Introduction to Political Theory

No license| Please help improve the educational quality of this resource to increase engagement by participants. Any concrete improvements made by June 15, 2025 may allow it to be kept.

You may remove {{proposed deletion}} from this resource's source text to contest this proposal, with or without discussion.

* * *

The nominator's rationale:

very little to learn from here; no further reading

|

Link to any subpages this page might have

# What is Politics?

[edit | edit source]

This section is under construction. You may find editorial notes, while these are for editors, they provide helpful context for the information on-screen.

## The Origins of Political Theory

[edit | edit source]

Political theory is best understood as a method, a practice for making sense of the world around us. Undergraduate-level introductory courses in this subject often begin with political philosophy by referencing the Ancient Greek practice of democracy ([demos ('people') + kratos ('rule of/by')]. However, recent scholarship encourages prudence in this assumption by encouraging us to consider a few questions which are fundamental to the discipline.

Though these questions appear initially arbitrary, they actually help us to uncover the nature of politics This concept is one that is usually difficult to broach but once we have considered each question in turn, we can return to that more fundamental issue which 'Introduction to Political Theory' intends to grapple: the origin of politics and, by extension, political theory.

### 1) What is the Demos?

[edit | edit source]

Perhaps the most fraught concept in all of democracy, and politics itself, the concept of the 'people' is not easy to face. For the Ancient Greeks, from whom we borrow the term 'democracy', the people, or more appropriately the political public, were unilaterally men and wealthy. If we look to our own societies, does everyone have equal access to political power? If we understand the concept of democracy by the meaning of the word and look at the diversity of societies we consider to be 'democratic', it's clear that democracy has many faces. it's not just about elections or a free press or any other of the common associations we've built with, but about rule (power, command, authority) belonging or used by the political public.

[DETAIL ABOUT ANCIENT GREEK DEMOCRACY - highlighting its philosophical premises and where they align/dis-align with our contemporary conceptions.]

[ALTERNATE VERSION OF DEMOCRACY - Example from non-western world, potentially the Igbo of what is now Eastern Nigeria, anthropologically regarded as a particularly egalitarian and non-patriarchal society which practiced a governance structure that is democratic in nature, if not name.]

As the Ancient Greeks, Enlightenment Era Europe, and pre-Emancipation era of mass enslavement, the [people/public] are not the same as just every living person. We decide who counts as a person or public member, and that has undeniably significant consequences for what political decisions are made.

Here we turn to Rawl's

### 2) What does Kratos mean?

[edit | edit source]

### 3) What does it mean to be 'ruled by the people?'

[edit | edit source]