Political Science

POLITICAL SCIENCE

I INTRODUCTION

Political Science, the systematic study of and reflection upon politics. Politics usually describes the processes by which people and institutions exercise and resist power. Political processes are used to formulate policies, influence individuals and institutions, and organize societies.

Many political scientists study how governments use politics. But political scientists also study politics in other contexts, such as how politics affects the economy, how ordinary people think and act in relation to politics, and how politics influences organizations outside of government. The emphasis upon government and power distinguishes political science from other social sciences, although political scientists share an interest with economists in studying relations between the government and economy, and with sociologists in considering relations between social structures in general and political structures in particular. Political scientists attempt to explain and understand recurrent patterns in politics rather than specific political events.

II THE IMPORTANCE OF POLITICAL SCIENCE

Political science is important because politics is important. During the 20th century, tens of millions of people were murdered by regimes devoted to particular political ideologies. All peoples’ lives are affected in many ways by what governments do or choose not to do, and by the power structures that exist in society.

The specific ideas of political scientists are only occasionally implemented by policy makers. Political scientists usually influence the world in more indirect ways: by educating citizens and political leaders, by contributing to debates on political issues, and by encouraging different ways of looking at the world. The study of political science is motivated by the need to understand the sources and consequences of political stability and revolution, of repression and liberty, of equality and inequality, of war and peace, of democracy and dictatorship. The study of political science suggests that the world of politics is complex and cannot be reorganized by simple ideological schemes without unintended consequences.

III WHAT POLITICAL SCIENTISTS DO

Most professional political scientists work in colleges and universities where they teach, conduct research, and write articles and books related to their specific research interests. Political scientists also work in policy-related think tanks, privately funded organizations that conduct and publicize research on public policy issues. Examples of such organizations include The Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute. Political parties and survey-research organizations frequently employ political scientists to design and interpret opinion surveys. Businesses employ political scientists to provide information on the political contexts in which corporations operate. Governments employ political scientists as assistants to legislators, as staff members of administrative departments such as the United States Department of State, and in international organizations such as the United Nations (UN) and the European Union (EU). Some political scientists become politicians or journalists. One political scientist, Woodrow Wilson, became president of the United States.

IV FIELDS IN POLITICAL SCIENCE

Political science is organized into several fields, each representing a major subject area of teaching and research in colleges and universities. These fields include comparative politics, American politics, international relations, political theory, public administration, public policy, and political behavior.

A Comparative Politics

Comparative politics involves study of the politics of different countries. Some political scientists, known as area specialists, study a single country or a culturally similar group of nations, such as the countries of Southeast Asia. Area specialists tend to be versed in the language, history, and culture of the country or group of countries they study. Other political scientists compare culturally dissimilar nations, and investigate the similarities and differences in the politics of these nations. Political scientists who undertake these comparisons are often motivated by the need to develop and test theories—for example, theories of why revolutions happen. This may lead them to discover commonalities between countries that are widely separated and appear very different. For example, political scientists have found many similarities between the transitions from authoritarian rule to democracy in Latin America and Eastern Europe in the 1980s and 1990s.

B American Politics

Research institutions in most of the world classify American politics as a subfield of comparative politics. However, political scientists usually organize the study of their own country into a separate field, so within the United States, American politics is recognized as its own specialty. Given the size of the United States and the number of students who study U.S. politics in colleges and universities, the American politics subfield is very large. Political scientists interested in American politics often study the Congress of the United States, judicial politics, constitutional law, the presidency, state and local politics, voting and elections, and American political history.

C International Relations

International relations is the study of the international system, which involves interactions between nations, international organizations, and multinational corporations. The two traditional approaches used by political scientists in the study of international relations are realism and liberalism (which is not the same as liberalism as a political ideology). Realism emphasizes the danger of the international system, where war is always a possibility and the only source of order is the balance of power. Liberalism is more idealistic and hopeful, emphasizing the problem-solving abilities of international institutions such as the United Nations and World Trade Organization. In 1991, after the Soviet Union dissolved and the Cold War ended, the balance of opinion briefly shifted in favor of liberalism, but realists were quick to point to the potential for future international conflicts.

