# Politics, and the Science of It

Political Science I · Political Science I · https://tryals.app/learn/political-science-i/politics-and-the-science-of-it

## A Word With Four Jobs

**Politics** has four main meanings in everyday and academic use:

| Sense | What it refers to | Example |
|---|---|---| 
| **Politics as arena** | The institutions of government | "A career in politics" |
| **Politics as process** | Conflict and its resolution | "The politics of the housing bill" |
| **Politics as power** | Any relation of command and obedience | "The politics of the family" |
| **Politics as the public** | What concerns the collectivity | "This is a political question, not a private one" |

Narrow definitions restrict politics to the state. Broad definitions extend it to all power relations.

The feminist slogan **the personal is political** argues for the broad view. It brings domestic labour, reproduction, and family power into political analysis.

Two classical definitions are widely used:

- **Harold Lasswell** (1936): politics is *who gets what, when, how*. This focuses on distribution.
- **David Easton** (1953): politics is the **authoritative allocation of values for a society**.

## The Study of Politics

**Politics** is the human activity. **political science** is its systematic study.

Political science relies on three core scientific commitments:

- **Explicit concepts**: clearly defined terms that others can apply consistently.
- **Evidence**: observable data used to test claims that could be proven false.
- **Comparison**: the discipline's substitute for laboratory experiments.

The **behavioural revolution** introduced survey data, statistics, and formal measurement in the mid-twentieth century. Critics responded that fundamental normative questions cannot be settled by data alone.

### The Three Organising Concepts

The discipline builds on three primary concepts:

- **power**: the fundamental social relation of influence and control.
- The **state**: the dominant historical institution that concentrates power.
- The **political system**: the model showing how political processes interact.

> **Common pitfall:** treating definitions as mere preference. Your choice of definition directly determines what counts as valid evidence.

## Practice questions

10 of this lesson's 14 practice questions, with answers. The full set is in the app.

### 1. Why does the choice between a narrow and a broad definition of politics change what a political scientist can study?

A. The definition decides what counts as data, so a narrow one puts household power outside the field
B. A broad definition forces researchers to rely exclusively on qualitative and normative methods
C. Only a narrow definition provides the institutional stability needed for cross-national comparison
D. The definition determines whether behavioural revolution methods are statistically rigorous enough

**Answer:** A. The definition decides what counts as data, so a narrow one puts household power outside the field

**Why:** Because a definition fixes the **field of view**. Under a state-centred definition, a study of who decides how domestic labour is divided is sociology; under a power-centred one it is political science. Nothing about the household changes, only whether the discipline is entitled to look at it, which is exactly the claim behind "the personal is political".

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/political-science-i/politics-and-the-science-of-it/why-does-the-choice-between-a-narrow-and-a-broad-definition-of

### 2. Sort each use of the word "politics" by the sense it carries.

**Answer:**

- Politics as arena: Political career, Left politics for business
- Politics as process: Housing bill politics, Compromise between two wings
- Politics as power: Politics in the family, Workplace deference dynamic

**Why:** The same word does three jobs in ordinary speech and the discipline inherits all three. Being able to say which one a claim is using resolves a surprising number of apparent disagreements, two people arguing about whether something is "political" are usually agreeing about the facts and using different senses.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/political-science-i/politics-and-the-science-of-it/sort-each-use-of-the-word-politics-by-the-sense-it-carries

### 3. Easton's definition of the political system is the authoritative allocation of values for a society.

**Answer:** True

**Why:** **True**, and each word earns its place. *Authoritative* means binding rather than merely influential; *allocation* means distributing scarce things, symbolic as well as material; *for a society* means collectively rather than privately. Strip any one and the definition stops distinguishing politics from advertising, economics or private preference.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/political-science-i/politics-and-the-science-of-it/eastons-definition-of-the-political-system-is-the-authoritative

### 4. The feminist slogan 'the personal is political' shifts the study of politics from an arena-based conception to one centred on power. What consequence does this move have for what a researcher investigates as political data?

