Political Science a science?

I'm a senior in high school taking AP Government and a Rothbardian as far as political belief is concerned. The course so far feels like a 'dismal science', a term describing economics; the course is far removed from human interaction. It seems as if every government and its respective policies are treated as an experiment and the political scientist must try to figure out whether the results were beneficial or not. Can we really treat states as experiments? Its impossible for one to dissect the state and look for a variable and keep controls the same for it to be an actual experiment. How about the analysis and conclusions? Bastiat points out government allows one group to live at the expense of another. Is it a beneficial result if we mulk the public and put to use their funds on welfare/warfare or subsidies? Political science hasn't really advanced since its conception. It takes to describing political systems rather than interpreting events or predicting future ones. It's seemingly value-free, but how can we determine the viability of different policies if we don't have values to work from. Thus, political science merely becomes an exercise in the art of acquiring government power with appropriate apologia for power. It doesn't lead us anywhere and political science hasn't progressed anywhere. How often do we hear a bureucrat saying they are 'political scientist', out for the pursuit of genuine science to help mankind and serve the public interest. It almost sounds as if scientific socialism has taken a new form. What are your thoughts on political science being termed as a science?

Hey equack. First of all, I think its awesome that you have such clear and deep thought in high school--I was still years away from exposure to Rothbard... but I digress.

I'm currently in, ironically, a political science course called, simply, "Conservatism" (of course, it should be called Neoconservativism). At any rate, the other day my professor said what appeared to be the first accurate thing of the semester, namely that the social sciences exist not in spite of, but for the expansion of state power.

It is, after all, the social sciences that have led to the vast expansion in statistics which are, as Rothbard pointed out, a key element to the states power. The vast accumulation of minute details about each citizen has empowered the State greatly, and it has been done largely in the name of "scientific" research. While there may be some good to come out of the social sciences (such as predicting the inevitable failure of socialism), the good rarely makes it to the mainstream due to the ultimate special interest: the state. 

 Just my thoughts on the issue. Thanks for the good post.

cris  

The term politics is derived from the Greek word polis and it has different meanings.

 In Antiquity and Medieval times politics used to designate, by and large, the lawful community of people while in modern times (starting around the 15th century) it simply denotes the institutional exercise of power.

The academic field of political science came into being at the end of the 19th century, at first in Europe (France and most notably Germany) and very soon after that in the United States where the contemporary face of the discipline was forged and where it subsequently became the formal and well established academic field it is today. It was the last byproduct of the positivist weltanschauung and social program and as all the other social sciences brought about by positivism (psychology, sociology and so on) it is a grand failure by it's own standards.

But I do think however that one can conceive of a science of politics in the spirit of the modern/contemporary definition of politics, i.e. the organized exercise of power. The analysis of interventionism as well as a large part of the public choice literature do fit into this description. There is still room however for the development of a systematic praxeology of conflict as noted by Mises in "Epistemological Problems of Economics".

 

Praxeology could be extended to form an Austrian sociology and a more formalized view of the political process, drawing on Austrian insights on interventionism and public choice economics. In fact I think for any Austrian with an interest in the field, that they should try take praxeological insights into that direction.

I am also currently in highschool and decided to opt out and just challenge economics and government rather than put up with the nonsense. Needless to say, I passed. =)

 I would say political science is not an objective science but rather a subjective art, a really terrible genre of art, in my opinion.

II applaud you for having discovered all that before college.

Is political science a science? No. At least not any more so, probably much less, than most econometric economics can be considered a science. Although if you consider history to be a science then most econometric political science and economics are historical sciences in the sense that the best they can usually do is form statistical interpretations and analyses of past data. Sure political scientists still try to make predictions and search for general laws, but the former are generally unsuccessful and none of the latter have yet been found by their modern positivist methods.

 I'm a doctoral candidate in political science at Louisiana State University. My primary field, however, is political philosophy and theory (which I think is the true and original political science). My second field is international relations though and I am somewhat familiar with how things are done in comparative politics and American politics.

 Academic political science is rather dismal and it does support and has helped to create the status quo. Was it Rothbard who pointed out that the statistical methods tend to have that effect? That they tend to make one a left of center statist? Researchers tend to be only interested in doing research on things that are easily amenable to statistical methods and promise quick and easy publication. Thus, important issues get ignored.

