Political Science: Nature, Scope and Approaches
What the domain covers
Political science studies power, authority, governance and the distribution of values in society. Candidates must distinguish it from adjacent fields: political theory (normative questions about justice, obligation, the good state) versus political science in the narrow empirical sense; and politics from political philosophy. Know the classic scope debates: the state-centric view (institutions, sovereignty, law) versus the behaviouralist broadening to power, groups, voting and informal politics.
Approaches you must be able to name
- Normative/philosophical: prescriptive, asks what ought to be.
- Historical: traces institutions through time.
- Institutional-legal: formal constitutions and offices.
- Behaviouralist: observable behaviour, empirical, value-neutral claims, quantifiable.
- Post-behaviouralist: rejects pure neutrality, insists on relevance to social problems.
- Systems and structural-functional approaches (Easton's inputs-outputs-feedback; Almond and Powell on functions).
- Rational choice and feminist/postcolonial critiques.
Traps
Questions often blur behaviouralism (a methodological stance) with behaviourism (the psychological stimulus-response school); keep them apart. Another trap is treating 'value-neutrality' as a claim that political scientists have no values rather than an injunction to separate analysis from advocacy. Do not attribute the systems approach to the wrong author.
Rule of thumb
Ask: is the claim about what should be (normative) or what is (empirical)? and is the unit the institution or the behaviour? Those two axes place almost any approach.
Worked example: 'The study of politics should focus on observable voting behaviour rather than constitutions.' This is behaviouralist and empirical; it is not a normative claim about how people should vote.