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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
The definitive guide to politics in our polarized times
Politics is everywhere. It touches almost every aspect of our lives. And it is present wherever individuals face collective choices. It is hardly surprising, then, that politics so often divides us, above all in an age in which the collective choices we face seem more daunting and more consequential than they have perhaps ever been.
Exploring what it means to 'think politically' in these troubled times, this cutting-edge textbook reveals the many dimensions of politics. It does so by opening a series of analytic lenses through which we can make sense of politics and its impact upon societies and individuals. Each chapter, written by a leading scholar in the field, encourages us to view politics in a particular way, making a succinct and focused case for the insight this brings to our understanding of political practice, political behaviour, and political outcomes. Among the perspectives considered are politics as power, politics as moral choice, politics as identification, politics as ritual, politics as rhetoric, and politics as crisis management.
Written with the new student in mind, this probing introduction will be essential reading for all those who strive to make sense of politics in today's world.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025
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Table of Contents
Cover
Dedication
Title Page
Copyright Page
About the contributors
Preface
1 What is politics?
Colin Hay
Introduction
Politics in troubled times
The meaning of politics
A discipline divided? Beyond the ‘arena versus process’ distinction
Politics as choice
Politics as contingency
Politics as social consequence
From politics to politicization
The structure of the book
Conclusion
Notes
2 Politics as the exercise of power
Liam Stanley
Introduction
The problem of power
Life, death, and politics
Monopoly of violence
Rule, rulers, and ruled
Conclusion
3 Politics as moral choice
Jonathan Parry and Johanna Thoma
Introduction
Moral choice: some general factors
Promoting the good
Distributing benefits and burdens
Doing versus allowing harm
Disrespect
Summary
Politics as moral choice: opportunities
Specialist expertise
Solving collective action problems
Addressing structural injustices
Moral constraints on political decision-making
Precautionary reasoning
Democratic deference
Avoiding paternalism
Neutrality
Can social scientists avoid ethics?
Conclusion
Notes
4 Politics as collective action
Albert Weale
Introduction
The political theory of collective action
A role for states
Collective action and the commons
From the small to the large?
Cooperation and conflict
International relations
Conclusion
5 Politics as behaviour
Will Jennings and Stuart J. Turnbull-Dugarte
Introduction
Principles of behavioural research
Fields of behavioural research
How do we study political behaviour?
Electoral behaviour
Why do people vote?
Why do people vote the way that they do?
Trust and behaviour
Conclusion
6 Politics as identification
Vivienne Jabri
Introduction
Lessons from moral and political philosophy
Power and politics as identification
Identity, performativity, resistance
Conclusion
Notes
7 Politics as gendered
Johanna Kantola
Introduction
Women and politics
Gender and politics
Deconstruction and politics
Intersectionality and politics
Postdeconstruction and politics
Conclusion
Notes
8 Politics as institutionalized performance
Shirin M. Rai
Introduction
Institutions and/as politics
Institutionalized conduct as/in politics
Analysing performance of institutional conduct
Reading institutional conduct
Consolidative performances: ceremonies and rituals
Performances that challenge
Disruptive performances
Prefigurative performances
Conclusion
9 Politics as cognition
Alyt Damstra and Paul
’
t Hart
Introduction
Political beliefs: consequential and treacherous
The origins of political beliefs
Root beliefs
Here-and-now beliefs
Shaping cognition in the contemporary information environment
Media dynamics and citizens’ beliefs
Mediated opportunities for belief-shaping
Conclusion
10 Politics as ritual
Florence Faucher
Introduction
What are rituals?
Rituals draw boundaries
Rituals contribute to social and political integration
Rituals and political legitimation
Ritual between repetition and indeterminacy
Conclusion
Notes
11 Politics as rhetoric
Alan Finlayson
Introduction
Language and politics
Rhetorical situations
Means of persuasion
Rhetoric as political action
Rhetorical political analysis
Conclusion
12 Politics as the history of the present
Andrew Hindmoor
Introduction
Understanding politics
Explaining politics
Evaluating politics
Studying politics
Historical institutionalism
Conclusion
13 Politics as crisis management
Matthew Paterson
Introduction
What do we mean by crisis?
What do crises tell us about power relations?
How do crises enable political change?
From crisis to polycrisis?
Crisis and underlying social structures
Conclusion
Notes
References
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Tables
Chapter 1
Table 1.1
Definitions of politics
Table 1.2
The universality and exclusivity of politics
Chapter 4
Table 4.1
The prisoner’s dilemma
Chapter 8
Table 8.1
Performing institutional conduct
List of Illustrations
Chapter 1
Figure 1.1
Politicization/de-politicization as ‘snakes and ladders’
Chapter 5
Figure 5.1
Simple demonstration of spatial voting model
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
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Dedication
To future generations of political analysts.
What is Politics?
The Definitive Guide to Politics in Our Polarized Times
Edited by Colin Hay
polity
Copyright Page
Copyright © Colin Hay 2025
The right of Colin Hay to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2025 by Polity Press Ltd.
Polity Press Ltd.
65 Bridge Street
Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK
Polity Press Ltd.
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Hoboken, NJ 07030, USA
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-5905-3
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-5906-0 (pb)
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2025931648
by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NL
The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.
Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.
