CH 9: Riemer, Science, and Romance The Political Values of Political Actors Key Terms Political values are important beliefs about which goals, principles, and policies are worthwhile in public affairs. A goal is an objective. (may be peace, security, and order or war, domination, and power; may be liberty, equality, justice, and fraternity or slavery, subordination, tyranny, and enmity. May be positive or negative goals.) A principle is a basic truth or belief that is used as a basis of reasoning or a guide to behavior. May also be positive or negative (peaceful change or violent change). A policy is a course or general plan of action designed to solve problems or achieve specified goals; help determine whether certain standards are being met; serve as important guideposts in politics. Where do political values come from? Whose goals, principles, and policies are actually being observed? A political actor is the individual or group that expresses and shapes political values, struggles for power, and decides issues of public policy; governmental, economic, social and military elites, political parties, interest groups, the mass media, and nation-states are all examples of political actors. Individual citizens are also political actors. Level-of-analysis problem With so many different political actors, who do we focus on: the national government as the primary actors or the decision-makers who lead the government? The international system itself? What level do we operate on to really understand what is going on? Guiding Hypothesis in studying political values 1) political values of political actors are rooted in their vital needs, fundamental interests, and perceived desires. 2) the struggle over political values is conditioned by the differing interpretations of needs, interests, and desires by diverse political actors and by the historical distribution of power (make for both conflict and consensus). Guiding Hypothesis in studying political values 3) the world of politics frequently contains serious gaps between professed values and actual behaviors. The gaps exist because political actors are unable to break out of parochial, rigidly ideological patterns of thought and behavior. Difficult to narrow these gaps because human resources and capabilities are limited. 4) the future will probably include a major constitutional and democratic struggle between what we might call broad values and narrow values; will require a realistic understanding of vital needs, of compatible fundamental interests, and of modest and prudent desires. The Values of Nations as Political Actors Nations (national leaders, ruling elites, or governing parties) generally profess and seek to protect the national interest in foreign affairs and public interest in domestic affairs. National interest is the vital needs and fundamental interests of the nation as a whole, security, liberty, justice and welfare, which are es ...

1. CH 9: Riemer, Science, and Romance
The Political Values of Political Actors
Key Terms
Political values are important beliefs about which goals,
principles, and policies are worthwhile in public affairs.
A goal is an objective. (may be peace, security, and order or
war, domination, and power; may be liberty, equality, justice,
and fraternity or slavery, subordination, tyranny, and enmity.
May be positive or negative goals.)
A principle is a basic truth or belief that is used as a basis of
reasoning or a guide to behavior. May also be positive or
negative (peaceful change or violent change).
A policy is a course or general plan of action designed to solve
problems or achieve specified goals; help determine whether
certain standards are being met; serve as important guideposts
in politics.

2. Where do political values come from? Whose goals, principles,
and policies are actually being observed?
A political actor is the individual or group that expresses and
shapes political values, struggles for power, and decides issues
of public policy; governmental, economic, social and military
elites, political parties, interest groups, the mass media, and
nation-states are all examples of political actors.
Individual citizens are also political actors.
Level-of-analysis problem
With so many different political actors, who do we focus on: the
national government as the primary actors or the decision-
makers who lead the government? The international system
itself?
What level do we operate on to really understand what is going
on?
Guiding Hypothesis in studying political values
1) political values of political actors are rooted in their vital
needs, fundamental interests, and perceived desires.
2) the struggle over political values is conditioned by the
differing interpretations of needs, interests, and desires by

3. diverse political actors and by the historical distribution of
power (make for both conflict and consensus).
Guiding Hypothesis in studying political values
3) the world of politics frequently contains serious gaps
between professed values and actual behaviors. The gaps exist
because political actors are unable to break out of parochial,
rigidly ideological patterns of thought and behavior. Difficult to
narrow these gaps because human resources and capabilities are
limited.
4) the future will probably include a major constitutional and
democratic struggle between what we might call broad values
and narrow values; will require a realistic understanding of vital
needs, of compatible fundamental interests, and of modest and
prudent desires.
The Values of Nations as Political Actors
Nations (national leaders, ruling elites, or governing parties)
generally profess and seek to protect the national interest in
foreign affairs and public interest in domestic affairs.
National interest is the vital needs and fundamental interests of
the nation as a whole, security, liberty, justice and welfare,
which are essential to the independence, prosperity, and power

4. of the nation-state.
Public interest is the interest of the entire community that
transcends the selfish interests of individuals or groups. It
expresses the best long-range interests of the entire nation.
Values of political leaders
Survival, security, safety, peace, territorial integrity, defense,
prosperity, independence, and power.
Freedom, their capacity to govern themselves, their control of
their own destiny, and their enjoyment of the rights that make
freedom meaningful.
Justice, equality before the law, due process, equitable
distribution of wealth.
Equal treatment of sovereign nations, respect for international
law and procedure.
Concern for welfare of their citizens.
Values of political leaders
Policies that enhance national economic well-being through
growth, production, full employment, decent farm prices, and
satisfactory business profits.
Policies that enhance social well-being through literacy,
adequate food and housing, and good health and nutrition.
Endorse stable institutions and organizations as a way to ensure
political well-being.

