Importance Of Political Science

Political science is defined as a scientific study of state, government and politics. Here, probably, the most frequently used concepts are politics, power, political socialisation, leadership, government, state, decision and policy making. The concept of politics is central to political science. In fact sometimes both are used interchangeably. In general, politics is often defined as a process whereby people form, preserve and modify general rules which govern their lives. Such processes generally involve both cooperation and conflict. Politics as an art of governance is thus engaged with the issues of public affair, multiple decisions making, compromises and consensus at different levels and essentially delineating concerns related to power and distribution of resources.

Firstly, politics is often considered as an art of government. There are however competing arguments whether politics is a science or an art just as we often have debates on scientific status of sociology as a discipline. If fact, as various scholars note, the word politics is derived from the word, ‘polis’ which literally means, ‘the city state’. In the ancient times, Greek society was divided into independent city states, each of which had their own system of governance. In the light of this context, politics or political science is often referred to affairs of polis- means the concerns or the matters related to state and its affairs. Political science as an academic discipline has adopted this