INTRODUCTION

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 518.

QUESTIONS

1. Why did Martha ask the preacher to come by?

2. Why did Martha was going to die?

3. What was her wish? Why?

Concepts have a particular importance for students of politics. It is no exaggeration to suggest that political argument often boils down to a struggle over the legitimate meaning of terms. Enemies may argue, fight and even go to war, each claiming to be ‘defending freedom', ‘upholding democracy' or ‘supporting justice'. The problem is that words such as ‘freedom', ‘democracy' and ‘justice' have different meanings to different people, so that the concepts themselves come to seem problematic.

At least three reasons can be suggested to explain the unusual importance of concepts in political analysis. The first is that political analysis typically deals in generalisations. The significance of this can be highlighted by considering differences between politics and history in this respect. Whereas a historian is likely to want to make sense of a particular event (say, the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution or the Eastern European Revolutions of 1989–91), a political analyst is more likely to study such events with a view to making sense of a larger or more general phenomenon, in this case the phenomenon of revolution. For historians a special study of the concept of ‘revolution' is of marginal value, because what they are primarily interested in is what is different, even unique, about a particular set of events. For political analysts, on the other hand, a study of the concept of ‘revolution' is not only necessary – it is the very process through which political enquiry proceeds.

The second reason is that the language used by students of politics is largely the same as that used by practitioners of politics, and particularly by professional politicians. As the latter are primarily interested in political advocacy rather than political understanding, they have a strong incentive to use language to manipulate and sometimes confuse. This, in turn, forces students of politics to be especially careful in their use of language. They must define terms clearly and refine concepts with precision in order to safeguard them from the misrepresentations often current in everyday political debate.

The final reason is that political concepts are frequently entwined with ideological beliefs. Since the emergence of modern political ideologies in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, not only has a new language of political discourse emerged, but the terms and concepts of political debate have also been imbued with complex and often conflicting meanings. Political concepts are therefore particularly challenging creatures: they are often ambiguous and not infrequently the subject of rivalry and debate, and they may come ‘loaded' with value judgements and ideological implications of which their users may be unaware.