Politics is the study of decision-making power (who's got it, and who hasn't) at the inter-social and societal levels. When considered at smaller scales, e.g. within a profession, it is indistinguishable from applied ethics or specialist ethical codes - for these issues see the list of ethics articles.
At whatever scale, politics is the rather imperfect way that we actually do coordinate individual actions for mutual (or strictly personal) gain. What distinguishes the political from the ethical or merely social is a much-debated question. Most theorists would acknowledge that to be political, a process has to involve at least some potential for use of force or violence - politics is about conflict that is about much more than theory and fashion. To win a political conflict always implies that one has taken power away from one group or faction to give it to another. Most would also acknowledge that political conflict can easily degrade to zero-sum games, with little learned or settled by conflict other than "who won and who lost":
Lenin said politics was about "who could do what to whom" (Russian "Kto-Kgo" for "Who-Whom"). As political scientist Harold Lasswell said, politics is "who gets what, when and how." It also concerns how we resolve moral conflicts that are sufficiently serious that they constitute a risk of social disruption - in which case commitment to a common process of arbitration or diplomacy tends to reduce violence - usually viewed as a key goal of civilization. Bernard Crick is a major theorist of this view and also of the idea that politics is itself simply "ethics done in public", where public institutions can agree, disagree, or intervene to achieve a desirable culmination or comprehensive (process) result.
In addition to government, journalists, religious groups, special interest groups, and economic systems and conditions may all have influence on decisions. Therefore, politics touches on all these subjects.
Authors of studies of politics have both reflected and influenced the political systems of the world. Niccolo Machiavelli wrote The Prince, an analysis of politics in a monarchy, in 1513, while living in a monarchy. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote "The Communist Manifesto" in 1848 and it went on to be one of the most influential works of the twentieth century.
Today, much study of politics focuses on democracies, and how their form affects the decisions they make.
Other lines of political inquiry attempt to answer philosophical questions such as;
*is there a moral justification for government.
*what is the purpose of government?
*is there any possible empirical or more formal method for evaluating and quantifying ethicality and morality of human actions that could augment or replace religion or authority or political contention in deciding what political leaders "should" do?
*is there an objective way to evaluate the quality of a decision, policy, leader or party?
These are ongoing debates that are millennia old.
As well being influenced by these weighty matters, politics is also a social activity, and as such it is subject to the whims of fashion as any other.
Political Science is the study of political behavior and examines the acquisition and application of power, i.e. the ability to impose one's will on another
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