What Is a Political Community - Article Example

Political Communities Political Communities A political community is an organized territorial social union that is characterized by autonomy in political aspects that enable the union to regulate its internal affairs that cover the very important aspects of the lives of the individuals in the union. The union also provides an avenue in which its members dissociate themselves from the external social environment by leaving out those who are not members at its discernment. Political community, from the definition seems sufficiently narrow to omit voluntary political affiliations like political parties that do not provide any positive implication to the community, but it is also fairly broad to cover a good of political organizations like empires, nations and federations including unions such as European Union. Political communities represent phenomena that are real in the real social setting that can be delineated as empirical concepts and outcomes of social actions that are subject to being evaluated in normative sense. It is, however, essential to differentiate between their legitimacy on one side and their actual development on the other side. Normally, the creation or development of political community is a complicated process that is impelled by a number of reasons which include power battles in the social environment that revolve around partial interests as opposed to arguments that are reasonable. However, political community can develop in any whatever way, it needs a good level of legitimacy so as to continue being in existence. A political community necessitate for legitimacy which is manifested in a variety of normative calls that come about together with the order recognized in the political community. The first part involves the claims of the people representing it and the officials to the obliging force of their decisions, secondly, is the claim of the members and the habitants of the political community to the appropriateness of the norms and practices of the political community. The third aspect is the claim of its neighbors and the surrounding community to the bearableness of the external effects of the political community. The concept of legimaticy of a political community, however, has an infamous ambiguity which can be interpreted both in normative sense and descriptive sense. The issues of legitimacy surrounding political communities may also assume two different courses; one being the empirical inquiry, which questions whether the political community is recognized by the applicable groupings. The other question lays on the normative sense in which questions the circumstances in which a political community will be accepted due to the good reasons it offers. Normative and descriptive legitimacy, despite of their abstract differences are interrelated. A political community has genuine legitimacy, if it is accepted by a greater proportion of its subjects and the surrounding communities that is enough for it to exist for a long time. The basic principles of the legitimacy are not reserve normative measures, but the genuine notions and attitudes of the officials of the community, members and neighbors without paying attention as to whether the beliefs and notions are rational or not when observed from a evaluative point of view. An educated public will, nevertheless, try to reflect on the beliefs and analyse them in regard to their own reasoning. Due to this, people may tend to change their own impressions to those they consider satisfactory after taking some time to scrutinize them. This therefore, raises question on the normative demands that a political community need to satisfy so as to be accepted by its targeted members and the surrounding community. The question here is about community normative legitimacy and its ability to be accepted basing on reasonable normative standards. The normative standards used to evaluate of social affairs and orders generally and particularly political communities can be sub-divided into three groups which to some extend parallels the well known distinction between technical pragmatic and moral guidelines of human behavior done by Kant. Which are common good, morality and justice or morality. When analyzed from efficiency viewpoint, social affairs, orders and practices are evaluated regarding to their ability to be utilized with references to actual predilections of the involved individuals in the setting of the situations at the specific time and community. However, there is no agreed way of aggregating individual preferences so as to form preferences which is accepted by the whole community or population. There are therefore, two standards of social efficiency that seem to be majorly arguable and are therefore agreed upon widely; the first is the Pareto- principle, which states that a social situation is considered to be efficient if it cannot be altered in a way that is to the gain of at least one of the individuals involved without making the situation of others worse. The second principle is the Kaldor-Hicks – principle which describes situation to be efficient if the state it is in, when likened with other executable options makes some individuals so much better off that they could right all those who fare worse than them. Common good in contrast with efficiency, is normally described s collective interest or welfare of the whole community instead of a small group of the members of the community. Therefore, when common good is to be considered, it requires one to have an impersonal perspective that removes it selves from analysis of genuine preferences of people but it aims to evaluate the practices and projects that are communal to all members of the community in the light of shared interests and goals that are well evaluated, the interests should consider future generations for them to have a common good. The issues that guide t fulfill these standards and consideration are however, rather unclear and controversial. Nevertheless, there