Political science

This article is about the field of study. For other uses, see Political Science (disambiguation).

"Poli sci" redirects here. For other uses, see Poli sci (disambiguation).

Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and power, and the analysis of political activities, political thought, political behavior, and associated constitutions and laws.

Modern political science can generally be divided into the three subdisciplines of comparative politics, international relations, and political theory. Other notable subdisciplines are public policy and administration, domestic politics and government (often studied within comparative politics), political economy, and political methodology. Furthermore, political science is related to, and draws upon, the fields of economics, law, sociology, history, philosophy, human geography, journalism, political anthropology, psychology, and social policy.

Political science is methodologically diverse and appropriates many methods originating in psychology, social research, and cognitive neuroscience. Approaches include positivism, interpretivism, rational choice theory, behaviouralism, 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the social sciences, uses methods and techniques that relate to the kinds of inquires sought: primary sources, such as historical documents and official records, secondary sources, such as scholarly journal articles, survey research, statistical analysis, case studies, experimental research, and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.

History

Main article: History of political science

Origin

As a social political science, contemporary political science started to take shape in the latter half of the 19th century. At that time it began to separate itself from political philosophy, which traces its roots back to the works of Aristotle and Plato, which were written nearly 2,500 years ago. The term "political science" was not always distinguished from political philosophy, and the modern discipline has a clear set of antecedents including also moral philosophy, political economy, political theology, history, and other fields concerned with normative determinations of what ought to be and with deducing the characteristics and functions of the ideal state.

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. The designation "political scientist" is commonly used to denote someone with a doctorate or master's degree 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 and the American Political Science Review were founded in 1903 and 1906, respectively, in an effort to distinguish the study of politics from economics and other social phenomena. The journal Political Science Quarterly was established in 1886 by the Academy of Political Science. In the inaugural issue of Political Science Quarterly, Munroe Smith defined political science as "the science of the state. Taken in this sense, it includes the organization and functions of the state, and the relation of states one to another."

Behavioural 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 takeoff in the use of deductive, game-theoretic formal modelling 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.

21st century

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.

Some 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.

Overview

Main sub-disciplines of political science, from top left to right: 1. Domestic politics and government; 2. Comparative politics; 3. International relations; 4. Political theory; 5. Political economy; 6. Political methodology; 7. Public administration; 8. Public policy

Political science is a social study concerning the allocation and transfer of power in decision making, the roles and systems of governance including governments and international organizations, political behaviour, and public policies. It measures 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 (which attempt to describe how things are, as opposed to how they should be) by analysing politics; others advance normative theses, such as by making specific policy recommendations. The study of politics and policies can be closely connected—for example, in comparative analyses of which types of political institutions tend to produce certain types of policies. Political science provides analysis and predictions about political and governmental issues. Political scientists examine the processes, systems and political dynamics of countries and regions of the world, often to raise public awareness or to influence specific governments.

Political scientists may 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 (NGOs) 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.

Country-specific studies

Political scientists may study political phenomena within one specific country; for example, they may study just the politics of the United States or just the politics of China.

Political scientists look at a variety of data, including constitutions, elections, public opinion, and public policy, foreign policy, legislatures, and judiciaries. Political scientists will often focus on the politics of their own country; for example, a political scientist from Indonesia may become an expert in the politics of Indonesia.

Anticipating crises

The theory of political transitions, and the methods of analyzing and anticipating crises, form an important part of political science. Several general indicators of crises and methods were proposed for anticipating critical transitions. Among them, one statistical indicator of crisis, a simultaneous increase of variance and correlations in large groups, was proposed for crisis anticipation and may be successfully used in various areas. Its applicability for early diagnosis of political crises was demonstrated by the analysis of the prolonged stress period preceding the 2014 Ukrainian economic and political crisis. There was a simultaneous increase in the total correlation between the 19 major public fears in the Ukrainian society (by about 64%) and in their statistical dispersion (by 29%) during the pre-crisis years. A feature shared by certain major revolutions is that they were not predicted. The theory of apparent inevitability of crises and revolutions was also developed.

The study of major crises, both political crises and external crises that can affect politics, is not limited to attempts to predict regime transitions or major changes in political institutions. Political scientists also study how governments handle unexpected disasters, and how voters in democracies react to their governments' preparations for and responses to crises.

