Editing Political science (section)

==History==
{{main article|History of political science}}

===Origin===
Political science is a social science dealing with systems of [[governance]] and power, and the analysis of political activities, political institutions, political thought and behavior, and associated [[constitution]]s and [[laws]].<ref name=":3">{{cite web |title=Definition from ''Lexico'' powered by Oxford University Press. Retrieved 23 February 2020 |url=https://www.lexico.com/definition/political_science |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191230225002/https://www.lexico.com/definition/political_science |archive-date=30 December 2019 |access-date=23 February 2020 }}</ref> 

As a social science, contemporary political science started to take shape in the latter half of the 19th century and began to separate itself from political [[philosophy]] and history.<ref name=":1">{{Cite journal |last=Bevir |first=Mark |date=2022 |title=A History of Political Science |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/history-of-political-science/F1FADCBCCCCB95BB3B8DF694A0A805F3 |journal=Cambridge University Press |language=en |doi=10.1017/9781009043458|isbn=978-1009043458 |url-access=subscription }}</ref> Into the late 19th century, it was still uncommon for political science to be considered a distinct field from history.<ref name=":1" /> The term "political science" was not always distinguished from [[political philosophy]], and the modern discipline has a clear set of antecedents including moral philosophy, political economy, [[political theology]], history, and other fields concerned with normative determinations of what ought to be and with deducing the characteristics and functions of the ideal state.{{Citation needed|date=April 2024}}

Generally, classical [[political philosophy]] is primarily defined by a concern for [[Greece|Hellenic]] and [[Age of Enlightenment|Enlightenment]] thought,<ref>{{Cite book |last=Zeitlin |first=Irving M. |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3138/9781442679498 |title=Rulers and Ruled: An Introduction to Classical Political Theory |date=1997 |publisher=University of Toronto Press |isbn=978-0-8020-7877-3 |doi=10.3138/9781442679498|jstor=10.3138/9781442679498 }}</ref> political scientists are also marked by a great concern for "[[modernity]]" and the contemporary [[nation state]], along with the study of classical thought, and as such share more terminology with [[sociologists]] (e.g., [[structure and agency]]).<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Sigelman |first=Lee |date=2010 |title=Terminological Interchange Between Sociology and Political Science |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/42956439 |journal=Social Science Quarterly |volume=91 |issue=4 |pages=883–905 |doi=10.1111/j.1540-6237.2010.00740.x |jstor=42956439 |issn=0038-4941|url-access=subscription }}</ref>

The advent of political science as a university discipline was marked by the creation of university departments and chairs with the title of political science arising in the late 19th century. The designation "political scientist" is commonly used to denote someone with a doctorate or master's degree in the field.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.bls.gov/ooh/life-physical-and-social-science/political-scientists.htm#tab-4 |title=How to Become a Political Scientist |last=Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor |access-date=13 September 2016 |archive-date=27 June 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180627210137/https://www.bls.gov/ooh/life-physical-and-social-science/political-scientists.htm#tab-4 |url-status=live }}</ref> Integrating political studies of the past into a unified discipline is ongoing, and the history of political science has provided a rich field for the growth of both [[Norm (sociology)|normative]] and [[positive (social sciences)|positive]] political science, with each part of the discipline sharing some historical predecessors. The [[American Political Science Association]] and the ''[[American Political Science Review]]'' were founded in 1903 and 1906, respectively, in an effort to distinguish the study of [[politics]] from economics and other social phenomena. APSA membership rose from 204 in 1904 to 1,462 in 1915.<ref name=":1" /> APSA members played a key role in setting up political science departments that were distinct from history, philosophy, law, sociology, and economics.<ref name=":1" />[[File:Map_of_unitary_and_federal_states.svg|right|300px|thumb|upright=1.5|A world map distinguishing countries of the world as [[federation]]s (green) from [[unitary state]]s (blue), a work of political science]]The journal ''[[Political Science Quarterly]]'' was established in 1886 by the Academy of Political Science. In the inaugural issue of ''Political Science Quarterly'', [[Munroe Smith]] defined political science as "the science of the state. Taken in this sense, it includes the organization and functions of the state, and the relation of states one to another."<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Smith |first=Munroe |date=1886 |title=Introduction: The Domain of Political Science |url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/2139299 |journal=Political Science Quarterly |volume=1 |issue=1 |page=2 |doi=10.2307/2139299 |jstor=2139299 |access-date=18 January 2022 |archive-date=18 January 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220118154703/https://www.jstor.org/stable/2139299 |url-status=live |url-access=subscription }}</ref>

As part of a UNESCO initiative to promote political science in the late 1940s, the International Political Science Association was founded in 1949, as well as national associations in France in 1949, Britain in 1950, and West Germany in 1951.<ref name=":1" />

===Behavioral revolution and new institutionalism===
In the 1950s and the 1960s, a [[Behavioralism|behavioral revolution]] stressing the systematic and rigorously scientific study of individual and group behavior swept the discipline. A focus on studying political behavior, rather than institutions or interpretation of legal texts, characterized early behavioral political science, including work by [[Robert Dahl]], [[Philip Converse]], and in the collaboration between sociologist [[Paul Lazarsfeld]] and public opinion scholar [[Bernard Berelson]].{{Citation needed|date=April 2024}}

The late 1960s and early 1970s witnessed a takeoff in the use of deductive, [[game theory|game-theoretic]] formal modelling techniques aimed at generating a more analytical corpus of knowledge in the discipline. This period saw a surge of research that borrowed theory and methods from economics to study political institutions, such as the United States Congress, as well as political behavior, such as voting. [[William H. Riker]] and his colleagues and students at the [[University of Rochester]] were the main proponents of this shift.{{Citation needed|date=April 2024}}

Despite considerable research progress in the discipline based on all types of scholarship discussed above, scholars have noted that progress toward systematic theory has been modest and uneven.<ref>Kim Quaile Hill, "In Search of General Theory", ''Journal of  Politics'' '''74''' (October 2012), 917–31.</ref>

===21st century===
In 2000, the [[Perestroika Movement]] in political science was introduced as a reaction against what supporters of the movement called the mathematicization of political science. Those who identified with the movement argued for a plurality of methodologies and approaches in political science and for more relevance of the discipline to those outside of it.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=veelUVVHg8MC |title=Perestroika!: The Raucous Rebellion in Political Science |date= 2005 |publisher=Yale University Press |isbn=978-0300130201 |language=en |access-date=24 May 2016 |archive-date=20 August 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200820003122/https://books.google.com/books?id=veelUVVHg8MC |url-status=live }}</ref>

Some [[evolutionary psychology]] theories argue that humans have evolved a highly developed set of psychological mechanisms for dealing with politics. However, these mechanisms evolved for dealing with the small group politics that characterized the ancestral environment and not the much larger political structures in today's world. This is argued to explain many important features and systematic [[cognitive bias]]es of current politics.<ref name="AEP">Michael Bang Petersen. "The evolutionary psychology of mass politics". In {{Cite book |last=Roberts |first=S.C. |title=Applied Evolutionary Psychology |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2011 |isbn=978-0199586073 |editor-last=Roberts |editor-first=S. Craig |doi=10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199586073.001.0001}}</ref>