Governing Ideas 4 - politics and the political
Summary
TLDRThe transcript delves into various perspectives on politics, emphasizing the absence of a single viewpoint. It explores political theories from conflict-driven ideologies like Lenin's to resource allocation and representation. The discussion touches on personal political decisions and their broader implications, drawing from Jacques Rancier's concept of making unheard voices heard. It critiques the Western-centric approach to political science, advocating for a more inclusive understanding that considers non-Western political frameworks like worldism and the importance of harmony and consultation. The summary also questions the reliability of political science as a predictive tool, given the complex and open nature of political systems.
Takeaways
- 🤔 Politics is multifaceted and there's no single way to view it; individuals must determine what makes the most sense to them based on their perspectives.
- 🏛️ Lenin's view of politics was centered on conflict, hierarchy, control, and power dynamics, emphasizing the struggle for dominance.
- 💡 An alternative view frames politics in terms of resource allocation, asking questions like 'who gets what, when, and how?'
- 🌐 Hannah Arendt introduced a feminist perspective on politics, suggesting that personal decisions can have political consequences, affecting society and the environment.
- 🗣️ Jacques Rancier's approach to politics focuses on giving voice to those who are unheard, suggesting that politics is about making the invisible visible.
- 🧠 The script critiques the Western canonical view of politics, which often overlooks non-Western experiences and perspectives, advocating for a more inclusive approach.
- 🔍 It discusses the limitations of applying scientific methods to politics due to the open and complex nature of political systems, which cannot be controlled or predicted with certainty.
- 🌐 The concept of 'worldism' is introduced as an alternative to the Westphalian approach, emphasizing a bottom-up perspective and negotiation across multiple logics.
- 🔄 The script touches on the idea of dialectics from Taoism, suggesting a holistic view that includes both competition and cooperation, rather than viewing everything as a zero-sum game.
- 🌱 The importance of considering different historical, cultural, and philosophical frameworks when discussing politics is emphasized, to avoid bias and to foster a more comprehensive understanding.
Q & A
What are the different frameworks for understanding politics mentioned in the transcript?
-The transcript discusses various frameworks for understanding politics, including conflict theory, resource allocation, uncontrolled competition for scarce resources, feminist understanding of the personal as political, Jacques Rancier's view on those who have nowhere to speak making themselves of account, and the Western canonical view of politics.
How does the transcript describe Vladimir Lenin's view on politics?
-Vladimir Lenin's view on politics is described as being about conflict, hierarchy, control, and power over, emphasizing the idea of 'who will dominate whom'.
What does the transcript suggest about the relationship between personal decisions and political consequences?
-The transcript suggests that personal decisions can have political consequences, as they can affect societal structures and norms, even if they are initially made for personal reasons.
How does the transcript define 'political representation'?
-Political representation in the transcript is discussed in terms of the rights of individuals to be politically represented, to vote, and to participate in society.
What is Jacques Rancier's perspective on politics as mentioned in the transcript?
-Jacques Rancier's perspective, as mentioned, is that politics is about those who have nowhere to speak making themselves of account, suggesting that politics is not just about policy organization or the re-allocation of resources but also about giving voice to the unheard.
What is the significance of the term 'scientific' in the context of political science as discussed in the transcript?
-The term 'scientific' in the context of political science is questioned in the transcript, as it highlights the limitations and biases in applying scientific methodology to the complex, open, and interactive systems of politics.
How does the transcript critique the Western canonical view of political science?
-The transcript critiques the Western canonical view of political science for omitting other experiences that exist in the world and for treating the sovereign nation-state model as universal, which may not account for different forms and structures of political authority.
What alternative views to the Western view of politics are presented in the transcript?
-The transcript presents alternative views such as worldism, which emphasizes a bottom-up perspective and negotiation across multiple logics, and the concept of harmony in Chinese worldview, which values different forms and structures as long as they coexist peacefully.
What is the Westphalian approach and why does the transcript argue it entrenches violence?
