POLS1002 Chapter Notes - Chapter ix-xxx: Plurality Voting System, Oligarchy, Glossary Of Riemannian And Metric Geometry
COLOMER ‘The Science of Politics’ – ix-xx
• Politics in general is the provision of “public’s goods”
• Politics as well, “can be the subject of systematic and reliable knowledge, according to the
norms of what is usually called ‘science’”
• Political scientists suggest the causes of certain political events and make suggestions
regarding making policies or institutional choice
• Political scientists make scientific propositions which “implies an assertion about how things
are” and can be confirmed by collecting evidence (e.g. the collection of data about the
number of political parties in different countries)
• Politicians however make normative statement and “judge how things ought to be”
• Normative statements require values (e.g. the decision of whether having many or few
parties is good or bad implies a choice in favor of either faithful representation, government
stability, policy consensus, or favorable opportunities for policy change)
• Both scientific and normative statements are vital when making decisions
THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD IN POLITICS
• “The basic idea is that the complex and sometimes apparently chaotic political reality can be
captured by stylized models”
• Political variables can often be measured (quantitative measurement)– e.g. number of
individuals, area, number of governments, money, time, votes, seats, number of parties.
• A model in politics usually implies some assumption regarding actors’ motives at making
decisions, that connect variables (mentioned above)
• Parsimony – the extreme unwillingness to spend money or use resources
• Models such as the ‘law of gravity’ and ‘law of demand’ form the bases of the modern
“normal” sciences
• The models in politics “merely say that if certain conditions are fulfilled, then certain
outcomes are likely to be expected”, they do not predict the future in an “unconditional sense”
• Empirical tests – information acquired by observation or experimentation
• Empirical tests can lead to the “validation, reformulation, or rejection of hypotheses about
relationships among variables and people’s decisions”
SOME THINGS WE KNOW [Thirty Propositions in Political Science]
Action
• This is where we use the concept of the public good to draw a line between the domains of
political activity and private concerns.
1. Public goods - are indivisible and cannot be satisfactorily provided by the market or other
private initiatives. The provision of public goods requires cooperation/coercion, through
collective action or effective government
2. Government size – demand for public goods and the relative levels of public expenditure by
governments usually increase due to economic prosperity, institutional stability and
democracy
3. Collective action – individuals from concentrated, small and homogeneous
communities/interest groups have more reason to cooperate in collective action then members
of large and dispersed groups. Members of small groups tend to have more access to public
resources at the expense of large groups
4. Voices versus exit – Collective action for the advancement of collective interests, or “voice”
weakens and may fail if the rival action of “exit”, in search for an alternative provider, is less
costly and more likely to give access to public goods
