Gamble - Politics : why it matters

Why It Matters

In these short and lively books, world-leading thinkers make the case for the importance of their subjects and aim to inspire a new generation of students.

Helen Beebee & Michael Rush, Philosophy

Robert Eaglestone, Literature

Andrew Gamble, Politics

Lynn Hunt, History

Tim Ingold, Anthropology

Neville Morley, Classics

Alexander B. Murphy, Geography

Geoffrey K. Pullum, Linguistics

Graham Ward, Theology and Religion

Andrew Gamble

polity

Copyright Andrew Gamble 2019

The right of Andrew Gamble to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2019 by Polity Press

Polity Press
65 Bridge Street
Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK

Polity Press
101 Station Landing
Suite 300
Medford, MA 02155, USA

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-2732-8

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Gamble, Andrew, author.
Title: Politics : why it matters / Andrew Gamble.
Description: Cambridge ; Medford, MA : Polity Press, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018033530 (print) | LCCN 2018049573 (ebook) | ISBN 9781509527328 (Epub) | ISBN 9781509527281 (hardback) | ISBN 9781509527298 (pbk.)
Subjects: LCSH: Political science--Philosophy.
Classification: LCC JA71 (ebook) | LCC JA71 .G252 2019 (print) | DDC 320--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018033530

The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.

Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.

For further information on Polity, visit our website: politybooks.com

For Michael Moran, 19462018 Scholar and friend

Someone who understood why politics matters

This book is a product of many years of thinking about politics, studying politics, teaching politics, and experiencing politics. Every generation is shaped by its political experiences and its political memories. One of my earliest political memories was in 1956 when Britain and France invaded Egypt to take back control of the Suez Canal. I had little understanding of what was happening, but it stuck in my memory principally because my father was angry enough to cancel his subscription to the Observer, so strongly did he disagree with their criticisms of the Governments actions. Politics obviously mattered. My formative experiences continued with the Sharpeville massacre in 1960, the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, the Profumo scandal and Kennedys assassination in 1963, and Labours election victory in 1964, promising a New Britain, with the improbable slogan, Lets go with Labour and well get things done. At university between 1965 and 1968 I was swept up in the excitement of the political and cultural earthquakes of those years. One of the slogans which appeared on the walls in Paris in May 1968 captured our mood: Be realistic. Demand the impossible. These experiences gave me my first involvement with politics and why it mattered. I began to study it in earnest and soon found there was a vast and fascinating hinterland of ideas and histories and arguments to explore, and that politics was a lot more complex than I had ever imagined. In writing this book, I have drawn in particular on two of my earlier publications: Politics and Fate (Cambridge: Polity, 2000) and The Limits of Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), which was my inaugural lecture at Cambridge.

I would like to thank my editors at Polity, Louise Knight and Nekane Tanaka Galdos, first for suggesting this project to me and then for giving such excellent support through the process of writing and submission, and also Justin Dyer for very thorough and helpful copy-editing, which has greatly improved the flow of the argument. I would also like to thank two anonymous reviewers and especially Adam Roble for their very helpful comments on an earlier draft. This book is dedicated to Mick Moran, whose sudden death in April 2018 robbed us of one of the best political scientists of his generation, someone who understood better than any of us why politics mattered and wrote many fine books explaining why it did. Consider this passage, read out at his funeral, which comes from his classic text Politics and Governance in the UK:

Why study politics? Indeed why be concerned with political life at all? For most citizens the answers to these questions are pretty obvious: there are no good reasons either to study politics or to take an active part in political life. But if politics is a minority interest, even in a democracy, it is nevertheless a matter of the utmost importance in a quite literal sense, a matter of life and death. Politics is about trying to choose between competing views and interests the failure to make these choices by peaceful means, and to carry them out effectively and peacefully has catastrophic results. Consider, for instance, the life of people unfortunate enough to live in poverty-stricken countries of Africa, like the Democratic Republic of Congo. What single thing would transform their life: a great medical advance, a great advance in biotechnology which would make farming more productive? Neither of these things; their lives would be transformed for the better by peace and the creation of a stable system of government, because since the then Belgian Congo achieved independence nearly sixty years ago it has been racked by civil wars. Understanding politics, if we want to make the world a better place for our fellow human beings, is more urgent even than understanding medicine, biology or physics. Politics shapes every detail of our lives, from the most dramatic to the most mundane.

This book is also for my six grandchildren, Joni, Nye, Louis, George, Ceinwen, and Ivy, who are at present blissfully unaware of politics and why it matters but one day will understand.

Andrew Gamble
Sheffield
August 2018

Politics today has a poor reputation. This has not always been so. There have been times and cultures when it was considered one of the most noble, most elevating, and most necessary human activities. Aristotle thought that participating in the life of the polis, being an active citizen, speaking and acting in the public arena, were the highest goods to which human beings could aspire. It was how they showed what they were capable of. Cicero agreed. For him the highest human virtue lay in the possession and employment of knowledge in practical affairs.