Chapter 1-1. Incomplete Conquest & Control

Mweong-Mi?

Prof. Jin-Wan Seo, Ph.D.

Department of Public Administration

University of Incheon, KOREA

http://prof.incheon.ac.kr/~sjinwan

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Truth, Fact, and Knowledge!

1. Incomplete Conquest

1) Survival, then Government

• _________________ is humanity's second most important problem. First there is survival

• The significance of war vs. fear of war.

 

• Slavery ==> _______________________

• More people than ever are educated and have the capacity to participate in their own government. Yet governments continue to turn primitive, and government leaders can always find intellectuals willing to write the justifications for dictatorship.

1. Incomplete Conquest

2) What is Government?

• Although government is a matter of life and death to everyone, it means different things to different people.

• __________: "the action gained by force of arms; acquisition by war; subjugation of a country … by vanquishing; gaining of victory." Conquest precedes government; Its meaning is bringing a territory and its population under control. Government should be defined by conquest because government emerges out of it. Sometimes territories and populations are conquered and governed, then lose their government. Revolution is itself a form of conquest, with the replacement of one government by another through internal war and re-conquest within the society. In whatever form, conquest comes first; government follows.

• Government can be defined as the _________________ of conquest. Government is the cold remains of conquest. From this perspective, the essential purpose of government is to maintain conquest. Conquest never ends; it only changes form. It becomes control. - In actuality, there are controls behind every benefit, and there is conquest behind all control.

• Government evolves after more violent forms of conquest such as imperialism, warfare, and revolution.

• Its purpose is to maintain conquest through various types of control

1. Incomplete Conquest

3) The Conquest behind Every Government

• Behind every government is a long history of struggle as territory is brought under control and as regional opposition is eliminated in favor of a single political authority.

1. Incomplete Conquest

4) The Institutionalization of Conquest

• All institutions in society exercise some kind of control. But, government is the only institution whose manifest purpose is to control.

• "Government is that institution in society which successfully claims a monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory." (__________________)

• Cases– The primary force in shaping the U.S. government was capitalism.

– All the early settlers - from religious and political dissenters to felons - were eager to own land.

– Property ownership was synonymous with freedom.

– Ready to break their ties with the Old World, the settlers quickly formed colony-wide and local representative governments.

– The westward expansion of New World governments was accomplished through land acquisition.

– As this form of free enterprise encroached on Indian territory, it met resistance and retaliation.

– Violent forms of conquest - wars and the forcible removal of Indians - resulted.

– Government approval, however, lent these acts of violence legitimacy.

– Slavery was another type of conquest; it too was given legitimacy by the government because of its economic

value. 

1. Incomplete Conquest

5) Incomplete Conquest

• Although conquest is the background of all governments in history, incomplete conquest is the fact about governments in operation. First, conquest will never be complete, because there is insufficient technology to control all behavior all the time. Besides, Second, people do not want complete conquest, because they want a government powerful, enough to conquer everything but restrained enough not to. - The technology to control everyone all the time does not exist; But no one wants complete conquest anyway because this would mean total loss of individual freedom.

• In the real world, government resides in a profound contradiction: The jeopardy and the freedom of the individual are both directly related to the failure of government to fulfill its purpose. In other words, government must succeed - but not too well.

• Conquest manifests itself in various forms of control, but in all those forms it is the common factor, tying together into one system the behavior of courts and cops, sanitation workers and senators, bureaucrats and technocrats, generals and attorneys general, pressure groups and presidents.

• The problem of conquest did not disappear, however. It only changed form. At first it was survival of the population, by whatever means available. With luck and success, it became ____________- the maintenance of the society through rules and institutions. People must be brought to acknowledge social rules and accept authority. This is the process of __________ - learning of social rules.

• Some of the rules and institutions are governmental, but many are not. Society teaches its members how to provide for their own wants and how to adjust to the wants of others. Only in utopia do all individuals get what they want. In real societies, people are taught to want what they get. Real societies regulate wants. That is how they transform conquest into social control.

• The learning of social rules is sometimes called citizenship. Social scientists refer to it as as assimilation or socialization. Some negative names for it are indoctrination, brainwashing, and propagandizing. People tend to use the positive names in describing their own societies and the negative ones for other societies. However, all the names describe the same thing: the long process by which each individual is brought to accept authority and to behave in and orderly and predictable way.

2. From Conquest to Government: Story without end

7 Main Components of Social Control!

1. Nationalism2. __________3. Property Ownership4. ____________5. ____________6. Participation7. Government

Government depends on the 6 preceding components of social control, but it is superior to them for two reason.

1) Government can make specific commands and use force to carry them out. The various institutions of government maintain control by making policies and issuing orders.

2) through its instruments of control, government can deliberately change society.

2. From Conquest to Government: Story without end

3. The Techniques of Control

1) From Conquest to __________

• Public policy is the result of a government's determining what, when, how, and for what purpose to control.

• Techniques of control can be categorized as promotional, regulatory, macro-economic, and macro-social.

3. The Techniques of Control

2) Major Techniques of Control

1. Subsidies

2. Licensing

3. _________________________

4. Other Regulatory Techniques(1) Administrative Regulation

(2) Taxation

5. Regulatory Use of Purchasing Power.

6. Macro-economic Techniques - Two Types of Techniques: fiscal and monetary.(1) Fiscal Technique: Taxing and spending are fiscal techniques.

(2) Monetary Techniques attempt to influence the economy by adjusting the supply of money. Federal Reserve Board plays an essential role by setting the discount rate.

7.  Macrosocial (and macropolitical)(1) Propaganda

(2) _____________________

1. Maintaining public ________ and private property

2. Maintaining the economy - the national system for the production and distribution of goods and services.

3. Maintaining a capitalistic economy though taxation, government spending, etc.

4. Treatment of the poor and dependent. Pluses for the welfare system are: (1) It identifies and deals with almost every type of need. (2) Requiring a

contribution helps dependents maintain their dignity. (3) A large public welfare system is good fiscal policy.

They are minuses, too: (1) The contributory programs do not reach the most needy. (2) Limits on the amounts of money the low- and moderate income aged can earn outside their welfare benefits are too severe. (3) The program creates and maintains dependency. (4) It is difficult to strike a balance between benefits that are too scant and benefits that are too generous

5. _____________ which is the cause of some individuals' poverty and dependence.Since the values, habits, and opinions of society are responsible for inequality, one major policy problem is to

establish channels through which individuals and groups can surmount inequality, including education, housing, and health programs.

Another is to eliminate barriers through continuing efforts to reduce discrimination.

 

• In all these areas, government and its use of coercive power is bound to grow. Policy making will continue to reflect the interests with the most access.

4. Government and Policy Problems