What is Political Theory?
What is Political Theory?
Political theory is the study of political ideas and values like justice, power and democracy that we use to describe, understand and assess political practices and institutions.
Political Theory helps us better understand the concepts that have shaped our politics, including freedom, equality, individuality, democracy and justice. Importantly, Political Theory is the part of Political Science that explores what a better political world would look like and how we can create it.
Types of political regimes
Modern political science distinguishes three classical types of political regimes - totalitarian, authoritarian and democratic. The first two are grouped under the category of non-democratic.
Researchers in each of the modes distinguish their subspecies:
Totalitarian .
” Right ” - cultivated the idea of racial and ethnic superiority of one people over the rest. He called for the physical destruction of unwanted nations, tried to achieve a class peace based on common national traditions ( fascist Germany ).
” Left ” - called for a class struggle, emphasized the main role of the proletariat (who is this?) In modern history, relied on a distributional state economy and considered achievable a fundamental change in the personal qualities of people towards collectivist principles when building communism (what is this?) .
Authoritarianism .
Military-bureaucratic - is formed within the framework of a military dictatorship (what is that?) , Later the importance of the bureaucratic layer increases in it . It relies on violence, a system of restrictions (in relation to rights / freedoms, travel abroad, electoral rights of citizens). A striking example of such a management model is the regime of A. Pinochet in Chile, J. Peron in Argentina or J. Vargas in Brazil.
Postcolonial - prevails in third world countries that were previously colonies. It is characterized by the presence of a one-party system, a low level of political participation of the population and reliance on the mobilization (what is that?) Of the population on nationalist appeals to protect the sovereignty of the state (what is that?) .
Direct (direct) - key power decisions are proposed, adopted and implemented by citizens. People’s law-making is present. Currently, it has become widespread at the local government level .