-The Westphalian approach refers to a system of international relations based on the Treaty of Westphalia, characterized by states as the primary actors, sovereignty as a main principle, and trade or commerce as legitimate venues for interaction. The transcript argues it entrenches violence because it offers a singular logic of what to do and how to think, leading to conflict over the legitimate use of force.
How does the concept of 'worldism' as presented in the transcript differ from the Westphalian approach?
-Worldism, as opposed to the Westphalian approach, is about a world of multiple worlds that interact and negotiate across different logics. It focuses on creative listening and speaking as a mechanism for implementing a dialogic approach, rather than being based on a singular logic of violence and competition.
Outlines
🌟 Introduction to Political Perspectives
The speaker begins by discussing the various ways to view politics, emphasizing that there is no single approach and that individuals must determine what resonates with them. They touch on broad theoretical traditions and how different frameworks can lead to different understandings of justice, representation, and fairness. The speaker also highlights the importance of considering multiple viewpoints, including those of historical figures like Vladimir Lenin, who viewed politics through the lens of conflict and power dynamics. The paragraph introduces the idea that politics is not just about resource allocation but also about who has the right to participate and be represented in society.
🔍 Exploring Political Frameworks and Concepts
This paragraph delves deeper into different political frameworks, such as resource allocation and conflict over resources, with examples from various thinkers. The speaker critiques the textbook's distinction between these concepts and introduces the idea of uncontrolled competition for scarce resources. They also discuss the personal political consequences of individual actions, such as environmental decisions, and the broader implications for society. The paragraph concludes with a mention of Jacques Rancier's view on politics as a rare occurrence where the unheard make themselves heard, suggesting a more inclusive approach to political participation.
🌐 Global Perspectives on Politics and Authority
The speaker explores global perspectives on politics, challenging the Western-centric view of the sovereign nation-state as universal. They introduce the concept of 'worldism' as an alternative to the Westphalian approach, which is based on conflict and competition. The paragraph discusses the idea of harmony and consultation in politics, drawing from non-Western traditions that emphasize cooperation and balance over dominance. The speaker also critiques the Western approach for its historical biases and suggests that political science should be more inclusive of diverse experiences and perspectives.
🌱 Worldism and the Future of Political Thought
In the final paragraph, the speaker focuses on the concept of worldism as a way to move beyond the traditional, conflict-oriented view of politics. They discuss the importance of creative listening and speaking as a mechanism for implementing worldless dialogics, which emphasizes negotiation and understanding across different political logics. The speaker argues against the idea of conducting political science experiments due to the complexity and unpredictability of political systems. The paragraph concludes with a call for a more holistic and inclusive approach to political thought that acknowledges power as historical and contingent rather than universal.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Politics
💡Resource Allocation
💡Conflict
💡Representation
💡Feminist Understanding
💡Jacques Rancier
💡Westphalian System
💡Worldism
💡Taoist Dialectics
💡Harmony
Highlights
Politics is viewed differently by different people, and there isn't a single way to understand it.
Political frameworks can include concepts of justice, representation, and fairness.
Vladimir Lenin's political framework focuses on conflict, hierarchy, control, and power dynamics.
An allocative sense of politics considers how resources are distributed among different parties.
Manheim's view includes competition for scarce resources and the use of force in political conflict.
A feminist understanding of politics considers personal decisions and their political consequences.
Politics can also be about who has the right to participate and be represented in society.
Jacques Rancier argues that politics is about those who have nowhere to speak making themselves of account.
Politics is about structuring thought and considering different frameworks for understanding it.
The textbook's framework of politics is largely centered on the polis and structures of power and authority.
Elections are often seen as a horse race, which is an unethical way to view the democratic process.
Politics involves collective decision-making processes and the advancement of individual and group interests.
The struggle for power, advantage, and dominance is a common theme in political frameworks.
The concept of 'scarce public goods' is a typo, but it leads to a discussion about shared resources.
The Western canonical view of political science may omit other experiences and perspectives from around the world.
A balanced or holistic view of politics can be found in non-Western perspectives, such as worldism.
The Westphalian approach to world politics is based on a singular logic of violence and is critiqued for entrenching conflict.
