Throughout history,
political commentators and theorists have speculated upon many often-contradictory
definitions of government politics. It is, amongst other things, a subjective
topic of conversation that brings out the best and worst in people when they
confer about the many different political ideologies that exist.
It is challenging to
offer a single definition of politics upon which everyone can agree. The topic
of politics means that a contextual framework reference is needed to define and
organise the subject into a form of subjective meaning concerning how politics
can be explained. To explore the broader definitions of politics, we can split
the definitions into four principal areas:
- Monarch: A monarchy is a government form in
which a person is defined as the monarch, or head of state, which may or may
not be in the form of a representation of being a symbolic or constitutional head
of state or a formal legitimate political authority position with real, and
actual power in the running of state affairs. The
monarch's role can vary from being restricted to a fully autocratic or absolute
position as head of state involving judicial, legislative, and executive domains.
The monarch holds their position for life or until their abdication, and succession
is hereditary. However, elective and self-proclaimed monarchies have been prevalent
throughout history.
- Democracy: a system of government where people
are elected by the electorate through the rule of the majority so that a government
can be formed in which the vested power is supreme and absolute. The electorate
holds power by exercising its wishes by collectively voting for people or
groups of people, more formally known as political parties, either directly or
indirectly through a system of representation, whichever best matches their
view of how the country should be run. Democracy
has evolved from a time when communities made decisions locally through popular
assembly to the dominant form today, where democracy is defined as representative
in which the electorate votes for the type of government to govern on their
behalf. This can be through a parliamentary or presidential format in which the
majority rule is applied. However, plurality, supermajority, constitution, or
consensus rule can be used in other cases.
- Totalitarian: is a government and a political form
that prohibits any form of opposition, outlaw's individual and group opposition
to the state, which can exercise a varying form of an extreme and comprehensive
form of authoritarianism, to an extremely high degree of control and regulation
over a country's population in both their public and private life. In
totalitarian states, a dictator often holds total and supreme political power in
which tactics control all-encompassing campaigns through state-controlled mass
media broadcast propaganda, to control the population's free and independent
thinking and ideology, to stifle rebellious thoughts.
- Authoritarianism is a system of politics that rejects
democracy and free expression, which involves using centrally controlled
absolute power to preserve the political status quo. Authority is less invested
in the rule of law, separation of powers, and democratic voting, with many
typologies describing the variations of authoritarian forms of government. Regimes
may be either oligarchic or autocratic and may be based upon the rule of the
military or politics. Some constitutions blur the meaning and boundaries
between authoritarianism and democracy, describing them as competitive
authoritarian or hybrid democracies.
What is important is
that government policies are characterised by the decisions and actions that governments
enact at various levels in diverse ways to achieve specific political goals and
aims. These political goals and aims or policies can affect many other aspects
of society, including the economy, demand and supply characteristics of trade
in terms of import and export, a country's balance of payments, businesses, and
the overall welfare of a countries populous.
Governments that are essentially
formed through totalitarian or authoritarianism-based politics have goals and
aims that can be, although only sometimes, centred on the ruling elite's needs,
aspirations and ideologies. The needs of society often take second place. They
are governed so that societal needs are replaced with a sense of total and
absolute allegiance to the ruling elite, often at the expense of the well-being
of the populous at large.
Countries that are
ruled by a monarch may have politics that are centred along a continuum of
totalitarian or authoritarianism-based politics at one end of the political
spectrum, to being a full democracy at the other. During the latter half of the
20th century, the world saw a polarisation of political systems
between communism, totalitarianism, authoritarianism, and democracy. In many
cases, the polarisation of political ideologies has led to wars, or at least a
profound sense of uneasiness, as evidenced by the European Cold War between the
USSR and Europe in the 1980s and 1990s.
