The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics (158 page)

 
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Those who control the mass organization of a political party within a locality. The word was given its sinister connotations from its first use in the United States in the late nineteenth century. It was used to describe urban groups in which politicians solicited votes and delivered favours in return. The favours might be jobs, welfare, or (in the upper reaches) contracts. The machine is wittily described by one of its bosses in W. L. Riordon (ed.),
Plunkitt of Tammany Hall
(1905). The machine survived attacks on it by the Progressives but had died out even in Chicago by the 1970s.
The term was imported to the United Kingdom by political opponents to describe Joseph Chamberlain's machine in late nineteenth-century Birmingham, and entrenched Labour Party machines in some cities in the twentieth century. These, too, have all disappeared.

 
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The branch of economics which deals with aggregates such as capital and labour, and their interactions in an economy as a whole. Politics everywhere is deeply affected by changes in macroeconomic variables such as inflation, unemployment, and the exchange rate. Some writers have developed ‘political business cycle’ models which aim to predict the popularity of the government from the current or recent (‘lagged’) values of these variables.

 
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(1751–1836)
US politician and political theorist. Madison entered Virginia politics in 1776 and national politics in 1780. He was instrumental in setting up the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and played a large role both in writing the Constitution and in its defence in the
Federalist Papers
, written jointly with Alexander
Hamilton
and John Jay . In his successful campaign to persuade Virginia to ratify the Constitution, he promised to promote amendments to it protecting individual rights against the state: these became the Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments, ratified in 1791). As the first party system developed, Madison joined
Jefferson's
agrarian and (relatively) democratic coalition; he was Jefferson's Secretary of State 1801–9, and succeeded him as President 1809–17. He was the shortest President of the United States to date (
Lincoln
was the tallest).
Madison's numbers of the
Federalist Papers
raise issues of enduring importance in political theory. Most opponents of ratification believed that the federal government would have excessive powers. In papers nos. 10 and 45–51, Madison argues that the horizontal division between states and the federal government, and the vertical division among legislature, executive, and judiciary, are the checks and balances which are necessary (and sufficient) to balance democracy and liberty. Madison believed that unchecked majority rule (as he perceived it in several of the state legislatures of the time) could lead to expropriation of the rich by the poor, or of creditors by debtors, for instance through ‘a rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project’. Madison's is one of the clearest statements of the ‘
tyranny
of the majority’; but he was wrong to describe the US Constitution as either a necessary or a sufficient curb of it. In particular, it could do nothing for groups which were neither a local nor a national majority, such as black Americans.

 
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(1753–1821)
Political philosopher, born in Savoy. Although a sincere Catholic, he was for fifteen years a Freemason, and briefly supported the
French Revolution
. Maistre had changed his mind before 1793 when the French invasion forced him into exile first in Switzerland, then in Russia as ambassador for the king of Savoy where he remained without his family until 1817. All Maistre's writings derived from his hate of the Revolution, but instead of a critique of particular events, he started from the form of thought that for him explained them, summarized in the notion of pride. This was a denial of the knowledge of final causes that had existed before the Fall of Adam and Eve, and which was afterwards available only in an instinctive form in the traditions of different societies, or in an individual form, in the consciences of the virtuous. The thinkers who had inspired the revolutionaries believed that they could do better by applying abstract reason, something which the history of the Revolution showed to be ridiculous. After the defeat of Napoleon, Maistre returned to Turin, and established contact with pro-royalist circles in France. He rapidly became dissatisfied with the Restoration, and with the post-revolutionary settlement. In 1819, he published
Du pape
in which he proposed the Church as the only possible sovereign, but this seems to have been more a matter of disappointment with the situation in Europe than something derived from his social philosophy.
CS 

 
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