Political science as a social science Essay Example for Free

Political experience as a societal science EssayPolitical Science is in dower a well-disposed science, and in part a humanity. Both ar important. In this topic, we forget look at the fundamental principle of social science inquiry, and then proceed to show how this differs from, on the one hand, inquiry in the innate sciences and, on the some other, inquiry in the humanities. fond Science Social science inquiry seeks to adopt experiential theory. ?Empirical? refers to things that can be experienced through the five senses of seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, or (in the case of political corruption) smelling. possible action? basicall(a)y means explanation. An empirical theory of regime, then, is an attempt to relieve wherefore people behave the centering they do politically. If a social scientist (or anyone else) observes people engaging in political behavior, he or she will need to focus on certain characteristics of the people being observed. The observer m ay wonder why some people differ from others in their political characteristics. Why, for example, are some people Liberals while others are Conservatives and still others are New Democrats.Characteristics that differ from one person to a nonher are called one variables. Those that do not are called constants. Constants are generally less interesting than variables. There is not much purport in trying to explain voting behavior in a country in which sole(prenominal) one party appears on the ballot. Of course, we might then ask why some countries have precisely one party whereas others have multi-party systems, exactly now we are treating ? number of parties? as a variables. fooling language is full of what are, in effect, hypotheses closely political behavior.For example, talk rough a ? gender tornado? in voting hypothesizes that vote (the dependent variable) is in part a function of gender (the self-sufficing variable), with women more(prenominal) likely to vote for the L iberals or New Democrats and men more likely to vote Conservative. Social science research differs from everyday discussion of politics in two ways. The first is where hypotheses come from. Anyone who follows politics will likely carry around in his or her head a lot of ideas roughly what explains political behavior.Such ideas may come from personal experience, from conversations with others, or from following politics through the toilet media. This is true as well for the ways social scientists conceive about politics. In addition, however, social scientists check hypotheses more systematically by disciplineing the critical literature for the results of previous research. This is important for at least(prenominal) a couple of reasons. For one thing, it is usually the case that the more you learn what is already known about a subject, the more newborn questions you are likely to have.A review of the literature helps generate new hypotheses. Even more important, social scienc e seeks not merely to describe raw facts, except to explain why people behave the way that they do. To accomplish this, we need to put our ideas into a broader theoretical scene that offers such an explanation. It is a fact that in the United States, from 1936 through 2000, the incumbent party has always won the presidency whenever the Washington Redskins won their last home game before the election, and lost whenever the Redskins lost.However, since there is no reasonable explanation for why this should be the case, it is merely an interesting bit of trivia, and no serious observer of politics would rely on it in analyzing the next presidential contest. A second difference is that, for many people, ideas about patterns of political behavior remain merely assumptions. Social science insists that the rigour of assumptions must be tested against data. Conceptual definition. We need to know, and be able to communicate to others, what our independent and dependent variables mean.What , in other words, is the idea in our mind when we accustom a term? Definitions found in dictionaries are examples of abstract definitions. Sometimes, the idea that is in our mind when we use a term will be obvious, but very much it will not. Many fantasys used in political science are anything but clear. If we are to study political ideology, for example, we need to spell out with as much precision as possible what that concept means in the context of our research. Operational definition. For hypotheses to be tested, we will need to come up with measurements of our variables.An operational definition is one stated in a way that can be directly mensural by data. We strive for a one-to-one correspondence between our conceptual definitions and our measurements (operational definitions) of them. If we succeed, then our measurements have validity and reliability. Data needed to provide operational definitions of our variables come from a wide variety of sources. We may touch the d ata ourselves. Analysis of data that we gather in order to test hypotheses that we have formulated is called old analysis.Often, however, this approach would be totally beyond our resources of time, money, and expertise. A nationwide survey of public opinion, for example, would take months to traffic pattern and carry out, would cost many thousands of dollars, and would require the services of a large survey research organization. Often, lowly analysis of data (that is, analysis of data originally gathered for other purposes) will suit our needfully far better. Indeed, very important databases are used al some exclusively in junior-grade analysis. The