A. It includes interpersonal power relations in ordinary domestic settings
B. It rejects institutional analysis entirely in favour of domestic dynamics
C. It confines valid empirical data to formal household legal arrangements
D. It treats all collective decisions as matters of formal state legislation

**Answer:** A. It includes interpersonal power relations in ordinary domestic settings

**Why:** Equating politics with power expands the scope of analysis to informal hierarchies, rather than restricting it to households or discarding state institutions. Methodological scope broadens rather than shifting to a new exclusivity.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/political-science-i/politics-and-the-science-of-it/the-feminist-slogan-the-personal-is-political-shifts-the-study-of

### 5. Which are true of political science as a discipline?

A. It professionalised in the late nineteenth century, long after politics itself
B. It requires concepts explicit enough that another researcher applies them the same way
C. It relies on comparison because controlled experiments on countries are usually impossible
D. Its claims are laws of the same kind as those in physics

**Answer:** A. It professionalised in the late nineteenth century, long after politics itself; B. It requires concepts explicit enough that another researcher applies them the same way; C. It relies on comparison because controlled experiments on countries are usually impossible

**Why:** Comparison is the discipline's central method precisely because you cannot randomly assign countries to electoral systems. What makes the work scientific is explicit concepts, inspectable evidence and falsifiable claims, not the production of physics-like laws, which no serious practitioner claims.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/political-science-i/politics-and-the-science-of-it/which-are-true-of-political-science-as-a-discipline

### 6. Complete the account of the discipline.

**Answer:** Lasswell defined politics as who gets what, when and **how**. Easton defined the political system as the **authoritative** allocation of values for a society. The push towards measurement and survey data in the 1950s is called the **behavioural** revolution, and the three organising concepts of the syllabus are power, the state and the political **system**.

**Why:** The four blanks are the vocabulary the rest of the unit assumes. Note that Lasswell and Easton are not rivals: Lasswell names what is at stake and Easton names what makes the allocation political rather than merely economic.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/political-science-i/politics-and-the-science-of-it/complete-the-account-of-the-discipline

### 7. How many distinct senses of the word "politics" does this lesson separate?

**Answer:** 4

**Why:** **Four.** The number matters less than the habit of asking which sense is in play. Most disputes about whether something "is political" turn out to be two people using different senses and agreeing about everything else.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/political-science-i/politics-and-the-science-of-it/how-many-distinct-senses-of-the-word-politics-does-this-lesson

### 8. Match each thinker to the definition they are known for.

**Answer:**

- Harold Lasswell → Who gets what, when, how
- David Easton → The authoritative allocation of values for a society
- Max Weber → The monopoly of legitimate physical force in a territory
- Feminist political theory → The personal is political

**Why:** Placed side by side these are four answers to the same question, what makes something political, and they disagree about scope rather than about facts. Weber's ties politics to the state; Lasswell's and Easton's to authority over distribution; the fourth to any relation of power.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/political-science-i/politics-and-the-science-of-it/match-each-thinker-to-the-definition-they-are-known-for

### 9. Arrange these steps of a comparative study in the order they are carried out.

**Answer:**

1. State the concept precisely enough for someone else to apply it
2. Select cases that vary on the factor of interest
3. Measure the outcome in each case
4. Check whether rival explanations account for the pattern
5. State the finding with its scope conditions

**Why:** The fourth step is what separates comparison from illustration. Finding two countries that fit a story is easy; showing that the obvious alternative explanations do not fit it as well is the work, and stating the scope conditions is what stops the finding from being over-applied.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/political-science-i/politics-and-the-science-of-it/arrange-these-steps-of-a-comparative-study-in-the-order-they-are

### 10. The behavioural revolution was universally accepted and ended methodological dispute in political science.

**Answer:** False

**Why:** **False.** The reaction argued that the questions worth asking — about justice, domination, legitimacy — are not settled by measurement, and that claiming neutrality smuggles in a politics. Both positions persist, and a student who assumes the argument was won will misread half the literature.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/political-science-i/politics-and-the-science-of-it/the-behavioural-revolution-was-universally-accepted-and-ended