This classification of political power summarises the following segments of this chapter, ending in how to press for better government.
It is structured according to the analysis of the role of politicians, as described previously (6.1.2). It examines how politicians exercise their powers and how they interact with the people they serve – assessing each facet in terms of its effect on the population:
(6.2) Political Ideologies and Approaches to Change. The labels ‘individualist’, ‘collectivist’, ‘conservative’ and ‘progressive’ describe ways of thinking. They affect a politician’s decision-making. In a democratic society, they form election platforms. They are reviewed here in terms of benefit to the public.
(6.3) Political Systems, Performance and Legitimacy. The different ways of organising a government, and the performance of the politicians within it, affect its legitimacy in the eyes of the population.
(6.4) Pressures on Politicians, from the population, from businesses, from interest groups and from the media are applied to gain influence. There are different methods of communication and economic power can be applied. Pressure mechanisms are needed, to make governments responsive, but they tilt the balance of power on behalf of specific groups.
(6.5) Consulting the People. Politicians can be selected to represent the population, or people can be directly involved in political decision-taking. Consultation enable politicians to find out what people want – which can provide a more balanced perspective than merely responding to the pressures described in the previous segment.
(6.6) The Levels of Subsidiarity of political power range from personal participation in politics through to global organisations such as the United Nations. There are trade-offs between localisation and centralisation.
(6.7) The Major Issues Requiring Political Negotiation – the most contentious issues in politics – relate to the scope of a government’s activities, how it spends taxpayers’ money, how it manages the economy, its management of change and diversity, and how it manages relationships with other countries. These often link back to the preceding segments of this chapter and to previous chapters.
(6.8) The ways of Ensuring that Politicians Serve the People involve challenging them and holding them to account, so that they serve the population well.
At this point, readers who are just seeking an overview of this book’s contents may wish to move to the next chapter (7). Alternatively, they may wish to go directly to a particular segment by following one of the above links, or they can continue to read sequentially.
(This is an archive of a page intended to form part of Edition 4 of the Patterns of Power series of books. The latest versions are at book contents).