Political theory

Political theory is a social science concerned mostly with citizenship and democracy. It represents the conceptual bridge between political philosophy and political science and relates to issues of politics and power, such as authority, the state, forms of government and legislation, the common good, rights, justice, civil society, ethics, natural law, and private and public goods.

Politics, as a field, is connected to ideology held by political leaders, governments, and groups of people. As such, it impacts the ways in which societies are managed and how the rights and obligations of individuals are guaranteed. Most political theorists have been concerned with participatory systems, leadership models, and principles for good government practices that promote a harmonious coexistence among citizens and nations.

Brief History

At the core of politics is an ideology held by those in charge of governing a society. This ideology is guided by both political philosophy and theory. That is, politics follow a doctrine created with the purpose of guiding the formation of a state and its governmental system. Also, political science depends on the theoretical development of methods to implement its ideas of administration and management of society’s goods and resources, their utilization, and their distribution among the population.

Political philosophy is at the root of most political theory, and different cultures have created their own particular theoretical constructs. For instance, the Analects of Confucius, an ethical guide based on self-discipline, the pursuit of virtue, and strong legalism, has been influential in Asian political thought.

Political philosophy is linked to the many conceptualizations of politics. The term is associated with Aristotle and his book Politics (4th century BCE), in which he developed his views about the fundamental principles necessary for the proper administration of power. In their inception, Western political theories are based on models first developed in the classical world. By the fifth century BCE, Greek schools of thought systematized political ideas aligned with notions of rationality and secular thought. Many Greek political ideals, such as republicanism, survived to become the basis of modern Western political systems.

Machiavelli and "Realpolitik"

In 1532, Renaissance writer Niccolò Machiavelli published The Prince, a political treatise considered one of the foremost works of modern philosophy. In it, Machiavelli presents what he considered a practical look at political power, suggesting that rulers achieve their goals by any means as a way of self-preservation. His work influenced generations of political philosophers who sought to further systematize political thought. Machiavelli’s impact can still be noted in political theories such "realpolitik."

Although rooted in the Renaissance era, realpolitik became one of the most important political theories of modernity. The term was embodied in the philosophies of conservative Prussian chancellor Otto von Bismarck, as he sought to find a method to achieve peaceful resolutions by way of balancing the imperial powers of the nineteenth century and unifying the German states into one nation. As a political theory, it looks at interests from a standpoint of objective reality without taking into consideration profound contextual issues, ethics, and other related philosophies. In other words, it is a goal-oriented philosophy rather than one based on ideals. In diplomacy, realpolitik is applicable to international relations; it supports the interest of a country according to the circumstances of that country’s environment and as a result, such countries do not hesitate when selecting the most useful means in order to achieve their goals. In some instances, realpolitik is seen as the most efficient and immediate way to negotiate and solve international conflict when it is deemed that waiting for a just resolution might be impractical, unrealistic, or contrary to the best interests of the country engaging in conflict resolution.

Modern examples of realpolitik include the twenty-first century conflicts of Afghanistan, Syria, and Ukraine, in which powerful nations engage in strategic maneuvers at the cost of the long-term well-being of the population of the countries being used as political pawns. This occurs because each nation considers its maneuvers necessary to protect its interests. However, although realpolitik seeks mainly the best interests of the country engaging in it, this outlook must also operate within the framework of political systems, most of them democratic republics. Realpolitik strategies can end badly in the long term, for not only local populations but also the powerful nation that acted without considering ethical and contextual factors.

The Enlightenment

Political thinkers of the Enlightenment, a movement of thought and ideas that took place in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, furthered the ideals of democracy and republicanism. Based on rationalism and classical philosophy, Enlightenment theories promoted the importance of civic virtue, the common good, equality, private property, free markets, and national sovereignty and individualism. From then on, the principal political philosophies underpinning theoretical systems in the Western world were democratic—at least as an ideal. Major thinkers of the period included Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant, and Adam Smith. Rousseau’s The Social Contract (1862) debunked the theory of the divine right of kings and argued that political power rests in the hands of the citizens. This was a groundbreaking political assertion that had wide-ranging consequences.

