Political science

Academic discipline concerned with the empirical study of government and politics. Political scientists
have investigated the nature of states, the functions performed by governments, voter behaviour,
political parties, political culture, political economy, and public opinion, among other topics. Though it
has roots in the political philosophies of Plato and Aristotle, political science in the modern sense did not
begin until the 19th century, when many of the social sciences was established. Its empirical and
generally scientific orientation is traceable to the work of Henri de Saint-Simon and Auguste Comte. The
first institution dedicated to its study, the Free School of Political Science, was founded in Paris in 1871.

The study of the state, government, and politics. The idea that the study of politics should be ‘scientific’
has excited controversy for centuries. What is at stake is the nature of our political knowledge, but the
content of the argument has varied enormously. For example, 1741 when Hume published his essay,
‘That Politics May Be Reduced to a Science’, his concerns were very different from those of people who
have sought to reduce politics to a science in the twentieth century. Although concerned to some
degree to imitate the paradigm of Newtonian physics, Hume's main objective was to show that some
constitutions necessarily worked better than others and that politics was not just a question of
personalities. Thus one of his main targets was the famous couplet in Alexander Pope's Essay on Man:
‘For forms of government let fools contest, | Whate'er is best administer'd is best.’

The twentieth-century debate about political science has been part of a broad dispute about
methodology in social studies. Those who have sought to make the study of politics scientific have been
concerned to establish a discipline which can meet two conditions: it must be objective or value-free
(wertfrei), and it must seek comprehensive and systematic explanations of events. The principal
candidate for the role of core methodology of political science has been behaviourism, drawing its
stimulus-response model from behavioural psychology and thus being much concerned to establish
‘correlations’ between input phenomena, whether ‘political’ or not, and political outcomes. The chief
rival, growing in stature as behaviourism waned after 1970, has been rational choice theory, following
economics in assuming as axioms universal human properties of rationality and self-interest.

Critics of the idea of political science have normally rested their case on the uniqueness of natural
science. In the philosophical terminology of Kant, real science is the product of the synthetic a priori
proposition that ‘every event has a cause’. The idea that the universe is regular, systematic, and law-
governed follows from neither logic nor observation; it is what Sir Peter Strawson has called, more
recently, a ‘precondition of discourse’. In order for people to study physics rationally, they must assume
that the universe is governed by laws.

It follows from this Kantian conception of the basis of science that there can only be one science, which
is physics. This science applies just as much to people, who are physical beings, as it does to asteroids:
like the theistic God, Kantian physics is unique or it is not itself. Biology, chemistry, engineering et al. are
forms of physics, related and reducible to the fundamental constituents of the universe. The social
studies are not, according to critics of political science, and become merely narrow and sterile if they
attempt to ape the methods and assumptions of the natural sciences. The understanding we seek of
human beings must appreciate their individual uniqueness and freedom of will; understanding people is
based on our ability to see events from their point of view, the kind of insight that Weber called
verstehen. In short, the distinction between science and non-science, in its most significant sense, is a
distinction between the natural sciences and the humanities; the two are fundamentally different and
politics is a human discipline.

However, there are a number of objections to this harsh dichotomy between politics and science.
Semantically, it might be said, this account reads too much into the concept of science which,
etymologically, indicates only a concern with knowledge in virtually any sense. Wissenschaft in German,
scienza in Italian, and science in French do not raise the profound philosophical questions which have
been attached to the English word science. There are also many contemporary philosophers who seek to
undermine the scientific nature of natural science. Inspired, particularly, by Thomas Kuhn's The
Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) they argue that science itself is not determined by the absolute
requirements of its discourse, but is structured by the societies in which it operates. Thus real physics is
more like politics than it is like the Kantian ideal of physics and it has no more claim to be a science than
has politics.

In 1968, the eminent political scientist David Easton wrote: "Political Science in mid-twentieth century is
a discipline in search of its identity. Through the efforts to solve this identity crisis it has begun to show
evidence of emerging as an autonomous and independent discipline with a systematic structure of its
own." However, the search for identity has been characteristic of political science from its inception on
the American scene. Initially, the discipline was confronted with the task of demarcating its intellectual
boundaries and severing its organizational ties from other academic fields, particularly history.
Subsequently, debate arose over goals, methods, and appropriate subject matter as political scientists
tried to resolve the often conflicting objectives of its four main scholarly traditions: (1) legalism, or
constitutionalism; (2) activism and reform; (3) philosophy, or the history of political ideas; and (4)
science. By the late twentieth century, the discipline had evolved through four periods outlined by
Albert Somit and Joseph Tanenhaus in their informative work The Development of American Political
Science: From Burgess to Behavioralism (1967). The four periods are the formative (1880–1903), the
emergent (1903–1921), the middle years (1921–1945), and disciplinary maturity (1945–1990).

