Portal:Politics

Portal topics: Activities; Culture; Geography; Health; History; Mathematics; Nature; People; Philosophy; Religion; Society; Technology; Random portal

Main

Categories and topics

Tasks and projects

edit

The Politics portal

Women voter outreach (1935)

Politics (from Greek: Πολιτικά,

politiká, 'affairs of the cities') is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations between individuals, such as the distribution of resources. The academic study of politics is referred to as political science.

Politics is a multifaceted word. It may be used positively in the context of a "political solution" which is compromising and non-violent, or descriptively as "the art or science of government", but also often carries a negative connotation. For example, abolitionist Wendell Phillips declared that "we do not play politics; anti-slavery is no half-jest with us." The concept has been defined in various ways, and different approaches have fundamentally differing views on whether the it should be used extensively or limitedly, empirically or normatively, and on whether conflict or co-operation is more essential to it.

A variety of methods are deployed in politics, which include promoting one's own political views among people, negotiation with other political subjects, making laws, and exercising force, including warfare against adversaries. Politics is exercised on a wide range of social levels, from clans and tribes of traditional societies, through modern local governments, companies and institutions up to sovereign states, to the international level. In modern nation states, people often form political parties to represent their ideas. Members of a party often agree to take the same position on many issues and agree to support the same changes to law and the same leaders. An election is usually a competition between different parties.

A political system is a framework which defines acceptable political methods within a society. The history of political thought can be traced back to early antiquity, with seminal works such as Plato's Republic, Aristotle's Politics, Chanakya's Arthashastra and Chanakya Niti (3rd Century BCE), as well as the works of Confucius.

Read more...

Show new selections'

edit

Selected article

The monarchy of the United Kingdom is a system of government in which a hereditary monarch is the sovereign of the United Kingdom and its overseas territories. The terms British monarch and British monarchy may mean different things in different contexts beyond the United Kingdom. The present monarch is Queen Elizabeth II, who has reigned since 6 February 1952. The heir apparent is her eldest son, Charles, Prince of Wales and Duke of Rothesay. They and the Queen's husband and consort, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, undertake various public duties in accordance with their positions. Elizabeth II is Head of the Commonwealth and also reigns as head of state of 15 other Commonwealth countries. This developed from the former colonial relationship of these countries to Britain, but they are now independent and the monarchy of each is legally distinct.

...Archive/Nominations

More...

edit

Featured picture

Credit: George Frederic Watts

George John Douglas Campbell, 8th Duke of Argyll KG, KT, PC, FRS, FRSE (30 April 1823 – 24 April 1900), styled Marquess of Lorne until 1847, was a Scottish peer, Liberal politician as well as a writer on science, religion, and the politics of the 19th century.

...Archive/Nominations

More...

edit

Selected quote

Where there is discord, may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth. Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. And where there is despair, may we bring hope.

— Margaret Thatcher

...Archive/Nominations

More...

edit

News and Current Events

Wikinews on Politics and conflicts

edit

Selected biography

Phạm Ngọc Thảo (1922–1965), a major provincial leader in South Vietnam and infiltrator of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), was a communist agent of the Viet Minh and later the Vietnam People's Army. As the overseer of Ngô Đình Nhu's Strategic Hamlet Program in the early 1960s, he deliberately forced the program forward at unsustainable speeds, constructing poorly equipped and poorly defended villages, in order to foster rural resentment against the regime of President Ngo Dinh Diem, Nhu's elder brother. Thao was posthumously promoted by the ARVN to the rank of one-star general and awarded the title of Heroic war dead (Vietnamese: Liệt sĩ). After the Fall of Saigon and the end of the Vietnam War, the communist government awarded him the same title and paid war pensions to his family, claiming him as one of their own.

...Archive/Nominations

More...

edit

Did you know...

...that Republican National Committee official Rob Bickhart wrote a PowerPoint presentation for a meeting of Republican fundraisers which depicted Nancy Pelosi as Cruella de Vil?
...that following its 1994 national convention, the Progress Party of Norway lost its deputy leader and the four MPs Christiansen, Hillgaar, Wetterstad and Bråthen?
...that Democrat Mayor Thomas G. Dunn, national co-chairman of Democrats for Nixon, was "read out of the party" for his support of Republican President Richard Nixon's 1972 re-election bid?

...that the National Assembly of Azerbaijan was the first secular republican parliament in the Muslim world?
...that in world-system theory, sociologists debate whether two world-systems have ever existed during the same period?
...that former Republican California State Senator Becky Morgan served on the Board of Trustees of both her alma maters, Stanford University and Cornell University?

...that the New Zealand McGillicuddy Serious Party wanted to return to a medieval lifestyle and establish a monarchy based on the Scottish Jacobite line?