Notes for Government and Politics Chapter 1 Politics: Setting the Stage

Chapter ONE Politics: Setting the Stage I. What do political scientists study? Study politics and analyze it. Ex. Measure just how much it actually costs a country to lose a war, devise a new system of voting in primaries that might have led to a different set of candidate for most presidential elections, study the spread of welfare reforms across the states, study why democracies almost never wage war on other democracies. II. Politics: What …

…detailed, nonnumerical information on a few cases. Behavioralist/quantitative: lean more to abstract mechanical theories of politics and to statistical analyses of numerical information. Theory- statement linking specific instances to broader principles. Are the building blocks of political science. Empirical theories are theories describing how things work in the world we observe. ( X causes Y) Normative theories involve making a judgment about the world, not describing how it works. (What should X be or do?)