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HOW far is political science really a science
Having explained the limitations of political science as a science ,low level of its gerneralistions,lack of law-like formulation of its phenomena,difficulty of verifiability or replicability of experiment etc, yet we cannot deny the fact that political science is a science and is becoming more so due to recent developments in science and technology .
First of all, political science has a systematic method of study .it is a method which is common to all others sciences, especially to the social sciences. It consists of the following stages:
1.collection of data by observation or experimental method.
2.Generalisation and explanation of the facts
thus collected.
3.The generalisation is treated as a hypothesis.
4.Verification of the hypothesis.
5.If the hypothesis it then becomes a theory ,or theory is confirmed as valid by further study (observation or experiment) ,it becomes a law or a law-like generalisation;
6.A hypothesis may be repeated by other political scientists to confirm or disprove it by their own observation ,or study .
7.If it holds in all subsequent verification or replications it becomes a theory.
Every theory or law is always on test , it has to prove itself by new facts or data , if disproved by any new fact or data,it will be either discarded or again reduced to the level of a hypothesis requriring further examination .taht is to say ,it will be subjected to further observation or experiment.if disproved by new facts as being invalid it willbe discarded in order words,every theory or statement in political scince is held on trust :it will have to prove itself to new facts of political life at any time in the fuure. this is the dynamic nature .they enable us to undertake further research . for instance it is a ,law, that state is interdependent with society ,and society with environment,human and physical. though it cannot be regarded as a scientist law yet it will greatly influence the research tactics of a political scientist.this is to be emphasised in view of the fact that some political thinkers believed the state and society to be absolutely different phenomena and that a particular kind of state can exist in any kind of society and at any time.
OR take another example .in the united kingdom the existence of the two-party system ,of the conservative and labour parties depends upon the practice of single member constituencies with plurality votes on an electoral system in which one candiate in a constituency is declared successful who secure the largest number of votes among two or more candiates.now it can be safely predicted that if this electoral pratice is changed the british two -party system will cease to exist because a multi party system will arise in that country similarly ,it is possible to predict when a revolution will occur in a counrty ,if we study its political.social economic and other conditions closely ,examples show us that political science can develop the "art of political prediction" provided we narrow down the possibilites,arrange them into more important and effective and less important and weak possibilites .prediction can be made on the basis of the more powerful and important possibilites ordinarliy called determinant variables or causes, the art (of political study) can be and is being made more ,scientific, by improving our strictness and clarity in specifying possibilites and our resources in measuring degrees of probability.
note: we will also discussed these points.
QUANTITATIVE method and techniques in political science.
THE data revolution
SOME quantitative metod
THE data bank
political science as propaganda
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