Political science

Political scientists do not agree on when the field emerged. Within social sciences, political science is a latecomer. However, many political scientists trace the beginnings of the discipline to the political debates that took place in ancient Greece, contending that political science was born as a result of the teachings of philosophers such as Socrates (ca. 469–399 BCE) and Plato (ca. 427–374 BCE). However, it was Aristotle (ca. 384–322 BCE), with his insistence on empiricism and the need to back up theories with experience and evidence, who is considered the father of political science. Niccoló Machiavelli is credited with bringing greater pragmatism to the study of politics in The Prince (1532), earning him the title of the father of contemporary political philosophy. David Hume (1711–76), Adam Smith (1723–90), and other figures of the Scottish Enlightenment introduced Newtonian principles into the discipline. Political science has always walked a fine line between the social sciences and the humanities, and is not completely part of either field.

In its simplest form, political science is the study of politics, an examination of the establishment of the state and the formation of state policies. The subfields of the discipline have not always coexisted harmoniously because of the tension between those who prefer scientific studies and those who focus on historical or descriptive studies. In the United States, the subfields of political science have generally been American government, public policy, comparative government, international relations, and political theory. Students with degrees in political science enter a variety of fields, becoming college professors, lawyers, policy analysts, political consultants, political activists, writers, and lobbyists. They are employed in both the public and private sectors.

Brief History

The first American professor of political science was Francis Lieber, who began teaching at Columbia College, now Columbia University, in 1857. The first academic school dedicated to the teaching of political science was established at Columbia in 1880. As the field of political science emerged, public law was considered an important part of the study of politics. At that time, many political scientists saw themselves as historians of politics, and the fields of political science and history have always been closely related. Both fields emerged as part of an Anglo-American tendency to consider history, philosophy, and literature as different parts of one broad field. It was not until 1903 that political scientists separated themselves from historians and established the American Political Science Association. In many smaller schools, the two disciplines continue to operate out of a single department.

In 1925, the University of Chicago published Charles Merriam’s New Aspects of Politics, which offered one of the first examinations of political science as a discipline. It was under Merriam’s leadership that the political science department of the University of Chicago became the top school in the field, remaining there until it was displaced by Yale University in the 1950s. Another significant influence on the development of political science as a discipline was Charles A. Beard, whose An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States (1913) is still considered one of the most significant works on that subject. While serving as president of the American Political Science Association (APSA), Beard admonished his colleagues for placing too much emphasis on empiricism and not paying sufficient attention to the need for reform within the discipline.

After World War II, political science began to reflect many of the changes taking place in the world. Rather than philosophizing about the role of the state, the emphasis was on the study of politics, including individual political behavior and opinions. V. O. Key, an expert in public administration, led political scientists into the study of political behavior and public opinion and was one of the first to explain why southern politics are often distinct from American politics as a whole. Key was a major influence on other political scientists such as David Truman, Robert A. Dahl, William Riker, Herbert A. Simon, and Robert Lane.

By the 1950s, behavioralism, an approach that emphasized empiricism, objectivity, and quantifiability, was firmly entrenched in political science. Most scholars focused on quantitative studies, and the biggest names in the field in the 1950s were generally behavioralists. Arguing in favor of the shift toward behavioralism, David Easton, author of The Political System (1953), argued that political science had undergone a "malaise" since the Civil War era. Consequently, qualitative studies such as those on the Constitution and public law diminished significantly.

In The American Science of Political Science: Its Origins and Conditions (1959), British political scientist Bernard Crick offered a critical assessment of American political science, maintaining that political scientists had become instruments of the dominant liberal ideology. By contrast, Crick insisted that British political scientists chose to concentrate on history and culture rather than on fake scientism. The 1950s and 1960s also saw the emergence of political scientists such as Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., and Ellis Hanley, who focused attention on such issues as pluralism and American exceptionalism. Others, including Richard Hofstadter, began to emphasize the importance of interdisciplinary studies.

In the 1970s, many American political science departments turned away from history, continuing to place greater emphasis on the scientific nature of the field. The rational choice approach, which uses the study of individual behavior to explain aggregate political behavior, also gained momentum. At the same time, John Rawls, who taught philosophy at both Harvard and Yale, emerged as the foremost American political theorist with the publication of A Theory of Justice (1971), reviving the idea of political theory as a valid element of the discipline.

Although the emphasis remained on the study of politics as a science, in the 1980s, some political scientists began reexamining the history of the discipline in works such as That Noble Science of Politics: A Study in Nineteenth-Century Intellectual History (1983) by Stefan Collini, John Burrow, and Donald Winch. Others who focused attention on the subject included Raymond Seidelman, James Farr, and Edward J. Harpham in Disenchanted Realists: Political Science and the American Crisis 1884–1984 (1985); Andrew C. Janos in Politics and Paradigms: Changing Theories of Change in Social Science (1986); and David Ricci in The Tragedy of Political Science: Politics, Scholarship, and Democracy (1987).

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, scholars such as Theda Skocpol of Harvard, Ira Katznelson of Columbia University, Elizabeth Sanders and Richard Bensel of Cornell University, and Stephen Skowronek of Yale University brought about a merger of political science and American political development by examining politics in relation to the historical process. The 1990s also gave birth to a new breed of political scientists who expanded political science curricula to include such issues as race relations and international political economy.

