6: Political Science

Rules

The importance of rules in politics or in life cannot be overstated. In virtually every human endeavor, the most successful individuals are likely to have a keen knowledge of the rules and how to use (or break) the rules to the advantage of their cause. Ignorance of the rules makes accomplishing your goals more difficult.

Rules can be highly precise or open to interpretation. In chess, for example, the rules are completely known to all players: each piece can move in certain directions but in no other ones. Each player takes a turn; that’s the rule. Although chess is highly complex, each player’s options at any given time are known. Chess champions—in fact, all champions—know how to use the rules to their advantage.

College campuses have their own sets of formal and informal rules, and not all of them are as precise as those in chess. The de jure (in law) rules are the rules as they are written, the formal rules. The de facto (in fact) rules are the ones actually practiced or enforced, the informal rules. For example: a sign might state that the (de jure) speed limit is 55 miles per hour, but if police do not give tickets to drivers unless they are driving 65 miles per hour, then that is the de facto rule. To thrive at college, it is useful to understand not only the formal rules but also the informal rules, which have been called “the hidden curriculum.”8 (For example, that’s it’s expected and encouraged that students come to office hours – they aren’t interrupting the instructors who are doing something “important.”)

The rules in any political environment affect who has power and how they can use it. Consider the rules that determine who can vote and how. These rules can be permissive or strict, making voting either easier or harder to do. The harder it is to vote, the fewer people will actually cast their ballots and vice versa. Voting rules influence who shows up to vote. Politicians who believe they have a better chance of success under permissive voting rules are likely to advocate for such rules, while politicians who believe they are more likely to prevail under restrictive voting rules will advocate for them instead.

Rules might appear to be neutral—that is, they may seem fair and not designed to favor one group over another—but this is not entirely true. Until recently, to become a pilot in the US Air Force, a person had to be no shorter than 5 feet 4 inches and no taller than 6 feet 5 inches: the short and the tall were excluded from this opportunity. The rule might be in place for a reason—in this case, to ensure that pilots can fit properly into their seats—but rules like these allocate opportunities and resources to some while withholding them from others. Because this rule excluded over 40 percent of American women from becoming pilots, it has been modified.9

Rules are everywhere in politics. Your family has rules—even if the main rule is “no rules”—as does your school. Rules, such as Robert’s Rules of Order,10 govern legislatures, and the criminal justice system, the tax system, and the national immigration systems are all based, at least in principle, on rules.

Rules and institutions are closely related. The institution of marriage or the institution of the family, for example, are the sets of rules (rights, roles, and responsibilities) by which those within the marriage or family live. Alternatively, institutions can be organizations, which are groups of people working together for a common purpose whose actions are governed by rules.

Perhaps the most important set of rules for any institution or organization is its constitution. The constitution affirms the most basic legal principles of a country or a state. These principles typically include the structure of the government, its duties, and the rights of the people. Constitutions can be quite general or extremely detailed. The Constitution of Monaco has fewer than 4,000 words, while the Constitution of India has nearly 150,000 words.11 Unlike the United States, some countries, including Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom, do not have a single document they call the constitution but instead rely on other written and even unwritten sources. In most countries the constitution is called just that—the constitution—although Germany, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and a few other countries call their constitutions the basic law.12

Constitutions define the relationship between people and their government. They give powers to and place limits upon the government and serve as the basis for any other laws or government activities.

Constitutions are perhaps the most important set of rules in a country but, after all, they are just pieces of paper. The true importance of a country’s constitution depends on the politics of that country. In the United States, the Constitution is venerated almost as if it were a religious document. Most of the biggest conflicts throughout US history have involved disputes over what the Constitution requires, allows, or prohibits. When the US Supreme Court rules that a political action is unconstitutional, the violator—whether it be the president, the Congress, or any other group or individual in society—is expected to comply with the ruling and stop the action.13 But this is not always the case. Politicians in any country, including the US, may be tempted to ignore their constitutions, especially when it comes to the rights they ostensibly guarantee. Whether those politicians are allowed to do this depends on whether other political actors are willing and able to uphold the constitution. If a rule or law is not enforced or upheld, its presence in a constitution has very little meaning. Some other political actor, such as the people of the nation themselves, would need to successfully demand it be taken seriously for it to regain meaning.

