forum Military & Political Science
Started by @LittleBear group
tune

people_alt 57 followers

@LittleBear group

I majored in Poli Sci (just graduated) focusing on counter-terrorism and state-building. Also, I know a lot about the military (Army). I'll share what I can.

@King-in-Yellow group

Interesting Very Interesting.
What is the difference between Political Theory, Political Science, and Political Philosophy?

What is communitarianism?

Do political attack ads work?

Has the presidency become the most important political institution?

Here is some questions that my friends had and I can't explain

@LittleBear group

So first question is the different approaches to studying politics: also this is off the top of my head so I can't give you specific citations but it's my closest approximation. Also, the three are often conflated for each other - but they ARE different. At least when looking at a syllabus.

  1. Political Theory is studying what ideas, values etc (like democracy, liberty, power, freedom) do in practice and how they shape our world. I think of it like presenting a well-thought-out argument…there will always be those that agree and those that disagree and while case studies and historical deep dives can provide evidence, its very hard to quantify.
  2. Political Science is applying the scientific method to political phenomena. So think of forming a hypothesis and then conducting studies with controls and variables. It gets really tricky when you're trying to isolate variables when you're either looking at history books or as actual live events - especially because it isn't ethical to conduct tests on mass populations. So an example would be "If a country is made up of mountains and forests, then a violent insurrection is more likely to be successful." Then math gets involved and it gets tricky from there.
  3. Political Philosophy is (as I conceptualize it) looking at classical political theory. Its the foundational stuff that we go off of Cicero, Locke and Hobbes, Plato, Machiavelli, etc. There is more modern stuff, but its mostly theoretical. These were primarily done before peer-reviewed standards were invented (because they are what everyone built off of.) This stuff doesn't require in-depth studies and a scientific approach (I only had one Poli Philosophy class, so if this is wrong, I hope those majors don't come after me lol.) It's more of following where a logical progression can go and arguing against old dead guys.

I hope that helps a little. But to distill even further - Poli Sci is the most quantifiable (generally), Poli Theory is the middle child, and Poli Philo is purely debate and persuasive argument.

Ill try and answer the rest soon!