The Formative Period, 1880–1903

Before 1880, the teaching of political science was almost nonexistent. Francis Lieber, generally
considered the first American political scientist, held a chair of history and political economy at South
Carolina College (being the second incumbent) in 1835–1856. In 1858, he became professor of political
science at Columbia College. Johns Hopkins University inaugurated the study of history and politics in
1876; but not until 1880, when John W. Burgess established the School of Political Science at Columbia
University, did political science achieve an independent status with an explicit set of goals for learning,
teaching, and research. Burgess, like Lieber, had been trained in Germany and sought to implement the
rigor of his graduate training and the advances of German Staatswissenschaft ("political science") in the
United States. Under his leadership, the Columbia school became the formative institution of the
discipline, emphasizing graduate education that drew on an undifferentiated mix of political science,
history, economics, geography, and sociology to develop theories.

The discipline grew rapidly in the formative years 1880–1903. Burgess, Theodore Woolsey, Woodrow
Wilson, Frank J. Good now, and Herbert Baxter Adams brought fame and direction to the field with their
pioneering works. Columbia began publication of the Political Science Quarterly in 1886; Johns Hopkins
published the Johns Hopkins Studies in Historical and Political Science (1882). New departments were
formed and the first American Ph.D.s were awarded.

As with any new discipline, a lively debate ensued about the intellectual boundaries of political science,
particularly as those boundaries related to history. There were those who envisioned the distinction in
the words of Edward A. Freeman: "History is past politics and politics present history." Others eschewed
the connection with history, arguing that law, economics, and sociology were more relevant to the
discipline. Methods of study were also debated. Early advocates of a scientific approach argued with
scholars who contended that the subject matter did not lend itself to the methods of the natural
sciences. During this period, political scientists combined a strict research orientation with willingness to
take an active part in public affairs. They dealt with current political issues in their scholarship, and took
on the function of educating college students for citizenship and public affairs.

The Emergent Period, 1903–1921

With the establishment of the American Political Science Association (APSA) in 1903, political science
asserted its independence as a discipline. More important, the formation of an association provided a
vehicle through which to pursue recognized common interests effectively. Annual conventions fostered
a lively exchange of ideas and continued organizational development. In 1906, the association launched
the American Political Science Review, which soon became the leading professional journal in the
discipline, containing notes about personnel in the profession as well as scholarly articles; in 1912, it had
287 subscribers, and by 1932, it had 580.

Growth continued at a rapid pace throughout the period. The association's membership rose from 200
to 1,500. In a canvass of university programs prior to 1914, it was determined that 38 institutions had
separate political science departments and that an additional 225 had departments that combined
political science with other disciplines, most frequently with history or history and economics. It is
estimated that the annual output of Ph.D.s rose from between six and ten to between eighteen and
twenty. The increase in domestically trained Ph.D.s Americanized the profession, whereas previously the
majority of new professionals had earned their degrees at German and French institutions.
Concomitantly, undergraduate instruction came to focus more on American government and less on
comparative and European government and politics. Original research and reviews in the journals
emphasized American materials.

While taking steps toward securing their discipline, political scientists were not reflective respecting the
intellectual content of their field. Political scientists mostly studied political structures and processes
using available official sources and records; their analyses were routine descriptions. The forward-
looking and iconoclastic Arthur F. Bentley complained in his Process of Government (1908; p. 162) that
"We have a dead political science." He, along with Henry Jones Ford and Jesse Macy, agitated for an
empirical study of contemporary political events instead of mere perusal of dry historical documents.

The Middle Years, 1921–1945

The intellectual complacency of the second era was interrupted in 1921 with the publication of Charles
E. Merriam's "The Present State of the Study of Politics" in the American Political Science Review.
Impressed with statistics and the rigor of psychology, Merriam called for "a new science of politics"
characterized by the formulation of testable hypotheses (provable by means of precise evidence) to
complement the dominant historical-comparative and legalistic approaches. The discipline, according to
Thomas Reid, should become more "policyoriented." Merriam was joined in his effort by William B.

Munro and G. E. G. Catlin—the three being considered the era's leading proponents of the "new
science" movement. Merriam's work led to the formation of the APSA's Committee on Political
Research, and to three national conferences on the science of politics. With Wesley C. Mitchell, Merriam
was instrumental in creating the Social Science Research Council in 1923.

William Yandell Elliott, Edward S. Corwin, and Charles A. Beard, all opponents of "scientism," quickly
moved to challenge its advocates. They questioned the existence of rigorous determinist laws and the
possibility of scientific objectivity in the study of politics. They were concerned with the propriety of the
participation of "scientists" in citizenship education and public affairs, endeavors that made objectivity
difficult. The "scientists" responded by urging, in principle, that research become more important than
civic education. However, the Great Depression and World War II made it difficult to contest the
significance of civic responsibility. Thus, when the APSA president William Anderson pronounced in 1943
that the preservation of democracy and "direct service to government" were the foremost obligations of
political science, he was representing the prevailing view of American political scientists.

The discipline continued to grow. The APSA doubled its membership. The number of Ph.D.s awarded
annually increased from thirty-five in 1925 to eighty in 1940; the number of universities granting
degrees expanded. On the basis of efforts made in 1925 and 1934 to rate the quality of the various
departments, California, Chicago, Columbia, Harvard, Illinois, Michigan, Princeton, and Wisconsin ranked
as the leaders.