Because rules affect the allocation of power and other scarce resources, political actors spend substantial time and effort fighting over them. In general, political actors seek to establish rules that benefit them and their allies.

Reality

Rules guide and constrain behavior, but the reality on the ground at any specific time also impacts political outcomes. Reality—facts—is not a matter of opinion, although people can dispute the nature of reality. Something is a fact, for example, when there is compelling evidence that an event has happened or a condition exists. The sun rises in the East: reality. The United Nations is an international organization: fact (reality).14 Has the United Nations made the world a better place? That is a matter of opinion, although those who say “yes” or “no” can provide facts that support their views about reality.15

How candidates can raise and spend money on their electoral campaigns may be limited by campaign finance laws, but if one candidate raises twice as much money as the other candidate, that is an important fact. If one candidate is the incumbent—a politician already serving in office and running for reelection—and the other is not, that is an important fact. These are important facts because whether or not a candidate is an incumbent and how much campaign money they raise may affect their chances of winning the election.

In chess, the rules are constant, never changing during the game. The reality changes as play proceeds—at any moment each player has a specific number of pieces in particular places on the board. What happens then depends on the choices the players make. This is as true for politics as for any other game. A key difference between chess and politics is that, in politics, the players themselves can change the rules of the game while they are playing.

Politics can be thought of as having the characteristics of a game. The players—anyone involved in political action—make strategic choices, given the rules and the current conditions, in an attempt to “win” the game by obtaining their goals.

Choices

Rules provide constraints and opportunities. Reality presents resources and challenges. The choices participants make in the face of rules and reality determine political outcomes. Choice exists whenever political actors face options, which they always do. If there are two candidates in an election for a single position, the voter has to choose between them, not being able to vote for both. Even if there is only one candidate, the voter still has an option: to vote for the candidate or to abstain.

In a democracy, the winning candidate wins because more voters chose to vote, and vote for that candidate, than for other options. The very definition of democracy is that it is a form of government in which the people have the ability to choose their leaders or, in some cases, the policies that they will adopt.16

Political outcomes are always contingent; they cannot be predicted with certainty in advance. That does not mean, however, that outcomes are completely unpredictable. By accounting for the rules, how human behavior works, and existing realities, it may be possible to reasonably predict what is likely to happen and explain what does happen.

Government and the Legitimate Use of Power

The government is the most important institution in any discussion of politics because it is the only one with legal, legitimate authority to use coercive power to compel behavior within a defined geographic area.

The government of a place typically exercises its powers over individuals who live within its borders or who are otherwise subject to its laws (for example, a citizen of the country who is currently living abroad). If you break your family’s rules, your family can punish you, but only your government can imprison you for breaking government laws. Your church may ask you to contribute money, but only the government can compel you to pay taxes. Your business can encourage you to uphold their rules and fight for their interests, but only the government can require you to serve in the military and sit on juries.

A government is one of the four elements that, along with territory, population, and sovereignty, make up a state (or its synonym, country). The United States is a state, and so are the individual territories, from Alabama to Wyoming, within it. Afghanistan and Zimbabwe are states too, as are all the other 190 some countries between them alphabetically.21

State has other meanings that are also relevant to politics and political science. For example, a country might be called a police state. In a police state, the government uses force, often imposed by the military or the secret police, to repress dissent and maintain order. In a welfare state, the government provides extensive social benefits like child care, education, housing, and pensions. Countries are more or less police and welfare states, as all countries use a police force to maintain order and all countries offer their citizens some social benefits.

North Korea, where the government monitors virtually every aspect of life and imprisons or executes those who oppose its leaders, is perhaps the most extreme example of a police state. Nordic countries, including Denmark, Finland, Norway, Iceland, and Sweden, are generally considered to be the most generous welfare states.

The terms country, state, nation, and nation-state are sometimes used synonymously, but they are not at all identical. A country is a defined geographic territory with a sovereign government. The term state is often used to refer to a smaller area within a country, as in the case of the individual American states, which all together make up the United States of America, the country. The term state can also be used to refer to an entire country. For example, India is a state. A nation, in contrast, refers to a population connected by history, culture, and beliefs that generally lives in a specific area, such as Kurdistan in the Middle East, where the Kurdish are the dominant ethnic group even though they do not have a country to call their own.22 A nation that also is a country is sometimes called a nation-state. The United States, France, Pakistan, China, and many others are generally considered simultaneously to be countries, states, nations, and nation-states.

