political science essay topics

political science essay topics

Exploring Contemporary Issues in Political Science

1. Introduction to Political Science as a Field of Study

Although a great number of issues were raised and new subjects and schools of thought were developed, it is quite frequent to still find specialists that concern themselves almost exclusively with the problems of office, the bureaucracies, the parties, the parliaments, or international matters. These newfound positions by the social scientists – in opposition to those found in the sixties – seem to be the outcome of true scientifization of political science. Indeed, we would not be unfair if we said that scientific methods and biological paradigms were considered unique ways of coming to understand the world.

Political science as a discipline faced many challenges from the sixties and the days that followed. The nineteen sixties could probably be described as the years of hope in Western countries, with an unprecedented economic growth and the expansion of the welfare systems throughout the 1950s and the beginning of the 1960s. Several of these development trends caused the belief that scientific and technological conquests might eventually bring happiness and well-being to humankind. Everything is social science was common in those days. By the seventies and the eighties, on the other hand, cease outside political science with the socialization studies of many countries.

2. Key Concepts and Theories in Political Science

The implication is that interest group competition tends to result in post-democratic political economies that serve the interests of wealthier individuals. This paper illustrates how the public choice theory has been developed in the distinct, important tradition of political economy, by providing a selective. Where little structure is provided, states may provide pure public goods of unpredictable genre, sometimes in a welfare-disadvantageous fashion. External decision-makers frequently customize political-economic institutions to match their specific requirements. Political support derived from concentrating public duties at the level of the hard budget constraint may affect the nature and quantum of transfers that are elected.

Game theory provides valuable insights about how strategic interactions among actors can create obstacles and bargaining problems. For such aggregated or collective decisions of the state to be made, polities invariably rely upon some form of explicit or implicit constitution, or fundamental law. In the world’s most powerful and influential form of government, democratic federal systems, national interests are mediated through the voting choices of elected representatives who are themselves chosen through democratic voting. Yet findings about decision outcomes from the rational choice theory are that close to unanimity are seldom achieved, and that multi-person decisions generally are biased against realizing the true preferences of the median income participant.

3. Contemporary Challenges and Debates in Political Science

These debates are not just symptoms of continuity in political science. While some standard definitions of political science establish that our discipline involves systematic inquiry into matters related to the state, governance, and politics, most currently active political scientists will agree that turmoil in domestic politics and international relations means that political scientists have a duty to address current political controversies and policy challenges. A central issue in such debates is the role and relevance of existing academic sub-fields, established methodologies, institutional structures, and professional mores. Do we need different policy-relevant criteria from what is currently considered worthy academic scholarship? Should political scientists be engaging differently with the broader public with their research?

Political science scholarship often aims, or claims, to be policy-relevant. It is often said that political scientists undertake research on matters that are crucial to the welfare and functioning of societies, to how they are organized and governed, and to practices and behaviors that have sometimes tragic effects. Scholars in international political economy and international relations, in particular, often argue that their work relates directly to efforts at reducing poverty, coping with global warming and environmental disaster, fostering development, ensuring peace, enabling good governance, and similar significant issues. Some political scientists working on policies or practices, however, are skeptical of these claims. They argue that by focusing on what they think are arcane abstract theories, or on rather narrow interpretive modes, political science scholarship is isolated intellectually and insular in its hidden motivations or agendas. They further claim that there is no apparent societal benefit to much of what political scientists write about or study, and no obvious reasons why governments or other agencies should engage with, much less fund, political science research.

4. Case Studies and Examples of Political Science in Action

Lincoln Quillian and Mary Brabeck explain the fact that female guardians are less likely to drop off their children’s library books in a predominantly black neighborhood by examining racial prejudice as it relates to suspicion of criminal activity. This reinforces racial inequality by dissuading African American families to use local public goods. Carolyn Gjerdstaf and John Jarvis explain the limited growth of community-based waivers at centers for independent living for the blind. These waivers empower the blind with new additional skills, yet dominant blindness organizations are reluctant to endorse these waivers because they perceive a conflict of interest. The tradeoff explored by assumption of the blind organization in convention explains why only 45 out of 359 state service providers actually adopted a single waiver on a full-time basis, despite the observations of a 54% increase in new skills for the friendly life of clients who are legally blind.

This chapter has reviewed empirical findings from political science research about contemporary governance problems. The essays highlight case studies and examples of political science in action using scholarly insight to the benefit of society. For example, the research of Vincent Hutchings explains public opinion on issues important to women, superior court judges, and the elderly. Hutchings’ research helps to explain the concentration of women-centered policies in state legislatures compared to their limited presence in Congress. This is because the sex-bias of the public can preclude male representatives from paying a political cost for introducing women-centered policies.

5. Conclusion: The Future of Political Science Research and Practice

In doing so, we hope to elicit a number of future directions for the discipline—both with respect to international experience and global issues, and in relation to method, theory, and strategy. Further, we hope to extend the dialogue about the potential tools that political scientists might bring to bear on their international and national mandates by raising ethical, political, and social concerns, along with methodological and conceptual issues. We encourage interested researchers to work with these and other contemporary concerns as they so choose, to ask relevant questions, and to continue broadening the trajectory of the discipline. We encourage you, too, to turn back to traditional or foundational methods and insights when doing so… political science.

In this chapter, we have sought to explore the broad array of challenging contemporary concerns that confront political scientists who endeavor to better understand political phenomena and ameliorate a multitude of social problems. We have addressed a diversity of topics, including political behavior, public opinion, political institutions, political economy, political violence, and conflict. In addition to these broad topics, we have also focused on gender, race, and identity politics, the media, science and the environment, and political theory and methodology. In these ways, we have outlined a broad array of contemporary challenges for the discipline.