About Politics

Jackson Kern asked:


Copyright (c) 2008 Jackson Kern

It is commonly accepted that the project of sustainable development is conceptually composed of three constituent parts. These parts are (1) environmental sustainability, (2) economic sustainability, and (3) social-political sustainability. The United Nations 2005 World Summit refers to the “interdependent and mutually reinforcing pillars” of sustainable development as environmental protection, economic development and social development. The interdependency of the first two is evident; it is perhaps the greatest challenge of our time to satisfy the needs and wants of burgeoning populations within the binding constraints imposed by our physical environment. But what is this great hoopla about social development and sustainability of politics, and what exactly is its place?

If environmental protection is concerned with the preservation of our natural environment and resources, and economic sustainability is concerned with seeking durable growth solutions therein, then the social-political sphere can be thought of as representative of the more purely human element in the equation. Social development and social-political sustainability are intimately related concepts but they are not in fact entirely interchangeable. It is important that we understand their symbiotic relationship and its implications for the broader sustainability project.

Social development is a concept that is familiar to most of us in its many and varying forms. Within any given society there are opportunities to improve and enrich each of its composite parts in many ways. Of sometimes greater importance is the need to harmonize relations amongst these various and sometimes opposing elements. Those actively engaged in the process of social development include agents acting within its institutions to effect change via established channels. Of more notice, however, are often those who act from the outside, those who reject the society’s institutions as inadequate, and who advocate wholesale social and political change as the only true path to social enrichment and development.

It is in this transformational role that we begin to touch on the realm of social-political sustainability. Within any given social context, social development can be pursued with the simple granting of budgets. Financial and human resources are utilized to strengthen and enrich societies by improving educational opportunities, by embracing the marginalized and the forgotten, by making improvements to healthcare and hygienic conditions and by endearing knowledge of financial and entrepreneurial activities to name just a few. Here, the distinguishing feature of social development is that it is executed within the institutional mechanisms and constraints prevailing in that given entity.

Social-political sustainability too is very much concerned with physical and material standing of peoples, but further than this it is concerned with the state of their civil society. Social-political sustainability is differentiated from pure social development in that its sphere is expanded beyond the employment of simply monetary means. Social-political development entails not only the engagement of institutional mechanisms, but also their modification and advancement. Social-political sustainability thus seeks pathways to durable social enrichment and development via the vibrancy and health of a society’s political processes. At its core, there ultimately is little more than an absolute faith in the functioning of liberal democracy. Despite the frequent changing of the guard and the potential for policy discontinuity this entails, it is believed that representative republican government bolstered by mass public awareness and participation provides the best model of a sustainable body politic.

In addition to social policy, environmental and economic policies are clearly dictated in the political realm as well. It is in the creed of the sustainability project to hold that healthy political bodies which are truly representative of the collective will can show us the path forward. Recognition of the strain to our natural environment that unrestrained industrialization and consumption have brought depends upon it.

The French political thinker and historian Alexis de Tocqueville long ago warned Americans that their political structure (and indeed that of all democracies) could fall hostage to a “tyranny of the majority”. To illustrate the weight of these words, consider a scenario in which a pluralistic political majority were unwilling to adopt legislation which combatively addresses climate change issues, while the autocratic but highly environmentalist ruler of another nation prosecuted an aggressive climate change agenda with gusto. In the face of peril, such a situation would revive human moral and ethical dilemmas of the highest order.

Faith in democracy and the ideologies it espouses transcends the purely political arena. In a free and wealthy society, those in the pursuit of scientific truth battle only scientific obstacles. If the danger is real, the truth will be brought to bear. But even in the face of incontrovertible truth, can the titanic inertia of human complacency and comfort be overcome and conquered?

Many scientific and economic authorities now believe that emissions caps are insufficient in the battle against climate change. They call for a massive mobilization of public funds for investment in research with the goal of discovering new low-carbon-emissions technologies, and this on the scale of the Manhattan Project that delivered the first atomic bombs.

We will be watching. This, folks, is nothing less than a test of social-political sustainability in action.

Jacob

paranoid asked:


Why don’t we all get a vote at election time? For example i am in australia, but american politics affect us here.

Patricia

Alyaa B asked:


What were the major turning points of transformations in the politics and goverment of ancient civilizations that provide the foundations for democracy or expansions of individual rights? Your answer should include examples from European, Asian and other civilizations.

Cindy

Jonathon Hardcastle asked:


Recently web logs, or blogs, have exploded in popularity and have come to occupy an increasingly important place in American politics. Given the disparity in resources and organization against other actors, their influence presents a puzzle. How can a collection of decentralized, nonprofit, contrarian and discordant websites exercise any influence over political and policy outputs? As the World Wide Web approaches its teens, we have new expectations about both the right to express an opinion and access to information upon which to base that opinion. Blogs have begun playing an important role in raising people’s expectations Thus, blogs have demonstrated influence; the power to affect events. Blogging is now positioned inside the context of participatory journalism and the responses of mainstream media and political parties to the new technology are reflections of its emerging influence. From what evidence illustrates, blogs have managed to affect today’s news agenda.

