Politics: The Basics, 4th Edition

These writers saw the rise of democracy as the major political

development of their time and sought to analyse not only the idea,

but also its contemporary manifestations in different countries, and

to suggest improvements and accommodations with the emerging

reality of democratic government.

Serious writers on politics now tend to be university lecturers, who

have to have specialist interests and lists of articles in professional

journals and/or monographs published by respectable academic

publishers. They tend now to adopt a much more limited conception

10 POLITICS

Table 1.1 Major contemporary approaches to politics

Traditional Social science Radical

Task Piecemeal explanation Science of politics Radical social change

Methods Descriptive, historical, Quantitative or Ideological criticism

philosophical analysis theorising illustrated

Values Liberal democratic Pro-US democracy Anti-establishment

and ‘development’

Level of Political, philosophical, Political and social Multi-level

analysis psychological

Scope Individual institutions USA or area studies Global and historical

or countries

Content Constitutional Pluralism Class/gender/species

consensus disturbed conflict

by cataclysmic events

Schools (a) Liberal- (a) Functionalist (a) Marxist

institutional (b) Economic (b) Feminist

(b) Historical (c) Systems (c) Ecologist

(c) Philosophical (d) Religious

fundamentalist

(e) Postmodernist

Typical Constitutional Political Contradiction,

concepts convention, culture, patriarchy, jihad

great man market,

feedback

Source: Adapted from Tansey (1973)