being cut loose from any stable ties to parties, so that their vote loses long-term
predictability.
Realpolitik
Realpolitik is a German political concept dating from the mid-19th century
and often thought to be especially characteristic of Karl Otto von Bismarck’s
policies, both domestic and foreign. Literally it means nothing more than the
politics of realism, an injunction not to allow wishful thinking or sentimen-
tality to cloud one’s judgement. It has taken on more sinister overtones,
particularly in modern usage. At its most moderate ‘realpolitik’ is used to
describe an over-cynical approach, one that allows little room for human
altruism, or that always seeks an ulterior motive behind another actor’s
statements or justifications. At its strongest it suggests that no moral values
should be allowed to affect the single-minded pursuit of one’s own, or one’s
country’s, self-interest, and an absolute assumption that any opponent will
certainly behave in this way.
While realpolitik in either of its current meanings is clearly characteristic of
much modern political behaviour, the fixed assumption that people do only act
in this way is probably itself an illusion that would not be acceptable to a
practitioner of realpolitik under its original meaning. Perhaps a more useful
modern definition of realpolitik is that it is, ingame theoryterms, a loss-
minimizing strategy or ‘fail-safe’—a way of conducting politics which, though
it may occasionally mean getting a sub-optimal result, will minimize the
catastrophes that would happen were a ‘best-case scenario’ regularly to be
relied on. A more modern version of realpolitik is the, largely American,
development of ‘realist’ theory in international relations in which a state’s own
interests are assumed to be supreme both as a justification for and a predictor of
action, leading, for example, to a widespread contempt for concepts such as
international law.
Recall
Recall is a method for securing greateraccountabilityof officials and elected
personnel by providing a procedure by which the electorate may vote to
terminate an appointment before the normal retirement date or before the
normal date on which the need for re-election would occur. This device
became popular in the USA in the Progressive era (1890–1920) and it now
exists in a number of the states, usually alongside two other methods for
producingdirect democracy, theinitiativeandreferendum. Because it can
be abused by parties, factions and single-issue groups, US state constitutions
tend to put severe restrictions on access to the ballot—normally by requiring a
Realpolitik