Beginning in the 1980s constructivist political scientists asserted that the interests of nations and the character of their interactions are not fixed, but can be determined by policy makers. For example, for the past 50 years, U.S. policy makers have constructed the identity of Canada and Cuba in quite different ways. In spite of the fact that Canada and the United States were rivals in the early part of their history, during the 20th century the U.S. has established military and economic alliances with Canada and regards it as a close ally. In contrast, since Cuba’s 1959 revolution and subsequent adoption of Communist principles, the United States has treated Cuba as a potential threat to American national security. Many European nations and allies of the United States believe this fear is unwarranted. According to constructivist political scientists, the identities that U.S. policy makers have constructed for countries like Canada and Cuba help to determine whether the fears of realists or the hopes of liberals are more likely to be realized.

D Political Theory

Jürgen Habermas Twentieth-century German philosopher Jürgen Habermas attacked the belief that modern scientific knowledge and research are objective and value-free. Habermas argued that reason and science have become tools of domination, rather than emancipating humans from myth, suspicion, and tyranny.Globe Photos, Inc./Friedrich Rauch/Camera Press

Political theory involves the study of philosophical thought about politics from ancient Greece to the present; the interpretation and development of concepts such as freedom, democracy, human rights, justice, and power; the development of models for government, such as participatory democracy or constitutional systems; and the logic that political scientists use in their inquiries. Political theory overlaps law, philosophy, and the other fields of political science. In 1971 John Rawls, a professor of philosophy at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, published A Theory of Justice, which revitalized political theory. Rawls’s book showed that it was still possible to generate sophisticated and challenging philosophical arguments about the way that political systems should be organized, and that political scientists should not just look to the ideas of the great philosophers of the past.

E Public Administration

Political scientists interested in public administration study government organizations and their relation to other parts of government. Political scientists investigate how these organizations work, and try to devise methods of improving them. For example, David Osborne and Ted Gaebler’s book Reinventing Government (1992) inspired many national, state, and local governments to adopt more-competitive and less bureaucratic ways of delivering services to the public.

F Public Policy

The field of public policy involves the study of specific policy problems and governmental responses to them. Political scientists involved in the study of public policy attempt to devise solutions for problems of public concern. They study issues such as health care, pollution, and the economy. Public policy overlaps comparative politics in the study of comparative public policy; with international relations in the study of foreign policy and national security policy; and with political theory in considering ethics in policy making.

G Political Behavior

Political behavior involves the study of how people involve themselves in political processes and respond to political activity. The field emphasizes the study of voting behavior, which can be affected by social pressures; the effects of individual psychology, such as emotional attachments to parties or leaders; and the rational self-interests of voters. The results of these studies are applied during the planning of political campaigns, and influence the design of advertisements and party platforms.

V RESEARCH METHODS

Sir Karl Popper Austrian-born British philosopher Sir Karl Popper is best known for his falsifiability theory of scientific method. Popper argued that hypotheses that survive attempts to refute them may be tentatively accepted but that no scientific theory can ever be conclusively established. His teachings were incorporated into political science research methods.Archive Photos/Horst Tappe

Political scientists are divided on the extent to which their discipline should follow methods used by traditional sciences. Some argue that political science should follow the research model of natural sciences such as physics and chemistry, which use quantitative analysis and repeated observation to establish scientific laws. These political scientists aim to discover general laws of politics, although few such laws have been discovered. One such law is Duverger’s law, which asserts that countries that conduct elections through proportional representation (such as Germany and the Netherlands) will have many political parties, while countries that decide elections on the basis of a simple plurality of votes (such as Britain and the United States) will have only two primary parties. But Duverger’s law is itself faced with a need to explain many contradictory real-world cases—for example, why India does not have a two-party system.

Political scientists who attempt to develop scientific laws favor quantitative methods or explanations of politics that are derived from deductions based upon simple assumptions about human behavior. All else is regarded as transient, unfounded, and unreliable.

Political scientists who oppose this scientific emphasis argue that politics is highly complex and variable, continually changing as new events unfold, and driven by unpredictable human actions. They argue that any rigidly scientific approach can only yield trivial results. They point out that their more scientific colleagues have not had much success in developing general laws of political science, let alone making predictions based on such laws. For example, not one political scientist predicted the breakup of the Soviet bloc in 1989 and end of the Soviet Union. Political scientists who favor less scientific approaches tend to pursue single-case studies—for example, a study of the presidency of Ronald W. Reagan—or examine specific social problems.

A Quantitative Analysis

Political scientists who favor quantitative research most often use statistical methods such as opinion surveys and aggregate-level analysis. Opinion surveys ask a representative sample of individuals a series of questions about their behavior, their attitudes about politics, their social status, and other individual characteristics. Political scientists also commonly employ aggregate-level statistical analysis, in which administrative entities such as electoral districts, states, or countries compose the units of analysis. Such analysis can be used to test very broad theories—for example, the relationship between a country’s level of prosperity and how democratic its government is. In addition, time series analysis can be used to track political relationships involving time, for example, the voting strength of socialist parties and the amount of government spending on social programs over time.

