POLS 206 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Harold Lasswell, Joseph Schumpeter, David Easton
29 Sep 2017
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Politics: harold lasswell (1938) who gets what, when, and how ; david easton (1953) Authoritative allocation of values : all societies must have some way to: resolve conflict about what people want and make collective decisions that are binding on the entire society. Sovereignty: the authority to wield coercive power to allocate values. Form of government determined by where sovereignty is placed: autocracy: one person, absolute monarch, and dictator. Oligarchy: small elite, based on wealth, status, or military. Democracy: all people have opportunity to participate in making binding decisions. Politics occurs in all forms, but the nature of politics is different. Process & substance democracy involves both: democracy as a process. Joseph schumpeter: democracy is mostly about means (process), not about ends : wide distribution of power, amplifies disagreements. We put up with democracy because: churchill: democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried .
