The answer is: make decisions, generally within governments.
The word <em>politics </em>comes from the Greek and it was also the title of Aristotle´s influential book, called by the same name (in which Aristotle analyzed different constitutions of several city-States and their forms of government). If literally translated, the word means: affairs of the cities.
Nowadays the word has many connotations and implications, but generally speaking, it refers to the activities related to the art of governing cities or States, which includes, evidently, groups of people making decisions within governments.
The effect of the simile in this passage makes the passage more interesting and gives it that extra "boost" to help the reader understand what is going on.
