Introduction to Politics

The Foreword of this book describes the outlook on which it is based and
the purposes that it pursues. I hope that you have read it.
In this chapter I want to give you a preview of what is to come-asketch
of the contents of the book. And I will define a few of the crucial words that I
will be using throughout the book.
I divide the book into seven parts.
Part I includes only this introductory chapter. The remaining parts take
up a series of issues or problems.
Words that appear in bold face type are defined in the Glossary at the
end of the book.
Part II discusses democracy and authoritarianism and is by far the long-
est, including chapters 2 through 9. Democracy and authoritarianism denote
kinds of political systems that contrast with each other and that are in
deadly struggle.
The United States and Canada are democracies, and so are many other
countries. The Soviet Union and all communist countries are authoritarian;
and so are the numerous other dictatorships that exist in the world.
It is easy to name countries that are democratic and countries that are
authoritarian, but it is more difficult to find criteria that permit you to put
every country unerringly into one category or the other.
I treat democracy and authoritarianism at the beginning of the book
because the choice between them is of such fundamental and general
significance. Moreover, I assume that the readers of this book are mainly
Americans and that in starting with democracy I am starting with the more
familiar. In any event,
if
you live in a democracy it is important for you to
know how democracy operates and what its problems are. And since democ-
racy is threatened by authoritarian regimes-at least by some of them-it is
important for you to know the nature of the threat. Further, once you know
the nature of both democracy and authoritarianism, you are in a better posi-
tion to tackle the other issues that I will discuss in later chapters.