POS 3113 Premidterms

ms grace premids third year, idk if its right tho

What is Political about Political Science?

The contemporary question in Political Analysis, as per Colin Hay.

reflexive debate

Political Science has entered a ________ _______ about both the nature of its subject matter and the kinds of claims it can legitimately make.

methodological quarrel

The disagreement in Political Science, especially in the academic field is more of a _____________ _________, it concerns what counts as political reality and what counts as defensible political knowledge. 

It concerns what counts as political reality and what counts as a defensible political knowledge. 

The Political Question
The Science Question

The Two Foundational Questions

The Political Question

This question is based on:

• What is the nature of political reality?

• Where are the boundaries of the political?

• What units constitute the political world?

• What counts as a political explanation?

The Science Question

This question is based on:

• What can we know about political reality?

• How certain can our claims be?

• Can political inquiry be objective?

• Should it emulate the natural sciences?

Ontology, Epistemology, Methodology

The three levels of analysis in Political Analysis

Norman Blaikie

He who defined each level of analysis (Ontology, Epistemology, Methodology).

Ontology

This level of analysis asks:

• What exists?

• What is political reality made of?

Epistemology

This level of analysis asks:

• What can we know?

• With what degree of confidence?

Methodology

This level of analysis asks:

• How should inquiry proceed?

• What research strategy follows?

directional dependence

Colin Hay suggests that all three levels of analysis are closely related but irreducible. This is called as _______ _______.

Ontological atomist

This refers to a person who believes that political behaviour is ultimately explained through individuals, their needs, capacities, motivations, and choices. If individuals are the basic building blocks of political reality, then social structures cannot simply be treated as independent causal forces.

Ontological structuralist

This refers to a person who gives explanatory priority to social relations, processes and structures. Institutions, social relationships, historical structures, and broader contexts shape what individuals can do.

_________ concerns the conditions under which knowledge of political reality can be acquired. 

It asks how much certainty can legitimately be claimed and whether findings can be generalized beyond their immediate context. 

It also asks how competing explanations can be compared and defended. 

Political analysis

_______ is better understood as a collection of analytical strategies that may rest on incompatible assumptions.

In politics, a _____ definition associates politics with government, the state and the public sphere. 

broad

In politics, a _____ definition asks where power operates—even outside formal government institutions. 

rigid

In politics, a _____ definition can exclude the mechanisms and conflicts through which something comes to be recognized as ‘political’.

The Feminist Challenge

This refers to the challenges the identification of politics with the public sphere. If the private sphere is declared non-political by definition, relations of oppression,  subordination and resistance located in family, body, sexuality, and interpersonal life disappear from political inquiry. 

Politics as an Arena

• Is the view that politics is primarily located within a locus where political activities take place.

• Defined as where it happens

• State, government, parliament, public institutions

• If you do the same activity, however outside a political arena, that activity will be deemed “non-political.”

Politics as a Process

• Defined by what happens

• Can occur in any social setting

Power

What makes political science political is not simply that it studies governments or elections. It is political because it focuses on _____—how it is acquired, exercised, distributed, justified, and challenged within societies.

Inclusive conception

Colin Hay favors an __________ in which political inquiry identifies and interrogates the distribution, exercise, and consequences of power.

Held and Leftwich

_______ and _______ emphasizes that politics concerns power and its effects on resources and the transformative capacities of agents, agencies, and institutions.

Power as Context-Shaping

Power as ______: the capacity of actors to redefine the parameters of what is socially, politically and economically possible for others.

Transformatory Capacity

In context shaping, this is the idea of expanding the range of possibilities available for others.

evidence

What makes Political Science authoritative is credibility earned through _____ and rigorous methods.

Naturalism

An analytical lens that claims an essential unity of method between natural and social sciences. Assumes common scientific standards can apply across domains. Does not necessarily entail strict positivism.

Positivism

An analytical lens that models social inquiry on natural science. Privileges observable evidence and empirical testing. Historically associated with objectivity and value-neutrality. Naturalism is necessary but not sufficient for positivism.

Rationalism

An analytical lens that maximizes reason and deduction. General axioms precede explanation. Appearance may differ from underlying reality. Modern parallel: rational choice/some realist approaches.

Empiricism

An analytical lens that maximizes experience and observation. Induction from cases toward generalization. Reality assumed accessible through the sense. Modern parallel: behaviouralism.

Universality and Reflexivity

What are the two problems in Induction?

