Study guide: Introduction to Political Science

📋 Course Outline

1. Lasswell’s Definition of Politics
2. Collective Choices and Political Conflict
3. Political Science and Its Traditions
4. Methods and Disciplinary Diversity
5. Concepts, Theories, and Variables
6. Course Modules and Assessment

📖 1. Lasswell’s Definition of Politics

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Politics: the process by which collective choices are made, especially choices that have a lasting impact on the life of a political community
• Lasswell’s definition of politics: Harold Lasswell defined politics in 1935 as determining who gets what, when, and how, emphasizing the distribution of resources, power, and benefits within society.

📝 Essential Points

📌 In Lasswell’s definition, “who gets what” concerns recipients and losers, “when” concerns the timing of decisions, and “how” concerns the processes, institutions, rules, or mechanisms through which distribution occurs.

💡 Memory Hook

Who gets what, when, and how

📖 2. Collective Choices and Political Conflict

★ Must-know

• Collective choices include: the State, broader political communities, institutions, laws and regulations, international agreements and treaties, tax, spending, and other redistributive matters

• Political choices generate outcomes and conflicts because policies redistribute power and resources, creating winners and losers.

Further detail

• Changing pension-system eligibility criteria can alter beneficiaries’ benefits, strengthen identification with their category, and generate political conflict.

💡 Memory Hook

Collective choices redistribute resources and power → political conflict

📖 3. Political Science and Its Traditions

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Political science: Almond, 1996 - the study of politics whose essential object is the creation of knowledge, understood as inferences or generalizations about politics drawn from evidence

📝 Essential Points

• Political thought has a long historical tradition involving Plato, Aquinas, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Islamic thinkers, and African political thought.

💡 Memory Hook

Plato and Aquinas seek the best government, whereas Aristotle and Machiavelli study politics to understand human nature

📖 4. Methods and Disciplinary Diversity

★ Must-know

📌 Political science is defined by its object, politics, but it cannot claim a monopoly over that object because sociology, economics, history, anthropology, and psychology also study politics.

• Political research methods include: decision theory and game theory, ethnographic research, interviews, archival research, and process-tracing, text-as-data, experiments, econometrics and regression techniques, and network analysis

Further detail

📌 Methodological diversity does not imply relativism because political theories must be developed and evaluated through generally accepted norms and procedures.

📖 5. Concepts, Theories, and Variables

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Concepts: inventions that human beings create to help understand the world and that can take different values, such as high or low, present or absent, or none, few, or many
• Theory: Moore & Siegel, 2013 - a set of statements involving concepts, including assumptions, propositions, corollaries, and hypotheses that are empirically challenged
• Variables: Moore & Siegel, 2013 - indicators developed to measure concepts; Y or y commonly represents the concept to be explained, while X or x represents a concept that causes Y to vary

💡 Memory Hook

Concepts are measured by variables → theories explain relationships among them

📖 6. Course Modules and Assessment

★ Must-know

• The three modules are:

  • building concepts in political analysis
  • macro political analysis
  • micro political analysis

• Module 1 covers powers, ideas, institutions, and competition; Module 2 covers political regimes, authoritarianism, totalitarianism, and democracy; and Module 3 covers political participation and collective action, parties and party systems, government, delegation, and decision-making.

• Continuous assessment consists of a 10-minute oral presentation worth 30%, two-page reaction memos worth 25%, active seminar participation worth 15%, and mid-term exams worth 30%, while continuous assessment represents one-third of the final grade.

Further detail

• The final exam requires answering one question based on lectures and seminars, with a choice between two questions, in up to four pages, plus one short text commentary chosen from two texts.

💡 Memory Hook

Concepts → macro analysis → micro analysis → global democracy and governance

📊 Synthesis Tables

Core analytical building blocks

Notion	Role	Typical representation
Concept	Analytical invention used to understand the world	Can take different values
Theory	Statements linking concepts	Assumptions, propositions, corollaries, hypotheses
Variable	Indicator measuring a concept	X explains variation in Y