B Case Studies

Some political scientists believe that case study research has little or no explicit methodology or theory, and argue that it is impossible to extrapolate its findings to other situations. Comparative case study analysis overcomes these criticisms. In this method of study, researchers choose cases that are alike in some important respects and different in others, and then try to explain the reasons for the similarities and differences. For example, theories about the causes of revolution can be developed and tested by comparing the details of a few important revolutions.

C Other Methods

Political scientists often adopt methods of study and analysis used by other disciplines. These methods include computer simulations of political processes, experimentation with human subjects playing political roles, in-depth interviewing, and textual analysis and criticism. Some political scientists conduct policy experiments, which compare what happens when a policy is implemented in one place but not another. Others use Q methodology, which involves profiling subjects in terms of their reactions to a set of statements, then comparing these profiles using statistical techniques.

VI HISTORY OF THE DISCIPLINE

A Origins and Development

Aristotle Aristotle, who was a student of Greek philosopher Plato, praised reason and moderation as practical guides to life. Known to medieval intellectuals as simply “the Philosopher,” Aristotle is possibly the greatest thinker in Western history and the single greatest influence on Western intellectual development.Archive Photos/Popperfoto
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Thomas Hobbes English political philosopher Thomas Hobbes is best known for his treatise Leviathan. Written during the mid-17th century amidst the tumult of the English Revolution, Leviathan outlines Hobbes’s theory of sovereignty (political authority).Corbis/Archivo Iconografico, S.A.
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The systematic study of politics dates to ancient times. The oldest legal and administrative code that survives in its entirety is the Code of Hammurabi, inscribed on a pillar of black basalt. Hammurabi, a Babylonian king who ruled from 1792 to 1750 bc, described the laws in his code as enabling “stable government and good rule.” Hammurabi’s justification indicates that the reasoning behind the code was political as well as legal.

GREAT WORKS OF LITERATURE
From Plato’s Republic
What is the nature of knowledge? And of ignorance? The 4th-century-bc Greek philosopher Plato used the myth, or allegory, of the cave to illustrate the difference between genuine knowledge and opinion or belief. This distinction is at the heart of one of Plato’s most important works, The Republic. In the first part of the myth of the cave, excerpted here, Plato constructs a dialogue in which he considers the difficult transition from belief based on appearances to true understanding founded in reality.
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The first political scientist known to analyze information systematically was the Greek philosopher Aristotle. He compared the constitutions of Greek city-states during the 4th century bc and generalized about the political consequences of the different constitutional systems. The study of political science flourished in ancient Greece during the 5th and 4th centuries bc, in the Roman republic from 509 to 31 bc, in the republics of Italy during the 15th and 16th centuries, amid the political turmoil of 17th century Britain, and during the French and American revolutions toward the end of the 18th century. While the specific methods employed by political scientists throughout the centuries varied tremendously, their common concerns have been to provide useful advice to rulers and to organize governments more effectively.

HISTORIC DOCUMENTS
From Government
Scottish-born philosopher and economist James Mill (1773-1836) worked closely with British philosopher-economist Jeremy Bentham to flesh out Bentham’s theory of utilitarianism. The utilitarian doctrine held that the function of government should be to secure the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. In the following essay, Mill argued that a “democratical” government—which he defined as one in which power is in the hands of many people—is best suited to achieving the utilitarian goal. This essay and the influence of the utilitarians were in part responsible for the passage of Britain’s Reform Bill of 1832. This legislation extended suffrage to more people in Britain, giving greater power to the middle class.

Political science as it is practiced today was developed more recently. In 19th-century Germany, academics developed a systematic science called Staatlehre to provide useful information to governments. Staatlehre was geared to the needs of Germany’s centralized government, which sought to consolidate power and administer society more effectively.

B Political Science in America

The first professor of political science in the United States was German emigré Francis Lieber, who was appointed chair of political science at Columbia College (now Columbia University) in New York City in 1857. Lieber and his successor, John W. Burgess, aspired to build a strong American national government following Germany’s example, and wanted Columbia to be appointed a national university and lead this movement. However, the U.S. government was not especially receptive to this view. Thus, the next generation of political scientists sought to establish the discipline’s identity and influence in the emerging American university system, rather than through the American government. This academic context encouraged many political scientists to emphasize the scientific aspects of their discipline.