Worldism proposes an alternative paradigm for world politics that focuses on negotiation and dialogue.
Taoist dialectics offer a different way to view differences and their interactions, which can be applied to politics.
The concept of worldless dialogics emphasizes creative listening and speaking as a mechanism for implementing worldism.
Transcripts
so we talked a lot about the kind of
buckets of politics at this point
um let's get into some of the specifics
of the what I mean we we've been talking
about things that are political or
concepts that are political bohammer
have talked about the political
um so you know there isn't again as I
said in the introduction there isn't one
way to view politics right so you know
you you have to figure out what makes
the most sense to you
um and then you can develop there's
broad theoretical traditions and all the
different ways that it makes sense to
you what makes sense to me about
politics isn't what makes sense to you
about politics but we can talk about
each other's visions of politics and
very liberal but we can do it
um and so we have all different
Frameworks about what the political is
but what Justice is but what
representation is what fairness is and
we can be sympathetic and we can be
critical to all of them including mine
right so we have to include and exclude
everybody from this so you know the
Lenin Vladimir Lenin right the famously
you know said who will dominate whom so
his framework of politics was was about
conflict right about this idea of
hierarchy and control and power over and
Power Authority and we'll get to the
power dynamics after this
um you know you can also frame it more
in a kind of allocative sense so who
gets what when and how so that's framing
it in terms of like how are resources
allocated so weirdly enough like out of
those two
last well sounds more communist than
Lynn Lennon really enough
um and the textbook makes this weird
distinction too which I don't really
understand because one is about resource
allocation and one is about conflict
between classes right in different ways
and Manheim has uncontrolled competition
for scarce Resources by domination and
forsh force this conflict over resources
so again very similar this kind of the
idea that there's conflict over
resources rather than just resource
allocation right resource allocation is
kind of more policy conflict over
resources says competition and builds in
more kind of systems and structures for
control
um you know it Hanish these are in the
text but Hannah thought I would do it
personally is politically kind of
feminist understanding of no you have to
understand that the ways in which we go
about the world how if I have a lawn or
not is is a
personal decision that has political
consequences right so it might not be
environmentally viable for whatever it
is I'm doing you know I've got ten
thousand acres I make it all on I love
my golf course right
um whether or not that's ecologically
sound is something that was a personal
decision that has political consequences
but in a more you know back to the real
sense do certain people have the right
to be politically represented do they
have the right to vote do they have the
right of participation in our society
right those types of personal political
questions and then mine is just I draw
this this is my own personal one you
don't have to agree with it this is just
how I like to think about it those who
have nowhere to speak making themselves
of account so this is from Jacques
Rancier and what he's arguing there is
that politics is actually kind of rare
most of what we talk about is just kind
of policy organization the re-allocation
of resources or you know some effort to
reorganize who's in charge right back to
the Lenin like no it shouldn't be them
the dominating it should be them who's
dominating it shouldn't be the
conservatives in power it should be the
Liberals it shouldn't be this and to be
them right whereas this version is more
about the idea back to the political
animal stuff about maybe we should
listen more and hear the voices that
currently we can't even hear and there's
all sorts of ways in which you do that
and it's really hard and it doesn't
happen very often right
um and so you know as meta then
as thinking about politics really what
we're doing is thinking about how we
structure thought
um I said feminism here because it
doesn't
this framework from the textbook doesn't
really do the feminist way of doing
politics personal political stuff
um and so it it frames it largely as
things concerning the polis which again
okay those in structures of power and
authority who gets what when how as we
talked about research allegation
processes have collected decision making
listen you can just be concerned that
you just think politics is elections
right it's the horse race so my my
candidate is going to win horse racing
let's be clear super unethical you're
racing babies look it up two-year-olds
uh anyways my wife's a horse uh writing
um instructors so this is why I know
this um so just the idea that processes
of collective decision making
um so how it is that that we come about
Collective decisions right how did the
Prime Minister come up with this policy
and what does it mean for me write that
episode
um advancement of individual and group
interests so this can be pushing forward
