POLS 1101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Critical Role, Tandem Bicycle, Direct Democracy
31 May 2016
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Document Summary
Choices are the heart of american politics. Politics arise from the need to choose among alternatives when differences make it impossible for all people to get what they want. Only when politics fails and societies collapse into anarchy and civil war do we grasp the significance of politics in sustaining our everyday lives as well as our plans for the future. Conflicting ideas about how to allocate limited resources. Politics are how people attempt to manage such conflict. Politics: the process through which individuals and groups reach agreement on a course of common or collective action even as they continue to disagree on the goals that action is intended to achieve. Successful politics almost always requires bargaining and compromise. Bargaining: prolonged exchange of proposals and counter proposals. Compromise: settlement in which each side concedes some of its preferences in order to secure others. Preferences are the givens - individuals and the groups know what they want that must be reconciled.
