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Politics and Knowledge

Chapter One

Color scheme: Folio

Text: News Gothic MT

Slide Theme: Median

Learning Objectives

Understand various meanings of the term "politics" and provide a general definition of the field of political science.

Identify the sources of political knowledge for the individual.

Describe the merits of and problems with the different levels of authority as a source of political knowledge.

Explain how personal bias can affect political thought and how scientific analysis can mitigate this effect.

Describe the three general types of political knowledge and how they are developed.

Explain how the scientific method can be applied to a specific political question.

Understand the objections to the idea that the study of politics can be considered a science.

Describe some of the subfields of political science.

Q: What is politics?>

Towards A Definition of Politics

First step toward a better understanding of the political world is to establish what we mean by politics:

Competition among individuals and groups pursuing their own interests

Exercise of power and influence to allocate things that are valued.

Determination of who gets what, when, and how

Resolution of conflict

Overall: Politics is the process through which power and influence are used in the promotion of certain values and interests.

Domains that are subject to politics are very large.

Q: Why we study politics?>

Why we study politics?

Because of the many relationships between what happen in politics or government and in our personal life.

It affects us in some way or another.

Therefore, we need to know politics, to form views, and to make informal decision especially in democracy where election can make change.

On Political Knowledge

Every individual’s understanding of politics is composed of three general types of knowledge:

1. Description of political facts

2. Explanations of how and why politics occurs as it does

3. Prescriptions of what should happen in the political world

On Political Knowledge

1. Descriptions of political facts

Focuses on what questions and is usually based on one or more “facts”

Example: The number of states in Nigeria: 36

On many questions no indisputable answers; complicated issues

On Political Knowledge

Attempts to specify why something happens and to provide the reason or process by which the phenomenon occurs.

Value judgment that indicates what should occur and should be done.

Answers to questions of what ought to be, not merely description or explanation of what is.

2. Explanations of how and why politics occurs as it does

3. Prescriptions of what should happen in the political world

On Political Knowledge

Normative political knowledge – your value judgments (of what should occur or be done?) – combine three types of understanding:

Descriptive knowledge of certain facts

Your explanatory knowledge about why certain outcomes occur

Your priorities among competing values

Sources of Political Knowledge

Three important sources of political knowledge:

1. Authority

Specific authority sources (parent, teacher, friend, famous person)

General authority sources (constitution, revered leader (Mao), respected book, religious teaching (Koran) )

“Everyone” as authority, ( many, true because held strongly by many people, unlikely to be incorrect!

Problems

2. Personal thought

Rationality (logic, make sense)

Intuition (feeling)

Personal experience (your own)

Problems

3. Science (Scientific method) >

1.c.

Sources of Political Knowledge: Science

Four essential characteristics of the scientific method:

1. Science is empirical in that it is concerned with phenomena that can be observed, or at least measured.

2. Science entails a search for regularities in the relationship among phenomena.

3. Science is cumulative in nature; a knowledge base can be established.

4. The method of science is testable.

In applying the scientific method, “reliable” evidence must be accurate.

Science

Provides some advantages over authority and rationality as knowledge sources.

Surrounded by competing political claims? What do you do regarding one of these claims?

Ignore it.

Accept that it is correct.

Reject it.

Try to assess it.

Ask questions and try to find the answers. This is at the core of political analysis.

It seeks to answer the “what,” “how,” and “why” questions

Political analysis: the attempt to describe and then to explain politics.

Political Science

Defined as a set of techniques, concepts, and approaches whose objective is to increase the clarity and accuracy of our understandings about the political world.

Comparative political analysis

Emphasizes utilizing comparative thinking to enhance our understanding of politics.

Political Science & Political Knowledge

Some argue that political science is not a real “science”.

Does it utilize strong application of the four elements set out by Kuhn?

Central concepts that identify and name critical phenomena

Theories, which are sets of systematically related generalizations that provide explanations and predictions about the linkages between certain concepts.

