4’Th Lecture

Nation, state, government and citizen

The role of the state

Constitution

Freedom and the State

Discussions: Is the State necessary

Discussions: Can we claim that absolute freedom is possible and beneficial?

Reading: Study concepts (definitions): “The State”, Dictionary of the History of Ideas

http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/cgi-local/DHI/dhiana.cgi?id=dv4-40

Classifying governments; Aristotelian six types of governments

CORRECT yourself

In our last lecture on features of nation I told you a one view, and did not tell another one. According to this alternative view nation is both cultural, historical and political.

As I take information from different sources some time I cannot correlate some points e.g. among elements of nation last one must be ‘aspiration’ not aspire, because previous points were in noun form. We have to pursue a uniform ….

codified constitution means that the constitution is written down

Nations (from Latin “nasci”, meaning to be born) are complex phenomena that are shaped by a collection of cultural, political and psychological factors. Culturally, a nation is a group of people bound together by a common language, religion, history and traditions, although nations exhibit various levels of cultural heterogeneity. Politically, a nation is a group of people who regard themselves as a natural political community. Although this is classically expressed in the form of a desire to establish or maintain statehood, it can also take the from of civic consciousness. Psychologically, a nation is a group of people distinguished by a shared loyalty or affection in the form of patriotism. However, such an attachment is not a necessary condition for membership of a nation; even those who lack national pride may still recognize that they “belong” to the nation.

=In the final analysis, the nation is a psycho-political construct. What sets a nation apart from any other group or collectivity is that its members regard themselves as a nation. What does it mean? A nation, in this sense perceives itself to be a distinctive political community. This is what distinguishes a nation from an ethnic group. ethnic group, unlike nation lacks collective political aspirations. These aspirations have traditionally taken the form of the quest for, or the desire to maintain political independence or statehood. On a more modest level, however they may consist of a desire to achieve a measure of autonomy, perhaps as part of a federation or confederation of states.

SUMMARY- nations are defined by a combination of cultural and political factors. Culturally, they are groups of people who are bound together by a common language, religion, history and traditions. Ultimately, however, nations themselves through the existence of a shared civic consciousness, classically, expressed as the desire to achieve or maintain statehood.

Cultural nationalism emphasizes the regeneration of the nation as a distinctive civilization on the basis of a belief in the nation as a unique, historical and organic whole. Political nationalism recognizes the nation as a discrete political community and is thus linked with ideas such as sovereignty and self-determination.

There are a number of contrasting manifestations of political nationalism: Liberal (based on a belief in a universal right to self-determination); Conservative (aims to achieve social and political unity), Expansionist (which is a vehicle for aggression and imperial conquest); Anti-colonial (associated with the struggle against for national liberation, social development)

Sovereignty, in its simplest sense, is the principle of absolute and unlimited power. We may make distinctions between legal and political sovereignty, and internal and external notions of sovereignty. Legal sovereignty refers to supreme legal authority = unchallengeable right to demand compliance, as defined by law. Political sovereignty, in contrast refers to unlimited political power = the ability to command obedience, which is typically ensured by a monopoly of coercive power.

In contrast to government, which is merely one of its parts, the STATE encompasses all public bodies and exercises impersonal authority on the basis of the assumption that it represents the permanent interests of society rather than the partisan sympathies of any group of politicians

What constitutes a nation? The elements of nationhood:

1) territory, 2) population, 3) common identity, 4) common history/ experience, 5) aspirations for the future

What constitutes a State? The elements of statehood:

1) territory, 2) population, 3) independence, 4) sovereign government

4’th lecture= FROM JILL CAROL Mill and Gln, Discussions: Can we claim that absolute freedom is possible and beneficial?

11’th lecture= Elections and Types of Electoral Systems (Single Member, Proportional Representation, Mixed Member Proportional Representation System)

KEY TOPICS

● The citizen’s rights and obligations

● The state, the government, power and authority

● Liberal democracy: uniting the citizen and the state

Citizen	the Individual Member of the State
Civil Rights	special freedoms which citizens of a country enjoy and which are protected by the law
State	a country which is independent of all others; the permanent political authority within an independent country
Political power	the ability to get things done, to change something in the country or to decide to keep it the same
Authority	the quality possessed by a political leader or a government which has legitimacy or a right to rule
Democracy	the system of government where the people rule themselves
Liberal Democracy	A state where the people rule themselves but in addition the rights of the citizen are protected by law

• Citizen

• Civil rights

• The state

• Justice

• Liberty

• Equality

• Political power

• Authority

• Democracy

• Liberal Democracy

Early study of politics took place in small communities. The ancient Greeks who asked many of the important questions (and answered some of them well enough to satisfy many people today) lived in city states where rulers and decision-making were not remote. Their primary concern was with the nature of the good and just society and what the attitude of the citizen should be towards authority. The nature of our obligation to our rulers became an important theme in the early study of politics. Why do we obey the state? (see Chapter 3).