enumerate Canada data is a good example.Other surveys such as the Canadian National Election look at and the General Social Survey were created, in part, for the express purpose of providing quality survey data for secondary analysis by students of Canadian politics. Indeed much of the work using the Canadian National is establi sh on secondary analysis. To facilitate secondary analysis, the University of Toronto Data Library, and other university-based data archives have been establish throughout the world. The largest of these is the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) established in 1962.Today, over 500 colleges and universities from all over the world, including the University of Toronto are member institutions. Students and faculty at these institutions obtain datasets that provide the basis for numerous scholarly books, articles, and conference papers, graduate theses and dissertations, and undergraduate term papers. The Social Sciences and the Natural Sciences What we have described as the social science method ? the effort to explain empirical phenomena by developing and testing hypotheses ? could as easy be called simply ? the scientific method,? without the ?social? qualifier. There are, however, differences between social sciences, including political science, and the natural sciences. though these are differences in degree, they are important. One difference is that the natural sciences rely much more intemperately on experimental cast, in which subjects are assigned randomly to groups and in which the researcher is able to counterfeit the independent variable in order to measure its carry on on the dependent variable. Often, when people think about the scientific method, what they have in mind are these sorts of controlled laboratory experiments.In political science, we for the most part are not able to carry out experimental designs. If, for example, we wish to study the doctor of party affiliation on decisions by judges, we cannot very well assign judges to different parties, but or else have to take the data as they come to us from observing judges in their natural setting. Experimental design, however, does not define the natural sciences, nor does its absence define the social sciences. Astronomy, for example, must of sine qu a non rely on observation of things that cannot be manipulated. ?Epidemiological?medical research also relies on non-experimental data. Conversely, the social science discipline of social psychology has been built in large part from experiments in humble group laboratories. In political science, a great deal of laboratory research on the impact of campaign commercials has been carried out in recent years. Field experiments are also common, as when survey researchers will test the impact of alternative question wordings by splitting their sample and administering different questionnaire forms to different subsets of respondents.Nevertheless, it is reliable to say that experimental designs are much less common in the social sciences, including political science, than in the natural sciences. Most of our research design is, in effect, an effort to approximate the logic of experimental design as closely as possible. Other differences, also differences in degree, have to do with lower levels of consensus in the social sciences. There is less consensus about conceptual definition. Even if we discipline that power is a describe concept for the study of politics, we may not agree on what power means.Chemists, on the other hand, not only agree that molecules are important, they also mean pretty much the same thing when they use the term. There is less consensus about operational definition. Chemists also agree on how to measure the atomic slant of a molecule. Social scientists are far from unanimous in the ways they go about metre power. It bears repeating that these differences are ones of degree. In the natural sciences there are also disputes at the frontiers of the various disciplines about what concepts are important, what they mean, and how they should be measured.In the social sciences, consensus is likely to break down from the start. Even if we can agree that a particular concept is important, on what it means, and on how it should be measured, we will e ncounter far bigger problems of measurement error than those in the natural sciences, where measurement is not without error, but is typically much more precise. Finally, remember that we are involved in trying to explain human behavior. People do not seem to behave as predictably as molecules.Philosophers are not in agreement on this point, but it may be that human behavior is inherently less predictabl The fact that we deal with tendencies rather than with laws means that, for the most part (and despite impressive work by ? rational choice? theorists to develop formal mathematical models of political behavior), political science makes relatively little use of elegant systems of deduction, but considerable use of statistics, which provides us with valuable tools for dealing with probabilities.Despite its unavoidable limitations, political science as a social science has produced an explosion in our knowledge about politics. This has had important practical consequences. For example , no serious aspirant for a major elected office in an economically developed country would consider embarking on a campaign without consulting experts in survey research, a signature social science technique. In addition to being, in part, a social science, political science is also in part a humanity. Political science as a humanity means at least a couple of different things.