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A batch of the best highlights from what Jophin's read, .
When addressing politics, we must accustom ourselves to think and speak about the actions and interests of specific, named leaders rather than thinking and talking about fuzzy ideas like the national interest, the common good, and the general welfare. Once we think about what helps leaders come to and stay in power, we will also begin to see how to fix politics. Politics, like all of life, is about individuals, each motivated to do what is good for them, not what is good for others.
The Dictator's Handbook
de Mesquita Bueno
If you can manage to work with the realists and re-educate the idealists, they will switch over to your position. Once these critics of conscience have been turned, the radicals will lose the broad credibility that the support of these moral authorities had conferred on them. Without support from the realists and the idealists the positions of radicals and opportunists are seen to be shallow and self-serving. At this point you will always be able to count on the opportunists to accept the final compromise.
The Ungovernable Society
Grégoire Chamayou
To arrive at an assessment of an agent’s overall power involves,
as we shall see, two kinds of judgment about what is relevant to
the assessment: judgments about the scope of the concept of
power one is using (roughly, how wide the lens is through which
one is looking for power) and judgments about the significance
of the outcomes the agents are capable of bringing about.
Power: A Radical View
Steven Lukes
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