The American model of political science has often been self-consciously scientific, and successive waves of reformers have criticized their predecessors for not being truly scientific. During the 1920s and 1930s Charles E. Merriam and his colleagues at the University of Chicago in Chicago, Illinois, formed the so-called Chicago School. Merriam’s many interests included the history of political thought and civic education. But he is best known for promoting the scientific and statistical study of politics. His associates and students in the Chicago School, most notably Harold Gosnell and Harold Lasswell, conducted research that focused on voting, mass political participation, the psychology of political behavior and leadership, and wartime propaganda. Merriam, a politician himself, wanted to improve politics by applying the results of this kind of research.

C The Behavioral Revolution

The Chicago School was the precursor of what became known as the behavioral revolution of the 1950s that influenced political science for the remainder of the 20th century. The behaviorists believed they would revolutionize the field by applying methods of analysis used in the natural sciences. Many of the behavioral revolutionaries served the U.S. government during World War II (1939-1945), and conducted economic and social analysis as part of the war effort. The behaviorists’ modernization theory influenced academics abroad. Modernization theory explored the conditions for economic and political development from a “traditional” to a “modern” society. The theory was premised on the belief that other countries could and should develop a political system similar to that of the United States. By the 1960s the behaviorists controlled the discipline.

The behaviorists’ triumph was short-lived. During the late 1960s, the violence and civil unrest associated with the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War (1959-1975) gave rise to calls for political science to become more diverse in its topics of study, theories, and methods. Critics also charged that the American political science establishment presumed the U.S. system of government was superior to other political systems. But the behaviorists had firmly established the place of quantitative research and broad theories in the study of political science.

The American Political Science Association, founded in 1903 and now composed of more than 13,000 members, helps to set professional standards and organizes the discipline. A rigorous and lengthy doctoral degree program is the only route of entry to the profession in the United States, and professional success is measured by publication in highly competitive journals.

VII RECENT TRENDS

During the late 20th century the American practice of the discipline has become dominant worldwide. The analytical methods favored by the behaviorists continue to influence political scientists, who have developed rational choice theory to predict and explain the behavior of people when they interact in a political context. Political scientists have also reconsidered some of the most basic building blocks of society, such as the state and the institutions it comprises.

A Rational Choice Theory

The latest initiative to make political science more self-consciously scientific involves the use of rational choice theory, which attempts to deduce what will happen when individuals are faced with a political situation. The theory borrows from economics the assumption that all individuals are rational egoists. People are assumed to be rational in their capacity to devise, choose, and put into practice effective means to clear ends; they are egoists because the ends in question generally refer to the self-interest of that individual. Rational choice theory can be applied to everything from decisions made by small committees to complex negotiations between governments.

Rational choice theory has proven limited in its ability to predict real-world behavior. For example, rational choice theory cannot explain why intelligent people vote in elections when the chances of their vote being decisive in determining the winner of the election are near zero. Some observers believe that the results of rational choice theory are best thought of as a set of warnings about what would happen if people behaved as rational egoists, rather than an explanation of how the world actually works.

B New Institutionalism

New institutionalists have reinvigorated the study of institutions. In political science, institutions can be defined as systems of formal rules or informal understandings that coordinate the actions of individuals. Examples of institutions include the U.S. Congress and global agreements that seek to limit damage to the earth’s ozone layer. New institutionalists claim that the behavioral revolution of the 1950s led political scientists to overemphasize the behavior of individuals, to the neglect of the institutional contexts in which these individuals operate. New institutionalists claim to have more-sophisticated theories about how institutions work than did the “old” institutionalists of the early 20th century.

C Return of the State

From the 19th century to the 1940s many political scientists regarded the state as a unified, organic entity that integrated government, society, and political organizations. During the behavioral revolution, this concept of a unified, goal-directed state was discredited, in favor of a looser and more open concept of the political system. Behaviorists contended that the idea of the state was unscientific and mocked it as mystical. They claimed that political systems, in contrast, are real and observable, composed of various inputs and outputs. According to the behaviorists, the inputs in a political system include influences such as lobbying by interest groups and bargaining between the executive and legislative branches, and the outputs are public policies.

The concept of the state, now more precisely defined as the set of officials legally authorized to make binding decisions for a society, made a comeback in the 1980s. States are viewed as having certain functions or imperatives that they must perform—for example, maintaining the confidence of financial markets—regardless of the desires of their political leaders, the wishes of voters, pressure from interest groups, or bargaining within government.

