Politics and Ideology before 1914

Abstract

Politics may be viewed in either a wide or a narrow gauge. ‘Formal’ politics is based on parliaments, bureaucracies and other governing institutions and is an affair of heads of state, cabinet ministers and government officials. Politics can also be seen, however, as a host of activities occurring both inside and outside the chambers of legislatures — ‘lobbying’ and ‘log-rolling’, private and public ‘pressure’, demonstrations, strikes, acts of violence and other manifestations of ‘extra-parliamentary polities’. Politics extends into other areas as well. Thus, the exaction of rent from a peasant by a landlord is both a political and an economic statement, as is the demand for higher wages from a bourgeois employer by a worker. The outlook which a landlord, peasant, bourgeois or worker holds is political. Beliefs adopted because of class, religion or education, both explicit ideologies and inchoate unexpressed attitudes, underlie all political actions. They do not determine them, however. The formal political realm always possesses a degree of autonomy; kings and presidents, ministers and bureaucrats, all have options, and their choices in turn affect extra-parliamentary action. The shape of politics consists neither of the rules governing formal political action nor of the social framework of extra-parliamentary politics alone, but of their interaction.