Questions tagged [political-theory]
Political theory is the study of the concepts in politics. Use this tag for questions regarding political philosophy or scientific theories.
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Does a political system exist where everyone gets what they want? [closed]
Let's say a country has 1,400,000 citizens. Elections are held about, for example, joining the EU. 1,000,000 people decide to do A, while 300,000 people decide to B, and 100,000 decide to do C. In a ...
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What are pros and cons of the present world order? [closed]
Why might Mr. Sunak suggest that maintening the status quo ante fuit should entail a "just and durable peace"? After all, the current world order, just like any other world order in history, ...
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What does social/public-choice theory have to say about plural v. unitary executive?
There are many state-level offices in the US that are elected by the people other than the legislature and the Governor, in the executive (Treasurer, Controller, Attorney General, Secretary, oil & ...
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What does the term "Equity" mean, in "Diversity, Equity and Inclusion"?
The use of the term Equity has been on the rise for years, especially with the emergence of the new political term of "Diversity, Equity and Inclusion", or DEI, being bandied about in the US....
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How do unpopular policies arise in democracies?
Very recent example: Macron bypassed parliament to enact French retirement bill amid protests against the bill.
There are several pedestrian explanations I can think of:
The decision makers believe ...
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What are the options for a government facing massive protests over seemingly unsustainable economical measures?
Context
France is currently facing nationwide strikes due to pension system reformation discussions. According to France24, there seems to be a debate over the opportunity of such a reform:
French ...
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Do oil-rich, wealthy Gulf countries have any local nationalist movements?
Do oil-rich, wealthy Gulf countries have any nationalist movements that are specific to their own countries, such as Qatari or Emirati (UAE) nationalism? How strong are these nationalisms compared to ...
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Can Justice exist independently of the Law?
The judiciary, contrary to what people believe, doesn't seem to have the job of determining fairness.
Its job seems to be to interpret and judge whether a law was broken or not. Even that seems to ...
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What sectors/industries would a General Strike cover in the 21st Century
The UK experiencing a lot of strikes at the moment (2022/3) and there have been tentative references to a General Strike.
My impression is that historically that would have meant "strike by the ...
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What does "the Balkanization of the United States" mean?
What is Balkanization? How does a country/political entity/area become Balkanized? What does Balkanization mean specifically for the future of the United States?
Edit: "The Balkanization of the ...
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How does modern day lobbying align with the ideals of Popular Sovereignty?
A core principle of The Declaration of Independence, Popular Sovereignty, is the idea that a government only exists to serve the will of the individuals it represents.
I understand this to mean that ...
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Is there any modern political theory or strong evidence that direct democracy would not work?
If one considers a society with a more direct relationship between what people want and the policies of the country, is there any reason to believe it would not work?
In the U.S., people vote for ...
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Why was preaching ideology important for USSR/USA?
I am reading the Wikipedia page on the Cold War, where I found these lines
The US government supported anti-communist and right-wing governments and uprisings across the world, while the Soviet ...
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How can one distinguish between "Ethnic Russians" and "mostly Russian-speaking Ethnic Ukrainians"?
According to a multi-million-views talk of John Mearsheimer (2015), the "ethno-linguistic map of Ukraine" looked like this.
There's no source given in the talk for the map and I've not seen ...
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The paradox of majority power vs. contracts
For this question, let us assume that the only principle we care about in public decision making is majority power: the majority of citizens should be able to do whatever they want. There seems to be ...
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Governments can organize themselves into a few bodies, or into many (ministries, agencies, etc.) What are the relative advantages and disadvantage?
For example, Japan, Germany and some other countries have governments organized into a small number of bodies Whereas Canada, Indonesia, Pakistan, and other countries have many.
And considering the ...
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Is there any theory regarding a colony's natural evolution into independence?
From a layman's perspective, it seems that the fate of most colonies is to evolve into an independent nation. At least those colonies that are, at a particular point in human technological evolution, ...
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Political terminology or example for a leader making their crime a norm by highlighting an opponent's small mistakes?
Let's say that politician A is a corrupt person. His opponent is a moral guy with an honest reputation. The reputation of politician A is badly affected when a news story breaks about his corruption. ...
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Correlation between political power and completion of a politician's "grand headquarters"?
Introduction:
In "Parkinson's Law, and Other Studies in Administration", in the "Plans and Plants, or The Administration Block" chapter, Cyril Northcote Parkinson elaborates that ...
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How are interactions between Taliban Afghanistan and the world carried out if they are not officially recognized by anyone?
This is a hybrid politics/international law question and it’s posted here for convenience.
Everyday interactions would include border crossings, postal services, telecommunications, airspace ...
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Political system to automatically vote system for optimal life for everyone [closed]
What would a political system where you could cast a percentage to each party and have that percentage count as the amount of influence you would want that party to have in politics according to how ...
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What do politicians do? [closed]
I do not have much familiarity with politics other than being aware of how politicians are portrayed in the public, including a bunch of jokes made about them.
So, in reality, what do politicians do (...
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What is the academic term for political activities on the small social group level?
We have the phrases "office politics", "family politics", etc, describing relations of power, that is, political relations within small social groups.
Political relations on this ...
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What is the generally accepted definition for "micropolitics"?
According to Encyclopedia Britannica, micropolitics is about "small-scale interventions that are used for governing the behaviour of large populations of people."
According to the ...
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Why do Anarcho-Primitivists believe a primitive society will persist?
Whenever anyone advocates a transition to a stateless society, an obvious objection is that such a society would be unable to resist a dissident group trying to impose a government on it. Some ...
