Conceptualizing Politics

1.   What does order mean in politics?
The word ‘order’ allows, in politics, for a two-step definition: generic and political 
order. In the first sense it means the patterns of regularity we may observe in the flow 
of political life, exactly like how earth scientists can recognise similar patterns in 
the dunes shaped by the wind in a sandy desert or like economists do with business 
cycles. This would not call for any theoretical attention, were it not for one fact: 
becoming aware of some patterns of regularity in political affairs (how a certain 
behaviour X developed by actor A causes corresponding reactions from actor B) 
makes to an extent predictable what an actor can expect when repeating X. The 
end of complete blindness about the future, the knowledge of what X can unleash, 
relieves actors of total uncertainty and the ensuing fear: the surrounding world no 
longer appears to be totally chaotic and unpredictable. This relief goes in the direc-
tion of what we will learn to be a major outcome of politics: the regulation of fear.
Political order also comes up as a pattern of regularity, this time, however, filled 
with achievements giving it a specifically political character: it promotes goals or 
values, it establishes rules and institutions. What goals? Primarily the preservation 
of life, the containment of violence, in a word security; then at a higher evolution-
ary stage the protection of property as well as conditions favouring a minimum 
wellbeing for all. Above all of this, as its meta-condition, comes the observance of 
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