Universality

A problem in induction:  How can observations of a limited number of cases prove that the same relationship will hold in every relevant future case?

Reflexivity

A problem in induction: People may change their behaviour because they learn about studies. For example, researchers identified a street as a high-crime area—this finding can itself influence behaviour—residents may move away, police may increase patrol, businesses may close, people change their behavior because they have learned about the classification.

Theory
Deduction
Observation
Test
Revise

The five steps in The Positivist Logic

Theory

In the positivist logic, this refers to the definitions and assumptions

Deduction

In the positivist logic, this refers to general hypotheses / predictions

Observation

In the positivist logic, this refers to the collection empirical evidence

Test

In the positivist logic, this refers to compare theory and evidence

Revise

In the positivist logic, this refers to retain, amend, or replace theory

Falsification

This idea refers to the process of empirical testing should seek to eliminate false hypotheses 

Karl Popper

A devout believer in naturalism and was championed by advocates of an empirical approach to both the natural and social sciences. 

Bhaskar

Colin Hay follows ____ (person) in arguing that the nature of the object should shape the form of its science.

The Limits of Naturalism

These factors refers to the ________ ___ ________:

• Social structures do not exist independently of the activities they govern.

• They do not exist independently of actors’ understandings of what they are doing.

• They may be historically temporary rather than universal across time and space.

• These features qualify any single attempt to transplant natural-scientific methodology into Political Science.

Double Hermeneutic

This is a concept introduced by Anthony Giddens: people’s ideas about the political world can themselves influence the world

The Positivist Approach

One of the three ways of ethics in political analysis:
It ignores the normative content of analysis, relying on the “comforting rhetoric” of objectivity and truth to avoid ethical questions.

The Relativist/Postmodernist Approach

One of the three ways of ethics in political analysis:
Openly embraces the value-laden nature of inquiry but often denies the possibility of generating any social scientific knowledge or grounding a critical theory for change. 

The Third Way (Critical Political Analysis)

One of the three ways of ethics in political analysis:
Replaces the idea of “science” with interpretation. It acknowledges that there are no privileged vantage points and that all explanations are competing narratives based on different ontological and ethical assumptions. 

Art of Theorizing

It is a skill that you are expected to develop as future political analysts.

Charles S. Peirce

The person who solved theft in the crime on the steamship Bristol in 1879.

False

True of False

To solve the crime, Charles Peirce:

• Relied on professional knowledge of criminals

• Questioned all the stewards

• Focused on the steward with a criminal record

• Initially rejected Peirce’s apparently unsupported inference

True

True of False

To solve the crime, Charles Peirce:

• Relied on an intuitive interference

• Focused on one steward despite lacking explicit proof

• Treated the hunch as hypothesis to be pursued

• Was willing to risk being wrong

overcoat
watch
gold chain

The three items that Peirce lost.

Pinkertons

The detective agency that tried to solve the crime in 1879.

explanation

For Peirce, the most important product of scientific analysis is an _______.

False

True or False:

Facts alone can generate science

Abduction

This refers to generation of plausible explanatory hypothesis.
The capacity to generate explanations.

It asks what possible explanation would make sense of what I have observed?

Abduction

It differs from merely accumulating observations and from mechanically deriving consequences from an existing theory.

It is the imaginative move from a puzzling phenomenon toward a tentative explanation.

Abduction

The heart of creative theorizing

Replicability

This refers to researchers continuing your work, focusing on the knowledge and methodological gaps.

Observation
Abduction
Testing

The three movements of inquiry.

Observation

In the three movements of inquiry, this refers on the noticing of a phenomenon or puzzle.

Abduction

In the three movements of inquiry, this refers the generation of plausible explanation.

Testing

In the three movements of inquiry, this refers to confronting the idea with facts.

True

True or False:

Without empirical testing, an hypothesis remains an unsupported.

True

True or False:

Without a hypothesis, there is nothing meaning to test.

faculty of guessing

Peirce believed human beings possess a natural capacity to generate explanations – a _______ __ _______.

False

True or False:

Theorizing is an inborn gift possessed by a few, not an intellectual craft that can be practiced.

Observe
Name
Conceptualize
Build
Explain

The five steps from observation to theory

Conceptualize

A step from observation to theory that develops useful concepts.

Build

A step from observation to theory that use analogies, metaphors, and typologies.

Explain

A step from observation to theory that produces a tentative theory.

