND DANCE.

Rousseau (Pitfalls of large society)

• Cultivation of land became the devision of land which resulted in property then social distinctions occur due to a persons capacity for labor/agriculture.

• Growth of the Amour propre: The desire for recognition and esteem from others, leading to competition and inequality among individuals.

The Fraudulent Social Contract.

Rousseau: After the development of private property, the rich try to create a social contract that secures their property they are trying to apply the freedom of everyone to justify the property of the few. (A great Adventure Time reference is to be had here).

Rousseau’s Solution.

• The Social Contract “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains”

• What can be done:

  • Establishing a new social contract based on collective will and general interest, directing society toward true freedom and equality for all.

The will of All

Rousseau: Considers private interest and is only a sum of private wills.

The General Will

Rousseau: What is good for society without the personal will.

• NO political parties and representatives - they create factions.

• Whoever refuses to to obey the general will shall be constrained to do so by the entire body.

• If you know your own interests, you will follow the general will.

• Freedom = Autonomy.

Carole Pateman (Main Points)

• Text Title - The Sexual Contract.

• The social contract only established freedom for MEN.

• Two Spheres:

  • Public Sphere: Male dominated fields of politics and legislation.

  • Private Sphere: The sphere women have been forced to stay in - Household, marriage.

• The private sphere however is inherently political.
  

Charles Mills (Main Points)

• Text: The Racial Contract

• Extends Patemen’s argument to race as well.

• The state of nature is used as a justification to dominate minorities (JOHN LOCKE).

What is Democracy (Minimal Definition)?

• Minimal Definition: Democracy is a system in which rulers are selected by competitive elections. Limitation of this definition - equal votes and frequency of elections.

What is Democracy (Liberal definition)

• Democracy is a system that promotes and defends certain fundamental individual rights.

Thucydides

• Text: History of the Peloponnesian war.

• Pericles - The Funeral Oration: A Praise of Democracy.

• Democracy is an innovation and a model to be imitated by others.

• Democracy is about giving people a say in the government and aims at promoting the welfare and interests of the people. EQUAL VOTE.

• Athens was great because it favored the many instead of the few.

Peloponnesian war

War fought between Athens and Sparta. Sparta Won.The conflict lasted from 431 to 404 BCE.

Pericles’s Position

• Democratic laws guarantee equal justice to every citizen.

• in a democratic society, ones’s position should be determined by one’s contribution to society, rather than socioeconomic background.

Origin of the word “Idiot”

Someone who takes no part in political duties and is therefore perceived as uneducated or ignorant in civic matters. The term originates from the Greek word "idiotes," referring to a private citizen.

Plato (Ancient Democracy)

• Text - Protagoras.

• Latham Young’s Abridged version:

• Socrates is seeking out the wise sophist Protagoras to learn about the proper care of his personal affairs, power, state affairs and how to be and adult. RHETORIC.

• Socrates is in doubt that political knowledge can be taught because experts are normally used.

Protagoras’s response to Socrates

Virtue, political knowledge, and rhetoric can and SHOULD be taught. Virtue is being taught everywhere since childhood. Parents, schools, laws, etc.. Everyone is a teacher of virtue to the best of their abilities.

Protagoras’s Mythos.

• The myth of Prometheus - Gives humans art and fire he stole from Mount Olympus and is punished eternally. An eagle would eat his liver every day since he was chained to a rock.

• “Great Speech”.

• Protagoras uses this myth because it demonstrates equal existence, and equal capacity for government.

• it illustrates the duality of human existence, where knowledge and the cultivation of virtue make one a better citizen while also highlighting the consequences of hubris.

Plato (Ancient Critique)

• Text: Republic.

• For democracy to work, we must assume that every citizen is capable of participating in deliberation and decision-making.

• Different people have different capacities. And yet, when it comes to democratic politics we just let anyone make decisions.

• Not all citizens possess the necessary knowledge or virtue for effective participation in governance, leading to potentially flawed decision-making.

Who should govern? (Socrates)

Plato: The philosophers…

Allegory of The Ship.

• Author: Plato

• A ship with a deaf, shortsighted, and unknowledgeable owner.

• Shipowner = THE PEOPLE

• Sailors (Politicians, or Sophists) who fight and kill each other trying to take control.

