Is politics the study of power?

Introduction

The statement that politics is the study of power reflects a common view, both in everyday talk about politics and in the realist tradition. I partly agree: power is central to politics, but a definition of politics only in terms of power is too narrow.

Politics, power and the political

Politics as power. In everyday speech politics is often just another word for the scramble for power and advantage. A ward councillor who sanctions new drains only in the lanes that voted for him, or a housing-society secretary who works the municipal office for his own block alone, is described as doing politics, and the phrase is used of anyone who will use any means to get ahead. Power is also built into the structures political theory studies. Deep divisions between those who own wealth and property, with the power that goes with that ownership, and those who are excluded mark a society that lacks social justice. Constraints backed by organised social, religious or cultural authority, or by the might of the state, restrict freedom in ways that are hard to fight against. Feminists of the second wave, under the slogan that Carol Hanisch coined, that the personal is political, read women's private lives as a reflection of the power structures of a patriarchal society. Marxists hold that people in a capitalist society only imagine themselves free while they are in fact bound by structures of exploitation. Between states the claim is starkest. Realism, a tradition IGNOU traces back through Machiavelli and Hobbes to Kautilya and Thucydides, assumes that people are self-seeking and that states, to stay secure, pursue power and go to war when they must; its spirit is caught in Thucydides' remark that the strong act as they wish while the weak bear what they have to.

Politics as more than power. The NCERT text takes a wider view. Its starting point is that no society, however small, can survive without some way of organising itself and taking decisions together; the family, community bodies and, above all, government exist so that people with many different needs can live side by side and meet their duties to one another. To reduce all this to selfish manoeuvring is a mistake, even if many people make it. Because people disagree about what is just and desirable, politics is the continuing bargaining by which a society arrives at common decisions: it covers citizens' efforts to shape those decisions as much as the conduct of governments and their response to what people want. Politics is also wider than the affairs of government. Power that is accountable is part of what justice asks of politics: political justice means representation, participation and equal political rights, with the final authority resting with the citizens who elect the government.

Conclusion on the question. Power is central to politics because every collective decision involves someone's ability to prevail, but defining politics only as power leaves out purposes (justice, the common good), accountability and cooperation.

Why power cannot be the whole of political study

1. Purposes. Politics is also about what ends power should serve (justice, equality, freedom), which is the business of political theory and was the question of the NCERT account: politics arises from different visions of what is just and desirable.
2. Accountability. Power is meant to answer to those over whom it is exercised: rulers are accountable for their actions, and political rights make government accountable to the people; the study of politics must ask how that is secured.
3. Cooperation. Collective decision-making and common action are as much part of politics as conflict.
4. Institutions and rules. Governments, constitutions and laws are central objects of study and affect the lives of citizens in many ways.

Where the power view is strongest

The power view is at its strongest in showing that politics is never only formal. Power can sit in the family and in social and religious authority as well as in the state, so that even apparently peaceful, consensual politics may hide inequalities of power. NCERT's examples of unequal political voice (people discriminated against because of caste or poverty although they enjoy equal political rights) show why a study that looks only at formal rights misses power in society.

Conclusion

I agree that power is at the heart of politics and that any serious study of politics must examine who has power, how it is used and how it is limited; I do not agree that politics is only the study of power, because it also concerns the purposes, legitimacy and cooperative side of collective decision-making.