electoral politics in some countries necessarily indicate a decline in
the importance of politics?
The authors’ sympathies lie with Maurice Duverger (1972: 19)
who argues, ‘The two-faced god, Janus, is the true image of power’. In
other words, both conflict and consensus are essential elements to the
creation of a political situation. The imposition of one person’s or
group’s interests on another by force and without any element of
consent seems far from what most people understand by ‘politics’,
as Crick (2000) argues. On the other hand, a situation (perhaps
unlikely) in which a group in total agreement (as to goals and
methods), proceeds to achieve more and more of its objectives does
not sounds like a political process either.
Thus ‘politics’ encompasses a broad range of situations in which
people’s objectives vary, but in which they work together to achieve
those aims they have in common as well as competing where aims
conflict. Both co-operation and competition may involve bargaining,
argument and coercion. Politics may often be more an art than a
science, and the art of politics may often be to see the potential for
alliances rather than antagonisms amongst differing groups.
Approaches to the study of politics
One of the joys, and also one of the frustrations, of the study of
politics lies in the variety of approaches adopted by academic writers
to the subject. This is a joy in the sense that within one course of
study you will be introduced to a rich spectrum of writing ranging
from classic philosophers like Plato (1866) and Aristotle (1946),
through radical sociologists such as C. Wright Mills (1956) and
Pareto (1976), to dedicated modern social scientists wielding statis-
tical tests of significance to analyse huge volumes of computerised
data, e.g. Robert Dahl (1971). It is frustrating in that the conclusions
of such writers cannot be simply accumulated to form a certain body
of knowledge representing the political scientist’s view of politics.
Students of politics must be ready to live with uncertainty, to sift
through varied sources and accept what seems to them to be relevant
and valid.
The remainder of this chapter attempts to provide tools to enable
students to do their own ‘sifting’, and to recognise why writers on
politics differ so radically. We shall look at three main approaches to
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