The Essence of Politics 9789048544738

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THE ESSENCE OF POLITICS

THE ESSENCE OF POLITICS

Cees van der Eijk

Amsterdam University Press

Cover design: Sander Pinkse Boekproductie Lay-out: Crius Group, Hulshout isbn 978 94 6372 721 1 e-isbn 978 90 4854 473 8 (pdf) doi 10.5117/9789463727211 nur 754 © Cees van der Eijk/ Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2018 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book. Every effort has been made to obtain permission to use all copyrighted illustrations reproduced in this book. Nonetheless, whosoever believes to have rights to this material is advised to contact the publisher.



Preface

In 2001 I wrote a precursor of this book, titled De Kern van de Politiek, published by Het Spinhuis in Amsterdam. It aimed to be a conceptual introduction to political science, for use in undergraduate teaching. It has been extremely gratifying to see that it served its purpose well, as it has been used ever since at several universities. Recently the demand increased for an English-language edition, which is provided by this book. It has the same aspiration as the original Dutch text: to provide an introduction to the conceptual underpinnings of political analysis. The themes, ideas and arguments remain the same, but the book has changed in detail. Chapter 4 of the original Dutch version has been expanded into two separate chapters in the current version. Minor changes have been made with respect to emphases, references and illustrations. I owe debts of gratitude to various people. I happily acknowledge the encouragement given by Philip van Praag and Wouter van der Brug, colleagues at the University of Amsterdam; without their support this book would not have been written. Sue Pryce, my colleague at the University of Nottingham, commented on large parts of the text, which was extremely helpful. Annabelle de Heus, PhD candidate at the University of Nottingham, provided all kinds of practical support that allowed me to focus on the writing of the text. Finally, I am extremely grateful to Rene Bailey, who edited the manuscript (and identified a variety of minor infelicities for correction), managing to turn it into proper English while respecting my personal style. I hope that this little book will be as useful an introduction to political science as its Dutch precursor has evidently been. Cees van der Eijk Southwell, Nottinghamshire June 2018

This book is for J.A. and J.E., and for E.D., N.S. and A.B.



Contents

Preface 5 Chapter 1 What is Politics? Definitions of politics Essentially contested concepts The struggle over words and language as an aspect of politics The perspective on politics used in this book

9 9 19 22 23

Chapter 2 Conflict and Cooperation What is conflict and cooperation? When are goals and interests incompatible or synergetic? The inevitability of conflict and cooperation Not all conflict and cooperation is political in character Relations between and dynamics of conflict and cooperation

25 25 29 30 33 38

Chapter 3 Key Questions Five key questions Everything changes, continuously

43 44 53

Chapter 4 Political Actors Varieties of actors Elites and non-elites Structure and agency – perspectives on actors’ behaviour

55 55 62 67

Chapter 5 Political Conflicts What is at stake? Who are the actors in a conflict? The history of the conflict Connections between conflicts

71 72 79 81 81

Chapter 6 Political Power 85 Power as a concept 85 Perspectives on power and approaches to the empirical study of power 94 The key question about political power 99

Chapter 7 The Political Landscape and the Wider Context The political landscape The wider context of politics Politics and context

103 104 111 118

Chapter 8 The Political System and the Political Community 121 The incomplete fit between political systems and political communities 122 Responses to the outcome of political conflicts 124 The reciprocal relation between political system and political community 126 Bibliography 129



Chapter 1



What is Politics?

This chapter examines what we mean when referring to ‘politics’ and ‘the political’. This is an initial discussion in which terms and concepts are used that will themselves be discussed in more depth in subsequent chapters. I will present and discuss here a number of descriptions and definitions from authors who have occupied themselves with the question of what it is that characterises politics. When comparing their work, we learn that, despite important differences, these descriptions also have a lot in common. This leads to the conclusion that what politics is can be reasonably well described by a set of characteristics, none of which is always required, which can be combined in different ways, and which jointly are still not always sufficient to capture all the associations and connotations that the term ’politics’ evokes. The comparison and discussion drawn from existing efforts to define politics also show that it is impossible to formulate a single all-encompassing definition that will always be satisfactory. The reason for this is that the concept of politics is a ‘contested’ concept, as are other concepts which are often used in its definition. At the end of this chapter we will therefore investigate the character of such concepts and learn that the process by which they acquire a (sometimes dominant) meaning is itself part of what we call politics.

Definitions of politics A review of the literature reveals an enormous number of definitions and descriptions of ‘politics’ and ‘the political’, but fortunately many of these are variants of a much smaller number of perspectives. The two most important of these are the aspect perspective and the domain perspective of politics. The first conceives politics as an aspect of virtually all kinds of human behaviour and human interactions. The second does not do so and instead regards politics as only existing in a specific, demarcated sphere of human relations. Other definitions of politics also exist that do not fit within either of these two general perspectives, the most influential of which we will also review.

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The aspect perspective on politics The aspect perspective on politics holds that ‘politics’ is one of the aspects of human relations and interactions in all different domains of life. This perspective therefore postulates that politics not only exists in the domain of the state, the government and public administration, but also in sport, education, health care, business, personal relations, and so on. It also postulates that we can distinguish this aspect of behaviour and interactions from other aspects, such as the social, economic, affective and artistic.1 In other words: not everything is political, but politics is everywhere. Obviously, before this perspective can be used, it is necessary to specify what the specific nature of this political aspect is, and how it is to be distinguished from other aspects of human behaviour and interactions. The American political scientist Robert Dahl demarcates the political aspect, in his concise introductory text Modern Political Analysis (1963:6), as “any persistent pattern of human relationships that involves, to a significant extent, power, rule or authority”. In other words, politics is present in all situations where interactions between people are structured by (differences in) power, authority and control. Therefore, we find politics everywhere: in firms and voluntary organisations, in churches and in schools and, of course, also in the state and its related institutions. Yet what goes on in all these places is not only structured by ‘power, rule and authority’, and that is why concrete, real-world organisations are not exclusively political. Sometimes the political aspect is dominant, sometimes it is more marginal. But in principle, one could discern a political aspect in all kinds of organisations, institutions and contexts.2 Obviously, Dahl’s description requires further elaboration to be useful: what is power, rule and authority, and what is meant by ‘persistent’? These questions will be addressed in subsequent chapters, and for now we will 1 Distinguishing these various aspects of behaviour and interactions does not imply that they exist independently of each other. How these aspects are related and how they affect each other is an empirical question. This means that it cannot be answered through theory or first principles alone, but must also be investigated on the basis of systematic observation. In Chapters 3 and 6 of this book the relations between these aspects are discussed in more detail. 2 A nice example of studying ostensibly non-political organisations from a political perspective is the study by Arian (1971) of the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra. He analyses conflicts between artistic and commercial interests, and between performing musicians and the management of the orchestra, and demonstrates that regarding the orchestra mainly as an artistic institution is insufficient for understanding the origin, evolution and conclusions of these conflicts. From a political perspective, however, they are perfectly intelligible.

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assume that, even when not defined precisely, most people have some idea of what these terms mean. Dahl’s emphasis on power as a defining characteristic of politics is shared by many other authors. Implicitly, they therefore also subscribe to an aspect perspective on the meaning of politics, as the existence (and use) of power is not limited to the domain of the state and its institutions. The central element in the description of politics by the American political scientists Harold Lasswell and Abraham Kaplan, for example, consists of “the shaping and sharing of power” (1950: xiv). This emphasis on power to characterise what is political is shared by so many authors that it is impossible to list them all, nor would it be useful to do so. This illustrates the importance of this concept for our thinking and understanding of politics. We will therefore examine this concept extensively in Chapter 6. However, not all authors who use an aspect perspective when describing politics focus on power as the central aspect. Elmer Schattschneider, also an American political scientist, sees conflict as the most central characteristic of politics: “at the root of all politics is the universal language of conflict” (1960: 2), an idea that is also used by the German author Carl Schmitt who expresses it as “the distinction between friend and foe” (1979: 26).3 The Irish author Michael Laver, however, regards the focus on conflict as one-sided, and conceives of politics as the mixture of conflict and cooperation: [P]olitics is about the characteristic blend of conflict and co-operation that can be found so often in human interactions. Pure conflict is war. Pure co-operation is true love. Politics is a mixture of both. I will go further, and claim that any mixture of conflict and co-operation is politics.4

Yet others emphasise the aspect of distribution of (scarce) resources as the basic element of what is politics: “who gets what, when and how?” (Lasswell, 1936). Obviously, this question can be applied in all kinds of contexts, irrespective of whether they are commonly regarded as political ones. A final example, for now, of the ‘wide’ aspect perspective on politics comes from the British authors Rod Hague and Martin Harrop (2013: 2), who emphasise collective decision-making: “politics is the activity by which 3 Translated from German: “die Unterscheidung von Freund und Feind”. 4 Schattschneider also sees conflict and cooperation as being inseparably connected in politics. The main difference with Laver, however, is that he regards cooperation as a necessary condition for success for each of the sides in a conflict (see specifically his Chapter 4 on The Displacement of Conflict).

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groups reach and enforce binding decisions”. This highlighting of collective decisions is also shared by many other authors. All these different descriptions and definitions have in common that they observe political processes and phenomena in situations where people interact. The differences between what is proposed to be the most central aspect by various authors – power, conflict, cooperation, distribution or collective decisions – are not as deep is they may appear at first sight, although they are not entirely irrelevant. After all, conflict (and cooperation) is often about the distribution of scarce resources. Collective decision-making is generally required to bring such conflicts to a conclusion, and power relations determine to a considerable degree what these decisions will be. It is therefore quite possible to formulate the defining element of politics in different ways, and still largely agree on which concrete phenomena, events, and processes are to be considered as ‘political’. The domain perspective on politics In contrast to the ‘wide’ perspective that politics is an ever-present aspect of interactions between people, the ‘narrow’ perspective maintains that politics is exclusively related to a specific context of organisations, institutions and actors. In this view, not all relations and interactions are (to some degree) political, and politics is not everywhere. Instead, politics is only to be found in its own political domain. That domain is usually referred to by terms such as ‘the state’, ‘government’, ‘public administration’ or ‘the public sphere’. Such terms need further definition themselves, but we will do so in later chapters. For now we will assume that these terms are – even in their undefined form – sufficiently informative to proceed with our wider examination of perspectives on the meaning of politics. Incidentally, this ‘domain’ perspective on politics is more in line with everyday understandings of the term ‘politics’ than the aspect perspective discussed above, as demonstrated by descriptions in familiar dictionaries. This emphasis on politics as being defined by the state and government is widely used, and it has a long and venerable pedigree, dating back at least to the Greek philosopher Aristotle. It permeated centuries of political philosophy and the contributions to that field by those who feature prominently in contemporary histories of political thought, such as Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Hegel and Marx. And it is still very much alive today. The Dutch political scientist Andries Hoogerwerf defines politics as “government policy, along with its construction and its effects” (1979: 42), while Meindert Fennema, a Marxist-inspired Dutch political scientist uses the following definition:

What is Politics?

13

“the expression of social conflicts at the level of the state” (1982: 25).5 The very strong associative link between politics and the state or government is also visible in a quite different way: in contemporary universities we find departments of ‘politics’, of ‘political science’ and of ‘government’ without much (if any) difference in the subject matter of their work. The domain perspective of politics locates it in the sphere of the state and of government (and their associated institutions), and it implies that this sphere is not all-encompassing. It thus makes a distinction between matters that belong to the domain of politics (matters that are or should be dealt with politically) and those that do not belong to that domain. This distinction is also known as that between the public and the private spheres. As we will discuss later in this chapter, the question about the demarcation between these public and private spheres is often hotly contested. Nonetheless, the distinction is often seen as necessary to define politics as an exclusive domain, separate from other domains of human life and interaction.6 Comparison of the aspect and domain perspectives When discussing the advantages and limitations of each of the perspectives discussed above, the goal is not to arrive at an unequivocal verdict about which is ‘better’ or ‘preferable’. I will explain later in this chapter why that is not possible. Rather, the purpose is to gauge the implications of both perspectives on politics. The aspect perspective, as emphasised by Dahl, Lasswell, Laver and others, opens the possibility of investigating organisations and institutions, behaviours and interactions that would not in the first instance be regarded as ‘political’ with concepts and theories from political science. This often leads to unexpected and innovative insights that would have been overlooked otherwise. What happens in, for example, hospitals, universities or museums is sometimes easier to understand when seen as political than when only seen as medical, academic or artistic. This is not only useful for understanding what such institutions do (and what they do not do), but it also engenders broad theories of political processes, that can be applicable to a wide variety of concrete contexts. For example, gaining understanding about the origins, evolution, management and ‘solution’ of 5 Both translated from Dutch, respectively: “het overheidsbeleid, alsmede de totstandkoming en effecten ervan” (Hoogerwerf) and “het proces van articulatie van maatschappelijke tegenstellingen op het niveau van de staat” (Fennema). 6 This is clearly articulated by the New Zealand scholar Kenneth Minogue (1995: 5): “it is the fact of recognizing such a division [between what is public and what is private] which distinguishes politics … from despotism”.

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conflicts is not only relevant in the context of states and governments, but also in other settings in which conflicts exist. Moreover, acquiring insights about these phenomena is facilitated just as well through studying them at the level of the state as elsewhere. The aspect perspective on politics is therefore particularly useful when one aims for broadly generalisable knowledge about processes such as decision-making, conflict management, coalition formation, resource allocation, and so on. Despite its advantages, the aspect perspective on politics also has its weak points. If politics is everywhere, this perspective fails to indicate which of all these political processes are more (or less) important and hence worthy of study. Are conflicts in a soccer club about the colour of the uniform equally worthy of our attention as conflicts between government and parliament about social security? Moreover, are the political processes visible in hospitals, for example, and states sufficiently comparable to lead to useful insights, or would this only result in abstractions that have little relevance when studying the real world? Also, if we are interested in politics, why would we spend our efforts on studying contexts for which the political aspect is of only secondary or more marginal relevance, instead of focussing on those contexts that are primarily political in character, as defined by the domain perspective on politics? The latter approach also has the advantage that it is more focussed on the content of conflicts, decisions, policies and outcomes than on abstract processes. However, as with the aspect perspective, the domain perspective also has its disadvantages. The concepts of state and government themselves are problematic to define and demarcate. They also lose some of their capacity to distinguish between the public and private spheres with the increasing scope of government policy that results in a growing overlap between state and society. Moreover, some elements of ‘the state’ are more ‘political’ than other ones (in terms of the aspect perspective) and the domain perspective itself does not help us in choosing which of these is most worthy of our attention.7 Another problem of the domain perspective shows itself from a comparative viewpoint. The kinds of matters that states and governments deal with vary greatly between states, or across historical periods. What is a matter of government concern in one context is not so in another one, and if that is the case for something one is interested in, the aspect perspective may be more helpful for identifying the concrete phenomena to focus on.

7 The branches of the state and government that provide services to citizens (e.g., issuing passports or driving licences) are clearly less ‘political’ than a national government or legislature.

What is Politics?

15

A different problem with the domain approach is its inapplicability to some phenomena which clearly seem to be of a political nature. International relations can often not be reduced to what happens at the level of the various states involved. Moreover, sometimes there is no discernible state at all, as in situations of civil war, collapsed structures of government and so-called failed states. Yet that does not imply that political processes would be absent in such contexts. Other perspectives on politics Although the distinction between the aspect and domain perspectives on politics is relevant for many of the definitions provided in the literature, it does not capture everything, and some other descriptions of what politics is about must be mentioned. Gijs Kuypers, a Dutch political scientist, sees politics as “designing the future of an entire society, and influencing this design” (1973: 164).8 Although this definition focusses on the macro-level (‘an entire society’), just as the domain perspective does, it differs from it by leaving open the question of who is involved in this designing. It may be the state (and its associated institutions), but it may also be churches, firms, social movements, individuals, and so on. An additional interesting element in this description is that it refers to the substantive aspirations of everyone who is involved in this process of designing the future. It thus draws attention to what politics is about in terms of goals, visions, ambitions and policy. The characterisation of politics as formulated by the American political scientist David Easton also eschews the distinction between the aspect and domain perspectives. His definition, which is a rather abstract one, has been very influential in the American and international literature: “those interactions through which values are allocated authoritatively for a society” (1965: 21). As with Kuypers’ definition, cited above, Easton focusses on the level of a society, and thus excludes what he terms ‘parapolitical’ processes which pertain to political aspects internal to smaller organisations and groups. It is therefore more restrictive than the aspect perspective, yet it does not restrict itself to the state or government, as the domain perspective does. The ‘allocation of values’ is a very wide formulation that encompasses material matters (e.g. income, housing) as well as immaterial matters (e.g. justice, respect, happiness, power), and it pertains to, on the one hand, 8 Translated from Dutch: “het vorm geven aan de toekomst van een samenleving als geheel, danwel het uitoefenen van invloed op zo’n vormgeving”.

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their distribution (see also Lasswell, above), and on the other hand to the availability of (non-divisible) collective goods, which can themselves be material (infrastructure of rail, roads, internet) or immaterial (such as the institutional arrangements of the state, the presence of an effective legal system, etc.). The qualification ‘authoritative’ refers to these allocations being binding. Just as with the other definitions discussed previously, both Easton’s and Kuypers’ definitions require further conceptual elaboration: what is a ‘society’, what does it entail, and what and who is included in it? Both authors seem to have in mind a culturally homogeneous nation-state (another term we will examine later in this book), but the reality on the ground is often less sanitised and messier than such an abstraction implies.9 Another problem, particularly for Easton’s definition, is how to distinguish between political and economic processes and interactions. Interactions on markets also lead to a binding allocation of values, but they are not generally regarded as political in character, but rather, economic. Indeed, politics and markets are often portrayed as distinct and alternative mechanisms for the allocation of values, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. (We will examine the relation between politics and economics in Chapter 2.)10 The last interpretation of what politics entails that we will discuss here is a set of associations and connotations rather than a specific description or definition. In this form, ‘politics’ is mostly linked to a kind or style of behaviour – sometimes even referred to as a craft or an art. Politics is then the competence to realise specific goals as well as is possible, given the circumstances. Irrespective of whether we agree about the goals pursued, we nevertheless can observe that some people are more competent than others in realising their goals. This competence is not the same thing as ‘expertise’, since it also involves anticipation and calculation, and being convincing (either by force, threat, trust, bluff, duplicity or compelling argument), culminating in what is often referred to as strategy and tactics. 9 This assumption demonstrates that reflection about the nature of politics can easily spill over into normative ideas about how politics and political systems should be organised. The (implicit) notion that political systems should be culturally homogeneous lies at the heart of nationalist aspirations that states should represent nations and that nations should have their own states. It also implies a tenuous normative distinction between state and society, with far-reaching consequences for our perspective on conflict (see Chapter 2). 10 Lindblom (1977), for example, distinguishes between states in terms of their political structure (various forms of democracy and non-democracy) on the one hand, and their political-economic structure (various mixtures of political or market influences in economic and distributive processes) on the other.

What is Politics?

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The importance of these associations of politics is that they call attention to the fact that politics is not only about its location (everywhere, or only within the state and government), or about the stakes involved (conflicting goals, aspirations, etc.), but also about how it is ‘played’. This competence to play the game effectively can be used for all kinds of political goals, for good and for evil, for substantive policy or for the pursuit and preservation of power. It is particularly when this competence or skill involves duplicity and when it is used to acquire power for its own sake that the term ‘politics’ generates negative evaluations and associations (cf. Hay 2007). What is politics? – A preliminary conclusion All of the definitions of politics discussed so far in this chapter have their pros and cons. Each of them functions as a tool to distinguish what is political from what is not. Although there are important differences between these various definitions, they also have a lot in common, particularly when we consider how they are used in practice rather than how they could be used in hypothetical instances that rarely, if ever, occur. Those who emphasise that politics is an aspect of human interactions that can, in principle, be found everywhere, do nevertheless recognise that politics in the context of states is more important than in the context of a birdwatching society. This is because political outcomes that affect large numbers of people in key aspects of their lives are generally more deserving of analysis than those that affect only very few people and only in a marginal way. Likewise, those who are attracted to the domain perspective, which regards politics as being exclusively related to states and governments, do not deny that the way in which very large organisations – such as multinational corporations, media empires, banks and financial institutions and large universities – arrive at decisions and manage conflicts is very similar to the operation of politics at the level of the state. The various definitions discussed so far all include – either implicitly or explicitly – several shared elements. Identifying these elements does not lead to a potentially satisfactory overarching and perfect definition, for reasons to be discussed in the next section. Nonetheless, identifying these common elements does help to develop a better sense of the nature of politics. The following four features are of particular importance. 1. Politics is a social phenomenon: it exists only in the relations and interactions between people, and it pertains therefore to groups, collectives or societies. The implication of this is that discussing politics requires a specification of the specific groups, collectives or societies that we discuss, and of

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their demarcations. This specification may be implicit or explicit, but any discussion will soon turn out to be unproductive in the absence of a shared understanding of it. It is also important to reflect critically about these groups and about what and who is (or is not) included: how clear are these boundaries, and therefore also, how ‘real’ are the groups and collectives or societies that we label as such? We will return to these questions in Chapter 8. The overarching term that is often used for the chosen group/collective/ society is that they all represent a political system in some form. Such systems can be identified in the following contexts: a. The political system at the global level; b. Political systems at the level of countries, states or societies; c. Political systems within regional, devolved and local administrations; d. Sundry other groups and collectives which also act as political systems, insofar as their internal relations and interactions lead to binding decisions for all those involved. These different political systems are not unrelated to or independent of each other. Sometimes one is nested within another (as is the case with local/regional/state-level administrations), and sometimes they are not nested or hierarchically ordered but are connected in other ways.11 Other political systems hence form a part of the relevant environment of the one we are trying to understand (this will be elaborated further in Chapter 7). Which of these possible political systems is most relevant will depend mainly on the specific phenomena one is interested in. 2. Politics involves matters that must be settled for a group, collective or society in its entirety. This includes the management of conflicts, making collectively binding decisions, and so on. Many societies, states and large organisations are comprised of specialised institutions charged with performing such functions, and jointly they constitute the political domain. a. As argued above, the various definitions of politics overlap to a large extent in their core. In this book, we will rely on a concise definition, that of ‘conflict and cooperation in achieving collective outcomes’, because this vantage point lets itself be easily elaborated in the form of ‘key questions’ that need to be addressed when studying concrete political phenomena. 11 Many political systems that are not part of state structures are connected through overlapping membership, as may be the case, for example, between labour unions and churches.

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b. Important political interactions and processes are certainly to be found in the political domain of the political system in question, but not necessarily only there. 3. Politics involves power and power relations in the management of conf licts, the allocation of values for the system, and for making collective decisions. This makes the question about how power is acquired (or retained, or lost) of particular importance, as well as the question about how power ‘works’ in political interactions and processes. 4. There is something at stake in political processes and interactions. Depending on what we are specifically interested in, the stakes can involve the design of the political system itself and its relations with its environment, or the realisation of ‘solutions’ for specific problems, but they can also involve the struggle and competition for power and other resources necessary to realise these visions.

Essentially contested concepts The common elements to be found in the multitude of attempts to clarify what politics entails are insuff icient to arrive at a fully encompassing and universally agreed definition. Indeed, a detailed analysis of all such efforts (something that I will not undertake here) shows that they are not all necessary, let alone sufficient criteria to distinguish politics from other phenomena. This raises the question why it is so difficult to arrive at a commonly accepted definition; a question that applies not only to the concept of politics, but also to many terms and concepts that are of central importance when studying politics, such as ‘power’, ‘legitimacy’, ‘freedom’, ‘equality’, ‘justice’, ‘democracy’, and so forth. Not every term and concept that is used in the study of politics defies agreed-upon def initions. Some concepts let themselves be def ined in unambiguous and uncontested terms, but these are mainly ‘technical’ terms such as the ‘zero-sum game’ (a concept explained in Chapter 5). While such terms can be invaluable in analyses of concrete political phenomena, they are too narrow to cover many of the questions that are on people’s minds when thinking about politics. The broader terms that we need are, however, contested (at least to some degree). In this section, I discuss the nature of contested concepts, why their presence cannot be avoided, and how we can attempt to use them productively, in spite of their contested character.

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The character of contested concepts can be summarised in at least four aspects:12 1. Contested concepts are complex, which means that they derive their meaning from multiple components, none of which is sufficient to capture the full meaning of the concept in question. It is often even impossible to list these components exhaustively. Moreover, it is not always necessary that all of these components are present to consider the concept applicable, but various sub-sets of all of them may be sufficient. Such complex concepts are sometimes referred to as cluster concepts. Descriptions of such concepts are therefore not definitions per se, but rather clarifications of their intended meaning that are not fully exhaustive, and thus also not fully unambiguous.13 Comparing such clarifications may help, however, to arrive at a more complete understanding of the term in question, and of irreconcilable differences in meaning that may exist depending on who uses it. 2. Some of the components of complex concepts may themselves be complex in their character. Thus, if we interpret politics as involving power, then we find that power is also a complex concept that does not let itself be defined unambiguously. 3. Contested concepts generally contain two kinds of components that impart meaning to them: descriptive and evaluative ones.14 Descriptive components point to empirical phenomena to which the concept may be applicable, and are usually explicit. It is often seen to be desirable to include only descriptive components in definitions, but even if that were possible, the question remains which of numerous possible components (none of which is sufficient or necessary) to include in a ‘definition’, and what emphases to apply when using several. Differences in how we solve these questions often reflect unexplicated differences in our understanding of the concept in question. Evaluative (or normative) components are often implicit, and they are often unavoidable because descriptive and evaluative components cannot always be fully separated and, moreover, because the concepts we try to define would lose much of their purpose and meaning without them. William Connolly (1983: 29) expresses this as follows: 12 This section is heavily inspired by Gallie (1955/56) and Connolly (1983). 13 For a more wide-ranging discussion, see Oppenheim (1975). 14 The difference between descriptive and normative is that different people could (at least in principle) agree on matters of description, while their agreement on normative matters cannot be assumed for reasons elaborated in Chapter 2. Thus, the descriptive statement that the European Parliament consists (in 2017) of 751 members is unlikely to create disagreement. Whether or not this body can be considered to be a ‘real’ parliament, however, is frequently hotly debated.