Disciplinary Maturity, 1945–1990

The postwar world stage changed the priorities for the nation. The stark realities of the military and
ideological struggle of American capitalism and democracy versus Soviet communism shaped the
environment in which political scientists worked. Political science retained its fascination with American
democracy and continued to be characterized by disciplinary disunity, which gave it strength through
diversity and debate. Four major developments are evident during the Cold War period. Most obvious is
the steadily increasing emphasis on mathematical models, making it difficult for nonspecialists to read
political science journals by the late twentieth century. Second is the development of the "behaviorist"
method in the 1950s and 1960s. Third is behaviorism's eclipse by "positive political theory" in the 1970s
and 1980s. Fourth is the development of the field of comparative politics and area studies. Gradual
evolution is evident in the subfields structuring the discipline, with "political philosophy and
psychology," "government of the U.S. and dependencies," "American state and local government,"
"foreign and comparative government," "international organization, politics, and law," and "U.S. public
administration," shaping political science in 1950; and with "political theory," "American government,"
"comparative politics," "international relations," and "public policy" shaping it in 1990. An increased
interest in issues of gender and race relations added ethnic studies and the feminist perspective into
professional studies and undergraduate curricula.

The development of political science between 1945 and the late 1960s was dramatic, although this
growth subsequently leveled off. The APSA more than tripled in size as a membership of 4,000 in 1946
grew to 14,000 in 1966; in 1974 the APSA had 12,250 members, in 1990 it had 10,975 members, and by
2002 it had 13,715. More than 500 independent political science departments were in existence; all
major U.S. universities had developed competitive political science programs. By the mid-1970s, more
than 300 Ph.D.s were awarded annually over seventy-five departments offering doctoral programs.
There were at least twelve major professional journals. The careers of Henry A. Kissinger (secretary of
state in 1973–1977) and Joseph S. Nye Jr. (deputy undersecretary of state, 1977–1979, and later dean of
Harvard's Kennedy School of Government) demonstrate that a career as a political scientist could serve
as a vehicle for prominent public office, and vice versa.

Behaviorism

Behaviorism is best viewed as a broad-based effort to impose standards of scientific rigor, relying on
empirical evidence, on theory building, in contrast to the legalistic case-study approach in vogue in the
1940s and 1950s. Harold Lasswell, Gabriel Almond, David Truman, Robert Dahl, Herbert Simon, and
David Easton, the movement's leading figures, each contributed his unique view of how this goal could
be achieved. The Political System (1953) by Easton and Political Behavior (1956) by Heinz Eulau and
others exemplified the movement's new approach to a theory-guided empirical science of politics. Data
gathered from public-opinion polls, initiated in 1935, and from social surveys were central to the
movement. In 1946, the University of Michigan established a leading research program, the Survey
Research Center, which undertook field studies of voting behavior and amassed data. It also created in
1962 the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), which was designed to
share precious data among its twenty-one-member community. By the 1980s, this consortium
incorporated more than 270 colleges and universities, both in the United States and abroad. Statistics,
as presented to political scientists in V. O. Key Jr.'s A Primer of Statistics for Political Scientists (1954),
became an indispensable tool for analysis. Quantitative analysis became integral to graduate curriculum
in political science, over time replacing the long-standing requirement of knowledge of two foreign
languages.

The behavioral movement was informed by the logical positivist philosophy of Karl R. Popper, Hans
Reichenbach, and Bertrand Russell, who emphasized cumulative scientific knowledge based on empirical
testing of hypotheses. Although the method still exists in political science, it dissipated as a distinct
intellectual movement in the early 1970s as Thomas Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962)
signaled a defeat for logical positivism by questioning its assumption of cumulative, fact-based scientific
knowledge. As well, the social unrest over the war in Vietnam raised consciousness among political
scientists that behaviorism could be perceived as amoral and irrelevant to the normative concerns
governing human lives.

Positive Political Theory

From their initial enunciation in the 1950s, behaviorism and positive political theory, or rational choice
theory, as it is also referred to, shared practitioners and research goals. Both drew strength from broad
interdisciplinary support, which ranged throughout the social sciences for behavioralism and was found
in economics, psychology, sociology, philosophy, mathematics, and public policy, as well as in political
science, in the case of rational choice theory. Both emphasized general theory based on empirical tests.
However, the two movements deviated in their precise method: behaviorism used data concerning
human behavior to build and test theory; rational choice theory made deductive models of human
interactions based on the assumption that individuals are self-interested rational actors.
Positive political theory was pioneered by William H. Riker, who built the powerful political science
department at the University of Rochester and served as its chair from 1963 to 1977. Riker was not
alone in his initiative to formulate a science of politics based on deductive models of rational self-
interested action subject to empirical tests. He built his theory using John von Neumann and Oskar
Morgenstern's game theory, Duncan Black and Kenneth J. Arrow's mathematical analyses of voting, and
Anthony Downs's economic theory of democracy. He also benefited from the work of other early
advocates of the rational choice approach—Vincent Ostrom, James M. Buchanan, Gordon Tullock, and
Mancur Olson, who together formed the Public Choice Society in 1967 and immediately thereafter
established the journal Public Choice. These scholars turned the conventional study of politics upside
down by considering politicians to be self-interested actors seeking to win office as opposed to officials
serving the public. From its humble origins, rational choice theory became established as a disciplinary
standard not just across the United States, but also worldwide by 1990. By 1987, 35 percent of the
articles published in the American Political Science Review adopted the rational choice approach. The
method's stellar success was due to its attraction of adherents, its interdisciplinary dynamism, its
promise to deliver scientific results, its overlapping boundaries with the public policy, and its assumption
of individualism shared with American philosophy of capitalist democracy.

