Political Science
The Essentials
Politics and change
• Your textbook argues that “studying
politics involves studying change.”
• Do you agree?
• What about politics involves change?
Politics and change
• Notice in the readings how politics occurs
throughout society, even within the
workplace or the family, and societal
needs & demands change over time.
• Political scientists focus on politics of the
State, that is, of the government. But
even government policies affect our
personal lives.
Governments
• Government is the formal mechanism or
structure through which we collectively
make and implement public choices.
• Public policies determine how wealth and
power are distributed in the society, and
those policies in turn affect all of us - our
income, our safety, our access to clean
water, medicine, & education, and even
our life expectancy.
Governments resisting
change
• Sometimes, governments do not serve
society’s needs, particularly in rapidly
changing times.
• If a government fails to adjust to society’s
changes, people will organize outside of it
in an effort to force it to act (through
social movements). People may even
fight the government (through revolution).
Governments resisting
change
In the 1850s, for example, the U.S. government
was unable to respond to the growing demands
of those opposed to slavery.
1. neither existing political party was willing to
accept the abolitionist platform.
2. slave-interests in Congress were politically and
economically powerful.
3. the Supreme Court supported slave interests,
citing the Constitution.
4. many moderate Americans thought abolitionists
were too radical & would tear the country apart.
Governments resisting
change
What happened?
Despite the efforts of political leaders to
ignore the issue, it did not disappear.
Instead:
1. One long-time political party – the Whigs –
disappeared, replaced by the Republican Party
& Abraham Lincoln in the 1860 election.
2. Southern states seceded (not northern
abolitionist states) and civil war ensued.
Political actors
• Governments are major political actors,
but they aren’t the only ones.
• Who else are?
Political actors
• Individuals, neighborhoods, interest
groups, political parties, news media,
business interests, professional
associations, international organizations,
etc.
• What type of political actions do they
engage in?
Types of political activities
• Elections and campaigns, law making,
lobbying, court rulings, letters to the
editor, demonstrations outside of city hall,
war, in some circumstances even
bombing a building.
• Politics includes activities that are legal
and illegal, local and global, ordinary and
dramatic.
Importance of politics
• Politics is important; it’s how we live in
common, regardless of if we live in a free
democratic society or if we live under the
Taliban or the Nazis.
• It is about the distribution of resources –
the benefits and the burdens in the
society.
Economics & politics
• When we talk about a political system, we also
refer to its economic system. However, no
particular economic system has to go with a
particular political system. For example:
• The U.S. has a democratic political system and
a capitalist economic system, but some other
democracies have a socialist economic system,
and some authoritarian political systems follow
a capitalist economic system.
• These distinctions will become more clear
through the semester.
• For studying politics, remember that it is
an ancient field of study.
History of the field
Political philosophy dates back to Socrates
(469-399 B.C.) and
the ancient Greeks,
although the
academic study of
political science
is only about
120 years old.
.
Subfields
Six subfields: public law, public
administration, political theory, American
government, comparative politics and
international relations.
Sometimes, these areas are broken down
a little differently, as in the textbook. And
new fields are emerging, such as women
in politics, and politics & literature.
Approaches to studying
politics
• Political scientists who focus on
normative questions seek to discover the
ideal way that politics should work, in
hopes of improving our political
institutions. It is concerned with moral or
ethical questions.
Normative study:
how should politics work?
• The normative approach was used by
Plato, the student
• of Socrates, who
• tried to define
• justice and
• the good society.
• He lived from
• 427 to 347 BC.
Approaches to studying
politics
• Political scientists may be empiricists that is, they may be trying to understand
how things actually work, not how they
should work. They are less concerned
with ideals than with facts.
Empirical study:
how do politics work?
• Empirical researchers collect facts or data
through observation. They try to describe
political behavior and processes, and to
use that knowledge to make predictions
about future political behavior.
• Empirical & normative scholars use
different tools.
Different tools to study
politics
1. Traditionalism - Using history and
philosophy to seek a non-numerical indepth understanding of a few cases.
Scholars may study the constitutional
cases of the Supreme Court, for example.
They also tend to limit their study to
formal politics – laws, government offices,
official actions.
Different tools to study
politics
• 2. Behavioralism - focusing on actual
behavior of political actors, rather than on
formal rules. Behaviorists are not
interested in ethical questions. Often rely
on statistical methods
• For example, what is the socio-economic
background of federal judges, and is
there a correlation between that
background and how they rule in certain
cases, that is, how they behave?
Different tools to study
politics
• Behaviorists criticize traditionalists for
being unscientific, because traditionalists
do not use statistical methods. They also
believe that ethics and value judgments
have no place in research, because they
are subjective and ethnocentric; that is,
they arise out of a particular culture, and
therefore not universal.
Reaction against
behavioralism
• 3. Postbehavioralism – combining the
two approaches; recognizing that
research should be relevant and ethical
as well as empirical.
Post-behavioralism
• Critical of behavioralism:
• 1. lack of relevance. The questions
behavioralists ask are often not the relevant or
important ones for a political society.
• 2. ethnocentrism. Like traditionalists,
behaviorists are rooted in their own culture – in
this case, a scientific culture, which assumes
that everyone else is wrong. They are not
value free and neutral as they claim.