Presented by:

POLITICAL SCIENCE AND Arriola, For tune

Frias, Sophia

THE STUDY OF POLITICS Melo, Rienier

Pelonia, Jasper
 POLITICAL SCIENCE AS A DISCIPLINE

 Political science comes from two Greek words: polis and scire.
Polis refers to the city -state in ancient Greece. The political
activities within a polis are later termed as politikus (Latin).
Scire means “to know.”

 Combining the two meanings, political science aims to know

the activities within the state. Such activities include the
following: human interaction and conflict, human and state
relations, and power distribution.
 POLITICAL SCIENCE AS A DISCIPLINE

 The American Political Science Association defined its

discipline as “the study of governments, public policies and
political processes, systems, and political behavior” (2013).

 These topics are covered by the subdisciplines of political

science such as political theory, comparative politics,
international relations, political behavior, public policy, and
public administration.
SUBDISCIPLINES OF POLITICAL SCIENCE

 Political theor y examines the contemporary application of

political concepts such as human rights, equality, peace, and
justice. It seeks to address the variance of its implementation
in societies with the aim of understanding the nature of these
concepts and the elements that af fect it.

 Comparative politics is a branch of political science that aims

to provide context to the differences in government and
political systems. It examines the parallelism and divergence
of political systems to provide analyses on the factors that
make governments efficient and the factors that make them
fail.
SUBDISCIPLINES OF POLITICAL SCIENCE

 International relations is the study of state-to-state relations

and the wider margin of the impacts of globalization and
climate change such as terrorism, piracy, and democratization
of non-Western territories fall into the category of
international relations. This field also covers the interaction
between states and nonstate global actors such as
international organizations and human groups.

 Political behavior covers the attitudes, knowledge, and the

actions of an individual in response to political variables such
as policies created by the government, behavior of politicians,
and general political environment.
SUBDISCIPLINES OF POLITICAL SCIENCE

 Public policy inquires on the types of governmental policies

and the underlying motivations for their enactment and
implementation. Due to the nature of this field, it operates
with other subdisciplines to create a comprehensive analysis.

 Public Administration examines the various administrative

schemes implemented by government officials. It analyzes the
strategies applied by administrative units in implementing the
existing policies and the feedback mechanism that they use
to gain the opinion of the public. Given the scope and nature
of the discipline of political science, it is oriented toward an
applied and interdisciplinary approach.
 EASTON’S POLITICAL MODEL

 A conceptual model that may be used in analyzing the

political dynamics within a society is that of David Easton’s
political system model (1957). Easton presents five primary
variables in this model: environment, input, political system,
output, and feedback.

 The environment consists of the historical, social, and

economic conditions of the society that affects the types of
policies accepted and declined by the electorate. In this
category, you should consider questions such as the following.
 Is the country from the Global North or Global South?
 Is the country culturally pluralistic or homogenous?
 Does the country have a colonial past?
 EASTON’S POLITICAL MODEL

 The next variable is the input. This refers to the forms of

political events or products that are needed by society from
its government. This is divided into two categories: demands
and support.
 Demands refer to the perceived needs of the population that could
better their lives.
 Support refers to mechanisms within the system that would allow for
such demands to be facilitated.

 The political system acts like a black box through which every
form of demand is sifted and decided upon. It could be either
democratic or socialist, parliamentary or presidential, and
unitary or federal. Based on the nature of the political system,
the demands are either acted upon or neglected.
 EASTON’S POLITICAL MODEL

 The decision of the government toward an input is called an

output. This includes policies, rules, laws, regulations, and
projects. Using the example on wage hike for teachers, the
government could grant it by creating a law that would
increase their wages or provide an alternate solution such as
deloading teachers of working requirements to enable them to
indulge in other occupations.

 Whichever the government decides on, opinions and

responses would be made by the af fected sectors. This is
referred to as feedback. It is important for the system to
gauge the ef ficiency of its response to a public need.
 POLITICAL SCIENCE CONCEPTS

 Similar to anthropology and sociology, political science has

discipline-based concepts that aid in the analysis of society.
This section presents the eight most essential terms used in
the field of political science.

 Politics is the central concept in the discipline, as much as

society is to sociology and culture to anthropology.

Theorist Definition of Politics

Alfred Boyer Politics is the interaction between the civil society and
the government in the activity of governance.

Max Weber Politics is the exercise of power within a state.

David Easton Politics is the authoritative allocation of scarce values.

 POLITICAL SCIENCE CONCEPTS

 Government is the set of personnel who manages the affairs

of the state in its act of allocating scarce values. Its existence
is dictated by the political system that it revolves on. For
democratic systems, the aim of the government is to advance
the welfare of the general public.

 Aristotle provided a system of classification of governments

based on number of rulers and its ef ficiency in governance.

Aristotle’s Classification of Government

Number of Ruler/s Normal Form Perverted Form
One Monarchy Tyranny
Few Aristocracy Oligarchy
Many Polity Democracy
 POLITICAL SCIENCE CONCEPTS

 Sovereignty is the capacity of a political system to make

independent decisions within its territory. Sovereignty can be
classified in terms of its scope. Internal sovereignty refers to
the capacity of a political system to implement its rules and
policies within its territory. External sovereignty refers to the
recognition of that system’s existence and authority by other
actors and systems.

 Territory is the geographic space in which the sovereignty of a

state is exercised. A territory includes “the terrestrial, fluvial,
and aerial domains, including its territorial seas, the seabed,
the subsoil, the insular shelves, and other submarine seas”
(De Leon, 2005).
 POLITICAL SCIENCE CONCEPTS

 People is the most crucial element of all, as it is through the

existence of the people that concepts on government, state,
territory, and sovereignty take shape. In the context of
political science, the term people is synonymous to a nation.
A nation is a concept that is related to ethnicity, as people
within it are bound by cultural and historical ties. A state can
consist of many nations.

 When a state is composed of people who share the same

culture and history, it gains the compounded identity of being
a nation-state. Not all states can be considered as such due to
the lack of shared identity among its people.