CHAPTER ONE - TUP TUTORS
CHAPTER ONE
1. What is your personal definition of politics?
My personal definition of politics is a system (tacit, explicit or both) by which a subset of a population represents or governs the population (or both). I think it is only applications of this definition that vary widely.
2. What do you think are examples of political behaviours? To what extent do you engage in these behaviours in your own life? How different are these types of behaviour from what you perceive to take place in our municipal, provincial, and federal institutions?
Political behaviours are essentially the private citizen stepping outside of their personal or professional life to engage in a behaviour, activity, instance or process that will affect or factor into the policy making process of the community, city or country, to whatever very small extent. In my opinion political behaviour may also amount to the expression of a view with a situation or a view regarding a suggested change or action in the decision making of the political establishment. In our democracy, the right, even the moral responsibility to participate in elections is an example of this. Speech making, volunteer work, participating in electoral campaigns, writing to the newspapers or even leaving comments on the Internet sites of newspapers, may all be considered political behaviours. I do not engage in political behaviours to a considerable extent; my extent is negligible. Often it is all I do to leave comments on the Internet regarding news articles that are relevant to my concerns, and I do this relatively rarely. The types of behaviour in our municipal, provincial and federal institutions, of course, are much more formalistic, ceremonious, vitally symbolic of the decorum of the governance of this country, much more cautious in ascribing solutions to problems, and much more consequential than the political behaviour of private citizens.
3. Are the ways we conduct ourselves politically really a product of our cultural? How are we different from Americans, Brazilians, Cubans, or Mexicans? What are the distinguishing components of these political cultures or cultures like these? Can they be distinguished even within Canada, e.g., in Alberta, Quebec, and Newfoundland?
The ways we conduct ourselves politically are a product of our culture, because the type of government is often rooted in the culture, for example Hofstede's cultural types and his matching them to organizational behaviours, this applies to governments as well. The type of government, in turn, determines the extent to which a private citizen can conduct themselves politically, and the channels along which the private citizen may go to conduct themselves politically. In this respect, as Canadians we are not very different from Americans, Brazilians or Mexicans (whose countries are considered free and fair, transparent democracies like our own) who also have a tradition of widespread private citizen engagement in the political process, though adverse conditions in these countries (such as the relentless violence of drug mafia kingpins in Mexico) may make this engagement more difficult or less realistic. Of course, beyond political behaviour, the characteristics and needs of the country, city or community government are unique to it. This does not necessarily make the process less free. This is the rule that distinguishes many small variations in the political process (not at the essential level) across cultures, for example to ask the question of how Japanese democracy is different from Canadian democracy. Using this same rule (community need specificity), we see how different provinces of Canada have very slightly different politics adapted to their historical characteristics and needs.
4. Do you agree with the eight values that are listed as generators (such as health, and education) of politics? List the values you feel are the basis upon which politics flourish. What values do Canadians reflect in their political system?
I do not think that any abstract model could precisely describe the generators of politics; politics is a far more complex network of connections and mechanisms than for all its gears to be summarized in eight values. Thus, I do feel that the eight values are accurate, only not complete. I feel that politics flourishes upon the pursuit of stated goals ascribed to the unique situation of the people; for example, goals that may make Chinese voters happy may not be the same as the goals that may make Japanese or Swedish or South African voters happy. Though most voters may agree on the importance of goals such as economic growth, a low unemployment rate, healthy social services, etc., the means of pursuing such goals (which form little goals in themselves) will also differ from country to country. Canadians value transparency, accountability, diversity, and tax dollar efficiency in their political system.
5. What is your position on the abortion issue -- are you pro-choice or pro-life? If you were given a hypothetical budget of $10 million, how would you spend that money to defend your position?
Regarding abortion, I believe that pregnancy prevention (which can happen at the time limit of a few days within intercourse) should be encouraged, as well as frequent pregnancy testing, but I do not know if I believe in abortion itself. I have seen images of the fetus prior to abortion, including images of the fetus in its final developmental stages, in which it much resembles a human child, and has only to leave the mother's body. It is difficult to call abortion murder or to mandate my opinions on others, of course, because I do not know what the experience is like of having another human being developing inside me, what manner of emotional or physical effects this may have, both happy and unpleasant. From the standpoint of pure ethical theory I do not agree with the moral foundation of abortion, but in practical terms I feel there is not much point to vigorously enforcing anti abortion legislation as I find it somewhat cruel for the women involved, it produces genuine human suffering that the policy makers (especially if they are male, of course) cannot fully fathom or appreciate, and all for the sake of their own ethical biases. That said, I do sometimes compare abortion to murder, especially if the fetus is nearly fully developed, but I consider there to be varying degrees of murder, as the courts recognize. If I had $10 million to spend on the abortion issue, I would make birth control and birth control education more widely and economically available.
