Political science

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.[1]

History

Origin

Political science is a social science dealing with systems of governance and power, and the analysis
of political activities, political institutions, political thought and behavior, and associated
constitutions and laws.[2]

As a social science, contemporary political science started to take shape in the latter half of the
19th century and began to separate itself from political philosophy and history.[3] Into the late 19th
century, it was still uncommon for political science to be considered a distinct field from history.[3]
The term "political science" was not always distinguished from political philosophy, and the modern
discipline has a clear set of antecedents including 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.

Generally, classical political philosophy is primarily defined by a concern for Hellenic and
Enlightenment thought,[4] 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).[5]

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.[6] 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. APSA membership rose from 204 in 1904 to 1,462 in 1915.[3] APSA
members played a key role in setting up political science departments that were distinct from
history, philosophy, law, sociology, and economics.[3]

A world map distinguishing countries of the world

as federations (green) from unitary states (blue), a
work of political science

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."[7]

As part of a UNESCO initiative to promote political science in the late 1940s, the International
Political Science Association was founded in 1949, as well as national associations in France in
1949, Britain in 1950, and West Germany in 1951.[3]

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 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 types of scholarship
discussed above, scholars have noted that progress toward systematic theory has been modest and
uneven.[8]

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.[9]

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.[10]

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.[11] Political science provides analysis and predictions
about political and governmental issues.[12] 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.[12]

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.[13]

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[14] or just the politics of China.[15]

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.[16]
Anticipating crises

The theory of political transitions,[17] and the methods of analyzing and anticipating[18] crises,[19]
form an important part of political science. Several general indicators of crises and methods were
proposed for anticipating critical transitions.[20] 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.[21] 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.[22] 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.[23]

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.[24]

Research methods

Political science is methodologically diverse and appropriates many methods originating in

psychology, social research, political philosophy, and many others, in addition to those that
developed chiefly within the field of political science.

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
behavior, 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).[25] 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."[18] 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, minerals in geoscience, chemical elements in
chemistry, stars in astronomy, or particles 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,[26] surveys and survey
experiments,[27] case studies,[28] process tracing,[29][30] historical and institutional analysis,[31]
ethnography,[32] participant observation,[33] and interview research.[34]

Political scientists also use and develop theoretical tools like game theory and agent-based models
to study a host of political systems and situations.[35] Other approaches include the study of
equation-based models and opinion dynamics.[36]

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.[37] 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.[37] 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.[38]

The most common piece of academic writing in generalist political sciences is the research paper,
which investigates an original research question.[39][40]

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."[41] Thus, in most American colleges, especially liberal arts colleges, it would be located
within the school or college of arts and sciences. If no separate college of arts and sciences exists,
or if the college or university prefers that it be in a separate constituent college or academic
department, then political science may be a separate department housed as part of a division or
school of humanities or liberal arts.[42] At some universities, especially research universities and in
particular those that have a strong cooperation between research, undergraduate, and graduate
faculty with a stronger more applied emphasis in public administration, political science would be
taught by the university's public policy school.

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 post-1960s North America than elsewhere while universities predating the 1960s or those
historically influenced by them would call the field of study government;[43] other institutions,
especially those outside the United States, see political science as part of a broader discipline of
political studies or politics in general. 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, specialized or, in some cases, professional degree
programs in international relations, public policy, and public administration are common at both the
undergraduate and postgraduate levels, although most but not all undergraduate level education in
these sub-fields of political science is generally found in academic concentrations within a political
science academic major. 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.[44]

The main national honor society for college and university students of government and politics in
the United States is Pi Sigma Alpha, while Pi Alpha Alpha is a national honor society specifically
designated for public administration.

See also

Artificial intelligence and elections – Use and impact of AI on political

Politics portal
elections

Comparative politics

History of political science

Index of politics articles – alphabetical list of political subjects

International relations

Outline of political science – structured list of political topics, arranged by subject area

Political history of the world

Political identity