THE FOUR PARTS OF POLITICS

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The parts of politics are inseparable

Politics can be discussed as having four parts: actors, values, forms, and processes. Though they are inseparable in reality, we need to talk about them one piece at a time to understand this reality. As we examine each part to see what it is, we must at the same time hang onto our memory of this unity. Here we describe actors, values, forms, and processes as static parts of a whole. These parts are the anatomy of politics. Elsewhere we discuss the physiology, the dynamic workings of political action involving people, purpose, policy and power.

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Actors

"If we could just get rid of politics." is the same as saying "If we could just get rid of people." Knowing who is acting for whom is vital to understanding politics. Both the “who” and “whom” are ultimately persons. No matter how often we talk about what a group, company, or country did, none of these structures or institutions, in reality, “acts.” Only persons do. The persons we see when we look at these structures are political actors. What we see actors doing, especially what we remember and talk about, grants power to the actor. Action over time shows an actor’s capability and influence, i.e. , power. Most often when we speak of someone’s ”power” we are short-handing a description of ongoing relationships among a set of actors. Those actors accordingly have power to the extent that many people within their arena see them as powerful. The power we grant results from our experience, values, priorities and culture. Hence, especially during an election year, public opinion surveys abound in an attempt to assess relative power of political actors. News stories and advertisements tell us about the priorities and values of political actors so we can gauge the extent to which the actors' values and priorities align with our own. We also must speak about how the interplay of expectations and the varying abilities of the actors in a group may constrain or impel their actions.

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Values

Our own values and the values each actor brings to a policy setting are a mixed bag. Values combined and filtered from many actors, become the source of the policy objectives. Liberal and conservative describe a group of values. But these are only gross descriptors. Values like honesty, empathy, security, health, also form the basis of policy actions. Values also allow us to measure the amount of success a policy action produces. The values provide a screen through which actors filter information they confront in decision-making. Regardless of the nature and extent of debate in a given political setting over what statements of purpose are "proper," over whether what is at stake are objectives, policies, or in "the national interest," whatever set is operative can facilitate decision-making, including the evaluating process and standards of pragmatism and morality. The values offer an agreed "objectivity" for otherwise wholely "subjective" aspects of decision-making. Stating and clarifying values can reduce deliberation time and facilitate consultation and clearance in the decision-making network. Determining an actor's values is critical to understand what choices the actor has made and will make.

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Forms

Forms are the structures, organizations, institutions, and pragmatic arrangements within which politics takes place. They are the policy arenas wherein actors play political games. The forms both limit and allow what actions are possible within the arena. Some structures are rigidly hierarchical. Some are loosely bound. When we analyze the decisions an actor makes, we must take into account the arena within which the action takes place. Within a family or small business form, we see politics among individuals and think more about the individual principles of positive politics. Likewise city, state, and corporate political forms use the principles associated with communities, like culture. National and inter-national politics are institutional wherein law, authority and citizenship are in focus. All the principles matter across all the forms, but, like the camera lens, when our focus changes., we can see different actors, challenges, opportunities and policy priorities.

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Processes

Policy, the critical guidance function in managing any group, is a product of political processes. This is true regardless of the policy content, be it financial, economic, technological, military, diplomatic, legal, ecological, or something else. While political processes may be conceptually separable from the design, engineering, production, consumption, and market activities of the economic system, the threat and coercion of the military system, the perceptions and persuading of the psychological system, the interpretation and sanctioning of the legal system, it is within these and other systems, that political processes operate. Human systems and their processes interlock and politics is oil (or sand ) in the gears that keep them moving. Politics is how actors use processes to make and implement policy based on values shared within the structures of a society.

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worldviews mental models institutions authority community power basic needs priorities organization politics communication sacred truths law governance citizenship culture