of Rights you know property rights
landlord rights tenant rights whatever
you want to do resolution of conflict so
you can frame in terms of Peace how do
we generate peace what makes peaceful
Society who is peaceful how does peace
come about
competition for scarce that should be
scarce public goods ah they made a typo
that's not mine
um scarce public goods
scaring public goods would be like I
don't know the most Halloween
decorations we can give out for free but
public goods are just things that we
share in common so you know I want to
have a road built because it will be
quicker for me to get to work I just
happened to reflect certain types of
hierarchy and Authority some white voice
counts more so I get the road and you
don't right because we only have so much
we're only willing to pay for so much so
those the allocation of those resources
or you can see it as the unrelenting
struggle for power advantage and
dominance all of these are very much
framed in a not personalized political
they're framed in a very kind of public
political way that that what takes place
is is out there and what happens in here
doesn't have those consequences right so
it's just an interesting way to frame
these things I will say they're you know
there is a weird I don't even I don't
even know it's it's you know we're in
the 2020s now I don't know about using
that word for science
um I think we're trying to get rid of
that language but here I think it is
instructive
um because you know that's what
Aristotle thinks of this is the kind of
overarching framework that explains all
the other Frameworks
maybe maybe that's what he argues
use of here is very much in this kind of
Plantation of scene mentality this the
legacies of plantationism in the way
that we frame both of those words
together the exploitation colonialism
inequality inequality
um you know I just have questions about
the science part right
because this has been one of the
fundamental problems famously you know
he debates it now but Nate silver was
the famous statistician who predicted
Obama's uh election but was famously
very wrong on Trump everybody was very
wrong on Trump
um because they were using this
scientific
methodology
that has this problem in it is that if
you and this is why we close polling
this is why even Facebook said we won't
run political ads 24 hours before an
election because if you statistically
say that this happens 99 times out of
100 therefore because it happens 99
times out of 100 you shouldn't go vote
for your candidate because there's a
only a one percent chance they're going
to win
that actually makes people not go to the
polls and then it reinforces or creates
the opposite where your science
interferes with the outcome and so we
don't have the ability to control
variables in politics so we want to say
we're doing science we want to come up
with the idea that we're doing science
but we don't have any systems that are
closed and controllable our systems are
open and complex and interact with each
other right so advancements in feminism
result in counter feminism right so then
the premise of advancing like ideas of
women's rights it was floated at certain
points by certain people in the U.S on
the right that oh well maybe women's
rights in voting well we went too far
like this happened during the Trump
presidency like that we can go back on
Concepts and ideas that we thought were
well settled right and so there's no
such like there's a premise to you know
even with what we did in the last
section to say these are the three types
of systems I'm not you know those are
the three types of systems we have now
but we're not sure they will always be
that way and so there's a bias in our
science and that our science isn't very
reliable in the kind of predictive
analysis sense
um I would also say that the Aristotle
Western canonical view of political
science has
to omit the other experiences that exist
in the world
um I just use two there's many more I
just used two as examples so I know this
little link she just died I think last
year a couple years ago
um I met her several times but she had
this framework and she gave one of her
big last lectures at the London School
of Economics on worldism that basically
this idea of framing everything in this
kind of this conflict way or one against
another we can actually use something
she she looked at like kind of taoism as
this idea it's not one versus the other
but there's also a bit of each in each
other and so it's this idea of a
balanced or holistic views it doesn't
see everything in terms of competition
right it doesn't see everything as a set
outcomes over scarce resources that
doesn't seem everything this tiencia Sia
my my Mandarin's terrible it's been
years since I took it
um and that um the idea of all under
heaven or all the people or these World
institutions and this is China's kind of
world view that they're propagating
listen we can be critical like I've been
critical everything we critical this but
the idea here is that this is a Humane
Authority strategy which is the idea
that you know we're not going to reject
those who've come to learn and but we're
also not going to go out there and
lecture others so this is a different
view than liberalism liberalism
everybody should be able to speak their
ideas and that we have this this kind of
exchange of ideas and this open and that