are some widely recognized characteristics of the community’s welfare that may act as moderate signs that show existence of common good. Its ability to assert itself within the surrounding both natural, and social together with its social coherence that require a unanimity on the main precepts of the social order of the political community in question. These features are, however, vague and can be interpreted in so many different ways. Considerations of justice and morality try to evaluate social affairs, patterns and orders in regard to their ability to be accepted universally to most of the people that are involved from a view point that is quiet impartial. Therefore, the position to start moral consideration is considered to be the previous position of equal standing as opposed to the current situation, their quantity of evaluation is generally the basic principles and interests of the concerned community that are shared, for example their basic needs as opposed to the actual preferences. The normative standards that resulted from this may divided in to two categories; one being the precepts of morality that is universally binding and that is applicable to all humans generally, the second category involves the demands of justice, which in most cases refer to specific configurations of social relationships and thus, developed rights and duties for the people that are concerned in the configurations. In reality, there are a good number of such constellations and their corresponding requirements of justice. To further understand them, it is important to distinguish the various forms of justice which apply to a specified class of social policy that lead to the formation of a political community. There are four kinds of this forms based on some reasons; contractual, distributive, corrective justice and political. Distributive justice is applicable to social gathering where a good number of people constitute a common call to specific aspects and / or common duty in regard to specific burdens facing the populations. These communal relationships require goods to be distributed justly or under distribution. The distribution should be satisfactory to all sides concerned when observed from an impartial point of view. The basic building block of distributive justice is the demand that all of its members have an equal share of both the responsibilities and incumbrances, except when there is a good reason to distribute them unequally. Contractual justice on the other hand refer to the voluntary exchange of relationship that is, understandings among independent individual on the mutual transfer of private goods and services. Contractual justice demanded that the agreements or understandings are to the welfare of all parties affected. This demand for just exchange environment including; That all parties involved are well versed concerning the pertinent information and are able to decide rationally so as to peruse interests that are well evaluated That the understandings are not borne by misleading information and dupery That no member of the association has the ability or power to dictate the terms of exchange without consulting the other members. Political justice is focused on power relationship; that is the use of definitive power and force. For justice to prevail, such human relationship must consider the interests of all parties concerned which includes the governed which demands that any form of authorities power used must be directed at legitimate ends and done in an unprejudiced way basing on the general rules. Corrective justice focuses on wrongness relationship; that state of affairs that result from wrongdoing and therefore require correction. Generally, there exist two forms of corrective options; compensation and punishment. Each of these two forms is subject to diverse demands of proportionality. From this discussion, it is absolved that the three forms of normative conditions that is the common good, efficacy, morality and justice are not divided, but, are diverse aspects in which social affairs that form a political community are comprehensively evaluated. This therefore to the questioning f how they are related and how they can be combined to form an effective political community. The question of very important particularly if these aspects is conflicting as opposed to leading to the same final goal or result. In this case there is one rather simple rule which states that the cardinal demands of justice and morality have precedence over common good and that substantial demands of common good should take priority over efficacy. This pattern is accepted in principle by a large variety of scholars; however, it is not normally applied that easily in practice. This is because the in most circumstances the considerations of justice and morality mostly have infirmer motivational force compared to the demands of common good that are normally predominated by the endeavoring for efficacy. This disrupted order of the diverse aspects of strength in motivation makes it essential to consequently invert their normative ranking arrangement. Without this, justice and morality would continue to be completely effete and at the same time the common good would be difficult to put in place. In respect to this it is important to determine the requirement that a political community has meet so as to be considered legitimate in terms of morality and justice, since as mentioned earlier morality and justice are given a higher priority. The research for the preconditions in which political communities that is their laws and practices, may be viewed as to be legitimate supposes the thought that the existence of such communities is not just an empiric concept, but normatively satisfactory too. Consideration of this arouses important questions regarding the justification in the formation of comparatively autonomous and freestanding social societies. The development of political communities is a kind of ‘moral division of labor’ in which the individuals