Cognate fields

Most political scientists work broadly in one or more of the following five areas:

• Political philosophy or political theory
• Public administration
• Public law
• Public policy
• Program evaluation

Program evaluation is a systematic method for collecting, analyzing, and using information to answer questions about projects, policies, and programs, particularly about their effectiveness and efficiency. In both the public and private sectors, stakeholders often want to know whether the programs they are funding, implementing, voting for, receiving, or objecting to are producing the intended effect. While program evaluation first focuses on this definition, important considerations often include how much the program costs per participant, how the program could be improved, whether the program is worthwhile, whether there are better alternatives, whether there are unintended outcomes, and whether the program goals are appropriate and useful.

Policy analysis is a technique used in public administration to enable civil servants, activists, and others to examine and evaluate the available options to implement the goals of laws and elected officials.

Subfields

Many political scientists conduct research in one of four areas, described below:

• Political philosophy: Concerned with the foundations of political community and institutions, while focusing on human nature and the moral purposes of political association.
• Comparative politics: Compares contemporary political systems and discovers general laws and theories.
• International relations: Concerned with developing an understanding of why states and non-state international actors interact.
• Political methodology: Studies the philosophical bases of social science, political science, empirical research design and analysis.

Some political science departments also classify methodology as well as scholarship on the domestic politics of a particular country as distinct 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 behaviour (including public opinion, collective action, and identity), and political institutions (including legislatures and international organizations). 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.

Research methods

Main article: Political methodology

Political science is methodologically diverse; political scientists approach the study of politics from a host of different ontological orientations and with a variety of different tools. Because political science is essentially a study of human behaviour, in all aspects of politics, observations in controlled environments are often challenging to reproduce or duplicate, though experimental methods are increasingly common (see experimental political science). 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 behaviour 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.

Empirical political science methods include the use of field experiments, surveys and survey experiments, case studies, process tracing, historical and institutional analysis, ethnography, participant observation, and interview research.

Political scientists also use and develop theoretical tools like game theory and agent-based models to study a host of political systems and situations.

Political theorists approach theories of political phenomena with a similar diversity of positions and tools, including feminist political theory, historical analysis associated with the Cambridge school, and Straussian approaches.

Political science may overlap with topics of study that are the traditional focuses of other social sciences—for example, when sociological norms or psychological biases are connected to political phenomena. In these cases, political science may either inherit their methods of study or develop a contrasting approach. For example, Lisa Wedeen has argued that political science's approach to the idea of culture, originating with Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba and exemplified by authors like Samuel P. Huntington, could benefit from aligning more closely with the study of culture in anthropology. In turn, methodologies that are developed within political science may influence how researchers in other fields, like public health, conceive of and approach political processes and policies.

Education

Political science, possibly like the social sciences as a whole, can be described "as a discipline which 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 more terminology with sociologists (e.g., structure and agency).

Most United States colleges and universities offer BA programs in political science. MA or MAT and PhD or EdD 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 the use of the scientific method, political studies implies a broader approach, although the naming of degree courses does not necessarily reflect their content. Separate programs (often professional degrees) in international relations and public policy are not uncommon at both the undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Master's-level programs in public administration are professional degrees covering public policy along with other applied subjects; they are often seen as more linked to politics than any other discipline, which may be reflected by being housed in that department.

The national honor society for college and university students of government and politics in the United States is Pi Sigma Alpha.

Writing

There are different genres of writings in political sciences; including but not limited to:

• Argument essays and research papers
• Political theory writing
• Responses to articles, texts, events thoughts and reflective papers

The most common piece of writing in political sciences are research papers, which investigate an original research question.