The Italian Renaissance gave Western civilization several crucial transformations. None, for this article’s purposes, matters more than perspective. Boccaccio’s Decameron, published in 1353, is considered to be among the earliest works of literature to propose that a point of view is crucial to understanding. Gutenberg’s printing press brought forth a revolution that no one could have anticipated at the time. Today, the Internet is the most important medium since the printing press. It subsumes all that has come before and is, in the most fundamental way, transformative. When anyone can be a writer, in the largest sense and for a global audience, many wish to become one. Actually, no better environment exists nowadays for people to exercise these among many other rights, than the Internet and one of the best mediums to exercise these rights are weblogs.

According to some critics, most weblogs will never attempt to reach a public, even if they are in theory reachable by all Net users. The great majority of weblogs will probably be for personal use, while the user base will be peer to peer, not author to public. Other critics, in their attempt to evaluate the accelerating speed of the weblog trend, support that from what it seems so far, it is probable that most weblogs will be short lived, and wind up abandoned, just as most conversations are abandoned. Also it is probable that a few popular blogs will have huge user base and the vast majority will be invisible most of the time, a pattern that reminds some of the “old” and “traditional” mass media. Since the software and interface are highly flexible, and the uses of an easily updated, good-looking page are endless, weblogs will be commonly used in closed systems—private and company networks—as much as the open waters of the Web.

In relation to political coverage and news stories, bloggers have broken or magnified major news stories and blogs themselves draw fire for partisan politics, poor journalistic practices, and duplicity. But the issue still remains that blogs are still in their infancy, despite the wave of press they have received during the last two years. They provide a reasonable, but far from perfect, entry point into the news space, better at offering commentary and starting conversations than serving a current-events-indicator role.

Gary

Philip Yaffe asked:


 
by Philip Yaffe
 
 
We live in a cynical age where the values of truth, honesty and integrity seem to be in short supply. We are therefore always looking for examples of such values in action, especially with regard to politicians.
 
 
I would like to offer you such an example from Africa. You have probably never heard of this man, but for me he stands as a true model of integrity. It’s not Nelson Mandela, but Mr. Mandela would certainly be proud to have his name mentioned in the same breath with him. His name is Julius Nyerere.
 
 
Julius Nyerere was the man who led then Tanganyika, today called Tanzania, to independence from Britain in 1961. Unlike many other independence movements, this one succeeded without a single drop of blood being shed.
 
 
I had the privilege of living two years in Tanzania shortly after independence. Being a city boy (I grew up in Los Angeles), for me Tanzania was quite a revelation. I virtually lived in a mud hut, suffered through a drought, saw leprosy, and contracted both malaria and dysentery. All of these things affected me. But getting to know Julius Nyerere as a political leader was truly a life-changing experience.
 
 
When Nyerere became head of state in 1961, he was so popular that he could easily have taken on the trappings of a king or potentate. But he did exactly the opposite. He chose to live very modestly, because that was his nature.
 
 
More importantly, he inspired confidence in everyone, and never betrayed that confidence, because that also was his nature. He of course had political enemies. They were often critical of his ideas and policies – but never the man. The worst I ever heard anyone say about him was, “President Nyerere is doing all the wrong things for all the right reasons.”
 
 
Julius Nyerere was a realist riding a wave of idealism.
 
 
For example, shortly after taking office, he cut the salaries of all government ministers by 20-50 percent, including his own. Although by world standards these ministers very poorly paid, by Tanzanian standards they were very rich. Nyerere argued that such a poor country simply could not afford to maintain its government in such a lavish style. Any minister who refused the cut was invited to leave the government, and a number of them did.
 
 
In the 1960s, the first thing a newly independent country wanted to do was set up a national airline and rush to industrialise. Nyerere was different. He concluded that Tanzania could not become truly industrialised for at least a century. So instead of devoting all its energies and limited resources to trying to build an industrial base, it made more sense to strengthen its agricultural base.
 
 
This meant reforming the schools. Instead of turning out potential clerks, shop assistants and middle managers for the cities, the goal should be to turn out scientific farmers. These would then go back to their villages to teach their compatriots, who were mainly subsistence farmers.
 
 
Advocating this was close to heresy. Most people felt that the purpose of going to school was precisely to escape from the backward rural villages. There was considerably opposition to Nyerere’s idea, but ultimately it was implemented.
 
 
As a Peace Corps teacher in a boarding school, I could immediately see the difference. Suddenly, we were required to start a school farm and to grow much of the food the students would be eating. The students didn’t take kindly to having to do manual labour, but eventually the protests subsided and farming became part of the daily routine.
 
