NIGERIAN GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS

 UNDERSTANDING THE CONCEPT OF POLITICS

       The most important factor leading to the development of knowledge in any field is study is agreement among its members about the content of that field. In other words, the scholars in the field must agree on a fairly clear-cut definition what they are studying. But, as noted by the English historian', Morse Stephens, after teaching-in the United State for two years, reported that he had not been able to find anyone who could tell him precisely what political science was.

         While there has been a wide range off definitions, most of them can be classified as being one of two types - the classicalist/institutionalism or behaviouralist school of though. The classicalists institutionalists identify politics with government, "legal government" or the "state", while others, the behaviouralists, revolve around the notions of "power" "authority", and or "conflict", Alfred de Grazia says that "politics" or the "political" Includes the events that happens around the decision-making centers of government" Charles Hyman claims that legal government is die subject matter of politics."

         This definition which equates politics with the formal institutions of the state, is too restrictive. The emphasis of the definition should be placed not on institutions. But in David Easton's words, on "a kind of a activity that may express itself through a variety of institution" politics is concerned with the activities within and related to the political system.

       An alternative definition equates politics with "power", "authority" or "conflict", Thus, to same, politics involves power and, influence. Politics gives on answer to the question "who gets what, when, and how? Another is that politics involves "influence" and the influence." These concepts, power and influence, are central to the study of politics but are, as well among the most difficult concepts to define.

         William Bluhm a political scientist explains. "Reduced to its universal elements then, politics is a social process characterized by activity involving rivalry and cooperation in the exercise of power and culminating in the making of decisions for a group", The appeal of the definition flows out of its apparent flexibility or wide scope. Politics is found wherever power relationships or conflict situations exist, which means that the political scientist can legitimately study the politics of a labour union or corporation, religious organizations, as well as what goes on in a legislature or administrative agency." The emphasis of this kind of definition is on a type of activity or behavior 'rather than a particular kind of institution. There is a practical difference between a definition based on government, and one based on politics.

       The Estonian definition of politics as the "authoritative allocations of values for a society", is considered useful by politics scientists. It emphasizes political activity rather than institution. The authoritative allocation of values is, Easton argues, the kind of activity we should be interested in. The first assumption is that in every society, values are desired, that is. People have different interests or objectives, and these must be allocated; or distributed by someone or something.

           In a sense, this is a power and conflicts situation. Every society has different political systems allocating values authoritatively. According to Easton, "a policy is authoritative when the people to whom its intended to apply or who are affected by it consider that they must or ought to obey it." In other words, it is considered binding.

           To most political scientists, therefore the behaviouralist approach to definition is more comprehensive. Politics is considered as the activities and process that take place in the political realm. Thus, in this vein, Quincy Wright in his classic study of international relations defines international politics as "the art of influencing, manipulating or controlling major groups I' the world so as to advance the purposes of some against the apposition of others." This definition could be readily applied to domestic as well as international politics." Vernon Dyke agrees with Wright. According to him, politics can be defined as "a struggle among actors pursuing conflicting desires en public issues", Herbert winter and Bellows suggest a definition that contains elements of the thoughts by Vernon Dyke and David East on. namely that "politics is a struggle between actors pursuing conflicting desires on issues that may result in an authoritative allocation of values.

           Most contemporary political scientists question the usefulness of any attempt to define politics on the groups that there is no final solution to a problem of definition, as reflected in the many existing definitions of politics, thus, a leading political scientist, Frank Goodnow, wrote that.

           Such an attempt to define politics is not only dangerous but even if successfully made, it is not in my opinion sufficiently fruitful of practical results to justify the expenditure of thought and time necessary to secure the desired end"

THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS

       Is there a science of politics - a body of laws, rules or principles bringing phenomena within the range of control and prediction? Can one speak of the laws of political behavior; the principles underlying the state or the rules for establishing and maintaining the most just and efficient government? To what extent is political science a science? This is a crucial and controversial debate."  In the sense of the precision that is attributed, often mistakenly, to such sciences as physics, mathematics, zoology and botany, perhaps political science is not a science. Political science cannot be considered an exact science because it is a soft or behavioral science. It deals with people rather than with matter.

         Scientific knowledge is usually defined area of inquiry. It is a body of organised and verifiable knowledge based upon observation and experience. Basically. science involves a method, some assumptions and certain goals. It is an Outlook, a means of study which involves precision, rigour and systematic way of proceeding." Thus, the identifying marks of science are in the methods of study used, the painstaking accuracy in observation and in collection of facts as well as the systematic analysis of close logical reasoning. The major objectives of any science are the description of phenomena and the establishment of general Principles by which the phenomena can be explained and predicted.

