In modern nation-states, people form political parties to present their ideas, and this process reveals well the relationship between law, politics and the economy. They agree to adhere to a common position on many issues and agree to support the same changes in legislation, as well as common leaders.
Elections in the Modern World
Elections are usually a competition between different parties, increasing the role of politics in society. Some examples of political parties are the African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa, Tory in the UK, and the Indian National Congress.
What is a policy?
Politics is a multifaceted word. It has a set of rather specific meanings that are descriptive and impartial (for example, “the art or science of government” and “principles of governance”), but often carry a negative connotation. For example, the negative connotation of politics, as can be seen from the phrase “play politics”, has been used since at least 1853, when abolitionist Wendell Phillips stated: “We do not play politics, and the anti-slavery movement is not a joke for us.”
Policy Features
Various methods have been deployed in politics, which include promoting one’s political views among people, negotiating with other political actors, enacting laws, a reasonable balance of law, politics and economics, as well as using force, including war against opponents. Politics is carried out on a wide range of social levels: from clans and tribes of traditional societies, through modern local authorities, companies and institutions to sovereign states at the international level.
Power and politics
It is often said that politics is power. The political system is the basis that defines acceptable political methods for solving the problems of society. The history of political thought can be traced back to early antiquity, and all thanks to such classic works as the “Republic” of Plato, the “Politics” of Aristotle and some works of Confucius.
Policy classification
Formal policy refers to the functioning of the constitutional management system and publicly defined institutions and procedures. Political parties, public policies, or discussions about war and international affairs fall into the category of official politics. Many people see formal politics as something divorced from everyday life, but it can still affect their daily lives.
Semi-formal politics is politics in government associations, such as associations of neighbors or student parliaments, in which co-governance is crucial.
Informal politics is understood as the formation of alliances, the exercise of power and the protection and promotion of certain ideas or goals. As a rule, this includes everything that affects everyday life, such as managing an office or a household, or how one person or group affects another. Informal politics is usually understood as everyday politics, hence the idea that "politics is everywhere, " and the role of politics in society is growing.
State concept
The origin of the state can be traced when studying the origin of military art. Historically, all political communities of the modern type owe their existence to a successful war. The connection of law with economics and politics appeared much later.
Kings, emperors and other monarchs in many countries, including China and Japan, were considered divine. Of the institutions that ruled states, the ruling dynasty stood in first place until the American Revolution ended the "divine right of kings." Nevertheless, the monarchy is one of the longest-running political institutions, from 2100 BC in Sumer to the 21st century AD under the British monarchy. The monarchy is realized through the institution of hereditary power.
The king often, even in absolute monarchies, ruled his kingdom with the help of an elite group of advisers, without which he could not maintain power. As these advisers and others outside the monarchy negotiated power, constitutional monarchies appeared, which can be considered the embryo of constitutional rule.
The greatest of the king's subordinates, counts and dukes in England and Scotland, always sat at the council in the first places. The conqueror wages war with the vanquished for revenge or for robbery, but the victorious kingdom requires tribute. The state’s priority at that time was war. One of the functions of the council is to keep the king's treasury full. Another is the satisfaction of military service and the establishment of the legitimate authority of the king to solve the problem of collecting taxes and recruiting soldiers. Thanks to this, a connection began to emerge between law and the economy and politics.
Political Forms
There are many forms of political organization, including states, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and international organizations such as the United Nations. States may be the predominant institutional form of political governance, where the state is understood as an institution, and the government is understood as power in power.
According to Aristotle, states are classified into monarchy, aristocracy, timocracy, democracy, oligarchy and tyranny. Due to changes in the history of politics, this classification is now considered obsolete. This is largely due to a change in the ratio of law, politics and economics.
States
All states are varieties of a single organizational form, a sovereign state. All the great powers of the modern world adhere to the principle of sovereignty. Sovereign power can be assigned both to the autocratic ruler and to a group, as happens with constitutional government.
The Constitution is a written document that defines and limits the powers of various branches of government. Although the constitution is a written document, there is also an unwritten constitution. It is constantly written by the legislative branch of government - this is only one of those cases when the nature of the circumstances determines the form of government that is most suitable.
