Topic 1

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering the core concepts, theories, and historical examples of power, institutional vs. extra-institutional politics, and rule dynamics from POLS3335.

Social Movement (Flacks' Definition)

Collective efforts, of some duration and organization, using noninstitutionalized methods to bring about social change.

Extra-Institutional Politics

The realm of political activities, agents, and movements that operate outside of formal, authoritative state channels and established governing institutions.

Why should we pay attention to extra institutional politics?

• can help in understanding the formation of contemporary politics institutions

• because the scope of the state and its rules is contested

• otherwise, attention is diverted away from other sources of social power

• denying legitimacy to this kind of politics

• is a normative claim

Social Power (West)

The deployment of collective resources, capacities, and coordinated actions of many people to achieve common goals, distinct from individual power.

The State (Weber's Definition)

A compulsory political association that successfully upholds the claim to the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force in the enforcement of its order within a given territory.

Public-Private Divide

An intrinsically political, variable boundary separating issues governed by the state and public law from those relegated to individual or domestic discretion, repeatedly challenged and redefined by social movements.

Political Realism

A pragmatic stance insisting that political thought and goals should be strictly confined to what is achievable within existing power distributions, interests, and institutional parameters.

Zero-Sum Conception of Power

A view of power (associated with Max Weber and Thomas Hobbes) holding that social life involves endemic conflict, where one actor realizes their will only at the expense of and against the resistance of another.

Distributional View of Power Resources

The perspective that power derives from possessing unevenly distributed attributes or things (wealth, skills, status, or weapons) that are statically concentrated at the top of the social hierarchy.

Structural Power (Schwartz)

Power rooted in patterned interdependence, where the inability of an ongoing system to function without routinized contributions gives subordinate groups the leverage to disrupt and alter the system.

Actionability of Contributions - problems to actionability

The degree to which a group's necessary contributions to interdependent social relations can be effectively mobilized or withheld as leverage in power contests.

problems of:

coordination

endurance

controlling alternatives

exit

multiple and constraining bonds

Rule Making as a Power Strategy

The practice of using state authority and formal institutions to define permissible behaviors in interdependent relations, thereby stabilizing domination and neutralizing subordinate leverage.

Rule Breaking as a Power Strategy

The deliberate disruption, evasion, or violation of institutional rules by subordinate actors seeking to activate the inherent leverage of social interdependence and challenge domination.