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An Introduction to Teaching Government Courses At various colleges and universities, the courses which I teach at Union County College are variously called government courses, politics courses, or political science courses. Regardless of their designation, these courses all cover broadly the same material. They deal with the study of government and politics. At Union County College and Harvard University, no comparison intended, they are still called government courses. At most other institutions of higher learning, they are generally labeled as political science courses. Before World War II, many government courses were taught within the history department. It is largely in the 1950s that political science departments were formed by broking away from their history umbrella. The break-away was also associated with the general debate about behavioralism and the methodologies of the social sciences. Traditional, institutional, and historical approach was to be replaced by a more scientific approach. What Approach to Take? What is political science? Is it a science? What is science? Can there be a science of human behavior? Can there be a science of politics? Is the study of politics more than the daily accumulation of events that broadly fall within the category of dealing with government and political issues? Is there more to politics than a historical description of the evolution of political institutions? Is political science more than a specialized branch of history? When I started graduate school at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ, the political science department had recently broken away from the more renowned history department and many of those teaching in the department had a traditional institutional and historical approach. The government department of the University of New Hampshire in Durham, NH, where I had done my undergraduate work, had a similar approach. We talked about behavioralism but I never had to learn about chi squares and mathematical approaches to political phenomena. I did not even have to take a statistics course. We dismissed behavioralists as “man-hole cover counters.” They undertook large empirical surveys that reached obvious conclusions. They documented, for example, that religious beliefs have an impact on political voting behavior. They documented the obvious. My bias is, therefore, more traditional than it is behavioral. Facts and Values There were also important discussions on the relationship between values and science. Science can not empirically prove that democracy is “better” than dictatorship. The question of whether an entire legal system, like that of Nazi Germany, can be illegal and immoral is not answerable through public opinion polls. But if values are not logically derived from facts, if the empirical sciences can not answer moral questions, then the science of politics ignores an important aspect of the study of government and politics. Politics is inherently intertwined with moral questions. If moral issues can not be addressed by purely scientific methods, then can political science be a science? Either political science is not a "real" science or else it leaves out much of what belongs to the discipline, the whole question of values. Two Meanings of the Concept of "Science" Is political science a science? Well, the answer depends partly on your definition of the word "science." The term has many meanings but at least two are of critical importance. There is a broad definition which derives from the German term “Wissenschaft (science)” and a narrower definition which is more commonly used American meaning of the term. Science refers to those academic disciplines which depend on scientific method to arrive at and to validate all knowledge in that discipline. Not all areas of political science are “scientific” in this narrower definition. In the broader sense, a science, Wissenschaft, is any academic discipline made up of a distinct body of knowledge that derives from history, tradition, rational analysis, and practical experience. In this sense, both theology, philosophy, and history are “sciences” or Wissenschaften. At German universities, even Germanistik (German Literature) and Anglistik (English Literature) are Wissenschaften or sciences. As long as there is a body of knowledge, a canon, which professors analyze, develop, and explain, that discipline constitutes a “science.” In this sense of the term, political science is a Wissenschaft or science. Methodology But these semantic distinctions do not really solve the basic issue. What part of political science (and the social sciences in general) is truly scientific (in the narrower sense of the term)? German professors are as aware as American that there are methodological differences between the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities. To further clarify these kinds of issues, one must study the theory of knowledge (epistemology) and its methodological offshoots. Methodology asks questions such as: What does one study when one wants to study political science? What is relevant material and what is not related to the study of politics? What methods of inquiry does one employ? How does one go from mere description to explanation? Can one predict the future? Do the methods used in a chemistry course apply to a political science course? How explanatory are probabilities. Is the “Iron Law of Oligarchy” really scientific? And, of course, how do values relate to science. The answers to all these questions depend on yet further definitions, assumptions, and principles. They depend on the methodologies employed in a particular discipline. Comparative Linguistics as a Tool for Methodological Understanding. All languages, provide slightly different analytical frameworks for understanding the world that surrounds us. Every language carries its own peculiar world view, which the speaker of that language takes for granted unless he or she is almost equally fluent in another language. By comparing linguistic frameworks between languages, we can gain important insights into the “reality” of our physical and social worlds. We have seen how the "Wissenschaft" may help us to understand the way in which Political Science is, indeed, a science. I do not believe that a beginning student of political science needs to worry about the epistemological and methodological underpinnings of the discipline. It may suffice to give a broad definition. A brief Definition of Political Science Political science is an academic discipline with a distinct body of knowledge parts of which are derived through scientific methods and other parts depend of history, tradition, and inherited beliefs. Political science studies the political processes and institutional (governmental) structures and how they interact with each other to produce various public policy outputs. At this point our essay can diverge into many different, but overlapping, directions. 1. Knowledge. This Web page provides a further excursion into methodology. What is knowledge? What kinds of knowledge are there? How do we gain scientific knowledge. 2. The Tree of Academic Knowledge. 3. The Subfields of Political Science 4. Political Philosophy and Empirical Political Theory in Political Science 5. The Core Concepts of Political Science 6. Empirical Models in Political Science
Copyright Dr. Harold Damerow |