• The true captain = The philosophers.

Representative democracy

• Author: Bernard Manin

• Text: The Principles of Representative Government.

• Main Points: Historically, the idea of representation was not seen as a way to promote democracy, but to tame democracy

• The “people” are seen as poor and uneducated. The rule of the people is perceived as “mob rule”

• Representation is introduced as a way to ensure that the best and most qualified citizens will govern while still responding to popular demand for political power by giving everyone an equal vote.

• What today we call representative democracy has its origins in a system of institutions that was in no way initially perceived as a form of democracy or of government by the people.

Four principles of representative democracy.

Author: Bernard Manin

Text: The Principles of Representative Government.

1. Those who govern are appointed by election at regular intervals.

2. The decision-making of those who govern retains a degree independence from the wishes of the electorate.

3. Those who are governed may give expression to their opinions and political wishes without these being subject to the control of those who govern.

4. Public decisions undergo the trial of debate.

Representatives as Delegates

• Author: Bernard Manin

• Text: The Principles of Representative Government.

• A messenger carries a message from one person to another

• Alt: Representatives who are delegates simply follow the orders or expressed preferences of their constituents

Representatives as Trustees.

• Author: Bernard Manin

• Text: The Principles of Representative Government.

• Manin - Charging the bank with the task of investing one’s capital.

• Alt: Trustees are representatives who follow their own understanding of the best action to pursue

Problems with Representative Democracy

• The “Populist Complaint”: Elected representatives are chosen from the elite sector and do not look like the average citizen. Each citizen has an equal right to run for office, but access to candidacy and elections is skewed along socioeconomic lines. The wealthy and already powerful are much more likely to run for and win office

• The “Corruption Complaint”: Elected representatives tend to be more responsive to the interests and demands of wealthy and powerful citizens than to the concerns of ordinary citizens. There is a strong correlation between business and financial interests lobbying and legislative policy agenda.

Participation

• Author: Jane Mansbridge

• Text: Does Representation make better citizens?

• Short answer: Yes it does.

• We should value participation because…

  • Higher turnout can increase the legitimacy of the system and its elected leaders.

  • It can improve your character (Mansbridge).

  • Aristotle: We develop our character through our actions and habits.

Democratic Deliberation/ Deliberative Democracy

• Author(s): Gutman and Thompson.

• Text: Why Deliberative Democracy?

• “Most fundamentally, deliberative democracy affirms the need to justify decisions made by citizens and their representatives both are expected to justify the laws they would impose on each other.

Characteristics of Deliberative Democracy

• Authors: Gutman and Thompson.

• Text: Why Deliberative Democracy?

• Citizens are not objects of legislation, but free agents.

• Necessary reasons for laws and legislation:

  • These reasons should appeal to principles that any reasonable citizen can expect.

  • The reasons given in this process should be accessible to all the citizens to whom they are addressed.

  • Its process aims at producing a decision that is binding for some period of time.

  • Its process is dynamic - Most decisions are not agreed by everyone – the ability to change them is crucial.

The Purposes of Deliberative Democracy

• Authors: Gutman and Thompson.

• Text: Why Deliberative Democracy?

• Promotes the legitimacy of collective decisions.

• Encourage public-spirited perspectives on public issues.

• Promote mutually respectful processes of decision-making.

• Helps to correct mistakes.

What kind of democracy is ancient Greece?

• Direct. Assembly, council, court.

What is an alternative to Direct Democracy?

• Liberal Representative Democracy.

• Liberal - Establishes private rights, freedoms, and inclusivity that was left out by ancient democracy which left out women and slaves.

Representatives (as a solution)

Solution for scale. Addresses question of citizen competence. Allows for specialization and experts.

Populism (Definition)

• Author: Nadia Urbinati

• Text: Political Theory of Populism.

• Definition: Strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel their concerns are disregarded by established elite groups.

Populism

• Author: Nadia Urbinati

• Text: Political Theory of Populism.

• Exclusive not inclusive.

• In Populism, the leader is seen as the true representative of the people. The populist leader is seen as their Direct representative who communicates directly with their constituents.

• Pars pro toto vs. Pars pro Parte. The whole vs. The part.

