What is Political Science?

         As previously stated, within the study of Political Science are a number of sub-disciplines. Public Policy is one of the major areas of focus within the larger breadth of Political Science. In all societies, the government enacts laws, makes policy, and allocates resources. Public policy is essentially a system of laws. This system of laws, which is designed to enforce legislative courses of action and funding priorities concerning a given issue, is promulgated by the government. One example of the enforcement of these laws is the Internal Revenue Service. The IRS is authorized to set the Federal tax code according the policy set by the government. Our Police are another example of the enforcement of governmental policy. Ultimately Public policy can be summarized not as “who has the right to rule” but “How the rulers will rule.” In a democratic society, this right to rule is granted thru the will of the people.

        Finally, some major aspects of Political Science one must consider are political relationships. Some examples of political relationships are political parties, International relations, and various world organizations. Anyone who watches news channels such as Fox News or CNN are fully aware of the press coverage that congress receives along with daily news briefs by The President. The hot button topic of the day seems to be nationalized healthcare. One cannot discuss healthcare without the term partisanship being mentioned. Regardless of one’s personal views on healthcare, the bottom line is political deadlock. There seems to be no willingness to compromise between the two major political parties in America. The congressional deadlock stems from the unified front shown by both Democrats and Republicans. The solidarity from the political parties is a type of political relationship. The parties tend to vote in block to demonstrate a since of commonwealth value within each respective party. Even when it comes to international relations, Democratic nations tend to show solidarity even in instances where the actions of nations of the free world create moral dilemmas. Some examples of this solidarity include the US having overwhelming support from the United Nations for its activity in Iraq, without bringing any conclusive evidence to support its premise for the military operation. Another example of these International relations occurred in 2006. Both China and Russia refused to publicly admonish North Korea for testing Nuclear Weapons despite those test violating international treaties’ that had been long since ratified by both nations (Washington Post).  Additionally, World organization such as the G-20, WTO (World Trade Organization), and the World Bank often fall under the Social Science sub-discipline of Economics. Nonetheless, due to the often ambiguous separation of the Social Studies sub-disciplines, these organizations indeed fall under the study of Political Science due to their structure and bylaws being set by state policy of its members.

        As one can clearly, Political Science is far too complex to be pigeonholed by simply defining it as an investigation of “who has the right to rule”. Nonetheless “who has the right to rule’ is a fundamental premise of political theory. This mistake would be akin to calling Crust “pizza”. It is true that Crust is a subset of “pizza”, however so is the sauce, cheese and other toppings that comprise “pizza”.

                                              References

1. Suffrage. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved January 30, 2010, from
     

2. “North Korea Nuclear Blast draws global condemnation”. (May, 26 2009)

      Washington Post Online.                                                                      

3.  “Social Science” (n.d.) The Free Dictionary. Retrieved February 19, 2010 from