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Understanding the dynamics of how the state and society exercise and contest power (e.g. power structures, authority, social inequality). [7] How political values and behaviours shape society and how society's values and behaviours shape politics (e.g. public opinion, ideologies, social movements).
In the social sciences, social structure is the aggregate of patterned social arrangements in society that are both emergent from and determinant of the actions of individuals. [1] Likewise, society is believed to be grouped into structurally related groups or sets of roles , with different functions, meanings, or purposes.
Term Description Examples Autocracy: Autocracy is a system of government in which supreme power (social and political) is concentrated in the hands of one person or polity, whose decisions are subject to neither external legal restraints nor regularized mechanisms of popular control (except perhaps for the implicit threat of a coup d'état or mass insurrection).
For example, according to Hannah Arendt, the view of Aristotle was that, "to be political…meant that everything was decided through words and persuasion and not through violence"; [24] while according to Bernard Crick, "politics is the way in which free societies are governed. Politics is politics, and other forms of rule are something else."
The term social order can be used in two senses: In the first sense, it refers to a particular system of social structures and institutions. Examples are the ancient, the feudal, and the capitalist social order. In the second sense, social order is contrasted to social chaos or disorder and refers to a stable state of society in which the ...
The emergence of mass politics generally associated with the rise of mass society coinciding with the Industrial Revolution in the West. However, because of the extent of popular participation in the Protestant Reformation, it has been called the first mass political movement, which "other ideologies, ultimately more secular in tone" superseded ...
He specifically distinguishes social movements from political parties and advocacy groups. [17] The sociologists John McCarthy and Mayer Zald define as a social movement as "a set of opinions and beliefs in a population which represents preferences for changing some elements of the social structure and/or reward distribution of a society." [18]
Political opportunity theory, also known as the political process theory or political opportunity structure, is an approach of social movements that is heavily influenced by political sociology. It argues that success or failure of social movements is affected primarily by political opportunities.