Conceptualizing Politics

1.  A first definition of politics
On these premises I am now introducing the first, classical definition of politics: it 
is the social activity in which scarce and unequally distributed resources are allocated among 
conflicting parties by an authority whose legitimate power is guaranteed by force.
No doubt this is a highly conceptual and squared-off description of a multi-
faceted phenomenon. It follows the pattern used over sixty years ago by David 
Easton (1953). It is not the only image of politics to be found in this volume: recent 
developments, which shall not be anticipated here, have created the necessity to 
add a second definition, to be formulated in Chapter 7, Part II. Now, the best way 
to make good use of it is in the disassembling of its singular components, which 
we will comment upon separately: 1. activity, 2. resources, 3. conflict, 4. power and 
force, 5. legitimacy/authority. Components 1–4 are explained in this chapter, while 
the fifth one requires a separate and much larger discussion, which will be under-
taken in Chapter 2.
* * *
1.  Politics is one of the activities human beings perform socially, possessing features 
that make it a very special social activity – working them out and preventing poli-
tics from being merged with society and social activity at large will be a principal 
care of this book. Politics remains in some respect what used to be in old times 
dubbed ‘the art of government’, that is, an eminent practical issue, and all attempts 
made in the time of positivism at establishing a ‘scientific politics’ could not but 
fail. To put it with the ancients, it is not theoretical knowledge (
σоφία/sophia), but 
prudence (
φρόνησις/phronesis) that leads us to good choices in politics. Sophia, 
in the meaning of clear, non-illusionary concepts and a habit of rational argu-
mentation, can however be a great help in making the right choices in awareness 
of the consequences. This is why the insufficient ability or willingness of sectors 
of today’s politics to take good note of what science has to say about the world 
that we have to govern, be it economic insights or warnings concerning new 
technologies. The ‘art of government’ must fail if it does not respect scientific 
knowledge, as we shall see in the chapter on global/lethal challenges.
2. The 
resources involved in political struggle can be material (territory, energy 
sources, precious metals, financial capital) or positional/relational; in this case 
they only exist in the actors’ relationships and beliefs, as it was once the case 
with glory and honour and is nowadays with prestige, status and credibility.
3
 

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Politics and power  5
To be politically relevant, resources must be scarce
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 or unequally distributed 
or both (relative scarcity is the most frequent case), thus generating conflicts 
among particular actors, each striving to redress the inequalities in her/his/its 
favour,
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 or in the best case in favour of the majority. Were actors altruistic and 
not interested in a different distribution of resources, there would be no poli-
tics. ‘If men were angels, no government would be necessary’, as James Madi-
son (1751–1836) put it in The Federalist No. 51 (Hamilton et al. 1788, 266).
3.  Scarce and unequally distributed resources lead to conflict, but the typology 
of conflict goes beyond those around resources. First and foremost we have 
to elucidate what we mean by conflict. Unlike in International Relations
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 or 
the media’s language, in political philosophy as well as in theoretical sociology 
conflict does not mean armed conflict or war, and is rather seen as a general 
structure of social and political interaction. This meaning goes as far back as 
Heraclitus of Ephesus (BCE 535–475), who in his Fragment 53 wrote that 
‘
πόλεμος/polemos (strife, conflict, war) is both father of all and king of all’. For 
a conceptual definition of conflict we turn to Max Weber’s (1864–1920) for-
mula for struggle, but also modify it slightly: it is the social relationship in which an