Area Studies

While both behaviorism and positive political theory exemplify the commitment to scientific rigor hoped
for by Charles Merriam, the Cold War development of area studies had a less direct relationship to its
predecessors. Prior to World War II, Americans had been inwardly focused; during this earlier era,
"comparative politics" signified contrasting European parliamentary-style democracy with the American
presidential model. However, with the rise of Adolf Hitler's Germany and Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union in
the 1930s and 1940s, it became evident that democracy needed to be assessed in comparison to fascism
and totalitarianism. As the world broke into the two camps of Eastern communism and Western
democracy in the 1950s and 1960s, and American political leaders required detailed knowledge of
Eastern bloc nations and of Southeast Asia, political science departments and specialized institutes
responded to this need. These undertakings were generously funded by the National Defense Education
Act (NDEA); from 1958 to 1973 the NDEA Title IV provided $68.5 million to the approximately 100
language and area centers. By 1973, these centers had produced 35,500 B.A.s, 14,700 M.A.s, and over
5,000 Ph.D.s.

Area studies focused on questions of modernization and industrialization and strove to understand the
differing developmental logic of non-Western cultures; they embraced diverse methods for
understanding native languages and native cultures and remained skeptical of approaches to
comparative politics adopting universalizing assumptions. Lucian W. Pye, Robert E. Ward, and Samuel P.
Huntington championed the approach, with Huntington's Clash of Civilizations (1996) epitomizing the
perspective afforded by the field.

Political Theory

During the Cold War period, the study of political theory continued to include the great books of Plato,
Aristotle, Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Karl Marx, but it was reshaped by the influx of
European émigrés. Leo Strauss, Herbert Marcuse, Hannah Arendt, and Theodore Adorno stirred the
imagination of American theorists through their perspectives developed under the duress of the Nazi
occupation of much of Europe. Political theory, with its emphasis on timeless works and its input from
European theorists, became international in scope during the Cold War period. Thus, European scholars
such as Jürgen Habermas and J. G. A. Pocock were as germane to scholarly discussions as were the
American theorists John Rawls and Robert Nozick. Emigrant scholars published in Social Research, and
newfound interest in political theory among indigenous scholars was reflected in the more recently
established journals Philosophy and Public Affairs (1971) and Political Theory (1973). Whereas much
American political science saw the world from the perspective of the United States, political theory
retained a critical edge: it was skeptical of social science methods boasting of objectivity, and of what
might be regarded as a collusion between American political science and American democracy and
capitalism.

General Political Science

Independently from well-defined movements, the mainstay of political science, American political
institutions, political behavior, comparative politics, and international relations were pursued
throughout this period by numerous methods. For example, a 1987 study found that the 262 political
scientists contributing to legislative research adopted the following approaches in significant
proportions: behavioral analysis; case studies; "new institutionalist"; organizational theory;
historiography; positive political theory; democratic theory; and other approaches, including policy
studies. Not necessarily representing a single school, prominent political scientists central to the field
included Richard F. Fenno Jr., Nelson Polsby, Warren E. Miller, Harold Guetzkow, Donald R. Mathews,
Samuel J. Eldersveld, Dwaine Marvick, Philip E. Converse, Donald E. Stokes, and Joseph LaPalombara.

Since 1990

In the 1990s, disciplinary divisions existed over the efficacy and merits of the rational choice approach to
politics, with many American political science departments divided into camps for and against. In leading
centers for rational choice, including Rochester, Carnegie Mellon, California Institute of Technology, and
George Washington, as many as half of the faculty adopted this method of study. Disciplinary
controversy culminated in the publication of Donald P. Green and Ian Shapiro's Pathologies of Rational
Choice Theory (1994), and the responding issue of Critical Review (winter-spring 1995). Whereas the
future of this disciplinary strife remains unclear, it is clear that the rational choice theory has an
ascendant position across the social sciences and in the spheres of business, law, and public policy.

