Political Science - Assignment Example

The term “Politics” has been coined from the Greek term ‘Polis’ that meant city – state (Murali, et al, 1). There are five major subfields in the discipline of political science which are American Government, Comparative Government, Public Administration, International Relations and Political Theory (The Subfields of Political Science). American Government – it is concerned with the American system of government and exposes the student to its different functionalities. Comparative Government – this section explains about the different comparisons of the governments in the world.

Public Administration- this deals with the study of government bureaucracies. International Relations- it involves a detail study of the different international systems in the world. Political Theory –it is divided into empirical political theory and normative political philosophy. Answer 2 The four primary subfields in political science get their ideas from the western political thoughts. Political science is considered as a relatively new concept that began in the early nineteenth century.

Before the beginning of political science as a separate discipline, politics was studied as a part of the natural philosophy. There were many terms in political science like parliament that were derived from the existing western political governments. For these reasons, it is considered that the essence of political science is westernized in many respects. Political science is a combination of several subfields each of which pertains to a separate area of study and understanding. For gaining a complete understanding of the subject, it will be necessary to have a fair idea of all its related subfields.

For this reason, it is said that the knowledge in political science is a cumulative knowledge of different but inter related topics. Answer 3 Power has been defined in many ways depending on the social and political interests. As a single definition of power is not easy to frame, Galileo had stated that power is an “essentially contested concepts” and “concepts the proper use of which inevitably involves endless disputes about their proper uses on the part of their users” (Pansardi, 1).

According to the Weber power has been defined as “the probability that one actor within a social relationship will be in a position to carry out his own will despite resistances, regardless of the basis on which this probability rests” (Swedberg, 205). Conflict is defined as the situation that arises when there are disagreements between parties over an issue. Social conflict can arise over how the resources of the society are to be utilized and how much of it would be allotted to every individuals.

Answer 4 There are different approaches of studying political science. These are Positivism, Functionalism, Structuralism, Interpretivism and Materialism (Marxism). Positivism - Positivism is the philosophy of science which is based on the concept that in social sciences, data is derived from the sensory experiences (Blaikie, 113) and the logical or the mathematical expressions of the data, are in all, an exclusive interpretation for the authoritative knowledge. Obtaining and verification of the data which can be obtained from the senses is called empirical evidence.

Positivism view holds the concept that society operates based on the laws found in the physical world. Structuralism –