Politics

Politics is the art of governing an administrative entity, such as a city or nation, as well as the methods and beliefs involved in that management.

In a democracy, people who share broad political goals often gather into parties to mobilize fundraising and create a unified manifesto, called a party platform. In a multi-party state, such as the United States, politics can be adversarial but in a productive way.

In a single-party state, such as communist China or certain democracies where the minority party is practically non-existent, politics amounts to a process of rubber-stamping the decisions of a small ruling group.

Sometimes the accusation that an opponent is "playing partisan politics" is thrown around as a criticism, but this is actually expected behavior in a multi-party system.