For further information on Polity, visit our website: politybooks.com
About the contributors
Alyt Damstra is an endowed Professor in Knowledge and Strategic Policy Advice at the University of Amsterdam and Senior Research Fellow at the Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR) in The Hague. Her research interests include political communication, journalism, opinion formation, and the role of knowledge in policy-making.
Florence Faucher is Director of the Centre for European Studies and Comparative Politics and Professor of Political Science at Sciences Po, Paris. She brings an anthropological lens to the study of politics, focusing on how people think about politics, how they get involved in parties and movements, as well as the symbolic dimension of public policy.
Alan Finlayson is Professor of Political and Social Theory in the School of Politics, Philosophy and Area Studies at the University of East Anglia. His research is primarily concerned with political ideas, political ideologies, and the various forms of rhetoric through which they are expressed, online and offline, in speech, writing, and even in song.
Colin Hay is Professor of Political Science at Sciences Po, Paris, and founding Director of the Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute (SPERI) at the University of Sheffield. He is lead editor of New Political Economy and founding co-editor of Comparative European Politics. His research focuses on political disaffection, the political economy of crisis, and the analytic foundations of political science.
Andrew Hindmoor is Co-Director of the Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute (SPERI) and Professor of Politics at the University of Sheffield. He has published several books on British politics and the global financial crisis, including Haywire: A Political History of Britain since 2000 (2024).
Vivienne Jabri is Professor of International Politics in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London and Principal Investigator on the five-year European Research Council (ERC) advanced-UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Horizon Europe project ‘Mapping Injury’. Her research interests centre on war and the political, international political theory, aesthetic thought, the postcolonial international, and critical approaches to global justice.
Will Jennings is Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at the University of Southampton and between 2019 and 2023 led the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)-funded ‘TrustGov’ project exploring the trust in and trustworthiness of national and global governance. He is also Elections Analyst for Sky News and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. His research explores questions relating to public policy and political behaviour.
Johanna Kantola is Professor of European Politics in the Centre for European Studies (CES), University of Helsinki. Her research focuses on gender and politics; equality and democracy; and European Union institutions and governance, especially the politics of the European Parliament.
Jonathan Parry is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). His research interests are in moral, political, and legal philosophy.
Matthew Paterson is Professor of International Politics at the University of Manchester and Director of the Sustainable Consumption Institute. His research focuses on political economy, global governance, and the cultural politics of climate change.
Shirin M. Rai is Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Politics and International Studies, SOAS, University of London. She is a Fellow of the British Academy. Her research interests lie in feminist international political economy, performance and politics, and gender and political institutions, particularly parliaments.
Liam Stanley is Senior Lecturer at the University of Sheffield. He researches and teaches on politics, political economy, and international relations, including ten years leading an undergraduate module entitled ‘What is Politics?’
Paul ’t Hart is Professor of Public Administration at Utrecht University and the deputy chair of the Scientific Council for Government Policy, a strategic advisory body to the Dutch government. His research interests include political leadership, executive politics, and success and failure in public governance.
Johanna Thoma is Professor of Ethics at the University of Bayreuth, External Member of the Munich Centre for Mathematical Philosophy, and a Visiting Professor in the Department for Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Her core research interests are in ethics, decision theory, philosophy of economics, and philosophy of public policy.
Stuart J. Turnbull-Dugarte is Associate Professor in Quantitative Political Science at the University of Southampton. His major research interests include exploring the relationship between social identities and political behaviour. He frequently runs large-scale field experiments in collaboration with different political campaigns and writes on political parties and elections in Britain and Spain.
Albert Weale is retired Professor of Political Theory and Public Policy at University College London (UCL). Over his career, he taught a number of courses tackling the problem of collective action in politics and policy. His evolving essay on the topic is the only chapter to feature in all editions of What is Politics?
Preface
This is an entirely new book. But it owes its inspiration to an older book, first published over forty years ago, with the same title, What is Politics?
That book was edited – both in its first edition and in a later, expanded and further developed, second edition twenty years later – by Adrian Leftwich. It began life as a conversation between colleagues and with a recognition that those who taught and studied politics did not teach and study the same thing because they held very different understandings of what politics is and what it is not. The book became an instant classic, an inspiration for generations of political analysts, myself included.
This book is its natural heir in a way. Yet four decades on and in rather different times it is inspired less by the idea that practising political analysts differ from one another because they define politics and the political differently. But they differ still. For even if they now tend to depart from similar definitional starting points, they continue to choose to illuminate what I will call ‘the stuff of politics’ very differently: drawing attention to and thereby foregrounding different dimensions, aspects, or elements of politics and the political.
Each chapter makes the case for viewing politics and thereby conducting political analysis through a particular lens. The aim, collectively, is to show the diversity of analytical approaches that can illuminate the political. Above all, it is to put the reader in a better place to pick and choose between them in conducting their own analysis of the stuff of politics, aware both of what they have the potential to illuminate and what they might leave in the shade.
As is by now probably already clear, as editor of this book, I owe a considerable debt to my predecessor, the late, great, and much admired Adrian Leftwich, whose original idea a book of this kind was. I also owe a rather more recent debt to Louise Knight. Like all the best commissioning editors, she both inspired and cajoled me into taking on the responsibility of bringing What is Politics? into the world in which we find ourselves today – a rather more existentially troubled world than that of 1984 or 2004. I am very pleased that she got her way and I only hope that she is as pleased with the final result as I am.
