Politics and Power Summary
The review of the terms politics, power, and powertics enables one to draw distinctions among the terms. Politics is the stage on which the participants interact. Politics establishes the processóthe way that the public conducts its business. Politics involves decision making on political demands. Politics involves conflicts that result when competing demands press their positions. Politics is also the process wherein conflicts are normally resolved in a relatively peaceable manner short of war, or by war or threat of war when necessary.
Power deals with the governmental and nongovernmental actors who seek to influence political decisions. Power has both positive and negative connotations. Power is a relative term subject to the perceptions of the actors. The human actors on the political stage are limited by their personal and organizational powers. Political power derives from coalitions that achieve balance on a specific issue at any given point of time. The changing nature of coalitions requires that the political system be constantly re-balanced as coalitions change.
Powertics is the interaction of governmental and nongovernmental actors on the political stage during the process of decision making. Powertics occurs in both formal and informal interactions that take place during the decision process. The product of powertics is the output of the decision process that is observable. The formal interactions in the decision process are measurable and usually recorded for history. The informal interactions, however, are unrecorded and very difficult to observe. Even when observed, they are difficult to understand because of the varying perceptions of the participating actors on what took place in any given interaction.
Examining the American political system is a study of politics, power, and powertics in the early twenty-first century. The shifting coalitions of actors and how they play accounts for the outcomes that we can observe, measure, and record. Understanding the dynamics of these interactions among the powerful actors (powertics) is the object of the research project performed in this course (Lesson 13).