POLITICS
This chapter
discusses what politics is and the ways in which scholars have
attempted to understand it. The first serious professional students
and teachers (Greeks such as Plato [427–347 BC] and Aristotle
[384–322 BC]) made politics the centre of the curriculum. In the
twenty-first century academics are still seeking to explain politics
‘scientifically’. This chapter discusses the meaning, importance and
problems of such an enterprise.
Politics in everyday life
Is the study of politics a sensible activity? Any watcher of tele-
vision news can see that democracies vary in apparent effectiveness,
equality and longevity, from peaceful and egalitarian regimes as in
Switzerland and Sweden, through the controversial case of the
United States of America, to apparently fragile new democracies in
Eastern Europe and Latin America. Dictatorships seem to thrive at
one time like the former Soviet Union, sending the first satellite into
space and dominating half the world, only to crumble away as the
result of forces which few seemed able to predict. There are times
when it is difficult not to sympathise with the view that such matters