American political science continues to question its identity, and to reflect on appropriate research
methodology; methodological pluralism continues to reign. The field's continued self-examination
reflects three independent axes. One embodies the two extremes of particular and localized studies
versus universalizing analyses; a second is defined by the extremes of considering either groups or
individuals as the key to analysis; and a third is represented by the belief that a normative stance is
unavoidable at one extreme, and by a firm commitment to the possibility of objectivity at the other
extreme. In the midst of the numerous topics and methods structuring political science, one certainty is
that it is no longer possible for a single individual to master the entire field.

Political scientists study matters concerning 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 (attempt to describe how things are, as opposed to how they should be) theses by
analyzing politics. Others advance normative theses, by making specific policy recommendations.

Political scientists 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." 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, US Congressional
committees, and the US Supreme Court — to name only a few issues.

Most United States colleges and universities offer B.A. programs in political science. M.A. or M.A.T. and
Ph.D or Ed.D. 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 use of the scientific method, political studies implies a broader approach, although the
naming of degree courses does not necessarily reflect their content. Separate degree granting programs
in international relations and public policy are not uncommon at both the undergraduate and graduate
levels. Master's level programs in political science are common while political scientists engage in public
administration.

The national honour society for college and university students of government and politics in the United
States is Pi Sigma Alpha.

History

Antecedents

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, 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. In each historic period and in almost every geographic
area, we can find someone studying politics and increasing political understanding.

The antecedents of Western politics can trace their roots back to Plato (427–347 BC) and Aristotle (384–
322 BC), particularly in the works of Homer, Hesiod, Thucydides, Xenophon, and Euripides. Later, Plato
analyzed political systems, abstracted their analysis from more literary- and history- oriented studies
and applied an approach we would understand as closer to philosophy. Similarly, Aristotle built upon
Plato's analysis to include historical empirical evidence in his analysis. Plato wrote The Republic and
Aristotle wrote the Politics.

The rise and fall of the Roman empire

During the height of the Roman Empire, famous historians such as Polybius, Livy and
Plutarch documented the rise of the Roman Republic, and the organization and histories of other
nations, while statesmen like Julius Caesar, Cicero and others provided us with examples of the politics
of the republic and Rome's empire and wars. The study of politics during this age was oriented toward
understanding history, understanding methods of governing, and describing the operation of
governments. Nearly a thousand years elapsed, from the foundation of the city of Rome in 753 BC to the
fall of the Roman empire or the beginning of the Middle Ages. In the interim, there is a manifest
translation of Hellenic culture into the Roman sphere. The Greek gods become Romans and Greek
philosophy in one way or another turns into Roman law e.g. Stoicism. The Stoic was committed to
preserving proper hierarchical roles and duties in the state so that the state as a whole would remain
stable. Among the best known Roman Stoics were philosopher Seneca and the emperor Marcus
Aurelius. Seneca, a wealthy Roman patrician, is often criticized by some modern commentators for
failing to adequately live by his own precepts. The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, on the other hand,
can be best thought of as the philosophical reflections of an emperor divided between his philosophical
aspirations and the duty he felt to defend the Roman Empire from its external enemies through his
various military campaigns. According to Polybius, Roman institutions were the backbone of the empire
but Roman law is the medulla.

The Middle Ages

With the fall of the Western Roman Empire, there arose a more diffuse arena for political studies. The
rise of monotheism and, particularly for the Western tradition, Christianity, brought to light a new space
for politics and political action. Works such as Augustine of Hippo's The City of God synthesized current
philosophies and political traditions with those of Christianity, redefining the borders between what was
religious and what was political. During the Middle Ages, the study of politics was widespread in the
churches and courts. Most of the political questions surrounding the relationship between church and
state were clarified and contested in this period. The Arabs lost sight of Aristotle's political science but
continued to study Plato's Republic which became the basic text of Judeo-Islamic political philosophy as
in the works of Alfarabi and Averroes; this did not happen in the Christian world, where Aristotle's
Politics was translated in the 13th century and became the basic text as in the works of Saint Thomas
Aquinas.

Indian Sub-Continent

In ancient India, the antecedents of politics can be traced back to the Rig-Veda, Samhitas, Brahmanas,
the Mahabharata and Buddhist Pali Canon. Chanakya (c. 350-275 BC) was a political thinker in
Takshashila. Chanakya wrote the Arthashastra, a treatise on political thought, economics and social
order, which can be considered a precursor to Machiavelli's The Prince. It discusses monetary and fiscal
policies, welfare, international relations, and war strategies in detail, among other topics. The
Manusmriti, dated to about two centuries after the time of Chanakya is another important political
treatise of ancient India.

East Asia

Ancient China was home to several competing schools of political thought, most of which arose in the
Spring and Autumn Period. These included Mohism (a utilitarian philosophy), Taoism, Legalism (a school
of thought based on the supremacy of the state), and Confucianism. Eventually, a modified form of
Confucianism (heavily infused with elements of Legalism) became the dominant political philosophy in
China during the Imperial Period. This form of Confucianism also deeply influenced and were expounded
upon by scholars in Korea and Japan.

