ADM1121, Ders Notları: Conservatism

Conservatism is essentially a response to liberalism, which built its foundation on the idea that every man is free to do whatever he or she wishes without infringing on other people's rights to do whatever they wish. Liberalists favor pure reason for deciding a political system while the conservatists believe that pure reason will never work on practice (with Edmund Burke going as far as claiming that pure reason belongs to god alone) so they believe that using history is far better than using something that can never quite see the big picture (the human mind) as the decider. History, they think, shows us what more or less worked, not necessarily in an ideal way, but it is safer than assuming that something new that was developed out of a reasoning that has no certainty of working in practice would work better. They view society as an organism, rather than the liberalist view of the society being a machine. For the liberals, every individual or group of individuals is a cog, their free-willed actions make the machine run; for conservatists, the society is an organism, with every individual or group of individuals having a task given to him (bkz: "ayaklar baş olursa bu iş yürümez"). So in this analogy, changes and improvements are a medicine, and the conservatists believe that if administered suddenly, all change and improvements will lead to an overdose, thus it should be spread slowly and carefully.

This is in line with their dependence to adhere to the status quo, but the problem here is that all of this seems like a giant and misguided rationalization for the very human wish of preserving power. Every source of power is one way or another conservatist, they might not necesarily be against change, but if that change is going to deprive them of their potency, then they oppose it. This is why they prefer slow, careful doses of changes/improvements, because if the differentiation is slow, it's controllable, but if it's sudden, a power shift becomes inevitable.

The idea that the society is an organism becomes even more apparent when you try to answer the question regarding the reason why some people are seen as the brains while some people are seen as the hands or the feet. The conservatists believe that there are certain qualities required for the act of ruling and those requirements can only be filled by someone who is born into them. For the conservatists, this meant that only the nobility was wise and prudent enough to override the faults created by the imperfections of the society. The noble man was a man of history and experience; thus he had to rule. He was also obliged to help the poor (bkz: "noblesse obligue") and take care of the unfortunate, because if not, they would bring about the end of the system and the traditional authority.

This, again, seems to support the idea that everything in conservatism is about the idea of preserving the power, rather than being opposed to progress. It seems like oppostion to change is a by-product of conservatism rather than the reason behind its emergence. They want the poor and the unfortunate to be in a position where they feel satisfied not because of altruistic reasons, they know that poverty and a dissatisfaction towards one's life would lead to a dissatisfaction towards the system, which would not necessarily bring about the end of system, but would definitely create a power shift. The idea that some people are just born more fit for the task of ruling seems like a concept created to keep the people who'd be called the feet in that analogy in check by implying that them being ruled instead of ruling is the only way to avoid total chaos.

So this creates the question of how to determine the difference between the ruler and the ruled in modern ages, because although this was as simple as what surname people had back in the early and late middle ages, nowadays, the concept of nobility does not have the meaning it had. It seems like modern conservatists determine that by using private property, in one way, shape or form. While the liberalists want private property because it's a birth-right, the conservatists seem to want it because of its help establishing a hierarchy. So the head of the organism in modern ages can only be the one with most neurons, rather than the one who was born as the head.

ADM1121, Ders Notları: Power and Authority

Politics is something that developed out of diversity that exists between those who have power over others and the others that live under the power of the ones who has it. That power is given or taken after a certain manner of social relationships. The one who takes the power eventually decides how to allocate power and scarce resources in the society, which, gives him political authority (i.e. right to influence others' behaviours). So authority includes power, but power does not include authority (i.e. power generates obedience, but obedience does not necessarily generate acceptence, i.e. power results in authority). To generate acceptance, you require legitimacy and you need acceptance for stability in the society. But why would people accept power as rightful, legitimate? Because in all cases power offers a reward or a punishment. But although power requires this rational argument, authority doesn't. Authority just requires power.

There's also infleunce: which is the ability to effect decisions by some sort of rational pressure. The keyword here is "rational", because power based decision changes do not need to be rational, they just need to be -legitimately- power based. But nevertheless, influence is not binding, it only works if the people in places of power are convinced.

And since power is about decision making; non-decisions are also in the mix. Silence, inaction and apathy are all decisions themselves. Non-decisions of the people who are in a position of power usually leave the people whose only means of acquiring power is channelizing their own views through political parties of the people who are making those non-decisions of their choice powerless, i.e. if the party you voted for is silent/inactive/apathetic on an issue you have an opinion about, that pretty much makes you irrelevant and politically null.