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[C]oncepts such as ‘democracy’, ‘politics’, and ‘freedom’ are bounded by normative considerations…. if we were to exorcise the evaluative point from any of these concepts, we would be at a loss as to how to clarify or refine its boundaries when new and unforeseen situations arose. We would find eventually that a concept so cleansed would lay idle (unless we illicitly brought such considerations back in). With no point or purpose to serve, the concept itself would fall into disuse.

4. These problems are increased by the fact that formulating a definition requires words which, to be fully unambiguous, need to be defined as well, and so on, ad infinitum. It is thus unavoidable that definitions and descriptions are partly formulated in terms of words that are undefined themselves –so-called primitive terms, which derive their own meaning from the everyday language that is used in a community. However, as I will discuss in the next section, everyday language imbues many words with (implicit) normative meanings. Moreover, the meaning of words in everyday language is not unequivocal, resulting in different associations and connotations being evoked for different people. Contested concepts are concepts that, unavoidably, have different meanings for different people. These differences can be the consequence of differences in associations evoked by the term in question, or of differences in the importance of such associations, or of differences in evaluative and normative connotations that the term may have for different people. Yet, at the same time there is often also a degree of shared understanding of what is meant by the term or concept in question.15 This (partially) shared understanding makes it possible to communicate, while the differences in meaning simultaneously give rise to debate or, if there is no debate, to confusion and misunderstanding. To avoid the latter, debate about the meaning of the terms used to describe and understand the political world is key. Such debate about concepts should not be conducted in the expectation that it will lead to full agreement, but rather with a more modest, and more productive aim in mind: to avoid confusion and misunderstanding.

15 This shared understanding of what is meant by contested terms presumes a language that is sufficiently shared and that comprises a critical mass of terms and phrases which are not contested in their meaning.

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The struggle over words and language as an aspect of politics Understanding that the meaning of many important concepts is contested helps to identify the variety of perspectives that exist on political phenomena. It also helps us to appreciate that language is to some extent formed as an outcome of politics. The words and phrases used to refer to concerns, issues, problems, norms and procedures are similar to contested concepts: they are complex and multifaceted; they have not only descriptive, but often also normative meanings; and the associations and connotations evoked by them will vary, depending on how they are phrased and given meaning. Which of the ways to interpret the meaning of words become accepted among the dominant groups in a political system therefore affects how the phenomena referred to by these words are evaluated, whether or not they will be regarded as matters for collective decisions and, if so, the range of possible outcomes of such decisions. Economic policy, for example, can be cast in terms of the magnitude of national income, or in terms of its distribution. Each of these approaches then has consequences for the way economic policy is discussed, for the kind of policy proposals that will evolve, and for who will be aligned with whom in favour of or against these proposals. Similarly, debates about crime follow a different political trajectory, depending on whether they are cast in terms of prevention or of suppression; and the same holds for abortion (‘right to choose’ vs. ‘right to life’), and so on. Each alternative way to give meaning to words has implications for whether it becomes a subject for collective decision-making or not, and, if it does, then for what kind of information will be relevant in the development of proposals, and for the chances of different proposals becoming binding decisions. The political domain is, in contemporary western societies, relatively autonomous (for a discussion of this notion, see Chapter 7). In common everyday parlance, the term ‘politics’ is most frequently used to refer to this domain. This means that referring to concerns or problems as being ‘political’ problems brings with it the implication that they should be dealt with by the actors and institutions of the political domain, while those that are not termed to be political will be taken up by actors and institutions which are not part of the political domain. Where, and by whom concerns and problems are dealt with subsequently affects the norms and procedures that are invoked, and the outcomes in terms of decisions (or their absence). In parliamentary democracies, for example, designating something as ‘political’ usually implies that public debate is in order, that policy-makers are accountable to parliament (and, eventually, to the voters), that decisions

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are based on parliamentary majority, and so on. But when problems and concerns are not designated as ‘political’ but instead as ‘technical’, ‘medical’, ‘scientific’, or yet different still, then the norms and procedures that belong to the political domain do not necessarily apply, and other sets of norms and procedures will become pertinent. In short: the adjective ‘political’ is not innocent, and nor are other words and phrases. Those who have an interest in specific concerns and problems are usually well aware of this and will try to get their choice of words, and their interpretations of particular terms, accepted as apposite. Others, who have different interests in the same issues, will push for different terminologies and different interpretations of words to prevail.16 The struggle over words and language is thus one of the ways in which political conflict and competition plays out.

The perspective on politics used in this book Earlier in this chapter I asserted that different perspectives on what politics is are not necessarily incompatible. However, that does not imply that the differences between these perspectives are irrelevant. The perspective that one uses (whether consciously or not) guides the questions that one asks about politics, the concepts that one uses when analysing political phenomena, and so on. It is therefore necessary to clarify, in the context of this examination of the character of politics, the perspective from which this book is written. This book is based upon the aspect perspective on politics, i.e. the perspective that politics exists in all kinds of human relations and interactions, irrespective of whether they are commonly referred to as ‘political’ or not. When seen from this perspective, the characteristic feature of ‘the political’ can be summarised by the terms conflict and cooperation. Politics 16 The aspect perspective and the domain perspective look at all the conflicts about how to ‘def ine’ problems in quite different ways. These conflicts involve semantics, that is, the ‘framing’ of problems in terms of associations and connotations triggered by the words and phrases used, and whether or not the problem is designated as ‘political’ in the narrow sense of the word. Many of these conflicts are not played out in the political domain, but in the wider society (i.e. in interest groups; institutions of an economic, religious or social character; via traditional communications and, increasingly, social media; and so on). These processes are often referred to as issue formation (cf. Crenson, 1971; Cobb and Elder, 1972; van der Eijk and Kok, 1975). From a domain perspective on politics, this process is only ‘political’ once it reaches the stage that a problem (or ‘issue’) becomes part of the agenda of the government. From an aspect perspective this process is always to be regarded as political, irrespective of whether it has or has not entered the political domain. For a more extensive discussion of this, see Chapter 6.

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then involves conflicts in which (large) groups of people are involved, the development of such conflicts, how groups and ‘actors’ cooperate to influence the outcome of conflicts in directions they prefer, and how conflicts are concluded. This indication of the book’s perspective is still somewhat rudimentary, and lacks depth, but it will be elaborated and acquire detail and nuance in the next chapters. In those chapters, I will make use of illustrative examples – some from the real world, others hypothetical – of which many relate to politics in the context of states and governments. Such illustrations that relate to states and governments are not an implicit endorsement of the domain perspective on politics. They do, however, reflect the dominant position in the contemporary world of states as institutional frameworks that affect the genesis, evolution and conclusion of all kinds of matters deemed to be of collective interest. This does not only hold for those matters that are dealt with in the political domain of states. It also holds for the relations, interactions and behaviour of actors outside the realm of the state (individuals, private groups, firms, social organisations, and so on), which play out within the ‘rules of the game’ defined and imposed by states. This regulatory capacity of states and the consequences thereof will be further discussed in Chapter 7. The focus on conflict and cooperation that flows from the aspect perspective on politics necessitates the clarification of specific concepts and the examination of a set of key questions. This starts with the clarification of the terms conflict and cooperation in Chapter 2 and is followed in Chapter 3 by an elaboration of a set of ‘key questions’ that have to be addressed when trying to understand conflict and cooperation. These questions are also at the heart of subsequent chapters, but then in more detail and depth. Chapter 4 focuses on political actors, and Chapter 5 on political conflict. Chapter 6 elaborates the concept of power and related terms. Chapter 7 locates politics in wider contexts and discusses the relation between them. Finally, Chapter 8 discusses the question introduced earlier in this chapter about the demarcations between groups, collectives and societies that are implied in political analyses, and it does this mainly around the concepts of the political system and the political community.



Chapter 2



Conflict and Cooperation

As indicated in Chapter 1, we understand politics as an aspect of conflictual and cooperative interactions between people and groups about matters that must be settled for a society or community. In this chapter, I will elaborate this perspective by examining the concepts of conflict and cooperation, and by analysing the consequence of the existence of many conflicts. I will start by defining conflict and cooperation in terms of interests or goals on the one hand, and behaviour on the other hand. This leads not only to a definition of these terms, but also to some non-trivial implications about the inferences to be drawn from, for example, the absence of conflict. Having done this, I will continue by developing the argument that conflict (and cooperation) is unavoidable, and that, therefore, so is politics too. A further refinement of our understanding of conflict and cooperation, and thus also of the nature of politics, is introduced by arguing that, although politics is understood in terms of conflict and cooperation, there are nevertheless some instances in which conflict and cooperation are not political in character. The last part of this chapter discusses the relations between conflict and cooperation, and between different conflicts. The simultaneous existence of multiple conflicts may lead to quite different consequences, depending on how they are related to each other. Conflicts may reinforce each other, or they may be ‘cross-cutting’, and each of these scenarios has quite different consequences for the sustainability of the political system, as well as for the ‘political capital’ that is created by conflict and cooperation.

What is conflict and cooperation? In everyday language, the terms conflict and cooperation have not only a descriptive meaning, but they also carry evaluative loadings. Conflict is regarded as deplorable, fruitless or bad, and has to be ‘resolved’; cooperation is good, productive and laudable, and should be applauded. In this chapter, and in contrast to common associations in the everyday use of these words, we must distance ourselves from these evaluative loadings. Thus, conflict

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is not bad per se, nor is cooperation necessarily good.1 These words are only used to describe relations and interactions in a way that focusses on interests or goals on the one hand, and behaviour on the other. A conflict exists when different individuals or groups actively pursue goals or interests that are incompatible with those of the others. Cooperation is defined likewise, as the active pursuit of shared goals or interests. These definitions thus contain two aspects: on the one hand, how the goals or interests of different groups or individuals relate to each other, and on the other, whether these goals or interests are pursued actively. These definitions do not specify what the conflict or cooperation is about; they only postulate that they are about something that is, abstractly, referred to as goals or interests (terms that are discussed in more detail later in this chapter). The behavioural aspect in these definitions (the ‘active pursuit’) implies that conflict and cooperation are observable through the actions of the individuals and groups involved.2 Conflict and cooperation are not terms for describing individuals or groups, but rather their interactions. The terms therefore concern at least two ‘sides’. The complexity of such relationships increases rapidly when more than two sides are involved. If there are three parties involved (referred to as A, B and C), then there are three separate relations that define the entire structure of conflict/cooperation (namely the relations A-B, A-C and B-C). With four parties involved, there are six separate relationships, and if there were ten parties involved, there would be no less than 45 pairwise relationships between them.3 The more complex problems are, in terms of the number of separate ‘sides’ involved, the more difficult it becomes to deal with them and arrive at some form of widely accepted solution. Astute political actors know this, and will therefore attempt to manipulate the number of sides involved, by trying to limit or increase it, depending on their expectation of the consequences for resulting outcomes. 1 One might wonder why we do not use other terms that are less loaded with negative or positive evaluations. That turns out to be near impossible, as related words and approximate synonyms are also evaluatively charged. We are constrained by the idiom that is available in everyday language. Yet, rather than bemoaning the absence of more neutral words in our current language, we may learn from the discussion in this chapter to dissociate ourselves from these common evaluative associations, not only in analytical reflections, but also when using these words in our own contributions to everyday parlance. 2 In certain circumstances, however, the ‘active pursuit’ may consist in not doing something. This would be the case when individuals refrain from doing what they ‘normally’ would do or would be required to do, in order to advance their goals or interests. Examples include strikes or boycotts. 3 More generally, if k ‘sides’ are involved in conflict/cooperation, the number of pairwise relations involved is ½k(k-1).

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Figure 2.1  Combinations of interests and activity

One of the characteristics of conflict is the incompatibility of the goals and interests of the sides involved. This means that the realisation of the goals of one of the sides thwarts the realisation of the other’s goals. When goals and interests are not incompatible they can either be irrelevant to each other (the realisation of the goals of A does not affect the realisation of B’s goals in any way), or (to a smaller or greater degree) synergetic (the realisation of A’s goals increases the chances of the realisation of B’s goals). When they are irrelevant to each other, a necessary condition for conflict or cooperation is absent. Because conflict and cooperation are defined in terms of two characteristics (goals and interests, and active pursuit) we can distinguish a variety of ways in which these two characteristics can go together. This is illustrated in Figure 2.1. The two characteristics are depicted in this f igure as the two axes that jointly show the range of combinations between them. The horizontal axis reflects the incompatibility (at one extreme) or the synergetic relation (at the other extreme) of the goals and interests of two ‘sides’. The mid-point indicates where goals and interests are irrelevant to each other.

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Rather than depicting these distinctions as three separate conditions, we can portray them as a continuum to reflect different degrees of incompatibility and synergy, respectively. The vertical axis reflects activity in pursuit of goals and interests, ranging (at the top) from joint action, to (at the bottom) contestation. The mid-point indicates the absence of any action in pursuit of the goals and interests in question. This axis is also depicted as a continuum to reflect that activity can vary in its involvement and intensity. What we have termed conflict and cooperation are the situations in the lower-left and the upper-right quadrant of Figure 2.1, respectively, indicated by the symbols  and . The figure adds to our discussion so far by clearly showing that there are also other possible combinations of incompatibility/ synergy of goals and their active pursuit. The points in the figure indicated by  and , for example, identify situations of incompatible or synergetic goals and interests, respectively, and the absence of any activity in their pursuit. They thus do not reflect conflict or cooperation, but rather potential conflict and potential cooperation. They could develop into conflicts or cooperative relations, but for that to happen the sides involved must be mobilised into action. There are all kinds of reasons why this mobilisation may not occur, and one of the important questions in politics is therefore about the conditions that either propel or impede individuals and groups to actively pursue their goals and interests. What about other regions in Figure 2.1, such as those indicated by  and  ? At first sight these seem to reflect somewhat absurd situations, in which sides with incompatible interests nevertheless engage in joint action, or where those with synergetic interests fight each other. But they are only absurd when we make a number of assumptions which will often not hold in the real world, such as that people always act freely, or that they have adequate information, or the capacity to foresee the likely consequences of their behaviour, and so on. 4 When these conditions are absent, then the situations depicted by  and  are not unlikely to occur at all. Understanding political processes and interactions between people and groups thus requires more than the identification of conflict and cooperation, but also of the potential of such relations, and of the perverse situations where active pursuit works against the goals and interests of those involved. Such 4 Factors that may violate these assumptions include misleading information (advertisements, ‘fake news’, propaganda, being lied to), the absence of relevant information, coercion and manipulation, threats and bullying, ‘false consciousness’ (which will be discussed in the next section), the absence of relevant leadership and organisation, the need to prioritise survival in daily life, and so on.

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understanding is not only relevant for those who analyse the political world in a possibly dispassionate way, but even more so for people and groups who want to realise their goals and interests.

When are goals and interests incompatible or synergetic? In the discussion above the question was ignored as to how we know whether the goals and interests of individuals or groups are incompatible, synergetic, or mutually irrelevant. This question ties in with how we know what these goals and interests are in the first place. One possibility is to rely for this on the judgement of those concerned. Another option is to trust in the judgement of a third party; a political observer. Neither of these possibilities is as simple as it might appear at first sight. When relying on the perceptions of those involved5 the terms goals and interests are interchangeable, and it is assumed that individuals are aware of their own interests and goals. This assumption may be contested (see footnote 4), but even if it is not, it is not clear whether individuals themselves are good judges of the incompatibility or synergy between their own goals and interests and those of others. If they are not aware of (or have no perception of) the goals and interests of others, then they cannot arrive at a judgement about their incompatibility or synergy. But even if they have relevant perceptions in this regard, there is no guarantee of reciprocal agreement; it may thus happen that where A sees their own goals as incompatible with those of B, the other (B) may perceive their respective goals as synergetic with those of A.6 All of this becomes even more problematic if actors try to hide their goals, as part of strategic behaviour.

5 Only people can have perceptions, and therefore this approach is most directly linked to identifying the goals and interests of individuals. Yet it is also quite common to speak about the interests of groups. But can a group have a perception of its own interests? Only if there is no disagreement about this within the group, such that those who speak and act on its behalf can sensibly express what its goals and interests are. This is a problematic assumption, particularly when we see disagreement on such matters within all kinds of groups. For the moment, I shall disregard this problem, returning to it in Chapter 4. 6 Such differences in perceptions are almost unavoidable in view of the inherent uncertainty about the consequences (including unintended side-effects) of pursuing one’s own goals in relation to the possibility of other parties realising their goals. Each party may commit to wishful thinking about the absence of any harmful effects of their own actions for the other, while being acutely aware of the risks of the actions of the other in regard to the realisation of their own goals.

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It is also possible to use the judgement of third parties to establish what the interests of individuals and groups are, and whether these are incompatible, synergetic, or inconsequential to each other. In such instances, it is common to distinguish between the terms ‘goal’ (what individuals themselves perceive as being in their interest) and ‘interest’ (what a political observer judges as such). That terminological distinction points to the possibility that (self-perceived) goals and (externally judged) interests can be at odds with each other, a situation sometimes referred to as ‘false consciousness’. It will be obvious that different observers will not necessarily arrive at the same judgement about the interests of individuals and groups, or about the incompatibility or synergy between them. Such judgements by third parties about what would be (and what would not be) in people’s interests obviously raise the question on what authority they claim to have a ‘better’ understanding of these interests than the people involved. This question becomes even more pertinent when these third parties may have a political agenda of their own. In short, then, there is no single way to determine people’s interests in ways that are not contested themselves, and political conflict thus ensues not only over conflicting goals and interests, but also over what the ‘true’ interests are of individuals and groups. The latter kinds of conflict are very much conflicts over words and language, as already referred to in Chapter 1. We return to these questions in Chapter 6.

The inevitability of conflict and cooperation Conflict is inevitable, and so is cooperation. Together they constitute the basis of politics. Conflict is inevitable for several reasons. First, conflict arises from scarcity, which is the root cause of all distributive conflicts.7 The availability of what people want is limited, and gives rise to Lasswell’s classic question “who gets what, when and how?” (see also Chapter 1). It is irrelevant in this context whether we are thinking about things that are of a material nature or not. Material items such as food, accommodation, clothing, books, or TV sets can be scarce (directly, or indirectly, if there is a scarcity of funds to obtain them), just as immaterial items can be, such as health care, education, 7 Declaring scarcity as one of the causes of conflict raises the question about the relation (and differences) between politics and economics, because scarcity is also one of the foundational aspects of economics. I return to this question in a limited form in the next section and later, in Chapter 6.

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or a clean environment. Some matters are inherently scarce because they exist only in relative (or relational) terms: status, prestige, fame, and – of particular relevance in politics – power and influence, since not everyone can be ‘highly influential’. Sometimes scarcity flows from the indivisibility and uniqueness of what is desired: only one person can hold a position such as being prime minister of a country, or mayor of a city. We assume that scarcity is unavoidable, and therefore so are conflicts which have their source in scarcity.8 A second source of conflict is the incompatibility of what people and groups regard as desirable or necessary for the society. Here, too, it may be about material or immaterial items. Some promote the development of (physical) infrastructure in the form of airports, roads, rail and harbours, while others oppose them. Some want the (immaterial) separation of state and church, while others oppose that. Some favour a monarchy, others a republic. Here conflicts are not a consequence of scarcity, but of the fact that only one of the proposed alternatives can be chosen for a society, and that its presence precludes the realisation of the alternatives. Why people and groups differ in their preferences for what has to be done for a society is not relevant here, only the fact that their preferences are irreconcilable.9 Apart from scarcity and the incompatibility of what one wants for a society, conflicts are ubiquitous even when there is agreement around what people would like to see realised. In every society there is near unanimous support for certain goals, although what these goals entail will differ between societies and historical periods. In contemporary developed western societies these include high-quality healthcare and education, a well-functioning judicial system, the absence of structural unemployment, and clean soil, air and water. 8 It is sometimes proposed that the rise of a ‘new’ economy, largely based on information and communication technology, would make scarcity a thing of the past. That is incorrect, but this new economy has changed the kinds of resources that are scarce. The scarcity (i.e. high cost) of publishing and disseminating ideas has become less severe as a result of technological innovation, although the use of the internet (actively and passively) is hardly free (in terms of money or the effort and expertise that is required). At the same time, these same developments have given rise to a ‘scarcity’ of (paying) audiences. 9 The examples given in the text are also about issues for which a ‘middle position’ as a compromise seems difficult to imagine. Yet whether or not this is really so depends on the background of the incompatible goals and interests and on political creativity. When in 1974, for example, the Dutch cabinet appeared to be hopelessly divided between closing off a part of the Rhine estuary (for reasons of flood defence) or not doing so (to protect an important natural eco-system), the demise of the coalition government was averted by the creative solution of closing the estuary with a ‘permeable dam’, which satisfied the underlying motivations of both sides.

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Such universally desired matters are known as ‘valence’ issues (in contrast to ‘position’ issues, which are defined in terms of conflicting alternative goals). Conflicts concerning valence issues are about how to accomplish the desired outcome; they are conflicts not about end goals, but about the means to realise them. They have their basis in uncertainty about the effects (and side-effects) of different ways to achieve these goals, and about their consequences for the attainment of other goals that people may have for themselves or for the society at large. Moreover, valence issues are also often conflicts about priorities, in view of so-called opportunity costs,10 which affect the attainment of other goals. Two other, unavoidable, sources of conflict must be mentioned here, although they are generally given short shrift in political science. The first of these consists of misunderstanding. What is said and done by one ‘side’ in a conflict may be misunderstood by another side, which will, however, react to it as if its own understanding is correct, thus possibly giving rise to further interactions that would otherwise not have occurred. The risk of misunderstanding can be minimised by investing in multiple channels of communication and by remaining mentally open to new and different interpretations of the actions and statements of others.11 The second source of conflict that is much ignored in discussions about politics are human emotions such as distrust, animosity, envy and hate. Distrust is an important cause of misunderstanding the intentions and behaviour of others, as just discussed. Animosity, envy and hate often result in conflict for the mere sake of obstructing the disliked party, irrespective of what it tries to achieve. Because they are often seen as dishonourable, such motivations will rarely be admitted. Instead, they will be masked in other terms, and embellished with rationalisations. The inevitability of conflict about matters that involve a community or society also leads to the inevitability of cooperation on such matters. Each of the parties in a conflict about collective decisions will attempt to strengthen its hand, i.e. its position of power and influence among other political actors. One of the ways to achieve this is by cooperation with others. The same factors discussed above as sources of conflict operate in their inverse form as factors that facilitate cooperation. Compatible or synergetic goals and interests, as well as sharing values and positive experiences, are invaluable 10 Opportunity costs refer to the non-realisation of other desirables because of the money, effort and attention (all of which are scarce) spent on a particular issue, decision or policy. 11 Awareness of this risk during the Cold War, particularly after the 1963 Cuban missile crisis, led to the installation of a so-called ‘hot line’ between the White House and the Kremlin.

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in this respect. And here too emotions matter: trust, respect and ‘personal chemistry’ are all important facilitators of successful cooperation.12

Not all conflict and cooperation is political in character The relations that have been defined as conflict and cooperation in this chapter can apply to a wide variety of situations including international relations, national politics, large corporations and local clubs. In all these situations, the presence of conflict and cooperation about matters that need to be settled for the political system in question lead to interactions and processes that we have defined as political. However, in some circumstances conflict and cooperation should not be considered as political in character, for reasons to be explained. I will begin the argument with three examples, after which I will explain what makes them non-political. In this way we can refine the description of politics that was presented in Chapter 1. The first example concerns competitive sports, such as a chess tournament. The goals of the competitors are incompatible with each other – everyone’s goal to win the tournament is incompatible with the same wish of each of the others – and each of the competitors pursues this goal actively. Yet we would regard this rather as a feature of sports than politics. So what is the difference? Here is another example. Several f irms compete for a large order of delivery vans for a parcel delivery service. Only one of them can acquire the order. The goals of the competing firms are mutually incompatible (each wants to win the order), and they actively pursue these goals by competing in terms of price, quality, service and so forth. Should this not be considered as economic competition rather than as politics? And if so, why? And a final example. The customers of a firm that provides IT services are dissatisfied with the firm’s performance and customer relations. In their view, the firm fails to fulfil its obligations to its customers, and so they sue the firm in court. What is it that makes us regard this as a legal conflict rather than a political one? The very fact that these situations would not be termed ‘political’ in everyday speech is not the crucial point. Indeed, the aspect perspective on the nature of politics would consider many conflicts and interactions 12 A well-documented and renowned example of the importance of such personal factors is the warm personal relationship that developed between Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and American President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s (cf. Matlock, 2004).

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as ‘political’ which would probably not be considered as such in everyday discourse. The main reasons why we would not consider the three examples above as political conflicts involve the scope of the conflicts and the way they are resolved. In all three examples, the outcome is directly relevant for the parties involved, but in general not for a society or community. Whoever wins the tournament, gets the order, or wins the legal case is irrelevant for the society at large, and even for smaller communities such as a chess federation, the car trade, or the legal profession and consumer advocacy groups. In other words, there is nothing to be settled for a community or society. That would be different if, for example, an economic transaction involved goods and services that can only be obtained from a very small number of suppliers, and where the products involved would ‘tie in’ the customers for a long period or would have substantial ‘downstream’ consequences for other purchases. Examples of this would be rolling stock for rail, long-haul airplanes, or IT platforms. It is no wonder that governments often take an active interest in such instances, sometimes by actively supporting one option over others, or by regulatory efforts to minimise long-term and downstream effects.13 Likewise, the outcome of a legal case is not ‘political’ if it does not ‘bind’ future cases, but it acquires prominent political aspects if it reaches higher courts whose verdicts set boundaries for subsequent individual cases conducted in the lower courts.14 In short, it is only if the conflicts in the examples given lead to consequences for a community or a society that they acquire a political character. If that is not the case, they would be considered as conflicts of a sporting, economic or judicial nature. A second reason for not regarding the conflicts and interactions in the three examples as political is the degree to which the ‘rules of the game’ are fixed in detail and known to all involved. In all three examples this is the case, and none of them involves a conflict about what the rules should be. The less a conflict is regulated by existing rules and regulations, the more that power relations become relevant, and the more that the conflict acquires a political aspect. Thus, decisions to define or alter effective rules

13 Think in this respect of sundry interventions by the EU to avoid letting a strong position in a market become self-perpetuating. In the IT sector, this has involved providers of goods and services such as Google, Microsoft and Apple. More generally, economic competition and interactions acquire a more pronounced political aspect when important discrepancies of power exist – either on the supply side or on the demand side – that affect the behaviour of the parties involved. 14 Think of the American Supreme Court, or the EU’s European Court of Justice.