See also

• Comparative politics
• History of political science
• International relations
• Outline of political science – structured list of political topics, arranged by subject area
• Index of politics articles – alphabetical list of political subjects
• Political history of the world
• Political lists – lists of political topics
• Political philosophy

Further reading

• The Evolution of Political Science (November 2006). APSR Centennial Volume of American Political Science Review. Apsanet. 4 February 2009.
• European Political Processes: Essays and Readings (1968). [Compiled and] ed., with original essays, by Henry S. Albinski [and] Lawrence K. Pettit. Boston: Allyn & Bacon. vii, 448 p.
• Oxford Handbooks of Political Science
• Abbott, Kenneth W., and Duncan Snidal. "Hard and soft law in international governance." International organization 54.3 (2000): 421–456.
• Atchison, Amy L, editor. Political Science Is for Everybody : An Introduction to Political Science. University of Toronto Press, 2021.
• Badie, Bertrand, et al. International Encyclopedia of Political Science. SAGE, 2011.
• Blatt, Jessica. Race and the Making of American Political Science. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018.
• Bleich, Erik. "What is Islamophobia and how much is there? Theorizing and measuring an emerging comparative concept." American behavioral scientist 55.12 (2011): 1581–1600.
• Bornschier, V. (1996). Western society in transition. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction.
• Bornschier, V. (2005). Culture and politics in economic development. London: Routledge (Routledge frontiers of political economy, 67).
• Bornschier, V. (2016). Hegemonic decline, West European unification, and the future structure of the core. Journal of World-Systems Research, 1, 69–96. https://doi.org/10.5195/jwsr.1995.42
• Bornschier, V., & Chase-Dunn, C. K. (1985) Transnational corporations and underdevelopment. New York: Praeger.
• Brand, Ulrich, and Markus Wissen. "Crisis and continuity of capitalist society-nature relationships: The imperial mode of living and the limits to environmental governance." Review of International Political Economy 20.4 (2013): 687–711.
• Brand, Ulrich, and Markus Wissen. The limits to capitalist nature: Theorizing and overcoming the imperial mode of living. Rowman & Littlefield, 2018.
• Brand, Ulrich. "Green economy–the next oxymoron? No lessons learned from failures of implementing sustainable development." GAIA-Ecological Perspectives for Science and Society 21.1 (2012): 28–32.
• Caramani, Daniele, editor. Comparative Politics. Fifth ed., Oxford University Press, 2020.
• Elsenhans, H. (2011). The rise and demise of the capitalist world system. Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag.
• Elsenhans, H. (2014). Saving capitalism from the capitalists: world capitalism and global history. Los Angeles: Sage.
• Elsenhans, H. (2016). Hartmut Elsenhans and a critique of capitalism: conversations on theory and policy implications. Edited by N. Wilcock and C. Scholz. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. doi:10.1007/978-1-137-56464-1.
• Elsenhans, H. (2021). Development, capitalism, and rent: the political economy of Hartmut Elsenhans. Edited by H. Warnecke-Berger. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-62605-1.
• Elsenhans, H., & Babones, S. (2020). BRICS or Bust? Stanford University Press.
• Gerardo L. Munck and Richard Snyder, eds. (2007) Passion, Craft, and Method in Comparative Politics. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
• Goodin, R.E.; Klingemann, Hans-Dieter (1996). A New Handbook of Political Science. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-829471-9.
• Goodin, Robert E, editor. The Oxford Handbook of Political Science. Oxford University Press, 2011.
• Grinin, L., Korotayev, A. and Tausch A. (2016) Economic Cycles, Crises, and the Global Periphery. Springer International Publishing, Heidelberg, New York, Dordrecht, London, ISBN 978-3-319-17780-9;
• Hayek, F. A. (1960). The constitution of liberty. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Hochschild, Jennifer L. Race and Class in Political Science. Michigan Journal of Race and Law. 2005;11 (1) :99-114.
• Inglehart, Ronald F. Religion's sudden decline: what's causing it, and what comes next?. Oxford University Press, USA, 2021.
• Inglehart, Ronald, Pippa Norris, and Inglehart Ronald. Rising tide: Gender equality and cultural change around the world. Cambridge University Press, 2003.
• Katznelson, Ira, et al. Political Science: The State of the Discipline. W.W. Norton, 2002.
• Kellstedt, Paul M, and Guy D Whitten. The Fundamentals of Political Science Research. Third edition., Third ed., Cambridge University Press, 2018.
