Power and politics (short note)

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.