The easy answer to this question is that people obey out of habit. It does not occur to them to disobey. In modern times the question might be answered by anthropologists studying primitive societies, or by psychologists studying small groups of people and their response to leadership in laboratory situations. The ancient philosophers believed the answer lay in the nature of man. Aristotle perceived man as an animal of the polis: outside society people could not attain true happiness. The real nature of man could only be realised by associating with others. He assumed that the good life lay in the polity and that legally constituted government was the natural form, so that corruptions of good government were aberrations. Hence harmony was more natural than conflict. Neither Plato nor Aristotle seems to have conceived that disagreement could be irreconcilable. Christian philosophers believed that authority came from God and, therefore, should be obeyed. Later dynastic rulers transformed this into the claim that hereditary rulers were appointed by divine law and so disobeying them was unthinkable.

Once the acknowledgement of basic disagreement arose the question of political obligation either disappeared or became far more complicated. The Scientific Revolution, the Renaissance, the Reformation and finally the eighteenth-century Enlightenment removed many of the old certainties. Machiavelli (1469-1527), who had been imprisoned and tortured by rulers' commands, believed people were fickle and prone to evil. He was the holder of high office at the period of the expulsion, and then reinstatement, of the Medici in Florence. Instability, he held, could always be round the corner. When the safety of the country is ultimately in question, he wrote, there must be no question of justice or injustice, of mercy or cruelty, of praise or ignominy. It was not a matter of obligation, but of success or failure. Similarly Hobbes (1588-1679), writing in the period of the English Civil War and religious intolerance, perceived man's nature as fearful in consequence of the struggle for survival. People battled against one another to achieve their ends and in consequence life was 'nasty, brutish and short'. Hence a sovereign was needed to enforce law and order. We obey the sovereign because if people start disobeying everyone will be miserable in a state of mutual conflict. It is not a moral obligation, it is a necessity.

From the late seventeenth century onward the question of the relationship between the individual and the state generally shifted from the obligation to obey to the circumstances in which one could disobey. It was argued by John Locke (1632-1704) that rulers rule with the consent of their people with whom they have a contract. If the ruler breaches their individual rights the people have a right to replace him. This justification of the English Revolution of 1688, when Parliament replaced a hereditary monarch it disapproved of, became an inspiration for the American Revolutionaries. Thus the study of political thought turned to constitutional liberalism and the need to control powerful government. Montesquieu (1689-1755) believed that this could only be done by separating the powers of the judiciary, legislature and executive from each other. Rousseau (1712-1778), with his belief in equality and sovereignty belonging to the people, challenged all previous ideas about authority.

After the American and French Revolutions obedience was no longer either a habit or an accepted and expected pattern of behaviour. Conflict among the people, who were rarely even 90 per cent in favour of any proposal, had to be assumed. The arrival of the Common Man and the pluralistic society meant that philosophic thinking about politics could no longer be the simple matter of the relationship between the individual and the state.

This is only the briefest summary of that part of most political science syllabuses known as political philosophy or political theory. (In Chapters 2 and 3 more recent developments are discussed.) It is possible to make a distinction between these two rubrics. Political philosophy is more concerned with implicit assumptions and internal logic, while political theory tends to be more related to intellectual influences and to cultural and historical environments, but the terms are sometimes used interchangeably

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2. 'The government' (with the definite article) usually refers to the rulers, that group of people who are in charge of the state at a particular time. Terminology is not universal even in the English speaking world. In the USA it is usual to call them the 'administration'. (Thus (in 1996) one would write of the Major Government in Britain and the Clinton Administration in America.)

The characteristics of the people who rule, their behaviour in office and the methods by which they reach their positions, are paramount in any analysis of POLITICAL SYSTEMS

The way one set of rulers succeeds another is one of the main distinguishing marks of political systems. In very traditional systems there may be one-man rule. This is usually dynastic rule and succession is by the hereditary principle, but in pre-Communist Tibet monks used esoteric methods to discover the next Dalai Lama. In many countries the method of succession is not prescribed and adventurists may seize power by force of arms. Much of the world is governed by MILITARY REGIMES and power changes hands after successive coups d'état. In countries ruled by single parties succession may be decided in small committees in secret and the procedure is obscure. In democracies succession of governments takes place through ELECTIONS, either directly, or as a result of negotiations by elected representatives.

Elements in Political Science

Frank Bealey, Richard A. Chapman and Michael Sheehan Edinburgh University Press

THE STATE

The concept of the state is one of great complexity. The term state is used in at least three different contexts 1) philosophical, 2) legal and 3) political and each of these three streams of thought provides us with a history of the development of the concept which has also been a response to the social and political environment.

There are three common perceptions of what is meant by the term 'the state'