 
At roughly the same time, Nyerere looked at Tanzania’s university students, who were the elite of the elite. It is important to understand that there were only about a thousand university students in the country out of a population of nearly 10 million because Tanzania had virtually no educational base. At the age of 6, less than half the children were in school. There was a severe examination to go from primary to secondary school, which nearly 85 percent failed because there just wasn’t any place for them. So those who reached university were by definition the elite of the elite.
 
 
Nyerere noted that it took the total annual income of 78 Tanzanians to keep one university student in school for one year. To help cover the costs, he proposed that on graduation each student give two years to public service.
 
 
Once again, rebellion; the students went on strike. Once again, Nyerere stood his ground, declaring that as much as the country needed university graduates, it needed true Tanzanians more. He therefore closed the university for a year and sent the students back to their rural villages to rediscover their roots. Those who received good reports from their village headman were allowed to return the following year.
 
 
A neutralist during the Cold War, Nyerere was basically a man of peace. However, he could take military action when the situation called for it. For example, in 1978 he sent Tanzania troops into neighboring Uganda to oust the notorious dictator Idi Amin, who fled into exile.
 
 
When he retired as head of state in 1985, Nyerere took on the role of roving diplomat and peacemaker. Because he was so trusted, he was invited to mediate disputes all across the African continent. For instance, he was instrumental in bringing an end to the slaughter in Burundi in 1996. He also worked tirelessly to put an end to apartheid (racial segregation) in South Africa.
 
 
Nyerere didn’t look like the consummate leader he was. He was rather small and had a bushy little moustache that made him look like a chocolate Charlie Chaplain. But when he spoke and when he wrote, you knew that you were in the presence of someone special. He was affectionately known as “Mwalimu”, Swahili for teacher, which is what he was before going into politics. This was a sign of respect, not reverence.
 
 
I am not a very emotional person. But when Julius Nyerere died on October 14, 1999, I felt a sudden emptiness in me. It was as if something good had left the world. And it had.
 
 
Nyerere was a devout Catholic and in 2005 he was proposed for beatification. He is currently under consideration for canonization, which is one step away from sainthood. I don’t think I would put him on such a high pedestal. I didn’t necessarily agree with everything he did. But I never doubted that it was always for the best of reasons.
 
 
Every time I hear his name, I still feel the same emptiness I felt on the day he died. So if you are ever tempted to say that politics and integrity don’t mix, please remember Julius Nyerere. You will never find a better model of integrity, either in politics or in daily life.
 
 
Philip Yaffe is a former reporter/feature writer with The Wall Street Journal and a marketing communication consultant. He currently teaches a course in good writing and good speaking in Brussels, Belgium. His recently published book In the “I” of the Storm: the Simple Secrets of Writing & Speaking (Almost) like a Professional is available from Story Publishers in Ghent, Belgium (storypublishers.be) and Amazon (amazon.com).
For further information, contact: Philip Yaffe Brussels, Belgium Tel: +32 (0)2 660 0405 phil.yaffe@yahoo.com, phil.yaffe@gmail.com

Bruce

Groshan Fabiola asked:


Do politics and business ever meet? Of course they do, because there is a reciprocal need between the two in every democracy. Politics equals power, but it is nothing without the money it needs to realize it; any business is mainly about money, but it also demands a secure presence, which actually means consorting with power, and thus with politics. Another similarity between the two is that they both require the presence of the citizen, either as customer or as voter. Theoretically, the citizen’s freedom of choice is nearly perfect. But in practice, both business and politics resort to all sorts of techniques to draw their voters or customers, such as the media, celebrity endorsements, movie starts, appeals to passion, sentiment and psychology, and so on, and so forth.

Whether we are talking about marketing, or about electioneering, we can refer to both of them in terms of campaigns. In both business and politics, the battle exceeds any metaphorical level, and the amount of money spent in either of them is rising every year. And all that, just to convince us, voters and customers, that they are worth our attention.

When a business tries to promote a product or a model at a national level, it encounters the same problems and difficulties that a party comes against when attempting to capture several regions. Scale is extremely important, by definition, but that naturally comes with a demand for standardization.

A business that needs security cannot separate itself from politics, because that’s where the power is. Some businesses find it in their own interest to sustain rather close working relationships with politics, because separating the two is almost impossible when you are faced with a reactive situation. Many countries have both public and private traders, which means that keeping your business away from politics is virtually impossible if you want to keep doing business with that country. And the economical prospects and financial benefits are so appealing that the connection between politics and business just doesn’t seem to have any importance.

In the sensitive political regions, the marketplace is subjected to change daily. In fact, the entire international marketplace can change very quickly, from year to year, or even from week to week, which is why companies have to learn how to stay alert to change and have flexible attitudes and approaches. But above that, they have to ensure security for themselves, and what better way to that than to become involved with politics, which ultimately is about power?

