Andrew Heywood - Key Concepts in Politics and International Relations

Key Concepts in Politics and International Relations

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KEY CONCEPTS IN POLITICS AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

Second Edition

Andrew Heywood

Andrew Heywood 2000, 2015

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First edition (Key Concepts in Politics) 2000

Second edition 2015

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For Jean

USES AND ABUSES OF POLITICAL CONCEPTS

Concepts have a particular importance for students of politics and international relations. It is no exaggeration to suggest that political argument often boils down to a struggle over the legitimate meaning of terms. Enemies may argue, fight and even go to war, each claiming to be defending freedom, upholding democracy or supporting justice. The problem is that words such as freedom, democracy and justice have different meanings to different people, so that the concepts themselves come to seem problematic.

At least three reasons can be suggested to explain the unusual importance of concepts in political analysis, whether domestic or international. The first is that political analysis typically deals in generalizations. The significance of this can be highlighted by considering differences between politics and history in this respect. Whereas a historian is likely to want to make sense of a particular event (say, the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution or the Eastern European Revolutions of 198991), a political analyst is more likely to study such events with a view to making sense of a larger or more general phenomenon, in this case the phenomenon of revolution. For historians, a special study of the concept of revolution is of marginal value, because their primary interest is in what is different, even unique, about a particular set of events. For political analysts, on the other hand, a study of the concept of revolution is not only necessary, it is the very process through which political enquiry proceeds.

The second reason is that the language used by students of politics is largely the same as that used by practitioners of politics, and particularly by professional politicians. As the latter are interested primarily in political advocacy rather than political understanding, they have a strong incentive to use language to manipulate and sometimes to confuse. This, in turn, forces students of politics to be especially careful in their use of language. They must define terms clearly and refine concepts with precision to safeguard them from the misrepresentations often current in everyday political debate.

The final reason is that political concepts are frequently entwined with ideological beliefs. Since the emergence of modern political ideologies in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, not only has a new language of political discourse emerged, but the terms and concepts of political debate have also been imbued with complex, and often conflicting, meanings. Political concepts are therefore particularly challenging creatures: they are often ambiguous and not infrequently the subject of rivalry and debate; and they may come loaded with value judgements and ideological implications of which their users may be unaware.

WHAT IS A CONCEPT?

A concept is a general idea about something, usually expressed in a single word or a short phrase. A concept is more than a proper noun or the name of a thing. There is, for example, a difference between talking about a cat (a particular and unique cat) and having a concept of a cat (the idea of a cat). The concept of a cat is not a thing but an idea, an idea composed of the various attributes that give a cat its distinctive character: a furry mammal, small, domesticated, catches rats and mice and so on. In the same way the concept of presidency refers not to any specific president, but rather to a set of ideas about the organization of executive power. Concepts are therefore general in the sense that they can refer to a number of objects, indeed to any object that complies with the general idea itself.