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for particular conflicts and interactions are essentially political, while the application of these rules in a concrete instance is not.15 This reasoning implies that some political processes can lead to the de-politicisation of conflicts or interactions. This is even the case within the narrow domain of politics itself. As a case in point, debating time is scarce in parliament, and more members would like to get a share of it than is possible. By regulating the allocation of time the matter is depoliticised, at least until the existing rules are contested. The detailed regulation of what can and cannot be done in the three examples presented above means that the outcome of a concrete instance in such a conflictual situation does not affect the outcome of another instance. The winner of a chess competition does not acquire a competitive advantage at the next tournament; nor can the firm that wins an order expect that other customers will make the same choice; and different legal cases about provider performance do not necessarily lead to the same outcome. This is different for political conflicts which are generally interconnected, so that the outcome of one conflict tends to affect the outcome of other ones. Not all situations that are highly regulated are non-political. Elections are generally subject to highly detailed rules about the parties and candidates on the ballot paper, about permitted modes of campaigning, who is eligible to vote, how votes should be cast, how they should be counted, and how the election outcome is to be determined. These regulations do indeed de-politicise some of the aspects of the electoral process,16 but the election in its entirety certainly is political because it determines for an entire society or community the allocation of power to make binding decisions. The discussion in this section and in Chapter 1 about what is and what is not to be considered ‘political’ is not motivated by a desire to divide social relations and interactions into segments which then would constitute the subject matter and exclusive domains of different disciplines such as political science, economics or law. That would not be desirable at all, for 15 This is not to imply that politics consists only of the making of rules and regulations. Politics also involves sundry other decisions on matters that are either unique (and for which therefore no rules exist), or that have not been regulated in great detail, thus leaving scope for political factors. 16 However, when rules are vague, their interpretation and subsequent application becomes political. For example, in Britain the criterion for a valid vote is that the “… intention that the vote should be for one or other of the candidates clearly appears”. This is rather vague, and the Electoral Commission has subsequently issued a 40-page booklet to promote uniformity of interpretation (The Electoral Commission, 2015). In Florida during the US Presidential elections of 2000, no such clarity existed, and this led to the dispute about what were valid votes being resolved by the Supreme Court, which is not merely a judicial, but also very much a political body.

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all kinds of reasons, and fortunately it is not possible either. Why, then, do we care about this question? The main reason is that conflicts, processes and interactions that we designate as ‘political’ emerge, evolve and get resolved in different ways to those that we designate as ‘economic’, or educational’, and so forth. Those differences are, of course, not caused by how we label these social phenomena, but by the inherent differences between what we do and do not refer to as political. To understand political phenomena, we need to ask specific questions (see Chapter 3), not all of which are equally pertinent when we want to understand economic or legal events, for example. The same holds the other way around: not all questions that we need to address to understand legal phenomena are equally important when trying to understand ‘politics’. In short, reflecting on the character – political or otherwise – of the things we are interested in helps to ask relevant questions. To conclude this section, two cautionary remarks are in order. First, just as the concept of politics is essentially contested (see Chapter 1), so is the question of whether (or rather, the extent to which) specific phenomena are to be regarded as political, economic, and so forth. Not everyone will agree on this, but that does not diminish the reason for making such a judgement, namely to assist us in identifying questions that are pertinent for gaining understanding. Second, inherent in the aspect perspective on politics is that events, relations and interactions that we want to know more about may simultaneously comprise political and other aspects, each of which leads to different sets of questions to be addressed when trying to understand them, and to different, yet complementary, contributions from different disciplines. A final consideration that matters for the distinction between political and non-political phenomena has to do with the demarcation of the system that we focus on. Something is political when it affects a society, community or group by way of collective decisions, the authoritative allocation of values, or the resolution of conflict. As discussed in Chapter 1, this may be an entire society (loosely understood as the population of a state, but discussed further in Chapters 3, 7 and 8), but it may also be defined differently. For matters related to urban planning, for example, the relevant system is usually smaller, and defined in regional or local terms. When focussing on competition policy, for example, the relevant system (in the European context) is not the national state, but the European Union. When considering what can (or cannot) be done by whom in Antarctica, the relevant system consists of the Antarctic Treaty System, its signatories and its functionaries. If we want to understand the global production of oil, the relevant political system

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would consist of oil-producing countries (many of whom are organised within OPEC) but also multinational oil companies which make decisions about investment in exploration and production. And finally, if we want to understand the evolution of a branch of sport, such as football, then the relevant system would comprise FIFA and its regional federations, national football organisations, individual football clubs (particularly rich ones in the top leagues) and probably 17 well-organised large purchasers of broadcasting rights. Systems do not have to be large, and they can be quite limited in size and scope (see footnote 2 in Chapter 1). What is political and what is not therefore depends on the system in which the phenomena are located that we are interested in. When we want to study German employment policy, for example, everything that happens with respect to employment policy in neighbouring countries, or in the EU at large, is not part of the relevant political system (which would consist of the German federal government and some of its branches, overarching employers’ organisations and labour unions). That does not mean that what is outside this system is of no relevance, but only as part of the wider context that impinges on the interactions, conflicts and decision-making within the demarcated system (this is discussed further in Chapters 3 and 7). The discussion in this section thus leads to the following further elaboration of what was presented in Chapter 1 as a description of what politics is: – What is political and what is not is dependent on the choice and demarcation of the relevant political system. – Politics involves conflict and cooperation about matters that have to be settled for the system in question, particularly when the interactions between the different sides are not very highly regulated. – Politics involves defining or altering rules and procedures that constrain and regulate behaviour in conflictual and cooperative relations for specific situations. – Politics allocates power and defines the power relations that determine collective decisions for the system in question.

17 The use of the word ‘probably’ indicates that it is not always immediately clear how the relevant political system is to be demarcated, and that addressing this question is part of the process of understanding politics in that system. More generally, not every conceivable list of ‘actors’ makes for a sensible demarcation of a system. The notion of a ‘system’ implies that its constituent parts are related to and affect each other in relevant ways. Also, that the ‘density’ of such relations is higher for the components of a system than between them and elements of their wider context. This makes the demarcation of any system not only a conceptual or theoretical affair, but also a matter of empirical assessment.

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Relations between and dynamics of conflict and cooperation Conflictual and cooperative political relations exist in many forms. They can be short-lived or of long duration. They can involve – directly or indirectly – only a few, or large numbers of people. They can be of low intensity, or they can trigger strong passions. Of great importance in all political systems are conflicts that are long-lasting, involve great numbers of people and generate strong passions. Such conflicts can become so dominant in a system that they affect the development of other conflicts, either by depriving them of the opportunity to develop at all, or by ‘moulding’ them in the image of the dominant conflict. In this section, I discuss how conflictual and cooperative relations affect each other across issues.18 In most conflicts, the power positions of the parties involved are not of equal strength. Some are more powerful than others, and they use this to achieve their desired solution. Often that is the end of the matter, and the ‘losers’ abandon the goal they pursued and direct their energy to the realisation of other goals, and to the concerns of daily life that are to a large degree not political. But sometimes losing the battle, or expecting to lose it, is not the end of the matter for the weaker party. If they are sufficiently passionate about their cause, they will try to improve their chances of success. One way to do so is by getting additional parties involved in the conflict. This is a well-known tactic to avoid losing a conflict; obviously, the winning party will try to prevent this happening.19 But drawing others in will sometimes require (or result in) changes to the goals that are pursued, by broadening or softening them.20 Only after the opportunities for bringing in new parties have been exhausted does the then resulting balance of power determine the outcome of the conflict. This process of widening the group of involved parties generally leads to a prolongation of conflicts and the mobilisation of larger segments of a society. But even when a conflict leads to a ‘resolution’ in which one side clearly wins, it does not necessarily result in the issue disappearing. That will only 18 This section is strongly inspired by the book The Semi-Sovereign People by the American political scientist Elmer Schattschneider (1960). 19 These attempts to increase the number of involved parties, or to avoid that that happens, explain why the losing party generally benefits from publicity, which helps to reach and convince not-yet mobilised allies. For the same reason, the winning parties often try to avoid publicity. 20 If this happens repeatedly over several iterations, the subject matter of the conf lict may change unrecognisably, with those originally involved feeling betrayed by their new-found allies who took over and ‘perverted’ the original cause.

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be the case if the losing side can live with its loss, or if it sees no possibility for a different outcome in the future. If the losing side is very passionate about its cause, and expects that the current power relations will change, then the issue will resurface in one form or another. The underlying thought is that one may lose a battle, yet – in the long run – win the war. If this is the perspective of the losing party in a conflict, then any ‘solution’ will only be a temporary one, and the starting point for a next round of the struggle. The expectation that one’s prospects for success will be better in a next round is an important factor if one is to keep ‘investing’ in one’s cause (in terms of effort, time, money and opportunity costs – see footnote 10), and in doing so this has a reinforcing effect itself on the intensity of one’s involvement, sometimes to such an extent that commitment to the cause becomes a part of one’s identity. Some such long-lasting conflicts may become dominant conflicts, which means that they deny other conflicts the opportunity to develop in their own right. For that to happen it is necessary that large segments of the political system become involved in the conflict, that the intensity of their involvement is sufficiently high to motivate continued activity, and that the expectation on the side of the losing party that their position of power may improve over time is not entirely unrealistic. The intensity of involvement in the conflict does not only serve to keep the matter alive for long periods, but it also fosters the need to keep one’s side united, and that leads to the suppression of other conflicts which might otherwise divide one’s ‘camp’. Such conflicts do not happen often – indeed, the development of one prevents the development of others – but when they do occur, they help to structure a system in many ways. They also help to clarify the mutual relationship between conflict and cooperation: conflict can only be waged successfully if one’s side is unified, i.e. involved in active cooperation, so that it becomes more than a loose collection of individuals with the same preferences about a given issue. This is helped by the formation of identities with strong antagonistic elements towards other sides in the conflict. Moreover, the development of such conflicts, and of unified camps, requires organisational effort and investment, such as effective leadership, internal communication and continued efforts to convince one’s side not only of the rightfulness of its cause, but also of the necessity to actively contribute to it. Much of this can be achieved through institutionalisation: the creation of formal organisations to fulfil these requirements. One can think of setting up dedicated media, of organising supporters in organisations that – to make them more attractive – also perform other functions, and so on.

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Long-term, high intensity conflicts also require political skill to identify risks and opportunities and react to them adequately. In short, all of this requires systematic and skilful organisation in addition to passion and belief. If successful, it leads to the creation of ‘camps’ that are not only anchored by social-psychological ties (identities, and strong antagonistic feelings towards other camps), but also by organisations. Both forms of anchoring can only be achieved by the investment of resources such as time, creativity and money. However, once achieved, they constitute political capital. Just as in business, politicians will protect their investments and capital. This explains why organisations that have their origin in specific conflicts do not generally cease to exist once the conflict has been resolved and laid to rest, but will generally acquire new functions. Likewise, identities that have developed in a prolonged conflict do not disappear once the issues at the heart of the conflict have been pacified; they persist, and are often passed on through socialisation to the next generation. Implied in these arguments is the notion that conflicts compete and conflict with each other. They compete because they require resources which are scarce: leadership, time, attention and commitment, and so on. They also conflict with each other because different conflicts tend to undermine each other’s potential for effective political organisation. This idea was first formulated by Schattschneider (1960), although astute politicians have probably been aware of it throughout history. The logic of the argument is as follows. Each conflict divides the society or community into rival sides (camps) that provide a basis for political organisation. If the divisions created by a new conflict do not coincide with those of an already existing conflict, then the new conflict divides the camps of the existing conflict. These therefore become less effective as bases for political organisation. Such ‘cross-cutting’ conflicts are sometimes seen as a good thing for a society or community, because it means that one’s opponents in one conflict could become one’s allies in another, and hence make it more likely that everyone would have a mixed experience of sometimes being on the winning side and sometimes on the losing side in terms of the outcome of a conflict. All of this would mitigate the depth of antagonisms and resentments within a society or community. However, for the leaders and core partisans of the camps that have formed around a specific issue, the competition between conflicts represents a threat to the unity of their camp, to the political capital that they have created, to the identity they have acquired in the struggle around a conflict, and to their (sometimes privileged) positions. The leaders will therefore attempt to suppress the emergence of other conflictual issues or, if that is not possible, to (re)define

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and (re)interpret them so that they become compatible with the already existing political dividing lines.21 Ironically, as part of such efforts, the rival camps that have formed through older conflicts are often each other’s tacit allies, because newer issues threaten the internal unity of each. Such efforts will not inevitably succeed, or if so, only for a limited time. Nonetheless, the logic of the competitive and cooperative relations involved helps explain the often observed inertia of the structure of political divisions, in which camps that originated in specific conflicts remain important bases of political organisation long after the original conflicts have been laid to rest.22

21 This interpretation and definition involves the processes of ‘issue formation’, referred to earlier in footnote 16 in Chapter 1. 22 The classic example here are the political cleavages in many West European countries around class, religion and language that had their origins in the late nineteenth century, that were in some ways pacified in the early twentieth century, but which remained ‘frozen’ and structuring national politics until late in the twentieth century. For an analysis of the origin and early development of these cleavages see Lipset and Rokkan, 1967. For an analysis of the factors underlying the gradual erosion of cleavage politics, see Franklin et al., 1992.



Chapter 3



Key Questions

In Chapters 1 and 2 I explained how we distinguish ‘politics’ from other human activities and interactions. As indicated in Chapter 1, the character of this concept makes it impossible to define it exhaustively and without any ambiguity. One might therefore wonder what the point is of trying to define the term if its definition cannot be expected to be entirely clear-cut or uncontested. The reason for doing so is that in order to understand political phenomena one has to address a set of ‘key’ questions. These questions are not pertinent for understanding other phenomena, such as those with a predominantly economic, psychological or legal character, for example. This chapter therefore briefly presents these questions, which are essential for comprehending political matters, while later chapters deal with them in more detail. The reason for considering these questions to be ‘key’ is that they are used, implicitly or explicitly, by political analysts of very different theoretical backgrounds. There is evidently, and despite differences about how to distinguish the ‘political’ from other matters, broad agreement that these questions must be taken up when dealing with politics. This reflects, as mentioned in Chapter 1, that such theoretical, conceptual and paradigmatic disagreements are far from absolute, and that theorists largely agree on how to distinguish between political and other matters. Before discussing these key questions, a few cautionary remarks must be made. First, these questions do not exhaust what one needs to know about political phenomena, either in their specificity or in general. On the contrary, analysts ask all kinds of additional questions, some of which they also consider to be of key importance. Yet there is less agreement about these additional questions, and some of them are clearly tied to the specific theoretical and paradigmatic perspectives embraced by the analysts in question. In other words, the key questions presented here constitute a kind of common denominator, and need in every concrete application to be supplemented by other ones. A second remark is that the various questions cannot be answered satisfactorily in isolation. They are interconnected, which implies that each one affects how we answer the other ones. It also implies that addressing them will often require several turns, until the answers to all of them are satisfactory. And that, in turn, implies that there is no fixed order in which these questions should be asked, and

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that the order in which they are presented and discussed in this book has no particular significance. The key questions are to a large extent empirical questions, which means that they require systematic observations. The quality of the answers to these questions therefore depends on the quality of the underlying empirical work. The latter is not the topic of this book, but it will be self-evident that it is of paramount importance that such underlying empirical work be unbiased, reliable, and valid.1 The discussion of the key questions in the next pages is largely carried out as if it is a case of dealing with contemporary political phenomena which, possibly, have not yet resulted in final outcomes. This is done merely for the sake of convenience, and one can, in principle, use the same key questions to try and understand political events and processes from the past, the outcomes of which we already know. Doing so is useful to avoid the fallacy of seeing those outcomes as the only ones that could have occurred, or as the realisation of what those involved in them foresaw or intended. The outcomes of political conflict and cooperation are – in the present as much as in the past – not just the desired product of anticipation, planning and actions by those who, in the end, are portrayed as the ‘winners’. Outcomes are also created by the unintended effects of actions, by misunderstanding and confusion, or by chance.2

Five key questions The questions presented here as being key resemble somewhat those which tend to be asked in a detective novel: Who? What? Why? Where? How? I will start by listing these questions, and continue with a short explanation of what they involve and how they are interconnected. More extensive discussions of each of these questions follow separately in later chapters. 1. What are the characteristics of the conflictual and cooperative relations? 2. Who are the actors, and what motivates and guides them? 3. How are resources distributed? 4. How is the political environment structured? 5. What does the broader context look like? 1 Excellent texts about how to avoid bias and threats to validity include King et al. (1994) and Shadish et al. (2001). 2 The awareness of this is reflected in the answer reputedly given by British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan when a journalist asked what he feared most: “events, dear boy, events”.

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What are the characteristics of the conflict?3 This question is formulated somewhat abstractly, but that is for a reason. If we formulated it as ‘what is the conflict about?’, it would most likely lead to labels that are not very informative. The answer could be, for example, ‘defence’, or ‘social care’, or ‘immigration’, and so on. But such labels are only shorthand and do not describe what the issue is actually about. Take the example of ‘defence’. The disagreements that may exist in this respect may take many different forms. There may be disagreement about the specification of the potential enemies, and thus implicitly also about the kinds of defences that would be required. There may also be disagreement about the size of the budget for defence, or about questions (exclusively for a small number of countries) of the balance between nuclear and non-nuclear capacities. Disagreement may involve questions about conscription versus professionalisation, and so on. The shorthand label ‘defence’ is thus only informative if we already know a lot about it, including the way in which the current conflict has evolved. Moreover, labelling political conflicts in such concrete (although condensed) ways does not help us to understand how they evolve or to what kinds of outcomes they lead. For that purpose, it is more helpful to describe conflicts in terms of certain characteristics that can be applied irrespective of the concrete issue at hand. Characteristics (sometimes also referred to as ‘variables’) are aspects of, in this case, conflicts. Every specific conflict is then given a ‘value’ for each of these characteristics. As a case in point, we can distinguish conflicts in terms of their complexity: the larger the number of different ‘sides’ in a conflict, the more complex the conflict is (see also footnote 3 in Chapter 2). A ‘low complexity’ conflict has only two sides, a ‘high complexity’ one has several sides. Other characteristics of conflicts can be their symmetry or asymmetry in terms of the resources available to the different sides. In a symmetrical conflict the resources of each of the parties are approximately equal, while in an asymmetrical conflict this is not so. Another form of (a)symmetry (and thus another characteristic of conflicts) is whether the conflict is of equal importance for all sides, where 3 As discussed at length in Chapters 1 and 2, one of the defining aspects of politics is that it involves conflictual as well as cooperative elements. For the sake of convenience, I will refer to such situations using the term ‘conflict’ instead of the more laborious ‘conflict and cooperation’. It has to be kept in mind, however, that for the reasons discussed in Chapter 2, cooperation is also involved: cooperation exists between all those on the same side of a conflict, and often there are also forms of cooperation between different sides of the conflict (see Chapter 2 for one example of this).

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asymmetry would indicate that what is ‘at stake’ is very high for one or some of the sides, and much less so for other  sides.4 Addressing the key question about the characteristics of the conflict thus requires two different steps. The first is to determine which characteristics to use for describing conflicts; this a conceptual and theoretical question. Second, for each of the characteristics that one wants to use, it is necessary to establish how a concrete conflict should be described in those conceptual terms; this is an empirical question. Describing conflicts in terms of characteristics that can be used for all kinds of concrete instances has the advantage that it stimulates comparisons across these different instances. Such comparisons result in more general insights than when focussing only on a single, concrete conflict. Symmetrical conflicts, for example, evolve differently to asymmetrical ones and lead to different kinds of behaviours by the conflicting parties, irrespective of their specific content. That holds as much in military conflicts as in industrial disputes, and even in family conflicts. The question about the characteristics of conflicts also shows that it is related to other key questions, as some of these characteristics – such as the number of different sides involved in a conflict, or the symmetry or asymmetry of ‘what is at stake’ – require an answer to the question ‘who are the actors?’. Who are the actors, and what motivates and guides them? I use the term actors for all those individuals, groups and organisations who are actively engaged in political conflict and cooperation. This is a more restrictive definition than one which incorporates those who are involved or implicated in such interactions and their consequences, because it excludes all those who are affected passively but do not participate themselves.5 This emphasis reflects that how conflicts evolve and get resolved is particularly 4 An example of this is the regularly recurring conflicts in rich Western societies in regard to state subsidies for art. Such subsidies are usually a very small proportion of total government budgets, so that the budgetary benefits for all who would want to abandon them are relatively small. However, for the much smaller number of people who work in the arts (in museums and orchestras, performing and creative artists, etc.) the stakes are much higher, as the withdrawal of funding may mean the difference between survival and collapse. See also Dahl (1956; 2006) about the disparity between ‘passionate minorities’ and relatively indifferent majorities. 5 This emphasis on active engagement mirrors the same criterion in our definitions of conflict and cooperation (see Chapter 2). And just as was the case there, it also includes the possibility that we have to characterise inactivity as ‘active engagement’ in those instances where actors refrain from their ‘normal’ activities in order to further their political causes.

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driven by those who actively engage in them. Those who are passive are in that respect less important. That does not mean that they are of no importance; on the contrary. They form, as indicated in Chapter 2, the reservoir of the ‘not-yet-actively-involved’, and as such they are an object of strife between actors, some of whom would benefit from activating them, while others would like to prevent this (see Chapter 2, footnote 19 and Figure 2.1). Moreover, politics is about outcomes to be realised for a society or group which includes not only the active, but also those who do not participate politically, and from that perspective all who are part of the political system in question do matter. Actors exist in many forms and shapes. Although only individuals can think, anticipate, plan and act, it matters on what title they do so, and that is the basis for the distinction between individual actors (who pursue their individual goals and interests), collective actors (who pursue the goals and interests of a group), and organisational actors (who pursue a certain cause that is not necessarily limited to a specific group). These distinctions are discussed further in Chapter 4, together with the distinction between ‘political elites’ and ‘ordinary people’. The question around who the actors are who are engaged in a conflict is not asking for a list of names. Just as in our discussion about the characteristics of a conflict, this question requires an answer in terms of the relevant characteristics of actors. What the relevant characteristics are depends to some extent on the nature of the conflict, and on the theoretical perspectives that we use to understand it. Knowing the actors, and their characteristics, contributes in turn to our knowledge of the characteristics of the conflict. For example, whether a conflict is symmetrical in terms of its importance for the different sides can only be established on the basis of having described the actors in this respect. Similarly, whether a conflict is ‘cross-cutting’ of other conflicts (see Chapter 2) can only be determined by knowing who the actors are (and what their characteristics are) for all conflicts under consideration. To understand conflict and cooperation we must also understand the behaviour of the actors involved. What makes them ‘tick’? What do they want? How do they understand the world? And so on. To answer this key question, it is not necessary to construct for every actor a detailed individual psychological profile, but rather an approximate and broad-ranging understanding of those aspects of a person that are of particular relevance for their political behaviour. To address this question, we need to know what the goals and interests of political actors are. As discussed in Chapter 2, the term ‘goals’ is generally

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used when we assume that these are conscious in actors’ minds, while the term ‘interests’ may also encompass matters that are not seen as such by the persons involved (a situation sometimes referred to as ‘false consciousness’). Obviously, when trying to understand why actors behave as they do, this distinction is largely irrelevant and it suffices to focus on the goals and interests that are recognised as such, irrespective of whether these match what third parties would regard as the actor’s ‘true’ interests. The emphasis on goals and interests reflects that the behaviour of political actors is generally interpreted as goal-directed. It may fail to realise those goals, because of a lack of understanding or unanticipated circumstances, but such failure does not make it less purposeful. Yet not all behaviour can be understood adequately from consciously pursued objectives. People are also driven by needs, which are not always of a conscious nature.6 Different actors may be driven by different psychological needs such as ambition, power, affection, information and materialism (Murray, 1938), which help explain differences in how they attempt to realise their substantive goals and aspirations.7 Actors’ substantive goals will, of course, evolve over time, as some conflicts become settled and new ones appear. Nonetheless, there will often be some resemblance between what actors pursue at different moments and in different conflicts. This similarity can be the consequence of persistent psychological needs (such as the need for power, or for materialism, etc.), but may also derive from so-called ‘values’ and ‘norms’ which are often seen as (rather abstract) preferences about behaviour or about how the world should be. Values may refer to such abstract matters as ‘freedom’ and ‘equality’, and particularly to which of these should be given precedence if a trade-off must be made. Norms are more directly prescriptive for behaviour; examples include ‘being respectful to authority’, or ‘presuming innocence until proven otherwise’. Such values and norms vary between individuals and groups – differences that can themselves give rise to conflict. These values 6 The attention to needs was very popular in the second half of the twentieth century, whereas it has declined somewhat more recently. Maslow (1943) postulated a hierarchy of needs, with ‘higher needs’ becoming more pressing once more basic ones are satisfied. Physiological and safety needs are more basic needs, intermediate ones include social belonging, and ‘higher’ needs involve esteem and self-actualisation. Similar theories have been put forward by Marx (1844), Doyal and Gough (1991), for example; and, with a particular emphasis on psychological needs, by Murray (1938). These theories are not uncontested in their specific details, but they offer a useful general perspective on the psychological drivers of human behaviour. 7 These needs are not of equal importance for everyone. Explaining such differences is a question for psychologists, but it is often seen as originating in the extent to which different needs have been under threat during a person’s psychological development.

