POLITICAL SCIENCE

the systematic study of government processes by the application of scientific methods of analysis. More narrowly and more traditionally, it has been thought of as the study of the state and of the organs and institutions through which the state functions. In most countries, political science is thought to be a single discipline, but the plural form has been used in France, as in the name of the cole Libre des Sciences Politiques (now Institut d'tudes Politiques de l'Universit de Paris), founded in 1871although there is also an Association Franaise de Science Politique. Speculation about political subjects is not unknown in ancient non-Western cultures, but most students agree that the roots of political science are to be found in the earliest sources of Western thought, especially in the works of Aristotle, who is recognized by many as the founder of political science. Although political science may be distinguished from political philosophy, the distinctions are unsatisfactory inasmuch as they lack categorical rigour. In the most usual distinction, political philosophy is thought to be concerned primarily with the study of political ideas, often within the context of their times. It is strongly normative in its thrust and disposition and rationalistic in its method. Political science, however, concerns itself with institutions and behaviour, eschews normative judgments as much as possible, and attempts to derive principles from objective facts with as much quantification as the evidence will allow. Political philosophy thus speculates about the place and order of values, the principles of political obligation (why men should or should not obey political authority), and the nature of such terms as right, justice, and freedom. Political science, on the other hand, seeks to establish by observation (and, if possible, by measurement) the existence of uniformities in political behaviour and to draw correct inferences from these data. The stated differences between political philosophy and political science are less than is sometimes supposed, for the most empirical scholar in both the social and natural sciences makes use of unproved postulates, hunches, and intuitions; and the most rationalistic philosopher employs conceptions that embody empirical statements. Some theorists, however, who believe it possible to develop a completely value-free science of politics insist that the distinction between political philosophy and political science is not faint but vivid. It is their opinion that only a few hundred philosophers and political theorists have ever contributed to systematic speculation about and study of politics. It was said in 1966 by one of the exponents of this view that probably two out of every three political scientists who have ever lived are alive and practicing today. In this view, political philosophy is believed to be addicted to obscurity and opacity of statementan effort to bespeak the unspeakableand it is thought that its task should be a more modest one, namely, to grope with the grammar of philosophical statements. This would require political philosophers to put their intelligence to the elucidation of the language of politics and to expose the difficulties placed by language in the consideration of matters of fact. One of those interested in this approach was the English political philosopher T.D. Weldon in The Vocabulary of Politics (1953), but few have followed his initiative. The question as to whether political science is a science is largely inconsequential, because the problem is primarily one of definition. If the term science is to be applied 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, just as are the other social disciplines. If, on the other hand, the term science is to be limited to those disciplines in which the scholar can control the materials to be studied and can perform experiments that others can reproduce under the same conditions and in which predictability is possible, then the label is less appropriate, although not entirely misapplied. The American political economist Thorstein Veblen denied that political science was anything more than a taxonomy of credenda, and, more recently, a British writer, Bernard Crick, has said that the hope of creating an artificial science of politics on natural principles, although not originally and uniquely American, has been largely generated and sustained by two aspects of the American culturean agreement on liberal doctrine that has made politics less a matter of serious doctrinal splits than of mere disagreement among partisans of the same creed, and a general national preoccupation with technology. academic discipline concerned with the study of government and politics. Political science studies the functions performed by governmentse.g., legislation and administration of the lawas well as the behaviour of voters, the operation of political parties, the influence of political organizations, and other factors in the functioning of the state. The discipline, which is concerned with observing patterns in political behaviour and deriving principles from the data, is generally distinguished from political philosophy, a normative field that is concerned with such concepts as right, justice, and obligation. Speculation on political subjects is