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).

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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]
Modern political science can generally be divided into the three subdisciplines of comparative
politics, international relations, and political theory.[2] Other notable subdisciplines are public policy
and administration, domestic politics and government, political economy, and political methodology.
[3]
 Furthermore, political science is related to, and draws upon, the fields
of economics, law, sociology, history, philosophy, human geography, political anthropology,
and psychology.
Political science is methodologically diverse and appropriates many methods originating
in psychology, social research, and political philosophy. 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historical documents and official records, secondary sources, such as scholarly journal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.

Contents

 1History
o 1.1Origin
o 1.2Behavioural revolution and new institutionalism
o 1.321st century
 2Overview
o 2.1Country-specific studies
o 2.2Anticipating crises
o 2.3Cognate fields
 3Subfields
 4Research methods
 5Education
 6Writing
 7See also
 8References
 9Further reading
 10External links
o 10.1Professional organizations
o 10.2Further reading
o 10.3Library guides
History[edit]
Main article: History of political science

Origin[edit]
As a social political 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.[4] Into the late 19th
century, it was still uncommon that political science was considered a distinct field from history. [4] 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.[5] 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.[4] APSA members played a key role in setting up political science departments that
were distinct from history, philosophy, law, sociology, and economics. [4]
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."[6]
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. [4]

Behavioural revolution and new institutionalism[edit]

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.[7]

21st century[edit]
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.[8]
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.[9]

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

Country-specific studies[edit]
Political scientists may study political phenomena within one specific country; for example, they may
study just the politics of the United States [13] or just the politics of China.[14]
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.[15]

Anticipating crises[edit]
The theory of political transitions, [16] and the methods of analyzing and anticipating[17] crises,[18] form an
important part of political science. Several general indicators of crises and methods were proposed
for anticipating critical transitions.[19] 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.[20] 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.[21] 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. [22]
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. [23]

Cognate fields[edit]
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,[24] 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. [25]
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[edit]
Many political scientists conduct research in one of four areas, described below: [26]

 Political philosophy: Concerned with the foundations of political community and institutions,
while focusing on human nature and the moral purposes of political association.
 Political methodology: Studies the philosophical bases of social science, political science,
empirical research design and analysis.
 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.
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.[27]

Research methods[edit]
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).[28] 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."[17] 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, [29] surveys and survey
experiments,[30] case studies,[31] process tracing,[32][33] historical and institutional analysis,
[34]
 ethnography,[35] participant observation,[36] and interview research.[37]
Political scientists also use and develop theoretical tools like game theory and agent-based models
to study a host of political systems and situations.[38]
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.[39] 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.[39] 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.[40]

Education[edit]
Further information: Public policy school and College of Arts and Sciences
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
exist or if the college or university prefers that it be in a separate constituent college or academic
 department, political science may be a separate department housed as part of a division or school of
humanities or liberal arts [42] while 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. 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.[citation needed] Separate programs (often professional degrees)
in international relations, public policy, and public administration, are not uncommon at both the
undergraduate and postgraduate levels, although most but not all undergraduate level education in
these sub-fields are generally found in academic concentration 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. [43]
The national honor society for college and university students of government and politics in the
United States is Pi Sigma Alpha.

Writing[edit]
There are different genres of writings in political sciences; including but not limited to: [44]

 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.[45]

See also[edit]

 Politics portal

 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
References[edit]
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