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Political Science and Its Audience

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 October 2004

Kenneth Prewitt
Kenneth Prewitt
Affiliation:
Columbia University
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Extract

I start a course on Politics and Policy by asking 100 or so students from several dozen countries to say what comes to mind when they hear the word “science.” Terms mentioned are objectivity, truth-seeking, hypothesis testing, experiments, data, logic, and the like. I write them on the blackboard. I then ask what comes to mind to mind when they hear the word “politics.” Here they mention power, manipulation, ambition, conflict, partisanship, spin, ideology, and, less often, vision and purpose. This list is put on the blackboard. Then, with two word lists before us, I comment that because they have just joined a school of public policy they must have a view of what goes into thinking up, arguing about, designing, and implementing policy. After a bit of discussion it gradually it sinks in. Policy is the meeting ground of science and politics. It is where the two word-lists on the blackboard come together and thrash it out, neither side ever quite vanishing the other.

Type
Symposium
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 37 , Issue 4 , October 2004 , pp. 781 - 784
Copyright
© 2004 by the American Political Science Association

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