Question

1. How does political scientist Harold Lasswell define politics? Is that a good definition of politics? How would you define or explain politics? Does politics matter to you personally? Is it possible that politics matters to some people but not to others?

2. Briefly explain the main arguments of majoritarianism, elite theory and pluralism as theories of how democratic systems work or should work. Explain if the U.S. democracy is majoritarian, elitist, or pluralist.

3. Choose an important issue such as child care, health care, abortion, immigration, or welfare. What government policy would a liberal, a conservative, and a libertarian support to solve this issue? Explain the main differences across those three policies.

4. Explain how “economic liberals, cultural conservatives” compare to liberals and conservatives. Choose policy issues and explain how the views of “economic liberals, cultural conservatives” are different from or similar to the views of liberals and conservatives on those policy issues. Do “economic liberals, cultural conservatives” tend to vote democrat or republican and why?

Answer 1

1. According to the renowned political scientist Harold Lasswell, politics is a process of “who gets what, when, and how.” From my perspective, this is a practicle definition of politics, and its value is in its broadness. There is a necessary implicit assumption here-that is politics emerges when there are two or more people. In a hypothetical state such as in Defoe’s book, when Robinson Crusoe was alone on the island there was no politics, but as soon as “Friday” appeared, everything became political from the act of mutual benefit and cooperation to the exercise of power in terms of the utilisation of the space in the hut, etc.

My own definition of politics is closer to Laswell’s thought on politics as I view it in terms of a process of interaction over resources on an affective spectrum ranging from hegemonic, competitive and unequal to more cooperative, mutual and coalitional. I believe that a definition of politics which takes into account the different power relations in society would be better able to gage the magnitude of involvement of different sections of the population in the political process and thus help to explain how and whether Politics is a universal phenomenon. A closer analysis would show that everyone is not interested in politics to the same extent nor is every individual or group equally engaged in the decision-making process. However, The fact that some may exert a ‘choice’ to remain disinterested does not indicate that their life is outside politics. On the contrary, it only reveals a trend towards the inherent politics of privilege and inequality in status quo where the elite or the dominant groups may continue to hold positions of power may therefore take their stakes in politics for granted.