        A fundamental test of the scientific potential of any discipline is its capacity for clearly classifying its subject-matter in terms of discrete and mutually exclusive categories. These categories must in turn readily lend themselves to the construction of variables. A variable is any given set of phenomena that have measurable properties.

       For clarity, let us summarize the assumptions, or principles, which characteristics science or scientific knowledge:

• Patterns of behavior: This. Involves the discovery and description of uniformities and regularities in the behavior of natural phenomena.
• Empiricism: This involves verification or observation of facts or experimentation in a laboratory setting.
• Inter-subjectivity: This means that scientific knowledge should be communicable or transmissible. It should be subject to study in the same way by more than one person anywhere.
• Objectivity or value-free-analysis: The purpose of this is for precision or accuracy in the presentation of facts by using reliable techniques, e.g. mathematics and statistics.
• Systematization: This refers to the systematic and orderly collection and analysis of data; seeking out similarities and differences and organizing them into intelligible pattern or structure.
• Universal laws or generalization: Possibility of layout down general principles (through the discovery of recurrent uniformities) which have for practical purposes a universal application.
• High - level theory: Collection of logically related generalizations to explain events and situations and to predict future happenings.

         When we talk about a scientific study of politics we means that the study will be systematic and orderly and that students will attempt to find out what is or what actually exists. In short, they will use the scientific method. They will use the available information to form low or generalizations and construct theories with explanatory and predictive powers about polities life. Thus, a group of behavioral and quantitatively oriented political scientists, the behavioral is ts, has as their goal the scientific study of politics. Behaviouralism or the behavioral approach, seeks to develop generalizations about political behavior; I.e to advance hypotheses, about relationships, about discisver uniformities or regularities or laws and to suggest theories with explanatory and predictive capacities.

        How systematic is the political scientist's knowledge of politics, that is, his area of inquiry? As we have said earlier, political scientists do not agree on the appropriate categories for classifying the phenomena of politics. The large variable are difficult to control and quantify.

       

            There are formidable difficulties in the way of the scientific study of politics. Some relate primarily to the science as outlined above, yet, many political scientists, especially the anti-behaviouralists, deny that political science can ever meet the requirement. They advance reasons as follows to prove that we cannot talk of political science in the sense we will of physics, chemistry or biology.

• It is difficult to observe regularities and uniformities in human behavior, the subject matter of political science; unlike the constancy of the behavior of matter, the subject matter of the natural scientists.
• Useful generalizations about human behavior cannot be made as human beings can always change their actions whenever they wish. They can always adapt themselves to changing situations. Almost all discoveries about human behavior relate to a particular time and locality and therefore cannot be made the basis of absolute or universal law. In other words, it is difficult to formulate laws of political behavior. Man is free to modify his actions in keeping with, or in violation of, such lows once they are made known. There are no discoverable uniformities in human behavior.
• The basic principles of laboratory experiment, associated with the physical science, are not possible in political science. Human behavior is not amenable to experimental inquiry.
• Problem of explaining and predicting the behavior of individuals.
• Variable factors too much in political science and for less subject to measurement or control than in the natural sciences.
• Problem of subjectivity. It is very difficult to eliminate the subjective element, personal values, feelings, attitudes opinions, preferences and biases, from political investigation. The student of political science may find himself deeply involved with his subject-matter and therefore scientific objectivity is difficult. As David Butler has aptly remarked, "although the aim of every academic writer on politics should be a detached search for the truth, objectivity is only a goal that can' be striven for, it is not one that can'be achieved.
• Quantification or precision is still an unattainable goal because of the lack of agreement on the basic concepts and categories of the study of political science. Political science deals with imprecise and immeasurable concepts as well as with moral and ethical issues.
• Human behavior cannot be directly observable as such, only overt political actions can be seen. This creates a major problem of objectivity in research because the larger part of political life lies beneath the surface of human action which cannot be directly understood."

    From the above, it seems therefore more realistic to assume that there exists no systematic body of knowledge that can, to use MacIver's phrase serve as a definitive guide to the statesman, a science, of how to govern, an applied science, that can do in its field what medicine or engineering does in its field." "Political science,' according to Horold Lasswell, "has not the axiomatic quality of mathematics. In its equations, the variables are human beings whose uniqueness prevents their reduction to law in the scientific sense of that much abused word." Human beings are the least controllable, verifiable, law-obeying and predictable of subjects. He has the freedom of choice at any given time in the political process.

