Political Science 1020E Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Soft Power, Oligarchy, Hard Power
Document Summary
Decline of violence: steven pinker"s thesis. This is the most peaceful time in history to be living within the human race: evidence. Better then they were still pretty bad. Democracies don"t generally fight each other, more democratic countries then ever been. Ancient history, people had a 15% chance of dying by violence. 18th century went from 15% to 3% Now it is 1/150th of 15% in ancient history: explanation. Most important piece of the explanation is political. Live in a world of states and a state system. Spread of commerce, bad idea to kill trade partners. Who gets what, when, and how? : primates. A biological order that includes humans, apes, and monkeys. Chimpanzee politics: competition, power, conflict, dominance strategies and alliances, winners and losers. Bonobo politics: peaceful, gentle and loving, erotic and egalitarian, recent study. They hunt and eat other monkeys: answer, the elements of politics. Institutions responsible for coordinating collective decisions: aristotle"s two questions.