Political Science
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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 lawgoverned 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
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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 forwardlooking 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 selfinterested 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 nongovernmental 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":
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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.
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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:
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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).
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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.
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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.
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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]
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Uncentralized systems o Band o Tribe Centralized systems o Chiefdom o State
Main differences
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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"
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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
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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 ² democracy and republic ² 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.
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 lawgoverned 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
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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 forwardlooking 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 selfinterested 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 nongovernmental 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":
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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.
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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:
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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).
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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.
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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.
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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]
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Uncentralized systems o Band o Tribe Centralized systems o Chiefdom o State
Main differences
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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"
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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
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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 ² democracy and republic ² 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.
