L2 | POLITICAL SCIENCE

• ARISTOTLE

  • Father of Political Science
  • Introduced empirical observation into the study of politics
  • First person to give a working definition of political science
  • “Man is by nature a political animal”
• POLITICAL SCIENCE

  • Academic discipline that deals with the study of government and political processes, institutions, and behaviors.
• POLITICAL THEORY

  • Doctrines
• PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

  • How you are going to run the government
• COMPARATIVE POLITICS

  • Ideologies: democracy, liberalism, capitalism, etc.
• PUBLIC LAW

  • Created local laws
• KEY CONCEPTS IN RELATION TO CONTROL (LAWSON, 1977)

  1. POWER
  2. INFLUENCE
  3. AUTHORITY
  4. LEGITIMATE
  5. LINKAGE
• POWER

  • Ability or right to control people / things
  • Political control of a country or area
  • “Who’s in charge?”
• INFLUENCE

  • Includes all cases when one party’s desire affect the behavior of another party
  • Can take place without the threat of sanctions, use of force, and promise of personal reward.
• AUTHORITY

  • Right to exercise the power and influence of a given position that comes from having been placed in that position according to regular, known, and widely accepted procedures (election).
• LEGITIMATE

  • Approval of others
  • Condition of being regarded as correctly placed in a particular role and as carrying out the functions of that role correctly (whether or not one is actually doing so)
• POLITICAL LEGITIMACY

  • Having widespread approval for the way one exercises political power
• DE JURE

  • Having a rightful title but not in the power to exercise authority.
• DE FACTO

  • Does not have a rightful title but can exercise authority
• LINKAGE

  • Connection between one political unit and another
  • Ways which decisions in one nation may force desired decisions in another.
• NATURE OF POLITICAL SCIENCE

  1. Social science that deals with humans and their interactions, it essentially deals with the large scale actions of human group mentality.
  2. Soft science, it studies tendencies and actions in people – which cannot be easily quantified.
  3. Scope is vast and experts have divided the field into 5 subdisciplines:
  4. POLITICAL THEORY
  5. PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
  6. COMPARATIVE POLITICS
  7. INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
  8. PUBLIC LAW