 In any event, you'll find that a lot of political science involves explaining state behavior. (Some theories don't even study states per se but rather the international system (systemic variables) as a whole.) There is some study of individual level variables though. For example, those who do international political psychology attempt to study the psychology of political leaders. They are interested in correlating things like the president's need for power, affiliation and achievement, or his operational code, or his cognitive complexity, with foreign policy preferences or behavior. My first academic conference paper was actually an attempt to correlate self-esteem with foreign policy behavior. While the results were interesting, I had given up the project as futile before I even finished. The way that such research is done is called at-a-distance measurement. One such method is called verbs-in-context. The researcher actually attempts to code a political leader's speeches and/or interviews, assigning different values to different words or phrases in order to create variables amenable to statistical analysis. To improve objectivity, researchers will have a number of coders and do tests to determine how much agreement there is among the coders.

 As one example of state level research, I give you power preponderance theory. One thing researchers attempt to do when testing this theory is try to determine state dissatisfaction with the status quo. Now, obviously, states are not people, so they can't go ask them. Researchers of this theory also don't bother with interviewing or doing at-a-distance measurement of the political leaders. No. They tried using UN General Assembly votes as a proxy variable but it turned out states generally all vote the same in the general assembly. They tried measuring alliances but, for example, all states in South America are allied with all the other states in South America. So those two methods didn't work. If I remember correctly, they then turned to measuring changes in military spending as a percentage of GDP. I don't need to tell you, I'm sure, that there could be many other reasons for this proxy variable to change other than dissatisfaction with the status quo. Nonetheless, it is often forgotten that one's proxy variable is nothing more than a proxy, and a shaky one at that, and in their written conclusions the proxy variable comes to be treated as the actual variable they want to test.

Little or no progress has been made in modern academic political science. At best, old theories get picked apart bit by bit before being replaced by new theories that are often just the old theories in new clothing. Some researchers remain die-hard adherents to some theory in its pure form but over time you often see younger scholars using the collection of theories as a tool bag from which to choose what appears to be the most appropriate tool for the particular job.

 A praxeological political philosophy and political theory would, I think, be truly scientific and not dismal at all.

Bogdan:

The term politics is derived from the Greek word polis and it has different meanings.

 In Antiquity and Medieval times politics used to designate, by and large, the lawful community of people while in modern times (starting around the 15th century) it simply denotes the institutional exercise of power.

Polis would be a community of people, but politics I only know as the usage of power over a larger group of people (doesn't matter, if its lawful, moral or not). Personally I consider any action outside the private sphere as something political.

 

Bogdan:

The academic field of political science came into being at the end of the 19th century, at first in Europe (France and most notably Germany) and very soon after that in the United States where the contemporary face of the discipline was forged and where it subsequently became the formal and well established academic field it is today. It was the last byproduct of the positivist weltanschauung and social program and as all the other social sciences brought about by positivism (psychology, sociology and so on) it is a grand failure by it's own standards.

To decide whether political science is a science one would have to explain the meaning of what a science is first. I'd add Italians like Nicolo Machiavelli and Antonio Gramsci.

 

Bogdan:

But I do think however that one can conceive of a science of politics in the spirit of the modern/contemporary definition of politics, i.e. the organized exercise of power. The analysis of interventionism as well as a large part of the public choice literature do fit into this description. There is still room however for the development of a systematic praxeology of conflict as noted by Mises in "Epistemological Problems of Economics".

...This brings us to the question whether the existence of government and state is a requirement for the political. One can distinguish the state from civil society. One also could distinguish formal politics from metapolitics(this what lies beyond or underneath politics, i.e. peoples beliefs and their influence on behaviour especially political behavior of the lack of it.)

Praxeology (and Thymology) would apply to politics (exercising power) as well. Here an other Austrian Thinker comes to mind. I'm thinking of Friedrich von Wieser and his writings. Especially his later writings:

Das geschichtliche Werk der Gewalt (1923) (The historical work of force")

Das Gesetz der Macht (1926) (Law of Power)

 may be of some relevance to the subject. I'd like to know whether any of the works of Friedrich von Wieser are available as e-Text and would like to use the opportunity to thank the Mises.org team for making so many texts available on the internet. 

 

 

Torsten:

Polis would be a community of people, but politics I only know as the usage of power over a larger group of people (doesn't matter, if its lawful, moral or not). Personally I consider any action outside the private sphere as something political.

As you probably know, Aristotle and the Ancient Greeks didn't distinguish between society and state so the term polis meant both things. However, nowadays we distinguish between a private sphere, a social sphere and a political sphere of action and this makes Aristotle's famous definition of man as zoon politikon something very ambiguous.

Torsten:

  To decide whether political science is a science one would have to explain the meaning of what a science is first. I'd add Italians like Nicolo Machiavelli and Antonio Gramsci.