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and norms help to create more encompassing ‘ideologies’ that specify how the world ‘ought’ to be, and what would be required to realise that ideal.8 A third element of what motivates and guides political actors consists of their views on how the political world operates and on their own place in it. This includes perceptions of other political actors and their goals and motivations, their trustworthiness and benevolence. It also includes views on how politics works (e.g. through force and power, through negotiation and compromise, and so on). And it comprises how actors see themselves amid all this. This self-perception includes feelings of identity which define individuals as part of larger groups, but also how they see themselves in a political order (as subject, or as citizen, for example). This self-image also includes feelings of political competence or efficacy that may help – or, when absent prevent – people to actively pursue their goals and interests. These different elements of what motivates and guides political actors do not exist independently of each other; they are interconnected. In Chapter 4 I discuss this in more detail. How are resources distributed? This question concerns everything that actors can use to realise their goals: their political resources. It thus concerns power and influence, and all those other matters from which power and influence are derived. Power and influence are central concepts in politics. However, just as much as the concept of politics itself, how to define power and influence is strongly contested. This will be discussed further in Chapter 6. Fortunately, the different views on what power is also agree in many respects. This shared understanding focusses on power as the capacity to get something done in politics that otherwise would not occur. The problem with this view is that a ‘capacity’ only shows itself when it is actually used, and it may well be present even when it is not used. This makes the question on how to observe power empirically an important one when studying politics, and it will be explored in more detail in Chapter 6. This capacity – that is, power – derives from other factors, which are the so-called resources of power. These include the means of force and 8 Well-known political ideologies include a wide variety of forms of liberalism, socialism, anarchism, fascism, and so on. The ideologies that may motivate political actors may be less developed, or hybrid, or entirely idiosyncratic; but what is of relevance is their widely encompassing and general nature that can incorporate new and concrete issues and conflicts, and thereby help actors to orient themselves to those issues and conflicts.

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coercion, as succinctly expressed in Mao Ze Dong’s phrase that ‘political power grows out of the barrel of a gun’. But other resources can also lead to political power, such as money and capital, expertise and information (‘knowledge is power’), contacts and networks, or occupying particular positions. These resources may be more relevant for some political conflicts than for other ones, which leads to questions about the domain specificity of power, which will also be discussed further in Chapter 6. Power is not an attribute of individual actors, but a relation between actors. This means that thinking about power must involve more than assessing the power resources of various actors. For a society or group this leads to the question how these resources are distributed, and what the form is of the totality of all the power relationships between actors: the power structure. Additionally, in view of the possibility that power may be domain-specific, we need to ask whether it is useful to think in terms of a single power structure, or of different ones, each being relevant for particular kinds of political conflicts. How is the political environment structured? Politics is about conflict and cooperation over matters to be settled for a society or a group – the political system. The kinds of conflicts that emerge, and the way in which they develop, is influenced by how this system is structured. Apart from anything else, this structure comprises the institutions and rules of the game.9 Political institutions are relatively stable forms of organisation of behaviour and interaction. They can be concrete institutions or procedural institutions. For a country, concrete institutions can take the form of a parliament, a supreme court, a department of agriculture, and so on. For a political party (which is a political system in its own right) the concrete institutions may include an executive and a ‘congress’ or ‘conference’, for example. These institutions fulfil a specific goal or function. They include people who work to realise that function, who have an address and an office. What the function is that these institutions perform can sometimes be seen in a formalised remit. For example, the function of the Electoral Commission (in the UK) is to oversee elections and regulate political finance in the UK, and to promote public confidence in the democratic process

9 It also comprises the power structure discussed in the previous section, which, again, demonstrates that the key questions do overlap to some extent.

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and ensure its integrity.10 However, one should not rely blindly on such descriptions of function and remit, as they are sometimes more fiction than fact. What institutions really do (or fail to do) must be established by empirical research. Procedural institutions do not have such a concrete organisational form but they exist nevertheless in the form of stable patterns and procedures of behaviour and interaction. One can think, for example, of the existence of regular and free elections in democratic societies, or of the occasion at which the executive unfolds its plans in ceremonies referred to as the State of the Union Address (in the USA), or the Queen’s Speech (in the UK).11 Concrete and procedural institutions are important because they constitute patterns of ‘normal’ behaviour and interactions, that help political actors to plan and organise their own behaviour in pursuit of their goals and interests. They provide incentives and constraints for political actors, and are therefore generally not ‘neutral’ towards all political actors (let alone potential political actors). That does not mean that they are necessarily blatantly partisan, but it does imply that some kinds of political actors benefit from their existence, while others do not. This is hardly surprising if one recognises that the existing institutions are to a large extent the outcome of political conflicts in the past, where the ‘winners’ contributed more to the institutionalisation of the outcomes than the losing sides did. In any case, this character of institutions also implies that the institutions themselves (and their functions, remit, resources, liberties and constraints) will be objects of conflict and cooperation. Concrete institutions can themselves political actors. When studying the emergence and evolution of political conflicts one therefore has to assess which institutions are unavoidably, or likely, or even possibly involved, and how they affect the structure of power relations between non-institutional actors. Some stable patterns of behaviour and interaction are referred to as ‘rules of the game’, rather than procedural institutions. The distinction between the two is not always very clear, but to the extent that they are different, the ‘rules of the game’ are often more malleable. It must be kept in mind, however, that in the absence of an external arbiter, the term ‘rules of the game’ is to some extent a misnomer. Instead, they are patterns of behaviour that exist as long as they are sufficiently useful to those who have the power to ignore or change them. In Chapter 7 I will discuss the role of the internal 10 See https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/our-work/who-we-are (accessed 8 August 2017). 11 Most countries have similar events, known locally by different terminologies.

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organisation of political systems further, and thus also the role of concrete and procedural institutions, and of any rules of the game that may exist. What does the broader context look like? The political domain where conflict and cooperation occur about matters that must be settled for a society or group is not isolated from the rest of the world. Everything outside it is labelled ‘the context’. Politics and context affect each other, yet neither can be regarded as merely the consequence of the other. Therefore, the distinction between politics and context does not imply that they are detached from each other, but rather that what happens in the political domain should, first and foremost, be understood from its own ‘logic’ that is rooted in political conflict and cooperation. This relationship between politics and context, each mainly driven by its own dynamics, is known as the relative autonomy of politics (and by the same token, as the relative autonomy of the context). Some parts of the context have a very high degree of autonomy from politics, which means that they are hardly influenced by political processes, and certainly not in the short run. One can think in this respect of geophysical phenomena such as tectonic movements, or tidal movements. Yet even this physical domain is not entirely autonomous of human behaviour (and thus of political processes), as is evident in the case of climate change. Events emanating from this physical part of the context frequently impact on politics, by necessitating collective solutions to the problems they create for societies. One can think of ‘structural’ problems, which exist for certain societies in areas of endemic drought, or in areas below sea level, as well as intermittent problems caused by natural disasters. In more general terms, the physical environment establishes the conditions, opportunities and constraints within which people lead their lives and conduct politics. Other parts of the context are intrinsically determined by human behaviour and interaction, and therefore more open to political influence. Important parts of the context of politics, which are themselves also relatively autonomous, include society, culture, law, the economy, and communication. How strong the relative autonomy of each of these contextual domains is varies across societies and historical periods. The same holds for the strength of the relative autonomy of the political domain vis-à-vis these contexts. Indeed, in totalitarian political systems, the relative autonomy of these other spheres of human behaviour and interaction is severely restricted, but in liberal democracies it is high, and this makes

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these spheres more capable of affecting the political domain. In Chapter 7 I elaborate further on the relationship between politics and context.

Everything changes, continuously The key questions introduced in this chapter are connected with each other. Relevant changes in the real world therefore lead to changes in the answer to each of them. Addressing these key questions is thus not only helpful to understand a concrete conflict or issue at a specific moment, but also to understand the wider ramifications of any changes within the answer to them. For example, if new actors become involved in a conflict, the goals of the existing actors may change, as well as the distribution of resources. Similarly, changes in the function or remit of institutions can have an effect on the goals and resources of the actors involved, and possibly even on which actors are, or are not, actively involved in a conflict. Changes in the context – for instance, in economic conditions – modify the goals of actors, as well as the structure of the power relations between them. And so on. Another consequence of the inter-relations between the key questions is that political conflict and cooperation will not only revolve around substantive problems and concerns, but also around the phenomena that these questions point to. Who is to be recognised as a (legitimate) actor in a concrete conflict is, as much as the subject matter of the conflict itself, a matter of conflict, because the answer will affect the goals and power relations between actors and thus also the outcome of the original conflict. Similarly, substantive conflicts and conflicts about procedures and ‘rules of the game’ are inseparably connected, because the outcomes of procedural and rule conflicts affect the outcomes of substantive conflicts. In other words: political conflict and cooperation give rise to behaviour and interactions that, in turn, change the constellation of actors, goals, resources, power relations, institutions and, sometimes, the wider context. Politics is thus not only adaptive to changes in the context, but also self-adaptive: it changes in response to its own dynamics. The self-adaptive character of political processes requires that answers to the key questions introduced here must be continuously updated. But there is another reason for this as well, which is not directly linked to the earlier discussions. Political processes – conflict and cooperation – are driven by people. People are born, grow up, mature, and pass away. The result is that who belongs to the society or group that we look at, and who populates the political domain is in constant flux. In contemporary developed societies,

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an almost total replacement of individual actors takes no more than about half a century. It takes even less time in societies with shorter average life spans or which are riven with war and deadly disasters. The consequences of this replacement of existing generations by more recent ones depends on how different the successive generations are. For societies that change only slowly and gradually, new generations will in many ways resemble the older ones that they replace, in terms of their goals, experiences, expectations, norms and values. On the other hand, societies and political systems that are subject to rapid and profound change will inevitably experience large differences between generations. That also implies that the evolution of patterns of conflict and cooperation and of everything related to them must be regarded in the light of this process of ‘demographic metabolism’.



Chapter 4



Political Actors

This chapter addresses one of the essential questions introduced in Chapter 3: who are the actors in political conflict and cooperation? This requires a focus on different kinds of actors, on the differences between the goals and interests that they pursue, and on their resources. It also requires a reflection on how the behaviour of political actors is to be interpreted: whether as choices, or as determined by the circumstances in which actors find themselves.

Varieties of actors As already discussed in Chapter 3, the question ‘who are the actors?’ does not require a list of names. Instead it requires a description of actors in terms of characteristics. Among the most fundamental characteristics are two distinctions that classify actors into different ‘kinds’. These are the distinction between individual, collective and institutional actors, and the distinction between elites and non-elites. The importance of these two distinctions is that the different kinds of actors that are distinguished in this way generally also differ in other characteristics, such as their goals, their position in a power structure, the resources that they have at their disposal, and so on. In addition to a description of the (kinds of) actors involved in political conflict, we also need to know how they are related to each other. Who are on the same side in a conflict, and who are not? Who is dependent on others, who is more powerful, and so on. These questions about relationships between actors will be discussed in the context of the characterisation of conflicts, later in this chapter. Individual, collective and institutional actors Although the term actor can easily be interpreted as relating to individuals of flesh and blood, not all actors are individual persons. Of course, many political actors are individual people who pursue goals that they care about. The smaller the scale of the political system we look at (the society or group for which something must be settled about which there are conflictual

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views), the more that we see that individuals are the relevant actors. Conflicts in a local organisation about membership fees (and how to use them), for example, are a case in point. As the scale of the political system increases, individuals often lack the resources to have much influence, but they can nevertheless be quite influential, for instance as initiators of new organisations that subsequently act as collective actors. Collective actors represent groups of individuals, sometimes highly organised, sometimes more loosely so. They represent their group members in political conflict. One can think of political parties, labour unions, pressure groups or churches as collective actors when they pursue political goals at the level of a country or a community. As discussed earlier, these organisations can also be regarded as political systems in their own right, within which collective actors can be found. Many political parties, for example, have more or less organised groups within their own ranks, such as youth chapters and local or regional sections, each of which constitutes a collective actor. Institutional actors do not represent a specific group of people, but have been set up (by other political actors) to pursue particular goals or fulfil particular functions. Modern states, for example, all have a State Department, Foreign Office or Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Such organisations are not just part of the executive branch; they are frequently also political actors in their own right. For example, when they compete with other government units over budgets, or when they have different policy views than other departments or agencies which are part of the same government or administration. Institutional actors do not represent ‘members’ or a particular group, but the very fact of their organised existence allows them to be actors in conflicts that impinge on their purpose or function. Collective actors and institutional actors only ‘act’ (or plan, or communicate) through the individuals that represent them, such as a chairperson, a spokesperson, a negotiator, etc.1 And these people not only represent the views and interests of their organisations, but they also must define what these views and interests are, often in competition (i.e. conflict) with others who have different ideas. The people who act for groups or institutions are therefore political actors in two different ways: they actively pursue the goals and interests of a group or an institution, but they generally also pursue

1 This argument sometimes has to be applied several layers deep. A labour union, for example, may ‘act’ through its executive committee, but that executive committee, in turn, can only act through a person who has been entitled to act on its behalf.

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their own goals and interests.2 This generates important questions about the relationship between these ‘impersonal’ organisations and the people who act for them in political conflict and cooperation. Individual, collective and institutional goals and interests Groups and institutions are dependent on individual persons to act for them. But on what authority can individuals claim to do so and be acknowledged as not pursuing their ‘own’ interests, but those of the organisation for which they act? And does it matter whether their claim to act for wider goals than their own is recognised by others in the group or institution, or by other political actors? Are members of a group committed to what is done or said in their name? The answers to such questions are to a large degree given by existing customs and habitual ways of doing things in the political system at hand (a society or a group). In modern states, this is to a considerable degree formalised in law. Civil law defines, for example, under which circumstances groups (such as voluntary member-based organisations), or organisations (such as foundations, or firms and corporations) are recognised as legal entities, by whom they are legally represented, and in which ways their ‘members’ are committed by the behaviour of those who legally act for them. Constitutional and administrative law defines this for organisations that are part of the state. Although these legal provisions are invaluable to allow the organisations involved to operate in a clearly defined way, often they do not describe how these organisations are actually run and represented. Many political parties, for example, stipulate in their constitutions that their membership has the ultimate say, to be expressed in the party congress or conference. Yet in practice, it is more often than not the party leadership which controls what happens, even in the congress or conference. The claim to act on behalf the members of a group is generally recognised by third parties if the members of the group consent, or at least acquiesce to it. That claim is even stronger if it is successfully used to bring the members of the group to engage in certain actions (such as to strike, to demonstrate, 2 These ‘own’ goals and interests are not necessarily self-serving. For example, they may consist of a personal view on how the group or institution should define and specify its own goals and strategies. To the extent that these personal views are not shared by others, the person who represents the group or institution is also him/herself an actor in conflicts about its stance and potential course of action. Additionally, people representing groups or institutions may also have ‘own’ goals in a self-serving sense: to fend off competition by others for the office and position they occupy.

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hold sit-ins, or boycott certain products, but also to pay contributions and fees). Given collective actors’ need for consent or acquiescence by the group they act for, an obvious strategy for the group’s opponents is not to recognise this claim of representation, or even to instigate that some of the group’s own members challenge it. This is not without risk, however, as such a strategy will backfire (and thus strengthen the collective actor’s representation claim) if the challenge is unsuccessful. Although institutional actors do not represent a group per se, the individuals acting for them nevertheless have to be recognised as legitimate by other political actors. And here too it is consent or acquiescence by other actors that is crucial, particularly those who helped bring the institution into existence, or who could make rival claims. Because collective and institutional actors can only act through the individuals representing them, the question arises about their goals and interests. Do such goals and interests exist independently of the individuals who express them? And if individuals are required to express the goals of collective and institutional actors, to what extent then is it meaningful to differentiate between the goals and interests of these individuals on the one hand, and of the organisations or groups they represent on the other? A similar question can be asked the other way around: to what extent are the ‘personal’ goals and interests of individuals distinguishable from those of the social and institutional circumstances they form part of? Questions such as these lie at the heart of different perspectives on the relationship between individuals and their social context. Two of these perspectives are often used when addressing these questions in political contexts, although quite often in more hybrid forms than presented here. One perspective holds that people derive their interests from their position in a social structure. Workers, for example, thus have shared interests that derive from the need to sell their labour to acquire an income. Similarly, women, or Catholics, or immigrants, or welfare recipients have a shared interest if their group membership has repercussions for the fulfilment of their needs.3 In the case of cross-cutting cleavages (see Chapter 2), combinations of characteristics are required to identify relevant groups (e.g. immigrant workers vs. non-immigrant workers), but the underlying logic remains the 3 Whether or not belonging to a particular group of people leads to shared interests is therefore dependent on the social consequences thereof. Differences in height (in many contemporary societies at least) do not therefore lead to shared interests among ‘tall’ and ‘short’ people, but were such differences to be linked to beliefs of moral or physical superiority, that would result in differences in the fulfilment of fundamental needs (food, housing, respect, etc.) and in turn engender shared interests.

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same: shared positions in a social structure lead to group interests, which have a real existence, irrespective of who represents the collective actors which pursue the interests of a group in a political conflict. Just as groups can be seen as having shared interests, so by extension, can an entire society. This idea is often expressed in terms of the ‘general interest’, which is often seen as including the preservation of peace, law and order, and as the provision and management of matters pertinent for its population, such as education or health care. In established societies, the idea of a general interest, revolving around such matters, is usually widely accepted; nonetheless, as I will argue below, it remains problematic. This perspective, which advances the idea of a general interest, does not exclude the existence of conflicting interests within a society between individuals and groups. However, the pursuit of these conflicting interests should not endanger the overarching general interest, as it would otherwise imperil the very existence of the society, and thus also of the individuals and groups comprised within it. The institutions and individuals who act for the society at large are, according to this perspective, also responsible for the pursuit of the general interest, and for reigning in other conflicts were they to threaten that general interest. In a similar fashion, while conflicting interests are likely to exist between members of a group, their pursuit should not jeopardise the interests of the group. All in all, this perspective implies that there is not a necessary and inescapable contradiction between the interests of a group (or of a society) and the interests of those who act for that group or society.4 In contrast to the perspective which claims the existence of collective interests (and thus also of the general interest) is the view that no such thing as group interests or the general interest exists. Such notions are seen as figments of the imagination which are, however, particularly useful for those in power to use to obfuscate their own interests. John Miller (1962: 60) states this as follows: … [I]t is quite plain that politicians, and others concerned in politics, habitually equate the general interest or common good with what suits them and the people around them. …… [G]overnments seem to use the notion of the general interest simply as a cloak for the special interests which they represent. 4 The position that there is not an unavoidable inconsistency between the interests of a group (or society) and the interests of those who act for that group (or society) does not imply that such an inconsistency could not occur at all. That would be seen as an aberrant state of affairs, however, caused by misrepresentation of the interests of the group (or society) by those who act for it. The moral implications of this have occupied political philosophers through the centuries, and are the focus of debates about issues such as tyrannicide and civil disobedience.

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In other words, what is touted as the general interest entails, in a rhetorically disguised form, just the interests of those who rule. The same holds for group interests, which involve no more than the interests of those who have the power to win in conflicts over the definition of what is to be termed a group interest. The notions of group interests and of the general interest thus do not reflect really existing interests, but rather powerful manipulative tools to persuade and mobilise, to undermine the legitimacy of rival ideas, and to obtain power. This also holds for those interpretations of the ‘general interest’ that are often widely accepted, such as the preservation of law and order. One may well ask ‘whose law and whose order?’ as the actual state of affairs covered by those terms is never uncontested and never ‘neutral’. Indeed, the fact that political conflict is unavoidable (as explained in Chapter 2), and that no society or group is unanimous in its vision about the common good, implies that some benefit while others are disadvantaged by what is expressed as a group or general interest. This perspective thus refutes the existence of true group interests or of a genuine general interest. It does not imply, however, that everyone who uses these terms should be regarded as a fraud and cynical manipulator. On the contrary, many political actors employing these phrases are entirely sincere and would react indignantly to the accusation that they espouse special interest, or their own interests.5 Such honest use illustrates both the rhetorical strength of these terms and the human capacity for rationalisation. It also illustrates that political ideologies – visions of what would constitute a good society (see also Chapter 2) – are not neutral as regards conflicting interests in the world as it exists. In short, this perspective on group interests and the general interest reveals no contradiction between individual interests and collective interests, because the latter do not exist. Conflicting interests will exist between (some or many) members of groups and societies on the one hand, and the political actors who act for them on the other. But such conflicts are not of a specific nature, and can be analysed in the same manner as any other political conflict (see Chapter 3). The previous discussion highlights that collective and institutional actors can only do things (e.g. plan, decide, argue, act) through the persons who do so for them, and that this elicits questions about the relationship between the interests of the collective or institution on the one hand, and of those who act for them on the other hand.

5 Of course, there are also political actors who are consciously disingenuous when invoking the idea of a group interest or the general interest as an argument in political debate.

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Another question we can ask about goals and interests pertains to the origin of the ideas that individuals hold about their own goals and interests, and those of others, of groups and of society at large. The postulate that people are social beings implies that their thoughts and behaviour are not entirely individually generated, but that they are also moulded by their place in the structure of society, by the groups and social categories to which they belong. This explains why it is often difficult for people to imagine a world quite different from the one in which they live and have grown up, and thus also why they tend to see their own goals and interests within the constraints of the world they know.6 This reinforces the rhetorical strength of the very idea of group interests or a general interest. As we reach the end of this section, we arrive at the conclusion of interdependency between individual actors on the one hand, and collective or institutional actors on the other. Collective and institutional actors can only operate through leaders or other individuals. These individuals do not only ‘act’ for them, but they also define the collective or institutional goals and interests that should be pursued. They are also indispensable for creating and establishing collective and institutional actors, and thereby contribute to the development of a social structure. Without leaders or representatives these impersonal actors cannot exist, let alone be effective. The other side of the same coin is that the interests of individuals (including the leaders and representatives of impersonal actors) derive to a considerable extent from their position in a social structure, from the groups to which they belong, and from the conflictual and cooperative relations between these groups. This mutual dependency between individual and collective actors and their interests makes it rather sterile to ask which is in general more fundamental. But in concrete instances it is rewarding to investigate the relationship between the interests of leaders and of followers, and the justification for considering something as a collective (or as a general) interest. It is imperative in such analyses to question the assumption of homogeneity of a group or a society that is somewhat implied through the notion of collective interests or the general interest. No group or society is ever fully in agreement about its goals and interests or about how to pursue these. 6 The tendency to constrain one’s thinking by the world we know, is complemented by the capacity to develop ideas that transcend it and to imagine radically different worlds, including those that are seen as better. This capacity contributes to the development of utopian visions of society (cf. Sargisson, 2012) and, sometimes, to the development of political ideologies. Yet, the opportunity to develop the creative and cognitive skills required for this are largely absent for many people.

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Therefore, we may not assume that collective actors that claim to represent all their members really do so. Indeed, the views that collective actors put forward only represent the views of some of their members. It is thus necessary to establish which members are truly represented by collective actors, and which are not (at all).

Elites and non-elites Understanding politics as it operates in societies or large groups requires the distinction between, on the one hand, the people who belong to the society or group in question and, on the other, those who act for them. This distinction is known under different names, such as ‘rulers and subjects’, ‘governors and citizens’, ‘leaders and followers’, and so on. For our purposes I will use the terms elites and non-elites. This section elaborates the nature of this distinction, and why it is of importance. Politics is only one aspect of human life, and it competes for time and attention with other aspects. People have to earn a living, which usually involves that they have to work and prepare for that through education and training. They engage in personal relations, they form families, and have responsibilities for those who are dependent on them. They also need to recover from the strains of work and everyday life, and to fulfil their cultural, spiritual and creative needs. All of this depletes much of people’s available time, attention and energy, so that little is left for conflict and cooperation about matters that need to be resolved for a society or group as a whole. The extent to which people will engage in political matters is partly dependent on how pressing these are perceived to be, whether people can conceive of some kind of ‘solution’, whether they feel that it is a matter for collective (instead of individual) action, whether they see a realistic chance of achieving a desired outcome, and so forth. All these factors, together with the incessant pressure of managing daily life, mean that many people engage with politics to a very limited degree. However, some will do so more than others, which can be a matter of chance, or courage, or ambition, or obligation, or yet other factors.7 Specialisation and the division of labour – characteristic for modern societies – contribute to the development of 7 As elsewhere in this book, this argument holds not only for entire societies, but also for every group or organisation that can be regarded as a political system (see Chapter 8, for a further discussion). That means it also holds for schools, hospitals, business enterprises, churches, interest groups, social movements, sports clubs, etc.

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specialised political positions that require a great and lasting commitment in terms of the time and attention devoted to them. As a consequence, we find major differences in the degree of actual involvement with political affairs in virtually all societies or large groups. Quite small numbers of individuals are engaged full-time, a few others might spend a considerable proportion of their time on political matters, but most people are only sporadically or marginally active in political affairs, or not at all. Those who are most actively and intensely involved in political processes, those who command the most extensive political resources, and those who occupy positions of authority and decision-making power for a political system constitute the political elite, while everyone else belongs to the non-elite.8 In view of the connotations evoked by the term elite in everyday language, a few cautionary notes are in order. First of all, the term elite is used here as a descriptive term, not as an evaluative term. Members of political elites are not morally superior, or more valuable members of society than the non-elite. There is no reason to expect them to be less flawed than others with regard to vices such as egotism, envy or laziness. They are not necessarily more rational, cool-headed or compassionate. They are only distinct in the extent to which they are actively involved in politics, and that, as we will see, has some important consequences. A second cautionary note is that the term elite does not imply that those who belong to it are homogenous in terms of social background, political beliefs, or the goals and interests that they pursue. Whether such homogeneity exists is a matter to be assessed empirically. A final cautionary note is that the term elite requires the specification of a domain. So far we have referred to this as the political domain, but it may well be that this is too simplistic and that a political system may contain several political elites, each with its own area of political affairs in which it occupies elite status. Again, it is a matter for empirical research to assess whether, in a political system, there is a single political elite that is active in all areas of politics, or whether there are several (or even many) political 8 Just as with other important concepts, the concept of a political elite is contested in its meaning. The description used here is largely similar to that of the Italian sociologist Pareto (1916). A different use of the term is proposed by Meisel (1958), who defines elites in terms of a shared group identification, a feeling of solidarity towards other members of the group, and consciousness of their elite status. I do not subscribe to Meisel’s perspective because I wish to emphasise here the structural difference between elites and non-elites in terms of actual involvement in political affairs. Whether that difference translates into a cohesive group identity and loyalty is then not a matter of definition, but an empirical question.

