6.1.4 Classification of Political Power
This classification of political power summarises the following segments of this chapter, ending in how to press for better government.
The structure of the rest of this chapter is based on 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 different views of how politics should be conducted. Politicians’ views affect their decision-making. And, in a democratic society, these views are expressed in manifestos or political platforms to attract support from 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 are exerted in their interactions with the public, the media, businesses and interest groups. The Internet plays a major role. And money can buy influence. It must be possible to communicate with governments to make them responsive, but unsolicited pressure tilts the balance of power on behalf of specific groups.
(6.5) Consulting the People. Politicians can represent their constituents in political decision-taking, or people can be directly involved in consultations. Consultation enables politicians to find out what people want – and this 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, how it protects the environment, its management of change and diversity, and how it manages relationships with other countries. These patterns of power 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 page is intended to form part of Edition 4 of the Patterns of Power series of books. An archived copy of it is held at https://www.patternsofpower.org/edition04/614d.htm