Political Science Today

By the early 2020s, the APSA had grown to include over 11,000 members in more than 100 countries. A minor rebellion occurred in the field in mid-October 2000 when a group of political scientists initiated what came to be known as the "Perestroika Movement," insisting that the leading political scientists of the day were no longer in touch with the realities of the field. The movement began with a letter signed by "Mr. Perestroika" that was distributed to political scientists across the country. At the end of the month, 125 political scientists signed a letter written by Rogers Smith of Yale University suggesting that many political scientists were feeling alienated from the discipline as a whole because political scientists were no longer concentrating on the study of politics. The group insisted that reforms were essential, and demanded that the American Political Science Association and its journal, the American Political Science Review, become more democratic. The Perestroika Movement also opened up new debates on the subfields of political science and generated new discussion about the need to include both qualitative and quantitative studies within the discipline.

In 2010, Thomas Cronin, who is considered one of the most respected experts on the American presidency, published On the Presidency, in which he suggested that some political scientists conducted research with preconceptions. He cautioned political scientists about examining political subjects from idealistic viewpoints rather than taking into account the realities of politics.

The following year, in an article for New Political Science entitled "Politics in Motion: A Personal History of Political Science," noted political scientists Theodore J. Lowi of Cornell University and Israel Waismel-Manor of Israel’s University of Haifa attempted to explain how political science had changed since its founding. They examined trends in the discipline by identifying citations of 220 noted political scientists between 1906 and 2001. While the article was considered controversial because it reflected the White male bias that has long been associated with the profession, Lowi and Waismel-Manor did succeed in demonstrating that political science has continued to evolve throughout its history and in identifying some of the major influences on that evolution. Other political scientists criticized the article, insisting that the authors had failed to grasp the fact that internal changes may be more indicative of decline than of growth.

In the twenty-first century, there has been a tendency for political science departments to move away from traditional subfields of the discipline by examining new issues that are believed to more realistically describe the field. Contemporary political scientists study political philosophy, political theory, policy studies, policy analysis, political communication, political ideology, elections and voting behavior, race and politics, and women and politics. The rise of populist movements worldwide has been a focus of study for many political scientists in the 2020s, as researchers study the movements' impacts on democratic institutions and political stability. Climate politics, or the intersection of politics and climate change, has also become a critical area of study.

Some contemporary political scientists argue that the fields of American politics, comparative politics, and international relations should be replaced with studies of conflict, political economies, institutions, and behavior. Critics of traditional American political science maintain that the field has always had an ethnocentric bias, insisting that Americans see the politics of other nations only in relation to that of the United States.

The argument that American political science discriminates against women is not new, and feminist scholars have produced significant evidence to show that compared to their male colleagues, women in the field are less likely to become full professors, earn lower salaries, are less likely to be cited in major academic journals, and are given fewer prestigious committee assignments. They have also shown that women are more likely than men to receive negative student evaluations when they teach large classes; it has been posited that students expect female professors to be more nurturing than male professors, and nurturing tends to be difficult in large classes. There is also a tendency to consider the works of female scholars as less significant than those of male scholars because of differences in their subjects of study. For instance, women are more likely than men to conduct research in fields related to gender and family.

In 2013, the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association offered two panels devoted to the subject of gender bias, featuring such participants as Barbara F. Walker of the University of California–San Diego who coauthored the paper "The Gender Citation Gap" with her colleague Daniel Maliniak and Ryan Powers of the University of Wisconsin–Madison. In an examination of 3,000 journals published between 1980 and 2006, the authors concluded that male political scientists are more likely to cite one another than they are to cite women and that women are less likely than men to cite their own work, which increases the number of times a scholar is cited.

Bibliography

Clarke, Kevin A., and David M. Primo. A Model Discipline: Political Science and the Logic of Representations. Oxford UP, 2012.

"Discover Trending Political Science Research." EBSCO, 30 Jan. 2024, www.ebsco.com/blogs/ebscopost/discover-trending-political-science-research. Accessed 30 Dec. 2024.

Fisher, Louis. Congress: Protecting Individual Rights. U of Kansas P, 2016.

Fisher, Louis. "Political Scientist as Practitioner." Political Science and Politics, vol. 46, no. 3, 2013, pp. 520–23.

Goodin, Robert F. The Oxford Handbook of Political Science. Oxford UP, 2009.

Grant, Judith. "Forget the APST: The Politics of Political Science." New Political Science, vol. 33, no. 1, 2011, pp. 87–91.

Kornhauser, Anne M. Debating the American State: Liberal Anxieties and the New Leviathan, 1930–1970. U of Pennsylvania P, 2015.

Roskin, Michael G. Political Science: An Introduction. Pearson, 2016.

Verba, Sidney, et al., editors. The Future of Political Science: 100 Perspectives. Routledge, 2009.

Von Vacano, Diego. "The Scope of Comparative Political Theory in Comparative Political Theory." Annual Review of Political Science, vol. 18, 2015, pp. 465–80.

Waismel-Manor, Israel, and Theodore J. Lowi. "Politics in Motion: A Personal History of Political Science." New Political Science, vol. 33, no. 1, 2011, pp. 59–78.