As An Academic Discipline
Political science, the study of politics, examines the acquisition and application of power. Political scientist Harold Lasswell defined politics as "who gets what, when, and how". Related areas of study include political philosophy, which seeks a rationale for politics and an ethic of public behaviour, political economy, which attempts to develop understandings of the relationships between politics and the economy and the governance of the two, and public administration, which examines the practices of governance. The philosopher Charles Blattberg, who has defined politics as "responding to conflict with dialogue," offers an account which distinguishes political philosophies from political ideologies.
The first academic chair devoted to politics in the United States was the chair of history and political science at Columbia University, first occupied by Prussian émigré Francis Lieber in 1857.
Read more about this topic: Politics
Famous quotes containing the words academic and/or discipline:
“If we focus exclusively on teaching our children to read, write, spell, and count in their first years of life, we turn our homes into extensions of school and turn bringing up a child into an exercise in curriculum development. We should be parents first and teachers of academic skills second.”
—Neil Kurshan (20th century)
“If the factory people outside the colleges live under the discipline of narrow means, the people inside live under almost every other kind of discipline except that of narrow means—from the fruity austerities of learning, through the iron rations of English gentlemanhood, down to the modest disadvantages of occupying cold stone buildings without central heating and having to cross two or three quadrangles to take a bath.”
—Margaret Halsey (b. 1910)