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elites.9 One should therefore always establish whether, when used in the singular, the term political elite should actually be used in the plural. Elites and non-elites generally pursue different goals and interests. Members of non-elites are usually not political actors (as defined earlier in this chapter), which means that they do not actively pursue political objectives. That does not mean that they have no preferences about politics. But above all, they want to be able to lead their own lives and pursue their own (non-political) goals without undue interference, and hopefully with some facilitation. What this entails in more concrete terms varies in different locations and at different times. In contemporary liberal democracies, it involves that politics should respect the private sphere and facilitate citizens’ pursuit of their private desires by providing the necessary infrastructure, general education and healthcare. It also includes the provision of safety against violence and crime and, last but not least, that citizens are not repressed, exploited or treated capriciously by the political system and those who act for it. Although this desire appears to ask little from politics, it nevertheless requires continuous activity by the political system and its elite(s). People differ in regard to what they consider to be ‘undue interference’, and this, as well as the pursuit of private desires, unavoidably leads to conflicts that must be ‘resolved’ through prioritisation, regulation and adjudication for a community or society through political processes (see Chapter 2 on the inevitability of political conflict). In general, political elites pursue other goals than non-elites. Of course, members of elites also have to earn a living, but they often do so through paid professional work in the political domain. The goals that they pursue in their political activities are visions and power. Visions are mental pictures of how the world should be, of how society should evolve and be organised, of specific policies that fit into these larger visions, and of how to achieve all of this. Such visions are sometimes also labelled as ideologies or creeds. Substantively, these visions can take a great many forms, such as the promotion of well-being and equality for an entire population or, conversely, the supremacy of some groups over others. They can be religiously inspired, or secular. They can be totalitarian (renouncing the distinction between public and private), or liberal (embracing this distinction). And they can vary within 9 Federal and confederal systems are clear examples of systems with different kinds of elites that are not hierarchically ordered in an unequivocal way. Similarly, systems with independent or devolved branches of functional government are characterised by multiple elites, which operate in different areas of political affairs.

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more limited terms, as is the case with the visions of most political parties in contemporary western states, which generally all embrace representative liberal democracy and respect the private sphere, but differ between them with respect to how ideals of equality and individual freedom, for example, should be balanced. Whatever the specific aspirations of such visions, they provide direction to the more concrete political behaviour of the members of the elites that subscribe to them. In addition to pursuing such visions, elites also strive for power (a concept that I use at this moment without further ado, but that will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 6). Power is necessary to achieve political visions, and is thus of instrumental value. But striving for power can also be motivated by the pleasure of its trappings, the prestige and esteem, the fulfilment of the psychological need for control and, sometimes, the opportunity for enrichment. The balance between the pursuit of substantive visions and the pursuit of power varies; it is different across contexts and across segments of elites, and also across individual members of elites. For some elite members, the pursuit of power dominates, and substantive political goals are no more than a means to obtaining power,10 while others refuse to compromise or dilute their visions for the sake of power. Elites and non-elites also differ in terms of their resources. Elites have more political power than non-elites (this is a close to tautological consequence of our definition of elites, above). The division of labour in which political elites deal with matters that have to be settled for a society or a group (and that are subject of conflict) results by necessity in large differences between elites and non-elites in terms of information and experience. Such differences tend to have a self-perpetuating character. This structural difference does not imply that individual members of elites will always succeed to hold on to power. Members of elites will be replaced and their positions of power will be taken up by others. This can be the result of democratic elections, or of competition between different segments of elites, and of the passing of generations. Nonetheless, such changes in terms of who holds power do not alter the structural distinction between elites and non-elites, only the individual identities of elite members. 10 This is the perspective that the American political scientist Anthony Downs uses in his book An Economic Theory of Democracy (1957: 25): “[A] political party is a team of men [and women – CvdE] seeking to control the governing apparatus by gaining office in a duly constituted election”. Keep in mind, however, that Downs’ theory is not an empirical description, but rather a ‘positive’ theory that analyses what (political) outcomes would ensue if a small number of postulates (such as what motivates political parties and politicians) were true.

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In spite of this fundamental distinction between elites and non-elites, political systems differ in how ‘open’ or ‘closed’ elites (and elite positions) are. This distinction is linked to the degree of social mobility that a society offers. Low social mobility leads to ‘closed’ elites, where elite positions are only achievable for specific social groups defined by, for example, class, religion, language, or inherited social background. High social mobility leads to more ‘open’ elites, where people from all kinds of social positions have opportunities to achieve elite positions. How ‘open’ or how ‘closed’ elites are in a society determines how widely it can recruit for the fulfilment of elite roles, and thus how large a proportion of naturally available talent is excluded from elite positions. That, in turn, is generally seen as affecting the capacity of societies and political systems to adapt to challenges and changing circumstances.11 A perennial question about the relation between elites and non-elites is whether elites exploit the rest of a society or group, or whether elites make it possible for non-elites to pursue their private (non-political) goals. There is, of course, no single answer to this question, as this relationship varies between political systems, historical eras and political regimes.12 Moreover, the answer also depends on what is regarded as the interests of non-elites, which brings us back to a problem discussed earlier in this chapter: who defines the interests of an entire group or society? One thing is clear, however. Namely, that over the course of history elites have often exploited the rest of society. The development of modern states is inextricably linked to the exploitation of ordinary people (who were often explicitly not defined as ‘citizens’, but instead as ‘subjects’, including serfs and slaves) to fuel struggles for dominance between rival rulers and elites.13 It is difficult to regard much of this exploitation as being in the interest of those who perished in the process or in the wars fought for dominance.14

11 The degree of openness of elites has been referred to by the Italian school of elitist theory as the ‘circulation of elites’ (cf. Pareto, 1935; Mosca, 1939; see also Bottomore 1993). 12 This concept will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 8. 13 In the jargon of political science this exploitation is known as ‘extraction’. The American historian Barrington Moore (1966) shows in a seminal study that such extraction can assume different forms that differ between them with respect to their cruelty. These differences appear to be related less to the benevolence or malevolence of ruling elites than to the social and economic conditions that make some forms of extraction either more or less attractive. 14 This does not imply that all extraction is necessarily against the interests of large groups of society. Taxation – one of the forms which extraction can take – can be in the interests of non-elites if it is used to generate security, infrastructure, education and health care that jointly enable people to pursue their private goals with success.

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Although some of the most ruthless forms of exploitation have disappeared from modern liberal democratic systems, the question to what extent elites exploit, or conversely facilitate, non-elites is nonetheless relevant there too. And thus also the question as to how the risk of such exploitation can be limited. A widely shared perspective is that the risk of being exploited by elites can be reduced by making elites compete for power, with the rest of society deciding which elites are awarded with power for limited periods of time.15 Whether such electoral competition between rival elites is sufficient to avoid elite collusion against the interests of non-elites remains a question that cannot be addressed in further detail in this book. Unsurprisingly, any answers to this question are themselves contested, both intellectually and politically.

Structure and agency – perspectives on actors’ behaviour Every political actor must continually make judgements about which goals to pursue, about how these goals could be pursued, about the costs and benefits that each perceived course of action brings with it, and so on. Many of these judgements are made implicitly, particularly in the case of individual actors.16 That they are not made fully consciously does not make these judgements unreasonable or unintelligible, but it does reflect the importance of habit, tradition, and sundry other factors that encourage or discourage particular kinds of behaviour. It also raises the more general question how to interpret the behaviour of political actors: as driven by circumstances, or as a choice? This is the ‘structure versus agency’ question.17 15 This perspective on electoral competition (in combination with other conditions) as a way to avoid exploitation by elites has been emphasised particularly by the economist Schumpeter (1942). 16 Because many of these judgements are made implicitly, it is not always possible to identify actors’ goals by direct questioning. People are often not fully aware of their goals, or f ind it difficult to verbalise them. Moreover, if they were fully conscious of their goals, some actors may be reticent to divulge these because of strategic considerations (being open about one’s goals may make it harder to realise them). Political scientists therefore often assume that goals can be inferred from actors’ actual behaviour (‘deeds speak louder than words’). Such inferences may, however, be incorrect when the ‘logic’ used by the observer to connect goals and deeds is different from that used by the actors themselves. 17 This question is of central importance in all the social sciences, not only for thinking about politics. For reasons that will hopefully be clear at the end of this section, different disciplines generally occupy somewhat different positions in discussions about structure vs. agency, with economics tending to emphasise agency, sociology generally prioritising structure, and contemporary political science tending towards hybrid interpretations.

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When interpreting the actions, inactions and interactions of political actors from the perspective of structure, one emphasises that they are to a large extent determined by how society is organised, and how the political landscape18 is arranged. People have learned to operate within these ‘structures’, they know how they are expected to behave, what the ‘roles’ that they play involve, what to expect of others (given the roles that these others occupy), and how ‘the game’ is played.19 The specific nature of these expectations, roles and games differs for different people, depending on their station in the social structure, on their place in patterns of political conflict and cooperation, and on specific political positions which they may occupy. Citizens in democratic societies, for example, know that they are entitled to voice their views, that they should obey the law, and that they have access to a (limited) repertoire of legitimate actions if they do not agree with the political process or political outcomes. They are also expected to refrain from intervening in the political process by violent means. Similarly, the executive officers of a political interest group know that they are expected to inform their members about how they have represented them, while cabinet ministers know that they are expected to peacefully vacate their positions at the end of their elected mandate or when they have lost the confidence of parliament. Many of these expectations are backed up by regulations, by law, and, ultimately, by a state’s coercive powers (judiciary, police, etc.). That does not mean that everyone always adheres to these expectations, but in established societies most people will do so most of the time anyway, even when they think they would not be caught if they violated them. This structure perspective thus sees much behaviour as the consequence of the wider social and political environment in which people find themselves. It does not matter very much, therefore, who occupies particular positions in a political system; anyone else would be subject to the same structural constraints and inducements, and can thus be expected to behave very similarly. This thus implies that, in order to understand politics, it is more important to understand the norms and expectations that govern behaviour than the personality or individual characteristics of the people who hold various positions. The agency perspective does not see behaviour as a consequence of social and political structures, or of the position that actors occupy in 18 This concept is discussed in more detail in Chapter 7. 19 The ‘learning’ of these various matters is broadly known as (political) socialisation.

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those structures. On the contrary, it emphasises that these structures, and the norms and expectations that are associated with them, are the result of human behaviour, and that complying with norms and expectations is, just as any other form of action or inaction, a choice. This perspective therefore focusses first and foremost on the behaviour and interactions of individuals, and not on the structure of the world and the norms and expectations that come with it. The agency perspective emphasises that political behaviour is to be seen as consisting of conscious choices by actors who pursue goals that reflect their interests and which are generally seen as self-centred.20 All such behaviours by all actors in a political system jointly determine the political outcomes, including the structuring of society and of the political system. These ‘structures’ are therefore continuously changing as a result of individual choices either to change them, or to reaffirm them. This perspective also emphasises the ‘calculations’ on which individual behaviour is based. These include expected costs and benefits, anticipated risks and opportunities, and expectations of other actors pursuing their own goals in a similarly rational and calculating fashion. Neither the structure nor the agency perspective is particularly compelling as an all-encompassing view of human behaviour. The structural perspective is not able to explain very well why or how organisations and institutions change their goals and the way that they operate, sometimes quite rapidly. The agency perspective is silent about the origins of the goals and interests that people pursue. And both have little to say about the importance of the personalities of political actors. It is therefore not surprising that a great deal of current political research combines aspects of the structure and the agency perspectives. This is known under different terms, such as neo-institutionalism and bounded rationality.21 Such hybrid perspectives generally assume the behaviour of political actors to be goal-directed – a somewhat less loaded term than ‘rational’ – while acknowledging that the expected costs and benefits of various options are largely determined by the social and institutional environment of these actors, in the same way as many of the goals and interests that they pursue. They also appreciate that social structure and institutions evolve 20 These assumptions lie at the heart of so-called rational choice or rational actor theories. Additional assumptions characterise the various forms of such theories; see, e.g., Monroe (1991). Although these theories do not explicitly exclude the possibility of altruistic goals, actors are nevertheless mainly seen as operating in a self-interested fashion. 21 Cf. Lowndes (2010) and Simon (1983).

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in their character as a (sometimes unintended) result of the behaviour of and interactions between political actors.22 In empirical research on political matters it is thus necessary to ask oneself how strongly constrained the behavioural options are for the political actors engaged in conflict and cooperation. The more constrained they are, the more that political actors play a highly prescribed role, while the less constrained, the more room exists for individuals – including those who represent collective or institutional actors –not only to play a role, but also to write (part of) the script. And also, the less constrained actors are, the more room exists for a conflation of self-centred interests and collective or institutional interests, a question already discussed in slightly different terms at the beginning of this chapter. Neither the structure nor the agency perspectives pays much attention to personality as a factor driving political behaviour, although this could in principle be regarded as an aspect of agency. However, to understand the outcome of political processes politics, it is sometimes necessary to acknowledge the importance of quite individual traits of political actors: their creativity to find solutions where others fail, their paranoia that poisons every political interaction, or their dogged determination where others would have resigned and given up. And, above all, their ruthlessness or compassion. The behaviour of leaders such as Mandela or Gandhi cannot be fully explained by their place in the social and political world, nor by a calculating pursuit of the interests of the groups they claimed to represent, or even their own self-interest. The same holds for the behaviour of dictators such as Pol Pot, Stalin or Hitler. In such instances, we see people occupying political roles which leave a great deal of room for ‘writing the script’. The leaders referred to above did indeed exploit these possibilities, but not all occupiers of these roles do so, or have the personality to do so.23 Even in more modest positions that leave room to the occupant for defining it, we see that personality and character matter. Therefore, in the analysis of concrete political processes it is sometimes also imperative to also consider these more psychological characteristics of political actors. 22 The importance of both structure and agency has been recognised by many political philosophers through the centuries. For example, as Karl Marx (1852) stated: “Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past”. A more recent and well-argued example of the equal importance of institutions and agency can be found in the work of Giddens (1984). 23 It is particularly here that political psychology and political biography provide relevant insights. In the United States, for example, the pioneering work of Barber (1972) resulted in a burgeoning field of studies on ‘presidential character’.



Chapter 5



Political Conflicts

The variety of topics that lie at the heart of political conflicts is virtually infinite. Any analysis of real-world conflicts therefore needs to start by identifying and studying its concrete subject matter. However, a more general understanding of political conflicts requires a focus on their characteristics, which are the aspects of their identity that can be used to describe every imaginable conflict, and this may help to recognise similarities in the factors underlying their origin, evolution and dynamics. Which characteristics are useful in this respect can only be established by empirically driven theoretical analysis. This chapter focusses on a small number of such aspects of conflicts that have been demonstrated to be relevant for a wide variety of seemingly quite different concrete situations.1 The first of these concerns what is at stake for the conflicting parties, which can be specif ied in several ways. Other important characteristics of conflicts that will be discussed in this chapter relate to the actors involved in the conflict, its history, and its connections to other conflicts. Before turning to these characteristics, a cautionary remark has to be reiterated that was made earlier in Chapter 2. The terms conf lict and cooperation are used here in a neutral sense, in contrast to many evaluative connotations of these terms in everyday language. Conflict is not necessarily bad, or regrettable, and cooperation is not necessarily to be applauded. How one would evaluate specific conflictual or cooperative relationships depends on one’s norms and values and on the goals or interests one pursues, and all of these are different across people. Moreover, there is also a philosophical tradition – known as agonism – that points to the positive consequences of some kinds of political conflict. The underlying idea is that truth and understanding require the acknowledgement of, and intellectual contestation between inevitably incompatible interests and viewpoints, rather than their negation or obfuscation.2

1 2

Parts of this chapter are based on the work of the American political scientist Kriesberg (1998) Cf. Karagiannis and Wagner (2008); Wenman (2003).

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What is at stake? What is at stake in conflicts affects the motivations of those actively involved and how determinedly they will pursue their cause. It therefore also impacts upon the dynamics between the conflicting parties, and on the possibilities for arriving at some kind of resolution. This ‘what is at stake’ aspect of conflicts has different aspects of its own that are not fully independent of each other. What is at stake? Distribution or indivisible values Some conflicts are about the distribution of things that are scarce, but divisible. Income, land, education and health care are such matters, and the question for a society is how, and on what basis, the total that is available is to be distributed to its members. In some societies, a number of such questions are seen as belonging to the private, or to the economic domain, and not as part of political decision-making. But even then, the implicit decision not to regard them as belonging to the political domain is itself political, as it determines for a society how certain questions of distribution have to be settled.3 But most societies resolve many distributional conflicts via political processes. Such distributional problems do not only entail things that are desired, but also burdens that people would like to see minimised, such as taxes or forced labour (as required in feudal societies from serfs, or in other instances in the form of forced recruitment in the army via conscription, for example). Other conflicts centre on matters that are non-divisible and that therefore impinge on all members of the political system; they are sometimes referred to as ‘public goods’. Such conflicts are of the kind whether or not a new road or railway line should be constructed, but they may also involve nonphysical matters, such as whether or not a country should be a monarchy or a republic, whether the age limit for compulsory education should be altered, or whether abortion or euthanasia should be permitted. Distributional conflicts may be difficult to resolve, but they offer more alternatives than conflicts over the imposition of indivisible goods (or ‘values’ in Easton’s terminology, see Chapter 1). The possible outcomes of 3 This statement assumes that it is in the interest of some members of society to settle these questions by political means, and that therefore the question how such distribution is to be achieved is subject to conflict.

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distributional conflicts are almost infinite, as the share of scarce goods that is allocated to individuals or groups can be altered in smaller or larger amounts, upwards or downwards. That does not make the ‘losers’ in such conflicts content, but they have not necessarily lost all. Moreover, when parties have different preferred outcomes in mind for distributional conflicts, any solution somewhere in between these rival options could constitute a viable compromise. This is generally not the case for conf licts over indivisible values. A road is either built, against the wishes of, say, local residents or environmentalist concerns, or it is not, against the wishes of motorists. It cannot be done half way, and whatever outcome is reached, it binds everyone, so that either one side or the other in such a conflict loses, entirely. Particularly when the conflicting sides justify their positions in strong moral terms, this all or nothing aspect of outcomes contributes to the conflicts not being easily resolved. 4 In such instances, any outcome will likely be a temporary one, with the losing side re-igniting it again when circumstances permit or when chances of success seem to have improved. Issues such as abortion and assisted dying are of this kind in many contemporary societies.5 What is at stake? The definition of the situation A concrete political conflict may be interpreted by conflicting sides in very different terms, which makes the question what the conflict really is about as much a part of political struggle as the question what kind of collective decisions have to be taken. The issue of abortion illustrates this. For some, the issue is about the autonomy of women over their own body. For other people, it is about the protection of life. Both definitions refer to values that are widely shared and accepted in contemporary societies. The broader context in which a concrete issue is embedded – known as the ‘framing’ of 4 It is here particularly that political creativity can contribute to outcomes acceptable to all parties, either by reformulating the issue at hand, or by proposing solutions that have escaped the imagination of the opponents so far (for an example of the latter, see footnote 9 in Chapter 2). 5 The binding imposition of values for an entire society, thus also for those who do not accept them, is sometimes justified (by ‘winners’) on the grounds that those who oppose those values are unaware of their ‘true’ interests, and that their manifest preferences therefore do not deserve to be taken into account. In an extreme form, this argument formed the basis for religious persecution in Europe in the sixteenth century (and elsewhere, up to the present day): heretics were burnt at the stake for the sake of the salvation of their own souls. A non-religious but equally inhumane reasoning was used during the Stalinist purges, as chillingly narrated in Arthur Koestler’s novel Darkness at Noon (1940).

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the issue – affects how people who have not yet been mobilised into one of the rival camps are likely to react to it. If the dominant framing of abortion is one of women’s rights, the balance of public opinion will be quite different than when the dominant interpretation of the issue is cast in terms of protection of life. And therefore the ‘definition of the problem’ is itself an important part of political conflict; winning the battle over the framing is a large part of winning the battle over more detailed and concrete issues. Frames and problem definitions are also important for other reasons: they help actors to ascribe goals and motives to their opponents and, on that basis, to define their own political strategy. This is particularly important when opponents’ reasoning is seen as only ‘spin’ to obfuscate their real goals. One of the problems of this is that it quickly becomes impossible to falsify this ascribed portrayal of goals, which undermines reasoned political debate and, possibly, viable compromise. What is at stake? The structure of pay-offs In some conflict situations, the outcome is not reached by a collective and authoritative decision, but through the consequences of the joint behaviour of independent parties. A classic example consists of rival countries that do not trust each other. Each can protect itself against the nefarious goals of the other by arming itself (or by strengthening its armed forces). Each can also refrain from doing so and spend the resources that otherwise would have been spent on arms on other matters. Each country has thus to make a choice between increasing its defence spending, or not. Jointly, this results in four possible outcomes, which can be characterised by how attractive they are for each of the countries. The level of attractiveness is often referred to as the ‘pay-off’ of that outcome. Conflicts can be characterised – at least in a stylised form – by the structure of their pay-offs. A specialised branch of political science – known as ‘game theory’ and based on formal logic and mathematics – analyses how the different structures of pay-offs affect the behaviour of and interactions between the conflicting parties, and thus the outcome of such conflicts.6 The example of two rival countries that each have to decide whether or not to increase their defence spending could be represented as indicated in the table on the next page, in the tradition of game theory.

6 An extensive and thorough introduction in this field, which is nevertheless very accessible for the uninitiated, has been written by Dixit and Skeath (1999).

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The table shows the two possible courses of action for each country, with the four cells representing the possible outcomes. The two numbers in each cell reflect the attractiveness (the pay-off) of that outcome for each of the countries. For ease of interpretation, Country B has been underlined, as have the pay-offs for Country B. If both countries increase their defence spending, the balance of power between them does not change, but each spends a lot of money that could also have been spent on other matters. Each country sees this as an unattractive result, as reflected in their negative pay-offs. If neither of them increases the defence budget, the balance of power between them remains unaltered, but they have considerable resources left to spend on other things, which is attractive to each, as indicated by their positive pay-offs. However, if one does increase defence spending and the other does not, then the balance of power between them shifts, which is, given their mutual distrust, an outcome that is very advantageous for one, and very disadvantageous for the other country. Country A

Country B

Increases defence spending

Does not increase defence spending

Increases defence spending

-9, -9

-12, +12

Does not increase defence spending

+12, -12

+6, +6

If both countries decide independently about their defence spending, then this pay-off structure shows that it is best for each to increase its spending on defence. This can easily be verified. Country A does not know what the other will do, but it does know that the other has two options. If B were to opt for increasing defence spending, then it is best if A does so too, as a comparison of its pay-offs in the top two cells indicates that that leads to the better outcome (a pay-off of -9 is better than one of -12). If B were not to increase its defence spending, then here too, A would be best off if it increased its spending, as (see the bottom two cells) a pay-off of +12 is better than one of +6. Therefore, irrespective of the choice that B makes, A is better off by increasing its spending on defence. Because of the symmetry of the structure of pay-offs, the same reasoning holds for what B should do. However, the outcome of these two independent decisions is inferior to the outcome that would have been achieved if neither increased its arms budget, as for each the pay-off of -9 is worse than +6.

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The structure of pay-offs can vary in a number of ways, each of which may alter the logic that drives the conflicting actors to their ‘optimal’ behaviour. Some conflicts may have a zero-sum structure in their pay-offs, which implies that in all possible outcomes a positive result for one of the parties would result in an equally large negative result for the other. Such conflicts will, for obvious reasons, be more difficult to resolve than other conflicts, in which the possibility exists of a positive pay-off for each. Pay-off structures thus distinguish between different kinds of conflicts, such as – Symmetric versus asymmetric conflicts. The example presented above is symmetric, and therefore the same logic holds for both parties; – Conflicts that comprise a logically best option for the parties (so-called ‘optimal’ behaviour), versus conflicts without this; – Zero-sum versus non-zero-sum conflicts; – One-off conflicts versus repetitive conflicts;7 – and many more. The example presented is obviously not a realistic description of any particular conflict between two countries. It is a highly stylised abstraction. But it illustrates how such abstractions can help to understand how conflicts vary in their structural characteristics, and this in turn clarifies why some conflicts are more intractable than others. The example also helps, sometimes, to identify conditions that would alter the logic that otherwise drives to outcomes that are not desired, either by the parties involved, or by the wider system of which these actors form a part. What is at stake? Priorities As already indicated in Chapter 2, conflicts vary in their importance, in terms of where they are located on the respective scales of priorities of the actors. If the same actors are in conflict with each other over several issues, and if the importance of these issues is different for the actors, then it is sometimes possible to arrive at an overall solution in the form of a trade-off. Figure 5.1 illustrates this. The horizontal and vertical axes in this f igure reflect the importance of issues for actor A and actor B, 7 The example above was presented as a one-off game, yet can easily be seen as a repetitive game where the required decision has to be made again in each successive budget year. Game theory and psychological research demonstrate that the inescapable logic towards a dominant result in a one-off conflict is rarely the dominant outcome in a repetitive situation. For a further discussion on this, see Dixit and Skeath (1999).

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Figure 5.1  Importance of four issues for actors A and B

respectively, who have conflicting preferences on a range of issues, but where not every issue is of equal importance for them. Issue 1 in this figure is of very great importance for A, but of relatively little importance for B. The opposite holds for issue 2. This makes it possible for both actors to agree to a trade that involves that issue 1 is resolved according to A’s preference, and issue 2 according to B’s preference. Each of the actors has thus given up something that they desired, but that is relatively unimportant to them, while each has achieved something of great value to them. Such trades are not always possible when actors have conflicting preferences about multiple issues. It will be clear from Figure 5.1 that this would not work if these actors conflicted over two other issues (labelled issue 3 and, particularly, issue 4).8 8 There are additional requirements for such trades to be possible, which will not be elaborated here; for example, that the resolution of the issues involved should not require the same (scarce) resources.

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Such trades based on differences in priorities are particularly important if neither of the conflicting sides has sufficient power to achieve its desired outcome on all issues. How easy trades of this kind can be achieved also depends on the institutional structure within which conflict resolution (and thus also negotiation and bargaining) take place. In the European Union, for example, important decision-making occurs in the Council of Ministers. But this institution, which is populated by the ministers of the member states, exists in many shapes, for agriculture, education, justice, and so on. This fragmentation makes it difficult to identify possibilities for such trades between issues that belong to different policy areas. What is at stake? Power Characterising conflicts by what is at stake can, as is evident from the previous pages, be done in various ways. One feature that still needs to be discussed in this chapter is that many conflicts are, implicitly or explicitly, about power. The concept of power will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 6, but it can be understood for now as the capacity to get something done. Power is often seen as an ‘input’, i.e. as a factor that helps to determine the outcome of conflicts. But it is also an ‘output’ of conflicts. The development, dynamics and resolution of conflicts affects subsequent power and power relations. Therefore, power is often at stake in conflicts. The actors involved in a conflict need not be aware of this, but if they are, then it brings an additional layer of meaning and of ‘calculation’ to their behaviour and interactions. This awareness will be most acute for actors who aim to remain active in political processes, these being predominantly collective and institutional actors (see Chapter 4), as well as individuals who belong to political elites. These actors will not only aim to achieve their desired outcomes in conflicts over all kinds of substantive issues, but they will also try to avoid so-called Pyrrhic victories.9 This layer of considerations about power may be so strong that it dominates the substantive aspects of what is at stake in a conflict. Power considerations are generally also at the heart of conflicts over procedures, decision rules and eligibility for specific roles or functions. The 9 Named after king Pyrrhus of Epirus, who in the third century BCE won several battles against the Romans at a cost of such disastrous losses that his power was largely depleted and he eventually lost the war.