I would also like to thank the contributors for responding so enthusiastically to my initial request and for appreciating immediately the importance of a book such as this. They have been a joy to work with, rising to the challenges of quite a demanding and specific brief in precisely the way that I knew they would – whilst delivering their chapter drafts in an uncharacteristically timely manner!
I am sure that they would wish to join me in dedicating this book not only to the memory of Adrian Leftwich but also to the generations of political analysts to come. This is a book written with the shared hope that they – that you – will find inspiration in the chapters it contains to conduct your own political analysis and to illuminate the very stuff of the politics you encounter and seek to illuminate both brightly and creatively. For it is only through the ongoing invention and reinvention of political analysis that we maximize our chances of mitigating and perhaps solving the challenges of our troubled and divided times.
1What is politics?Colin Hay
Introduction
Politics is something done, sometimes by us, more often than not by others, for us, in our name (if not necessarily for us), to us, even against us. When practised by others, it is often, if not invariably, tolerated, but rarely admired. It prompts a range of emotions: anger, fear, frustration, irritation, contempt, and, if perhaps more rarely, appreciation, empathy, elation, enthusiasm, and a sense of achievement. It is consequential. It makes the world different and without it we lack the capacity to make the world differently. The stakes are exceptionally high, existentially high.
It is not surprising, then, that it tends to divide us. We have different stakes in the consequences to which it gives rise and different views as to what constitutes a stake, let alone a legitimate stake, in those consequences. Indeed, we could even define politics as the means that societies (and groups within them) use to resolve (however temporarily) issues in which their members have or perceive themselves to have different stakes. And, understood in such terms, it often fails. Indeed, it seems to fail more often than not and perhaps more often than it used to.
One can tell a great deal about the times in which one lives from the popular associations and connotations of the word ‘politics’. If so, there is much that might concern us today. Until recently, it was still just about credible to suggest that whilst politics has never been much admired as a practice, a pursuit, or, worse still, a career, contemporary levels of political disaffection are not historically unprecedented. That was then … No-one is making that argument today. We seem to have entered a qualitatively new condition of political despair.
Politics, quite simply, is loathed; politicians are despised; and, should we have the good fortune to live in what we still regard as a democracy, those we elect to govern on our behalf have never had to do so in such a low-trust environment.
That is already bad enough. Yet it is made far worse by the troubled times in which we live. In the period following the global financial crisis and Covid, the challenges we face, both domestically and at a planetary level, have never been so threatening. They are both largely of our own making and, arguably for the first time in human history, of a truly existential kind. As that suggests, now might not seem like the best of times to have fallen out of love with politics so badly. For the stakes of our politics have never been higher. Yet confidence in our collective capacity to forge political solutions to even the most trivial of problems has never been lower.
Politics in troubled times
It might seem odd to begin the introduction to a collection entitled What is Politics? with quite such a morbid characterization of our troubled present. For what, you might ask, has any of this to do with the definition of this sometimes elusive concept?
A little more than one might imagine, I want to suggest.
Indeed, the above reflections are suggestive of at least two of the central themes of this book. The first comes from noting that they tend to prejudge in effect the central question that this collection poses by presuming a certain understanding (a definition, even) of politics. That understanding, crucially, is a lay understanding – arguably the predominant lay understanding of politics. The above paragraphs proceed, at least implicitly, from the very simple and no doubt familiar understanding of politics as what politicians do (see also Leftwich, 1984). Second, and perhaps more intriguingly still, that simple and intuitively appealing definition of politics is not one that is defended in any of the twelve chapters that follow. And that suggests that political analysts tend to view politics differently from citizens.
That they might do so seems, on the face of it, perplexing, even perhaps strangely perverse. And it is certainly important to be clear here. None of the chapters that follow, nor indeed this introduction, is suggesting that what politicians do is not politics. But one of the consistent messages of this collection is that politics is not just what politicians do, but potentially quite a lot besides. That is important because it leads to a rather different assessment of politics and, above all, its capacity to respond to the challenges we face today.
It is perhaps just a little too trite to suggest that if politics were nothing more than what politicians do, then we would indeed be doomed. But that certainly captures at least part of this. For if political analysts see in politics (as they understand it) at least a potential for the forging of solutions to problems that citizens seem increasingly sceptical of, it is not so much because they have a different assessment of the capacity, conduct, and competence of actually existing political elites but because they typically have in mind a rather broader understanding of politics itself.
Indeed, for almost all contemporary political analysts, politics is the necessary (if never in itself sufficient) condition of any solution to a common or collective challenge – such as is posed in a potentially existential way by the global climatic and environmental emergencies we face. If solutions are to be found, they have to be made. That process of ‘making’ is politics. This does not make political analysts any less sanguine than citizens about the prospects of actually existing politicians fashioning credible solutions to the problems we face. But it does make them rather more reluctant to give up on the very possibility of political solutions. For all solutions – or at least all that do not rely on fate or divine intervention – are political (see also Gamble, 2000).
The meaning of politics
After all of that, it might seem just a little prosaic to turn to the question of definition. But it is important nonetheless, as the preceding paragraphs have hopefully already served to suggest.
It is certainly tempting, above all in a collection like this posing the seemingly simple (and certainly singular) question ‘what is politics?’, to leave the definitions to others – notably those whose chapters follow. Indeed, anything else might be seen to abuse the privilege of editorship by imposing, in effect, a common definitional standard on those who might feel obliged to follow.