West Asia

In Persia, works such as the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Epic of Kings by Ferdowsi provided evidence
of political analysis, while the Middle Eastern Aristotelians such as Avicenna and later Maimonides and
Averroes, continued Aristotle's tradition of analysis and empiricism, writing commentaries on Aristotle's
works. Averroe did not have at hand a text of Aristotle's Politics, so he wrote a commentary on Plato's
Republic instead.

The Renaissance

During the Italian Renaissance, Niccolò Machiavelli established the emphasis of modern political science
on direct empirical observation of political institutions and actors. For Machiavelli, nothing seems to be
too good nor too evil if it helps to attain and preserve political power. Machiavelli shatters political
illusions, reveals the harsh reality of politics and could be considered the father of the politics model.
Later, the expansion of the scientific paradigm during the Enlightenment further pushed the study of
politics beyond normative determinations.

Like Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes, well-known for his theory of the social contract, believed that a strong
central power, such as a monarchy, was necessary to rule the innate selfishness of the individual but
neither of them believed in the divine right of kings. John Locke, on the other hand, who gave us Two
Treatises of Government and who did not believe in the divine right of kings either, sided with Aquinas
and stood against both Machiavelli and Hobbes by accepting Aristotle's dictum that man seeks to be
happy in a state of social harmony as a social animal. Unlike Aquinas' preponderant view on the
salvation of the soul from original sin, Locke believed man comes into this world with a mind that is
basically tabula rasa. According to Locke, an absolute ruler as proposed by Hobbes is unnecessary, for
natural law is based on reason and equality, seeking peace and survival for man.

The Enlightenment

Religion would no longer play a dominant role in politics. There would be separation of church and state.
Principles similar to those that dominated the material sciences could be applied to society as a whole,
originating the social sciences. Politics could be studied in a laboratory as it were, the social milieu. In
1787, Alexander Hamilton wrote: "...The science of politics like most other sciences has received great
improvement." (The Federalist Papers Number 9 and 51). Both the marquis d'Argenson and the abbé de
Saint-Pierre described politics as a science; d'Argenson was a philosopher and de Saint-Pierre an allied
reformer of the enlightenment.

Other important figures in American politics who participated in the Enlightenment were Benjamin
Franklin and Thomas Jefferson.

Modern political science

Since Political Science is essentially a study of human behavior, in all aspects of politics, observations in
controlled environments are usually not available and impossible to reproduce or duplicate. Because of
this, political scientists seek patterns in the reasons and outcomes for political events so that
generalizations and theories can be made. Again, study is still difficult since humans make conscious
choices unlike other subjects in science, such as organisms, or even inanimate objects as in physics.
Despite the complexities, consensus has been reached on various political topics with the help of proper
study. To the extent that political scientists are not politicians, they can demonstrate a greater
objectivity about politics. Politics may be studied as an activity, as current affairs, as the work of
government and as conflict, either national or international, and its early solution.

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. In fact, the
designation "political scientist" is typically reserved for those with a doctorate in the field. 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 was
founded in 1903 and the American Political Science Review was founded in 1906 in an effort to
distinguish the study of politics from economics and other social phenomena.

In the 1950s and the 1960s, a behavioral revolution stressing the systematic and rigorously scientific
study of individual and group behavior swept the discipline. The late 1960s and early 1970s witnessed a
take off in the use of deductive, game theoretic formal modeling techniques aimed at generating a more
analytical corpus of knowledge in the discipline. This trend has continued and accelerated, even as the
behaviouralist revolution has subsided. At the same time, due to the interdependence of all social life,
political science also moved towards a closer working relationship with other disciplines, especially
sociology, economics, history, anthropology, psychology, public administration, law, and
statistics without losing its own identity. Increasingly, political scientists have used the scientific
method to create an intellectual discipline based on the generation of formal models used to derive
testable hypotheses followed by empirical verification. Over the past generations, the discipline placed
an increasing emphasis on relevance and the use of new approaches to increase scientific knowledge in
the field and provide explanations for empirical outcomes.
In modern times as well, political science in the form of research towards other forms of unique
government such as those displayed on the internet or theoretical scenarios.

State & Nation

In political science, a "nation" refers to a group of people who feel bound into a single body by
shared culture, values, folkways, religion and/or language. A "state" just refers to a patch of land
with a sovereign government. States often coincide with nations (and are called "nation-states,"
but not always. States that overlap multiple nations tend to have civil wars; states that exclude
parts of a nation tend to have wars with the neighboring state(s) that contain the rest of the
nation.

State & Government

'The State' can refer to the government, but properly includes and refers to the people and the
government... It is a country as a unified community in whole, and in concept.

'The Government' includes the people and departments that take active, professional, elected, or
appointed part in governance, and the conceptual authority they act upon to do so.

Government & Administration

The government refers to, well, the government, while an administration refers to the people or
party that happens to be in charge of it during any specific period of time

Elements of State

1. People = refers to the rational inhabitants of a state bind by law, living together for the purpose
of mobilizing a polity. People, as an element, serve as the most essential and important
characteristic of a state.

