Political Concepts [Presentation Thursdays]

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Carrying on with slides on Philippine Politics and Governance, these focused on some "basic" concepts in politics.

And yes, the title is terribly inelegant. But that ship has already sailed.

Anyway, some interesting stuff in there: Robert Dahl's definition of power, splitting hairs on the notion of government and democracy, and some slides on what ideology is all about. This last topic is interesting in its own right because the question tends to come up about whether religion is ideology. Good times, though absent the lecture to put everything in perspective, the slides tend to oversimply things.

(But to answer that question -- and risk opening a can of worms -- my take would be that it isn't, if only because the notion of faith is distinctly absent from ideology, not to mention the fact that it is entirely possible for some ideologies to be reconciled with the demands of certain religions.)

Once more, I made the presentation while getting used to Powerpoint early on in my abbreviated career in the academe, so it could stand much improvement. It's clear I was still experimenting with the use of colors to emphasize points in the text and didn't put much thought into how to make the onscreen text look aesthetically pleasing. Notwithstanding this, I must say that the default template remains one of my favorites from Powerpoint XP.

[About Presentation Thursdays: Every now and then, on a Thursday, I post a presentation from my archives and include some accompanying commentary not just about the content but also my thoughts on designing it. The presentations can also be viewed and downloaded from my Slideshare page (Creative Commons license applies).]