Society

As a society we need to make decisions about things that affect us all.  According to John Donne, ‘no man is an island’.  That is because we are all part of society.  This term refers to a large group of people, living in a defined geographic area, who think of themselves as sharing common traditions and culture, and interact on a regular basis.  What is more, members of society share rules of conduct and behaviour so that individuals are integrated into a societal group.  The term society often refers to the people of a country, as in ‘New Zealand society’.  Equally it is applied to subgroups within a country, for example, Māori or Asian New Zealanders.  An individual may be part of many different societies at the same time and people have multiple identities.

Community

We also tend to think of ourselves as being a part of a community, a concept similar to society.  A community is a collective of people in a given location such as a village, town, city or country.  More specifically though, a community has a strong collective identity based on the bonds of friendship, loyalty and duty.  According to Ferdinand Tonnies, communities are bound together by ‘natural affection and mutual respect’.

Politics

Wherever there are people joined together in society or in communities, there is politics.  There is no one definition of politics agreed to by all.  But most definitions agree that politics is the means by which groups arrive at binding, collective decisions by attempting to reconcile differences among their members.  According to David Miller, four main features characterise politics:

• Politics is a collective activity, involving people with a shared membership or at least who acknowledge a shared fate.  Robinson Crusoe, alone on his desert island, could not practise politics.
• Initially at least, there must be diversity of views in terms of goals, or means, or both.  If there is no difference of opinion, then there is no need for politics.
• Politics involves reconciling these differences through discussion and persuasion.  Communication is an important part of politics.
• Once a decision is made, it is binding on all members of the group and can be enforced.  Politics does not really exist if decisions are reached solely by violence, but force, or the threat of force, may be used when implementing decisions reached through politics.

Government

At its very core, then, politics is the art of collective decision making.  But people have to do more than arrive at collective decisions; they must first agree on how these decisions should be made and implemented.  Government is the term used by political scientists to describe all of the institutions and structures that are involved in making and enforcing collective decisions.   In the New Zealand context government is usually used to mean the executive or cabinet, and sometimes the departments and agencies reporting to them.