Political science

From Free net encyclopedia

Template:Elections Political science is a social science discipline that deals with the theory and practice of politics and the description and analysis of political systems and political behavior. It is oriented around academia, theory, and research.

Fields and subfields of political science include political theory, civics and comparative politics, national political systems, cross-national political analysis, political development, international relations, foreign policy analysis, politics, public administration, administrative behavior, and public policy. Related fields include international law, judicial behaviour, and public law. In the United States, most political science departments are organized around four or five major fields: American politics, comparative politics, international relations, political theory, and sometimes political methodology.

Approaches to the discipline include classical political philosophy, structuralism, and behavioralism, realism, pluralism, and institutionalism. 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the social sciences, uses methods and techniques that relate to the kinds of inquiries sought: primary sources such as historical documents and official records, secondary sources such as scholarly journal articles, survey research, statistical analysis, and model building.

An alternative term for the academic study of politics is political studies. Whilst "political science" tends to rely primarily on the quantitative methodologies of the social sciences, "political studies" tends to avoid or refute such connections by employing a broader methodological approach to the study of politics.

Herbert Baxter Adams is credited with coining the phrase "political science" while teaching history at Johns Hopkins University.

1 History of political science
2 Contemporary political science
3 Current fields of study
4 See also
5 External links

[edit]

History of political science

Main Article: History of political science

While the study of politics is first found in the Western tradition in Ancient Greece, political science is a late arrival in terms of social sciences. However, the discipline has a clear set of antecedents such as moral philosophy, political philosophy, political economy, history, and other fields concerned with normative determinations of what ought to be and with deducing the characteristics and functions of the ideal state. In each historic period and in almost every geographic area, we can find someone studying politics and increasing political understanding.

The advent of political science as a university discipline is evidenced by the naming of university departments and chairs with the title of political science arising in the 1860s. In the 1950s and the 1960s, a behavioral revolution stressing the systematic and rigorously scientific study of individual and group behavior swept the discipline. Increasingly, students of political behavior have used the scientific method to create an intellectual discipline based on the postulating of hypotheses followed by empirical verification and the inference of political trends, and of generalizations that explain individual and group political actions.

[edit]

Contemporary political science

Political scientists study 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, and peace. Some political scientists seek to advance positive theses by analyzing politics. Others advance normative theses, by making specific policy recommendations.

The study of politics is complicated by the frequent involvement of political scientists in the political process, since their teachings often provide the frameworks within which other commentators, such as journalists, special interest groups, politicians, and the electorate analyze issues and select options. Political scientists may serve as advisors 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. In the United States, political scientists known as "Americanists" look at a variety of data including elections, public opinion and public policy such as Social Security reform, foreign policy, U.S. congressional power, and the Supreme Court to name only a few issues.

As a discipline, political science is primarily advanced by articles in scholarly journals and academic books. The major journals, which are published by academic presses and are associated with associations of political science, are the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics and British Journal of Political Science, referred to in the discipline as "APSR," "AJPS," "JoP," and "BJPS" respectively. Countless other journals focus on more specific areas of the discipline, for example Legislative Studies Quarterly and Political Research Quarterly.

Perhaps more than in other disciplines, political scientists do not all agree on the standards for the study of political science. In recent years, one important aspect of this debate has become increasingly salient. In 2000, a political scientist using the pseudonym "Perestroika" sent an e-mail to a large number of other political scientists, objecting to what the writer saw as the dominance of quantitative statistical methods and formal economic models in the discipline and the marginalization of interpretive methods, case studies and normative social science. This e-mail sparked the "Perestroika movement" or "Perestroikans," who argue that political science should have more methodological diversity and strive to be more relevant to those outside the discipline. Those who oppose the movement argue that the discipline has always accommodated other methods, that the Perestroikans want to marginalize quantitative and formal methods, and that political science needs rigorous and objective standards of evidence to progress as a science. As a response to the Perestroika movement, APSA now publishes a new journal, Perspectives on Politics, designed to include more work aimed at influencing practitioners of politics.

[edit]

Current fields of study

In the United States, most departments of political science have at least four or five primary fields: American politics, comparative politics, international relations, political theory and political methodology. However, field boundaries are especially porous in political science.

American politics in the United States (and related fields in other countries) study domestic political institutions, elections, voting and public opinion. Many people divide this field into the subfields of instititions, which focuses on the direct study of Congress, the Presidency, etc., and behavior, or political psychology which focuses on the political decisions of citizens, generally public opinion and voting. This division is especially fluid, and most scholars do work that bridges both categories.

Much of the early progress on the study of legislatures, elections and public opinion was done in the U.S. context, so the study of these general subjects is often associated with American politics. But work in the past few decades has expanded these subjects to other countries.

Comparative politics involves the comparison of patterns of political development—including forms of government—and processes of political change in different settings or at different times.

International relations focuses on the study of the dynamics of relations between states, and, more recently, on transnational issues such as the environment, human trafficking, trade, social movements, labor like co-operatives, or preventing terrorism.

Political theory involves the study of normative questions of politics and the history of political philosophy.

Political methodology refers to the development and application of statistical techniques to political questions.

The complex interplay of economic and political choices is reflected in the field of political economy where political science tries to understand the normative implications of economic structures and theories. Political economy can also refer to the application of economic models and methods to political subjects, as in Anthony Downs' An Economic Theory of Democracy.

Public administration studies the implementation, determination and outputs of public policies. It seeks to explain the role of political structure, bureaucratic politics and interest group activity on the public policy output and the policy performance of public sector entities.

[edit]