Talk Doesn’t Matter?
If politics is concerned with who gets what, or with the authoritative allocation of values, one may be pardoned for wondering why it need involve so much talk. An individual or group can most directly get what it wants by taking it or by force and can get nothing directly by talk. The obvious difficulty is the possibility of resistance, and it is the counterforce that talk may circumvent.
Murray Edelman, The Symbolic Uses of Politics
Notes on a Theory... 
[…] We might compare this view with David Easton. Easton is famous both for his systems theory of politics and perhaps even more so for his definition of politics. It is one that is often repeated, but it seems to me it is generally deployed without much thought about what his point is or how it differs from other definitions of politics. […]
What is Politics? Easton, Stone and Claim Making | Notes on a Theory...
December 2, 2013 at 8:34 am