the basics of political science
When people think of political science, or politics, in general, it can seem very intimidating. Many people think of big words and complicated terminology. Not a lot of people understand politics and government. And I’d like to say it’s not that scary.
Truth be told, I didn’t want to go into political science when I went to college. In my first class, there were a lot of smart and intimidating people. People who read the news daily, who memorized cases from years ago and those who loved to argue their position on topics. Those people scared me because I went in knowing nothing about politics nor the government. ( I was never a big fan of history in h.s and so i never memorized anything unless it was for a test...)
But I just want to say none of that is super important. Sure background knowledge is helpful to stay in touch and everyone should know the basics but all those things can be easily learned in either a basic psci class or online.
I’m still figuring out everything on theories and definitions. 😅
Political science is just what it sounds like, the science of politics, however, it does go deeper. It covers law/ the judicial system, the executive system and the legislative. It discusses how all of those are intertwined. There is also international politics which covers the political relationships between countries and how it functions in other countries.
When you get down to it, you’ll learn that politics is basically ways to achieve the best interest of you and the public. with political science, we can learn what works, what doesn’t and how the people respond using the scientific method. There is research, there is studying, lots of observations and even more trials and errors.
A lot of studying human behavior is involved when studying politics. For example, voting predictions. How do we know people are going to vote for those they say they will? or, does the political views of the family influence how their kids will vote? What can we say about the difference between the state/ location and the political party the residents prefer. Ever wonder why the south is heavily republican vs the north?
Here are some of my notes from Political science 101:
What is political science and how is it done?
What are the basic government types?
In all, whether you like to research and human behavior, or whether you want to figure out what's wrong with our government and have ideas on how government should run, or even just want to be able to voice what you think is best for the country and the people, politics and political science is a great place to start.