Marxism

Among the most important theories that arose in the aftermath of the Enlightenment was Marxism, a political and economic theory that evolved from radical Enlightenment thought and reconceptualized the ideas of German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, an idealist and one of the foremost Enlightenment thinkers. Hegel believed that German society was backward and oppressed and in need of more freedom. Moreover, true to the spirit of the Enlightenment, the Young Hegelians—a more radical branch of Hegelianism—posited that religion was part of this backwardness and had been overcome by reason and philosophy. Karl Marx, initially a follower of Hegel, eventually veered away from Hegelian idealism—and its belief in the grandeur of the human spirit—to a more radical materialism, that is, a focus on a concrete or fundamental reality. Other elements of traditional Marxism, such as the negative social consequences of private property, were previously addressed by Enlightenment philosophers such as Rousseau. Nevertheless, Marx’s political philosophy is still considered by most scholars as a Hegelian project.

Marxism sought to liberate human beings from material poverty and oppression by enabling the masses to understand their oppression and rebel against despotic modes of government that favored solely the owners of capital (or, in Marxist terms, the bourgeoisie). The most radical expression of Marxism became Communism, a system in which all private property would be owned by the proletariat (working-class people) by way of the state.

Communism as a blueprint for social change failed with the collapse of the Soviet Union in the late twentieth century. However, Communism was but one political philosophy to emerge from Marxism. Other political approaches to government and democracy stemming from Marxism are represented in modern national systems, such as social democracy. Marxism acknowledges that there are different types of democracy, depending upon who owns the means of production and to what extent. At its extremes, the means of production may be controlled by the people through a centralized state or, on the contrary, reside completely in the private realm with little to no government intervention. Most modern governments, however, are situated somewhere in the middle of these two positions.

Democracy

Democracy was an ideal first developed by ancient Greeks, but in its modern inception, democracy evolved as a middle-class movement against the state in autocratic feudal societies. Democracy, then, comes in many theoretical models and may exist even in current parliamentary monarchies. All democracies include some sort of public deliberation, that is, the participation of groups and individuals in the argumentation and formation of their political systems. Democracies may incline toward forms of communitarianism, in which the state engages abundantly with society and the common good is paramount, or toward individualism, in which the inalienability of the individual takes precedence over the community and the state intervenes minimally. Although an absolute democracy remains a political ideal, such a system does not exist. Some have argued it to be unfeasible, while others have argued that it could even evolve into a sort of tyranny of the majority. Regardless of where they fall in the ideological spectrum, in an increasingly diverse world, most political theories tend to promote democratic ideals and ways to safeguard the rights of its citizens.

Impact

Political theory, as a subset of political philosophy and political science, engages in rational, systematic, and critical study of all social phenomena related to political systems. Political theory is mostly studied in the career of political science, even though its origins are understood as firmly rooted in the discipline of philosophy. Because philosophy seeks to provide explanations and interpretations for society’s actions and systems of thought, political theory is often connected to a wide array of disciplines, from economics and international relations to law. Therefore, political theory has opened many career paths for its scholars and professionals as they analyze and try to understand how governments operate and work in some fundamental way to solve problems related to world peace, economic trade, globalization, local governance, development, and international cooperation. One of the ways in which political theorists have had an impact in bridging the gap between academia and governments, for instance, is through organizations known as "think tanks." Think tanks are institutions in which experts and scholars generate ideas and provide advice on different areas in politics, economy, and other social sciences.

In practice, the ideas of political theorists can be adapted and implemented to projects that range from designing a city to administering a political system. They may fall within rationalism, in the models of the Greek philosopher Plato, or of concepts of the "general will," in the model of the Enlightenment philosopher Rousseau. Thus, political theorists fall across a wide spectrum of ideological positions and help ensure that governance occurs in a politically coherent fashion.

Political theories developed as thinkers strove to justify the political systems they favored, from the absolute rule of monarchy to systems in which individuals became citizens and participated more actively in the political realm. In modern society, most rulers are not political theorists, as much as they are high-level bureaucrats or state administrators; the role of political theory is to guide rulers and delineate the labor of policymaking for the state.

Bibliography

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