Intro to poli-sci

Political Socialization

the process by which citizens develop values, attidutes, beliefs, and opinions that enable them to support the political system.

what can contrinubte to ones political socilization?

gender, race, religion, friends, sexual orientation, family,

education, and socioeconomic status

public opinion polls

allow individuals to see how certain demographics view specific political issues

or problems.

demographics

refer to ways people are categorized.

Political Power

the ability to get others to do what they would not do on their

own.

Social Contract theorists

• Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau

• studited the relationshiop between the government and the individual

hard power

Compelling nations through military or economic force

Soft Power

Influencing nations through diplomatic and cultural persuasion

traditionalism

relies on normative evaluations, seeking to determine whether individuals within

• government institutions are acting as they "ought to be acting" based on historical and philosophical inquirty

• avoid quantative data, as they seek value in judgments

Behavioralism

• employs an empirical, data-driven approach, focusing on the actual behavior of those

  in the political process and using quantitative analyses to explain political and social behavior.

Postbehavioralism

• hybrid of traditionalism and behavioralism. It criticizes behavioralists for

  being too scientific and reminds political scientists to address important questions affecting citizens,

  states, and the world.

  
  

Ancient Greece Impacts today

• had adcancements in math, philosophy, and archetecture

• The US white house resembles the Grek parthenon, the hippocractic oath for doctors, and the widespread practice of democratic government

• socrates, plato, and Aristotle

The lonian’s

• rejected mythological explanations for the universe and advocated for greater rationality

• early greek philospoers debated the form and the substance of the univerise

  • thales belived it was made of water

  • anaximenes thought it was made of air

  • heraclitus belived it was made of fire

Theory of becoming

• argued that the universe was in a constant state of random and arbitary change, understood in mateiral terms

• best understood by examining measurable things in our universe

  rather than attaching religious, mystical, or metaphysical explanations.

Theory of being

• believed in a preexisting and permanent design underlying our

  ever-changing material world

• SPythagoras proposed that a permanent, invisible, and unchanging structure underpins our world of appearances, with mathematical formulas representing a deeper reality.

Sophists

• shifted the focus of Greek philosophy from the universe to the individual, emphasizingShifted

• the study of human behavior over cosmic mysteries known as skeptics as they questioned whether we can ever truly understand our ultimate reality and the mysteries of the universe.

socrates

• sentenced to death for corrupted the youth

• introduced the socratic method

• employed the normatice theory, uncocering the purpose of human existing and acheiving a good life

  • goal: find happiness

• encouraged civil disobidence

Henry David Thoreau

• argued in his essay On the Duty of Civil Disobedience that citizens

  should prioritize individual core beliefs over government policy.

Mohandas Gandhi

• employed nonviolent civil disobedience principles, including ahimsa

  (nonviolence), satya (truth), and swadeshi (boycotts) to gain Indian independence from Great Britain in

  1947.

MLK

• adapted Gandhi's principles for the U.S. civil rights movement,

  advocating active resistance without anger and never submitting or retaliating.

Plato

• wrote the republic

  • considered the first written work of political science

  • discussed justice with proninent thinkers

The Republic vs Today

• In The Republic, Plato argued that successful businesspeople should not rule, as business skills may

not translate well to leadership skills.

• Yet, the average American salary is $57,200, while the average net worth of a member of Congress in

2024 is over $1 million

Platos Theory of Forms

• theory distinguishes between the world of apperances (things we can see) and the intelligible world (things beyond our physical senses)

• The world of appearances is nonpermanent and ever-changing (state of becoming), while the intelligible world includes a more permanent design (state of being).

Allegory of the Cave (Plato)

• demonstrates the needs for the philosophical rule by showing how some forms of judgement are more valuable than others

  • The allegory describes humans chained in a cave, only able to see shadows on the wall. They would ultimately come to view the shadow of a wooden cat, for example, as their reality of an actual cat. This represents the lowest form of comprehension called "imagining."

  • Let’s suppose they were freed from their chains and were able to view the objects directly. This represents a higher form of comprehension called a “belief.”

  • Suppose they were entirely pulled from the cave and were out in the blazing sun. They would possess an advanced form of understanding called “knowledge.”

  • For Plato, the cave represents the word of appearances, and the sun represents “the good.”

Plato and democracy

• Plato viewed democracy as a substandard political system because it treats all opinions as equally

legitimate.

• Plato believed democracies are destined to fail due to the masses lacking intellectual training to promote justice in society; they will confuse “shadows” for truth and inevitably pursue their own self-interest rather than the public good.

  • thus why the US constitution is a republic, and why we originally did not have popular elections

Aristotle

• student of plato for 20 years and was the teacher o Alecander the Great and finding Lyceum

• purused a more pragmatic empirical and scientific approach

Aristotle theories

• Assumes that there are three distinct forms of human communities

  • The family unit = embryonic stage

  • The village = childhood stage

  • The polis (state) = adulthood stage

• Believes that the key to happiness is found in pursuing virtue in our unique ability to reason

Aristotles theory of mixed constitutions

• strongly believes in mutiple systems

  • Monarchy: It is a political system led by a single individual. Good if the monarch pursues justice, perverted if the monarch becomes a tyrant.

  • Aristocracy: It is a political system managed by a small number of leaders. Good if leaders pursue justice, perverted if it becomes an oligarchy.

  • Polity: In this, many leaders administer the political system. Good if leaders pursue justice, perverted if it becomes a democracy where the majority pursue self-interest.