Critical Thinking in Political Science Exam Revision Flashcards

A set of vocabulary-style flashcards defining core concepts and terms from key political science texts including Hannah Arendt, Karl Polanyi, and Michel Foucault, based on the CTiPS revision guide.

Banality of Evil

Hannah Arendt's concept, developed from observing Adolf Eichmann, that extreme moral catastrophe is often produced by an ordinary, bureaucratic 'inability to think' rather than pathological hatred or demonic wickedness.

Two-in-One

The internal dialogue that forms our conscience when the unified self splits into a speaker and a listener during the act of thinking; this split establishes the psychological foundation for moral responsibility.

Thinking vs. Judgment

Arendt distinguishes between thinking, which operates in a withdrawn, invisible realm dealing with meanings and universals, and judgment, which is the 'worldly byproduct' that allows one to recognize right or wrong in specific, concrete situations.

Democratic Deconsolidation

Foa and Mounk's term for the process in which democracy ceases to be 'the only game in town'—the unquestioned framework for political competition—and support for the democratic regime itself begins to erode.

Plutonomy

An economic condition where the fortunes of the super-rich grow independently of national economic health or the purchasing power of wage earners, built on global financial flows that bypass the national economy.

Politainment

Wolfgang Streeck's term for the transformation of democratic politics into an entertainment spectacle that substitutes for genuine class conflict and policy debate, leading to citizen alienation.

Haute Finance

Karl Polanyi's term for the supranational network of international bankers and investors who maintained the 'Hundred Years' Peace' ($1815–1914$) because their wealth depended on stable international trade and credit flows.

The Gold Standard

An international monetary system symbols of $19^{th}$-century civilization that forced nations to discipline their domestic economies (controlling wages and spending) to maintain a fixed gold peg, ultimately triggering political catastrophe when it collapsed.

The Double Movement

Polanyi's foundational concept describing the tension between the aggressive liberal project to create a self-regulating market and the spontaneous, defensive reaction by society to protect its fabric from destruction.

Fictitious Commodities

Polanyi's identification of labour, land, and money as things treated as commodities in a market system despite not being produced for sale; subjecting them entirely to market forces threatens the physical survival of society.

Speenhamland System ($1795$)

A welfare policy in England that guaranteed a minimum income scaled to the price of bread; Polanyi argues it caused disaster by destroying worker incentives and subsidizing employers who paid low wages.

Principle of the Countervailing Passions

An intellectual breakthrough where political philosophers identified the pursuit of material 'interest' (money-making) as a calm, predictable force that could be used to neutralize or tame violent and destructive passions like the lust for power.

Doux Commerce

Montesquieu's thesis that engagement in commercial trade inherently civilizes human behavior, making people more peaceful and soft and making nations less militaristic due to rational interests in stability.

Habitation versus Improvement

Polanyi's framing of the tension between the capitalist drive for efficiency and profit ('improvement') and the human need for stable homes, secure communities, and social continuity ('habitation').

Governmentality

Michel Foucault's term for the ensemble of institutions, procedures, and knowledge (political economy) that allows modern states to exercise power over populations by arranging conditions rather than just commanding subjects.

Rendering Technical

Tania Murray-Li's term for the process of reframing messy, politically charged problems as neutral technical problems manageable by expert calculation, thereby excluding structural causes like class exploitation.

Anti-Politics Machine

The systemic effect of improvement programs where political challenges (like land rights) are converted into administrative management (like training programs), defusing demands for structural change.

Friction

Anna Tsing's concept for the awkward, unequal, and culturally specific encounters that enable global commodity flows while also generating the traction necessary for both mobilization and potential disruption.

The State Effect

Timothy Mitchell's term for the powerful political illusion that there exists an abstract, overarching 'state' standing above society, produced by material disciplinary practices like bureaucratic routines and surveillance.

Dendritic Energy Networks

The narrow, chokepoint-heavy distribution channels for coal (railways, canals) that gave coal miners the structural power to paralyze economies and force elites to concede to democratic demands.

The Economy (as a Political-Epistemological Object)

Mitchell's argument that the modern concept of the economy as a manageable whole was invented in the postwar era, enabled by cheap oil that made endless growth seem possible without ecological limits.

Progressive Neoliberalism

Nancy Fraser's term for the alliance between high-end finance capitals and social movements (feminism, anti-racism, LGBTQ rights), which delivered cultural recognition to marginalized groups while implementing devastating economic deregulation.

Post-Politics

Chantal Mouffe's term for the condition where genuine political antagonism is eliminated by a consensus that 'there is no alternative,' leaving a void filled by right-wing populist movements.

Left Populism

Mouffe's strategic prescription to construct a political identity that pits 'the people' against the neoliberal 'oligarchy' by uniting diverse social movements into a single egalitarian political force.

The Plantation

Anna Tsing's concept of a simplified, controlled ecology designed to maximize a single resource by alienating living things from their natural entanglements, which creates perfect conditions for 'hidden' feral pathogens.