The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics (12 page)

The allocation of money by public officials for specific purposes. Control by the legislature over the raising of revenue and the expenditure of public funds has been seen historically as an essential requirement of democratic government. In practice in the United Kingdom, control over the purse strings lies with the government. Theoretically, back-bench members of the House of Commons may reduce or delete proposed appropriations, but they are unable to initiate expenditures without the agreement of the executive. No such restrictions exist in the United States Congress where legislative control over appropriations is complete (apart from rare Presidential vetoes) and, as such, a bulwark of the considerable power of the legislature.
DM 

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

An electoral system in which voters may cast up to as many votes as there are candidates, but may not cast more than one vote for one candidate (which would be
cumulative voting
). The effect is that each voter may partition the list of candidates into two classes: ‘those I approve of’ and ‘those I do not approve of’. Approval voting has influential academic support in the United States and is used in some society and local elections there. It produces better results than other unranked voting systems but worse results than some systems which ask voters to rank-order the candidates.

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

(
c.
1225–74)
Catholic theologian and political philosopher, regarded as one of the great figures of medieval thought. The tradition he founded became known as ‘Thomism’. The basis of his political theory was Aristotelian. It is contained in his commentary on Aristotle's
Politics
, in
De regimine principum
(On the Rule of Sovereigns), written while at the papal court in Italy (1259–68) and completed by others, and in the
Summa Theologiae
, II, First Part, Questions 90–7.
Following
Aristotle
, he held that the state is a natural, not a conventional (such as a society, company, or club), institution; and it is a perfect society (
communitas perfecta
). It is natural, not conventional because human beings are social animals. They need to form a society for their survival, prosperity, and cultural development. Gregarious animals do this by instinct; humans do it by using reason. It is perfect in that (in principle) it can satisfy all the ends of human life, and is not dependent on any higher society, unlike the family (also a natural society) which is dependent on a larger community for survival and material and cultural development.
All power, according to Aquinas, comes from God since it involves the power of life and death which, in Church doctrine, is the prerogative of God—here Aquinas deviates from Aristotle. But he returns on stream when he argues that (1) sovereignty (be it monarchy, parliamentary government, or popular government) is natural, and that (2) it comes (albeit from God) through the people governed. It is natural in that without a governing body capable of making binding decisions anarchy would result and people could destroy each other. It comes through the people, because, whatever the form of government, it must reflect the wishes of the governed. The sovereign or government, in the view of Aquinas, is the representative of the governed (popularly called ‘the people’): ‘If the people (
multitudo
) do not have the power to institute laws freely or to rescind laws imposed by a superior power, a custom prevailing among such people, however, obtains the force of law, insofar it is by it [the custom] that those who impose them on the people are allowed to do so’ (
ST
, II, First Part, Question 97, Article 3).
The State is, therefore, not in any way dependent on the Church. Each has a separate end and a separate role. But Aquinas believed in a supernatural end for humankind. In the pursuit of this end the Church is a perfect society, since in this respect, it does not depend on any other body. Moreover, unlike the State, it is an autonomous perfect society. In the Thomist view the Church as such is in no way subordinate to the State, whereas the State must take the interests of the Church into account, since its end is loftier and it is the ultimate end of the citizen. Aquinas likens the relationship of Church to State to that of the soul to the body. Each has its own particular role to play but ultimately the soul's is higher.
This unity of purpose comes about in the citizen who has one end but separate spiritual and material needs. The citizen's relationship to the State is also holistic. He is subordinate to the State as the part is to the whole, the members to the body. But this does not give the State unlimited power over its subjects. For one thing, it is never permissible to obey a law which is contrary to divine law. For another, civil laws and decrees that are contrary to natural (i.e. moral) law are invalid. In this Aquinas was voicing the views of most medieval political theorists, as in his support for the legitimacy of tyrannicide. As political power, after God, rested with the governed, the government holds power in trust. If the ruler or rulers abuse that trust by tyrannical behaviour, it can be withdrawn, even if this means deposing the tyrant.
Aquinas wrote within the context of a power-struggle between Church and State. Aquinas's account of the Church's place is still valuable. On the wider issues of sovereignty, the rights of citizens, and law he still has much to offer. His amalgam of Aristotelianism and Christianity has made a considerable contribution to the development of political theory.
CB 

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

(1906–75)
Political theorist, who was born in Königsberg (then in Germany, now Kaliningrad in Russia) and studied
existentialism
under
Heidegger
and Karl Jaspers . During the Nazi era she emigrated first to France and then to the United States, and published her best-known work in English. Her first major work was
The Origins Of Totalitarianism
(1951) which attempted to understand the horror of both Nazism, in terms of the concentration camps, and Stalinism, with reference to the ruthlessness of the purges. Arendt saw
totalitarianism
occurring through two particular factors; the destruction of the legal and territorial nation-state by imperialism and the tendency for individuals to identify themselves with races as opposed to citizens or members of a class. Through the concept of ‘superfluousness’ she shows how these factors could lead to a political system where human beings become quickly and simply expendable. This led to her conception of ‘the banality of [the] evil’ represented by the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann : what he lacked was ordinary understanding of how the world looked from inside other people's minds. In
The Human Condition
(1958) she attempts to analyse particular concepts, such as labour, work, and action, in terms of how they were linguistically understood in previous cultures. The motive for this was to try to give an insight into the very experiences which people felt in earlier ages and thereby reveal possibilities in our own human condition which have become lost in modern language. In
On Revolution
(1963) she attempted to reinstate human action, rather than simply historical processes, as the essence of a revolution. Such a focus on the capacity for individuals to act led her to support popular councils for self-government and to stress the importance of public freedom. Thus the paradigm revolution was not the
French
or
Russian
, but the
American
. She saw her emphasis on human action and human capacity as the distinguishing factor between her own and preceding political theory. Some have seen the collapse of East European communism as an Arendtian moment of free human action; others see her as a precursor of
post-modernism
.
IF 

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search