According to Weber, there are three types of authority: Traditional, Charismatic and Legal-Rational. Traditional authority, as its name suggests, is based on traditions and customs, e.g. "töre". In these cases, history legitimizes authority, but also limits it because the one who has the power also has to obey the same rules he enforces, and most of these customs and traditions also have rules about enforcing rules. Charismatic authority on the other hand is solely legitimized by the charisma of an individual; manufactured or naturally obtained. If not kept in check by the constitution, charismatic authority usually turn itself into something totalitarian. Lastly, legal-rational authority is based on rational arguments, which, in the age of bureaucracy usually is efficiency. In cases like this, you obey the guy who symbolizes the office, not the guy himself.

ADM1121, Reading I: "The Meaning and Scope of Politics" in Geoffrey Ponton and Peter Gill's Introduction to Politics, Notlar

the problem with studying a subject is the stance you take against other fields of study. you're always free to create borders between your area and method of research and the others, but these borders will eventually seem less and less required and yours and other fields of study will run across each other, blurring borders and making the researcher question his need for them. this eventually will lead the researcher to remove these and bring other methods and fields of study into his/hers.

what we also need to understand is the relativity of one's interpretations. the aforementioned fields of study are created to make sense of a world that does not inheritly make sense itself. because the world itself does not have clear definitions, instead, it just has a constant flood of thoughts and actions. our senses perceive these thoughts and actions, and starting from day one, our brain assembles these into a framework. thus the things that were not suppressed in the subconscious become a filter for the future thoughts and actions that come in our way. and that creates the beautiful uniqueness of each human being. although a similarity between people that have been exposed to similar ideas do exist, the difference in experiences of individuals create a unique framework for every unique human being. but, nevertheless, we must base these framework on life experiences and material arguments, i.e. logical and rational sources. because if based on metaphysical ideas and logically inferior answers, the framework will only make sense to some people, disregarding others. this should not be the case if a communication is to be present, because although -due to the aforementioned and accepted relativity of ideas- frameworks do not need to be accepted when communicating, they do need to make sense.

and the concepts. concepts are crucial to the study of politics, which is a concept itself. concepts simply are aids to understanding the world and every single person would have a different body and use for a concept. but unlike the framework, the similarities between masses of people is even more crucial, because in the field of concepts, knowing what we think we mean when we use one is only as important as knowing what recognized sources of authorities about the concept commonly mean when they use it. so we need to create balance when using this tool, we need to be precise, but also quite broad.

but the understanding of these concepts, these studies greatly depend on our approach to our own understanding. great scholars usually study the mind behind the idea as much as they study the idea itself, because the assumptions and prejudices make up the framework, and the framework -or, the effect of the framework on perception to be more precise- define the idea. but some prejudices are hidden deep beneath the subconscious, how do we get these out? that starts the series of questions that we'll have to ask ourselves when we are studying politics, because without this question, there won't be any direction to our understanding.

politics is essentialy the means by which we order our social affairs and allocation of scarce resources especially underline this. this action is usually crucial to most affairs, social and not social, but the allocator almost always has an underlying principle or agenda that has social roots, most likely a wish to gain control is also present. this shows how social politics can be and how much it interacts with other areas like economics and sociology.

so what distinguishes political activity from politics? what makes an activity political and others not? it usually is related -again- to the frameworks and relative ideas. this time, the relativity is tied to the concept of legitimacy. for people who define themselves as legitimate political bodies the only activities that can be considered political are the activities conducted between themselves and other political bodies that they deem legitimate. they usually shun other activities and avoid labelling them as political so that they wouldn't legitimize them. a contemprorary example of this would be the concept of politically charged terrorists being treated as political prisoners.

so where does the politics end then? if only legitimate bodies of political power define which activities are political and which activities are not, then what happens when there are contradictions? what happens if defining an activity as not political is actually very political itself? there had been, might be and will be cases like this in politics where definitions and principles result in hidden (unintentional) or apparent (intentional) contradictions. sometimes the wish for non-politicizing activities will be very political itself, thus giving us the idea that whatever legitimate political bodies do will essentially be political.

so what a researcher that focuses on the area of politics must do then is to not exclude any part of the human social interaction system from the concept of politics. everything socially related to the act of allocating scarce resources, no matter how small or how unlikely to be viewed as political by the legitimate sources of political power, contains a certain amount of politics.

nor should a researcher exclude activities that are not as socially liberal as others. whether a public discussion about the allocation of scarce resources, i.e. a social activitiy takes place or not, if the actions that were resulted from the activity directly or indirectly affects the ordering of social affairs, then that action can be considered political. it's ideal that the people being affected by this have some power or influence over how and why their social affairs are being ordered, but whether they do or not is irrelevant to the definition of politics.

So what criteria should be used to decide what is or is not relevant to politics? If something is directly related to the way social relationships and actions are conducted/viewed/results then it essentially makes up the concept of politics, so, therefore, determining how socially charged an action is quite possibly the best criteria to be used.