Politics

Political institutions are concerned with how power is distributed in society.

• Power is the ability of individuals or groups to carry out their will even when opposed by others. Power is held in relation to others, at their cost: if some hold more, others hold less. Power runs through all of society, from elders assigning household duties to children, to managers in a factory and leaders of a political party.
• Authority is power that is accepted as legitimate: people see it as right and just, and so they obey willingly. Ideologies often help legitimise power.
• Example (new): a traffic police officer's signal is obeyed by drivers because they accept the officer's right to direct traffic; a bully's order may be obeyed out of fear, but that is power without authority.

Stateless societies. Studies by social anthropologists more than sixty years ago showed how order was kept without a modern government: through balanced opposition between groups, cross-cutting alliances based on kinship, marriage and residence, and rites and ceremonies that brought people together.

The state exists where there is a political apparatus of government (institutions such as a parliament or congress, civil servants) ruling over a given territory, backed by a legal system and the ability to use force.

• Functionalists see the state as representing the interests of all sections of society.
• Conflict theorists see it as representing the dominant sections.

Modern states differ from traditional ones in three ways:

• Sovereignty: the undisputed political rule of a state over a territory.
• Citizenship: at first, sovereign states did not give people the right to take part in politics. These rights were won largely through struggles that limited or overthrew monarchs, such as the French Revolution and, in India, the freedom struggle. Citizenship rights are of three kinds: civil rights (to live where one chooses, freedom of speech and religion, to own property, equal justice before the law); political rights (to vote in elections and to stand for public office; many governments at first excluded women and large groups of men); and social rights (a minimum level of economic welfare and security, such as health benefits, unemployment allowance and a minimum wage, which grew into the idea of the welfare state).
• Nationalism: a set of symbols and beliefs giving a sense of being part of a single political community, a nation. It developed with the modern state; it did not exist long before it.

Sociology studies power widely: not only in governments but in families, caste and class, village factions, trade unions and social movements, up to global movements.