Inkwell institute

Professor’s Classroom

Subject:  Political Theory

Paper #8

NOTE: Before I go into the concept of party politics I would like to say that this series started off as a post on the electoral college and has morphed into a massive undertaking because each post begets yet another posts….the great exchanges I have in my comments makes me think about the system and its components and because of that thought process more and more posts come out…I just hope that these simplistic definitions do what they are written to do….inform and educate as best as I can…..

Now onward and upward…the brain worms need nutrition……they feed on my mental energy…..and of course, CAFFEINE……

Where to start is the first question I asked myself and Duverger’s Law seemed like the most obvious place……

Duverger’s law is a principle which asserts that a plurality rule election system tends to favor a two-party system. This is one of two hypotheses proposed by Duverger, the second stating that “The double ballot majority system and proportional representation tend to multipartism”The discovery of this tendency is attributed to Maurice Duverger, a French sociologist who observed the effect and recorded it in several papers published in the 1950s and 1960s. In the course of further research, other political scientists began calling the effect a “law” or principle. Duverger’s law suggests a nexus or synthesis between a party system and an electoral system: a proportional representation (PR) system creates the electoral conditions necessary to foster party development while a plurality system marginalizes many smaller political parties, resulting in what is known as a two-party system.

With that said I move on……..my intention was to talk about party politics but after much thought on the subject I realize that Human Nature would play a major role in the concept of party politics…..I shall continue from that aspect….

Almost all political theorists and thinkers have tackled the subject of human nature……some are far fetched, at least in my opinion, and then there are a few that I think are pretty spot on……like Rousseau, Marx and others….but please hold the comments…because I found Marx’s view on human nature a good one does in any way make me a follower….just as my fascination with Hitler’s jet propulsion research does not make me a Nazi…..

First I will turn to Rousseau…..his Second Discourse by proposing that humans had once been solitary animals, and had learned to be political. The important point about this was the idea that human nature was not fixed, or at least not anywhere near the extent previously suggested by philosophers. Humans are political, and rational, and have language now, but originally they had none of these things.

Then there is Marx……It is often believed that he denied that there was any human nature, and said that human beings are simply a blank slate, whose character will depend wholly upon their socialization and experience. It is true that Marx placed enormous importance on the view that people are influenced and, in part, determined by their environments.

These two are very simplistic in their definition but I wanted to spare the reader from any mental pauses while reading…..more to the point is that every individual will have an opinion on what constitutes human nature…your personal views influence how you think of society and ultimately how you view politics…..to illustrate my point I will show how different political leanings view human nature………below are the 5 major political groupings……

Conservative:  are people (human beings) who are limited and self-seeking , drawn to the unknown, the familiar, the tried and the tested.  They also believe that human rationality is unreliable and morally corrupt…….(sounds like a pragmatist, huh?)

Liberal:  views human nature as a set of qualities that is of the individual, with social and historic conditioning is virtually non-existent.  Man is self-seeking and self-reliant creatures; that are governed by reason and are capable of personal development, especially through education…..(could explain why most intellectuals are liberal)

Socialist:  Humans are social creatures, the capacities and behavior are shaped more by nurture than of nature; they have the propensity for cooperation, sociability and rationality which leads to more human development and personal growth…..

Anarchist:  have an optimistic view of human nature—humans are either have a strong inclination towards, gregarious, and cooperative behavior, being able to maintain order through collective effort.  or to be self-interested but rationally enlightened.

Fascist:  believe that humans are motivated by the will and other non-rational drives, mostly by a deep sense of social belonging focusing on race or nation.  And the masses are fitted only to serve and obey.  They believe that the masses are capable of personal regeneration through dedication to a national or racial cause.

I would like to thank Andrew Heywood for his book entitled, “Political Ideologies” for the assistance on the human nature of different ideologies.

Remember the above explanations are a very simple interpretation but they are characteristics of the different political leanings.  And once again I remind my readers that the definition is far more complex than I have shown….I did so in the hopes to stimulate others into more research……..