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V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University

Department of Political Science

POLITICAL SCIENCE: seminar practicum

Seminar - practicum 1

POLITICAL SCIENCE: ITS ORIGINS, LINKAGES AND ESSENCE

One of the most striking features of the contemporary social life as we can observed, is the increasing role of politics in all major spheres. The impact of politics is the in some form or the other, is visible on economy, culture, social relations and even ethical norms. Disintegration of conventional forms of organization, social and political revolutions and the aggravation of conflict at all levels have further placed at the centre of public life. This is, however, not to state that politics was non-existent or unimportant in earlier times. On the contrary, politics according to Aristotle and many other thinkers is as old as human organization. It has always played a decisive role in social life. This role has been constantly increasing in our times.

How we can identify what is political science?

Political science is the study of governments, public policies and political processes, systems, and political behavior. Traditionally political science represented in literature as systematic study of governance by the application of empirical and generally scientific methods of analysis. As traditionally defined and studied, political science examines the state and its organs and institutions. The contemporary discipline, however, is considerably broader than this, encompassing studies of all the societal, cultural, and psychological factors that mutually influence the operation of government and the body politic.

Although political science borrows heavily from the other social sciences, it is distinguished from them by its focus on power-defined as the ability of one political actor to get another actor to do what it wants at the international, national, and local levels. Political science is generally used in the singular, but in French and Spanish the plural (sciences politiques and ciencias políticas, respectively) is used, perhaps a reflection of the discipline’s eclectic nature. Although political science overlaps considerably with political philosophy, the two fields are distinct. Political philosophy is concerned primarily with political ideas and values, such as rights, justice, freedom, and political obligation (whether people should or should not obey political authority); it is normative in its approach (i.e., it is concerned with what ought to be rather than with what is) and rationalistic in its method. In contrast, political science studies institutions and behavior, favors the descriptive over the normative, and develops theories or draws conclusions based on empirical observations, which are expressed in quantitative terms where possible.

For a good cross section of the areas of study, political scientists use both humanistic and scientific perspectives and tools and a variety of methodological approaches to examine the process, systems, and political dynamics of all countries and regions of the world. In conceptual terms also, politics has always occupied a significant place in both the East and the West. The conceptions of politics, however, have varied with the time and place. Politics for instance, was conceived as ethics by some ancient Greece, India, China and Middle East area. During the medieval feudal ages it was colored in theological terms everywhere. The realistic orientation began in the West with Machiavelli in the 16^th century Italy, although in India it began much earlier with Kautilya, in Greece with Thrasymachus and in Middle East with Ibn Khaldun.

State, Law, Sovereignty and related institutions as well as the structure and centre of power became the focal points of study. Karl Marx in the 19^th century gave a revolutionary turn to social sciences, by giving politics a historic-economic interpretation. The third decade of 20^th century witnessed the rise of “behaviorism” in United States, with dominated Political Science, among other social sciences, till the last sixties. The behaviorist’s movement rejected all major notions of traditional Political Science and advocated an empirical, scientific discipline of politics. Two decades later, however, restoration of values in political analysis became one of the major concepts of the leading contemporary movements such as “post- behaviorism” in United States or Humanistic Marxism, currently popular in parts of America, Europe and Asia. Political science, thus, in the sum of all that has happened in these preceding centuries.

Although political science, like all modern sciences, involves empirical investigation, it generally does not produce precise measurements and predictions. This has led some scholars to question whether the discipline can be accurately described as a science. However, if the term science applies to any body of systematically organized knowledge based on facts ascertained by empirical methods and described by as much measurement as the material allows, then political science is a science, like the other social disciplines.

In the 1960s the American historian of science Thomas S. Kuhn argued that political science was “pre-paradigmatic,” not yet having developed basic research paradigms, such as the periodic table that defines chemistry. It is likely that political science never will develop a single, universal paradigm or theory, and attempts to do so have seldom lasted more than a generation, making political science a discipline of many trends but few classics.

The brief sketch outlined above should make it clear to us that there is no single definition of the subject matter of political science that is uniformly or universally accepted. There are different interpretations and approaches and therefore, a variety of definitions. However, before discussing in detail some major issues of subject Political Science, let us briefly examine the controversies the standard nomenclature of Political Science.