Chapter 1 On Knowing the Political World Definition of Politics Competition in pursuing interests Exercise of power and influence Who gets what when and how Resolution of conflict on society Types of Political Knowledge Politics deal with anything with public influence BUT private and public changes based Description The What and straight up facts The problem with this is that sometimes you don t have all the knowledge i e with nuclear weapons Only 6 claim to have operational weapons but more are suspected Explanation tries to figure out WHY things happened Patterns of cause and effect are complex though so this can be difficult and inaccurate Prescription A value judgment that decides what should be done Ought You make that judgment depending on your Normative Political Knowledge your value judgments NPK combines your descriptive knowledge explanatory knowledge and your priorities India vs China Huge difference in prosperity and equality Sources of Political Knowledge Authority Appeal to documents traditions or people who have controlling Specific Authority People family friends explanation regarding a particular issue General Authority Constitution leaders respected media religious teachers This can vary For instance rights of women Constitution in US Koran in Iran and Mao Zedong in China Everyone Bandwagon Problems with Authority as a source of knowledge Not free from Bias Personal Thought Assumes one can use their own rationality Intuition Based on feeling a sense of understanding empathy Rationality Logical obvious Personal Experience Based on your individual experiences I mean duh Problems with Personal Thought We can t be sure that what we think is the best thing to think EVERYONE VARIES Science Use of explicit methods It s empirical observed phenomena regularities cumulative testable Essentially this is the best form because it is what leads to political analysis attempts to describe and answer the WHAT questions and then Poli Sci Political Science Applies a set of techniques concepts and approaches to increase clarity and accuracy of understanding of the political world Political Science and Knowledge Not all believe that science should be applied to politics Some believe that it is not fully developed in the 4 areas necessary to be a science Concepts Theories Rules of Interpretation and list of issues worth solving From Thomas Khun s book BUT it is still assumed to be important Enhancing what we know and what we value should make us more effective when deciding how to address problems Politics is not science The issue with science and politics is that politics cannot be unbiased cannot be generalized scientific study doesn t really solve the problems and it s not a REAL science Politics as science Everyone has bias and political scientists must also look past their bias Few events are truly random No science is pure And even in real science a definitive answer is rare
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