The breakdown of the
USSR increased the democracy of the political landscape in some of the former
states of the USSR, with some states embracing political democracy in full. At
the same time, some accepted it in limited ways. Democracy allows people to choose
the political system within their country through the use of voting and free
speech, in which people are free to express their thoughts and political ideologies
to anyone who will listen. The freedom of choice allows people to decide on the
levels of public services to be provided through the magnitude of taxation that
they judge to be fair, at least in a limited way.
As distinct from the government, the micro definition of politics is
defined as that which concerns the state. The state forms the government
departments and quango’s that provide and manage the country's public services,
enforces law and order, ensures national and international security and supplies
for the governance of the country's general administration.
Conversely, the government comprises politicians who temporarily, through
being elected, run the state and determine the public services that should be provided,
the laws it must enforce, the level of national and international security that
must be executed and all other purposes that the state must provide and
administer. A more expansive definition of politics concerning the state might
include the following:
- Activities that either involve or directly affect
the institutions of the state.
- Individuals and politicians who directly manage
the affairs of state.
- Those directly involved in the organisation of
governance.
- Locations in which these activities and people
operate.
A government's policies
are used to address the issues of social welfare, economic growth, national security,
and international relations. Government policies are principles, guidelines,
and rules a government develops to achieve its goals or address specific
issues. The policies are created through a democratic elective process and are
enforced by government agencies, and can affect businesses in a way that can be
divided into two categories:
- Microeconomic
policies that affect legislature, tax, and industrial regulatory processes.
- Macroeconomic
policies that affect the economy, business, and fiscal trading patterns.
Within the UK, HM
Treasury manages fiscal policy, the economy and finance to implement economic
policies and strategies that ensure sustainable economic growth through public
spending, financial services, and the business and personal tax regime, sporadically
using the delivery of infrastructure projects. A government's monetary and
commercial aims are usually centred around six vital objectives:
- Manage
public finances efficiently and effectively.
- Stimulate
and increase economic growth, both nationally and internationally.
- Ensure
a stable macroeconomic environment through the growth of supply and demand.
- Achieve
and support full employment.
- Ensure
economic trade and price stability.
- Increase
and manage the balance of payments.
The foremost crucial goal
is achieving economic growth. Economic growth is measured by the annual change
in the percentage of a country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as the increase or
decrease in the value of national output, considering national production and
labour efficiency. Sustainable economic growth is vital to ensuring a country's
economic performance. It contributes to increased economic trading activity and
a lower unemployment rate that can be utilised to raise tax revenues and boost public
spending on welfare and infrastructure projects to stimulate further economic
growth. Governments can stimulate additional economic growth through demand and
supply policies:
- The
demand-side stimulus includes national and international fiscal and taxation policies,
such as increased public spending promoted by reduced taxation and interest
rates through prudent monetary policies.
- Supply-side
policies include interventionalist and non-interventionalist policies.
Interventionalist policies confer more control over fiscal and economic
activities to the government. Examples include increased funding for
infrastructure, education, and training. Non-interventionalist policies
increase the importance of the market in economic growth and include policies
such as tax cuts, free-market agreements, privatisation, and deregulation.
- Demand-side
policies aim to increase aggregate demand (national expenditure). In contrast,
supply-side policies improve aggregate supply (national output) and
productivity.
The balance of payments
of a country is a record of its international trade through foreign currencies made
by organisations based in the country. Foreign trade is crucial to enable
countries to trade with each other, as it allows for the international trading
of currencies in exchange for imports and exports and has been a method by
which taxes have been raised through the imposition of trade tariffs to protect
internal industrial and economic markets from cheaper foreign products and
services.
International trade has
its peaks and troughs, meaning that a country's balance of payments should
balance out over the long term but may become erratic in the short term,
implying that the balance of payments of a nation can be both negative or in
surplus when countries have purchased more from abroad than they have exported,
or vice versa.
