Politics is the process by which groups of people make decisions. It is the authoritative allocation of values. Although the
term is generally applied to behavior within governments,
Politics is observed in all human group interactions, including corporate, academic, and religious institutions.
In its most basic form, politics consists of "social relations involving authority or power" In practice, the term refers to the regulation and
government of a nation-state or other
political unit, and to the methods and tactics used to formulate and apply government policy.
In a broader sense, any situation involving power, or any maneouvring in order to enhance one''s power or status within a group, may be described as politics (e.g. office politics). This form of politics "is most associated with a struggle for ascendancy among groups having different priorities and power relations."
Political science (also political studies) is the study of political behavior and examines the acquisition and application of power. Related areas of study include political philosophy, which seeks a rationale for politics and an ethic of public behavior, and public administration, which examines the practices of governance.
The philosopher Plato classified governments into monarchies (the
rule of one individual), oligarchies (rule by a small elite), timocracies (rule by one race or group over another) and democracies (rule by the governed). Modern taxonomy seperates monarchies (where succesion is hereditary) from autocracies.
In more recent times, the distinction between forms of government has become more complex; in a constitutional monarchy, for instance, there is a monarch as head of state, but actual power is typically held by a parliament or legislative assembly of some description. A republic is the term usually used to describe
nations without a monarchy.
Likewise, the definition of "democracy" has become less clear in more recent times; many nations with widely differing forms of government describe themselves as democratic. The North Korean constitution, for instance, describes North Korea as a democratic state, but some commentators in Western nations have described it as a totalitarian dictatorship.
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