Government and Politics

Perspective

«Politics» is generally recognized as occurring in many, probably all, social groups regardless of size. However, politics becomes especially prominent when groups are large and command significant resources.

Recent research proposes Closed that governance is necessary as an evolved «primal need» associated with groups generally. As such, it is handled via politics as the evolved «primal means». This proposition is strengthened by being placed in the context of propositions about other «primal needs» and psychosocial means for meeting them. See Architecture Room.

The picture is clearest and the issues most urgent in regard to a society and its government. So that is the focus in this Satellite. Understanding politics within society will provide a basis for grasping politics globally, within firms, and in other social bodies.

The main frameworks to be developed in this Satellite are

  • political maturation (PH'6C) in society
  • political choice (PH'6CHK) in society
  • political life (PH'6CsH) in society
  • political legitimation (PH'6CsHK) in society.

With society and its government as our focus, the desired frameworks must unambiguously represent what can and should be found in the world around us.  However, before developing any framework, it is necessary to be clear about the essential nature of:

  • government and politics
  • politics and ethics

Closed More on "Society"

The earliest human groups, hunter-gatherers, were organized as bands, and as these grew they became organised as tribes. These groups were kinship-based and operated with norms for managing conflicts and enabling leadership. Politics proper did not exist.

Societies, as considered here, need government because the human group is primarily defined by a large number of diverse members inhabiting a specific territory. The group claims sovereignty over that territory, and its authority is centralized, formalized, and backed by religious authority or equivalent beliefs. The central authority monopolizes legitimate coercion within the group. Such a society is large enough to reveal stratification; and it views kinship and tribal pressures as issues to be managed by the society.

Exactly how societies emerged from tribal life is uncertain, and not relevant to the Taxonomy.

The Essentials

The first section of this Satellite establishes certain fundamentals and is organized as follows:

1. Propositions clarifying the necessity for government.

2. Propositions explaining why government entails politics.

3. Regimes and ideologies are dependent on politics, i.e. not primary, and hence not a focus in this inquiry. They are located elsewhere in the Taxonomy.

4. The nature of ethics as revealed in the THEE framework of purpose-PH6.

5. The link of ethics to politics: what it shares and how it differs.

5. The possibility of political evolution towards an enlightened goal, and the nature of such maturation.

6. The framework used for modelling stages in political maturation. All the remaining frameworks are derived from this initial framework.

Summary of Key Proposition

  • Government is needed to sustain and protect a society and its members.
  • Politics is about the access to social goods (i.e. the group's wealth and power) for the group's benefit. However, leaders are naturally tempted to focus more on wealth and power for themselves than on benefit for the group generally.
  • Political values and institutions commence in a rather primitive fashion where brute power and privilege dominate. However, evolution is possible.
  • Political maturationis about altering the focus of the ruling elites' concerns through group members taking increasing responsibility for themselves, their politics and their governance.
  • Ethical choice, the obligation on a person to choose what is right and good, provides the basic ideas relevant to politics, which is the obligation for a group to choose what is right and good for itself and its members.
  • Maturation of political institutions takes place in a discontinuous fashion that depends primarily on the people not the ruling elites.
  • Maturation does not lead to a utopia. (In any case, the present analysis indicates that even the most advanced societies have a long way to go in their development.)
  • The preliminary modelling required to understand politics involves plotting the 7 ethical choice approaches (PH'6) on a Typology Essences Table (TET).

Originally posted: July 2009; Last updated: 27 Feb-2014. Amended 13-Nov-2023.