A government has authority when those subject to its power recognize that power. In a class, you accept your teacher’s power to give assignments and assign grades—or, at least, your school recognizes these powers. Authority is generally limited to specific circumstances and places where the authority is said to have jurisdiction. As a condition for passing this course, your teacher can require you to read this book but not to do their laundry. Your government can require you to pay your taxes—it has this authority—but it cannot require you to do things that are unlawful.23

When authority is used in ways that are consistent with the duties or rules of the institution, that authority is said to be legitimate. If a police officer pulls your car over because you are speeding, that is a legitimate use of authority; if that officer pulls you over because you are “driving while black,” that would be an illegitimate use.24

In politics, there is a continual struggle over which uses of authority are legitimate and which are not, and governments resolve these conflicts in different ways depending on how democratic they are. What can a government compel you to do, allow you to do, or prohibit you from doing? One possible answer is that if a government enacts a policy in accordance with its own rules, then that policy is legitimate. In this view, individuals could enslave others so long as governmental policy allowed this practice, as some countries have. Another answer is that some policies, such as slavery, are fundamentally illegitimate, even if they are lawfully enacted.

Conflict and Bargaining

Disagreement—that is, conflict—is fundamental to politics for two primary reasons. As long as there is desire and people want things they do not have, there will be conflict. Millions of people lack clean air, access to potable water, and even basic necessities such as food and shelter. Scarcity is not limited to human needs. Even if every family in the world was wealthy enough to buy as big a mansion as (they thought) they wanted, differences would still exist that would make some people want what others have—say a better view, a bigger lot, or proximity to certain amenities.

In addition to desire, conflict will always exist because people have differing beliefs and preferences—that is, differing values. Should abortion be legal? A spectrum of passionate views on the subject exists, and there is no way one political decision will satisfy all individuals at every point along that spectrum. Should governments spend taxpayer money on bike trails, mass transportation, or roads? The answer might not be a matter of deep belief, but it still elicits differing preferences. Again, no one political action is likely to satisfy everyone.

Throughout history, the resolution of conflicts has often involved brute force. Violence can resolve conflicts, at least temporarily, with the strong getting what they want through brutality.

Politics is the process for resolving conflicts over scarce resources and differing values without resorting to violence. When violence is used to solve disputes, it represents the failure of politics, or at least the deep frustration of those whose aspirations are thwarted by politics. Politics can determine how scarce resources will be allocated and which values will prevail. Through political processes, a country can decide whether abortions will be allowed in all cases, some cases, or no cases. This does not mean that everyone will now agree on whether the policy is good or not; politics can resolve issues, but it cannot eliminate the underlying conflicts that cause them.

In recent decades the world has gotten richer and more peaceful.25 That does not mean conflict is disappearing; several countries are experiencing open military conflict, and many other countries are experiencing high levels of violence. Even in countries without open, violent conflict, political polarization is increasing.26 Political polarization occurs when groups—political parties as well as ethnic or religious groups—become divided (“polarized”) in ways that increase cohesion within the groups and also increase suspicion and distrust across the groups. The United States today is more polarized than it has been in many years.27 The greater the polarization, the greater the difficulty of resolving conflicts: polarization is a risk to peaceful politics.

How does politics resolve conflicts? Most often, through bargaining. When parties involved in a conflict engage in negotiations concerning the status quo—that is, the existing state of things—they are bargaining. Political bargaining determines whether existing rules and reality (the status quo) will be changed.

In political bargaining, there are three likely outcomes. The first is that those bargaining simply cannot come to any agreement. When this happens, and it often does, the status quo prevails. Negotiations are almost certain to collapse when those bargaining are unwilling to give an inch because they have diametrically opposed goals. If one side seeks to raise taxes, for example, and the other to lower them, then there is no deal that would be acceptable to both sides. In this situation, those who favor the status quo are the winners, so those who favor the status quo have reason to prevent the negotiations from succeeding.