GOVERNANCE

   

         Governance as a concept has a dimension as it involves all the function of government and it is basic activities. It deals with the way and manner in which the need and capacities of the state and societies are organized and conducted. It is the practical activity of taking decision, how person should behave, the effect of government actions on people how relate to the person in government, etc.

        In order words, government can be defined as the role of rulers one might conclude that governance is the process by which authority conferred on ruler by which they make the rules and by which those rules are enforced and modified. 

         Governance is the act of covering. It relates to decisions that define expectations, grant power, or verify performance. It consists of either a separate process of part of management or leadership process.

UNDERSTANDING CONFLICT

        Fundamental to our focus on basic concepts of conflict is a brief on what conflict is all about. Consensus is achieved by scholars that conflict is an inevitable part or process of social life. It is a continuing reality of social existence. Necessarily. Conflict involves two or more parties that have, or perceive incompatibility in either interest s or values or in strategy of achieving the news needs desired, for sure. Be corrective signal or warning. It can be an integrative process. Conflict can be development driven. Yet, whether conflict is in the negative or positive, it cannot be left alone. It needs to be tailored towards the support of existing norms and rues of social existence. Either way, an uncontrolled conflict situation may be counterproductive. Change is the real subject of conflict.

CONFLICT MANAGEMENT

         Conflict management is basically the use of open' and clear dialogue to assist opponents or parties not to have agreements against hostile images or actions, but compliance to agreed resolutions and strategies." It is a whole effort, process that spans though conflict phases to prevent conflict in the first place, or its escalation, or to restore confidence of greater safety to parties even when a given conflict case is considered under control.

       Functionally, conflict management is more of the action driven dimension of conflict resolution Principles. Making agreements work is vital. How conflict reduction and control, or conflict escalation. It employs a whole lot of diplomatic techniques and skills necessary to contact and interact with disputing parties as well as timely coordination of intension and responses. In the process, it assumes on intervention mechanism, including monitoring and evaluation of conflict behaviors and the degree of compliance to resolutions on ending violence, demobilization of arms, or effecting concessions and remedies. These are important to head off tensions and fear of greater insecurity, or fears of reprisal attacks.

         

        Whatever the nature of conflict resolution as an agreed framework, conflict management proper is not intended to impose rigid conditions of achieving compliance. By its sensitivity to the conflict dynamics, it works better by means of free flow of communications and coordination of intelligence. The other is the capacity building of conflict management mechanism to be impartial when it gets to coordination of intelligence and introduction of remedies Remedy works well at every conflict phase because concessions and humanitarian concerns are ingredients of conflict management.

       Conflict management is committed to address stress and time.pressure(s). Respond time Is crucial, otherwise conflict situation can degenerate. Furthermore, it is more assuring when institutional mechanisms are in place, with 'diplomatic and legal frameworks' to help in achieving compliance. Usually, the value of institutional mechanism is to assist parties adjust their mindsets more in favour of collaboration and cooperation rather than discard.

      For the avoidance of doubt, it is absolutely an externally determined process. There may be a unilateral actor in conflict management. In this case, the initiative of conflict management comes primarily from one party usually by Signals suggestive of tension reduction or the readiness for dialogue. It may also be bilateral, where the two parties share the same fear, concern and capacity building to 'sort' out their differences and allow 'peace reign'. More often, third party involvement in conflict management includes any or combination of the following:

• States or regimes,
• Multilateral actors (such as UNO), regional and sub-regional initiatives and
• Non-governmental organization initiatives.

In both domestic and international settings, coercive means are occasionally threatened, or actually employed not necessarily to escalate tension, but to get the more unwilling party to be more submissive to conflict resolution principles. Here again, the timing, manner and impact of any coercive management strategy can head off tensions or even complicate matters. This explains why dialogue is the supreme strategy of conflict resolution and management.

CONFLICT RESOLUTION

  

            Conflict resolution is often confused with a term conflict resolved. Conflict resolutions primarily not conflict resolved, but agenda setting on peace principles. Conflict resolution is both a principle and process. In concert with communication channels open to parties in a conflict, conflict resolution systematizes intelligence and strategies on 'dos' and 'don'st' mediation, conciliation and arbitration.