my criticism should be allowed of those
ideas and those criticisms and my ideas
should be allowed this is a different
view
um this idea of Harmony it's not
sameness and there is a especially in
the western Canon we treat The Sovereign
Nation State as universal we say it's
analytical but we treat it as universal
you're either a modern nation state or
you're not right and so everything is
sameness whereas Harmony says no there
can be different forms and structures as
long as everything gets along right it's
not just cooperation it's Harmony and so
this is a different way of viewing
things and then we've got you know this
idea as I spoke about earlier about the
separation of the political from the
religious doesn't have a lot of
authority and that there's this this
sure idea in both Arab and Muslim
traditions of consultation that there's
actually a democracy as a concept has
Origins outside the Western canonical
experience we just tend not to look
there because of that white ignorant
stuff I talked about earlier because we
make an assumption about how we should
view things and that assumption trickles
down in how we think about everything
else right
um and that there doesn't necessarily
need to be a separation of religious and
political Authority or order that we can
have a consultative process so in this
this world is this this this
um non-western view of politics we can
either have something like Harmony or
consultation which is similar democracy
you don't have to have agreed upon
principles which just everybody has
input and structures and institutions
and histories are different and so there
are different analytical restrictions
here and so I just thought I'd do a
little bit of uh Lily link talking about
this
um this question so this is Professor
Ling discussing her kind of Framing and
we'll you know we'll talk about it
by hegemony I mean a singular logic of
violence in World politics both in what
we do such as in Wars as well as in how
we think such as definitions of
knowledge what qualifies as knowledge
this approach to World politics is
called the westphalian approach because
it comes from the Treaty of Westphalia
that was uh signed in 1648 and which has
been spread throughout the globe through
five centuries of colonialism and
imperialism and the two main pillars of
the Westphalia Interstate well three
main pillars of the westphalian
interstate system are that the
International System is made up of
states and secondly that sovereignty is
a main principle by which states
interact with one another and the third
is that trade or Commerce is the
legitimate venue for Interstate
interaction
this Westphalia interstate system I
propose entrenches violence because it
offers a singular logic of what to do
and how to think consequently I propose
worldism as an alternative Paradigm for
IR World politics worldism comes from
the notion that we live in a world of
multiple worlds and this world of
multiple worlds is not a bubble of or
framework that is established top down
but emanates From Below through the
multiple interactions among multiple
worlds so immediately we see the
difference of the top down bottom-up
perspective right if thinking about
politics from the top down is this long
tradition of of machiavellianism
speaking to leaders to princes about how
they should be printy
um whereas here we're talking about the
idea well no different ideas emerge from
all over the place maybe we should
listen to some of those ideas The
Sovereign Nation State model isn't care
about that it says are you a sovereign
nation state or not your legitimate
political Authority or not and you have
the legitimate use of force that's why
she's saying it's conflict oriented is
that the use of force is the foundation
of what makes you Sovereign right so
then you are going to compete over who
has the legitimate use of Thor Force
that's going to happen
consequently worldism is about
negotiation how do we negotiate across
multiple Logics particularly if they
conflict for this reason I draw on
Taoist dialectics as an epistemology
that was dialectics in particular
as you see from the graph it is a a
holistic organism composed of the black
sphere the white sphere with the black
dot in the white sphere and the white
dot in the black sphere and what uh that
was dialectics presents US is an
alternative way to look at difference in
how they interact into a complement a
complementary whole
from Taoist dialectics I developed a
model of dialogics which is the
dialectics of dialogue which I call a
worldless dialogic and it focuses
specifically on Creative listening and
speaking as a mechanism for implementing
worldless dialogics because that's
enough I mean it I wasn't going to go
into detail you don't need to know the
specifics of it but it's just the idea
that maybe this vision of politics isn't
the only vision of politics and that the
vision of politics reflects like we see
here power the the that power then is
going to be historical and contingent
not Universal even though we like to
teach it as universal because we want to
be science I mean we want to have you
come here and now you can be a political
scientist and you can do political
science experiments I advise you to
never do political science experiments
that sounds like a bad idea
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