Lecture
At the root of all the processes taking place in society one can find politics, although not everything in human relations can be reduced to politics. In our time there is no person who could say that they stand outside the reach of politics. Even if a person considers themselves apolitical, they are still compelled to recognize and, at the same time, respect the decisions of political power. Knowledge of politics serves the interests of every person seeking to understand their place and role in society, to more fully satisfy their needs in community with other people, and to influence the choice of goals and the means of achieving them within the state.
The word «politics» derives from the ancient Greek "polis" (city-state) and its derivatives: "politike" (the art of governing the state), "polites" (citizen), "politicas" (statesman), and others. Analyzing these terms, we arrive at the conclusion that the concept of politics covers an extremely wide range of social activity aimed at obtaining, using, maintaining, or overthrowing state power. As a sphere of public life, politics includes relations among subjects, managerial and organizational activity as such, people's behaviour, their socio-political interests, needs, motives, and the traditions governing the functioning of political institutions and organizations, as well as political ideas and views.
The subjects of politics are individuals and communities, as well as the institutions and organizations they have created, who take active, conscious part in the political process.
The objects of politics are all phenomena of political and public life - elements of the political, economic, legal, and cultural-spiritual subsystems of society, as well as the communities and individuals toward whom the activity of political subjects is directed.
Politics has a complex structure. In the scholarly literature various aspects and component parts of politics are distinguished. One of the most widely used divisions of politics is the distinction between its form, content, and process (relations).
The form of politics is its organizational structure (the state, parties, etc.), as well as the norms and laws that ensure its stability, its steadiness, and that make it possible to regulate people's political behaviour.
The content of politics is expressed in its goals and values, in the motives and mechanisms of political decision-making, and in the problems it addresses.
The political process reflects the complex, conflict-laden character of political activity, and the manifestation and realization of relations among various social groups, organizations, and individuals.
Form, content, and process do not exhaust the structure of politics. As its independent elements one can single out: 1) political consciousness, encompassing the inner world, mentality, value orientations, and attitudes of individuals, as well as political views and theories; 2) normative ideas: programs and electoral platforms of political parties, the target objectives of interest groups, political-legal norms; 3) institutions of power and of the struggle for it; 4) relations of domination - rule and subordination, as well as political rivalry and struggle.
Politics can be carried out at several levels:
1. The lowest level includes decisions on local problems (housing conditions, the construction and operation of hospitals and schools, public transport, etc.).
2. The local level requires state intervention. This is politics at the level of a region. It is carried out by large groups interested in the development of their region.
3. The national level, also called the macro level, characterizes politics at the level of the state: this is public coercive power, and the particular features of its structure and functioning.
4. The international level, or mega level, relates to the activity of international organizations: the UN, the EU, NATO, and others.
The role of politics as a distinct sphere of social life is determined by its properties:
Politics has boundaries within society, but they are always shifting. Over the course of human history they have at times expanded (sometimes to such an extent that politics came to encompass the whole of society) and at other times contracted.
Almost any social problem can become a political one if, in the view of political leaders, it touches the interests of society as a whole and calls for decisions binding on all citizens. It extends to many economic, cultural, and other social phenomena, and sometimes, it would seem, even to purely personal, intimate spheres. Thus, for example, in the early 1990s, in Poland, the Federal Republic of Germany, and other countries, the question of banning abortion provoked sharp political debates and confrontations between various socio-political movements.
Politics depends in large part on specific historical conditions, on the ideology dominant in society, on moral and religious norms, and on the level of development of the individual, of his worldview and his culture.
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