England established the fashion of written constitutions during the Civil War, but after the Restoration rejected constitutional rule, this idea was adopted by the liberated American colonies, and then France, after the revolution, provided the constitution with a triumphant return to the European continent.
Forms of government
There are many forms of government. One form is a strong central government, as in France and China. Another form is local governments, such as the ancient counties in England, which are comparatively weaker but less bureaucratic. These two forms helped shape the practice of the federal government, first in Switzerland, then in the United States in 1776, in Canada in 1867, in Germany in 1871 and in 1901 in Australia.
Federal states have introduced a new principle of agreement or contract. Compared to the federation, the confederation has a more fragmented system of the judiciary, which means a different ratio of law, politics and economics. In the American Civil War, the claim of the Confederate States that the state could secede from the Union was untenable because of the power that the federal government had in the executive, legislative, and judicial branches.
Constitutional Republic on the example of the US Constitution
According to Professor A. V. Ditsi in the Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution, the essential features of the federal constitution are:
- The written supreme Constitution in order to prevent disputes between the jurisdictions of federal and state bodies, as well as to define the concept and principles of law in a particular country.
- Distribution of power between federal and state governments.
- The Supreme Court, empowered to interpret the Constitution and enforce the law, is independent of the executive and legislative branches of government.
The relationship of economics with politics and law
Economics is only one of the social sciences, and therefore has areas bordering other scientific fields, including economic geography, economic history, social choice, energy economics, cultural economics, family economics and institutional economics. We should also mention economics and business, since in the modern world these concepts are practically inseparable.
The economic analysis of law is an approach to the theory of law that applies the methods of economics to the legislative sphere. It involves the use of economic ideas to clarify the consequences of the adoption of new legal norms, as well as assess which legal norms are economically effective, and create a forecast of socio-economic development.
In an original article by Ronald Coase, published in 1961, it was suggested that clearly defined property rights could help overcome economic problems that depend on external factors. This discovery has changed the approach of economists to issues of economics and business.
Energy economics is an area that includes topics related to energy supply and demand. Georgescu-Rogen re-adapted the concept of entropy in relation to the economy, politely borrowing its thermodynamics, and contrasted with what he considered the mechanistic basis of the neoclassical economy, supposedly based on Newtonian physics. His work has made a significant contribution to thermoeconomics and environmental economics. He also published a capital work, which later helped to develop such an interesting area as evolutionary economics - an absolutely indispensable discipline for creating a forecast of socio-economic development.
Politics, Economics and Sociology
The sociological support of economic sociology arose primarily due to the work of the eminent scientist Emil Durkheim, theorist Max Weber and Georg Simmel on the analysis of the effects of economic phenomena in relation to the modern social paradigm. Classical works include Max Weber's Protestant Ethics and The Spirit of Capitalism (1905), as well as George Simmel's Philosophy of Money (1900). The relatively recent work of Mark Granovetter, Peter Hadstrom and Richard Svedberg were extremely influential in this area, expanding their understanding of the role and functions of the economy.
Political Economy
Political economy is the study of production and trade, as well as their relationship with law, traditions and government, including the distribution of national income and wealth, the development of social programs, etc. How discipline political economy arose from moral philosophy in the 18th century, and her goal was to study the management of wealth of states. The earliest works on political economy are usually attributed to the British scholars Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus and David Ricardo, although they were preceded by the work of French physiocrats such as Francois Quesnay (1694-1774) and Ann-Robert-Jacques Turgot (1727-1781).
At the end of the 19th century, the term “economy” gradually began to replace the term “political economy” due to the growing popularity of mathematical modeling, which coincided with the publication of an influential textbook by Alfred Marshall in 1890. Earlier, William Stanley Jevons, a proponent of the mathematical methods applied to this subject, advocated the term “economics” for the sake of brevity and with the hope that the term would become “the recognized name of science.” Citation measurements from Google Ngram Viewer show that the use of the term “economics” began to overshadow “political economics” around 1910, becoming the preferred term for discipline by 1920. Today, the term “economy” usually refers to a narrow study of economics, in which there are no other political and social considerations, while the term “political economy” is a separate and competing scientific approach.