found in the thought of many ancient cultures, but it is generally agreed that the roots of political science are found in the works of Plato and Aristotle. The scientific character of the discipline was developed by the Christian Socialist Henri de Saint-Simon and by Auguste Comte and other 19th-century Positivists. During this period political science became allied with other disciplines that were beginning to study human behaviour by using scientific techniques, and scholars began to examine actual human behaviour as reflected in political life. A pioneer in this development was Ludwig Gumplowicz, who drew upon ideas from anthropology and from Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and who focused attention on the interactions that take place between groups within the state. During the last three decades of the 19th century, institutions dedicated specifically to the study of political science were established. The first such institution was the Free School of Political Sciences (now the Institute for Political Studies, of the University of Paris), founded in 1871. Although a chair in history and political science had been created in 1857 at Columbia University, it was not until 1880 that John W. Burgess, who had studied at the Free School of Political Sciences, established a separate school of political science at Columbia. The London School of Economics and Political Science was founded in 1895, and the University of Oxford established a separate chair in politics in 1912. One of the most influential books in American political science was Arthur F. Bentley's The Process of Government (1908). Following Gumplowicz, Bentley made the concept of the group central to his thought, and he considered how governmental actions could be understood in terms of human activities. In the 1920s and '30s, the so-called Chicago school, which later influenced the development of behavioralism, assumed preeminence in political science. Charles E. Merriam and Harold D. Laswell, leading members of the school, emphasized the role of psychological factors in political life, though Merriam was also interested in the use of mathematical techniques such as statistics in the analysis of politics. Since World War II the techniques of systems analysis have become increasingly important in political science. This approach, particularly as developed by David Easton in The Political System (1953), studies politics as that part of the overall social system whose activities involve the making of social policy and the distribution of social goods. Systems analysis also provides a broad framework for other topics of study, such as the interactions of interest groups, elite classes, and political parties. Additional reading Although works of classical political philosophy are both venerable and extensive, few of them qualify as modern political science, because they are neither quantitative nor, in most respects, even empirical in tone and temper. Aristotle's Politics and Machiavelli's The Prince come closest to meeting empirical standards. Auguste Comte, Cours de philosophie positive, 6 vol. (183042; Eng. trans., The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte, 2 vol., 1853), and Systme de politique positive, 4 vol. (185154; Eng. trans., System of Positive Polity, 4 vol., 187577), are seminal statements in the 19th century on a science of society. Ludwig Gumplowicz, Grundriss der Sociologie (1885; Eng. trans., The Outlines of Sociology, 1899; 2nd ed., 1963); and Gustav Ratzenhofer in Wesen und Zweck der Politik, 3 vol. (1893), argue the case for the primacy of groups in studies of the state. A useful summary statement of the sociologies of the 19th century is Nicholas S. Timasheff, Sociological Theory: Its Nature and Growth, 3rd ed. (1967). A good general work on the efforts of German jurists in the 19th century to cope with the facts of federalism is Rupert Emerson, State and Sovereignty in Modern Germany (1928).The most notable precursor of the behavioral approach in the 20th century was Arthur F. Bentley, The Process of Government: A Study of Social Pressures (1908, reprinted 1949). Others were Graham Wallas, Human Nature in Politics, 4th ed. (1962); and Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion (1922; paperback ed., 1965). Besides works of the Chicago School mentioned in the article, the following may be noted: Charles E. Merriam, Chicago: A More Intimate View of Urban Politics (1929, reprinted 1970); Leonard D. White, The Prestige Value of Public Employment in Chicago (1929); and Harold D. Lasswell and Daniel Lerner (eds.), The Policy Sciences: Recent Developments in Scope and Method (1951), an effort to bring scientific method to the study of choices in public policy. Support for the establishment of a value-free science of politics was also provided by Stuart A. Rice, Quantitative Methods in Politics (1928, reprinted 1969), who wrote the first general work on the application of statistical methods to the study of politics; George E.G. Catlin, The Science and Method of Politics (1927); and William Bennett Munro, Invisible Government (1928). A useful summary survey of political science around the world after the end of World War II is Contemporary Political Science, published in 1950 by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.