6. How does politics build cities, towns, provinces, nation-states?
Identify those political decisions that have added assets and infrastructures to your community. Are there any examples you can recount that point to how politics can hurt or even destroy communities?
Cities, towns, provinces and nation-states need infrastructure. This infrastructure may be explicit, such as transportation infrastructure and public housing, or it may be tacit, such as frameworks, protocols, the penal code, etc... Depending on the size of the cities, towns, provinces and nation-states, however, this infrastructure may be extremely challenging and large scale and wide ranging to build, and to build it we need a methodology, and that methodology is politics. I support political decisions that are investment and development oriented instead of fiscally conservative and debate oriented. I think, in plain terms, that the only point of government is to get things done, and that there always is much to be done to improve the conditions of a population. An example I can recount is the closure of the West India Docks by the British government in the early 1980s. The Docks were obsolete and costly but serviced many thousands of locals with their livelihoods. Their closure led to the complete stagnation of the community in terms of employment, per capita income, and standard of living. However, as an accompanying reverse example, the British government then decided to invest tens of millions of pounds in the development of the Docklands Light Railway, which brought new corporate branches, job opportunities, and development incentives to the Docklands until they became one of the most important parts of London from one of the most irrelevant.
7. How do people learn about politics and where do political attitudes come from? List the most important agents of political socialization in your life. Discuss the roles of public opinion polls in generating opinion. Do political opinion polls influence how people vote and how they feel about certain politicians?
People learn about politics from the immediate social environment of their roots: schooling (although our schooling struggles to be secular and non partisan), family, friends, classmates, colleagues, and the goings on of the environment around them. For example, someone growing up in a warzone may inevitably develop political opinions about the opposing side. More advancedly, political attitudes come from independent thought and study, not only the continuation of trends; this is where original political ideas come from, whether positive or negative. For example, Communism took some time to develop in the literature and philosophy before it became a real political action (in the days even before it was a formidable force). The most important agents of political socialization in my life have been to read. I think that schooling is not quite the same as education; most of what I independently know, has come from books, and I try to make my readings as fair and comprehensive as possible. I do not necessarily read about politics, but I do about history, geography, world culture, etc., which is relevant to understanding politics today, especially in terms of long term conflicts with deep and complex roots. In terms of public opinion polls, I have not always been a believer in statistics but I believe that there is something of a positive correlation between public opinion polls and electoral campaign results; for example, all the polls in the 2008 election pointed to a unanimous victory for Obama, and the electoral results showed that he won by a margin of almost ten percent. Public opinion polls do not often seem to be wrong in my opinion, especially in terms of public elections. However, public opinion is sensitive to change and can do so overnight, so polls need to be held very frequently in order to keep track of this, which is impractical. A difference of even a few days can render a public opinion poll invalid. I think polls influence voters to some extent because not all voters fully understand their own positions and may feel pressured to agree with one of the black and white options on the Likert scale.
CHAPTER TWO
1. Can an academic discipline such as the one described in this chapter adequately collect, organize, and analyze information from the world of politics in a meaningful way? How are political scientists different from journalists in the professional study of political events and behaviour? Are the complexities of human political behaviour beyond the competency of any one specialized field of human knowledge?
An academic discipline as methodical and methodological and realistically ingrained as political science can certainly collect, organize, and analyze information from the world of politics in a meaningful way, in the sense that, much as in an organization, transactional and operational level data can be captured and studied to output a pattern or trend that can then be utilized in the formation of decision making or strategy setting. However, whether or not it can do this adequately is a good question. I believe it cannot do it adequately, just as I have read that only seven percent of transactional and operational data ever make it to the decision making strategic or executive managerial level. There is simply too much data for the available human resources or intellectual capital to process, and when there is a great deal of input from political scientists, there is an even smaller number of people at the executive level (i.e. government) who are paying attention and willing to use this information proactively. While a journalist simply describes what is happening, a political scientist analyzes it in all its deep rooted and complicated contexts. The complexities of human political behaviour are indeed beyond the competency of any one specialized field of human knowledge. Political science makes borrowings from other social sciences.
