From Ancient Greeks to American Behavioralism

A Brief History of Political Science

• Political science has been studied for centuries, but the term was not always distinguished from political philosophy.
• The antecedents of Western politics can be traced back to the Socratic political philosophers, such as Aristotle.
• The rise of monotheism and, particularly for the Western tradition, Christianity brought to light a new space for politics and political action during the Middle Ages.
• During the Italian Renaissance, Niccolò Machiavelli established the emphasis of modern political science on direct empirical observation of political institutions and actors.
• The Enlightenment era helped pave the way for policies that emphasized a need for a separation of church and state.
• In the Progressive Era in the United States (1890s-1920s), political science became not only a prestigious university curriculum but also an applied science that was welcomed as a way to apply expertise to the problems of governance.
• The American Political Science Association, established in 1903, is the largest professional association of political scientists.
• Behavioralism is an empirical approach which emerged in the 1930s in the United States.
• The concept of system was the most important theoretical concept used by American political scientists since the 1950s.
• Canadian universities until the 1950s were led by British-trained scholars for whom political science was not a high priority.
• Political science operates on a smaller scale in European universities compared to American ones.
• Confucianism, Taoism, Legalism, and Mohism are part of the six classical schools of thought in Chinese philosophy and dominated Chinese political philosophy during the Imperial Period.