Politics as compromise and consensus

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 559.

Politics as the art of government

‘Politics is not a science … but an art', Chancellor Bismarck told the German Reichstag. The art Bismarck had in mind the art of government, the exercise of control within society through making and enforcement of collective decisions. This is perhaps the classical definition of politics, developed from the original meaning of the term in Ancient Greece.

In this light politics can be understood as referring to the affaires of the polis – in effect, “what concerns the polis”. The modern definition is ‘what concerns the state'. This view of politics is clearly evident in the everyday use of the term: people are said to be ‘in politics' when they hold public office, or to be ‘entering politics' when they seek to do so.

In many ways, the notion that politics amounts to ‘what concerns the state' is the traditional view of the discipline, reflected in the tendency for academic study to focus upon the personnel and machinery of government. To study politics is in essence to study government, or, more broadly, to study the exercise of authority.

Politics can be also seen as a particular means of resolving conflict: that is, by compromise and negotiation, rather than through force and naked power. This is what is implied when politics is portrayed as “the art of the possible”. Such a definition is inherent in the everyday use of the term. For instance, the description of a solution to a problem as a “political” implies peaceful debate and arbitration, opposed to what is often called a “military” solution.

Borrowed from Andrew Heywood “Politics”