A country needs
adequate sources of foreign currencies to allow international trade. Currency
shortages will mean a country may be forced to buy foreign currency on the
exchange markets or trade with other countries while enduring an unfavourable
currency exchange rate. The primary concern for a government is to ensure that
the exchange rate for its currency is stable but trades at a level that allows
imports to be balanced with the cost of exports to stimulate international
trade so that products and services can be bought in locations where they can
be supplied at least cost.
A country’s balance of
payments is a record of all imports and exports recorded in the currency they
were made over a predetermined period. A country records these transactions in
three ways through its:
- Current
account records the value of the import and export of goods and services.
- Capital
account that records international financial currency transfers.
- Financial
account in which international investments, bonds, stocks, and property
transactions are documented.
The increase in the
level of global trade has, at times, increased macroeconomic liberalisation
within many developing third-world nations to create a trading boom and bust
economic cycle, leading to many countries to lift restrictions to maximise the
advantage of the currency inflows due to the export of products and services
through these financial account transactions. However, many economists believe
that lifting trade restrictions will eventually lead to an economic crisis in
emerging markets. This threat is currently envisaged within many Asian
countries.
Many Asian countries implemented
restrictive macroeconomic trade policies, with regulations preventing foreign
ownership of Asian national financial and non-financial assets, limiting
international foreign currency transfer. With the liberation of Asian capital
and financial accounts, currency market trade increased, allowing more sophisticated
and transparent investors to boost direct foreign investment within Asian
markets. The investments and rise in international trade increased Asia’s GDP through
increased domestic production and manufacturing volumes. They facilitated a
reduced risk by allowing a greater diversification of trading activities in a diverse
international market.
The government’s
policies on taxation and spending can affect a country’s level of output and
employment through the distribution of economic consumer and business spending.
The net effect of the government's positive changes in taxation is typically
seen as a stimulus to society’s financial resources and spending. Government’s will
act to regulate the overall aggregate economic demand within the economy through
its taxation policies to regulate the effects on household expenditure, national
economic trading levels, and exports to control inflation, which can either have
a positive or negative impact on the amount spent within the economy.
An often-interlinked
goal of government is to increase employment rates to supply more jobs and reduce
unemployment. A reduction in output or an increase in unemployment can create an
unsustainable strain on a country’s economy by lowering the living standards of
unemployed people and limiting the general wage increases of the employed, to
decrease spending in the economy.
A government fiscal
policy designed to increase the consumption of products and services is often formulated
to increase economic activity within the economy, principally when the private-sector
consumption, spending or investment in products and services, is reduced and insufficient
to stimulate and sustainably increase economic growth and employment. This is
especially prevalent within an economy where the budget is in deficit, and tax
receipts are lower than predicted government expenditure.
In this scenario, the
government may be forced into borrowing to fund the deficit between planned and
forecasted revenue and expenditure levels. Fiscal policy is drafted to eradicate
the short-term fluctuations in a country’s economic activity. The downside to using
fiscal policy to amend economic fluctuations is that fiscal drag can affect the
repercussions of events and can take longer than expected to have the desired
effect on economic activities.
Government spending can
be targeted at reducing the inequality of geographical economic activity levels
across the different regions of a country, where the local environment is made
up of trading markets that work at various levels. "Levelling up” of the
lack of economic activity in some regions can be achieved by spending on
capital infrastructure projects or public services in areas where the more
significant impact of the inequality of opportunity has harmed the local
economy, targeting the areas with the highest poverty rates.
This type of government
spending can be directed at infrastructure projects to increase local
employment rates, stimulate spending in the region's economy, and supply a
sustainable, more prolonged impact on the regional economy's ability to improve
a country’s overall international competitiveness. However, improvements in specific
national infrastructure projects encourage negative travel and economic
activity externalities.
The investment in green
technology through the government’s funding of projects and technologies such
as wind and wave power, subsidising the design and use of electric vehicles,
and supplying vehicle charging infrastructure, as well as alternative heating
technology for business and domestic properties will promote the adoption of greener
technologies, leading to a less polluted environment.
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