POLS 3130 Chapter 1: Chapter 1 – Intro to Politics.docx

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Political Science
• Course: POLS 3130
• Professor: Troy Riddell

Document Summary

Politics: politics who gets what, when and how", making decisions that distribute resources, creating rules, concerned with how authoritative decisions are made (cid:224) authoritative allocation of values, the process surrounding the making of decisions, the outcomes of the decision making process, some theories believe outcomes reflect the interests of the social elite who are dominating, some theories argue that political outcomes reflect open competition among groups an political parties, some theories suggest that institutions and state actors are the key to understanding political outcomes, representative democracy citizens vote for representatives who then make political decisions on their behalf, constitutional rights put constraints on decision makers, public policy a course of action or inaction chosen by public authorities to address a given problem or interrelated set of problems, a conscious decisions to do nothing about a problem can be considered a public policy.