Talk:Politics

Is that it ?

Does anyone have plans to complete this article? My first reaction as a newcomer to this workgroup was that this article must be "under construction", but the history page seems to indicate that nothing of substance has been added since July, and not a great deal since November. Surely we can't leave it as it is - with the only reference to democracy being Aristotle's "rule by the poor" and no links to Locke, Mill etc, and nothing on ideologies or forms of government. Can we? Nick Gardner 05:12, 15 November 2007 (CST)

I dislike the whole article,and am inclined to say we should scrap it and start again. --Martin Baldwin-Edwards 07:36, 15 November 2007 (CST)

Since nobody has dissented, I propose shortly to give effect to Martin Baldwin-Edwards' suggestion and make a fresh start. - Nick Gardner 02:35, 18 November 2007 (CST)

Especially as this is an imported article [from WP or where??] I doubt that there will be an objection. --Martin Baldwin-Edwards 11:17, 20 November 2007 (CST)

Please check

I am nearing the end of this article, and I should be grateful if, before I leave it, those of you that have it on your watchlists could spare the time for a quick check for errors and omissions. Nick Gardner 01:11, 27 November 2007 (CST)

To my mind, this is already a lot better than the original thing that was here. A few things stand out as missing, from a quick reading: these are the state as the central institution in advanced democracies; and forms of governance. As it stands, a novice reader would think that the state is the government: this is a common fallacy and needs an entire section on theory of the state. The forms of governance section I think needs to start off with a simple treatment, adding more sophistication with excpetions and additional layers of complexity. Some of the conventional terminology might be appropriate here -- but always as information about how the conventional literature describes it, not as a de facto "reality" !@

But don't feel compelled to do any of this, Nick: I might write something when I have spare time [e.g. Xmas]. --Martin Baldwin-Edwards 17:22, 1 December 2007 (CST)

Thank you Martin. I do hope that you will be able to find time to put it all right. If you run out of time before you finish, please let me know what more is needed and I'll do my best to provide it. Nick Gardner 02:58, 2 December 2007 (CST)

The concept of the state

Following Martin's suggestion, I have added "The concept of the state" as a sub-paragraph under the heading of "Fundamentals", with the intention of inserting a draft based mainly on A definition of the State by Professor Chandran Kukathas[1]. I have also added a "glossary" heading to the related articles subpages, with the intention of placing some of Chandran Kukathas' definitions there - so as not to allow terminological definitions to hamper the readability of the main text. I will await objections before going further. Nick Gardner 11:00, 20 December 2009 (UTC)