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political struggles for universal suffrage are about power (irrespective of the often lofty rhetoric that surrounds such struggles), as are struggles over the minutiae of criteria of individual (dis)enfranchisement.10 Similarly, the rules and criteria of who are (and who are not) included on influential committees, or advisory bodies, or quangos11 are about power. Having obtained a place in such organisations implies a structural advantage over opponents who have not been successful in that respect. Many such conflicts, which centre on questions about power, are legitimated in other terms (see the earlier section on ‘What is at stake? The Definition of the Situation’) such as ‘efficiency’, or ‘accountability’, or ‘evidence base’. And indeed, the outcomes of such conflicts may have ramifications in such terms, but when analysing political conflicts one should avoid being deceived by the rhetoric of the parties motivated by power considerations.

Who are the actors in a conflict? Conflicts can in several ways be characterised by the actors who are involved in it. One of these ways focusses on the number of actors. A relatively small number of parties involved in relations of conflict and cooperation allows all the actors to be reasonably cognisant about the conflict: the identity and character of the other actors, their goals, motivations and power, the range of viable outcomes and their pay-offs for all parties, and so on. This, in turn, allows them to choose a course of action that is best for achieving their own goals. This is less possible when the number of parties in a conflict becomes larger and information about all these aspects becomes more fragmentary. The importance of simplifying assumptions and cognitive shortcuts therefore increases with the number of parties involved in a conflict. Because such assumptions and shortcuts will not always be justified, the evolution of a conflict and its outcome becomes less predictable, and more subject to miscalculation, misunderstanding and sundry factors of chance. The strongest parties are least affected by this, as they can use resources to mitigate these factors (e.g. recruiting expertise, investing in information, etc.). Weaker parties 10 In recent decades, this has become a protracted struggle in many of the states of the USA, where, given the overwhelming support of black voters for the Democrats, Republican state governments have invented an increasing array of disenfranchisement rules that are intended to reduce the number of black voters. 11 Quango: Quasi Autonomous Non-Governmental Organisation; organisations to which governments devolve power and that are tasked with particular functions. The Federal Reserve Board in the USA is an example.

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in conflicts, with fewer resources available, are therefore disadvantaged in complex conflicts, and can only strengthen their position by reducing the complexity, for example, by coalescing with others. This underlines in its own way the thesis by Schattschneider (see Chapter 2) that being successful in relations of conflict and cooperation requires the reduction of complexity. All of this does not imply that less complex conflicts are easier to solve or to manage, as is aptly illustrated by the example of the Cold War. Conflicts can also be characterised by the characteristics of those who are not yet engaged, but who can conceivably be mobilised by one of the parties already involved. As explained in Chapter 2, the inclination to involve new parties in a conflict will be strongest for those who are on the losing side. As long as they are able to recruit new support, a resolution of the conflict will at best be temporary. This phenomenon lies at the heart of the protracted nature of conflicts over resources, universal norms and political power which were played out between groups distinguished by class, religion, language and culture in the modernising European countries in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The gradual extension of the suffrage continually altered the power of the groups involved, and therefore made every settlement a provisional one, until full universal suffrage was achieved, resulting in a ‘freezing’ of the then existing power relations between these groups.12 In countries where the composition of the electorate changes owing to largescale migration there is similarly the opportunity for a continuous reshuffle of power relations between groups and parties, depending on which sides in the conflict(s) are successful in recruiting these new citizens into their camp.13 Yet other characteristics relating to actors affect the nature of conflicts. Conflicts involving individual actors will more easily acquire psychological overtones (in terms of pride, self-esteem and arrogance) than when institutional actors are involved who are represented by professionals who can afford to be personally somewhat detached from the conflict. Collective actors are somewhere in between these two in this respect. Moreover, collective and institutional actors generally have more resources than individual actors, which allows them to prolong a conflict, whereas individual actors are sometimes forced to give up, even when they would prefer to continue. 12 This thumbnail sketch of the development of cleavage groups, cleavage-based political parties and cleavage politics needs, of course, elaboration that cannot be included in this context. For the origins and development of these groups and parties, see Lipset and Rokkan (1967); for the factors that led to the demise of these ‘frozen’ systems in the 1970s and 1980s, see Franklin et al., 1992. 13 The first election of F.D. Roosevelt as US president was to a considerable degree propelled by this phenomenon (see Andersen, 1979).

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The history of the conflict Political conflict can become prolonged when the stakes are very high for the parties involved, yet while none of them has sufficient power to force through a definitive resolution. In such situations, the protracted nature of the conflict itself becomes a factor in its further evolution. The longer a conflict is fought over, the more it impacts on the actors involved. They become ‘formed’ or (depending on one’s point of view) ‘damaged’ by their history of involvement. The conflict and the relations with opponents and allies then affect people’s identities. This colours not only their motivations and tenacity, but also their perception and interpretation of other conflicts and their inclination to align these with the protracted conflict in which they acquired their identity. Protracted conflicts thus have the potential to dominate and redef ine (through alignment) newer conflicts. This is partly an organisational necessity, and partly a social-psychological process. It is an organisational necessity that will be recognised by political leaders: if a protracted conflict is of paramount importance, then it is necessary to prevent attention and resources being drained away by other conflicts, and to avoid the possibility that other conflicts may divide the leaders’ power base. Other conflicts therefore have to be subordinated, suppressed, or assimilated through alignment (see also Chapter 2). In (social-)psychological terms prolonged conflicts generate opposition to compromise or to giving up, and the more so the larger the costs and sacrifices that have already been suffered. This is why violent conflict in particular – civil wars, insurgencies and rebellions, or the violent suppression of minorities – generates long-lasting identities and mutual hostility that can even be transmitted across generations. However, if the scale of sacrifices diminishes over time, then this inter-generational transmission of identity and hostility will be imperfect, and may even disappear after a few generations (cf. Van der Eijk et al., 1992).

Connections between conflicts Politics is about conflicts, and conflicts exist in multiples. It is close to impossible for political systems of any scale that only a single conflict would exist. This generates the question how conflicts relate to each other, and how these relationships affect the evolution, dynamics and resolution of each. This has already been touched upon earlier in this chapter, and in Chapter 2.

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One possibility is that conflicts are independent of each other, and that they do not affect each other in any way. A conflict about, for example, whether or not to increase the duration of compulsory education seems to be unconnected to a conflict about a plan to build a new highway. And indeed, such conflicts may well be unconnected, in the sense that what happens in the one conflict is of no consequence in the other, and in the sense that the actors in each of the conflicts are entirely different. But in modern societies such conflicts may nevertheless be connected in a number of ways. For example, political parties may include their stances on both issues in their election manifesto, which is quite possible given the tendency of political parties to express their viewpoints on all areas that they would have to make decisions on if they were elected to parliament, let alone if they were to acquire governmental power. Moreover, as the outcomes on either issue may have significant budgetary consequences, parties may be forced to prioritise these issues. Also, achieving a preferred outcome on one of the issues may cost so much of a party’s power that it does not have sufficient clout left to do so on the other issue. Such processes, and many others, mean that conflicts over matters that appear quite unrelated at first sight are actually not independent of each other at all. Because political parties are involved in national politics, all issues and conflicts that have to be settled for a country will necessarily be connected to some degree. This may have a variety of consequences. One is that it offers conflicting parties the opportunity of trades when their priorities allow this (as described earlier in this chapter). Such a ‘package deal’ is very common to allow the formation of coalition governments even when the constituent parties clash in their preferences on very many issues. Another consequence of the de facto connections between separate conflicts and issues is that it sometimes leads to attempts to amalgamate them into more encompassing (and generally also more abstract) issues; if successful this will generally strengthen the position of power of the actors involved. Yet another possible consequence of the connectedness of conflicts is that it sometimes permits the formation of a ‘negative coalition’: a strategic alliance between parties that is not based on shared or compatible ideas, but instead on a shared aversion to a common opponent. It is impossible to describe, on the basis of first principles, which conflicts will be connected with each other in particular ways. But it is evident that many conflicts will actually be linked to each other, for reasons of political organisation, because of strategic considerations, because of convenience, or happenstance or whatever idiosyncratic factors may operate in a given

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political system. Because of the many consequences that may flow from such connections, any political analysis must therefore include a well-founded and empirical diagnosis of such connections between conflicts.



Chapter 6



Political Power

Power is one of the key concepts in the study of politics. For some authors it is even an indispensable part of their conception of politics (see Chapter 1). Yet the term is not used in the same way by different authors, which is not merely because of their different definitions, but because ‘power’ is a contested concept1 that defies full and unambiguous definition. The problem is made worse even because of the close connection between the concept of power and other concepts – first and foremost influence – which are also understood differently across the literature. This chapter therefore focusses first on the conceptual problems that are encountered when trying to clarify the term power. This leads to a definition of power as used in this book. This definition does not pretend, or even aspire, to resolve existing conceptual disagreement, but it does aim to explicate the considerations on which it is based, and to clarify the difference, as well as the link between the concepts of power and influence.2 This chapter then continues with a brief discussion about different approaches to studying power empirically. It concludes with a renewed reflection on the key question about political power that was first introduced in Chapter 3.

Power as a concept One of the reasons for terminological and conceptual confusion with respect to power is that not all authors distinguish explicitly between different matters that are linked to each other and to the core of their conceptualisations of power. This chapter tries to reduce this confusion by distinguishing these matters analytically, which can sometimes be simply accomplished by combining the word ‘power’ with another noun, such as ‘power structure’, ‘power base’, and so on. A second factor that contributes to conceptual and terminological confusion is that many descriptions and illustrative examples are formulated in terms of individuals or small groups – as in ‘someone has power over someone 1 See Chapter 1 for a discussion of the notion of ‘contested concept’. 2 The discussion and conceptualisation in this chapter is strongly based on the work of Mokken and Stokman (1975; 1976).

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else if ….’ – and then proceed to use the concept in large-scale contexts which cannot adequately be reduced to the behaviour or interactions among a small number of people. It is well-known in the social sciences that what holds at the level of individuals and small groups does not hold for large groups or entire societies.3 A third reason for the confusion is that conceptualisations are sometimes over-complicated and unproductive by including aspects that should be left to empirical research rather than to conceptual definition. The solution for this is to keep concepts as lean as possible. I will first discuss four questions that have to be addressed before presenting definitions of power and influence. Is power a behaviour or an ability? Robert Dahl (1957) describes power as “… a successful attempt by A to get B to do something he would not otherwise do”. A crucial element in this description is ‘attempt’, which specif ies that power is a behaviour, but such an attempt is only to be regarded as power, according to Dahl, if it leads to a desired effect, because that is implied in the term ‘successful’. A potential problem of this behavioural definition of power is that it ignores the possibility of the so-called ‘law of anticipated reactions’, originally formulated by the German political scientist Carl Friedrich (1963). This ‘law’ holds that the behaviour of political actors (individuals, but also collective or institutional actors) is compelled by their perception of how powerful agents want them to behave. This may very well lead to ‘doing something people otherwise would not do’ but it does not require any overt behaviour of a power holder. The only requirement is that those who are subject to such power holders are aware of the latter’s existence, and that they have a perception of what they should or should not do to avoid the displeasure of the power holders, and the consequences thereof. This demonstrates the risk of an exclusive focus on behaviour as a def ining 3 The idea that what holds for individuals or small groups must also hold for societies (and vice versa) is known as a fallacy of composition. A well-known example is the so-called paradox of thrift (aka the paradox of saving), that is often attributed to Keynes (1936), but that has been recognised much earlier (cf. Proverbs 11:24). The paradox is that higher rates of individual saving may result in lower amounts of aggregate saving. The conditions under which this paradox holds are subject to intense debate among economists, while there is overwhelming agreement that it is fallacious to use small-scale and large-scale contexts as analogous. Many politicians seem nevertheless fond of rhetoric that compares prudent management of a country’s finances with the constraints of a family budget. Irrespective of whether they are confused themselves, or wilfully manipulating public opinion with misleading rhetoric, such comparisons are usually incorrect.

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criterion for power, because it disregards situations where power holders are so powerful that they do not even have to act at all to achieve the desired effects. Taking this into account leads to a focus on the ability to act (recognised by others) as a defining characteristic of power. This does not exclude the actual use of this ability. On the contrary, the perception of that ability is often based on actual behaviour by the powerful actor. But the application of this ability does not have to be repeated as long as others are sufficiently aware of it and of the consequences of not complying with the wishes of the power holder. Many political systems rely on this, because it is much cheaper (in terms of resources required) than actual coercion. This holds equally for totalitarian systems as for democratic ones, with the main differences between them being the desires of the power holders (how do they want others to behave?) and the sanctions meted out in case of non-compliance. Is power a characteristic of actors or a relation between actors? In many definitions power is described as a characteristic or a property of actors. A person, or an organisation, or an institution is said to be powerful, or not. Other definitions focus on power as a characteristic or property of a relation between different actors: actor A has power over actor B (or over individual people who are not political actors in the way we defined those in Chapter 4). Both perspectives are relevant, but they may be more clearly positioned by distinguishing between power (as a relation) on the one hand, and power sources (as a property of actors) on the other. Power sources comprise everything that may yield the ability to act in such a way that it makes B do something that A wants, and that would not have occurred in the absence of this ability (as described in the previous section). Power sources can thus be the possession of or control over coercive instruments, but also knowledge and expertise, or money, and so on. The possession of these power sources does not imply power, as the additional requirement for that is the presence of others who are sensitive to the application of these sources. After all, having a gun while living on a deserted island does not provide power over others. This argument can be generalised: power sources do not always yield power over others, but only in specific circumstances. One of the tasks of political analysis is to identify these circumstances for various kinds of power sources. The position of an actor in a society or community, and the relations with others that flow from this position, determine to a large extent

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which resources are available to an actor, which of these are relevant as sources of power, and who may be subject to such power. In other words: specif ic positions may be positions of power if they imply control over relevant sources of power to which others in the society or community are subjected. Power at a societal level Politics is about outcomes for a society – or more generally, for a political system, conceivably less encompassing than an entire society – about which actors have conflicting preferences. The relevance of descriptions of the kind formulated by Dahl, quoted above “… a successful attempt by A to get B to do something he would not otherwise do” is not very clear when looked at from a societal – or systemic – perspective. The problem is that such descriptions are formulated at the micro-level, while the logic that applies at the macro-level may be quite different (see the footnote about fallacies of composition earlier in this chapter). Moreover, they tend to elicit unproductive associations. The formulation ‘A has power over B if …’ suggests that power resides in the identity of actor A, which may be a person, or a group or an institution, and it overlooks the possibility that it is the position that is occupied by that actor in which power resides. Churchill, Gorbachev and Obama were the same persons after they left (or were forced out of) their positions as British Prime Minister, Secretary-General of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, or President of the USA, but they had lost ‘their’ power. After all, it was not ‘their’ power, but the power invested in the positions that they occupied. 4 An additional problem with descriptions and clarifications that are cast in terms such as ‘A has power over B if …’ is that they only focus on pairs of actors, and this does not help to identify broader networks of relationships that may yield positions of power. However, networks of social relations cannot generally be sensibly reduced to mere binary relationships, and it is thus necessary for the study of power at a societal level not only to reject any implicitly personalised perspective on power, but also to embrace a perspective that allows the consideration of power as a consequence of large and complex networks, which are largely driven by impersonal, institutional and cultural factors.

4 In spite of this, it is not irrelevant who occupies such roles, and it may well be that specific traits of that individual office holder provide non-positional sources of power.

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Personalised and binary perspectives on power distract from the identification of wider configurations of positions and relations that characterise a political system. They may also lead to simplistic attributions of responsibility for ills and evils to office holders, and equally simplistic beliefs that these will be remedied by ‘throwing the rascals out’. Even worse, the more one would apply such perspectives on power, the more that the wider, impersonal and institutional networks of power would remain unidentified, and thus shielded from critical scrutiny.5 Are violence and coercion inherent to power? Power is often seen as related to the use of violence or coercion, or to the threat thereof. This is expressed by, amongst others, Max Weber, a German who was one of the founding fathers of modern social science. He emphasised the aspect of power as the capacity to realise one’s own will, even against the resistance of others. Indeed, possession or control over the means of violence and coercion is a source of power and it can, under certain conditions, yield power. But there are also other sources of power, and these do not necessarily have to be backed up by coercive capacity in order to be effective. Coercive means provide the capacity to inflict negative sanctions in the case of non-compliance, but other sources of power can provide the capacity to apply positive sanctions which, again depending on circumstances, may be equally, or even more effective. An additional reason not to link power inherently to coercive means is that this implies that power can only be used in the pursuit of goals which are contested by those subjected to power. There is, however, no logical reason to restrict the scope of power only to such situations and to exclude the use of power in the interests of others. A definition of power In view of the considerations discussed above the following definition of power has been proposed by the Dutch political scientists Robert Mokken and Frans Stokman:

5 A corollary of this argument is that the stronger the personalisation of electoral politics, as institutionalised in elections with single-member constituencies or in presidential systems, the more that structurally anchored power is safeguarded from the wrath of the electorate in periods of strong discontent.

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Power is the capacity of actors (persons, groups or institutions) to fix or to change (completely or partly) a set of action or choice alternatives for other actors. (1976: 46)

Although this definition is rather abstract, it is quite clear, given the analytical considerations discussed above that need to be taken into account when conceptualising power. A few comments may help to grasp the content and scope of this definition. To start with, power is not defined in terms of behaviour, but in terms of the capacity to do something. Whether that capacity is actually used is not the point. This capacity pertains to what others (who are subject to power) can do, the options that are open to them, for choice, or for behaviour. Moreover, power exists in the capacity to either ‘fix or change’ these available options; in other words, it is about the ‘menu’ of options that are available to those subject to power. The implication is thus that power can be applied to maintain the range of options for behaviour or choice that exist, or to reduce it, or to increase it. This definition is much less restrictive than Dahl’s or Weber’s, both of whom define power in terms of a single option for behaviour that is left open for those who are subject to power. Moreover, it does not restrict the scope of power to restrictions of the options that are open to others, but extends it to expanding that range. Thus it does not imply that power leads to the absence of any choice for those subject to it (as Dahl and Weber do), but in fact the contrary. Nor does Mokken and Stokman’s definition imply that the consequences of power would be against the goals or interests of those affected by it. Power can therefore have all kinds of consequences, positive as well as negative ones. Mokken and Stokman’s definition of power, cited above, is defined in terms of political actors. They recognise the need to apply its underlying logic to structural power in a society as well, which also impinges on the range of options that are available to members of that society. Such structural power is located in the existing social, economic and cultural relations, in dominant norms and values, in law, in institutional arrangements, and so forth. But it is easy to grasp that such impersonal power, not linked to specific actors, can also operate to restrict, maintain, or expand the options available to political actors and ordinary people.6 By broadening 6 In Chapter 4 I presented a definition of political actors that centres on active involvement in political conflict, which means that most citizens in a society are not political actors. Mokken and Stokman’s term ‘actor’ is wider, and includes all members of a society or community, irrespective of their active involvement in political conflict.

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their definition to apply to structural power as well, it becomes possible to connect it to the perspective on power proposed by the British political scientist Steven Lukes, a possibility that is absent from the perspective proposed by Dahl and Weber, for example. Lukes’ perspective on power is discussed later in this chapter. Influence A concept closely related to that of power is influence. For this concept too, we find a large number of definitions or descriptions in the literature. The terms power and influence are often seen as being close to interchangeable, or linked in a manner where one is seen as a specific form of the other. A conceptual analysis of the pros and cons of various definitions, along similar lines to those discussed earlier in this chapter, has been presented by Mokken and Stokman, to whom we can refer for further detail. They arrive at the following definition, which I also subscribe to in this book: Influence is the capacity of actors to determine partly the actions or choices of other actors within the set of action or choice alternatives available to those actors. (1976: 46)

Influence thus presumes the existence of multiple choices or behavioural options for those subjected to it, and manifests itself in changing the likelihood of each or some of these options. Influence thus leads to actors (or ordinary people, see footnote 6 above) becoming more – or less – inclined to opt for (a) particular option(s) available to them. Here, too, as in the case of power, it is not necessary that influence is applied against the goals or interests of those who are so influenced. Whether or not that is the case is not a matter to be settled by definition, but by empirical research. Clearly, influence and power, as def ined above, are quite different relational phenomena, and it is quite possible that power relations and influence relations overlap. However, these definitions allow for power to exist in the absence of influence, as well as for influence to exist in the absence of power. The domain specificity of power and influence Power and influence have been defined above in terms of their impact on the availability of actions or choices available to others or their selection of one of these options. These definitions do not specify, however, what kinds

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of actions or choices they refer to. In the context of politics, this must be actions or choices that relate to political conflicts, but that is still a very diverse set of issues and problems. An important question, then, is whether power and influence relations are the same across all these different topics, or whether they are different. Differences in the structure of power and influence relations for different topics is known as domain specificity. If, for example, the actors who have (much) power in matters involving urban planning are largely the same ones as those who have (much) power in education policy, or in foreign affairs, then the domain specificity of power and influence is low. If the set of influential or powerful actors is different for each of these domains, then domain specificity is high.7 The more that power and influence are domain-specific, the less it makes sense to speak of powerful or influential actors in general, and the more it is necessary to specify the domain(s) for which this holds. The implication of high domain specificity is that it means there is not one single elite in the political system, but several, relatively independent elites, each of which has political clout within a limited field. The extent of the domain specificity of power and influence can only be established by empirical research. Many such studies have been conducted, and many of these suggest that power and influence are highly domainspecific in modern liberal democracies. However, many of these findings are not fully compelling, leaving room for the alternative hypothesis that a small number of actors exert a great deal of power and influence over many distinct domains, and that they constitute a single power elite at the top echelon. Below I discuss some empirical approaches to the study of power and influence, and we will see that none of these is without limitations or sufficiently convincing to yield a definitive test between these rival hypotheses about the structure of power and influence relations in a political system. Sources of power and influence Power and influence have their basis in political resources. Not all of these will necessarily be effective; often they are so only when combined with particular positions and the social relations derived thereof. Moreover, the relevance of particular resources as sources of power or influence may vary in different domains. 7 The question about domain specificity is also relevant for specific phenomena related to power and influence, such as power sources, power positions, et cetera.

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Important resources that may be sources of power or influence include the following (without aiming to be exhaustive): – Control over physical force and means of coercion. These are more relevant as potential sources of power than as sources of influence. Their use is more likely to result in determining for others their available options of behaviour or choice rather than affecting the choice of these others among the options that are open to them. The domain specificity of these sources of power is relatively low. – Control over economic and financial resources. These can be a basis for power as well as for influence. Moreover, these resources can often be used to acquire other sources of power or influence, which makes their domain specificity low. – Control over information, knowledge and expertise. These can be used to yield power or to yield influence. Obviously, the information and knowledge has to be scarce and not generally available, and this is also implied in the term expertise. The relevance of these resources for power and influence can be very high, but they are also highly domain-specific, as information that is of crucial importance in one domain may be irrelevant in other domains. – Control over means of communication such as newspapers, radio and TV, internet and social media. Rapid technological change means that the effectiveness of such control may change, which requires actors relying on these sources of power to keep up-to-date. – Control over positions that provide access to other sources of power or that are entitled to make particular decisions or appointments. – Personal characteristics may also be sources of power or influence. Under some circumstances these personal characteristics may include physical strength, but in modern societies other properties are more relevant, such as cognitive social and persuasive skills, mental flexibility, and ‘charisma’. Positions of power Power requires, as a relational phenomenon, that the actors involved be related to each other in one way or another.8 Many such relations are structured in everyday life through family, work, and – especially – the established ways in which the affairs of a society or community are concluded. 8 Obviously this is not the case when we consider power in its structural and impersonal forms, which will be discussed later in this chapter.

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These structures define networks of relationships. Not all positions in such networks are equally important for determining collective outcomes, but some are of crucial importance. These are positions of power. Positions of power can be specific for a person, as in situations where charisma or personal force matter. But in established and stable societies and groups positions of power are generally institutionalised, as will be discussed in Chapter 7. These are positions with special prerogatives, decision-making functions, or control over sources of power and influence. The power and influence derived from these positions is usually not the property of the occupant of that position but is located in the position itself. Such structural positions of power therefore define institutional actors. In spite of their power and influence being largely impersonal, it is often still relevant who occupies these positions (see also Chapter 4).