D Democracy and Democratization

During the 1980s and 1990s increasing numbers of political scientists studied democracy and its development in societies that had formerly been ruled by authoritarian governments. The wave of democratization that followed the end of the Cold War inspired political theorists to develop new models of democracy, and political scientists to study the role of citizenship and citizen education in democratic governments.

E Challenges to the Discipline

Louis Althusser French philosopher Louis Althusser challenged prevailing interpretations of the works of German political philosopher Karl Marx. Althusser was the most influential Marxist theorist in the West during the 1970s.Corbis/Hulton-Deutsch Collection

Marxists challenged conventional political science through most of the 20th century, charging that the discipline overlooked oppressive political relationships in the capitalist economy. According to Marxists, formal democracy is a sham because the dominant economic class in society always controls the government.

Since 1970 feminism has influenced most fields of political science. Feminist critics contend that both governments and political science have been organized along male-dominated lines and have ignored and repressed the perspective of women. Political scientists’ responses to feminism have ranged from attempts to study the political behavior of women more closely to the development of comprehensive feminist political philosophies.

Contributed By:
John Dryzek

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GOVERNMENT

I INTRODUCTION

Government, political organization comprising the individuals and institutions authorized to formulate public policies and conduct affairs of state. Governments are empowered to establish and regulate the interrelationships of the people within their territorial confines, the relations of the people with the community as a whole, and the dealings of the community with other political entities. Government applies in this sense both to the governments of national states, such as the federal government of the U.S., and to the governments of subdivisions of national states, such as the state, county, and municipal governments of the U.S. and the governments of the provinces of Canada. Such organizations as universities, labor unions, and churches are also broadly governmental in many of their functions. The word government may refer to the people who form the supreme administrative body of a country, as in the expression “the government of Prime Minister Churchill.”

II CLASSIFICATIONS

HISTORIC DOCUMENTS
From Government Scottish-born philosopher and economist James Mill (1773-1836) worked closely with British philosopher-economist Jeremy Bentham to flesh out Bentham’s theory of utilitarianism. The utilitarian doctrine held that the function of government should be to secure the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. In the following essay, Mill argued that a “democratical” government—which he defined as one in which power is in the hands of many people—is best suited to achieving the utilitarian goal. This essay and the influence of the utilitarians were in part responsible for the passage of Britain’s Reform Bill of 1832. This legislation extended suffrage to more people in Britain, giving greater power to the middle class.
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Governments are classified in a great many ways and from a wide variety of standpoints; many of the categories inevitably overlap. A familiar classification is that which distinguishes monarchic from republican governments. Scholars in modern times, especially in the 20th century, have stressed the characteristics that distinguish democratic governments from dictatorships. In one classification of governments, federal states are distinguished from unitary states. Federal states, such as the U.S. and Switzerland, comprise unions of states in which the authority of the central or national government is constitutionally limited by the legally established powers of the constituent subdivisions. In unitary states, such as the United Kingdom and Belgium, the constituent subdivisions of the state are subordinate to the authority of the national government. The degree of subordination varies from country to country. It may also vary within a country from time to time and according to circumstance; for example, the central authority of the national government in Italy was greatly increased from 1922 to 1945, during the period of the Fascist dictatorship. In one classification of democratic nations, parliamentary or cabinet governments are distinguished from presidential ones. In parliamentary governments, of which the United Kingdom, India, and Canada are examples, the executive branch is subordinate to the legislature. In presidential governments, such as in the U.S., the executive is independent of the legislature, although many of the executive’s actions are subject to legislative review. Still other classifications hinge on varying governmental forms and powers among the nations of the world.

In the theory of political science, the function of government is to secure the common welfare of the members of the social aggregate over which it exercises control. In different historical epochs, governments have endeavored to achieve the common welfare by various means. Among primitive peoples, systems of social control were rudimentary; they arose directly from ideas of right and wrong common to the members of a social group and were enforced on individuals primarily through group pressure. Among more civilized peoples, governments assumed institutional forms; they rested on defined legal bases, imposing penalties on violators of the law and using force to establish themselves and discharge their functions.

III HISTORY

The year 1987 marked the bicentennial of the Constitution of the United States. The anniversary of the Constitutional Convention not only inspired numerous celebrations in the nation’s capital, Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where the convention took place, but also prompted a reexamination of the durable document that still serves as the foundation for American government. In this article from the 1988 Collier’s Year Book, political science professor Richard H. Leach discusses how the Constitution remains a living document more than 200 years later.

