Everyone is involved in politics everyday, we are immersed in the cause and effects.

The decisions that are made effect us everyday; school, work, recreation. Our every action is legislated.

Governments need to balance Power and Security.

PowerSecurity

English political philosopher Thomas Hobbes is best known for his treatise Leviathan. Written during the mid-17th century amidst the tumult of the English Revolution, Leviathan outlines Hobbes’s theory of sovereignty (political authority).

He believed that people got organized for security and to prevent all out wars.

Hobbes held that since people are fearful and predatory they must submit to the absolute supremacy of the state, in both secular and religious matters, in order to live by reason and gain lasting preservation.

John Locke's views, in his Two Treatises of Government (1690), attacked the theory of divine right of kings and the nature of the state as conceived by the English philosopher and political theorist Thomas Hobbes. In brief, Locke argued that sovereignty did not reside in the state but with the people, and that the state is supreme, but only if it is bound by civil and what he called “natural” law. Many of Locke's political ideas, such as those relating to natural rights, property rights, the duty of the government to protect these rights, and the rule of the majority, were later embodied in the U.S. Constitution.

He believed that political organizations allowed people to pursue their own interests.

Autocracy, political system under which one ruler wields unlimited power, restricted by no constitutional provisions or effective political opposition.

Dictator, those who have assumed sole power over the state have been called dictators

Dictator, title of a magistrate in ancient Rome, appointed by the Senate in times of emergency

Totalitarianism, in political science, system of government and ideology in which all social, political, economic, intellectual, cultural, and spiritual activities are subordinated to the purposes of the rulers of a state. Several important features distinguish totalitarianism, a form of autocracy peculiar to the 20th century, from such older forms as despotism, absolutism, and tyranny.

Types of Dictatorships

• The leader is in control of the armed forces. • The military ensures that the laws, courts, and police carry out the will of the leader. • It has the appearance of a parliamentary or presidential type of government, but citizens have no say in government. • Chile and Argentina at various times have been military dictatorships.

Military

Traditional Absolute Monarchy

• It is a government where one individual has total control. • The leader has the ability to pass power on to his heirs. • It is usually a feature of a traditional type of society. • An example is Saudi Arabia.

Ideological One-Party State

• One small political group is in power.• No dissent or opposition is allowed.• Government policy is based upon a system of doctrines.• Only the small elite has the right to carry out the aims of those doctrines.• It often appears in under-developed societies that wish to industrialize.• An example would be the government of China

Nationalist One-Party State

• It is a single mass party under one leader.• It is extremely nationalistic.• It appears in advanced and industrial societies.• It has racist policies.• It is very imperialistic.• It is militarist.• Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy are common examples.

Anarchism, political theory that is opposed to all forms of government. Anarchists believe that the highest attainment of humanity is the freedom of individuals to express themselves, unhindered by any form of repression or control from without.

Liberalism, attitude, philosophy, or movement that has as its basic concern the development of personal freedom and social progress. Liberalism and democracy are now usually thought to have common aims, but in the past many liberals considered democracy unhealthy because it encouraged mass participation in politics.

Karl Marx, along with Friedrich Engels, defined communism. Their most famous work was the Communist Manifesto (1848), in which they argued that the working class should rebel and build a Communist society.

Marx Engels

Marxism (Scientific Socialism), communism sought to overthrow capitalism through a workers’ revolution and establish a system in which property is owned by the community as a whole rather than by individuals. In theory, communism would create a classless society of abundance and freedom, in which all people enjoy equal social and economic status.

In all ideologies there are some laws used to monitor appropriate and inappropriate behavior.

In every society, culturally unique ways of thinking about the world unite people in their behavior. Anthropologists often refer to the body of ideas that people share as ideology. Ideology can be broken down into at least three specific categories: beliefs, values, and ideals. People’s beliefs give them an understanding of how the world works and how they should respond to the actions of others and their environments. Particular beliefs often tie in closely with the daily concerns of domestic life, such as making a living, health and sickness, happiness and sadness, interpersonal relationships, and death. People’s values tell them the differences between right and wrong or good and bad. Ideals serve as models for what people hope to achieve in life.

Ideology, a structure of beliefs and a pattern of thinking that motivates human and social political action.

Destutt de Tracy, Philosopher in 1796 who first used the word Ideology to describe the rational study of the science of ideas.

1.People may consciously choose a set of beliefs to guide decisions they make.

2.People make decisions based on unconscious values.

Ideologies are a system of beliefs that can sometimes cause conflict between groups with

different beliefs !

Apartheid, policy of racial segregation formerly followed in South Africa. The word apartheid means “separateness” in the Afrikaans language and it described the rigid racial division between the governing white minority population and the nonwhite majority population.

Presidents Wife

Beginning in the 1950s, the government of South Africa divided the black population into ethnic groups and assigned each group to a separate territory, or bantustan. A total of ten bantustans, called homelands by the government, were created as part of the system of apartheid, or separation of the races. The bantustans consisted of many fragments of land and could not support the populations assigned to them. They were reintegrated into the rest of South Africa in 1994.

The Oka Crisis was a land dispute between the Mohawk nation and the town of Oka, Quebec which began on March 11, 1990, and lasted until September 26, 1990. It resulted in massive traffic jams and three deaths.

The crisis developed from a dispute between the town of Oka and the Mohawk reserve of Kanesatake. For 260 years, the Mohawk nation had been pursuing a land claim which included a burial ground and a sacred grove of pine trees near Kanesatake, which is one of the oldest hand-planted stands in North America, created by the Mohawks' ancestors. This brought them into conflict with the town of Oka, which was developing plans to expand a golf course onto the disputed land.

Oka Crisis