But that would be to misunderstand a little both the purpose of this collection and the content of the chapters to come. For as a collection its aim is at least subtly different from that of the two previous editions of this famous and venerable text (a text on which a whole generation of political analysts, including myself as a student, was raised).
Rereading the introductory essays to the first and second editions of What is Politics? penned by Adrian Leftwich in 1984 and 2004, respectively, it is clear that each chapter of each edition was chosen by the book’s founding editor to provide an introduction to a particular approach to political analysis proceeding from a different understanding – or definition – of politics. That is not how the following chapters have been selected. Each does indeed present a different and (more or less) distinct approach to political analysis, but not necessarily one predicated on a different definition of politics itself. Indeed, what is perhaps remarkable here is that although the range and diversity of the approaches to political analysis set out in the following chapters are greater than in either of the previous editions, the authors typically build the distinctiveness of the approach they present on common definitional foundations. In a discipline that is arguably more divided analytically than ever, and certainly more divided than it was in either 1984 or 2004, it would appear as if we have found some common ground at least in our understanding of our subject matter.
Adrian Leftwich would no doubt be pleased, not least as the common ground that I refer to here is close to that set out in his own substantive chapter back in the first edition (Leftwich, 1984). Perhaps more importantly still, it is credible to think that the greater reflexivity on the concept of the political that his book inspired has been a not insignificant factor in the identification of that common ground.
As that in turn suggests, editing What is Politics? today is a rather different task than it was when the project was first conceived, at least in part because the discipline – and the world to which it addresses itself – has moved on. The task that, as editor, I gave to each chapter author was not to propose an alternative definition of politics but to present and to make the case for seeing what might be called the ‘stuff’ of politics differently and, in so doing, to introduce a distinct perspective on politics, a distinct approach to political analysis.
Intriguingly, although these perspectives view politics and the political differently, revealing and illuminating different aspects of the stuff of politics in the process, they typically do not rely on distinct definitions or understandings of politics or the political. Indeed, the diverse array of approaches to political analysis that they present are invariably compatible with a range of rather different (albeit relatively general and inclusive) definitions of politics. And precisely because they are, this introductory chapter needs to address rather more directly than its predecessors the definition of politics itself.
One of the reasons for this is that the approaches to political analysis introduced in what is to follow are far from mutually exclusive. With care (and the caveat is important), they – and the multiple insights they offer – can be combined. Alan Finlayson is not arguing that all politics is rhetoric, just as Florence Faucher is not arguing that all politics is ritual. But what they are arguing is that rhetoric and ritual are recognizable aspects of the political that are often overlooked, and that by drawing attention to them we might come to understand politics and the political differently. In a similar vein, although Johanna Kantola is suggesting that all politics is gendered and that seeing politics in this way offers us a powerful (if at times frightening) insight into the systemic character of inequality, she is not suggesting that we need to define politics differently to see it in such terms. By the same token, while Albert Weale is arguing that all politics can be analysed as collective action and that we benefit from reflecting rigorously on what such collective action entails, he is neither suggesting that we need to define politics as collective action nor suggesting that viewing it as collective action exhausts what might usefully be said about it.
Yet it would be wrong to imply that modern political analysis (including modern political science) shares an agreed definition of politics and the political.1 Indeed, it would be rather more accurate to suggest that there remains no single or even dominant definition of politics within the discipline.
A discipline divided? Beyond the ‘arena versus process’ distinction
The classic distinction to invoke at this point is that between ‘arena’ and ‘process’ definitions of politics. It is perhaps easier to start with the former, since such definitions are in fact very close to the lay understanding of politics already discussed. Here politics (invariably with a big ‘P’) is something site- or locus-specific, occurring in – and only in – the realm of government and the public sphere. The same practices, conduct, or behaviour transposed to another domain beyond the realm of government or replicated in the private sphere are (by definition) non-political. The most inclusive of arena definitions of politics sees anything and everything that takes place in the realm of government (say, on Capitol Hill or in Westminster or Whitehall) as (capital ‘P’) political and, by implication, anything that does not as non-political. The personal is, in such terms, non-political by definition.
And therein lies the first of a number of objections. It seems both unnecessarily restrictive and arbitrary to reject as non-political actions self-consciously regarded as political by the participants themselves simply on the basis that they did not take place in a specific setting, locus, or arena. Similarly, it seems unnecessarily inclusive and no less arbitrary to regard as political actions never conceived as such just by virtue of the setting, locus, or arena of their unfolding. More significantly still, if (ostensibly) extra-political factors are capable of becoming political and, in the process, of changing the content of what we regard as political, it would seem perverse not to see them as political in the first place. To insist on so doing would also seem to condemn us to a non-political account of the origins of much significant political change.
For these (and potentially other) reasons, arena definitions seem to offer, at least to those contemporary political analysts who have posed directly the question, precious little analytical appeal. Their sole advantage, it seems, might be practical: to justify a narrowing of the field of vision for a certain type of political analyst otherwise drowning in variables.
If the contributors to this collection are anything to go by, contemporary political analysts seem to have abandoned arena-based definitions of politics in favour of process- or, possibly, function-based definitions.
So what are process- and function-based definitions, and how do they differ from arena-based definitions of the political?