Examples of the borrowings that political scientists make from other social sciences are the anthropological, historical, psychological, philosophical, sociological, linguistic, managerial, pedagogical, and religious studies. Political behaviour is the aggregate of many human and societal influences on an individual, so it is necessary to build bridges between these social sciences. Trend building should come from the analysis and cross examination and calibration of as much data as possible.
The progenitors of political science were the Greeks and the Romans. Political science was not known as such in those days, but it has origins in classical civilization. Books by Aristotle and Plato, such as The Republic, offered valuable, ethics related models of the description of an ideal state. The ideal state had roots not in political realism but in ideals of human behaviour and social and individual responsibility. These models are very different from those employed today, which take into account a state's interests rather than its ideology, but they represent the birth of the scientific study of politics. The Romans had greater need of political science than the Greeks, for the vast expanse of lands and peoples they ruled, and so they fashioned political science more elegantly and more concentratedly, developing many areas of law that even persist to this day in some penal codes; the Romans developed valuable legal precedents and concepts, but it was still not exactly political science yet. This began shortly after the Middle Ages, when descriptions of politics became descriptive rather than prescriptive, i.e. descriptions of the actual rather than the ideal. This was the birth of political realism. Idealizations such as The Republic (although Utopia is somewhat similar to it, from a much later time) were replaced by analytics such as The Prince, or the application of precise logical governances to the analysis of political behaviour, descriptive or prescriptive. In brief, political science became a science.
4. Compare the development of academic Political Science in Canada and the United States. Evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of pursuing political knowledge via the traditional, behavioural and post-behavioural approaches in Political Science? What are the likely trends in the future study of politics?
The development of academic Political Science in Canada and the United States differed in the sense that the states of the United States exhibit less independence than the provinces and territories of the Canadian federation. The central focus at the crux of Canadian politics and political science is intra governmental relations, and the balance of federal power and provincial power. Despite this, the approach of American political scientists to political science is more complex and comprehensive than that of Canadian political scientists; it is based on intensive research and research methodology. The Canadian approach is less abstract based and more practical; it is based simply on making a study of problems facing the Canadian federal government and provinces and finding solutions through abstraction, trial and error, etc. (depending on which model of policy development we look at).
The traditional approach is not political realism, i.e. ideology becomes interest. The behavioral approach is based on field research into "consumer psychology". The post-behavioral approach casts hypotheses and then verifies them with analysis, i.e. it is not exploratory. The global and comparative approaches to political science are the most probable to dominate the academic community.
5. Can a Political Science only function in a democratic environment? Is Political Science biased in favour of pluralistic liberal political systems? Do less than democratic systems have positive consequences for people living under them? Discuss the role of Political Science in those remaining totalitarian systems.
Political science in an undemocratic environment is limited in the scope of its hypotheses and field researches. The limit is government acceptability. Thus it is still possible to carry out some of the work and responsibilities of academic political science, but not as beneficially to the science, the academic community or the public (or even the government, which may benefit from its findings). Political science may be biased in favor of pluralistic liberal political systems, but only because such systems are encouraged as the end result of state craft on a global level; for example, almost every country in the world identifies itself as a democracy officially although of course, fewer countries actually are democracies. Undemocratic systems lack positive consequences for people living under them because human progress, such as economic progress (utilitarianism and Adam Smith) flourish under democratization and liberalization and laissez faire approaches. In totalitarian systems, the public face of political science is heavily propagandized.
CHAPTER THREE
Evaluate the relative importance of ideas and ideologies in politics. Discuss the role political socialization plays in support of a society's formal ideology.
Ideas and ideology are important in politics, but they should not be held to be the absolute. Political realism or realpolitik holds that a state should be guided by interests and not ideology in its policies. Nevertheless, few voters agree with this concept and most are ideology driven; thus political socialization and political behaviors have ideological foundations, hence the relevance of ideas and ideology even to political realism.
Discuss how one could go about examining a society's national ideology.
One goes about examining a society's national ideology by dismantling its influential components and making a study of each one of them.
Does Robert E. Lane's classification of the functions of political ideologies draw any particular ideology to mind? Which one and why?
Robert E. Lane's classification is closely related to what we learn about the ideas of Thomas Hobbs. Hobbs made a powerful argument against anarchism by stating that human beings are by nature competitive, even violently so, and that a government is an artificial institution that is necessary because it places supra natural controls on naturally barbaric human tendencies. A government becomes a matter of survival.
Discuss the following statements:
Canadians are not highly ideological.