2. Territory = principally the geographic profile of a state that includes the land, waters and the
space above.

3. Government = the agency and the machinery of the state through which the will of the people
is formulated, expressed, and carried out.

4. Sovereignty = the supreme power of the state to exact obedience to its laws upon the citizens.

Divine Right Theory

The Divine Right Theory is not a theory as we understand scientific theories becuase it does not
hinge upon any hypothesis which can be tested. With that The Divine Right Theory, also well
known as divine right of kings, is the doctrine that states the right of rules in a monarch (one
ruler) is developed directly from God and is only accountable to God because God created the
state. Also that God had given those of royal birth a "divine right" to rule, without consent of the
people. Which in simpler terms means if your father was the king and he had passed away, the
throne automatically goes to you and no one can take it away. It doesn't matter if you have
something mentally wrong with you or that you are not capable of handling a job like this, you
are born in royalty and have power amongst the people. These people are bound to obey their
ruler as they would God, even if you are or are not fit for the throne.

The Divine Right Theory is the belief that God gave Kings the right to rule.

Force Theory

Many scholars have long believed that the state was born in force, they hold that one person or a
small group claimed control over an area and forced all within it to submit to that person's or
group's rule. when that rule was established, all the basic elements of the state - population ,
territory , sovereignty, and the government - were present.

Paternalistic theory

It's quite like viewing society as a paternalistic family. In layman terms, paternalistic theory assumes that
in every country people has different degrees of awareness and knowledge of what must be done, like in
a family in which the parents holds more maturity than the children.

Social Contract Theory

An agreement among the members of an organized society or between the governed and the
government defining and limiting the rights and duties of each.

Political system

A political system is a system of politics and government. It is usually compared to the legal system,
economic system, cultural system, and other social systems. It is different from them, and can be
generally defined on a spectrum from left, e.g. communism, to the right, e.g. fascism. However, this is a
very simplified view of a much more complex system of categories involving the views: who should have
authority, how religious questions should be handled, and what the government's influence on its
people and economy should be.

There are several definitions of "political system":

 A political system is a complete set of institutions, interest groups (such as political

parties, trade unions, lobby groups), the relationships between those institutions and the
political norms and rules that govern their functions (constitution, election law).
  A political system is composed of the members of a social organization (group) who are
in power.
 A political system is a system that necessarily has two properties: a set of interdependent
components and boundaries toward the environment with which it interacts.
 A political system is a concept in which theoretically regarded as a way of the
government makes a policy and also to make them more organized in their
administration.
 A political system is one that ensures the maintaining of order and sanity in the society
and at the same time makes it possible for some other institutions to also have their
grievances and complaints put across in the course of social existence.

Commonalities between political systems:

 Interdependent parts
o Citizens Culture
o Government
 Boundaries
o Citizenship
o Territory
o Property

The following are examples of political systems, some of which are typically mutually exclusive
(e.g. Monarchy and Republic), while others may (or may not) overlap in various combinations
(e.g. Democracy and Westminster system, Democracy and Socialism).

 Anarchism (Rule by all/no one)

 Democracy (Rule by majority)

Direct democracy in its traditional form is rule by the people through referenda. The people are
given the right to pass laws, veto laws and withdraw support from a representative (if the
system has representatives) at any time.

The difference between direct and indirect democracy is fairly simple. In a direct democracy,
citizens make decisions directly by proposing laws or referendums on laws which are disliked,
voting to determine who enters public office, and recalling public officials who are not doing
their jobs. An indirect democracy, on the other hand, uses a small group of officials to make
decisions of importance on behalf of their constituents. In both cases, the input of the people is
the cornerstone of the government, but the government is run in different ways.

A classic example of a direct democracy is the Town Meeting. Many cities around New England
continue to hold town meetings, annual events where all citizens who want to can attend to
vote on issues of importance to the community. At a town meeting, citizens might decide how
to allocate funds in the community, or they may propose new laws to make the community run
more smoothly.
  Monarchy. (Rule by monarch) Monarchies are one of the oldest political systems known,
developing from tribal structure with one person the absolute ruler.

Limited Monarchy
a monarchy that is limited by laws and a constitution.

Constitutional monarchy.
A monarchy in which the powers of the ruler are restricted to those granted under the
constitution and laws of the nation.

 Communism (Rule by all citizens) Classless with common ownership and decision
making
 Meritocracy (Rule by best)
 Technocracy (Rule by scientist/intellectuals)
 Republic. (Rule by law) The first recorded republic was in India in the 6th century BC
(BCE).
 Sultanates. (Rule by Allah) an Islamic political structure combining aspects of Monarchy
and Theocracy.
 Islamic Democracy. (Rule by majority in Islamic context) an Islamic and democratic
political structure, which combines aspects of Theocracy (as the framework) and
Democracy (as the decision making method under Islam's ethical system). Iran's
constitution is based on such a system.
 Theocracy (Rule by alleged representative of God)
 Westminster system (rule by republic and representative democracy through parliament)
 Feudalism (Rule by lord/king)