• Populist leaders claim to represent all the people, but they exclude those who are not “true” (those that disagree with their ideology).

• The General will: What the people want is objectively correct, so the leader cannot be wrong since they directly represent the people.

Is populism compatible with liberalism?

No.

Citizen Competence

• Authors: Achen and Bartels

• Text: Democracy for Realists.

• Most people say that living in a democracy is important, but there is a gap between their ideals of democracy and how people feel their country is actually democratically governed.

• Achen and Bartels argue that many citizens lack the necessary knowledge and understanding to effectively participate in democratic governance.

Folk Theory of Democracy

• Author: Achen and Bartels

• Text: Democracy for Realists.

• “People have preferences about what their government should do. They will choose leaders who will reflect their personal beliefs and preferences.

• The authors argue that it collapses under scientific scrutiny because most citizens pay little attention to politics, lack coherent ideologies, and are driven primarily by partisan loyalties and immediate economic conditions rather than thoughtful policy deliberation. Election outcomes are thus largely random from the perspective of democratic theory, determined by forces like short-term economic performance and childhood-acquired party identification rather than by the informed policy preferences that the folk theory assumes should guide democratic choice.

Pitfalls of Populist Democracy (Voting)

• Authors: Achen and Bartels.

• Text: Democracy for Realists.

• Voters are too busy.

• Voters are bad evaluators of past performances. Retrospective voting. Acts of god and Nature.

• Voters are myopic. They often focus on short-term outcomes rather than long-term consequences, leading to decisions that may not reflect their best interests or the overall needs of society.

What is comparative Political Theory

• Authors: Leigh Jenco, Murad Idris, Megan Thomas.

• Text: “Comparison, Connectivity, and Disconnection,”

• Definition: Seeks to analyze normative claims, discursive structures and institutions, and expressions and formations of power from all parts of the world. Comparative political theory expands geographical and ideological horizons.

Standard approach to Political Theory

• Historically exclusionary.

• Assumes the existence of “perennial” and universal questions and ideas like private property.

Three central themes of Comparative Political Theory

1. Draws attention to the global and regional contexts of political power, exclusion, and relations of domination.

2. Brings forth historically marginalized bodies of thinking.

3. Broadens Geography.

Problems with “comparison” (CPT)

• Creates bias.

• Assumes fixed boundaries.

• Requires a proper degree of expertise.

How to do Comparative Political Theory?

Author: Timothy Reagan .

Text: A Wise Child is Talked to in Proverbs

• Pre-colonial African history is often ignored.

• Pre-colonial African systems - Stateless societies, effectively democracies.

• Kingdoms - Different from european systems because there was consent from the people. Similarity = Devine rule.

Reagan’s argument

• Main Point: Education as a broad complex process. Kids are taught communally.

• Aims of education: Survival, Cultural continuity, develop character. Respect for elders. Sense of belonging. Active Participation in the community.

Robert Nichols’s argument

• How to do CPT?

• Author: Robert Nichols

• Text: Indigenous struggles for epistemic Justice.

• Significant points:

• Legal battle between two indigenous communities and the government of British Columbia Canada centered around the oregon boundary treaty.

• Judge Overruled on the basis of “pleasure of the crown” and Hobbes’s State of Nature. Which was a thought experiment.

• Later overturned by Canadian Supreme court on the basis of continuous occupancy of the land.

Bai’s Argument

• How to do CPT?

• Author: Tongdong Bai.

• Text: Against Political Equality: The Confucian Case.

• Not an endorsement of the china model.

• Explores 2,000 years of chinese philosophy and how it can help us think differently about politics.

• Argument: The Government is FOR the people, and OF the people, but not BY the people. Not everyone is fit to rule. Humans are different and have different talents. This is literally Plato.

• OF= Power was given to the people from heaven who then gave it to the ruler. Thus, OF.

• Bai: Equality of Human potential.

The end of History

• Fukuyama: We are at the end of history because liberal democracy is the “final form of human history”.

• Bell: “The end of ideology”.

• This idea has become dominant because of the end of the cold war marked a new age where there is no opposition to democratic democracy.

Hobbes: State of Nature is a state of…

Scarcity

Locke: State of Nature is a State of…

Abundance.