The despotic empires of Egypt, Sumer, Assyria, Persia, and Macedonia were followed by the rise of city-states, the first self-governing communities, in which the rule of law predominated and state officials were responsible to the citizens who chose them. The city-states of Greece, such as Athens, Corinth, and Sparta, and of that part of Asia Minor dominated or influenced by the Greeks, provided the material for the speculative political theories of Plato and Aristotle. Aristotle’s system of classifying states, which influenced subsequent political thought for centuries, was based on a simple criterion: good governments are those that best serve the general welfare; bad governments are those that subordinate the general good to the good of the individuals in power. Aristotle distinguished three categories of government: monarchy, government by a single individual; aristocracy, government by a select few; and democracy, government by many. The later Greek philosophers, influenced by Aristotle, distinguished three degenerate forms of the classes of government defined by him. These were, respectively, tyranny, rule by an individual in his or her own interest; oligarchy, rule by a few people in their own interest; and ochlocracy, mob rule. Still other categories of lasting historical significance are theocracy, rule by religious leaders; and bureaucracy, the excessive domination of government by administrative officials.

Ancient Rome, which evolved from a city-republic to the seat of a world empire, also greatly influenced the development of government in the Western world. This influence was derived in part from the great Roman achievement in formulating clearly for the first time the principle that constitutional law, establishing the sovereignty of the state, is superior to ordinary law, such as that created by legislative enactments.

After the fall of Rome, the Roman concept of a universal dominion was kept alive during the Middle Ages through the formation of the Holy Roman Empire; and also, in part, by the establishment, through canon law and ecclesiastical courts with jurisdiction over secular affairs, of the ruling body of the Roman Catholic church. The effect of these influences was to retard the development of national territories and governments after tendencies in that direction had manifested themselves among the feudal principalities of Europe. On the other hand, the struggle of the feudal barons to limit the absolute power of their monarchs eventually produced many contributions to the theory and institutions of representative government. During the Middle Ages commercial city-states arose in Europe. These city-states eventually formed the Hanseatic League and the powerful Italian city-republics, or communes.

The final emergence of national governments is attributed to two principal causes. One comprises a number of underlying economic causes, including a great expansion in trade and the development of manufacturing. These conditions began to undermine the feudal system, which was based on isolated and self-sufficient economic units, and to make necessary the creation of large political units. The other cause was the Reformation, which succeeded in eliminating the restraining influence of the Catholic church on political development in a number of European countries.

The modern nation-state became a definite form of government in the 16th century. It was almost entirely dynastic and autocratic. The will of the reigning monarch, in theory and often in practice, was unlimited; the famous aphorism of King Louis XIV of France, “L’état, c’est moi” (“I am the state”), was not an idle boast, but an expression of existing reality. In time, however, the demand of the bourgeoisie for constitutional and representative government made itself felt, and the unlimited powers of monarchs began to be challenged. In England, the Glorious Revolution in 1688 restricted such powers and established the preeminence of Parliament. This tendency culminated in two events of historic importance, the American Revolution, beginning in 1775, and the French Revolution, beginning in 1789. Historians generally date the rise of modern democratic government from these events.

The history of government in the 19th century and in part of the 20th is notable for the broadening of the political base of government through extension of suffrage and other reforms. A tendency that became especially marked in the 20th century was the development and implementation of the concept that government, in addition to maintaining order and administering justice, must be an instrument for administering public and social services including, among many others, conservation of natural resources, scientific research, education, and social security. Between 1945 and 1951, the Labour Party government of Britain extended the responsibilities of government to include nationalization of a number of basic industries in a need for stringent economic planning. Other outstanding developments of the 20th century were the appearance of the corporative state and of totalitarian governments in a number of countries, and the first so-called proletarian dictatorship in history, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. From the late 1940s until the end of the 1980s, most eastern European countries adjacent to or near the USSR had governments similar in many respects to that of the USSR.

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POLITICAL THEORY

I INTRODUCTION

Political Theory, subdivision of political science traditionally concerned with the body of ideas expressed by political philosophers who have asked not only how politics work but how they should work. These philosophers have been concerned with the nature and justification of political obligation and authority and the goals of political action. Although their prescriptions have varied, and some have been utopian in concept, they have shared the conviction that it is the political philosopher’s duty to distinguish between what is and what ought to be, between existing political institutions and potentially more humane institutions. The term political theory, in the past century, has come to be used as well to denote descriptive, explanatory, and predictive generalizations about political behavior regardless of the morality involved. This approach is more concerned with mathematical, statistical, and quantifiable techniques than with normative concerns.