Indeed, Machiavelli is considered the founder of modern political science because of his realism/empiricism and his disdain for political philosophy; I've read about Gramsci's role in the Marxist revisionist movement but haven't read anything written by him : what should I look for ? 

Torsten:

 

Praxeology (and Thymology) would apply to politics (exercising power) as well. Here an other Austrian Thinker comes to mind. I'm thinking of Friedrich von Wieser and his writings. Especially his later writings:

Das geschichtliche Werk der Gewalt (1923) (The historical work of force")

Das Gesetz der Macht (1926) (Law of Power)

 may be of some relevance to the subject. I'd like to know whether any of the works of Friedrich von Wieser are available as e-Text and would like to use the opportunity to thank the Mises.org team for making so many texts available on the internet. 

 Thanks for pointing this two books to me ! I wasn't aware of thier existence. I hope I can find them.

 

Bogdan:

As you probably know, Aristotle and the Ancient Greeks didn't distinguish between society and state so the term polis meant both things. However, nowadays we distinguish between a private sphere, a social sphere and a political sphere of action and this makes Aristotle's famous definition of man as zoon politikon something very ambiguous

Polis - the many - can be seen as an umbrella term. I think the Greeks (and Romans) did already distinguish between the private and public sphere. This is how I understand the "Ancient City" of Fustel de Coulange. Society and the state are not distinguished that strongly everywhere. The Germans don't do this clearly, despite the fact that they have clear words for both (Gesellschaft vs State). 

http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/econ/ugcm/3ll3/fustel/AncientCity.pdf

Bogdan:

Indeed, Machiavelli is considered the founder of modern political science because of his realism/empiricism and his disdain for political philosophy; I've read about Gramsci's role in the Marxist revisionist movement but haven't read anything written by him : what should I look for ?

... Gramsci was more of an Hegelian. Wondering what was preventing "the revolution" from happening. He realized that a public oppinions and values are a strong factors that even a very powerful state needs to deal with. A cultural revolution is required, before a political revolution takes place.

A comprehensive summary on Gramsci can be found here: http://www.theory.org.uk/ctr-gram.htm 

Texts by Gramsci are listed here:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/gramsci/prison_notebooks/problems/intellectuals.htm

http://www.marxists.org/archive/gramsci/prison_notebooks/study_philosophy/index.htm

He clearly marks the paralell between how people think and how they will act in society and politics

Bogdan:

Thanks for pointing this two books to me ! I wasn't aware of thier existence. I hope I can find them.

Unfortunately there is only one text of Friedrich von Wieser in the Mises.org library:

http://www.mises.org/studyguide.aspx?action=author&Id=127

But I'm sure they'll place something there, soon. They already have place so many texts there. 

 

Has anyone here read de Jouvenel's works on politics? I think they are an example of what political science truly is about.

 

Torsten:

Polis - the many - can be seen as an umbrella term.

 Strictly speaking though, "polis" referst to the Greek city-state, not simply the people or the many but a certain sort of community, the political community, which the ancient Greeks envisioned only as the city-state. See, for example, Fred Miller on the polis in Aristotle's political thought. 

http://www.mises.org/reasonpapers/pdf/01/rp_1_5.pdf

Polis can mean other things if we want to use the term more loosely.

 

On a different note, I haven't read De Jouvenel yet, but I own several of his books and they are on my reading list. 

gplauche:

Strictly speaking though, "polis" referst to the Greek city-state, not simply the people or the many but a certain sort of community, the political community, which the ancient Greeks envisioned only as the city-state. See, for example, Fred Miller on the polis in Aristotle's political thought. 

http://www.mises.org/reasonpapers/pdf/01/rp_1_5.pdf

Polis can mean other things if we want to use the term more loosely.

For example a civic association with a defined membership. The polis had some functions such as regulating relationships between its members, but also dealing with outsiders. Personally I always like to read descriptions of historical institutions. It is always a treasure from which we can obtain knowledge that we can use today and in the future.

A narrow definition of political science would deal with macro-social phenomena of social power. But I think politics permeats other fields as well, such as economics, sociology, psychology, etc. What I'm interested in is how social and political change do occur. What causes it and what makes it succesful? With other words, I am looking at the underlying factors, the metapolitics. 

 

The more interesting question might be whether or not economics is a science or not.

Prior to the neo-classical revolution philosophers study "political economy" as an ethiocal inquiry.

Civic republicanism defined individual freedom as only possible by practicing virtuous behavior within a small-scale, face-to-face deliberative civic body.  

A good article on the matter:

 http://www.veritasnoctis.net/docs/aristotelianapriorism.pdf

 Hey! Thanks for the plug.