All societies have to find effective ways of exercising power, controlling it and transferring it.
The competition for power between individuals and groups shapes societies and directly affects our daily lives. Politics is thus part of our daily life, and is one of the most important ways our society works and affects us as individuals. The academic study of politics is about how power and conflict is handled in different societies, at various levels from the very local to the international. But politics is not just about studying governments, nor need it be concerned only with organisations. Apart from political parties and pressure groups, the relationships between classes, races, regions and the sexes may be intensely political, and thus open to study.