distribute so as to help them survive the problems that are associated with collective actions, this is because personally and locally limited social unions give them the ability as compared to the relationships that are not restricted in order to institute social agreements that are effective in enforcing the rights and duties of individuals in the associations and, therefore, facilitate projects that are good and that results from social cooperation. Moral divisions of labor imply that people are committed into a variety of social connections that empower them with particular moral duties and rights that are targeted at one another, the rights and duties in this case exceed the normal acceptable moral precepts that apply to all individuals without paying attention to their social relationships. The most accepted case scenario of the above is a family where the members of the family owe one another a greater amount of care as compared to strangers. Therefore, the moral division of labor has an aim of supplementing the precepts of the generally accepted morality, which in actual sense do not demand so much from individuals, with the additional and actually the more demanding rights and duties that apply to individuals in the relationship of a political community so as to help the members to cope with the problems facing them through mutually beneficial social cooperation arrangements. The most common and expedient practice that lead to the achieving the above aim is the development of political communities that accommodate their various members to common commonality and from so doing disjoint themselves from the surrounding social communities. Political communities that are f importance are those that dissent from other classes of community by the reality that they are able to be dominant to other surrounding communities within the territory of their domain; this is acquired from their far achieving powers of mandatory rule of social gathering. When the understanding is taken from this view, then the plurality of different political communities, in which the social setting is sub-divided, is not to say it is not legitimate but from the moral view point it could be illegitimate. This is however, is not meant to mean that all the political communities that are in existence are legitimate, but rather their normative legitimacy relies on some more demands that need to be substantiated. It is therefore, important to emphasize that the legitimacy of a political community comprise two possible sides; an internal side and the external side. A political community’s internal legitimacy involve the question whether the members of the community accepts its basic order that means it has needs to meet the demands of common good, efficiency and justice leastwise to a certain extend that is recognized. On the other hand, the external legitimacy of a political community is its ability to defend its practices and the whether the practices are actually defensible by the universal law or morality rather that defend the social surrounding, of particular interest here are the members of other political communities. However, the inquiry to find out if political communities and especially nations need legimatization is a topic under contest. Remarkable numbers of authors though, are seen to be inclined to taking affirmative position in this matter, there are still some others who advocate for ‘international realism’ who are of the idea that the external behavior of a state is not in need of normative justification. But most of the reasonable one pleads for differentiated moralism, which principally affirms for the need for external justification of all political communities but to a certain limit. There are two rationalities for the controversy that arise with respect to their conduct to toward other countries, are subject to particular requirements of justice and morality. First, when the actual exercise of political direction is observed, then it is realized that political communities are normally evaluated on both the internal affairs and the external effects of the practices the community performs on the external communities, even though, the results of the evaluation of the internal members differ from the evaluation of the outsiders. This suggests that there is no clear cut answer as to when a political community is affecting the external sorrounding to warrant being illegitimitate. For example if a nation that is waging war on another is considered the evaluation of the state would be that it needs to protect country’s legitimate interest and may also argue that it was aggravated through an belligerent behavior from the other state. Similarly, the external communities condemning the act would accuse the leaders of the waging nation or state as sacrificing its population and are also violating the legitimate interest of the other nation which is in conflict with. The second reason is it seems apparent natural state in the international community is the large moral evilness which needs to be opposed to the furthest point possible by use of international law that is effective. Although, morality is not that potent to pioneer such a law, it is essential because justice and morality are necessary to formulate the ideals of just and peaceful world that should act as guidelines for the endeavors that are geared to achieving a better international order. Making international politics to be moral, is however limited too. It would be fairly anticipated of a nation to abide by the requirements of international justice and morality which would bind the nation under the ideals of their universal compliancy. for instance if by so doing the state would have to forfeit its basic concerns for example the interest of self conservation and self assertion against the competition from international communities. Basing on this consideration, therefore, formulation for requirement for moral legitimization of political communities can be done. The basic rules, practices and