According to the working definition in this lesson, what is politics?
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Political Science & Government · Foundations
What Is Politics?
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politics The process by which groups make collective decisions and allocate power and resources; in Lasswell's one-line framing, who gets what, when, how. Full entry → is the process by which groups make collective decisions and allocate power The ability of one person or group to get another person or group to do something. Full entry → and resources. Harold Lasswell summed it up as who gets what, when, how. It runs at every level: local, national, and international. Power may rest on coercion Power exercised through force or the threat of force, without the target's acceptance. Full entry →, force backed by threat, or on authority Power that people accept as legitimate, grounded in the belief that the office or ruler has the right to command. Full entry →, power people accept as legitimate. government The institution a society creates to organize itself, allocate authority, and accomplish collective goals, in OpenStax's definition. Full entry → is the institution; politics is the process. And politics is not inherently dirty: it is how strangers govern themselves together.
Why this matters
Politics decides who gets what: which streets get repaired, whether a school stays open, what a country spends on health care, and which nations cooperate over a shared river. Reading it as a process rather than a scandal lets you follow any decision, from a city council vote to a treaty, as a contest over collective choices. That skill serves you in civic life, and it carries forward: every group you will ever join, from a club committee to a workplace board, runs on the same machinery of collective decisions.
The college version
The working definition: the art of collective decisions
Politics is the process by which groups make collective decisions and allocate power and resources. That working definition is the one this lesson uses, and it comes from two standard sources. OpenStax's American Government 3e textbook describes politics as the process of gaining and exercising control within a government for the purpose of setting and achieving particular goals, especially those related to the division of resources within a nation. The American Political Science Association frames its discipline as the study of political processes and of how power and resources are allocated in society. Three features of the definition matter. Politics is a process: an activity people do, not a thing they own. It is collective: the decisions bind a whole group, not one person's private choice. And it is about allocation: every collective decision A choice made by a group that binds all of its members, whether or not each member agreed with it. Full entry → gives something to someone — money, permission, priority, protection — and withholds it from someone else. In 1936 the political scientist Harold Lasswell compressed all of this into a single line that, as Britannica notes, became the standard lay definition of politics: politics is who gets what, when, how.
The arenas: local, national, and international
Politics happens at three broad levels, and the same process appears at each. Local politics is the level of towns, cities, and school districts. Original example: the city council of the town of Riverton votes on whether to spend its budget on a new community center or on repaving the old market road; either way, the vote decides who gets what in that town. National politics is the level of countries. In the fictional country of Veyra, the national parliament debates a rail budget, and regions bargain over which lines get built first; every national law and budget answers Lasswell's question at the scale of a whole country. International politics is the level of relations between countries. Veyra's diplomats negotiate a treaty with a neighboring country over the river they share, in a forum like the United Nations — which describes itself as the one place where the world's nations gather to discuss common problems and find shared solutions. Britannica's survey of the discipline states the point plainly: political science focuses on power at the international, national, and local levels.
Power and authority: coercion versus legitimacy
Politics runs on power, but power comes in different kinds. Power is the ability of one person or group to get another person or group to do something. A hijacker has power: he gets what he wants by threatening force. That is coercion — power exercised through force or the threat of force, without the target's acceptance. Nobody would call the hijacker's hold over his hostages legitimate. Authority is the kind of power people accept as rightful. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, presenting Max Weber's account, explains that the basis of every system of authority, and of every kind of willingness to obey, is a belief: people obey because they believe the office or the ruler has the right to command. Original example: after a storm knocks out the traffic lights on Bridge Street, a police officer stands in the intersection and directs cars, and drivers follow her signals because they accept that her office carries the right to direct them. Minutes later, a passerby with a megaphone tries the same thing and is ignored. Both wanted the same behavior; only the officer had authority. Force can make people comply; authority makes compliance willing.
Politics versus government, and two honest notes
It is easy to blur the process with the institution. Government is the institution: in OpenStax's definition, the means by which a society organizes itself and allocates authority in order to accomplish collective goals and provide benefits. Politics is the process: the activity of deciding what the government will do, who will hold its offices, and how its resources will be spent. In Veyra, the legislature, the courts, and the agencies are the government; the campaigning, bargaining, and negotiating that decide what those bodies do are the politics. The full anatomy of government belongs to its own lesson; here the distinction is enough. Two honest notes close the topic. First, politics is not inherently dirty. The word carries a whiff of scandal, but the process itself is neutral — it is how groups settle disagreements and share things they cannot all have. Dishonest people operate in politics, as they do everywhere; the process is not the corruption. Second, and more important: politics is how strangers govern themselves together. You will never meet most of the people whose decisions bind you, and they will never meet you, yet roads get built, schools stay open, and shared rivers get managed. That is the ordinary achievement of the process called politics.
Eli explains
The same idea, in plain words
Explain it like I’m 10
Politics is how a group of people makes decisions together when they cannot all have what they want. It is the process, not the building: the discussing, voting, bargaining, and negotiating that decide who gets what. It runs at every level — a town deciding about a park, a country deciding about a budget, countries deciding about a shared river. Power is the ability to make others do something. Authority is power people accept as rightful; coercion is power backed by force. Government is the institution that carries the decisions out; politics is the activity that makes them. And politics is not a dirty word: it is how strangers manage to live together, at every scale from a block association to the United Nations.
