I designed this to teach my students the content for the UOL International Foundation Programme, Political Sociology unit of work

1. Political Sociology IFP
Final Year Recap
. 1) Understand the notion of power, including the three dimensions of power.
. 2) Understand the relationship between civil society, social movements and
democracy.

2. Politics and Power
What is politics?
Write down your ideas

3. What is power?

4. Power
• Lukes created a model consisting of three dimensions of
power. All of which are centred around the idea of power as
being able to make and influence decisions
• The first dimension, sometimes referred to as ‘open face’
because you can see it
• It refers to power exerted through open processes such as
debate
• When one party wins a debate and the decision is made,
that party has exerted the first dimension of power
A useful quick reference guide:
https://revisesociology.wordpress.com/2011/10
/13/2-lukes-3-faces-of-power/

5. Power
• The second dimension of power, usually referred to as ‘agenda
setting’
• This is a more subtle, but wields much more power than the first
dimension
• This is because you can decide what will be argued about,
therefore dictating the situation.
• For example the party with the most power decides what will be
fought over

6. Power
• The first two faces of power describe how power
can be used to overtly get someone to do what
you want them to, even if it against their own will
• The third dimension of power is manipulation

7. Power
• The third dimension of power manipulation is
often compared to Marx’s theory of false class
consciousness because power is used to
manipulate others to do something they might
not actually want to do by changing what they
want

10. Authority
• Power is usually exercised by people with
authority
• Weber created a model of three kinds of authority:
• Rational-legal authority
• Traditional authority
• Charismatic authority

11. Traditional Authority
• We accept the authority of a person or group
because it is custom to do so

12. Charismatic Authority
• Where a heroic individual is able to rise to power
with a magnetic personality and makes changes
through passion and will
Which historical figures can be described as charismatic?

13. Rational-Legal Authority
• Power is not held by the individual
politician, but by the office to which
they hold
• The democratically elected leader of
a nation has legal-rational authority
• A headteacher of a school has been
chosen to lead and therefore has
legal-rational authority

14. Political Sociology Part 2
Democracy and Social Movements
1. To understand and explain the differences between democratic and
authoritarian governments
2 To able to define a social movements
3. critically evaluate the nature and organisation of social movements

15. Democracy
• What is meant by the term democracy?

20. Participatory democracy Representative democracy

22. Democracy
• What are examples of democratic freedoms?

24. Advantages Disadvantages
Read page 58 (IFP coursebook) and discuss
potential advantages and disadvantages of
democracy

25. Democracy
• Advantages
• People’s views are represented
• The leadership can be removed by the people
• Freedom of speech, and right to protest peacefully are protected
• Disadvantages:
• Majority rule can lead to populist leaders and policies (Burke:
Tryanny of the majority)
• Democratic leaders have to prove success over a short time

27. Authoritarianism
• Popular participation is more limited
• In ‘soft authoritarian’ states, democratic freedoms
are limited, but the quality of life is very high
• Singapore is often used as an example of this

28. Should we consider quality of life
and efficient government as more
important than democratic
freedom?

31. Social Movements
A social movement is the collective activity of a group united for or against
government policy
They are often united by a shared social background
How many social movements can you name?

32. List as many different social movements
as you can

33. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0EhG1Bk7ZQ