Hannah Arendt Political theorist Hannah Arendt, born in Germany in 1906, fled to France in 1933 when the Nazis came to power. In 1941, following the German invasion of France, she moved to the United States. Her personal experiences deeply influenced her professional work and she wrote extensively about totalitarianism and Jewish affairs.THE BETTMANN ARCHIVE/Oscar White

II THE STATE

Plato In “The Republic” Plato wrote that the ideal society should be comprised of three classes—philosopher kings, military men, and merchants. People’s membership in a class would depend on their education: those who had completed the highest level of education would make the wisest decisions and thus should be the rulers of society.THE BETTMANN ARCHIVE

The central concern of political theorists throughout history has been the theory of the state. Plato contributed to the founding of this theory in his discourse the Republic, which attempted to reconcile moral theory and political practice by projecting a community in which property was to be owned in common and which was to be governed by an aristocracy of philosopher-kings who would train the young. Such doctrines, in highly distorted form, have been used in modern times as the basis of the system of government known as totalitarianism, which, in contrast to democracy, asserts the supremacy of the state over the individual. A variant of this system, known as absolutism, vests the ruling power in a limited number of persons or in institutions, such as a priesthood, supporting certain fixed and generally immutable principles.

Aristotle is generally regarded as the founder of the scientific approach to political theory. His Politics, which classified governments as monarchies, aristocracies, and democracies, according to their control by one person, a select few, or many persons, successfully combined an empirical investigation of the facts and a critical inquiry into their ideal possibilities, thus providing a challenging model of political studies.

III CHURCH AND STATE

Niccolò Machiavelli Niccolò Machiavelli, an Italian statesman and writer, is considered one of the most significant political thinkers of the Renaissance. His best-known work, The Prince, describes cunning and unscrupulous methods for rulers to gain and keep power.Hulton Deutsch

Important shifts of emphasis have usually been related to the challenges of concrete historical and social problems. In the Middle Ages, for example, much political writing dealt with the outstanding political issue of the time, the protracted struggle for supremacy between the Roman Catholic church and the Holy Roman Empire. The Italian philosopher St. Thomas Aquinas defended the role of the church in his Summa Theologica (1265-73), while Dante argued in De Monarchia (On Monarchy, c. 1313) for a united Christendom under emperor and pope, each supreme in his appropriate sphere. In The Prince (1532) the Italian statesman Niccolò Machiavelli transcended the traditional church-state debate by realistically evaluating the problems and possibilities of governments seeking to maintain power.

IV THE SOCIAL CONTRACT

The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes also stressed governmental power. His major work, Leviathan (1651), argued that the sovereign’s power should be unlimited, because the state originated in a so-called social contract, whereby individuals accept a common superior power to protect themselves from their own brutish instincts and to make possible the satisfaction of certain human desires. Another 17th-century English philosopher, John Locke, accepted much of Hobbes’s social-contract theory but argued that sovereignty resided in the people for whom governments were trustees and that such governments could be legitimately overthrown if they failed to discharge their functions to the people.

GREAT WORKS OF LITERATURE
From Second Treatise on Government English philosopher John Locke anonymously published his Treatises on Government (1690) the same year as his famous Essay Concerning Human Understanding. In the Second Treatise, Locke described his concept of a “civil government.” Locke excluded absolute monarchy from his definition of civil society, because he believed that the people must consent to be ruled. This argument later influenced the authors of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.

The ideals and rhetoric of Locke later contributed to the establishment of the United States through their expression in the Declaration of Independence and The Federalist, two major documents of the American Revolution. Important contributions to republican and democratic ideals were also made by the French philosophers Jean Jacques Rousseau, who expressed ideas similar to those of Locke, and the Baron de Montesquieu, who proposed a separation of governmental powers in prerevolutionary 18th-century France similar to that later embodied in the U.S. Constitution. The political theories of Locke and the early Americans, constituting the attitude generally known as liberalism, were further refined by the 19th-century British philosopher John Stuart Mill.