This point bears repeating. Although you might see a world full of problems that obviously need to be fixed, you should always assume that there are those who benefit from the current circumstances who will work to thwart change. This bias in favor of the status quo is one of the reasons political change is often so difficult to achieve. Think of it this way: bargaining seeks to change the rules, and there are almost certainly those who benefit from those rules and want to keep them.

Compromise requires the ability to see gray areas and possible points of connection or overlap. It requires a willingness to accept partial progress toward a desired goal. Increasingly, everyday public discourse has moved in the direction of extremes and oversimplification (think of Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, and short online articles), exacerbating political polarization and making compromise increasingly difficult, both for individuals and for their representatives in government.

A second possibility involves compromise, in which the various participants in a conflict give ground on what they seek in order to arrive at an agreement. Compromise is most likely to occur when those bargaining generally agree on the goals but have disagreements on the specific details. If some countries seek to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to limit global climate change while other countries seek faster economic growth that increases their emissions, the participants are seeking different goals and compromise is unlikely. However, if all countries want to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, they are in general agreement about their goals. In this case, compromise is more likely. If no country has the power unilaterally to set emission limits, the countries may have motivation to split the difference. If your country wants to lower emissions by 10 percent and my country wants to lower them by 5 percent, the two countries might make a deal and lower them by 7.5 percent. Each country gets part, but not all, of what they want.

A third outcome results from what is called logrolling. If you have something I want and I have something you want, we each have something with which to bargain. In terms of politics, this is often translated into one politician offering to support another’s policy in exchange for that politician supporting theirs – Senator Steve will vote for greater pollution controls (which Representative Ruth wants) if Representative Ruth will vote for lower taxes (which Senator Steve wants), for example.

The outcome of political negotiations depends again on the core principles of politics discussed earlier—the rules governing the negotiation, the reality at the time of the negotiation, and the strategic choices those involved in the negotiation make.

Political negotiations are often a combination of high-minded principles and skullduggery. Negotiators will seek to persuade others and, if persuasion does not work, sometimes to bully or buy them. If any participants in a negotiation have the power to force the others to give ground, they very likely will use it.

If the status quo prevails, those participants who sought change may be seen as weak and be blamed for their failure. If compromises are achieved, participants may be criticized for “selling out”—for compromising not only their policies but also their principles. Logrolling can create the impression of impropriety, of corrupt dealmaking, or of unseemly quid pro quo, as in “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.”

Yet each outcome has an alternative explanation. If the status quo prevails, those who defended it will laud their accomplishments. When compromises succeed, each side can claim that “it is better to get half a loaf of bread than no loaf at all.” After a successful logroll, the negotiators can say, “We got what we valued most.” Negotiations can produce winners and losers, but they can also produce outcomes that leave the participants at least relatively satisfied with the outcomes.

If all political power were concentrated in a single person, with the government proceeding by fiat, or command, and the supreme leader giving the orders, bargaining might seem unnecessary. Yet even in totalitarian countries the supreme leader will have advisors, and those advisors will negotiate among themselves and the ruler as they seek to influence how power is used.

Normative Political Science

In politics, what is good and what is right? How should power be used? What is the public interest? These are tricky questions with multiple answers. One might think of the “good” as that which is beneficial or helpful and “right” as what is true or just. Power should be used to promote the public interest so that those in power use it to benefit the people. Normative political science seeks to understand the meaning, purposes, and goals of politics. It seeks to define how individuals should behave or how institutions should be constituted. Those who study these issues are referred to as political philosophers and share common interests with the broader discipline of philosophy.

Normative political science considers an endless array of questions. What is a good citizen? Do human rights exist and, if so, what are they? Who should rule? What purpose should governments serve? Is there an ideal constitution and, if so, what is it? What is social justice?

These questions cannot be answered by presenting evidence alone: there is no test that would prove beyond a reasonable doubt what a good citizen is or that any constitution is in fact ideal. So normative political science typically proceeds primarily by appealing to logic and reason. Consider the question “What is a good citizen?” Evidence alone cannot tell us what constitutes a good citizen. Is a good citizen the one who always obeys the laws or the one who challenges the laws they see as unjust? Reasonable people can—and do—disagree on this and almost all other questions in political theory. But in order to determine through logic and reason what it means to be a good citizen, evidence can guide judgments of whether citizens are good (for example, if citizens are observed doing bad things, they would not be good citizens).