Let’s take the latter first. For, in the two decades since the second edition of What is Politics? was published, function-based definitions of politics seem to have replaced arena-based definitions among erstwhile advocates of the latter (see also Hay, 2007: 63–5). In effect, any appeal that arena-based definitions of politics might once have had is now seen to have been spurious. It was never the arena itself that was significant, so the argument goes, but the delivery of the function (or functions) with which the arena was associated. It was not, in other words, the realm of government that was important so much as the function of governing with which it was typically linked. Put differently, that the arena (the realm of government) might have seemed important to those seeking to define politics was only ever an artefact of the privileged place of the arena in the delivery of the function (here, that of governing).
The shift from arena-based to function-based thinking has important implications. First, and perhaps most obviously, it implies that wherever the function (governing, the exercise of power, the taking of collective choices) takes place, politics is present. In other words, we cannot rely on a strictly arena-bound demarcation of the political. The scope and limits of political analysis cannot be site-specific. Second, and as this already suggests, it helps us to see the rather spurious (and increasingly outdated) character of the arena versus process distinction that is so often invoked here. For the appeal to a function (certainly the appeal to a function that is actually performed) implies a process (governing and the exercise of power are both functions and processes, after all). In short, function-based definitions of politics are also process-based definitions.
It is to them that we must now turn. And it is here, finally, that we start to encounter a proliferation of potential definitions of politics. For a range of rather different processes have been seen to define the political. Cracks are appearing in the seeming consensus to which I have thus far pointed.
In an earlier book, Why We Hate Politics (Hay, 2007), and admittedly for rather different reasons, I sought to construct a list of definitions of politics. It was compiled by reflecting on the various senses of politics appealed to in the literature on political participation at the time, a literature anxious about declining levels of participation in political processes both formal and informal in Western liberal democracies and by the associated condition of political disaffection. That list was far from exhaustive. But it is potentially useful here in showing both the diversity of (then) current definitions of politics and, just as importantly, what they share (see Table 1.1).
Table 1.1 Definitions of politics
1
Politics as the social life of the realm of government
2
Politics as government: formal decision-making processes with authoritative and binding outcomes for the members of the governed community
3
Politics as the formal set of processes and rituals in and through which citizens participate in the process of government (often at arm’s length)
4
Politics as the defence of the self-interest of the powerful
5
Politics as the process of discerning and acting to defend or promote the collective or public goods of a community
6
Politics as the deliberation and scrutiny of matters of collective concern to a community
7
Politics as the holding to account of those charged with responsibility for collective decision-making within a community
8
Politics as the collective noun for the public, yet extra-governmental, activities designed to draw attention to issues of concern or contention
9
Politics as behaviour motivated by instrumental self-interest or by partisan or sectional interest
10
Politics as behaviour motivated by the collective or public interest
It is not difficult to see that there is plenty that divides these various senses of politics and the political. Some are narrow and formal in their understanding of politics; others are broader in their range and more inclusive in their scope. The first three, in particular, are the most obviously narrow and institutional. Whether individually or in combination, they serve to delineate a separate realm of politics, distinct from, say, that of the economy or the private sphere more generally – the traditional focus of political analysis. Politics here is synonymous with government (an arena-based demarcation of the political) or governing (its function-based equivalent). Political analysis conducted in such terms is the science of government and/or governing.
Further down the list the definitions tend to become broader and perhaps more amorphous, definitions of ‘the political’ more than ‘politics’ per se. Definitions 5, 6, 7, and 8 all relate to government but clearly and quite explicitly see politics and, as they tend to prefer, the political as being concerned with the relationship between those who govern and those they govern, between government or governing, on the one hand, and the governed, on the other (those for whom public goods are provided, those to whom the governing class might be held to account, those seeking to expand the agenda of government beyond its current preoccupations).
Finally, in definitions 9 and 10, politics is understood in terms of the motivational dispositions that actors bring to whatever they do, regardless of the circumstances or context of that action. In definition 10, political actors are those whose motivations are publicly oriented, placing the (perceived) good of the collective above any individual or sectional advantage. Definition 9 places this on its head, associating political motives with the placing of personal, partisan, or sectional interest above the collective or public good. To act politically is, then, either to serve the public or to serve oneself rather than the public, depending on your perspective. The difference could not be starker.
Yet strange though it might seem, it is what all of these definitions share that interests me more than what divides them. For all ten understandings of politics at least implicitly assume that three core – and, I will argue, universally political – characteristics are present. These, I want to suggest, are the necessary and, indeed, sufficient preconditions of all politics. Together, they provide a general and inclusive definition of politics. It is, moreover, a definition of politics that I think is shared, at least implicitly, by all of the authors whose chapters follow – without my having shared this definition with them beforehand or having imposed it upon them after having read the chapters they drafted.
Politics involves, and always involves, actors making choices in contexts of contingency with consequences for others. Put more succinctly, politics is socially consequential choice-making in contexts of contingency. If all three elements (choice, contingency, and consequence) are present, the situation is political; if any one of these three elements is missing, the situation is non-political.
This requires some unpacking, and it is probably best to do that unpacking element by element.
Politics as choice
The first component of our definition is choice. Politics arises only in situations in which the actor or actors implicated face a genuine choice – in which, in other words, there is more than one realistic or credible option open to them. Somewhat ironically, if hardly surprisingly when one thinks about it, those exercising a public political power often tell us that they have no choice (‘there is no alternative’) or that the credible and realistic options available to them are limited (and certainly more limited than we might otherwise tend to assume). In so doing, they are, in effect, disavowing (in whole or in part) their political responsibility. Indeed, they are engaged in a practice that we will presently refer to as ‘de-politicization’. They are telling us, in effect, that they are not political actors and that this is not a political situation since there is no credible alternative on offer to them (we would be wrong to read the situation they face as one ‘of choice’).