I agree with this statement. Canada is a nominatively but hardly an ideologically religiously identifying country. The many facets of Canadian immigrant demographics are largely assimilated into Canadian society. Ideology is not so uniform or strong in Canadian society. This has allowed Canada to retain a highly fluid structure allowing it to flow and adapt to modern situations. Canada is one of the most diverse, yet one of the wealthiest countries in the world with a public administration system that other countries strive to study and emulate. It enjoys nearly perfect foreign relations with the rest of the world and does not usually participate in international conflicts, though it is not the same as, for example, Switzerland in a policy of official neutrality. All of this would not be possible if Canada were tightly ideologized.
Most Canadians describe themselves as liberal or conservative but there are not sharp differences between them.
I agree with this statement because Canada is such a developed and societally harmonious state that politics has almost ceased to be controversial in the major sense. This does not mean much noise is not made about politics (noise is made indeed) but if we relate our situation to the situations of the rest of the world, we may find that our debates and even our conflicts are relatively over quite quiet matters. Here we debate intra governmental relations, the social union framework agreement, government expenditures; in other countries we may debate matters of explosive situations or civil war. I believe most of the substantial differences between the liberal and conservative factions lie in their approach to the expenditure of Canadian tax dollars, and even so, we have seen the Conservative government that is holding power, embark on expensive economic stimuli to protect Canadian functionality from the global economic crisis. There are no sharp differences between the Liberals and Conservatives in Canada.
Nazism could never flourish in Canada.
I believe that extremist or hostile or xenophobic attitudes may find themselves created anywhere if adverse enough circumstances manifest themselves. The Germany after the Treaty of Versailles seemed to be a Germany that was de-imperialized, de-colonialized, and developing on the democratic track; but the devastation wrought by the treaty, its unfair blame on Germany as the supposed cause of the First World War, and the devastation wrought by the Great Depression, combined together to create a national desperation that allowed Hitler to win the vote. Such an attitude, created by desperate enough circumstances, is possible anywhere, and of course not necessarily in Western countries alone.
Which values and beliefs are likely to comprise an ideology?
• The nature of the individual
• The role of the individual
• The power distance of the individual
• The power distance of the state
• The social structure that accommodates the culture
Why is it so important to address the nature of human nature in constructing an ideology?
The shortcomings and over competitiveness of human nature are what makes an ideology and a political system necessary (Hobbs' argument against anarchism).
Differentiate between political philosophy and ideology.
Political philosophy is more along the lines of ethical theory. It is a scientific study of the morality of politics. Plato and Thomas More could be said to be political philosophers. Ideology is more relevant to a nation's culture or events or religion or other belief shapers; ideology changes. There may be many ideologies while political philosophy would be more congruent.
Discuss what ideologies do.
Ideologies align the ideas and opinions and the behavioral development of their subject population. They may be positive or negative, beneficial or counterproductive. I find that ideologies tend to be negative instead of positive, because an ideology does not have to be rational at all in order to convince people if they are born in that society from birth. I prefer a state that is not high in ideology, like Canada.
An ideology consists of a system of ideas that `prescribes' a system of values, beliefs and knowledge. Discuss the role of `proscription' in protecting a political culture.
Prescription and proscription are the most relevant parts of an ideology. They impose realizations and controls of beliefs and norms. They are the relation between the legislative and the executive. However, the sharpness of prescription and proscription, hinting that the political structure needs more and more enforcement of controls in order to survive, is a hint that the ideology is not fluidly responsive to changes in its external environment and may not be the best option for its society's progress.
Is an ideology a set of beliefs and ideas that a political system tries to live up to by giving them an institutional framework?
Yes; I agree with this definition. An ideology is a grid system that comes from the crisscrossing of many facets and sets the platform on which a society's tacit and then its explicit infrastructure is built.
Why do ideologies criticize other ideologies?
Many ideologies claim not only to be fitted for their own societies, but adaptable to other societies and even superior to the ideologies of other societies. In addition, many ideologies are more rigorous than others, for example, the North Korean ideology and the Canadian ideology. Finally, all human populations compete for scarce resources; ideology provides a conscionable justification for economic conflict.
Survey textbooks used in related disciplines (sociology and social psychology). Are some of the observations and generalizations made about ideologies helpful to your understanding of political ideology?
I believe that the textbooks I have surveyed are rather congruent and agreeable in their mutually overlapping definitions of the components and nature and function of ideologies. However, input from the social sciences is always valuable because it increases the background of political science.
