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1 May, 33 tweets, 8 min read
What is Political Science?

[THREAD]
This week, I tweeted 👇.

This (understandably) led to A LOT of responses and alternative definitions.
Before going into those responses, a few points of context about my above definition.

1) I wanted to keep it simple and jargon-free

2) The audience was non-political science social scientists, so I wanted to describe the discipline in a way that made it distinct.
#1 is why I stayed away from my preferred definition, because I would have to then clarify "sovereignty" (why this is my preferred definition is a discussion for another thread)

#2 is why I didn't go with something like the classic Lasswell definition (i.e. several of the social sciences can claim that this defines them as well).
cambridge.org/core/journals/…
Of course is Political Science only about democracy? No. As just one example, there is the work on the comparative behavior of autocracies, particularly Barbara Geddes' data on autocratic regime types (which I and MANY others have used over the years).
cambridge.org/core/journals/…
But democracy is a BIG part of the discipline. Also, it's a concept that non-political scientists immediately can appreciate...even though political scientists can't agree on what it means and when a country is or isn't a democracy 🤷‍♂️
Okay, with that context out of the way, how SHOULD we define political science? Well, the responses to my Tweet showed that we aren't (yet) clear on how to define it...or even if we should define it.
One approach would be to simply replace "democracy" with "regime" in my above definition, thereby capturing the variety of governing types. Of course, then we have to define "regime" (a similar limitation to my preferred "sovereignty" definition)
Some folks emphasized "power". Such as here...
...here...
...& here.
Since "power" can be a bit vague, other folks narrowed it to the term "authority". See here...
... and here...
...or the related term "governance".
I like the using authority and governance in the definition. But authority over what? That's why a common suggestion was to emphasize "the commons", such as collective/public goods. See here...
...and here.
Related to the concern over collective goods, several folks suggested that the discipline is about collective decision making. See here...
...here...
...here....
...here...
...and here.
So it seems that group decision making (or at least decisions made for a group) should be a critical part of the definition.
Some of the the other definitions emphasized constraints on decision making, either for others or for the group. These included...
...structures...
...the "will" of others...
... attempts at domination...
...and the creation rules (i'll be honest, this one -- the study of rules and rule -- might be my favorite).

So lots of definitions for "Political Science".

Which might be a problem. Is it even possible to define the discipline?

Several folks responded that the answer is "no", at least not in an intellectually satisfying way.

See here...
... here...
... and here.
Of course, this is probably because what one means by "politics" (maybe even "science") is going to vary by context
So what is political science?

As I said, I really like "the study of rules and rule". Also, it seems group/joint decision making is an important piece.

But political science is also a bit like how Wendt defined "anarchy": it is what folks make of it.

[END]

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