What is politics?
In this post, I’m going to tell you about politics in
my house and what it really is. Hopefully I can give you some insight on how to
understand it and what some of the most important things are to know.
If you have ever heard me say ‘politics is a real world
event’, then you’ll know that not everyone agrees with me and that’s probably
why it feels so strange to use the word. So let me explain it to you
straight-on as much as possible and hope you at least like it. Yes, this will
probably be quite long.
So political science is defined as “the study of society,
human behavior, institutions, and government’’ (Oxford Dictionary). These three
words make up a huge part of the subject matter and they are often used
interchangeably together with each other. But those three terms have different
meanings and are often misused. A lot of people confuse them for one another
but that doesn’t mean it’s the case. Also, don’t get me wrong, they are just
two different ones with diverse uses. For example, Political Science is quite
different from Social Science, so there is also no relation between these two
fields. But politics isn’t the same as sociology or psychology. The main ideas
of what we have to discuss are sociological as well as psychological and
political ones. We’ll talk about political theory later on and then after that
we will come to sociology, a field in its own right.
So how does political science differ from other kinds of
social science? Well, first and foremost, politics research is more empirical
and theoretical, while other fields are more qualitative. But do you think
politics is like social science, is it more rigorous or factual? Do you think
politics studies aren’t really empirical, even when compared to the fields of
statistics or economics? Well, that’s only partially correct. It’s true
politics is full of facts and has a certain degree of factual thinking as well.
It’s been estimated that the average American sees around 800 election times
every year, which means it’s around 2,000 election times per month. There are a
few interesting facts about elections that you should know and if you want to
understand politics better then you need to learn a bit more than that. For
instance, most US citizens are unaware of how many votes their state has
received and some of that can vary across states, sometimes up to almost 100%
depending on who wins. This makes sure that each state is given equal weight on
elections on a national level. And you can also see how closely elections are
arranged. One major thing this fact shows is that candidates can try every way
they want to win an election, it doesn’t always happen that way. As far as
candidates are concerned, they might start out strong and maybe lose, but then
they might gain something out of it and become stronger. That’s pretty much
what happens with politics when things go against a candidate or when you have
good odds against a candidate as well.
But how do politicians and politicians decide? How do they
choose? How do they decide whom they want to vote for? How does it happen? Are
we talking about simple majority or whatever? Can someone make a difference
with just a couple of thousand votes? Of course! You would just need 1 million
votes to change the outcome in some states where elections are close. No kidding!
And you already knew that election is one of the biggest political events of
our time. All in all, there are a couple of ways to be successful nowadays. For
example, in the United States it usually starts off with small groups of voters
that are spread over multiple states instead of just a handful of elected
officials and politicians. Elections are no longer only about money and power.
They are also about persuasion and persuasions. Politicians know this and
that’s the reason that they are trying to appeal to the individual voter and
convince him or her to support the policies that their party claims to stand
for. Some of them are successful and others may fail. In general, they have
more luck with smaller groups and less success with larger ones. Their methods
are easier to understand because we have seen it before.
Now you may wonder; ‘but politics is a very rational
place. Why should we be scared of the unknown’. To answer that question, the
following points need to be made:
Political scientists are aware of the dangers surrounding
large voting populations. Just take into account the famous saying of Richard
Nixon: ‘’It is difficult to predict the future, especially in a country like
ours” (Nixon 1992). In his speech he gives us an indication of what might
happen during the next presidential election and why we shouldn’t trust the
politicians either. He says this:
“It’s hard to know when your election tomorrow will result
in victory or defeat. It can be anything. It can come down to a couple dozen
counties – in any state – the process of counting ballots may stop for hours or
days due to extreme heat or cold. Or people simply won’t show up to vote even
after being informed their ballots cannot be counted. And there will certainly
be serious disruptions. People might ignore instructions to vote until polls
close because they were still upset by the last week’s results or because they
need to gather information to cast their ballot, only to find a polling station
closed down and the place too busy to accommodate people or because of
technical problems. This can lead to an anxious waiting and potentially long
lines. Even if you’re able to vote early, finding an available space can be a
problem especially in big towns. When it comes to absentee ballots, the Postal
Service must have the ability to deliver mail in person during peak periods,
including late in the night before polls close.’’
Now here comes the most important part of the whole
discussion. If you would want to run for president of the U.S. with the Democratic
Party and Joe Biden then you should be okay because the Democrats and their
supporters have a strong base. If you want to run for president of the
Republican Party and Donald Trump then you should be okay. But how do they
choose a leader? How do politicians figure this out? Now we know Donald Trump
is having trouble running his campaign, but that doesn’t mean he won’t win
again or there won’t be a new one. Let’s assume he gets elected from 2016 to
2020 and then a new President could come. Who takes responsibility of selecting
the best candidate and making sure it gets chosen wisely, how it is discussed
and decided and is that the best candidate is chosen? Again let’s suppose he is
chosen and that he becomes the current President of our great nation. Would
that person not be wise enough to select a good challenger? Does that person
really know what kind of strategy to implement or how to carry out campaigns
properly? Or does that person have bad experience with getting into such
situations? The latter is a more probable scenario. In the past there was no
shortage of scandals involving politicians and their scandals were often linked
to their own personal failures. For example, Bill Cosby’s sexual assault
scandal started it all, but was caused by his inability to carry out proper
counseling (Brilliant 1998). He didn’t know how to overcome his childhood
depression and anxiety. Now that situation is changing but there would also be
a negative impact on his physical condition. Another big name to mention here
is former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, he was impeached and convicted for
stealing thousands of dollars. He had a reputation of incompetence when it came
to his job. He is now known for failing at everything he did and that’s what
politicians need to keep in mind. But how did they select the best guy?
Politicians aren’t exactly responsible and that’s why we
can never be sure who is actually doing it. Our choices can seem unfair without
having to explain it further, so let me say that I’m just giving basic thoughts
on how it happens in a nutshell without needing complex explanations.
So back to the topic of politics. Politics isn’t something
complicated that requires a lot of knowledge and understanding. We know the
three words of sociology or political science and we know what we’ve learnt and
learned from various sources. Now we are going to focus on some more practical
aspects and a little bit more theoretical stuff. Not only politics and how it’s
done but also the history behind it. We will go through both countries and a
history of what the world experienced and how the US and Russia developed their
economies. The last thing of a discussion of political science is the
differences and similarities between politics and diplomacy. Both of them have
something in common and both require preparation and practice in order to
succeed at life and to find peace and harmony after a conflict. Diplomacy
consists of two parts that are interrelated and need to be practiced
separately. First is diplomacy itself and diplomacy is the art or skill of
establishing rapport – which is essentially communication – with a target.
Second, diplomacy is the activity of developing relationships with others,
establishing cooperation, cooperating, and forming cooperative associations.
This type of political system is called democracy as well as dictatorship.
The second part is defense, which is the idea of
protecting the interests of the masses from external coercion. Political
systems have defense and defense is considered to be a tool and weapon of
economic development, but it needs to be practiced and maintained. An effective
defense mechanism includes military, paramilitary organizations, police forces,
intelligence agencies, special agencies, private and public sectors, courts,
legislative bodies, judicial organizations, security services, prisons, asylum
seekers and asylum seekers and criminal justice.
The third part is the economy, which can be described as above.