Put together a needs or wish list for your community. What ideological path is most likely to enable your community/country to achieve its goals?
My needs or wish list for my community would be to seek alternative energy sources (renewables) to our petroleum industry which represents too great a percentage of our gross national product for comfort. I would like to see our financial sector and other natural resource-independent sectors build up. I would like to see us more diversified and secure, like the economy of Dubai. I would also like to see more liberalization, but I believe it would naturally come in line with economic development. The ideological path most likely for Saudi Arabia to achieve its goals is something like New Public Management (NPA) or neoliberalism, that is still in line with Islamic principles and values.
Democracy as a political ideology has roots going back over 2,500 years. Do you think the traditional components of these early democratic ideals are still relevant today?
I think most early traditional components of democracy as a political ideology still survive today. Some, of course, have been outdated by the fading out of their institutions… For example, we no longer hold discourses on the democratic or voting rights of slaves or women, which took place from Plato's time to comparatively recently. Nevertheless, "The Republic" or "Utopia" is still what most voters seem to be drawn toward as an end result of development.
Is democracy a transitional ideology, i.e., can fundamental democratic principles be altered to meet contemporary social requirements?
I believe this is similar to the case of Communism. Karl Marx spent his entire life in France, Germany, England and Switzerland; his theory was designed for a state that was heavily industrialized and not in a developmental stage. Russia, on the other hand, was limitedly industrial, with an impoverished agriculturalist population base. Lenin found that Russia was so ill suited for Communism that with all the adjustments he made to it, it became Leninism, Russian Communism, quite different from Marxism. There was also Stalinism, Maoism, etc… So probably there are many existing strains of democracy worldwide, that purists may be unaware of.
Discuss the connection between liberalism and democracy.
Liberalism and democracy both uphold the rights, or the worth, of the people. Even a liberal non democracy like Singapore, values the rights and worth of its people more than a non liberal democracy, such as Venezuela.
Define the term "pluralism" and explain why democracies are judged by the degree of pluralism they generate.
Pluralism is the concept of including more than one element, line of reasoning, principle or ethical judgment in a totality or judgment. Democracy is meant to encompass, and be inclusive, rather than exclusive. It is also meant to be flexible and adaptive to people's wants and needs, which they express through their rights. This is why pluralism is a criterion for judging the functionality of a democracy.
Research points out that democracy is rarely found among the nation-states of the world. Why do you think this is so?
It has taken the Western world 2,000 years to develop the world's leading democracies; even sixty years ago, the health of these democracies was in question, when we consider for example, the Jim Crow laws in the Southern United States that forbade African Americans from engaging in the political process or made it practically impossible for them by subjecting them to much longer bureaucratic processes and much more difficult examinations than their white counterparts. Most of the world is also recovering from centuries of colonial rule and has yet to build its own identity and a political structure that is optimal for that identity. Finally, some cultures are not maximally adapted to a democratic model by their very nature. These countries still need to develop a tradition of political behaviors that complements democracy.
What is it about both conservatism and socialism that manifest them as both democratic and non-democratic ideologies?
This depends on the degree to which institutions are set in place that are inflexible to voter referendums. These institutions have various arguments. They have their apologists and their opponents. This is typical of liberal and socialistic systems as well as conservative systems, e.g. anti racial discrimination laws were not established by voter referendum and would not be entrusted to voter referenda. The British monarchy has never been entrusted to a voter referendum. Etc.
Discuss the problems created in Canadian society by practising the principles of majority rule and minority rights. To what extent is the fate of Indians threatened by our presumptions about democracy in Canada.
On the one hand, democracy is rule of the people by the people, and by the people insinuates the majority of the people, since the people will never move unilaterally in one direction. On the other hand, democracy cannot turn into "mobocracy" that alienates and persecutes minorities who are weaker than the majority because of their weaker electoral proportion. And a country like Canada is not so homogenous and is growing less and less so; this complicates this contradictory understanding of democracy (majority rule vs. minority protection). This problem is partially solved by the institutions discussed above (government institutions placed inflexibly to voter referenda for ethical reasons, such as anti discrimination laws). The Native American community in Canada seeks to practice its multiple millennia old traditions such as whale hunting for example, which may contradict Canadian institutions (such as environmental laws). The majority of Canadians may vote for environmentally friendly laws if such laws were proposed in referenda, and we would presume that a majority vote would mean democratic legitimacy, while in fact it would affect the traditional lifestyle of this country's original inhabitants, and still appear democratically legitimate because they form a minority.
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