Political Science 1020E Chapter Notes -Politics As A Vocation

• School: Western University
• Department: Political Science
• Course: Political Science 1020E
• Professor: Bruce Morrison

Document Summary

We wish to understand by politics only the leadership or the influencing of leadership of a political association, hence today as a state. The state cannot be defined in terms of its ends. Ultimately one can define the modern state sociologically only in terms of the specific means peculiar to it as to every political association, namely, the use of physical force. Of course, force is certainly not the normal or only means of the sate nobody says that but force is a means specific to the state. Today however, we have to say that a state is human community that successfully claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a give n territory. The state is considered the sole source of the right to use violence. Hence, politics for us means striving to share power or striving to influence the distribution of power wither among states or among groups within a state.