ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights three features that are found in political arenas everywhere: a tussle between the public weal and private interests; mindlessness; and an ever-present risk of collapse either into chaos or into excessive regimentation. The public-weal way of looking at politics has a distinctively rational view of political behavior. The political achievements of great men and women are, of course, a legitimate historical study; so also is the study of institutional forms; but neither is a substitute for the analysis of political strategies and the political process. Rational calculation, in other words, dispassion and cold reason unhindered by moral scruples or emotional commitment, dominate the political arena. Politicians and political institutions need commitment, which is an unthinking, unquestioning, quasi-religious willingness to accept the regime's fundamental values and beliefs. Perfect order is a null category, a box that contains only the rules that prescribe orderly cooperative action intended to produce some agreed state of affairs.