Normative theorists have tried to answer questions like “What is a good citizen?” in three main ways: focusing on the consequences of behavior, moral rules, or virtue.

One definition of a good citizen is someone who acts in ways that benefit society; that is, the benefits are a consequence of the citizen’s actions. A good citizen votes and pays taxes, for example, because both actions help to create stable and prosperous societies. In contrast, a bad citizen is one who breaks the law, to the extent that breaking the law harms other people. In this view, someone who speeds would be a bad citizen because speeding increases the likelihood of causing a crash and harming others, but someone who commits a “victimless crime,” such as smoking marijuana, would not be a bad citizen because they would not be harming anyone else. According to normative political science, a person should behave in ways that benefit society and do not harm it, and individuals should strive to be good citizens. A good ruler is one who helps the ruled rather than harming them. According to Aristotle, constitutions that “aim at the common advantage are correct and just… whereas those which aim only at the advantage of the rulers are deviant and unjust, because they involve despotic rule which is inappropriate for a community of free persons.”28

Two challenges are central to this type of theorizing. What actions produce more benefit than harm, and what evidence supports these claims? For example, speeding is a risk to the driver and to others, but it may bring pleasure to the driver and enables them to get where they are going faster. Do the costs outweigh the benefits? Moreover, what counts as a benefit or a harm? Is it beneficial or harmful for citizens to monitor one another’s behavior for potential lawbreaking, for example?

Philosophers, and not just political philosophers, attempt to identify a set of moral principles that good citizens should adopt.29 Similarly, they have attempted to identify principles governments should adhere to because those principles are moral. For example, a good citizen would treat others as they themselves would want to be treated (the so-called Golden Rule). A good citizen would not lie because lying is wrong. In practice, it has proven hard to identify rules that are universally consistent or accepted. Is it always wrong to lie? What if a government decides it must lie to an adversary in order to protect its own citizens? Does a good government not, as a rule, have an obligation to do just that? But does this then create a slippery slope in which governments believe they are justified in lying as a matter of course?

Some normative political scientists seek to identify and understand character traits that are admirable in their own right. Rather than arguing that good citizens should tell the truth because lying harms the public interest or violates a universal moral principle, they argue that good citizens should tell the truth because a good person does not lie. According to this line of thinking, a government protects its citizens because doing so improves their lives and because it fulfills the duties of government, but also because doing so is what makes a good government. That is what good governments do.

Political philosophers studying virtue seek to identify and define the virtues, as well as to discover their limits.30 For example, traits like bravery, integrity, humility, and kindness have been identified as possible sources of virtue. A good person, and a good citizen, is brave enough to stand up for the right, in opposition to the wrong. To do otherwise would be a sign of cowardice. But can a person be too brave, becoming foolhardy or rash, when standing up for what is right?

These three types of normative reasoning—emphasizing consequences, rules, and virtue—overlap, but they represent distinctly different ways of thinking about politics and what ideal politics would be like. Although the questions they raise have been studied since ancient times, they remain relevant for us today and are still worthy of careful reflection.

Empirical Political Science

Unlike normative political science, empirical political science is based not on what should be, but on what is. It seeks to describe the real world of politics, distinguishing between what is predictable and what is idiosyncratic. Empirical political science attempts to explain and predict.31

Empirical political science assumes that facts exist: actual, genuine, verifiable facts. Empirical questions are ones that can be answered by factual evidence. The number of votes a candidate receives is an empirical matter: votes can be counted. Counting votes accurately so that each candidate receives the actual number of votes that were cast for them can be difficult. Different ways of counting can lead to slightly different counts, but a correct number actually exists.

