WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT POLITICS?

FEATURES: Agarah Bibisinuoluwa Iretunde

With the political atmosphere in the air, many of us do not know what politics is. Most think or refer to politics as a ‘dirty game’. But politics is here for your benefit and mine. Without it, we woiuld all fall into chaos.

Politics is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations between individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status.

A variety of methods are deployed in politics, which include promoting one's own political views among people, negotiation with other political subjects, making laws, and exercising force, including warfare against adversaries.

Politics is exercised on a wide range of social levels, from students in various departments and faculties to clans and tribes of traditional societies, through modern local governments, companies and institutions up to sovereign states, to the international level. In modern nation states, people often form political parties to represent their ideas. An election is usually a competition between different parties.

Forms of government can be classified by several ways. In terms of the structure of power, there are monarchies (including constitutional monarchies) and republics (usually presidential, semi-presidential, or parliamentary).

The separation of powers describes the degree of horizontal integration between the legislature, the executive, the judiciary, and other independent institutions.

The source of power determines the difference between democracies, oligarchies, and autocracies.

In a democracy, political legitimacy is based on popular sovereignty. Oligarchy is a power structure where a minority rules. These may be in the form of autocracies. Autocracies are either dictatorships (including military dictatorships) or absolute monarchies.

All the above forms of government are variations of the same basic polity, the sovereign state.

Constitutions are written documents that specify and limit the powers of the different branches of government. This is very much like the laws that guide the faculties and the halls of residence as well as the student body.

Macropolitics can either describe political issues that affect an entire political system (e.g. the nation state), or refer to interactions between political systems (e.g. international relations).

Global politics (or world politics) covers all aspects of politics that affect multiple political systems, in practice meaning any political phenomenon crossing national borders. This can include cities, nation-states, multinational corporations, non-governmental organizations, and/or international organizations. The international system of power is called the world order.

Politics inside the limits of political systems, which in contemporary context correspond to national borders, are referred to as domestic politics. This includes most forms of public policy, such as social policy, economic policy, or law enforcement, which are executed by the state bureaucracy.

Mesopolitics describes the politics of intermediary structures within a political system, such as national political parties or movements.

A political party is a political organization that typically seeks to attain and maintain political power within government, usually by participating in political campaigns, educational outreach, or protest actions. Parties often espouse an expressed ideology or vision, bolstered by a written platform with specific goals, forming a coalition among disparate interests.

Micropolitics describes the actions of individual actors within the political system. This is often described as political participation. An example of micro politics is the form of politics that takes place within the University of Ibadan.

It’s obvious then, is’t it, that politics is more than just a dirty game, it is a complex network involving different actors working together for a common goal or for a common benefit.