Political science is a social science discipline concerned with the study of the state, nation,
government, and politics and policies of government. Aristotle defined it as the study of the state.
It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics, and the analysis of political
systems, political behavior, and political culture. Political scientists "see themselves
engaged in revealing the relationships underlying political events and conditions, and from
these revelations they attempt to construct general principles about the way the world
of politics works." Political science intersects with other fields; including economics, law,
sociology, history, anthropology, public administration, public policy, national politics, international
relations, comparative politics, psychology, political organization, and political theory.
Although it was codified in the 19th century, when all the social sciences were established,
political science has ancient roots; indeed, it originated almost 2,500 years ago with
the works of Plato and Aristotle. Political science is commonly divided into
distinct sub-disciplines which together constitute the field:
political theory comparative politics
public administration international relations
public law political methodology
Political theory is more concerned with contributions of various classical thinkers such as Aristotle,
Niccolò Machiavelli, Cicero, Plato and many others. Comparative politics is the science
of comparison and teaching of different types of constitutions, political actors, legislature
and associated fields, all of them from an intrastate perspective. International relations
deals with the interaction between nation-states as well as intergovernmental and transnational
organizations. Political science is methodologically diverse
and appropriates many methods originating in social research. Approaches include positivism,
interpretivism, rational choice theory, behavioralism, structuralism, post-structuralism, realism,
institutionalism, and pluralism. Political science, as one of the social sciences, uses
methods and techniques that relate to the kinds of inquiries sought: primary sources
such as historical documents and official records, secondary sources such as scholarly
journal articles, survey research, statistical analysis, case studies, experimental research
and model building.
Overview Political scientists study matters concerning
the allocation and transfer of power in decision making, the roles and systems of governance
including governments and international organizations, political behavior and public policies. They
measure the success of governance and specific policies by examining many factors, including
stability, justice, material wealth, peace and public health. Some political scientists
seek to advance positive theses by analyzing politics. Others advance normative theses,
by making specific policy recommendations. Political scientists provide the frameworks
from which journalists, special interest groups, politicians, and the electorate analyze issues.
According to Chaturvedy, "...Political scientists may serve as advisers to specific politicians,
or even run for office as politicians themselves. Political scientists can be found working
in governments, in political parties or as civil servants. They may be involved with
non-governmental organizations or political movements. In a variety of capacities, people
educated and trained in political science can add value and expertise to corporations.
Private enterprises such as think tanks, research institutes, polling and public relations firms
often employ political scientists." In the United States, political scientists known
as "Americanists" look at a variety of data including constitutional development, elections,
public opinion and public policy such as Social Security reform, foreign policy, US Congressional
committees, and the US Supreme Court — to name only a few issues.
"As a discipline" political science, possibly like the social sciences as a whole, "lives
on the fault line between the 'two cultures' in the academy, the sciences and the humanities."
Thus, in some American colleges where there is no separate School or College of Arts and
Sciences per se, political science may be a separate department housed as part of a
division or school of Humanities or Liberal Arts. Whereas classical political philosophy
is primarily defined by a concern for Hellenic and Enlightenment thought, political scientists
are also marked by a great concern for "modernity" and the contemporary nation state, along with
the study of classical thought, and as such share a greater deal of terminology with sociologists.
Most United States colleges and universities offer B.A. programs in political science.
M.A. or M.A.T. and Ph.D. or Ed.D. programs are common at larger universities. The term
political science is more popular in North America than elsewhere; other institutions,
especially those outside the United States, see political science as part of a broader
discipline of political studies, politics, or government. While political science implies
use of the scientific method, political studies implies a broader approach, although the naming
of degree courses does not necessarily reflect their content. Separate degree granting programs
in international relations and public policy are not uncommon at both the undergraduate
and graduate levels. Master's level programs in political science are common when political
scientists engage in public administration. The national honor society for college and
university students of government and politics in the United States is Pi Sigma Alpha.
Modern political science Because political science is essentially a
study of human behavior, in all aspects of politics, observations in controlled environments
are often challenging to reproduce or duplicate, though experimental methods are increasingly
common. Citing this difficulty, former American Political Science Association President Lawrence
Lowell once said "We are limited by the impossibility of experiment. Politics is an observational,
not an experimental science." Because of this, political scientists have historically observed
political elites, institutions, and individual or group behavior in order to identify patterns,
draw generalizations, and build theories of politics.
Like all social sciences, political science faces the difficulty of observing human actors
that can only be partially observed and who have the capacity for making conscious choices
unlike other subjects such as non-human organisms in biology or inanimate objects as in physics.
Despite the complexities, contemporary political science has progressed by adopting a variety
of methods and theoretical approaches to understanding politics and methodological pluralism is a
defining feature of contemporary political science. Often in contrast with national media,
political science scholars seek to compile long-term data and research on the impact
of political issues, producing in-depth articles breaking down the issues
The advent of political science as a university discipline was marked by the creation of university
departments and chairs with the title of political science arising in the late 19th century.
In fact, the designation "political scientist" is typically for those with a doctorate in
the field. Integrating political studies of the past into a unified discipline is ongoing,
and the history of political science has provided a rich field for the growth of both normative
and positive political science, with each part of the discipline sharing some historical
predecessors. The American Political Science Association was founded in 1903 and the American
Political Science Review was founded in 1906 in an effort to distinguish the study of politics
from economics and other social phenomena. Behavioral revolution and new institutionalism
In the 1950s and the 1960s, a behavioral revolution stressing the systematic and rigorously scientific
study of individual and group behavior swept the discipline. A focus on studying political
behavior, rather than institutions or interpretation of legal texts, characterized early behavioral
political science, including work by Robert Dahl, Philip Converse, and in the collaboration
between sociologist Paul Lazarsfeld and public opinion scholar Bernard Berelson.