A fact may be disputed. There may be genuine uncertainty as to what the facts really are—what the evidence really shows. Sometimes it is extremely difficult to gather the facts. Do space aliens exist? That is an empirical question. Either space aliens exist, or they do not. Some researchers claim to have evidence that space aliens are real, but their evidence is not universally, or even broadly, accepted. One side of this argument is correct, however, and the other is not. Evidence has not yet conclusively determined which is correct.32

Does the Russian government seek to interfere with American elections, and if so, does its interference affect the outcome? The first part of the question is difficult (but not impossible) to answer because when a country interferes in another country’s domestic affairs it tries to do so in secret. It is difficult to uncover secrets.33 But the second part of the question, does the interference affect the outcome, is almost impossible to answer. Because so many factors influence election outcomes, it is extremely challenging to determine which individual factors made any consequential difference.34

There are thus empirical debates in which people of good faith disagree about what the facts are. In many cases, however, people do not want to acknowledge what the evidence shows, and because they do not want to believe what the facts demonstrate, they insist the evidence cannot be true. Humans often use motivated reasoning, first deciding what is true—for example, “Gun control makes us safer” or “Gun control makes us less safe”—and then finding evidence that supports this belief while rejecting data that contradicts it.35

Social psychologist Peter Ditto contrasts motivated reasoning with science, where scientists build conclusions based on evidence, and those employing motivated reasoning seek evidence that will support their pre-determined conclusions.

In other cases, individuals and interests may actually know what the facts are, but they are motivated by reasons of self-interest to deny them. The evidence is clear, for example, that nicotine is addictive and harmful to human health. The evidence is also clear that Big Tobacco, the largest cigarette companies, denied these facts for years because to admit them would have put their profits at risk.36

Donald Trump, along with many of his supporters, claimed that he won the 2020 presidential election and that President Joe Biden was declared the victor only because of massive voter fraud. All attempts to prove that fraud led to Biden’s victory have failed: no evidence has been found to support Trump’s claims.37 That these claims continue can be attributed to the fact that some individuals are simply unwilling to accept the evidence, while others benefit from denying the validity of it.38

Empirical political science might find—based on the available evidence—that individuals with more education or more income are more likely to vote. Empirical political science would not consider whether this is good or bad; that would be a normative judgement. Empirical political scientists might explain the link between education, income, and voting by positing that better educated, more prosperous individuals are more likely to believe that their views matter and that because of that belief they are more likely to express those views at the ballot box. These political scientists might also use their findings to make a prediction: an individual with more education or higher income is more likely to vote than an individual with less education or lower income.39

Based on this finding, empirical political scientists make no claims as to who should participate in politics. Questions about “should” are the domain of normative political science. Moral judgments cannot be made strictly on the basis of empirical statements. That members of one group vote at higher rates than another group, for example, tells us nothing about whether they deserve to vote at higher rates or whether government policies should be based more on their views as compared to those who vote at lower rates.

From this finding, however, empirical political scientists may infer a generalization. Generalizations are based on typical cases, average results, and general findings. Younger adults, for instance, typically vote less often than older adults. This does not mean that any specific young adult does not vote or that any specific older adult does, but that these statements are generally true.40

Generalizations can be helpful in describing, explaining, or predicting, but there is a downside to generalizations: stereotyping. If the evidence shows that political conservatives in the United States are opposed to higher levels of immigration, this means neither that every conservative holds this belief nor that one must hold this belief to be conservative. If data suggests supporters of abortion rights tend to be women, it is not possible to infer from the evidence that all women seek more permissive abortion laws or that no men do. In using generalizations, it is important to remember that they are descriptive of groups, not individuals. These are empirical statements, not normative ones: they cannot by themselves be used to assign blame or credit.

Empirical political science can be used to make predictions, but predictions are prone to error. Can political science knowledge be useful for predicting the outcome of elections, for example? Yes. Given a set of rules about who is eligible to vote, how votes can be cast, and what different categories of voters believe about the candidates or policy options on the ballot, political science knowledge can be useful in predicting the outcome of the election. Our predictions might be wrong. Maybe people did not tell the truth about who they were planning to vote for. Maybe the people who said they were going to vote did not.

In 2016, most political polls predicted that Hillary Clinton would be elected president of the United States.41 Clinton did indeed win the popular vote, as the pollsters anticipated, but Donald Trump won the electoral vote, against the pollsters’ expectations. Political science is imperfect, but it seeks to learn from and correct its mistakes.

Many of the terms in this book, like incumbent, are relevant mainly for the study of politics. Other terms, like ceteris paribus, are useful across a broad range of studies that use the scientific method. Ceteris paribus can be translated as “all other things being equal.” If the ethnicity of a political candidate does not influence their probability of getting elected to office, ceteris paribus, if there are only two candidates and if they are alike in every relevant aspect (e.g., age, experience, ability to raise campaign funding) except their ethnicity, then the candidate’s ethnicity by itself does not affect the outcome of the election.

