week 1 - intro Flashcards
the three definitions of politics
The human activity of making public and authoritative decisions.
The activity of acquiring the power necessary to make such decisions.
The conflict that comes with competition for power and its use.
political science
social science concerned with the analysis of political systems and political behavior
types of comp. politics
old style and contemporary style
old style
reports on single countries or comparisons of multiple countries using “the comparative method”.
such as descriptions of political systems, institutions, and processes of a specific country.
contemporary style
the testing of hypotheses using cross-national data in order to find generalizations (Most scholars no longer use this but use the scientific method)
the goal of comp. politics
to determine why certain political phenomena occur and to identify causes of political events.
why is the scientific method used
to understand how independent variables affect dependent variables across different units.
important rule to remember in research
Correlation does not equate to causation
what does a spurious relationship mean
when two variables are correlated but don’t have a causal relationship
