What Is PSC?

Huntingdon College | Political Science | Courses
WHAT IS POLITICAL SCIENCE?
by Jeremy lewis

WHAT IS POLITICAL SCIENCE? There is no one accepted definition; perhaps that keeps it interesting. For ancient Athenians, politics was the route to the highest virtue, an unlikely view today. Politics has been defined more recently as "the setting of authoritative values for society"; or as "Who gets what, when, how". The first of these is driven by values; the second is based both on material benefits and the satisfaction of psychological needs. Politics is also the collective settling of conflicts without (and sometimes with) violence, and democracy (literally, rule by the people) has been defined as a "competitive struggle for the people's vote."

Hence political science connects to political history, political philosophy, political economy, political psychology and political communications.

Among new college graduates with a Bachelor's degree, average first salaries in political science rank top of all the social sciences and humanities -- at over $34,000, they average $2,000 more than those other fields.

Political science is a strong major field for careers: the most common route to law school or to careers in public service, it is also a popular field of preparation for numerous positions as political staff aides, journalists or government consultants. (There are more lawyers here than in other nations -- and more political aides and consultants in the US than in all other countries combined). Among US freshmen surveyed (Mann, 1999), political science is the second most common social science major field taken, with enrolments rising among women and minority students.

You may be surprised that there are about 6 million federal officials from over 200 professions. In the state and local governments there are twice as many jobs again. With a public administration or political science degree, plus appropriate professional degree (MPA, MPP, CPA, JD etc) or training, you might become a police officer, city manager, public works manager, fire chief, accountant, district attorney, quality control inspector, military officer, food pathologist, forest ranger, city planner, transport consultant, policy analyst, or think tank researcher.

In most other developed countries, it is even higher. In fact, the best French private companies usually hire top executives from graduates of national administration instead of business students!

How does political science differ from other subjects you may have already taken? Generally, you have probably already taken civics and history classes; you will find political science familiar from these. Political science builds upon these subjects as its raw material, for example in presidential studies (where there are few cases to use for statistics.) If you are a party activist or an idealist, you may find that we tend in class to explore what is effective in politics rather than merely engaging in wishful thinking. If you live for today's headlines, you may notice that we tend to find historical or comparative patterns of behavior to place those headlines in context.

But modern political science takes normative theories and applies them via hypotheses, attempting to find data to answer questions about human behavior, for example in voting data and public opinion where statistics are especially plentiful. For this purpose we shall examine classic readings in political theory and perhaps recognize the echoes of their arguments in current political debates. Throughout the text you will find fascinating data tables and charts which we will interpret in class.