Name

A step from observation to theory that identifies and delimits.

Observe

A step from observation to theory that begins with a phenomenon.

Politics

This is the focus on power (values) (distribution, exercise, and consequences of power).

Political

encompasses the entire sphere of the social

True

True or False:

All events, processes and practices which occur within the social sphere have the potential to be political and, hence, to be amenable to political analysis

Analytical Politics

A contested and dynamic field that draws attention to the power relations implicated in social relations.
objective and close examination of political dynamics

Extra-Political Variables

refer to external, contextual, or control factors outside the core institutional framework that influence political behavior, policy outcomes, or economic growth models

Mainstream

The dominant analytical perspectives is called ______.

Rational Choice Theory
Behavioralism
New Institutionalism

The Political Science Mainstreams

Rational Choice Theory

• What you get if you seek to model political behaviour on the simplifying assumption that political actors are instrumental, selfserving utility-maximisers

• They behave rationally, maximizing personal utility net of cost while giving little or no consideration to the consequences, for others, of their behaviour. 

• Emphasis on individuals making choices to maximize self-interest

cost-benefit analysis

Individuals are rational and behave as if they engage in a ______________ of each and every choice available to them before plumping for the option most likely to maximize their material self-interest

Behaviouralism

• These include a focus on power as decision making and a tendency to assume that an analysis of the inputs into the political system, such as the pressure exerted by interest groups upon the state, is sufficient to account adequately for political outcomes.

• Concentrates on actual behavior, not on thoughts or feelings

• Built empirical basis for political science with numerous qualitative studies, especially on voting

• Seeks to examine the behavior, actions, and acts of individuals – rather than the characteristics of institutions such as legislatures, executives, and judiciaries – and groups in different social settings and explain this behavior as it relates to the political system.

Auguste Comte

Behaviouralism is built upon _______’s doctrine of positivism stating that social phenomena can be scientifically studied like physical phenomena.

New Institutionalism

• It marks a return, albeit rather more consciously theorized, to an older tradition of institutional analysis

• Emphasizes the mediating role of the institutional contexts in which events occur, rejecting what it sees as the input-weighted political analysis of behaviouralism and rational choice theory

• It draws attention to the significance of history, timing and sequence in explaining political dynamics

• It challenges the assumed regularity in human behaviour on which rests behaviouralism’s reliance on a logic of extrapolation and generalization (or induction)

• Interplay of the different institutions within society, and how their dynamics, rules and norms determine the behavior and actions of individuals

Realism
Neo-realism
Neo-Liberalism
Constructivism
Postmodernism

The International Relations Mainstreams

Realism

• A view of the world defined by assuming that the international community is in chaos and consists of political units called states. 

• States are primary actors and possess some offensive military capability or power which makes them dangerous to each other. 

• States can never be sure of the intentions of other states, and a state’s motivation is simply to survive.

• States think strategically about how to survive.

Neo-Realism

• A theory that attempts to explain international relations in scientific terms by making reference to the unequal capabilities of states and the anarchical nature of the international system.

• It focuses on the great powers whose relations determine the most important outcome of international politics.

• They argued that states exist and operate in the system of international anarchy.

• They assume that the structure of the system is a major determinant of actor behaviour.

• States are self-interest-oriented, and an anarchic and competitive system pushes them to favour self-help and survival over cooperative behaviour.

• States are rational actors, selecting strategies to maximise benefits and minimise losses.

Survival

The most critical problem presented by anarchy.

Neoliberalism

Is a form of capitalism in which the state deregulates the economy, destroys unions, decreases taxes on the rich and corporations, and defunds public goods, while repressing and policing the poor, particularly people of color.

Constructivism

• Is the claim that significant aspects of international relations are historically and socially constructed, rather than inevitable consequences of human nature or other essential characteristics of world politics.

• Is characterized by an emphasis on the importance of normative as well as material structures, on the role of identity in shaping political action and on the mutually constitutive relationship between agents and structures.

Postmodernism

Seeks to “deconstruct” such constructions as states, the international system, and the associated stories and arguments with which realists portray the nature of international relations.

Anarchy

The international system lacks a central authority above states.

Power

The ability of a state to influence others or control outcomes.

National Interest

The primary goals a state seeks to secure, often survival and security.

Balance of Power

Distribution of power among states to prevent dominance by one state. 

Alliance

formal or informal agreement between states for mutual security.

Security Dilemma

actions taken by one state to increase security may threaten others.