From Utilitarianism
English philosopher-economist John Stuart Mill was one of the most important thinkers of the 19th century. The son of English philosopher James Mill, he refined and elaborated on the work of his father and of English philosopher-economist Jeremy Bentham in his book Utilitarianism (1863). Utilitarian philosophers argued that all decisions could be made according to the principal of the greatest “utility,” or benefit, to the greatest number of people. In this section from the end of the work, Mill discussed the issue of criminal punishment and examined how it related to concepts of justice and fairness and to the doctrine of utility.
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V MARXISM AND OTHER FORMS OF TOTALITARIANISM

Karl Marx was in many respects the most influential political theorist of the 19th century. He sought to combine factual analysis and political prescription in a thorough survey of the modern economic system. Arguing that “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles,” and that liberal governments and ideology were merely agents of the exploiting owners of property, Marx advocated the abolition of private property and predicted the demise of capitalism after a series of recurring crises. The abolition of property, and therefore of class exploitation, would make possible a situation in which individuals would contribute according to their abilities and take according to their needs. The state, following a transitional period in which the working class would rule, would eventually wither away. In the 20th century, Marxism has been the subject of conflicting interpretations. It served as the official ideology of a number of totalitarian states, and it was also the inspirational credo of many revolutionary and nationalist movements throughout the world (see Communism; Socialism).

Louis Althusser French philosopher Louis Althusser challenged prevailing interpretations of the works of German political philosopher Karl Marx. Althusser was the most influential Marxist theorist in the West during the 1970s.Corbis/Hulton-Deutsch Collection

Another type of political theory, also constituting a form of totalitarianism, emerged after World War I in the political movements known as fascism and National Socialism. Both asserted, in varying degrees, the doctrine of the total supremacy of the state and justified the use of force to achieve political ends.

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ARTICLES ABOUT POLITICAL SCIENCE

Abdication

Abdication, relinquishment of office by a sovereign or other ruler. In modern times, sovereigns have abdicated for many different reasons.

Queen Christina of Sweden relinquished her crown in 1654 because she was weary of the cares of office. Ill health caused the abdication of the Holy Roman emperor Charles V in 1558 and of King Philip V of Spain in 1724. Louis Bonaparte, appointed (1806) king of Holland by Napoleon, abdicated in 1810 in protest because his brother treated Holland as merely a province of France. King Charles Emmanuel IV of Sardinia was compelled by the French government to abdicate in 1802; his successor, King Victor Emmanuel I, abdicated in 1821 in the face of a popular uprising against his regime. Foreign force compelled the abdications of the Polish kings Augustus II the Strong, Stanisław I Leszczyński (1735), and Stanisław II Augustus (1795) and of Charles IV of Spain (1808). Napoleon also was forced to abdicate by allied foreign powers, both in 1814 and, after his return, in 1815.

Insurrections often have forced abdications, including those of Richard II of England (1399), Mary, Queen of Scots (1567), Charles X of France (1830), Louis Philippe of France (1848), Ferdinand I of Austria (1848), Louis I of Bavaria (1848), King Charles Albert of Sardinia-Piedmont (1798-1849, abdicated 1849), King Amadeo of Spain (1845-1890, abdicated 1873), Prince Alexander I of Bulgaria (1857-1893, abdicated 1886), King Milan of Serbia (1854-1901, abdicated 1889), Manuel II of Portugal (1910), and Nicholas II of Russia (1917).

The defeat of the Central Powers in World War I resulted (1918) in a number of abdications, including those of William II of Germany, Charles I of Austria-Hungary, Louis III of Bavaria, King Frederick Augustus III of Saxony, and William II of Württemberg. Several more abdications occurred between World War I and World War II. King Constantine I of Greece was forced to abdicate twice: by foreign and domestic political pressure in 1917, during World War I, and, after his recall, again in 1922 as a consequence of the Greek defeat in the Turkish War. King Prajadhipok of Siam (now Thailand) abdicated in 1935 because of bad health and his growing disenchantment with the nation’s government. King Edward VIII of Great Britain (later duke of Windsor) abdicated in 1936 because the government opposed his marriage plans.

In 1940, during World War II, Germany forced King Carol II of Romania to abdicate. The Iranian ruler Reza Shah Pahlavi was allegedly an Axis sympathizer, so when Britain and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) occupied key areas of Iran in 1941 he abdicated in favor of his son. King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy abdicated in 1946 in favor of his son, Humbert II. The Italians, however, voted to make Italy a republic, and Humbert was deposed in 1947. King Michael of Romania abdicated in 1947 under the pressure of Romanian Communists.

Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands abdicated in 1948 because of ill health. Left-wing political pressures forced King Leopold III of Belgium to abdicate in 1951. King Faruk I of Egypt had to abdicate in 1952 after a military coup d’etat. King Norodom Sihanouk abdicated the throne of Cambodia in 1955 in protest against internal opposition to his pro-Western policies. Queen Juliana of the Netherlands abdicated in 1980 at the age of 71.

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