Picture it like this
Think of politics as the weekly meeting of a big shared household. The budget is limited, everyone wants something different — the rent, the groceries, the parking spot — and the meeting decides who gets what. Lasswell's who gets what, when, how is exactly the agenda of that meeting, and of every bigger one like it.
Where the picture stops working
A household meeting is small and personal: everyone knows everyone, voices get heard, and the group can talk until it agrees. A country's politics is none of those things. Millions of strangers, formal institutions, very unequal voices, and decisions that bind people who were never in the room. The household analogy hides the scale, the formality, and the stakes.
Worked example
In the fictional town of Crossfield, the last empty lot downtown sits between a row of shops and an apartment building. A residents' group asks the town council to turn the lot into a community garden; a merchants' association wants a small parking lot for customers. Both sides attend the council's public hearing — local politics in action. The garden group brings a petition with three hundred signatures; the merchants present a survey showing that customers struggle to park. The council, whose authority the town accepts, hears both sides and votes to approve a smaller garden plus a dozen parking spaces behind it. Nobody got everything; everyone got something. In one meeting, Crossfield answered Lasswell's question — who gets what, when, how — and a town of strangers governed itself together.
Key takeaway
Politics is the process by which groups make collective decisions and allocate power and resources — who gets what, when, how. It runs at every level, from a town council to the United Nations, and it is how strangers govern themselves together.
Quick check
3 questions here, of 5 in this lesson’s practice set. Answers stay hidden until you check.
Political scientist Harold Lasswell's famous one-line summary of politics is:
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In the fictional country of Veyra, the city council of the town of Riverton votes on a community center, the national parliament debates a rail budget, and Veyra's diplomats negotiate a river-sharing treaty with a neighboring country. Which row correctly matches each decision to its arena?
Choose an answer, then check it.
Study tools & related lessonsYou’ll learn to · Common mistakes · Easily confused · Key vocabulary · Related
You’ll learn to
- Define politics using the working definition: the process by which groups make collective decisions and allocate power and resources.
- Explain Harold Lasswell's one-line framing of politics as who gets what, when, how.
- Distinguish the local, national, and international arenas of politics, with an original example of each.
- Distinguish power from authority, and coercion from legitimacy, using an original scenario.
- Distinguish politics (a process) from government (an institution).
- Apply the honest framing that politics is how strangers govern themselves together to analyze a group decision.
Common mistakes
Politics and government are the same thing.
Politics is the process of deciding; government is the institution that carries decisions out. The bargaining over a budget is politics; the agency that spends the money is government.
Politics only happens in elections, at the national level.
Elections are one channel of politics, and national politics is one arena. Politics runs continuously, and it runs locally and internationally too — and in any group that must decide together.
Power and authority are the same thing.
Power is the ability to get others to do something; authority is power people accept as legitimate. A hijacker has power but no authority; an officer directing traffic holds both, by different means.
Politics is inherently dirty.
The process is neutral: it is how groups decide together and share what they cannot all have. Corruption is a behavior that can appear inside politics, not the definition of it.
Easily confused
Politics vs. Government
Politics is the process — the deciding, bargaining, and negotiating over who gets what; government is the institution — the legislature, courts, and agencies that organize society and carry decisions out. In OpenStax's terms, government is the means by which a society organizes itself and allocates authority; politics is the activity of gaining and exercising control within it.
Power vs. Authority
Power is the ability of one person or group to get another to do something; authority is power people accept as legitimate. A passerby with a megaphone can try to direct traffic but is ignored (power without authority); a police officer directs it and is obeyed (authority).
Coercion vs. Legitimacy
Coercion is power backed by force or the threat of force; legitimacy is people's belief that a ruler or institution has the right to command. A hijacker extracts compliance by coercion; a judge's rulings carry weight because people accept the court's legitimacy.
Key vocabulary
- politics
- The process by which groups make collective decisions and allocate power and resources; in Lasswell's one-line framing, who gets what, when, how.
- government
- The institution a society creates to organize itself, allocate authority, and accomplish collective goals, in OpenStax's definition.
- power
- The ability of one person or group to get another person or group to do something.
- authority
- Power that people accept as legitimate, grounded in the belief that the office or ruler has the right to command.
- legitimacy
- People's belief that a ruler or institution has the right to exercise power; the belief that turns power into authority.
- coercion
- Power exercised through force or the threat of force, without the target's acceptance.
- collective decision
- A choice made by a group that binds all of its members, whether or not each member agreed with it.
- arena
- The level at which politics happens: local, national, or international.
Sources & references
- 1.1 What Is Government? — American Government 3e — OpenStax, Rice University
- What is Political Science? — American Political Science Association (APSA)
- Harold Lasswell — Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Political Science — Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Political Legitimacy — Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- State and local governments — USAGov (U.S. General Services Administration)
- About Us — United Nations
EliExplains lessons are original prose written from the open, credible references above. See Copyright & Licensing.
Researched 2026-08-22
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