Their motives in telling us this may well be genuine. But they might also be disingenuous. One does not have to be of an especially suspicious or cynical disposition to see that they might well perceive themselves to have an interest in presenting what remains for them a choice as if it were a simple necessity. And it is also possible to imagine that, though genuine, they are misguided in conceiving of the situation in which they find themselves as one in which a logic of necessity applies when in fact they face a situation of genuine choice.
But that is perhaps not the issue here. For in so far as it is credible to think that there is genuinely no alternative – that there is, for instance, nothing that can now be done to avert the imminent catastrophe or that there really is only one realistic option in this situation and everyone agrees on it – then the situation is non-political.2 Such situations are, of course, rare, and if we don’t like the outcome to which they seem destined to lead, they are also rather unfortunate. For where there are no political options open to us, we are thrown, whether we like it or not, into the hands of fate (Gamble, 2000).
Politics as contingency
The second element of the definition is almost the flip-side of the same coin. For if the situation is, indeed, one of genuine choice, then that choice arises in a context of genuine contingency. Here the outcome is open-ended and contingent on what we do. Put differently, that we find ourselves in a context of contingency makes the outcome contingent upon the choice taken. Were this not a context of contingency and were the outcome not contingent upon our choice, then this would not be a political situation and our agency (what we do, what we choose) as actors would be irrelevant. Politics, in short, arises always and only in contexts of contingency.
This is interesting in at least a couple of respects. First, it reminds us that when political elites (elected or unelected) tell us that there is no alternative (and that we should remove our opposition to what they propose accordingly), they are telling us, in effect, that the situation is structured in such a way as to render the outcome if not inevitable, then certainly independent of any political will they or we might hope to bring to bear upon it. We are, once again, pitched back into the realm of fate: a politics-free zone.
Second, and arguably no less significantly, that such situations are again rare reminds us that the political realm expands well beyond the realm of government and that it is, always and necessarily, a realm of contingency. If political outcomes are, as this would imply, contingent upon the choices that we or others make, and if those choices are themselves also political, and hence contingent, then the ‘stuff of politics’ to which they give rise is itself likely to be highly open-ended and indeterminate. The more politics matters and the more contingent we acknowledge things to be, in other words, the less predictable they are also likely to be. Here is perhaps not the place to explore the implications of this for what we might legitimately expect from a science of politics. But it does suggest that predictive power is unlikely to be a good test of a political scientific theory.
Politics as social consequence
The third element of the definition is perhaps a little different – though in a sense it, too, can be almost logically inferred from the others. Political situations, as I have sought to explain, are situations in which choices are made in a context of contingency. By simple virtue of the existence of choice and the contingency of outcomes upon that choice, the agency of a choosing subject is likely to prove consequential – both to the immediate participants and, potentially, to others too. Such consequences might be seen as political.
But here, for the first time, we reach what might be seen as a threshold judgement, possibly two. First, I want to insist that it is only if choices made in a context of contingency generate (or have the potential to generate) consequences for others (that they are socially consequential) that we should see them as potentially political. An actor who makes a choice in what we accept to be a context of contingency whose choice influences no-one other than themselves is not, in this conception, behaving politically. It is only once the consequences of their actions start to impinge upon others that we might see their behaviour as political.
But even here, I suggest, a second threshold judgement applies. For many social consequences arising out of choice in a context of contingency are simply so trivial that they do not warrant being regarded as political. The call I make to a friend has a social consequence the moment they pick up the receiver and even, perhaps, if they don’t – if, for instance, the ringing of the phone disturbs the hushed silence of the seminar room. Neither it seems really warrants the label ‘political’. But if the message that I am seeking to convey to my friend is that the occupants of the seminar room are at imminent risk from a catastrophic weather event bearing down on the surrounding area and should immediately seek shelter, then we might well judge the threshold to have been reached (whether or not they answer). Quite where we choose to place any such definitional threshold is, of course, a subjective judgement and probably one to be adjudicated on a case-by-case basis. That something can be labelled political does not imply either that it should be so labelled or that it is necessarily useful to label it in such terms.
Thus far we have tended to assume that the social consequences we are talking about here are both immediate and direct. But there is clearly more to politics than that. This suggests that we might need to broaden our understanding of politics as social consequence to include, at minimum: (i) choices generating non-immediate social consequences; and (ii) choices generating indirect social consequences.
A good example of the former is the ship-wrecked sailor washed up on an uninhabited desert island. On the face of it, this does not look like a particularly promising topic of political analysis, for the environmentally unsustainable choices they make about the use of the island’s resources would seem, on the face of it, consequential only to them. As such, we might easily dismiss them as non-political. But they have the potential to prove highly consequential for others, above all those unfortunate enough to be washed up on the island’s shore at some later point in time. And, for precisely that reason (and possibly for some others too), they can, and I would argue, should be seen as political.