• Kohler, Gernot, et al. Globalization : Critical Perspectives. Nova Science Publishers, New York, 2003. With contributions by Samir Amin, Immanuel Wallerstein, Christopher Chase-Dunn, Kimmo Kiljunen, Andre Gunder Frank, et al.
• Klingemann, Hans-Dieter, ed. (2007) The State of Political Science in Western Europe. Opladen: Barbara Budrich Publishers. ISBN 978-3-86649-045-1.
• Lowndes, Vivien, et al., editors. Theory and Methods in Political Science. Fourth ed., Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.
• Noel, Hans (2010-10-14 | DOI https://doi.org/10.2202/1540-8884.1393) "Ten Things Political Scientists Know that You Don’t" The Forum: Vol. 8: Iss. 3, Article 12. de Gruyter.
• Morlino, Leonardo, et al. Political Science : A Global Perspective. Sage, 2017.
• Norris, Pippa. "Cancel Culture: Myth or Reality?." Political Studies (2021): 00323217211037023.
• Norris, Pippa. Democratic deficit: Critical citizens revisited. Cambridge University Press, 2011.
• Roskin, M.; Cord, R.L.; Medeiros, J.A.; Jones, W.S. (2007). Political Science: An Introduction. 10th ed. New York: Pearson Prentice Hall. ISBN 978-0-13-242575-9.
• Rosenberger, Sieglinde, and Birgit Sauer. Politics, Religion and Gender : Framing and Regulating the Veil. Routledge, 2012.
• Schram, S.F.; Caterino, B., eds. (2006). Making Political Science Matter: Debating Knowledge, Research, and Method. New York and London: New York University Press. Google Books 4 February 2009.
• Senghaas, D. (1985). The European experience: a historical critique of development theory. Leamington Spa, Warwickshire: Berg.
• Senghaas, D. (2013). Dieter Senghaas: pioneer of peace and development research. Berlin: Springer (Springerbriefs on pioneers in science and practice, 6). doi:10.1007/978-3-642-34114-4.
• Shively, W. Phillips. Power & Choice : An Introduction to Political Science. Fifteenth ed., Rowman & Littlefield, 2019.
• Solomon, Hussein. Islamic State and the Coming Global Confrontation. Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.
• Tausch, A.; Prager, F. (1993). Towards a Socio-Liberal Theory of World Development. Basingstoke: Macmillan; New York: St. Martin's Press and Springer.
• Tausch, Arno (2015). The political algebra of global value change. General models and implications for the Muslim world. With Almas Heshmati and Hichem Karoui (1st ed.). Nova Science Publishers, New York. ISBN 978-1629488998.
• Tausch, Arno, For a globally visible political science in the 21st Century. Bibliometric analyses and strategic consequences (October 26, 2021). Available at SSRN: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3950846
• Taylor, C. L., & Russett, B. M. (Eds.). (2020). Karl W. Deutsch: Pioneer in the Theory of International Relations. Springer.
• Van Evera, Stephen. Guide to Methods for Students of Political Science. Cornell University Press, 1997.
• Zippelius, Reinhold (2003). Geschichte der Staatsideen (History of political Ideas), 10th ed. Munich: C.H. Beck. ISBN 3-406-49494-3.
• Zippelius, Reinhold (2010). Allgemeine Staatslehre, Politikwissenschaft (Political Science),16th ed. Munich: C.H. Beck. ISBN 978-3-406-60342-6.

External links

Professional organizations

• European Consortium for Political Research
• Institute for Comparative Research in Human and Social Sciences (ICR) in Japan
• International Association for Political Science Students
• International Political Science Association
• International Studies Association
• Midwest Political Science Association
• Political Studies Association of the UK
• Southern Political Science Association

Further reading

• IPSAPortal: Top 300 websites for Political Science
• Observatory of International Research (OOIR): Latest Papers and Trends in Political Science
• PROL: Political Science Research Online (prepublished research)

Library guides

• Library. "Political Science". Research Guides. United States: University of Michigan. Archived from the original on 7 July 2014. Retrieved 15 February 2014.
• Bodleian Libraries. "Political Science". LibGuides. United Kingdom: University of Oxford. Archived from the original on 18 February 2014. Retrieved 15 February 2014.
• Library. "Politics Research Guide". LibGuides. New Jersey, United States: Princeton University. Archived from the original on 23 July 2014. Retrieved 15 February 2014.
• Libraries. "Political Science". Research Guides. New York, United States: Syracuse University. Archived from the original on 8 July 2014. Retrieved 15 February 2014.
• University Libraries. "Political Science". Research Guides. United States: Texas A&M University. Archived from the original on 21 October 2014. Retrieved 15 February 2014.