Talk:Political Theory

In my opinion, it's a good idea not to jump into discussion of what the main categories of political systems are. What I'd personally advocate is starting with a classical theorist or two, like Plato, and looking at the roots of modern political thought, then maybe Hobbes/Locke, Rousseau, Marx, etc. Go through them in a sort of sequence so we can see how the theories developed, and then when it comes to describing them, the reader will have a knowledge both of intellectual history and of the modes of thought used to arrive at the conclusions that form today's forms of government.

-My own objections: first of all, this page is redundant -- for a less developed page http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Politicaltheory -Second of all, a political theory book should not start with "a classical theorist or two", rather theres a whole rich history of political theory, and most political Theory textbooks that I have read focus on the history, not on modern ideologies. If you want to write a book on Political Ideology, perhaps you should title it that. I might be wrong, this is my own experience. In short, the "Introduction" part of your textbook outline should be the most substantial part, most Political Theory courses focus on these canonical authors. I also would recommend inclusion of Old Testament, New Testament, and Middle Age political theorists such as Machiavelli, St Augustine (analog to Plato), and Thomas Aquinas to name a few. There are others that are necessary to cover as well such as the post-Aristotle Hellenic political philosophers (they can be covered briefly though). If you want to broaden this beyond western theory you can tackle Confucius among others, though I would vote against this. There can be another textbook called Eastern Political Theory. This is just touching on Ancient political theory. I am not even going to begin naming other "classic" authors that fill the modern period. -I'm against putting emphasis on modern political ideologies. The above should illustrate why--there is not enough room to accomodate that without starving the historical theories. Make a political ideology textbook for that. Though I'm willing to hear arguments if you have convincing ones. cokane November 17 2005

Possible objections:

1) It's too canonical. I actually agree with this: everyone at my university who studies politics goes through the usual Plato, Locke, Rousseau, Marx sequence. But at the same time, these thinkers are canon for a reason: they have been extremely influential and a lot of people - important people - have taken their thought to heart. If this sounds like an argument from authority or popularity, that's because it sort of is. But at the same time, we assume anyone doing a "University" course - particularly an open one such as this - will be of the questioning persuasion. After they have learned the basics, students will not be scared of questioning thought. Additionally, we can balance out any description of these thinkers with objections and dissenters from both their contemporary and our present-day sources.

2) It marginalises other thinkers, even those who stated the same conclusions but arrived at them differently. I suppose this is a bit of a restatement of the original question, and as such the solutions are the same. Balance out the "canon" with a heretical tradition. Show that the the tradition of political thought is

3) It's ethnocentric. It's white, it's European, it's Anglo. Fair enough objection here: but I don't think I'm wrong in saying that most "politics" DOES stem from those civilisations influenced by Greco-Roman tradition. Once again, we can offer alternative explanations and objections to what is taught (e.g. modern-day Islamic objections to individualist politics; Singaporean objections to liberal democracy; when discussing Locke, cite present day objections not only to his theory of consent, but also his limits of political action to a few, thus invalidating the idea of universal consent.)

nach0king 20:18, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * I've separated out the procedures of government from the ideologies of government. I'll contribute more when i'm teaching this again in second summer.  Keeping clear, distinct and easily interpretable categories, will get us much farther, than mixing them.  --Buridan 13:42, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

removed feminism
while it may be an ideology, it is more social than political. It will be covered later. --Buridan 13:44, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

democracy and republic
aren't they close to the same thing? --OMouse


 * Not really, a true democracy is self-representation, a republic is appointed or elected representation. In aristotelian terms, there are three forms of government, kingship, aristocracy, and democracy.  rule by the one, rule by the few, and rule by the many.  In the tripartite division that i posted, i used republic for the the 'rule of the few' category, and when it is filled in over time, that will be expanded upon.    --Buridan 16:45, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

9 ideologies
It says there are 9 main ideologies but unless I can't count, there's only 8? Sars 17:57, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Feminism was removed as was another ideology (unless I'm mistaken) and someone just forgot to change that number. Thanks for pointing that out. OMouse 19 August 2005

Added Environmentalism
There are 9 now. I added environmentalism, for the reasons noted in the text. Am new to wikis, and apologise if I've not followed any shared protocols in what I've added today to the Political Theories. Wwwendos 26 September 2005

Edited Marx
was a rather vague and simplistic description that did not focus on his actual contribution to pol. theory. Old - "Karl Marx believed in teamwork and the power of labor." Cokane 17 November 2005

Question
Hi there, my name is Martin M. Elissetche. I'm a PhD student at the University of Maryland and the creator of a social science dictionary located at www.socialsciencedictionry.org. I wanted to know if I could place a copy of your book on my web site or whether you prefer if I just link to it. Please let me know what you think at info@socialsciencedictionary.org. Cheers, m.


 * A link will promote contribution to the book (but you can indeed post a copy in it and provide the link at the same time) --Panic (talk) 06:18, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Merge
Since no one is opposing or acting to complete the merge. If no objection is raised I'll start merging the works in 7 days. --Panic (talk) 06:22, 26 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Merge complete, I did a minor reshuffle of the sections but a major restructure of the book is in order. The original structure of the Political Theory (stub, since there isn't enough content to call it a book yet) wasn't chronologically oriented, and it should because it would become more easy to fallow the evolution of the political theory the impact different policies had on society and the people that arouse of said society with new ideas... --Panic (talk) 02:44, 1 May 2010 (UTC)