instutions formulatd from an impartial point of view include; (i) Internally acceptable which is seen from the fact that each member of the community agrees with it and accept them as binding. (ii) Externally defensible which is seen from the fact that they cannot be rejected by the external communities from a reasonable point of view.. Considering that these demands can be fulfilled but at different levels, they are supposed to be interpreted not as rigid requirements, but rather as ideas that are regulatory on the foundation of which a political community can be judged regarding its legitimacy. As expected, different people will have different judgment depending on their understanding of the requirements which must be admitted that they are not abstract. In order to understand this requirements clearly, it is important to use two proposed interpretations of the requirements. The first of the interpretations takes firm interpretation that calls for the demanding interpretation which forms the ideal standards while the second is a much weaker interpretations that form the minimum requirements or the minimum standards. A political community’s internal acceptableness demands that its cardinal rules, establishments and exercises are the concern of the members that are well-considered. Simply, for a political community to be internally acceptable, its rules should be good as compared to all the other possible alternatives from a non partial point of view. This assumes that such an order would therefore accord all the principles that are valid for common good, efficiency and justice and morality. The demand of fundamental justice and morality in specific aspects relating to social justice involves civil liberty, legal equality, equal opportunity, democratic participation and economic equity. When these demands are carefully and critically interpreted and evaluate then it is realized that most of them cannot be met, in fact even the big political communities such as states do not meet these demands and therefore there is provision to compromise them through the provision of the minimum requirements or minimum standards that each political community has to meet to be legitimate. These dictate that the political community must in effect ensure the cardinal human rights of its members which include both social and economic rights. The external defensibility implies that the practices of a political community can be tolerated by other surrounding communities together with their members. In simple words this demands that the practices of a political community do not have negative effects on the surrounding communities that would appear unacceptable in the considerateness of the concerns of all people referred from an unprejudiced view point. Therefore, the practices and projects of the political community must be general sable in the sense that they are universally acceptable even in the case that they were to be adopted by all the other surrounding communities. In ideal sense, the above requirements means that the political communities respect other nations and accord them autonomy, participate without partiality in international institutions , only work hard to ensure peaceful resolutions of international conflicts and protect the human rights in all avenues for the whole world, comply with fair trade I international markets. But again in reality these demands are normally no met by all nations which again calls for the setting for the minimum standards which must be met by all political communities which include; it must not implement any policy that affect foreign political communities that qualifies to be imperialistic or colonialist. It must also not support other governments that violet human rights of its citizens Generally, to be able to define a political community comprehensively there is need to consider the above requirement of what a political community must be able to fulfill for it to be legitimate. From the above we could say that a political community is an organized territorial social union that is characterized by autonomy in political aspects that enable the union to regulate its internal affairs that cover the very important aspects of the lives of the individuals in the union. The organization must also be able to fulfill the demands f its subjects without interfering with the external communities. Reference List Buchanan, A. .(2004), Justice, Legitimacy, and Self-Determination. Moral Foundations for International Law, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Byoung Joon Kim. (2015).  Political efficacy, community collective efficacy, trust and extroversion in the information society: Differences between online and offline civic/political activities. Government Information Quarterly. . 32(1), pp43-51. Howard, Dick (2010), The Primacy of the Political: A History of Political Thought from the Greeks to the French and American Revolutions, Columbia University Press, Knight, Kelvin (2011) Virtue, Politics, and History: Rival Enquiries into Action and Order, in Paul Blackledge& Kelvin Knight edd., Virtue and Politics: Alasdair MacIntyres Revolutionary Aristotelianism, University of Notre Dame Press, 2011. Oyowe, Oritsegbubemi.  2013. Individual and Community in Contemporary African Moral-Political Philosophy. Philosophia Africana. . 15 (2), pp117-136. Pettit, Philip (1997) Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government, Oxford University Press, Pocock, J. G. A. (1975), The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition, Princeton University Press, the classic account of republicanism as a tradition. Skinner, Quentin (1978) The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, vol. 1: The Renaissance, Cambridge University Press, the classic historical contextualist (or Cambridge School) account of the Renaissance origins of republicanism. Skinner, Quentin (1981). Machiavelli, Oxford University Press,. Skinner, Quentin (1997). Liberty before Liberalism, Cambridge University Press. Read More