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What research has been done into "emotion-driven" politics?
Byung-Chul Han and other authors have pointed out that political discourses are undergoing a transmutation from the style prevailing in the 1980s to the current one, where post-truth, emotion and ...
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What does Jared Diamond's theory say? [closed]
I am asking about Jared Diamond's (smallpox) theory. What does the theory really say? Does it mention whether specific genes were involved or if it is a theory of racial superiority?
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According to the "neo-realists", if the world is like a game of Risk, why isn't everyone uniting against the United States hegemony?
If I got the grand theme of "neo-realism" right (I and I might have not), every somewhat big country has just one primary concern: that some other country is going to become the hegemon. (...
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How do "neo-realists" support their view that the US can simultaneously exit NATO and convince the EU to cut their economic ties with China?
"Neo-realists" (like John Mearsheimer) argue that the US should simultaneously exit NATO (because the US should focus on the Chinese threat in Asia) and convince the EU to cut all economic ...
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Why didn't the totalitarian parties in the 20th century use the "big tent" strategy?
I see that ‘big tent’ or ‘catch-all’ parties are quite popular in modern politics. However, the autocrats of the past took the opposite view:
Before we can unite, and in order that we may unite, we ...
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Is there any academic research into the concept of "government does not control the government"?
In his blog post, Dominic Cummings (former advisor to Boris Johnson) writes the following:
In Washington as in London, the golden rule of Government is — the government does not control the ...
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What theory of organizational design incentivizes participants to improve performance?
Is there any theory of designing government departments so they are automatically incentivized to maximize ratings in certain metrics, including satisfaction by people receiving those services (like ...
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Is true democracy impossible? - a theorem
Consider the following reasoning:
Humans have different values and ideologies.
In a democracy, there is always a group that is willing to violently impose their values and ideology over others, ...
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Can political science gauge quantitatively the strength of US global leadership?
From my perspective, the headline coverage of the direction of the US on the global stage is mostly pessimistic. But I want to see if that is actually justified. I concede it's not an easy undertaking,...
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What positive tests exists for determining what countries are considered democratic?
Many nations call themselves democratic (e.g. the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, aka North Korea), but most scholars would refute the idea that they are democratic.
In other cases, nations ...
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What academic journals in political science have the highest impact factor? [closed]
I am in school for engineering and work as a programmer but I'm almost always reading about politics/philosophy/economics/sociology outside school.
However the sources I get my information from the ...
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Canadian conservatives on climate change: other examples of a mainstream political party deliberately moving itself out of the Overton Window?
(The Overton window can be thought of as "what's politically sellable to the public")
Canadian Conservative leader O'Toole has been jettisoned by his peers, 73 out 119.
Canada's ...
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What are some examples of Ur-Fascist Newspeak?
I'm a big proponent of Umberto Eco's definition of Fascism that he gives in his essay Ur-Fascism; I find it really helps break down the very nebulous and poorly defined - but unmistakeable - concept ...
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Is there any formal mathematical analysis of democratic peace theory? [closed]
The democratic peace theory postulates that democracies are less likely to go to war, or at least less likely to go to war with other democracies. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
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How do the liberal side of international relations theorists model people’s well-being?
I’m only referring to the liberal side of international relations theory, not the realist side.
In their formal theories (to the extent that they write mathematically formal theories), how do they ...
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Is Immanuel Wallerstein's theory on capitalism and cognitive dissonance empirically verifiable?
In the past I have heard people assert that racism is caused by capitalism, and this has never really made sense to me.
However, this answer references a theory by Immanuel Wallerstein that explains ...
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Will Russia need to delay an invasion of Ukraine until things settle down in Kazakhstan? [closed]
I am wondering if it is likely that Russia will delay an invasion of Ukraine until the political unrest and violence in Kazakhstan comes to end.
The way I see it is that Russia may need to send in a ...
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Are there election systems where voters cast a vote on the final composition of the legislature, rather than individual parties or candidates?
As an example, Germany is well known for having the problem of forming a coalition due to a large number of parties being elected to their legislative body. I imagine this can be frustrating to some ...
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Do any voting system models try to take "realistic" tactical voting into account?
In standard voting system models (see example), there are two types of voters: honest voters who always choose their preferred candidate(s) and tactical voters who try to maximize the expected weight ...
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Who wrote that the role of a government is to protect from foreign threats, promote trade, and provide for those that cannot provide for themselves?
Who wrote that the role of a government is to protect from foreign threats, promote trade, and provide for those that cannot provide for themselves (physically or cognitively impaired)?
The ...
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According to Marx, is Communism a workable system or an unreachable ideal?
I have heard opposing arguments about whether or not Communism was intended to be an unreachable ideal, or a workable system. Has Marx ever commented, either in the communist manifesto or otherwise, ...
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What is the political (moral) justification for terminating the employment of workers for moral reasons completely unrelated to their job? [closed]
In my country there was a recent moral panic, where it was discovered that a popular TV host had uploaded videos with private moments of his (now ex) girlfriend online.
After this event was made ...
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Is conscription incompatible with democracy? [closed]
Is mandatory military service incompatible with democracy, in which people supposedly are given choices?
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Have any capitalist libertarians asked if the free market destroys itself (due to the efficiency of organised crime)?
I am aware of, though not read in, the most influential capitalist libertarian thinkers (Hayek, Friedman, Nozick, Rand, etc). As far as I understand it, their general point is that an unrestricted ...
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Confused about the terms 'state' and 'government'
Google says:
Government: "the governing body of a nation, state, or community."
State: "a nation or territory considered as an organized political community under one government."
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