Anthropologists generally recognize four kinds of political systems, two of which are
uncentralized and two of which are centralized.[1]

 Uncentralized systems
o Band
o Tribe
 Centralized systems
o Chiefdom
o State

Main differences

 Uncentralized systems
o Band
 Small kin group, no larger than an extended family or clan; it has been defined
as consisting of no more than 30 to 50 individuals.
 A band can cease to exist if only a small group walks out.
o Tribe
 Generally larger, consisting of many families. Tribes have more social
institutions, such as a chief, big man, or elders.
  More permanent than bands; a band can cease to exist if only a small
group walks out. Many tribes are sub-divided into bands.
 Centralized systems
o Chiefdom
 More complex than a tribe or a band society, and less complex than a state or a
civilization
 Characterized by pervasive inequality and centralization of authority.
 A single lineage/family of the elite class becomes the ruling elite of the chiefdom
 Complex chiefdoms have two or even three tiers of political hierarchy.
 "An autonomous political unit comprising a number of villages or communities
under the permanent control of a paramount chief"
o State
 A sovereign state is a state with a permanent population, a defined territory, a
government and the capacity to enter into relations with other sovereign states.

Republic
 a state in which the supreme power rests in the body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised
by representatives chosen directly or indirectly by them.

 By definition, a republic is a political unit governed by a charter, while a democracy is a

government whose prevailing force is always that of the majority. Perhaps one of the difficulties
in defining these two words — democracy and republic — stems from the fact that many people
consider them to be synonyms, which they aren’t. They are no more alike than an apple and a
banana, and yet they are often used interchangeably.

 The difference between a republic and a democracy lies in the ultimate source of official power.
In the case of a republic, it lies with a charter; in a democracy, power lies with the rule of the
majority. Yet they are often lumped together. Consider the words to the United States' Pledge of
Allegiance, which adds to some of the confusion by proudly touting: "And to the republic for
which its stands, one nation under God, indivisible

Types of Governments
Governments can be classified into several types. Some of the more common types of governments
are:
1. Democracy
The word "democracy" literally means "rule by the people." In a democracy, the people govern.
2. Republic  
A literal democracy is impossible in a political system containing more than a few people. All
"democracies" are really republics. In a republic, the people elect representatives to make and enforce
laws.
3. Monarchy
A monarchy consists of rule by a king or queen. Sometimes a king is called an "emperor," especially if
there is a large empire, such as China before 1911. There are no large monarchies today. The United
Kingdom, which has a queen, is really a republic because the queen has virtually no political power.
4. Aristocracy
An aristocracy is rule by the aristocrats. Aristocrats are typically wealthy, educated people. Many
monarchies have really been ruled by aristocrats. Today, typically, the term "aristocracy" is used
negatively to accuse a republic of being dominated by rich people, such as saying, "The United States has
become an aristocracy."
5. Dictatorship
A dictatorship consists of rule by one person or a group of people. Very few dictators admit they are
dictators; they almost always claim to be leaders of democracies. The dictator may be one person, such as
Castro in Cuba or Hitler in Germany, or a group of people, such as the Communist Party in China.
6. Democratic Republic
 
Usually, a "democratic republic" is not democratic and is not a republic. A government that officially
calls itself a "democratic republic" is usually a dictatorship. Communist dictatorships have been
especially prone to use this term. For example, the official name of North Vietnam was "The Democratic
Republic of Vietnam." China uses a variant, "The People's Republic of China."

Federal Government is divided into three main branches: the legislative, the judicial, and the
executive. These branches have the same basic shape and perform the same basic roles defined
for them when the Constitution was written in 1787. Congress, the legislative branch, is divided
into two chambers: the Senate and the House of Representatives. Representation in the chambers
is carried out by the formula set forth in 1787: by population in the House and by state in the
Senate. The president is the elected chief executive officer and is charged with faithful execution
of the laws. The Supreme Court and all other federal courts have the judicial authority vested in
them by the Constitution and by subsequent legislation. A system of checks and balances
prevents power from being concentrated in any one of the three branches. Power is divided on a
territorial basis between the states and national government.

The Presidential government best known is the current political system of the United States of
America. Other Presidential government known is the French one. In this system the President
has the prime role in the government of the state according to the constitution in force and the
laws and regulations applicable. A presidential system, also called a congressional system, is a
system of government where the executive branch exists and presides (hence the term) separate
from the legislature, to which it is not accountable, and which cannot in normal circumstances
dismiss it.

Revolutionary Government well, the existing structure is overthrown by a completely new

group. The new group can be very small - such as the military - or very large - as in a popular
revolution. After a period of time, this 'becomes' one of the other type of government (unless
there is another coup or uprising)

Military government, rule of enemy territory under military occupation. It is distinguished from
martial law, which is the temporary rule by domestic armed forces over disturbed areas. The
practices of military government were standardized before World War I, notably at the Hague
Conferences (1899, 1907) and form a part of the laws of war.
Authoritarian Characterized by or favoring absolute obedience to authority, as against
individual freedom: an authoritarian regime.