Ethnicity

• Ethnicity is a concept commonly misunderstood by many students, often inappropriately conflated with related concepts such as race, national identity, or citizenship.

  • It is important that you begin with an understanding of the distinctions between all of these terms.

• Ethnicity is largely cultural and ascribed by the group.

• Nationality requires a belief in a shared political goal for one’s people.

• Citizenship requires specific benefits or privileges given by the state.

• Nations do share one or more common political aspirations, and may or may not be unified based on a shared ethnicity.

  • Nation a group of people united by a common political identity, usually the desire for self-rule or political autonomy, and commonly also united by ethnicity, language, religion, culture, or other factors

• Nationalism refers to a sense of pride in the nation of people and a belief that they can achieve their political destiny.

  • Nationalism a sense of pride in national identity that carries political implications, such as the desire for sovereign self-rule

• Patriotism a sense of pride in the state

Social Cleavages

• Cleavages act as the basis for political conflict.

  • Cleavages divide groups in society against one another because of conflicting political goals.

  • Cleavages divisions among people in a society causing conflicts over control of government and policymaking

• Owner vs. worker: A class cleavage based on who owns the means of production and capital, versus those who collect wages in employment for the owners.

• Church vs. state: This conflict refers to individuals for whom religious values are a high priority versus those who are more secular in their thinking and do not wish for religious values to influence policymaking.

• Urban vs. rural: Also referred to as “center versus periphery,” this conflict emerges based on whether people reside in the “center” urban areas where most elites are operating to progressively shape changes in culture, versus those who live in the rural “periphery” where they may tend to be more resistant to societal changes coming from the cities.

• Land vs. industry: On one side of this conflict is the state’s exercise of control over trade and tariffs in order to protect domestic business and workers.

• Cross-cutting cleavages occur when two cleavages do not align with each other in a way that reinforces the divide between the two sides.

  • The group of members on one side of a particular cleavage can be divided to identify with both sides of a different cleavage.

  • Cross-cutting cleavages social divisions that tend to run in multiple directions and therefore reduce the overall intensity of each political conflict

• Coinciding cleavages, also called reinforcing cleavages, meanwhile, can deeply divide a society to the point where it can no longer remain stable and unified.

  • Coinciding cleavages social divisions that tend to run in the same direction, dividing societies along the same fault line repeatedly and creating more intense political conflict between groups

• Centrifugal forces, which are the forces that divide and polarize the people of a state.

  • Centrifugal forces factors that divide people in a society, such as ethnic, religious, and regional differences

• Centripetal force unifies, or brings people of the state together to enhance stability and legitimacy of the state.

  • Centripetal forces factors that help to unite people in a society, such as a common ethnicity, national identity, language, religion, culture, and history

Political Attitude and Ideology

• Political attitude refers to how people feel about the pace with which political change should occur.

  • Political attitude an individual’s perspective on the acceptable level and pace of political change

• Radicals: Radicals prefer rapid, dramatic, and revolutionary change.

  • Radical a political attitude that seeks to make rapid changes, potentially including regime change and the abolition of existing political institutions to create new ones

• Liberals: Liberals would like to make progressive changes to the system, but they want to do so through evolutionary reforms rather than through rapid revolution.

  • Liberal a political attitude that embraces political change through existing political institutions and their reform rather than through radical transformation or revolution

• Conservatives: Conservatives are generally more satisfied with the status quo than not, and view proposed changes to institutions with skepticism and caution.

  • Conservative a political attitude that prefers the status quo to change, especially fast-paced change, and doubts its benefit to society

• Political ideology, by contrast, refers to a person’s preference for the goals of politics, rather than for the pace and methods of change.

  • Political ideology beliefs about what the fundamental goals of politics and public policy should be

    • Ideology can be classified along a very extensive continuum of political preferences, but large themes have developed that can be used to produce five distinct general groups.

• Liberalism: In terms of political ideology, liberals prioritize economic and personal freedom as central goals of a political system.

  • Liberalism a political ideology that prioritizes liberty and equal protection of all individuals under the law as the central goals of politics

• Communism: Communists believe that true freedom comes in the form of economic equality, and that the massive economic inequality that comes with economic freedom only results in freedom for those in the property-owning class.

  • Communism a political ideology asserting that liberty and equality can be achieved only through fundamental economic equality of all people via state ownership of private property

• Social democracy: Social democrats, sometimes called socialists for short, strongly emphasize basic economic equality as a core value, but they reject the strict state control that comes with communism.

  • Social democracy a political ideology that seeks to balance the values of liberty and equality by integrating market economic principles while using the state to provide some economic security

• Fascism: Fascists reject the notions of equality and freedom altogether, believing that people, social groups, classes, ethnicities, etc.

  • Fascism a political ideology that rejects the notions of liberty and equality as worthwhile values and exalts the state, nation, or racial group as supreme over individual rights

• Anarchism: Anarchists reject the idea that the state can be an instrument of helping people achieve equality and freedom, and that the only way to realize both is to abolish the state altogether.

  • Anarchism a political ideology that believes liberty and equality are best achieved by abolishing the state, which anarchists see as the main impediment to advancing human liberty and equality

Political Culture

• Political culture norms, values, and expectations held by the public and elites about how the competition for and the wielding of political power should function

• Political culture refers to the basic norms for political activity in a country.

• Every country has its own unique political culture that has been shaped by numerous factors, but the most important factors to consider include historical events, ethnic culture and religion of the people in the country, the level of economic development, and political tradition.

• Globalization: Technology, information flow, finance, trade policy, and environmental concerns have brought the world together in extraordinary ways over the last few decades.

  • Globalization the process of expanding interaction between individuals, businesses, and governments across borders worldwide, stemming from changes in technology, economics, transportation, and the exchange of ideas

• Modernization: Only a little over two centuries ago, the world was deeply divided into small societies that rarely interacted other than to go to war with each other.

  • Modernization the progression of societies away from traditional values and institutions toward rational processes and technological development

• Democratization: There was an explosion in the number of democratic political regimes that emerged in the world in the late twentieth century, particularly after the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe.

  • Elections are now the most common method for a state to choose political leadership.

  • Democratization the process of consolidating and institutionalizing processes that make a regime more subject to be accountable to the public