Perspectives on power and approaches to the empirical study of power Theorising, conceptualising and researching political power – and related phenomena such as influence – can be done in a variety of ways. The British political scientist Lukes distinguishes in this respect between three faces, or three dimensions of power. The one-dimensional perspective on power focusses mainly on decisionmaking about important conflicts for a society, in which the stakes are high for almost everyone. The idea of this perspective is that political actors cannot afford to ‘keep their cards close to their chest’, but that they are forced to commit their power and influence to avoid the risk that their preferred outcome in important matters would not be realised. The resulting behaviour can be observed and it reflects power or influence. It is thus possible to determine which actors are most able to have their preferred outcomes prevail in decision-making processes, and thus which have most power or influence. In short, this perspective holds that power and influence are reflected in decision-making and its outcomes. The two-dimensional perspective on power does not reject the onedimensional view, but sees it as too limited. It holds that not all conflicting goals and interests result in decisions for a society or community. One of the reasons for this is that the ‘capacity’ of the system to deal with conflicts is limited. Conflicts therefore compete with each other for a place on ‘the political agenda’. This is a more abstract notion than the agenda of, say, a Cabinet meeting. It refers to all those conflicts, issues and problems that are

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actually attended to by decision-making institutions and actors, irrespective of whether this is in a formal or informal way. This competition for agenda status is subject to political power and influence, just as decision-making is for those matters that have gained a place on the agenda. Many conflicts and issues thus never succeed in obtaining a place on the political agenda; they are known as non-decisions.9 Because such non-decisions maintain the status quo, they benefit those who have an interest in the status quo, to the detriment of those who aspire to change it. This second face of power can be investigated empirically, but only to the extent that overt behaviour has been involved in denying agenda status to particular conflicts. However, the law of anticipated reactions, referred to earlier, may also result in non-decisions, and in that case the exercise of power and influence cannot be inferred from the manifest behaviour of actors, because there is no such behaviour. In short, the twodimensional perspective on power holds that power and influence are reflected in decision-making and its outcomes (as in the one-dimensional perspective), but also in the behaviour of political actors that determines the competition for political agenda status. The three-dimensional perspective on power extends the two-dimensional perspective, and thus also the one-dimensional view on power. The additional, third ‘face’ of power reflects itself in the ignorance of individuals and groups of their own interests. Such ignorance prevents conflicting interests resulting in actual conflict. And only actual conflicts can compete for agenda status, potential conflicts cannot. This perspective thus calls attention to the mainly structural and impersonal forms of political power and influence. It implies the possibility of so-called false consciousness (see also Chapter 2), situations in which consciously held goals are not in accordance with people’s real interests. It does not imply that the postulated real interests would not be wanted should the people involved become consciously aware of them. In short, the third face of power reflects itself in what the British political scientist Andrew Heywood refers to as ‘thought control’ (1997: 11). This is not necessarily to be interpreted in sinister terms of powerful actors manipulating the powerless so that the latter lose sight of their own interests. The thought control is much more a consequence of impersonal and structural 9 The concept of non-decisions was introduced by the American political scientists Bachrach and Baratz (1963; 1970). Their conceptualisation has subsequently been refined and extended by Van der Eijk and Kok (1975) to incorporate elements of the third dimension of power, to be discussed below.

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forms of power, that flow from the organisation and structure imposed by everyday life. The status quo often appears as a natural order, even when it is not in someone’s real interests. It is very difficult to see alternatives for how the world is, and even more so under harsh conditions such as war, famine, or servitude. Under such circumstances the main option for people is to adapt to the world in which they f ind themselves, even when it flagrantly violates their real interests. But even under less harsh circumstances do people f ind it extremely diff icult to escape from the apparent inevitability of daily life, and to realise how it may infringe on their real interests. The most problematic aspect of the third face of power is how to identify ‘real’ interests. One of the ways to do so is by using counterfactuals and comparative research. Counterfactuals are, in this context, plausible descriptions of how the goals of those who are subject to (structural) power would be different if they were not subject to it. To avoid such descriptions being purely f ictional, comparison between political systems is often essential.10 The discussion above of Lukes’ distinction between the three perspectives on power already hinted at some approaches to empirical research into power. But some of the approaches that have been applied extensively in political analyses have not yet been mentioned. I will therefore briefly discuss some of the most commonly used methods for the study of power and power relations. Before doing so, however, a few general comments are in order on empirical research into power. Power and influence have been defined as capacities. This creates an unavoidable problem for empirical research: a capacity can only be observed when it is actually used, not when it remains unused. Yet there are good conceptual reasons, as explained earlier, why power and influence should not be defined exclusively in terms of observable behaviour. This conundrum leads to the search for indirect ways to detect power, two of which have become quite influential. The first of these focusses on the presumed consequences of power and is based on the logic of ‘where there is smoke there is fire’. If putative consequences of power are observed, then the presence of power is inferred. The other indirect approach does not focus 10 The American political scientist Crenson (1971) compared two cities with equal and severe levels of air pollution. In one of these, air pollution became an important issue on the political agenda, while it did not in the other. He used these two cities as each other’s counterfactual, and analysed the reasons for the difference in agenda status of the problem. He identified this as the perception of the power of local industry; where it was perceived to be very powerful, the law of anticipated reactions prevented articulation of the problem.

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on the presumed consequences of power, but on the presumed sources of power instead: the presence of significant sources of power is then used as the basis from which to infer the existence of power. Both indirect methods are problematic. The first presumes that power is a necessary and sufficient condition for its reputed consequences. The second presumes that sources of power are a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of power relations. Neither of these assumptions is completely plausible, which means that such indirect approaches to studying power have to be bolstered by additional evidence and compelling logic. The decision approach to studying power The logic of the decision approach has already been summarised in the discussion of Lukes’ first dimension of power. In practical terms, it implies that political conflicts or issues are selected that are of great importance for a political system and that are the subject of explicit political decision-making. For these conflicts the entire trajectory of decision-making is recorded in as much detail as is possible, using minutes of meetings, internal reports and memos, successive drafts of proposals, interviews with the actors who were involved in the process, and so on. This set of procedures is known collectively as process tracing. Further analyses of these data then focus on which actors have been able to steer the eventual outcome towards their preferences. The limitation of this approach is its inability to address the second and third faces of power, which can result in the law of anticipated reactions. It does allow, however, within its limitations, to establish whether or not the same actors are powerful or influential in all the policy domains investigated. The reputational approach to studying power The reputational approach is indirect, and assumes that power can be inferred from its observable implications, in this instance the reputation of power. The logic is thus that a strong correlation exists between holding positions of power or exerting power on the one hand, and the reputation of being powerful on the other. In practical terms, the procedure involves usually that ‘well-placed observers’ are asked which actors are powerful in a society or community. These informants are people who are assumed to have extensive information about politics and political actors, including about what occurs ‘behind the scenes’.

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This approach tends to be biased on account of the assumption that is implied in the question, namely that some actors are particularly powerful or influential. Asking informants about this means it is unlikely to result in answers like ‘nobody’. For the same reason, the question may not reflect the domain specificity of power and influence very well, unless it is repeated independently for multiple policy domains. One of the critical assumptions of this approach is that the informants are indeed well-placed and well-informed about political processes and able to distinguish between appearance and real power. This assumption seems more plausible for relatively small communities than for large and complex political systems. If the assumptions on which this method is based are plausible, then it is possible not only to identify power in Lukes’ first dimension, but also in the second dimension. This also implies that this approach may be better able than the decision approach to detect instances of the law of anticipated reactions. The outcome approach to studying power This is an indirect approach that is based on the notion that certain outcomes in a society must be the consequence of the power of particular actors. It assumes that certain values (in Easton’s terminology, see Chapter 1) are so universally aspired to that large discrepancies in their availability between individuals and groups indicates differences in their political power. If we assume that everyone aspires, for example, to the best education for their children, and we observe that the kind and quality of education is markedly different for social classes or ethnic groups, the conclusion is that these differences are attributable to inequalities of power.11 To lead to compelling inferences about power, further requirements must be fulfilled for this approach. It must clearly specify and justify for which generally desired values it can be used. It also requires the nontrivial assumption that those values are indeed universally desired. And it further requires that any inequalities in the realisation or availability of those values is not generated by factors other than power. However, if these requirements are fulfilled satisfactorily, then this approach is better able to identify impersonal and structural inequalities of power than the other 11 This method does not assume that all individual differences in the value in question are caused by disparities in power. But it does claim that systematic differences between different groups of individuals can be interpreted in that way.

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approaches that are summarised here. It is thus of particular relevance for identifying Lukes’ third face of power. The positional approach to studying power The positional approach focusses on the holders of positions of power, particularly institutional positions. Such positions can be formally invested with decision-making power, but that is not necessary. All positions are relevant that provide de facto control over decision-making (including agenda-setting) and over the use of sources of power. Of the four approaches to the study of power summarised here, this one is most focussed on power flowing from positions in a network of relations. Centrally located positions in a network are more powerful than peripheral ones. This approach thus requires the analysis of the structure of networks, and the identification of positions with high centrality.12 Of the approaches to the study of power reviewed here, this one is most strongly geared to the concept of power and influence as capacities, irrespective of their use.

The key question about political power The key question about political power was introduced in Chapter 3 as ‘how are resources distributed?’. As will be clear from this chapter, that was only a preliminary articulation of questions about power and influence. When seen from a purely distributional viewpoint, questions about structural power – which are not bound to political actors – would be overlooked. Moreover, when exclusively seen in terms of resources – i.e. the sources of power – analyses of power would ignore the relevance of positions of power and networks of relations that enable power. The key questions as formulated in Chapter 3 serve therefore only as points of departure for understanding politics and political processes, not as definitive formulations. At the end of this chapter, however, it is useful to sketch out how the key question about political power can be elaborated further, taking into account the inter-relations between sources of power, positions of power, and the domains in which power relations operate. Earlier in this chapter I emphasised that resources are only a source of power to the extent that 12 So-called graph analyses are very appropriate for this purpose. For a classic example, see Mokken and Stokman (1978), and the more extensive report of the same study by Helmers et al. (1975, in Dutch).

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they play a role in the relationships between actors. Such relationships include those between pairs of actors, but they should also be seen as elements of wider networks of relationships. Such networks then lead to the acknowledgement of the importance of power positions, which would be overlooked if the relational aspect of power is only applied to pairwise relations. Positions in networks of relations can be characterised by the totality of relations with other positions, which can be expressed in measures of, say, centrality. Network positions yield power or influence – conceptualised as a capacity – while also being subject to the power of other positions in the network. The structure of networks of positions may be different between domains, which would imply that actors occupying central positions in one network may be in peripheral positions in another, or may not be included in other networks at all. All of this implies that, to understand the role of power and influence in the resolution of political conflict, a series of interconnected questions have to be addressed. One has to establish in which domain – or possibly domains – a political conflict is located. For that domain, the question has to be answered, which political actors are important? These include the contestants in the conflict, but also other actors who occupy positions of power that affect agenda-setting and decision-making in that domain. Then the sources of power of these actors have to be reviewed so that their capacity to fix or change the behavioural and choice alternatives of others can be identified. From both a descriptive and also a normative perspective it is important not to see this capacity to ‘change’ only in terms of restrictions. Power can, after all, also be used to broaden the alternatives for others and power holders may be judged on whether they do so. Looking at power relations in network terms, rather than only for pairwise relations, allows the identification of indirect relations of power (A having power over C via B), which may even be circular (A having power over B, B over C, and C over A). The great advantage of transcending the micro-level that is implied in pairwise relations is that it avoids simplistic fallacies of composition (see footnote 3). What holds at the micro-level does not necessarily hold at the macro-level, and it is at the macro-level where politics and political processes are located: the resolution of conflicts over matters that have to be settled for a society or community. All of this provides a less simplistic view on the role of power and influence in politics. Yet it still does not do justice to the role of structural power, which is not tied to political actors or to positions of power. To a considerable extent, however, we can reformulate questions about structural power into questions about the context within which actors pursue their goals and

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interests in relations of conflict and cooperation. That context embodies the world in which people find themselves, that structures their lives, and that often acquires the aura of a natural order that results in the ‘thought control’ that is characteristic for structural power. Questions about this context will be elaborated in the next two chapters.



Chapter 7

The Political Landscape and the Wider Context Politics does not exist in a vacuum. It has a context which affects and constrains it. This context, and in particular its stable aspects, determines to a large extent our experiences and our thinking, our perceptions of the world, our expectations, and our ideas about ‘normality’. It therefore also affects our norms and values – even if these are not universally shared in a society – and our perceptions of ourselves and of how we differ from others. The context, therefore, constitutes an important foundation for our goals and interests and thus also for relations of conflict and cooperation. It determines to a very large degree the available options for behaviour and choices for actors, and particularly the options that are not open to them. All in all, without an adequate understanding of the context it is impossible to comprehend the political aspects of human behaviour and interactions. The context is for most people (political actors and non-actors alike – see Chapter 4) something beyond their control, at least in the short run. It embodies many of the structural power relations discussed in Chapter 6. This does not imply that the context is unalterable, as is amply illustrated by the historical developments of societies. But many of those changes occur gradually, and not necessarily as an intended consequence of conscious human actions.1 This chapter distinguishes two components of the context: the ‘political landscape’ on the one hand, and the ‘wider context’ on the other. The political landscape is very directly related to ongoing political processes; that is, to conflict and cooperation about matters that have to be settled for a society or a community (see Chapter 1). It consists of the institutions and ‘rules of the game’ that organise and structure political processes. The wider context relates to other aspects of human behaviour and interaction such as those in the economic or social sphere, and to non-human aspects such as the physical world, the climate, eco-systems and so on. The demarcation between 1 Yet important changes in the context of politics are the result of human action; not necessarily of individual actions, but rather as the consequence of myriads of individual actions, each of which may have been undertaken for other reasons, and without any premonition of their joint consequences.

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the political landscape and the wider context is sometimes blurred, and often of little relevance for individual people (particularly if they are not part of a political elite), since both provide opportunities and constraints for the realisation of goals, for conflict and cooperation, and for what to do. However, this distinction is relevant for understanding how a political system functions and adapts to changing circumstances.2

The political landscape The political institutions and rules that constitute the political landscape organise and structure how conflict and cooperation develop. For political actors, they are a given, and appear sometimes as ‘natural’. Yet they do change, as is obvious when comparing them over time. The political landscape affects ongoing politics, but at the same time it is itself the result or outcome of political processes (conflict and cooperation) that took place in the past. These rules and institutions are often the subject of intense political conflict, although sometimes only in implicit ways. The terms institution and rules are used in a variety of ways in the literature and are not always distinguished very clearly. Sometimes the term institution is used for specific organisations that themselves are political actors (see Chapter 4 on institutional actors). The term is also used for norms, or values or procedures that are not embodied in an organisation, and that therefore cannot be political actors. This is the case when ‘universal suffrage’ is referred to as one of the central institutions of contemporary democracies. And the term institution is also used for large-scale configurations of multiple organisations and rules and procedures, when ‘democracy’, or ‘the welfare state’, for example, are referred to as institutions. The common element in all of these meanings is that they concern relatively stable structures that shape how political actors can pursue their goals and interests. Organisations as political institutions The political landscape contains all kinds of organisations that play a role in how conflicts about matters concerning an entire society or community are settled. The role of such organisations is not to be understood from their formal remit, or their charter or similar declarations, but from the power 2 Comparative politics – a sub-discipline of political science – focusses on the consequences of differences in the political landscape of different political systems.

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and influence that they exert in their relations with each other and with other political actors (individual, collective or institutional actors). This includes their structural power (see Chapter 6). A first task of political analysis is thus the identification of the existing institutional actors in a political system. For most contemporary states these include their governments and parliaments, their advisory bodies and investigative committees, the armed and judicial forces, and so on. For modern political parties – political systems in themselves, as discussed in Chapter 1 – internal institutions that have an organisational presence include their executive, their conference, their local or regional chapters, their research department, etc. Describing the institutions in a political system requires a judgement with respect to their existence independent of other actors or institutions. For example, should the financial department of a political party be regarded as an institution, or is it simply a subordinate branch of the executive? The criterion here should be whether it exerts political power or influence independent of the executive; in the last resort, this is a matter for empirical research. How differentiated the set of institutions is differs between political systems, and for each system over time. In stereotypical single-ruler systems, differentiation is low, but this only seems possible in small-scale political systems. All large-scale political systems exhibit some degree of differentiation. The eighteenth-century French philosopher Montesquieu distinguished between three major branches of the state, which are generally embodied by different institutions: these are the executive, the legislative and the judicial branches. The very fact that these different branches exist as separate organisations does not yet make them into separate institutions, as that requires some degree of autonomy.3 Within each of these branches, further institutional differentiation is common, as exemplified by separate government departments for different policy areas (e.g. agriculture, health, education, etc.). Most large-scale political systems – states, but also corporations, labour unions, cause or interest groups, and political parties – are institutionally quite differentiated.4 3 Totalitarian systems often contain separate organisations for the executive, legislative and judicial branches of the state, which may in fact have no independence whatsoever from the leadership of the state (which itself may reside in yet other organisations, such as a political party, as was the case in the Soviet Union and still is in North Korea, for example). Organisations that have no independence from others do not qualify to be regarded as institutions in their own right. 4 Many large-scale organisations that are based on membership are also differentiated through the distinction between executive-legislative-judicial functions, with an executive board, a legislative congress, and separate institutions for arbitration.

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Functional differentiation reflects which concerns and interests are of sufficient importance to warrant separate institutions. It also implies that interests embodied in or aligned with these institutions are recognised as important and legitimate, and therefore enjoy a privileged position in competition for agenda status (see Chapter 6). This explains why political actors generally aspire for a separate organisation, or department, or unit in a political system, as it legitimates their side in political conflicts, and it provides them with an institutional ally within the political system at hand.5 Functional differentiation thus reflects the interests that in the past were sufficiently powerful to result in the establishment of separate institutions. As long as the existence of these institutions is uncontested, these interests still hold power, but when their continued existence is under threat, the power of their supporting interests has evidently waned. The implication of this is that the ‘reorganisation’ of large-scale political systems reflects shifting relations of power, and is rarely to be understood in the rhetorical terms used for its justification, such as efficiency or modernisation, for example. The extent to which institutions can operate independently of other institutions manifests itself in different ways. One is, obviously, to be seen in actual decision-making, the formal scope of independence and the de facto realisation thereof. Independence is also reflected in the recruitment of the individuals who act for institutions. Co-optation reflects a larger degree of independence than appointment by other actors. Recruitment via election provides an independent electoral legitimation that can help to maintain independence from other institutions, but it generates a dependence on a multitude of others, if the election is for a limited period and the incumbent aspires to be re-elected. Formal protection against dismissal provides independence, particularly if there is no time limitation for the position in question. In many countries this is the case for judicial appointments. Most large-scale political systems are not only organised along lines of functional differentiation, but also of geographical differentiation. Countries have their regions, or provinces, and hence local institutions. Likewise, political parties have their local branches, and so on. This also creates institutions that are political actors in their own right, at least if they have a minimum of autonomy from the institutions higher up the chain.6 5 It does not guarantee, however, that that institution will always do what its original proponents want(ed) it to do. 6 Functional and geographical differentiation can very well be combined, as in the case of the water boards in the Netherlands (‘waterschappen’) or school boards in many states of the USA.

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In addition to institutions that represent components of the formal organisation of the ‘government’ of the political system, the political landscape also contains other organisations that act as some kind of intermediary between, on the one hand, the political system and, on the other, individuals (including ordinary citizens who are not actively involved in political conflict and cooperation), non-political organisations (such as firms) and other political actors. Political parties are among these, and parties and party systems are therefore usually counted as part of the institutional framework of a system.7 Other intermediary institutions are interest groups, cause groups and pressure groups, and the media. Procedural institutions and rules of the game Procedural institutions are the norms and prescriptions that regulate the behavioural options and the actual behaviour of political actors. This implies that they exert structural power and structural influence (see Chapter 6). Examples include universal suffrage, freedom of expression, and the rule in parliamentary systems that the government must have the ‘confidence’ of parliament. Such procedural institutions are sometimes distinguished from more specific rules, regulations and non-formalised ‘rules of the game’ by their wide scope. The boundaries between these classifications is somewhat vague, however, and not of crucial importance here. I will therefore use these terms more or less interchangeably. Procedural institutions are, just as organisational ones are, the outcome of political conflict in the past, while they regulate behaviour, conflict and interactions in the present. They are often the subject of current political conflict, often in a somewhat veiled form in debates about their ‘correct’ application or interpretation.8 Procedural institutions exist in relation to a variety of matters, but in most political systems – states as well as other political systems – we find them regulating the following three aspects. 7 Parties and party systems should be distinguished. Although a party system is made up from the existing parties, it is more than the sum of its parts. Characteristics of a party system affect the political behaviour of all kinds of actors, but these characteristics do not apply to individual parties: the degree of polarisation, for example, or the variety of social cleavages that is represented in political parties. Whereas parties are organisations and political actors in their own right, a party system is not, yet it is part of the political landscape and it does affect the kind of conflicts that develop in a system and the way in which they are settled. 8 A large part of the work of the US Supreme Court, for example, consists of the repeated re-interpretation of the ‘meaning’ of the Constitution. Although the text of that document has not changed since the ratification of the 27th amendment in 1992, the interpretation of how it must be applied in contemporary politics is continually being modified by the Court.

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1. Procedural institutions and rules about members of the system and political actors Most systems define, either by explicit formulation or by rules that are not explicitly articulated, who belongs to it, in what kind of roles, and what those roles imply in terms of rights and obligations. Who are its subjects or citizens,9 and what are the positions of all others – are they foreigners, slaves, serfs or what? Virtually all political systems also regulate what kind of collective or institutional actors exist. Are political parties allowed? In many countries, this was not the case until the nineteenth century. The label that is attached to the position of people or actors is not of central importance here, but rather the institutionalisation of the rights and obligations that define these positions. The institutionalisation of civic rights is thus of the utmost importance for individual people to effectively pursue their political goals and interests. 2. Institutions and rules regulating power Most political systems regulate how positions of power can be attained: through succession, appointment, co-optation, election, purchase or lottery. More concrete procedural rules define how this has to occur, who qualifies to be taken into consideration, and so forth. Quite different procedural institutions have sometimes been devised to avoid the same persons occupying multiple positions by specifying ‘incompatibilities’ of roles. The opposite of this exists as well, via the specification of so-called qualitate qua positions.10 Political systems regulate the use of power in other ways too. Much of relatively recent regulation attempts to prevent the use of power or influence for particular purposes, for example, self-enrichment. The norm of accountability of public office holders in modern democratic systems results in procedural institutions with respect to secrecy versus the public availability of information. 3. Procedural rules and institutions about decision-making How binding decisions for a political system can be made is also a familiar part of procedural institutions. Likewise, questions relating to who has a say in what kind of decisions, who (if anyone) has a power of veto, who has to be consulted, and who has the power to make proposals 9 The designation of members of countries as citizens is only a relatively recent phenomenon, since the institution of universal suffrage. In feudal times, almost everyone except the nobility and clergy were subjects. In the intermediate centuries, some people could be citizens while others were subjects, two positions that entailed quite different rights and obligations. 10 E.g. the Vice-President of the USA is qualitate qua the President of the US Senate.

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for decision-making. What degree of support is required for certain decisions? A simple majority of all who are entitled to participate in the decision, or a qualified majority, or unanimity? The discussion so far illustrates that procedural institutions and rules of the game vary widely in scope and specificity. Some are explicitly formulated while others are implicit, yet they may be equally important in structuring the behaviour and interactions of political actors. Procedural rules and rules of the game are never neutral, even if they may appear that way. The rule, for example, of decision-making by majority vote – commonly applied in parliaments and elsewhere – does not take into account the strength of preferences in favour or against the topic that is voted upon. Under some circumstances this will disadvantage passionate minorities. Similarly, different procedures for applying the principle of majority decision-making when a choice has to be made from more than two options will lead to a variety of quite different outcomes. The choice of a particular procedure is then advantageous for some actors, but not for others.11 This non-neutrality of procedural institutions and rules should not be surprising. They are, after all, the outcome of political conflict (in the past). The kinds of interests that ‘won’ these historical conflicts put their stamp on the procedural institutions that have endured until the current period in ways that would, at the very least, not be detrimental to them. If the conflicting historical interests are still relevant today, then it cannot be expected that procedural institutions are neutral, even if they were not set up with an eye to the specific conflicts of today. The non-neutrality of procedures implies that they are part of the structural power relations in a political system. Moreover, because such knowledge is scarce and not always very intuitive, political actors and interests who invest time and effort in comprehending the ‘hidden’ consequences of procedures have a strategic advantage over others in situations where new institutions are set up, or where existing procedural institutions are under discussion. Astute political actors therefore continuously ask themselves whether to spend their scarce resources in the pursuit of their goals and 11 The American economist and Nobel Prize winner Arrow (1951) has clarified such somewhat ‘hidden’ consequences of voting procedures for a broad public. His impossibility theorem and voting paradox demonstrate that under many plausible conditions no voting procedure is neutral. His work and similar studies of the consequences of procedures is closely related to the game theoretic approaches referred to in Chapter 5. For further examples see also Brams (1976).

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interests within the framework of existing procedures and rules, or in the pursuit of making changes to these institutions in order to pursue their substantive interests better under new procedural conditions. Success in changing procedures does not, however, guarantee unadulterated success in the pursuit of other goals and interests. Incomplete or incorrect information, faulty strategic calculations, and other changes in the political system and its context may make any benefits from altered procedures and rules illusory. The ceteris paribus assumption that underlies strategic behaviour often does not hold, or not for very long. Changing procedures and rules themselves contribute to changes in the goals, the priorities and the strategies of political actors, and sometimes even to patterns of conflict and cooperation. This does not refute the proposition that procedures are not neutral, but it should discourage the view that they are consciously put in place to bias the outcome of present-day political conflict. Large-scale configurations as institutions The concept of institutions is sometimes used in a broader sense than discussed so far (cf. March and Olson, 1989). It then refers to an ensemble or configuration of interconnected norms, organisations and regulations. The idea is that the totality of such a configuration is more than the sum of its parts. To understand the working of political systems, it is then necessary to consider not only the institutional actors and procedural institutions, but also their distinctive connections. This perspective results in regarding ‘the welfare state’ as an institution, or ‘consociational democracy’, etc. Because of historical idiosyncrasies and local circumstances these large configurations are not identical across political systems. One may then easily conclude that every system is different in its institutionalisation, but that is not a productive point of view. Instead, it helps to describe the variety of institutional forms that exist in a stylised form with the use of so-called typologies. These consist of ideal-types: theoretical constructions that do not perfectly describe existing political systems, but which attempt to isolate the fundamental features that distinguish them. Such typologies have been developed to grasp the difference between democratic systems, for example, or between welfare states, and so on. Arend Lijphart (1999), a political scientist of Dutch origin who worked for most of his life in the USA, constructed such a typology that distinguished between two different kinds of democracies. On the one hand, the ‘Westminster’ type (also known as majoritarian) and on the other, the ‘consensus’ type. Some countries, such as the United Kingdom, resemble

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the first type, while others, such as the Netherlands and Austria, resemble the second type. These types not only reflect different organisational forms of countries, but also different conceptions about democratic politics. The Westminster type tends to equate democracy with decision-making based on majorities the consensus type sees democracies emphasising respect for political minorities more strongly. Typologies such as this one vary in their breadth. At a very broad scale the political systems of states are classified in typologies that distinguish between democratic, authoritarian and totalitarian systems, and so on. Lijphart’s typology is somewhat narrower, as are other typologies, for example, those of interest representation – pluralistic versus neo-corporatist. The reason for using such typologies is that they attempt to isolate the fundamental differences between political systems from a variety of their characteristics. Just as with all other institutions that are discussed in this chapter, these institutional configurations are important because of their power and influence: their capacity to structure political conflict and cooperation, the options and behaviour of political actors, and the perceptions and expectations of all involved.