In real life, however, “all other things” are almost never equal. To the extent that our societies have inequalities of wealth, health, education, and other resources, the inequalities tend to be correlated—that is, mutually related—to each other. For example, wealth and health are correlated with each other in that wealthier people tend to have better health and poorer individuals tend to have poorer health. In the United States, Whites tend on average to have more wealth, health, education, and other social resources than do persons of color.42 This does not mean that every White person is wealthier and healthier, but that on average, in general, they tend to be.

Empirical political science and political philosophy (or normative political science) are distinct modes of inquiry. But this is not to say that they are conflicting, that one is better than the other, or that political scientists do not use both in their research. If empirical research discovers that certain groups are systematically disadvantaged in the political process, the researchers may also argue that these disadvantages are harmful or wrong and make a moral argument that the disadvantages should be reduced or eliminated. Empirical research is often inspired by normative concerns. Those who believe that human rights should be better protected may undertake research to understand the political factors that limit the protection of rights.

Political Science and You

1. “Uganda Blocks Social Media Ahead of Tense Election,” Africanews, January 12, 2021, Africanews [www.africanews.com].

2. Alan Elb, Anit Mukherjee, and Brian Webster, Delivering Social Assistance during COVID with a “Digital-First” Approach: Lessons from India (London: Center for Global Development, July 22, 2021), CGDEV [www.cgdev.org].

3. “Protecting Your Privacy: Phone and Cable Records,” Consumer Guides, Federal Communications Commission, FCC [www.fcc.gov]; “Cell Phones,” US Food & Drug Administration, content current as of May 13, 2021, FDA [www.fda.gov].

4. Katie Moritz, “You Can Influence Lawmakers with Your Smartphone,” Rewire, August 15, 2017, Rewire [www.rewire.org].

What Is Politics? What Is Political Science?

5. Fred Miller, “Aristotle's Political Theory,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2017), ed. Edward N. Zalta, plato.stanford.edu [plato.stanford.edu].

6. Harold Dwight Lasswell, Politics: Who Gets What, When, How (New York: P. Smith, 1950).

7. The sociology discipline, in contrast, concentrates on the study of social behavior and institutions outside of the government.

8. Rachel Gable, The Hidden Curriculum: First Generation Students at Legacy Universities (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2021).

9. “Air Force Pilot Height Qualifications and Waivers,” US Air Force, Air Education and Training Command, November 5, 2019, AETC [www.aetc.af.mil].

10. Henry Martyn Robert and Will Eisner, Robert's Rules of Order (Toronto: Bantam Books, 1986).

11. Sophy Owuor, “Which Country Has the Shortest Written Constitution in the World?” World Atlas, December 21, 2018, Worldatlas [www.worldatlas.com].

12. Constitute, “Constitute: The World's Constitutions to Read, Search, and Compare,” accessed October 22, 2021, ConstituteProject [www.constituteproject.org?lang=en].

13. For the US President, see, for example, David H. Gans, The President's Duty to Obey Court Judgments (Washington, DC: Constitutional Accountability Center, June 2018), TheConstitution [www.theusconstitution.org].

14. “About Us,” United Nations, accessed September 8, 2021, TRT World [www.un.org].

15. “Twelve Times the UN Has Failed the World,” TRT World, November 28, 2018, UN [www.trtworld.com]; Kathy Calvin, “10 Ways the UN Made the World a Better Place in 2017,” United Nations Foundation blog, December 20, 2017, UN Foundation [unfoundation.org].

16. Tom Christiano and Sameer Bajaj, “Democracy,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2021), ed. Edward N. Zalta, plato.stanford.edu [plato.stanford.edu].

17. In fact, the Australian government has stated that “the public interest should not be defined.” Australian Law Reform Commission, “Meaning of Public Interest,” in Serious Invasions of Privacy in the Digital Era (Queensland, AU: Australian Law Reform Commission, March 30, 2014), accessed September 8, 2021, ALRC [www.alrc.gov.au].

18. Robert A. Dahl, “The Concept of Power,” Behavioral Science 2, no. 3 (1957): 201–215. doi:10.1002/bs.3830020303.

19. Daniel Philpott, “Sovereignty,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2020), ed. Edward N. Zalta, plato.stanford.edu [plato.stanford.edu].