The late 1960s and early 1970s witnessed a take off in the use of deductive, game theoretic
formal modeling techniques aimed at generating a more analytical corpus of knowledge in the
discipline. This period saw a surge of research that borrowed theory and methods from economics
to study political institutions, such as the United States Congress, as well as political
behavior, such as voting. William H. Riker and his colleagues and students at the University
of Rochester were the main proponents of this shift.
Despite considerable research progress in the discipline based on all the kinds of scholarship
discussed above, it has been observed that progress toward systematic theory has been
modest and uneven. Political science in the Soviet Union
In the Soviet Union, political studies were carried out under the guise of some other
disciplines like theory of state and law, area studies, international relations, studies
of labor movement, "critique of bourgeois theories", etc. Soviet scholars were represented
at the International Political Science Association since 1955.
In 1979, the 11th World Congress of IPSA took place in Moscow. Until the late years of the
Soviet Union, political science as a field was subjected to tight control of the Communist
Party of the Soviet Union and was thus subjected to distrust. Anti-communists accused political
scientists of being "false" scientists and of having served the old regime.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, two of the major institutions dealing with political
science, the Institute of Contemporary Social Theories and the Institute of International
Affairs, were disbanded, and most of their members were left without jobs. These institutes
were victims of the first wave of anticommunist opinion and ideological attacks. Today, the
Russian Political Science Association unites professionals-political scientists from in
Russia. Recent developments
In 2000, the Perestroika Movement in political science was introduced as a reaction against
what supporters of the movement called the mathematicization of political science. Those
who identified with the movement argued for a plurality of methodologies and approaches
in political science and for more relevance of the discipline to those outside of it.
Evolutionary psychology theories argue that humans have evolved a highly developed set
of psychological mechanisms for dealing with politics. However, these mechanisms evolved
for dealing with the small group politics that characterized the ancestral environment
and not the much larger political structures in today's world. This is argued to explain
many important features and systematic cognitive biases of current politics.
Subfields Most political scientists work broadly in
one or more of the following five areas: Comparative politics, including area studies
International relations Political philosophy e.g. Political ethics
Public administration Public law
Some political science departments also classify methodology as well as scholarship on the
domestic politics of a particular country as distinct sub fields. In the United States,
American politics is often treated as a separate subfield.
In contrast to this traditional classification, some academic departments organize scholarship
into thematic categories, including political philosophy, political behavior, and political
institutions. Political science conferences and journals often emphasize scholarship in
more specific categories. The American Political Science Association, for example, has 42 organized
sections that address various methods and topics of political inquiry.
History
See also Outline of political science - structured
list of political topics, arranged by subject area
Index of politics articles - alphabetical list of political subjects
Political lists - lists of political topics Outline of law
Index of law articles Process tracing
References
Further reading The Evolution of Political Science. APSR Centennial
Volume of American Political Science Review. Apsanet.org. 4 February 2009.
European Political Processes: Essays and Readings. [Compiled and] ed., with original essays,
by Henry S. Albinski [and] Lawrence K. Pettit. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. vii, 448 p.
Goodin, R. E.; Klingemann, Hans-Dieter. A New Handbook of Political Science. Oxford
and New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-829471-9.
Klingemann, Hans-Dieter, ed. The State of Political Science in Western Europe. Opladen:
Barbara Budrich Publishers. ISBN 978-3-86649-045-1. Schramm, S. F.; Caterino, B., eds.. Making
Political Science Matter: Debating Knowledge, Research, and Method. New York and London:
New York University Press. Making Political Science Matter. Google Books. 4 February 2009.
Roskin, M.; Cord, R. L.; Medeiros, J. A.; Jones, W. S.. Political Science: An Introduction.
10th ed. New York: Pearson Prentice Hall. ISBN 978-0-13-242575-9. ISBN 978-0-13-242575-9.
Tausch, A.; Prager, F.. Towards a Socio-Liberal Theory of World Development. Basingstoke:
Macmillan; New York: St. Martin's Press. Oxford Handbooks of Political Science
Noel, Hans "Ten Things Political Scientists Know that You Don’t" The Forum: Vol. 8:
Iss. 3, Article 12. Zippelius, Reinhold. Geschichte der Staatsideen,
10th ed. Munich: C.H. Beck. ISBN 3-406-49494-3. Zippelius, Reinhold. Allgemeine Staatslehre,
Politikwissenschaft,16th ed. Munich: C.H. Beck. ISBN 978-3-406-60342-6.
External links European Consortium for Political Research
International Political Science Association International Studies Association
IPSAPortal : Top 300 websites for Political Science
International Association for Political Science Students
American Political Science Association Midwest Political Science Association
Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies. "Political Science Department which
offers MA and PhD programmes" Dalmacio Negro, Political Science Emeritus
Professor at CEU San Pablo University, Madrid Political Studies Association of the UK
PROL: Political Science Research Online Truman State University Political Science
Research Design Handbook A New Nation Votes: American Elections Returns
1787–1825 Comparative Politics in Argentina & Latin
America: Site dedicated to the development of comparative politics in Latin America.
Introduction to Political Science Video Library Guides to Political Science
Library. "Political Science". Research Guides. USA: University of Michigan.
Bodleian Libraries. "Political Science". LibGuides. UK: University of Oxford.
Library. "Politics Research Guide". LibGuides. New Jersey, USA: Princeton University.
Libraries. "Political Science". Research Guides. New York, USA: Syracuse University.
University Libraries. "Political Science". Research Guides. USA: Texas A&M University.