An equivalent, if not exactly similar, case can be made for the political character of choices that generate not direct but indirect social consequences. Indeed, arguably most policy-making is (or at least involves) politics of this kind. For it tends to influence the context in which other actors (such as citizens and businesses) find themselves, leading them to choose to behave differently rather than influencing them directly. It is, as such, context-shaping rather than conduct-shaping. Tax incentives to encourage lower carbon emissions and speed limits on public roads are but two examples. They work not by directly coercing target groups into compliance with the desires of the policy-maker for them but by shaping the context in which the latter exercise their choices. Both should be seen to meet the standard of our definition. They arise out of choices made in a context of contingency and are socially consequential (and significantly so).
From politics to politicization
It might be tempting to think at this point that our task is complete. We have a broad, inclusive, and seemingly quite widely accepted basic definition of politics that is both compatible with and capable of informing a rich diversity of approaches to political analysis (as, in a sense, the chapters that follow attest).
But there are at least three potential objections to it that it is important for us now to consider. The first is very simple. Our definition has been rendered so broad and inclusive that almost nothing is excluded from it. Almost all that is social is now political; in the process, the term ‘politics’ has been emptied of all meaningful content (see especially Heywood, 1994: 25–6). This is a familiar critique of non-arena-based definitions of politics. But I think it is misplaced. For to have the potential to recognize in realms beyond that of government things that we might label political and to acquire in so doing the capacity to expose them to a distinctly political analysis (one highlighting choice, contingency, and consequence) is neither to insist that we see politics everywhere nor that a political analysis exhausts all that we might usefully say about what we identify as political. Nor is it to imply that all that meets our definitional standard always benefits from being analysed in political terms. Here, again, a threshold judgement surely applies.
A second and, arguably, rather more credible objection takes issue with the concept of choice. This, and the emphasis we have placed on it, might be seen to imply that all politics arises in (and only in) situations of conscious, reflexive, and strategic clarity – in which, in other words, a conscious and deliberate choice between options is made. If that were indeed the implication of the above, then our definition would indeed be problematic. For what matters here is not that the (political) actor was necessarily aware of the (political) choice that they made, but that had they been replaced by someone else it is credible to think that things would have turned out differently: that, in other words, their agency made a difference. We are often not fully conscious of the choices we make, and that is as true of political actors as it is of any other class of actor. But we make choices nonetheless. To see politics as present in situations of choice – situations in which the actor’s conduct makes a difference – is not to imply that the actor is necessarily aware of, let alone reflexive about, their role as a choosing subject. Indeed, it is precisely for that reason that this book contains a chapter on politics as cognition, focused on the (behavioural and social) psychology of political actors.
A third and final objection is, if anything, more significant still. It is that in abandoning an arena-based view of politics in favour of a process-based definition, we are in danger of throwing the proverbial baby out with the bathwater. The argument is, again, easily stated. By favouring a process- or even function-based definition of politics, we are relegating the significance of context; and context matters. A politics taking place in the realm of government has a different kind of salience and significance to a politics, even one addressed to the same set of issues, in the public but non-governmental realm or in the private or domestic sphere. This is undoubtedly true. Feminists have, quite rightly, argued for the importance of seeing struggles in the domestic realm and the private sphere more generally as political. But their own strategies of mobilization and ‘consciousness raising’ have always been about giving a public voice to their legitimate grievances and, ultimately, politicizing them in governmental spheres.
But in a sense that is precisely the point. For as long as we are sensitive (as feminists always have been) to the importance of the arenas or sites in which issues come to be politicized (to the ways in which an issue comes to be politicized and to the consequences arising from that politicization), there is no need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. We can have a process-based view of politics (and, indeed, of politicization and de-politicization) without losing sight of the importance of context and setting.
But to do this well requires just a little bit more analytical work. Indeed, some of that work is already hinted at in the above paragraph. For above all useful here are the concepts of politicization and de-politicization (see also Burnham, 2001; P. Fawcett et al., 2017; Hay, 2007: 78–89). Logically, politicization is simply the process in and through which something (an issue, a grievance, a concern) becomes political, more political, or more political than it would otherwise be; de-politicization is the opposite. Politicization, thus understood, might be seen to arise when an issue, grievance, or concern comes to be seen as a question of choice, above all collective choice, having previously been regarded as natural or divinely ordained in some way. The recognition that climate change is manmade, prompting questions about what we should do in the face of that recognition (highly socially consequential choices in a context of acknowledged contingency), is an example of a politicization of this kind. So, too, is the initial mobilization around the abortion rights of women (the first contestation of the idea that the absence of such rights was either naturally or divinely ordained, or indeed both).
But politicization is not just about whether an issue, grievance, or concern is or is not political. It is also about the arena or site in which that issue, grievance, or concern comes to be politicized. The question of politicization and de-politicization, in other words, is also about what might be called ‘arena-shifting’. And that suggests a simple model of the politicization/de-politicization struggle as a game of snakes and ladders (as in Figure 1.1).
Figure 1.1 Politicization/de-politicization as ‘snakes and ladders’
There are limits, of course, to the ‘snakes and ladders’ analogy. First, and most obviously, snakes and ladders is a game of chance and hence fate; politics, as I have been at pains to argue throughout this chapter, is not. It is, in a sense, the antithesis of fate. Second, in the game of politics, there is no mechanism analogous to the routine rolling of the dice that ensures a natural progression from right to left and up the board – politicizations and, indeed, de-politicizations have to be made, and they are made politically (with their consequences contingent upon how they are made). And, third, politics is not (generally) a winner-takes-all game, with plenty of fruitful opportunities for cooperation between the participants: the players. But what is clear is that while there are lots of ladders, there are just as many snakes!
