Political science
[citation needed] Generally, classical political philosophy is primarily defined by a concern for Hellenic and Enlightenment thought,[3] political scientists are also marked by a great concern for "modernity" and the contemporary nation state, along with the study of classical thought, and as such share more terminology with sociologists (e.g., structure and agency).
[2] APSA members played a key role in setting up political science departments that were distinct from history, philosophy, law, sociology, and economics.
A focus on studying political behavior, rather than institutions or interpretation of legal texts, characterized early behavioral political science, including work by Robert Dahl, Philip Converse, and in the collaboration between sociologist Paul Lazarsfeld and public opinion scholar Bernard Berelson.
[citation needed] The late 1960s and early 1970s witnessed a takeoff in the use of deductive, game-theoretic formal modelling techniques aimed at generating a more analytical corpus of knowledge in the discipline.
Those who identified with the movement argued for a plurality of methodologies and approaches in political science and for more relevance of the discipline to those outside of it.
It measures the success of governance and specific policies by examining many factors, including stability, justice, material wealth, peace, and public health.
[11] Political scientists may provide the frameworks from which journalists, special interest groups, politicians, and the electorate analyze issues.
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.
There was a simultaneous increase in the total correlation between the 19 major public fears in the Ukrainian society (by about 64%) and in their statistical dispersion (by 29%) during the pre-crisis years.
[24] Citing this difficulty, former American Political Science Association President Lawrence Lowell once said "We are limited by the impossibility of experiment.
Like all social sciences, political science faces the difficulty of observing human actors that can only be partially observed and who have the capacity for making conscious choices, unlike other subjects, such as non-human organisms in biology, minerals in geoscience, chemical elements in chemistry, stars in astronomy, or particles in physics.
Empirical political science methods include the use of field experiments,[25] surveys and survey experiments,[26] case studies,[27] process tracing,[28][29] historical and institutional analysis,[30] ethnography,[31] participant observation,[32] and interview research.
In these cases, political science may either inherit their methods of study or develop a contrasting approach.
[36] For example, Lisa Wedeen has argued that political science's approach to the idea of culture, originating with Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba and exemplified by authors like Samuel P. Huntington, could benefit from aligning more closely with the study of culture in anthropology.
Separate, specialized or, in some cases, professional degree programs in international relations, public policy, and public administration are common at both the undergraduate and postgraduate levels, although most but not all undergraduate level education in these sub-fields of political science is generally found in academic concentrations within a political science academic major.
