NIRMALAGIRI COLLEGE POLITICAL SCIENCE NOTES

Economic Equality - Democracy can function smoothly in countries that do not have extremes of wealth and property. A country in which a large number of persons are poor while a few of them have plenty cannot run democratic institutions successfully. Educated Citizens - Only educated citizens can have knowledge of their rights and duties and can exercise them properly. Uneducated citizens cannot even cast their votes properly. High Moral Standard - Democracy can be run successfully in a country whose citizens are honest, impartial and selfless. They should not be amenable to undue pressures during elections. Right Types of Leaders - The success of democracy depends greatly on the quality of leaders a country is able to provide. Leaders must be men of sound judgement, balanced mind, honest and of unimpeachable character. Equal Social and Political Rights- Democracy can be successful if all the citizens are given equal social and political rights. Equality before the law, the right to vo...

Referendum - procedure in which a proposed legislation is referred to the electorate for acceptance through direct voting. Initiative - method by means of which the people can propose a bill to the legislature for enactment. Recall - way for voters to remove a representative or an officer before the expiry of his/her term, when he fails to discharge his duties properly. Plebiscite - method of obtaining the opinion of people on any issue of public importance. It is generally used to solve territorial disputes.

 This approach concerns that the state is the fundamental organization for the formation and enforcement of laws. Therefore, this approach is concerned with the legal process, legal bodies or institutions, justice and independence of judiciary. The supporters of this approach are Cicero, Jean Bodin, Thomas Hobbes, Jeremy Bentham, John Austin, Dicey and Sir Henry Maine

This is traditional and significant approach in studying Political Science. This approach primarily deals with the formal features of government and politics accentuates the study of the political institutions and structures. Therefore, the institutional approach is concerned with the study of the formal structures like legislature, executive, judiciary, political parties, and interest groups. The supporters of this approach includes both ancient and modern political philosophers. Among the ancient thinkers, Aristotle had significant role in shaping this approach while the modern thinkers include James Bryce, Bentley, Walter Bagehot, Harold Laski contributed to develop this approach.

Theorists who developed this political approach focused on the historical factors like the age, place and the situation in which it is evolved are taken into consideration. This approach is related to history and it emphasizes on the study of history of every political reality to analyse any situation. Political thinkers such as Machiavelli, Sabine and Dunning considered that politics and history are closely related and the study of politics always should have a historical standpoint. Sabine stated that Political Science should include all those subjects which have been discussed in the writings of different political thinkers from the time of Plato. This approach strongly maintains the belief that the thinking or the dogma of every political thinker is formed by the surrounding environment. Furthermore, history provide details of the past as well as it also links it with the present events. History gives the chronological order of every political event and thereby helps in future esti...

This approach is considered as the oldest approach in the arena of Political Science. The development of this approach can be traced back to the times of the Greek philosophers like Plato and Aristotle. Leo Strauss was one of the main supporter of the philosophical approach. He considered that “the philosophy is the quest for wisdom and political philosophy is the attempt truly to know about the nature of political things and the right or good political order.” Vernon Van Dyke observed that a philosophical analysis is an effort to clarify thought about the nature of the subject and about ends and means in studying it. The aim of this approach is to evolve the standard of right and wrong, for the purpose of critical evaluation of existing institutions, laws and polices. This approach is based on the theoretical principle that the values cannot be separated from the study of politics. Therefore, its main concern is to judge what is good or bad in any political society. It is mainly an et...

  The general features of post –behaviouralism are given below:- 1.  Opposition to value free social science  : The post-behaviouralists are deadly opposed to the attempts of the behaviouralists in making political science as a value-free science. Post-behaviouralists give due consideration for values unlike the behaviouralists who think of a value- free science. Values should not be sacrificed for scientism.  2.  A Movement of Protest  : The post-behaviouralists asserted that political must be relevant to society as justice , liberty, equality, democracy etc. Easton asserted that the role of the intellectuals has been must be to protect human values of civilization. 3. Future Oriented Study :  Post-behaviouralists wanted that research should be future oriented . A researcher and investigator of social and political proplems with the help of his research should be in a position to fore-see the coming events and make prediction as well so that the socie...

The chief reasons for the growth of post-behaviouralism are- failure of the behaviouralists in addressing the social problems for their solutions; over-emphasis on research methods and tools, and consuming more time on conceptualizing or theory-building.

Political Science is that part of the social science which treats of the foundations of the sate and principles of the government Paul Janet Political science is concerned with the state and with conditions essential for its development. Lord Acton According to Leacock  “Political Science deals with government only "  J W Garner  “Politics begins and ends with the state.” 

After studying politics with the help of traditional approaches, the political thinkers of the later stage felt the necessity to study politics from a new perspective. Thus, to minimize the deficiencies of the traditional approaches, various new approaches have been advocated by the new political thinkers. These new approaches are regarded as the “modern approaches” to the study of Political Science. Modern approaches are fact based approaches. They lay emphasis on factual study of political events and try to arrive at scientific and definite conclusion. The aim of modern approaches is to replace normativism with empiricism. Therefore modern approaches are marked by empirical investigation of relevant data. Characteristics of Modern Approaches: 1. These approaches try to draw conclusion from empirical data. 2. These approaches go beyond the study of political structures and its historical analysis. 3. Modern Approaches believe in inter-disciplinary study. 4. They emphasize scientific m...

Traditional approaches are value based. These approaches put emphasis on values more that facts. Advocates of this approaches believe that the study of political science cannot and should not be purely scientific. They stated that in social science such as facts values are closely related with each other. In politics, emphasis should not be on the facts but on the moral quality of political event. There are huge number of traditional approaches such as philosophical, institutional, legal, and historical approaches  Characteristics of Traditional approaches: 1. Traditional approaches are largely normative and stresses on the values of politics. 2. Emphasis is on the study of different political structures. 3. Traditional approaches made very little attempt to relate theory and research. 4. These approaches believe that since facts and values are closely interlinked, studies in Political Science can never be scientific.