Birch - The Concepts and Theories of Modern Democracy

This is a book about the concepts and theories that are invoked when people discuss politics and government in modern democracies. It examines a variety of theories, both analytical and evaluative, and approaches them by analysing some basic political concepts because ideas about politics can only be expressed by using concepts.

A concept is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as an idea of a class of objects, a general notion or idea, and by Websters Dictionary as an abstract or generic idea generalized from particular instances. A political concept is an abstract idea about politics and people who discuss political matters use political concepts all the time. They cannot avoid doing so, because, as a British philosopher has said, our idea of what belongs to the realm of reality is given for us in the language that we use. The concepts that we have settle for us the forms of the experience we have of the world (Winch 1958: 15). An American political theorist has said much the same with particular reference to politics, observing that in political life our language is not just a neutral medium from some independent reality but instead is partly constitutive of that reality (Herzog 1991: 141).

The problem for all those who observe, study or participate in politics (and in modern societies that means most people) is that many political concepts are ambiguous, value-laden and subject to more than one meaning or interpretation. The object of this book is to examine some of the basic concepts of modern politics so as to clarify their meaning or meanings, to indicate the implications of using them in one sense rather than another, and to discuss their utility in political analysis.

In the course of doing this various familiar theoretical controversies will be thrown into a new light and examined from a relatively detached viewpoint. These include controversies about the power of the national state, the bases of political authority within the state, the nature of democratic ideals, the relationships between economic and political power, the case for extending popular participation in government, and the nature of minority rights. Because students of politics have varied widely in their methods of analysis, as well as in the nature of their political values, the final two chapters of the book will discuss the main methods adopted by political scientists and make suggestions about their relative utility.

An example may illustrate the nature of the conceptual problems involved in discussing politics. If it is said that George W. Bush became president of the United States in 2001, this is a simple historical statement that does not employ any concepts. If it is said that the American president wields extensive executive powers conferred on him by the constitution, this statement employs a concept with a fairly low level of generality, namely executive powers; but it does not involve any ambiguity or uncertainty as the powers in question are set out in a legal document. However, if it is said that the American president enjoys more political power than the prime minister of Britain, this statement hinges on a concept with a rather high level of generality, namely political power. There are problems about defining political power and disagreements between political analysts as to how its extent should be assessed or measured. That these problems and disagreements are serious will be clear to anyone who reflects for a moment on a further proposition sometimes advanced, namely that the industrial-military complex in the United States wields more power than the president.