Summary Of The Chapter 'Power Beyond The Rules'

John Macionis and Ken Plummer discuss the multiple ways in which political activity exceeds or tries to do away with established practices. Whilst they claim that a political system tries to resolve controversy within a system of rules, their chapter “Power Beyond the Rules” describes politics as an entity which is a disagreement about goals and the means to achieve them.

The authors identify five common means in which to change a political system. The first of these is labeled “Revolution”. The passage described a political revolution as “…the overthrow of one political system in order to establish another”. Perhaps because of the colloquial use of the word, I found their claim that revolutions rarely escalate in to something of a violent matter rather perplexing. However, they later explain that the said revolution may spark a reform, which in turn may spark violent action, but not the actual political revolution. Macionis and Plummer state that revolutions share several traits, such as rising expectations, an unresponsive government, radical leadership by intellectuals and establishing a new legitimacy. All four points were discussed but one would have to look elsewhere for a more in depth look as the passage lacks examples.
Unlike the first point, this section is filled with examples which do grant the reader a rather elementary understanding of the subject. This section includes four insights into the subject drawn from Sociologist Paul Johnson, namely: Violence as a tactic, it may be committed by government/authority figures, democracies are more susceptible to it, and terrorism is simply a matter of definition. This final insight stipulates that one person’s terrorist may be another’s freedom fighter. Whilst these do help with the general notion of what terrorism is by definition, the characteristics were simplified and lacked thorough