Nature and Scope of Political Science

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THE NATURE AND SCOPE OF POLITICAL SCIENCE CONTENTS

1.0 Introduction

2.0 Objectives

3.0 Main Content

3.1 Definitions/Explanations of Politics

3.2 The Development of Political Science as a Field of Study

3.3 What is Science? What makes Political Science a Science?

3.4 The Meaning of Verifiability

3.5 The Meaning of Systematic

3.6 The Meaning of Generality or Universality

1.0 INTRODUCTION In this unit, you will be introduced to what Politics is all about.

In your day to day activities, you must have heard of the word Politics without actually understanding its meaning. What do you think is Politics? This question has been asked many times in every age before the birth of Jesus Christ – when the Greeks first introduced the idea of the ‘polis’ meaning city-state. It is from ‘polis’ that we derive our modern word politics. Aristotle (384-322 BC) in his book POLITICS first used the term politics to refer to the affairs of a Greek city-state. Aristotle observed that ‘man by nature is a political animal’. By this he meant that the essence of social existence is politics and that two or more men interacting with one another are invariably involved in a political relationship. Aristotle observed that whenever men seek to define their position in society or as they attempt to achieve personal security from available resources and as they try to influence others to accept their points of 117 view, they find themselves engaged in politics. In this broad sense, every one is a politician.

Today, the word politics is an elastic one. To some authorities, politics is concerned with the ordinary day-to-day activities of the community in which we are all personally involved. To others, including Harold Lasswell, politics has been equated with the study of power or the study of influence and the influential. In fact, Lasswel went as far as to define politics as “who gets what, when how” which underlines the importance of power as the major ingredient of politics.

2.0 OBJECTIVES At the end of this unit, you should be able to:

· explain what politics is all about

· explain the development of political science as a subject of study and why political science is regarded as a science.

CODE: GG