20. “Government,” The Embassy of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, accessed September 8, 2021, plato.stanford.edu [www.saudiembassy.net].

21. Why did we not provide an exact number? Because there are disputes regarding whether a few political entities, such as Taiwan and Palestine, meet the definition of a state.

22. Erin Blakemore, “Today, the Kurds Are Spread Across Four Nations. Who Are They?” National Geographic, August 16, 2019, Saudi Embassy [www.nationalgeographic.com].

23. Tom Christiano, “Authority,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2020), ed. Edward N. Zalta, Apollon.uio.no [plato.stanford.edu].

24. David A. Harris, “The Stories, the Statistics, and the Law: Why Driving While Black Matters,” Minnesota Law Review 84, no. 2 (1999): 265.

25. Yngve Vogt, “The World HAS Become More Peaceful,” Apollon, February 15, 2019, apollon.uio.no [www.apollon.uio.no].

26. Thomas Carothers and Andrew O’Donohue, “How to Understand the Global Spread of Political Polarization,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, October 1, 2019, Carnegie Endowment [carnegieendowment.org].

27. Carroll Doherty, “7 Things to Know about Polarization in American Politics,” Pew Research Center, June 12, 2014, PEWResearch [www.pewresearch.org].

28. Fred Miller, “Aristotle's Political Theory,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2017), ed. Edward N. Zalta, plato.stanford.edu [plato.stanford.edu].

29. You can find an extensive discussion of the “good citizen” in Jack Crittenden and Peter Levine, “Civic Education,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2018), ed. Edward N. Zalta, plato.stanford.edu [plato.stanford.edu].

30. Rosalind Hursthouse and Glen Pettigrove, “Virtue Ethics,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2018), ed. Edward N. Zalta, plato.stanford.edu [plato.stanford.edu].

31. Klaus von Beyme, “Political Theory: Empirical Political Theory,” in A New Handbook of Political Science, eds. Robert E. Goodin and Hans-Dieter Klingeman (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2003).

32. John Gertz, “Maybe the Aliens Really Are Here,” Scientific American, June 21, 2021, Scientific American [www.scientificamerican.com].

33. US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, “Senate Intel Releases New Report on Intel Community Assessment of Russian Interference,” press release, April 21, 2020, intelligence.senate.gov [www.intelligence.senate.gov].

34. Nate Silver, “How Much Did Russian Interference Affect the 2016 Election?” FiveThirtyEight, February 16, 2018, FiveThirtyEight [fivethirtyeight.com].

35. Joseph M. Pierre, “The Psychology of Guns: Risk, Fear, and Motivated Reasoning,” Palgrave Communications 5, no. 1 (December 2019): 1–7. doi:10.1057/s41599-019-0373-z.

36. Stanton A. Glantz, The Cigarette Papers (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996).

37. “Voting Rights Litigation Tracker 2020,” Brennan Center for Justice, updated July 8, 2021, Brennan Center [www.brennancenter.org].

38. Michelle Ye Hee Lee and Anu Narayanswamy, “Trump Raises $495 Million since Mid-October, Including a Massive Haul Fueled by Misleading Appeals about Election Fraud,” Washington Post, December 4, 2020, Washington Post [www.washingtonpost.com].

39. For one interesting article on this topic, see Melissa R. Michelson, “Political Efficacy and Electoral Participation of Chicago Latinos,” Social Science Quarterly 81, no. 1 (2000): 136–150. JSTOR [www.jstor.org].

40. Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux, “Why Younger Americans Don’t Vote More Often (*No, It’s Not Apathy),” FiveThirtyEight, October 30, 2020, FiveThirtyEight [fivethirtyeight.com].

41. Nate Silver, “Election Update: Clinton Gains, and the Polls Magically Converge,” FiveThirtyEight, November 7, 2016, FiveThirtyEight [fivethirtyeight.com].

42. Neil Bhutta, Andrew C. Chang, Lisa J. Dettling, and Joanne W. Hsu, “Disparities in Wealth by Race and Ethnicity in the 2019 Survey of Consumer Finances,” Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, September 28, 2020, Federal Reserve [www.federalreserve.gov].