Rules of interpretation

A list of questions or issues that are worth solving within the area of inquiry?

Do politics and science go together? Are generalizations possible? Is politics important to study?

Subfields of Political Science

Boundary-spanning hybrids: link, borrow and adapt ideas

Political anthropology

Political economy

Political psychology

Political sociology

Bio-politics

Comparative politics

American politics

International relations

Political theory

Where Are We Headed?

Explore:

the nature of political knowledge

the approach that political scientists take to understand, analyze and evaluate this knowledge.

Focus on use of scientific method

Examination of:

The individual in the political world

Countries in a global political system

How states and governments organize for political action

How political processes occur

How countries face the challenges of the global system

Develop understanding of the political world

Political Knowledge of Different Age Groups: Applying the Scientific Method to Politics

Steps in applying the scientific method

1. state the examined issue (hypothesis) and examine the existing evidence.

2. operationalize key concepts (What it means, how might be measured).

3. gather appropriate data.

4. analyze the evidence

5. Offer a conclusion.

How to apply scientific method to politics? (Ex. Gender and voting in the U.S)

1. Examine existing evidence that is relevant to the issue you are analyzing.

State the issue you are examining in a precise manner. (Hypothesis= proposition about political fact: In a democracy, men are more likely to vote than women)

2. “Operationalize” key concepts. (What exactly each concept, like democracy, means and how it might be measured) (Democracy= periodic elections, adult allowed to vote, genuine alternatives candidates) (Operational= the probability of voting, the percentage of those eligible to vote and who actually do vote)

3. Gather appropriate data, that is valid (measure what supposed to measure) and reliable (accurate). Gather data from books or reports or from going to the field to measure it yourself. >

How to apply scientific method to politics? (Ex. Gender and voting in the U.S)

4. Analyze the evidence (in year such and such that much percentage of men and women voted…) Decide what, if any, inference can be made about the issue on the basis of your evidence. (is the evidence sufficient, can you generalize, generalization must be done with care and with attention to longitudinal patterns(overtime), have you overlooked some other important variables that might affect the relationship between gender and voting, such as age, ethnicity, education, party identification, attitude to key issues, and so on)

5. Ideally, offer a tentative conclusion regarding the issue. (Sometimes the issue is so complicated that no generalization is possible and more data and more thoughtful analysis is required)

Political Science and Political Knowledge

Some argue that political science is not a real “science”

Thomas Kuhn, elements of a “real” science:

Values*

1. Concepts

2. Theory (set of systematically linked generalizations)

3. Rules of interpretation (methods)

4.A list of issues worth solving

Criticism of political science as a science

Its subject matter is too complex and unpredictable.

It lacks the scientific elements present in the hard sciences.

It cannot address crucial normative questions about politics.

Scientists cannot be objective.

Normative political knowledge includes :

descriptive knowledge.

your priorities among competing values.

explanatory knowledge.

Supporters of women’s rights in the United States continue to advocate passage of the ERA (Equal Rights Amendment).

The method of rationality

The notion that key political knowledge is self-evident is most associated with

the method of rationality.

In Aristotle’s view, a central goal of political analysis is to discover the “highest good attainable by action”.

Major obstacles to the application of the scientific method to politics are:

Not enough data are available to serve as a basis for generalizations.

The evidence is so ambiguous that no clear conclusions can be reached.

The analyst cannot be objective because of the influence of his or her social reality.

Political reality is very complex.

The role of United Nations

An essay on the role of United Nations peacekeeping forces could emphasize the following types of political knowledge:

Descriptive

Explanatory

Prescriptive

A study that analyzes the historical ethnic animosity between Persian Iranians and Arab Iraqis primarily provides explanatory knowledge.

Political Science as a Means of Understanding the Political World

Desirable to use systematic and analytic thinking

Importance of shared knowledge

We need methods to reach some interpersonal agreement about political facts

Enables us to develop:

Better concepts

Improved methods

Sound generalizations