The structure of the book
Our task is now just about complete. It serves really only for me now to introduce what follows.
As I have suggested, politics is a universal and perennial feature of all human societies, present wherever individuals face collective choices. It is hardly surprising, then, that it should divide us, above all in an age in which the collective choices we face seem more daunting and more consequential than they have perhaps ever been.
Exploring what it might mean to ‘think politically’ in such times, the chapters that follow seek to explore the multi-dimensionality of politics. They do so, individually and collectively, by opening a series of analytical lenses through which sense might be made of politics. Each chapter encourages us to view what I have called the stuff of politics in a particular way, making a succinct and focused case for the insight this might bring to our understanding of political practice, political behaviour, and political outcomes.
In this respect, the book is very much inspired by the rationale of Adrian Leftwich’s original. This, as I see it, was to seek greater mutual understanding among colleagues by asking them to be clear about what they meant by politics when they sought to conduct political analysis, acknowledging the very different ways in which it was (and is still today) conducted. The idea was to use the opportunity of that conversation to provide for students, practitioners, and the general reader alike an introduction to the inherently contested character of both politics and the political analysis to which it gives rise.
This book seeks to retain that rationale but with an entirely new set of chapters designed to reflect the diversity of analytical approaches present in contemporary political analysis.
The remit given to each chapter author was clear and it can be summarized as follows:
To introduce students and the wider reader to the multiplicity of lenses through which sense is made of politics in modern political analysis.
To provide a series of clearly written and accessible introductions, each of which seeks to entice the student and wider reader into viewing politics through a particular lens.
To provide, in effect, chapters that are an invitation to view politics in a particular way (as the analysis of power, as gendered, as taking place in institutional settings, as conducted through rhetoric, and so forth).
To encourage students and the wider reader to reflect on the desirability analytically of viewing politics in such different ways and to encourage them to think about how the insights of these different ways of viewing politics can be combined.
To reflect in the process on the analytical but also the normative content of political analysis and on the nature of politics and the political as a realm of social inquiry.
And finally, and perhaps above all, to encourage those interested in conducting their own political analysis to start to take responsibility for the analytical choices they make in viewing politics in particular ways, being aware of the range of alternatives on offer.
The central theme here is of the multiple lenses through which politics can be viewed. It is reflected in the common form of title that I have insisted on for each chapter: ‘politics as X’, where only the ‘X’ varies between the chapters. In effect, the implicit rationale here is that different analytical perspectives and approaches to politics proceed from different answers to the question ‘what is politics?’ Their distinct approach to the study of politics reflects this.
But such answers come in a variety of forms. Some answers appeal to factors that are universal (here the claim is that all politics contains X), others to factors that are exclusive (only that which is X is political), and some to both (all politics is X and only that which is X is political). That suggests that we can construct the following two-by-two table (Table 1.2).
Table 1.2 The universality and exclusivity of politics
Among understandings of politics appealing to factors or dimensions that are both universal and exclusive (all that is X is political and only that which is X is political) are politics as the exercise of power (Liam Stanley’s chapter), politics as collective action (Albert Weale’s chapter), politics as moral choice (Jonathan Parry and Johanna Thoma’s chapter), and politics as the history of the present (Andrew Hindmoor’s chapter).
Among understandings of politics that appeal to ostensibly universal features of politics (things present in all politics) but not exclusive to politics (and so present also in the non-political) are politics as behaviour (Will Jennings and Stuart Turnbull-Dugarte’s chapter – all politics involves behaviour but not all behaviour is political), politics as cognition (Alyt Damstra and Paul ’t Hart’s chapter), and politics as institutionalized performance (Shirin Rai’s chapter).
Among understandings of politics that appeal to exclusive but non-universal features or politics are politics as identification (Vivienne Jabri’s chapter – all identification is political even if not all politics is identification), politics as rhetoric (Alan Finlayson’s chapter), politics as ritual (Florence Faucher’s chapter), politics as gendered (Johanna Kantola’s chapter), and politics as crisis management (Matthew Paterson’s chapter).
Finally, if only out of completeness and even though it is not discussed directly in this book, it is possible to populate the always-difficult-to-fill bottom-right quadrant in the two-by-two table by thinking of a realm of at least hypothetical political analysis concerned with exploring an element of the political that is neither exclusively political nor universally political. The perhaps intriguing example that I have picked is politics as the social life of non-human species. Clearly, were we to regard the social life of non-human species as at least potentially political, as well we might, we would not think of it as exclusively political (since not all of the social life of non-human species is credibly political) or universally political (since there is clearly more to politics than the social life of non-human species). It remains to this day, perhaps unremarkably, a minority field of study (though see De Waal, 2007).
Conclusion
It would be wrong, I think, to leave the final word, as it were, to the social life of non-human species in a collection such as this. Yet this is a book that strives to get beyond the mainstream in at least one important respect. For it seeks to give the stage, at least in part, to those keen to illuminate some typically rather marginal and understudied aspects of the political. Four chapters in particular stand out here: those concerned with politics as cognition, politics as ritual, politics as rhetoric, and politics as crisis management. Until recently, one might have said the same about politics as identification – and it is not surprising that there is little or no mention of identity and identification in either of the earlier editions of What is Politics?
The motivation in choosing to bring these at least currently rather unconventional approaches to political analysis into a book on What is Politics? is two-fold.
