1
Man and Society (2302102)
Topic11: Social Institutions III: Political Institutions
Dr. Yuki Miyake
School of Social Innovation
---------------------------------------------------
Today’s Topics
• Power and Authority
• Types of Government
• Problems in Democracy Today
• The nation
• Citizenship
-----------------------------------------------------
Power and Authority
Power
• In any society, someone or some group makes important decisions about how to use
resources and how to allocate goods.
• It needs the exercise of power and authority.
• It involves politics: who gets what, when, and how?
• Power lies at the heart of a political system.
• According to Max Weber, power is the ability to exercise one’s will over others.
• In the early 1900s, power is on the nation-state.
• Today, in the era of globalization, power is exercised on a global stage as well as a
national stage by countries and multinational corporations.
• There are three basic sources of power within any political system.
(1) Force is the actual or threatened use of coercion to impose one’s will on others.
(e.g. A leader execute opponents.) 2
(2) Influence indicates the exercise of power through a process of persuasion.
(3) Authority refers to institutionalized power that is recognized by the people over
whom it is exercised.
Authority
• In sociology, “authority” is commonly connected with those who hold legitimate power
through elected or publicly acknowledged positions.
• A person’s authority is limited.
(e.g. a referee of a football game)
• Max Weber classified authority into three.
Weber’s Classification of Authority
(1) Traditional authority: Legitimate power is conferred by custom and accepted practice.
(e.g. An inherited _________ or _________).
(2) Rational-legal Authority: Power legitimated by law such as constitution.
(____________________, government)
(3) Charismatic Authority: Power legitimized by Charisma of an individual without relying
on rules or traditions. (e.g. ______________)
In reality, most leaders combine some of these.
Types of Government
Types of Government
• Each society establishes a political system through which it is governed.
• Five basic types of government are raised: (1) monarchy, (2) oligarchy, (3) dictatorship,
(4) totalitarianism, and (5) democracy
3
Monarchy
• It is headed by a single member of a royal family, usually a king or queen.
• In earlier times, many monarchs claimed that God had granted them to rule.
• Typically they governed on the basis of traditional forms of authority.
(E.g. Thailand = Constitutional monarchy.)
Oligarchy
• It is a form of government in which a few individuals rule.
• It is a rather old method of governing that flourished in ancient Greece and Egypt.
• Today, it often takes the form of military rule.
• In developing nations, small factions of military officers will forcibly seize power,
either from legally elected regimes or from other small groups.
Dictatorship
• It is a government in which one person has nearly total power to make and enforce
laws.
• They rule through the use of coercion, which often includes torture and executions.
• Typically, they seize power rather than being elected.
Totalitarianism
• It is when dictators develop such overwhelming control over people’s lives.
• It involves virtually complete government control and surveillance over all aspects of
people’s life.
(E.g. Germany during Hitler’s reign, or North Korea today.)
Democracy
• It is the government by the people.
• The word “democracy” comes from Greek. “demos” means “the common people,” and
“kratia” (> cracy) means “rules.”
4
• Representative Democracy: Since populous nations cannot vote on every issue, the
elected members of Congress and state legislatures make the laws. (e.g. the United
States)
Figure 1: United States Declaration of Independence in July 4, 1774
United States Declaration of Independence
• Author is Thomas Jefferson et al.
• It is a well-known statement on human rights, particularly its second sentence.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of
Happiness.
Gettysburg Address in 1863
• It is one of the best-known speech by U.S. President Abraham Lincoln during the
American Civil War.
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining
before us ------ —that we here highly resolve that these dead shall
not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new
birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people,
for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Problems in Democracy Today
Problems in Democracy Today
• In theory, a representative democracy will function most effectively and fairly if an 5
elected politician actively communicate with government leaders…
• But it has a problem today.
• These days, people, especially young, do not turnout voting.
Figure 2: Voter Turnout Worldwide
• Because politics is related to power and authority, marginalized groups, such as women
and racial and ethnic minorities are lack of political strength.
Figure 3: Government Participation of Women as of 2010
Who really holds the power today?
• Karl Marx believed that 19th
century representative democracy did not function well.
• He argued that industrial societies were dominated by relatively small numbers of
people who owned factories.
• They also controlled natural resources.
• In his view, government officials and military leaders were servants of the capitalist
class.
Power Elite Models
• C. Wright Mills said that in the US, a small group of military, industrial, and
government leaders controls the state. = power elite
• Power rested in the hands of a few, both inside and outside government.
• In this model, economically powerful corporates cooperate with the military and
political leaders to serve their common interests.
• Powerless masses are at the bottom.
Figure 4: Power in the United States
2nd
Power Elite Models
• There is another Power Elite Models.
• For this, the elites of corporates and political organizations do not agree on specific
policies, but just cooperate. 6
• Many of the people in both groups are also members of the social upper class.
Figure 5: 2nd
power elite models, 2006
Pluralist Model
• Many socialists suggest that power in the US is shared more widely than elite models.
• It indicates that many competing groups within the community have access to
government, so that no single group is dominant.
• Emphasis on competition between groups of citizens.
• Policy is the result of interest group competition.
Figure 6: Pluralist Model
Nations and Citizenship
State
• There are various ways to indicate something like “country,” such as state, nation, and
nation-state.
• The “state” today refers to an integrated set of institutions consists of the legislature
that passes law, central and local administration, judiciary, police and armed forces.
• It acts as a system of political domination.
• It has a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence.
Nation
• A “nation” is a kind of community that has one or more following bases: Race,
ethnicity, language, customs, religion and political memory.
• Nationalists see the nation as an objective reality with a long history and clear identity.
• In contrast, social scientists stress the modern and socially constructed nature of the
nation.
• For Benedict Anderson, the nation is nothing but “imagined.” It means its members
never have real relationships with all or many of other members. 7
• It is possible for nations to retain a sense of identity without forming a state.
(E.g. people of Turkey, Iraq and Iran has a common identity as the Kurds.)
• But the right of self-determination of the nation and a nation ruled by its own people is
emphasized by the UN today.
Nation-state
• Most modern “state” includes and represents “nation.” = “nation-states”
• The “nation-state” refers to a form of political organization in which a group of people
who share the same history, traditions, or language live in a particular area under one
government.
• “Nation-state” often indicates “society.”
E.g. when we talk about “Thai society,” we often mean what is governed by the
Thai nation-state.
Sovereignty
• Sovereignty is a power that an absolute ruler has.
• In modern societies, that ruler is the state. = State sovereignty
Citizenship
• Originally, it was used in Greeks, and meant a political right for small number of elites.
• With the rise of the nation-state in the early 20th
century, its use expanded in the world.
• According to Marshall, citizenship consists of three rights.
(1) Civil rights: It refers to the right to freedom of expression, access to information,
etc.
(2) Political rights: It is mainly the right to choose the government.
(3) Social and economic rights: It is the right to receive social welfare as a safeguard
against exclusion from society through poverty, etc.
8
Civil Society
• Civil society was first created in the late 18th
century to contrast the democratic
institutions of the West with the despotisms (≈ dictatorship) of the East.
• Today, it means non-governmental institutions that fill the space between the family
and the state: E.g. Churches, trade unions, voluntary associations, and sportin