Machiavelli and Rousseau, both influential philosophers, were innovators of their time. They represented different ideas on what the state of nature and government should consist of, having both similarities and differences. Their viewpoints evolved from different time periods, which make them unique. Machiavelli, the sixteenth century Italian diplomat expressed, that a Prince should be unethical in achieving power. He argued that to be successful in politics certain qualities were of importance and ethics could not stand in the way.
Then, the constructivist position discusses the roles of political actors in placing emphasis on certain security issues to heighten it to a national security concern. For realists, the concept of national security is an effective balancing of external threats. The realist tradition of IR theory is said to have stemmed from th... ... middle of paper ... ...tional Relations Theory: A Social Scientific Assessment, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Morgenthau, H. (1948) Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, New York: A. A. Knopf.
This discipline evolved by other thinkers, such as Polybius and Cicero from Roma, Niccolo Machiavelli from Italy, Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot from France, with their discovery of political analysis, social science, social and political critic. Finally it was identified and evolved rapidly as an independent discipline in United States after the World War II on the 20th century. But the development of this discipline has been materialized since the end of 19th century. The rapid development of political science after the World War II was caused by the encouragement of several international institutions especially UNESCO United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization). Shoved by the inconsistency of terminology in political science, UNESCO in 1948 organized a survey based on the position of political science in about 30 countries.
This essay aims to examine the roles of ideas and interests in the political econ-omy by mainly drawing on theories developed by Karl Marx and Max Weber. The two authors have very different views on the drivers of historical development, the establishment of capitalism and the structure of modern society. Marx’s no-tion of historical materialism emphasizes the role of material interest in con-structing the boundaries and structure of the political economy. Max Weber’s notion of the Protestant Ethic emphasizes the role of ideas and norms in shaping rational action and modern society. This essay will explore, contrast and discuss these two authors and their views.
He was known for his creation of Machiavellianism, a theory that entails understanding politics primarily in terms of who dominates whom and how successfully,. Machiavelli successfully reformed political thought, making “the tradition that originated in classical Greece was rejected in favor of a new political philosophy,” (McShea 2). Many of Machiavelli’s political works put leaders first and stressed the importance of having a strong Head of State. Some view the trait of dominance as evil, but when put into context in the time period it was established, this trait actually advanced Europe. His change in his idea of great dominance for a leader was due to the power in Italy (Mattingly 6), with leaders such as the Borgia’s and Medici’s.
The various historical happenings of the eighteenth century were just as influenced by the rhetoric of Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine as Burke and Paine were influenced by the phenomena that was taking place at the time. Thomas Paine was a radical liberalist that believed in revolution against the monarchy as much as he called for a complete overhaul of society; Edmund Burke, on the other hand, was a much more conservative politician: Burke believed that revolution came gradually and incrementally and that a revolution as sudden and violent as the French Revolution went against the natural order and would inevitably fail. Despite differences in beliefs between the two, their roles in the taking place of these phenomena are undeniably crucial:
Of these theorists, Robert Dahl, and Robert Michels are two. The field of Political Science has been host to a fierce debate, between those who assert that democratic societies are ruled by elite(s), and those who believe that the pluralist model is a more accurate description. Robert Dahl, who is arguably the most influential of the pluralists, attacks ‘elitists’ in his book Who Governs, by applying his own conceptualization of power to the American community of New Haven, empirically backing his beloved pluralist model. At the other end of the spectrum, Robert Michels’ Political Parties offers a different take on the nature of political and social organization. Standing in disagreement to Dahl’s conclusions, Michels uses a rather social/psychosocial approach, in order to demonstrate what he though was the true nature of governmental politics, the unavoidable elite-mass relation, and the inevitable sociological tendency towards oligarchy (Michels 1915, 384).
Liberalism is trust of the people tempered by prudence. Conservatism is distrust of the people tempered by fear. William E. Gladstone In this essay I will be arguing about 2 political ideologies; this essay will be highlighting the comparison and contrast between the 2 ideologies and their elements. The 2 ideologies that will be discussed are liberalism and conservatism, the essay will explain what ideology is, a brief explanation of their elements and the comparison between them. In my opinion the best between both ideologies is liberalism, the reason I think that is because liberalism places an ontological supremacy upon the individual and has no value more important than freedom because man’s natural state is when he is free unlike conservatism that has a very pessimistic view of humans and claims that individuals are morally corrupt.
He criticizes the Old Regime and the monarchy in his book “The Second Discourse on The Origins of the Inequality “he argued that the tyrant monarch could be turned out because of his subjects. In his “Social contract “ book, he developed the idea that people have their sovereignty to the king. Rousseau’s writings had shaped the political thinking of Maximilien Robespierre, member of the Estates General and the Jacobin Club. James Miller, American literary critic emphasizes that Rousseau’s ideas had a concept of democracy. The ground for the upcoming revolution, bourgeoisie were inspired by Enlightenment thinkers such as Burke and Tocqueville – the ones who saw the weakness of the “old regime”.
In simpler terms the aim of the essay is to prove whether or not, UK is a liberal state in terms of its foreign policy. 2. LIBERALISM IN DETAIL According to Kelly (2005: 5) on Albaster “liberalism should not be seen as a fixed and absolute term, as a collection of unchanging moral and political values but as a specific historical movement of ideas in the modern era”. According to Balaam and Dillman (2011: 53) “liberalism in broader term means liberty under law”. However according to the (internet: 2014) liberalism is a “political or social philosophy advocating freedom of the individual, parliamentary systems of government, nonviolent modification of political, social, or economic institution to assure unrestricted developmental guarantees of individual rights and civil liberties”.