Political Science

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Political Science

• The Essentials

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Politics and change

• Your textbook argues that studying politics
  involves studying change.
• Do you agree?
• What about politics involves change?

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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.

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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.

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Governments resisting change

• Sometimes, governments do not serve societys
  needs, particularly in rapidly changing times.
• If a government fails to adjust to societys
  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).

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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.

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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.

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Political actors

• Governments are major political actors, but they
  arent the only ones.
• Who else are?

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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?

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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.

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Importance of politics

• Politics is important its 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.

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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.

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• These distinctions will become more clear through
  the semester.
• For studying politics, remember that it is an
  ancient field of study.

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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.
• .

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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.

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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.

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Normative studyhow 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.

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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.

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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.

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Different tools to study politics

• 1. Traditionalism - Using history and
  philosophy to seek a non-numerical in-depth
  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.

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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?
  

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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.

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Reaction against behavioralism

• 3. Postbehavioralism combining the two
  approaches recognizing that research should be
  relevant and ethical as well as empirical.

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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.