5. Key National Interests:
Security and Peace
Security and Peace; most leaders say they believe in security
and peace but the 20th and 21st centuries have been littered
with violent conflict: interstate wars, revolutions,
assassinations, rebellions, wars of national liberation, ethnic
conflict, terrorism, and genocide.
Over the past fifteen to twenty years, somewhere between thirty
and forty wars were raging at any given point in time.
One estimate of those killed in recent wars: 87.5 million dead –
33.5 million combatants and 54 million civilians (Zbigniew
Brzezinski, Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the
Twenty-first Century).
A second estimate puts the total at 203 million (M. Chiref
Bassouni, “Searching for Peace and Achieving Justice”)
Key National Interests:
Security and Peace
Facetious adage in international relations: “all wars are fought
in self-defense.”
Do nations engage only in just wars, defending itself against
aggressive opponents and protecting its security against real
attack?
Or have some nations engaged in war using the pretext of
protecting vital interests?
Do wars actually serve to protect a nation’s security?

6. Difficult to answer these questions because terms like just war,
defensive war, aggressive war, vital interests or security lack
common definitions.
Terrorism and nuclear proliferation have complicated the
question of security even further.
Key National Interests:
Security and Peace
The following are certain, however, (1) there is a serious gap
between talk of peace and the reality of war, (2) different
nations hold incompatible conceptions of national security, (3)
sometimes nations counter power with power in order to protect
vital national interests, (4) national defense expenditures are
huge and distort other priorities, and (5) the machinery for
peace and peaceful change is inadequate.
Many countries and their political leaders claim to be peace-
loving but often engage in war.
The Clash of Civilizations
Clashing conceptions of national security highlight international
relations.
Recent debates focus on the nature of ethnic and cultural
conflicts that persist.
Samuel Huntington (1993): predicted that with the fall of
communism different civilizations – Western, Eastern, Islamic,
Latin American – will come into conflict; these civilizations

7. will represent great blocs of countries with similar cultural,
religious, and political histories; highlights the intersection of
values, culture, and security; leads to a clash of civilizations as
each tries to protect itself; diverse values become the source of
clashing security concerns.
Values:
Liberty, human rights, and democracy
Most nations profess a commitment to liberty, human rights,
and democracy.
What constitutes a democracy is open to debate; accept that
democracies must have freedom of expression, free elections,
and the ability to gather alternative sources.
Some countries might achieve some level of democracy, but not
complete democracy.
So, how do we measure democracy?
Freedom House
Ranks countries into three categories: Free, Partly Free, and Not
Free.
The rankings show that there are more democracies than ever in
the world.
Also show that many countries profess to be democracies and
yet are not quite living up to the high standards that democracy
demands.
Gaps between rhetoric and reality.

8. Many countries will justify violations of liberty, human rights,
and the democratic process in the name of national security and
the need for domestic order.

9. Values:
Justice, equality, and liberty
Justice, equality, and liberty; justice, roughly understood as
fairness, involves balancing liberty and equality; but justice is
perceived in different ways by different nations and by different
groups within nations.
There are many ways to measure a nation’s commitment to
justice, or fairness; one is the way in which income is
distributed.
In general, the higher the development level of a nation, the
more equitable the distribution of income within a society.
Values:
Justice, equality, and liberty
The issues of justice and equality goes to the very heart of what
values political elites hold.
Justice addresses the question of how to balance competing
values.
The demands of personal freedom, which might require a
limited state that allows people to do what they want, will come
into conflict with the ideal of equality, which might call for the
state to limit concentration of wealth.

10. Values:
Welfare and economic well-being
Welfare and economic well-being; most nations endorse (at
least in their rhetoric) the welfare and economic well-being of
their people.
Welfare refers to government provisions for , or contributions
to, individual needs for employment, income, food, housing,
health care, and literacy.
Economic well-being is the level of income, food, health care ,
and education that satisfies minimum quality-of-life standard
and permits full growth and development.
Richer, industrial, developed nations have a much easier time
satisfying these needs.
Values of Citizens
What shapes the values of citizens?
What are those actual values?
How do they vary from country to country and within countries?
Is there a conflict between the values espoused by elites and
those espoused by average citizens?
To what degree should elites follow public opinion and respect
the basic values of the typical citizen?

11. Values of Citizens
Considerable evidence that the values of people who make up
political communities are rooted in and correlated with a
hierarchy of human needs: for sustenance and safety; for
belonging and esteem; and for intellectual, aesthetic, and social
fulfillment.
Associated with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: people are
motivated to achieve self-actualization, but only after other
needs on the hierarchy are fulfilled first.
Disagreement on Values
Whether there is broad consensus or significant disagreements
about certain basic values.
In the United States sharp disagreements can exist between
voters.
Republicans and Democrats differ substantially on several
issues, including government spending.
Notion of culture wars: division over the values reflected in
opposing positions on key public policy issues such as abortion,

12. gay marriage, prayer in public schools, euthanasia, genetic
research, and sex education.
Interest Groups and Class Values
Politics as a tug-of-war among competing interests; public
policy as a result of group pressures; political scientists
emphasize the importance of understanding the values and
behavior of powerful interest groups in the political community.
An interest group is comprised of members of the public who
organize and attempt to shape public policy on issues of
concern to them. Almost all political communities contain
interest groups seeking to protect their vital needs and
fundamental interests.
Social scientists influenced by the egalitarian ideas of Marxism

13. or socialism, focus on the interests held by social classes;
emphasize the role played by class values.
Class values are the political interests shaped by the social
classes, such as worker or capitalist; key interests wrestle for
power, working to integrate their values into laws,
administrative policies, and court decisions.
Values of nations, citizens, and interest groups are rooted in
their vital needs, fundamental interests, and perceived desires.
General agreement about fundamental needs and interests holds
all political communities together and enhances politics as a
civilizing process.
Serious gaps exist between civilized national values and actual
national values as measured by behavior.