On the international marketplace, relationship between politics and business is critically important, and its importance increases as time goes by. As much as any business would like to be poisoned away from politics, this is simply impossible, because behind each government there are political drivers, and the ‘mines’ that appear in front of a certain company or organization are far more numerous and powerful, should it try to detach itself completely from political affairs.

Business and politics interact, whether we like it or not, and they can influence each other in many ways, not all of them bad. For instance, a bad political climate can seriously influence economic growth, but fortunately the process can go the other way, too.

If you want to find more information on different business or politics subjects please visit http://www.articletimesonline.com

Corey

roostershine asked:


If religion is important to politics, I need to ask this, is religion about love or about people blowing up people?

Lorraine

XxElexX asked:


I’m thinking about what universities I’m going to and just wonderin if you know any very good colleges in America for politics and economics.

Dawn

Ernie Fitzpatrick asked:


It seems that NONE are exempt. If you candidate is Obama trash Hillary. If your candidate is Hillary smear Obama. If your candidate is McCain disparage him. If your candidate didn’t make it to the final round, trash them all (can you say El Rusbo and his campaign of chaos?). What is productive in destructive-chaotic politics. What ever happened to supporting your candidate in a positive way and laying off all the anger rhetoric?

And anyone who is associated with a candidate gets trashed as well- some deserving (can you say Jeremiah Wright?), and some not (can you say Bill Richardson?).

Hillary and team has been going after the endorsement of Bill Richardson for what it might mean to the Hispanic vote in America. But, Bill came out in favor of Obama today so what does Penn (Hillary promoter) have to say? Richardson’s endorsement means nothing, Bill is history! The state of our nation politically speaking is not good at all!

At the top of the trash the oppositon is none other than that “Great American”- Sean Hannity!

How is it that we now define “great Americans” as those who peddle in destructive politics? I know he’s upset that a die-hard conserevative didn’t make it. I know he’s disappointed that Mitt Romeny didn’t make it- so was I. But are those reasons to make politics so personal and damaging that few want to enter the fray for fear of the name-calling and innuendo?

In an Op-Ed article headlined “The Speech: A Brilliant Fraud,” Krauthammer acknowledges that Obama condemned Rev. Wright’s inflammatory remarks as “wrong and divisive” — without specifying the remarks he was referring to. So? So that’s reason to dump everything in the laudry room in his lap. If the Democrats don’t step in and stop the slaughter that’s going on amongst themselves, there wont’ be anough meat on the bones of Obama to give McCain any sort of run for his money.

As an article in the Politico said, “One big fact has largely been lost in the recent coverage of the Democratic presidential race: Hillary Rodham Clinton has virtually no chance of winning. Her own campaign acknowledges there is no way that she will finish ahead in pledged delegates. That means the only way she wins is if Democratic superdelegates are ready to risk a backlash of historic proportions from the party’s most reliable constituency.”

Ah, but this is the year to nail anyone and everyone who isn’t with you! Maybe this will be the year that the politics of destruction ends. Probably not!

Leo

Andy Smith asked:


Politics- a word detested by most of the common people. To an ordinary person, politics is a synonym to corruption, misuse of power, money laundering and other malpractices. Politics has earned such a bad name for itself everywhere, that even the most honest political leader is looked upon with suspicion. Elections come and go. Majority of the populace does not bother to vote. They know, once elected a candidate forgets his electorate and runs after money and power. But these elected leaders can play havoc or bring peace and prosperity in the society. It depends on both their decisions and participation of people. It is true that political decisions and activities affect all aspects of people’s lives. But is it really unfortunate?
Right from start of elections, candidates go on talking glibly about their plans to work for the benefit of all. They give speeches, hold rallies, fund raisers and waste precious money and time- just for power. It’s after they are elected, their ambiguous talk is exposed. Elected representatives often get portfolios for which they are totally unqualified. Imagine an illiterate politician becoming a minister for education. Hard to believe but is commonplace in many backward countries. Such a man will be totally incompetent for office and may end up spoiling the education system. The common man won’t be able to do a thing except watching promising careers and dreams fade away into oblivion.
It’s nothing new that money gets decisions reversed. Bribe more than your adversaries and the decision or policy will be in your favour. Cigarette and liquor companies with backing of billions of dollars put public health on the path of deterioration. The governments do nothing. This was brought to light after so many years when a big tobacco companies were ordered by the American courts to dole out billions of dollars to people suffering from diseases acquired by smoking. Construction companies cut off trees in hundreds and thousands to build new towers and buildings. All with no objections from the government. The environment suffers.
In most cases common people get most affected while not even being fully aware of the reasons. Thats the whole irony of it. Most decisions and policies get formed without the peoples say. They are helpless watchers of the whole game.

Grace