The wider context of politics The wider context of politics includes the non-human and non-social aspects of the world, such as the material and physical world, the climate, and the eco-systems that populate it. This part of the context affects the goals that people pursue, and provides opportunities and limitations for the realisation of those goals. The wider context of politics also contains all aspects of human life that are not political in character, such as family life, education and work, recreation and cultural life. It includes behaviour and interactions in these other spheres, as well as the tangible and intangible institutions which spring from them. Finally, the wider political context contains other political systems than the one under consideration.12 All these aspects of the wider context affect political processes and have therefore to be taken into account when studying politics. 12 Other countries, for example, are part of the wider context within which the political processes of a country play out. Political developments in other countries often inspire hope or fear to political actors in the country under study. As a case in point, when studying electoral politics in Britain, say, one finds that many politicians and political parties take inspiration from how recent elections were fought in other countries

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The relationship between the domain of politics and its wider context can be summed up in two assumptions. The first is that the political domain and the various components of its wider context all have their own internal ‘logic’ driving them. The second assumption is that politics and the wider context determine reciprocally the conditions and constraints within which these separate logics operate. Together, these two assumptions are known as the ‘relative autonomy’ of politics and context. The meaning of this relative autonomy can be illustrated with the relationship between politics and economics in contemporary western countries, which are politically organised as representative democracies, and economically as market economies. The importance of economic conditions and economic development for politics in such countries is generally recognised. The availability of public funds is largely determined by the state of the economy, as are many of the demands made on governments. The behaviour of economic actors (e.g. producers, consumers) has external consequences: for the environment, for mobility, for health, and for the development of the economy itself (i.e. for economic growth, employment, inflation, etc.). To the extent that such consequences are seen as problematic, government – i.e. the political domain – is generally seen as having a responsibility to ‘solve’ or ameliorate these problems. In other words, the economy impacts on the political domain via resources, and via the need to address problems originating from the economy. However, the economic domain does not determine how political actors react to all of this. Part of the reason for that is that not all interests in the economic domain are aligned. Entrepreneurs and producers have different interests than employees or consumers have. Capital-intensive branches of the economy want other things from politics than labour-intensive branches, and so on. Political actors can therefore address economic problems and problems originating from economic activity in multiple ways. This generates the autonomy aspect of the assumption of relative autonomy. In the same way, the economic domain enjoys relative autonomy from politics. Political decisions – e.g. with respect to taxation or subsidies – may be taken into consideration by economic actors, but whether they will adapt their behaviour as a consequence is their own choice. The relative part of relative autonomy flows from the fact that the political domain is, for all practical purposes, not free to ignore the performance of the economic domain or the problems that it generates for a society. Similarly, while the economic domain is free to choose how to react to the political domain (e.g., to its regulation, taxation, etc.), it cannot freely ignore it.

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The political system determines the constraints, rules and regulations that economic actors have to respect, but it does not determine what economic actors will subsequently do within these boundaries. In the terminology of Chapter 6 this means that the political sphere exerts power over the economic domain by imposing binding and enforceable rules that allow economic actors to make their own individual choices.13 At times it may also use influence, by way of inducements or subsidies, but it remains up to the economic actors to decide whether or not to change their individual behaviour in response to this. The relative autonomy of different spheres of human behaviour and interaction is an assumption which does not necessarily hold. In very small political systems, such as a tribe or an extended family, this assumption is more tenuous. Totalitarian political systems aim to deny or reduce any degree of autonomy of, say, economic or cultural life. But for most large-scale contemporary political systems the assumption of relative autonomy of the sub-systems or different domains is very plausible.14 The assumption of relative autonomy has two important implications for how we think about politics – and for the same reason, how we think about other relatively autonomous domains of human life. The first implication is the rejection of reductionist reasoning. Reductionism is the idea that political processes are ultimately driven by non-political factors.15 What the non-political factors in question are can vary, and it may be the economy, or the national character, or kinship, or whatever, but in all such instances the reductionist reasoning is that politics does not have its own, partly autonomous logic. The second implication of the assumption of relative autonomy is the rejection of political determinism, 13 One can think in this context about imposing the rules that make freely concluded contracts enforceable, prohibit fraud and false information, provide consumer protection, regulate credit, prevent or police monopolies and cartels, and provide a monetary system. Without all of these, many economic activities would not be possible. These examples also demonstrate that, as discussed in Chapter 6, power is not necessarily restrictive. In the examples given it is restrictive for (some) economic actors where it prohibits fraud or breaking a contract. At the same time, power expands the behavioural options of economic actors where it imposes a well-regulated monetary system or the regulation of credit. 14 This also holds for political systems that are not states. Large corporations organise their activities in relatively autonomous units that are responsible for, e.g., production, transport, advertising, sales, etc. In political parties, it is quite common that elected representatives have some degree of autonomy from the party conference, and so on. In short, large organisations, in politics and elsewhere, are generally not monolithic. 15 This may be formulated in a wide variety of ways, such as ‘in essence’, or ‘in last instance’, or ‘au fond’, etc.

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which holds that the processes and outcomes of the political domain are driven entirely and exclusively by political factors. The context of politics is so wide and so diverse that it becomes almost impossible to analyse its impact on politics in the absence of any further specification. In the following sections I discuss five different parts of the entire context which all relate to other domains of human life. They overlap to some extent with each other and with the sphere of politics, but that is no impediment for a fruitful discussion of their mutual relations. The social context The social context of politics contains all interactions between individual people and groups that contribute to people’s development towards membership in a community and to the position they occupy. It results in roles and obligations, networks of affection and loyalty, and partly shared identities, norms and values, perceptions and language. It contains organisational structures such as families and households, churches, schools, clubs and voluntary organisations. In Chapters 1 and 2 I indicated that some of these can be regarded as political systems in their own right when we focus on conflictual matters that have to be settled for a church, or a club, for example. At the same time, we can regard some political organisations as also belonging to the social domain in view of their contribution to the formation of people as members of society through identities, networks of loyalty, and so on. The social context of politics is of importance because it is a basis for the development of groups, and for the collective actors representing them (see Chapter 4). Many such social differentiations result in goals and interests that may lead to conflict or cooperation. Social differentiation in terms of status, esteem and prestige translate to some extent to differences in power and influence. The social context thus provides in many ways the ‘raw material’ that fuels political behaviour and interactions. Whether or not social groups will constitute themselves as collective political actors depends partly on their cohesiveness, but also on how they are treated by the political system, which may range from repression to facilitation. The social context is itself also affected by the political sphere. Shared identities and loyalties can be reinforced, weakened or re-conf igured by people’s exposure to and experience with political outcomes. This manifests itself in various ways, from small-scale ones to the large-scale processes known as nation formation (which will be discussed further in Chapter 8).

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The economic context Politics and economics each have their own internal ‘logic’, while affecting each other, as discussed earlier in this chapter. In that illustrative discussion of the assumption of relative autonomy I referred to a free-market capitalist economy. The relationship between politics and economics was quite different in the state planned economic systems that existed in the Soviet Union and the soviet bloc until 1989. In those systems, the relative autonomy of the economic sphere was much smaller than in market economies. The responsibility for decisions about investment (and thus also about innovation), production and pricing in those planned economies was not located with autonomous entrepreneurs and consumers, but with political institutions. The involvement of political institutions in economic decisions can thus vary greatly. However, it would be overly simplistic to see political involvement in the economy and ‘free’ markets as simple opposites, as in the idea that more politics implies less market, and vice versa. The reason for this is that a ‘free market’ is itself an institution that does not develop spontaneously and that generally is not capable of maintaining its ‘free’ character. Political institutions with sufficient power are required to safeguard its free character for producers and consumers, for creditors and for debtors. Without this political protection, no free market could exist, and it would degenerate into private coercion and manipulation, fraud and falsification, all of which would reduce the behavioural options for economic actors, and generally the overall level of economic activity. The creation, regulation and maintenance of free markets is thus an infrastructural provision that can only be delivered by political institutions, and without free markets, no market economy is possible. By providing and maintaining free markets, the political sphere exerts power over economic actors, but no influence (see Chapter 6). It can exert influence through other means, such as subsidies or narrowly targeted taxes. The legal context The degree of autonomy from politics that the legal sphere enjoys varies greatly. In small and traditional societies, this autonomy is generally low. It is virtually absent in totalitarian societies. But in many societies we see a legal or judicial sphere that has some degree of autonomy. The notion of the rule of law in modern societies expresses that the behaviour of political actors and political institutions – including the state – is bound by laws. The content

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of law is largely determined by political (collective) decision-making in the context of past conflicts. Here again we observe a double and somewhat reciprocal relation: politics contributes to legal regulation that will operate in the future, and is at the same time subject to currently existing law that originates from conflicts in the past. Laws and legal regulations are not only generated through the political sphere, however. Other relatively autonomous areas of human life contribute to their generation as well, such as society (and particularly religion), economics, and science and technology. The extent of autonomy of the legal context from politics hinges to a large extent on its freedom from coercion. Are legal and judicial institutions subject to violence or intimidation? Are legal personnel (judges, prosecutors) safe in their position, or can they be fired at will by political actors? Will legal decisions be executed by the state, or only when it suits political actors? And so on. In many modern western democracies, the autonomy of the legal context is high, but recent history and contemporary experiences of democracies succumbing to authoritarian or totalitarian developments show that such autonomy can be very precarious. The media context Much of what happens in a society is not directly observable to its members, except in very small systems. People obtain some of their information about what happens in their society, community or political system from personal contacts: family, friends, colleagues. But for much of their information they are dependent on specialised organisations and institutions. So-called mass media – newspapers, radio and TV – are paramount among these. In recent times the internet and evolving social media play an increasing role in providing information. In liberal democracies this media context enjoys a high degree of autonomy, but this is much less so in authoritarian or totalitarian systems. Political systems determine the boundaries and constraints within which media operate. In no system is freedom of the press (and of other media) without limits, but the autonomy from politics hinges on the liberty to provide and distribute information that political authorities find unwelcome. Non-democratic systems monopolise the media for their own purposes, and do not allow them to voice dissent. In democratic systems too, some media organisations can be so closely linked to particular political actors that their autonomy is de facto restricted. In democratic systems, the media context is of particular importance as it provides channels of communication between elites and non-elites.

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Moreover, through selection, framing and interpretation, the media package information in ways that are accessible for citizens with low levels of political knowledge and limited time and attention for social and political information. Because non-elites allocate power to competing elites through the electoral process, many political actors depend on the media to reach the electorate. Where competing elites have unequal access to the media, it is common to hear concerns about the consequences for freedom of choice, usually accompanied by demands for political regulation of the media to ensure a ‘level playing field’. The political culture as context The political culture is perhaps the least tangible of the various kinds of context discussed here. It refers to configurations of norms and values, of ‘common knowledge’ and expectations, and of behavioural repertoires that feed into actions, reactions and interactions. A part of this political culture consists of attitudes and expectations with respect to politics. These can be attitudes such as deference, or a critical stance towards authority; political trust, or cynicism; perceptions of political institutions as weak or strong; or as effective or not. And of course also, how ordinary people see themselves; whether as subjects or as citizens; as efficacious or powerless. All such attitudes and orientations affect how people behave in patterns of political conflict and cooperation. Just as in the case of institutions, discussed earlier in this chapter, configurations of several of such attitudes may be more important than each of them separately. The American political scientists Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba (1963) suggested, for example, that the existence of a ‘civic culture’ would be of importance for the stability of democratic politics. Such a culture would be characterised by a combination of political activism on the one hand, and passivity based in trust in the system and the political authorities on the other. Although later studies have been critical of details of this thesis, they have not rejected the idea that such patterns of multiple attitudes are of particular importance. Another aspect of political culture concerns the values that people aspire to. These could be related to material security, to spiritual solace, social harmony, or self-actualisation, for example. Changes in the attraction of such values affects political behaviour. The American political scientist Ronald Inglehart (1977) claimed that in the 1970s a shift occurred – mainly as a result of generational replacement – from materialist values such as income, possessions and security to post-material values such as solidarity,

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concern for the environment and self-realisation. This shift would have contributed to changing issue priorities and changing political demands. Here again, later research by others as well as by Inglehart (e.g. 1989) have provided further nuance, while recognising the importance of the kinds of values that people seek. More specifically focussed on politics are ideologies: systems of ideas about how the world should be, of diagnoses of the root causes of its defects, and ideas on how to improve the world through political action. These are sometimes known as ‘-isms’, referring to ideologies such as socialism, liberalism, feminism, fascism and Christian democracy, each of which exists in a plethora of variations that are continually adapted to changing circumstances. The appeal of these various ideologies translates into support for conflicting political actors such as political parties, and into specific demands of the political system by its members. Perceptions, expectations and ‘knowledge’ are also part of the political culture. This also includes prejudice, stereotypes and factual inaccuracies, but to the extent that these are accepted and believed to be true, they have the same consequences as well-informed and correct knowledge and understanding. They are relevant to politics in similar ways as attitudes, values and ideologies. They are also a factor in reputations of power, and consequently they contribute to the ‘law of anticipated reactions’ (see Chapter 6). A final aspect of political culture consists of established repertoires of behaviour with which political actors are familiar and about which they have experience or expectations regarding their costs and benefits, effectiveness and risks. Such repertoires are important because they allow political actors to make reasoned choices from among different behavioural options, even in circumstances where there is no opportunity for extensive evaluation of their relevance. As with everything else in political culture, and in the context more generally, these repertoires appear as a given at any moment in time, yet they clearly change over time.

Politics and context This chapter has argued that the context affects politics, and that it should therefore be considered. This argument might lead to the suggestion that to understand politics one also has to study everything else. That would obviously not be productive, and would be analogous to ‘the tail wagging the dog’. In real political analysis one must therefore rely on simplifying

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assumptions that distinguish between the aspects of this all-encompassing context that are or are not relevant for the study at hand. Moreover, considering the impact of the context does not require an in-depth study of its relevant components. That is the remit of other disciplines than political science, so that those who focus on the analysis of politics are in the first instance sufficiently served by relying on ‘state of the art’ reviews from other disciplines. They may subsequently experience the need to extend their knowledge of some of these aspects, but only of some. Which ones these are varies, and depends on the specific topic that one studies, on paradigmatic assumptions, and on personal intuition about what is more, and what is less relevant or enlightening. In other words, when studying politics, one cannot afford to ignore its context, yet that context should most often not be the focal point of one’s attention.



Chapter 8

The Political System and the Political Community Politics, as discussed in Chapters 1 and 2, is characterised by three things. First, it deals with matters that have to be settled for an entire society, community or group. Second, there is no agreement about what these matters are, or about their desired outcomes. Third, this generates conflict and cooperation, which drive politics. Throughout this book, it has been argued that political conflict and cooperation exists in all kinds of settings, including many that are not associated with the term politics in everyday parlance. Thus, politics exists in countries or states, but also in firms, schools, hospitals, churches, social organisations, and even in families. To avoid having to list repeatedly all these settings of political processes, we use the overarching term political system. The concept of political system refers to the members, the political actors, institutions, procedures and relations of power and influence that exist in the society, community or group in question. The people in a political system are often referred to as the political community. This is not a ‘random’ collection of individuals, but they are connected, be it only because of their shared existence in the same political system. Often this involves other connections as well, which may consist of more or less shared or linked experiences, identities, knowledge, values and norms. This does not imply that a political community is homogeneous. On the contrary – as is clear from the presence of political conflict. Nor does it imply that everyone shares the same identities and values, but it does imply that these are linked, which may be because they are shared, but a linkage may also exist through an antagonistic relation.

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The incomplete fit between political systems and political communities One of the most fundamental conflicts in political systems is about what the political community should be and especially who should be included in it.1 As an example, let us consider states, which are large, geographically bound political systems. All people living in a state’s territory can be considered a political community, but are there any additional characteristics beyond the mere fact that they inhabit the same area and are subject to the same political system? Are they a community,2 or a nation? What a nation is, is much debated in the literature. For some, a nation is characterised by a shared history, language, religion, culture and economic interdependence, and this notion has acquired strong roots in everyday associations of the term. Others, such as Ernest Gellner (1983) see nations as imagined communities, thus emphasising social-psychological aspects of identification with a group and related feelings of interconnectedness and even loyalty. I will return to these contrasting conceptualisations later, but for now it suffices to note that the populations of many states do not conform to either of these two criteria. Histories of warfare and migration have resulted in states with populations that are distinctly heterogeneous in these various respects and even in their imagination of community. Large sections of, for example, the Tamil minority in Sri Lanka do not see themselves as part of the same community as the majority Sinhalese, which led to a protracted and vicious civil war (1983–2009). Many Basques would not see themselves as belonging to the same community or nation as the Spanish, and they aspire to an independent state. Yet not all ethnic-cultural minorities strive for the establishment of their own state, as is demonstrated by the Swedish-speaking minority in Finland or the German minority in Belgium. Some states expressly see themselves as linked to a particular nation and, from that perspective, do not recognise parts of the population that do not fit in that respect. This often leads to repression, second-class citizenship, expulsion, or worse. Yet virtually all states make some distinction between the inhabitants of their territory, in the form of the legal definition of citizens, 1 Be aware, the description of what a political community is that was presented on the previous page is a functional-empirical one, and therefore does not address the question what the community should be. 2 The concept of community implies the presence of commonalities beyond co-existence, such as shared identities, or values.

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and others (foreigners). This leads to differences in rights and obligations, such as the restriction of the right to vote in general elections only to citizens. When states exclude in such ways inhabitants who have lived and worked on their territory for a long time, sometimes for multiple generations, the discrepancy between the political system and the state-sanctioned political community becomes very problematic. Discrepancies between the political system and political community are not unique for states, and also occur in other systems. Such non-state political systems also experience conflicts over the relationship between the political system and individuals who are allowed or disallowed inclusion in its membership. When not resolved, these conflicts lead to schisms and organisational splits, and to excommunication, expulsion and banishment. The previous chapters may have suggested that societies, communities and groups are clearly defined and demarcated, and that it is therefore also clear who is involved in conflict and cooperation about matters that have to be addressed for these societies or communities. The discussion in this chapter, however, indicates that such a presumption is overly simplistic and that the question how political systems and political communities are mapped onto each other is itself a topic of fundamental political conflict. In some respects this is a circular problem. The outcome of conflicts is to some extent dependent on who can have a say in the matter, and that hinges on who is part of the political community. Thus, the outcome of conflicts over who belongs to the political community depends on who belongs! This circularity is one of the reasons why conflicts of this kind are ‘messy’, often leading to violence when states themselves are the political systems involved, or to gross injustices and disruption or even destruction of personal lives if other communities are involved as political systems, such as churches, political parties or families. However, the circularity of the problem does not imply that the conflicts in question do not get settled. One reason for this is that ‘everything changes’ (as discussed in Chapter 3). Political systems, communities, and identities change due to all kinds of reasons, which implies that the social basis of political organisation is in continuous flux when we consider it over a slightly longer time frame. This may lead to some of these conflicts being solved without a ‘settlement’, simply because they lose relevance or urgency. Alternatively, sometimes these problems of who does or does not belong to the political community become settled when some actors are able force the issue based on their power or influence. In short, the societies, communities and groups referred to in our definition of politics do exist, but rarely in a completely uncontested way, and

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never an unchanging one. They change as a consequence of external forces (see Chapter 7), and sometimes as a result of their own political dynamics.

Responses to the outcome of political conflicts Politics is, per definition, about contested matters. How political actors and people who are not actively involved in political conflict and cooperation evaluate the eventual outcome of political conflict will vary. In the best-case scenarios, solutions are reached that satisfy everyone involved; or that they at least find acceptable. This will generally contribute to people’s affinity with the system, possibly leading to actual identification. But what if the outcome of political conflict is not satisfactory at all, as will almost unavoidably be the case for some? People can respond to this in several ways, which have been classified by the American political scientist Albert Hirschman (1970) as exit, voice and loyalty. Loyalty is the response when people accept their ‘loss’ in the matter. This will not be very painful if the issue at hand was not regarded as very important, and even less so if on other, more important issues, satisfactory outcomes are obtained. The possibility of trades based on different priorities (see Chapter 5) thus enhances loyalty to the political system. Loyalty is also a typical reaction if people experience over the course of many conflicts that they find themselves not always on the losing side of the outcome. However, being on the losing side in what one sees as crucially important matters, or expecting to be systematically on the losing side in such conflicts, will erode loyalty to the political system. Voice implies that one does not quit when being on the losing side of an important conflict, but instead that one becomes politically active in an attempt to achieve improvement. The ‘lost’ cause can be put back on the political agenda; additional allies can be recruited, etc. One can also attempt to alter the rules under which the unacceptable outcome has been reached, so that in a next iteration of the same issue the chances for an acceptable outcome are improved. All of this requires resilience, tolerance of adversity, political creativity and ingenuity, and resources, which means this response to the unacceptable outcomes of political conflict is not equally accessible to all. Exit, finally, involves retreat from the political system. This may, for individuals, imply emigration or exile. In collective form, it leads to secession. In a less extreme form exit may imply passive resistance and non-compliance. When seen from this perspective, tax evasion may be seen as a form of

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exit. The exit response is not an available option for everyone. How easily one can retreat, let alone emigrate, depends on the level of suppression exerted by the political system, as exemplified by North Korea and former East Germany. Moreover, emigration or exile require resources – courage, knowledge, money, and a place to go to – all of which are in scarce supply. Moreover, emigration or exile leads to high personal costs in the form of loss of contact with one’s family and one’s social network, and sometimes the loss of one’s own identity. In short, exit is not an easy or cheap response to unacceptable political outcomes or conditions. The responses of exit, voice and loyalty relate mainly to a political system or a political community, and less to the outcome of all kinds of political conflicts that are not of fundamental importance. Yet for such more mundane outcomes too the question arises how political outcomes impinge on the political system and the political community. The American political scientist David Easton (1965) addressed this question on the basis of a distinction between different objects in politics: policies, authorities, regime and political community. People evaluate each of these objects, and these evaluations are to a certain degree distinct from each other. The implication is that dissatisfaction with particular policies does not necessarily spill over into other forms of dissatisfaction, because one can be dissatisfied with some policies, yet quite satisfied with other ones. But if people are repeatedly dissatisfied by all kinds of policies then this will eventually erode satisfaction with (or acceptance of) the political authorities. Similarly, dissatisfaction with the incumbent authorities will not necessarily lead to dissatisfaction with the regime, especially not if the possibility exists to replace the authorities via, say, elections. But if replacements of office holders do not lead to improvement, people may eventually lose confidence in the regime itself.3 And finally, when a political system repeatedly and systematically violates the fundamental interests of individuals or groups, they may lose their feeling of belonging to the political community. Each of the higher ordered objects in Easton’s classification of political objects thus serves as a reservoir of acceptance of the political system when satisfaction with lower ranked objects falls short. These possibilities for the eventual spill-over of evaluations between these objects works not only negatively, but also positively:

3 The regime, in Easton’s terms, is approximately the same as what has been termed here the political system. It is made up of existing institutions, procedures, rules of the game and structural power relations.

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repeated satisfaction with lower ranked objects will eventually increase satisfaction with higher ordered objects as well.

The reciprocal relation between political system and political community Political systems and political communities do not always fit each other well, as discussed above. Moreover, both change and evolve over time. This raises the question which of these is the more fundamental and makes the other one fit. This question is hotly contested in the literature, especially with respect to states and nations. Some scholars see states as the expression of nations, which implies that nations are the driving force. Others see the development and formation of nations as the consequence of states. The first of these perspective, i.e. that nations lie at the basis of states, assumes that nations develop independently of political structures. In that perspective nations are a given, and political organisations in the form of states should be modelled along the same lines. This is often expressed in what is called the right of self-determination (and ultimately of independence) of nations. States that do not fit to nations are therefore not legitimate. The second perspective has been advanced by Gellner (1983) and Eric Hobsbawm (1990) and others following their lead. They claim that nations do not develop independently from political structures; on the contrary. Historical research shows that many of the nations that currently appear to be self-evident and ‘natural’ are actually of relatively recent vintage. The structuring of daily life by political structures is not without consequence, they argue. Individual people cannot dissociate themselves from the consequences, in all aspects of life, of living under a particular political organisation (i.e. state). Eventually the social and political order imposed on them will be experienced as naturally given, as will the experience of being a subject or citizen of that state, thus forming national identities. As is so often the case with rival theories, it is easy to descend into dogmatic and unproductive debates about which is fundamentally more correct. The difference between the two theories is to a large extent generated by the respective time spans that they relate to. When looking at time spans of centuries, the perspective that states form nations is particularly plausible. We see that where the boundaries between states artificially divide communities that once existed, different national identities eventually emerge, at least in some cases. However, where the imposition of state structures was accompanied by discrimination between ethnic, religious or linguistic

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groups, not only did national identities emerge in the dominant segments of a population, but also counter-identities of repressed or discriminated minorities. When looking at much shorter time spans, on the other hand, then it is undeniable that identities derived from existing social communities have formed powerful stimuli for aspirations of independence and separate statehood. This is especially the case when existing state structures lack legitimacy because of discrimination, repression, or sheer inefficiency. This discussion is, obviously, incomplete. Important questions remain about what length of time span leads the two perspectives to switch in plausibility, how fast identities are formed, and how quickly existing state structures may lose – or gain – legitimacy. Such further elaboration, however, does not fit within the introductory objective of this book. The connection between political systems and political communities is continuously subject to change, and the lack of a ‘perfect’ fit between the two is often problematic. The implication of this is that the answer to the question ‘What is politics?’ as formulated in Chapters 1 and 2 is also open to further elaboration. This question, it now appears, can be addressed on at least two different levels. One pertains to conflict and cooperation in regard to the demarcation of political communities and political systems (especially nations and states). The other pertains to political conflict and cooperation within the confines of an existing political system. Although these two questions are not unrelated, they are sufficiently different to warrant different strategies of research and, perhaps, somewhat different conceptualisations. Elaborating that would bring us back to our discussions in the first three chapters of this book, but at a more sophisticated level of comprehension and reflection than when we started there. And that would require a different book than this introductory text.



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