III.

Early History

Strong interest in the nature of the state, its organs of control, and the place of the citizenry within its boundaries existed as far back as ancient Greece. Most scholars would agree that Aristotle was the earliest forerunner of the political scientist. Among other things, his treatment of types of regimes in his Politics presaged countless efforts to classify forms of government and has remained a major influence on the discipline. Plato, whose The Republic presented his theoretical development of a utopia, or perfect city, was another important early political philosopher.

Over the centuries, other classics of the field were written by the Roman statesman Cicero, by St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas, by the Italian statesman Niccolò Machiavelli, by the British philosophers Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, by the French writers Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Baron de Montesquieu, and by the German philosophers Immanuel Kant, G. W. F. Hegel, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, and Karl Marx. The Federalist (1787-1788), a series of essays, most of them by the American statesmen Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, is a classic of political thought in the early years of the United States. Almost all of these authors dealt with the possibility that a society could provide the conditions for a good life for all its people. These works are still read, largely because they go beyond material comfort to treat such higher values as justice, equality, liberty, and the promotion of human excellence.

The successes achieved in the natural sciences led many political scientists to the belief that in time, if they borrowed the orderly analysis and methodology of physics, chemistry, and biology, and if they, too, developed explanatory theories, the study of government and politics could become as much a scientific endeavour as were the established laboratory sciences. In their efforts to achieve this scientific credibility, these scholars allied themselves primarily with researchers in the fields of sociology and psychology. From sociologists they borrowed statistical methods of collecting and analysing data on people's political behaviour. From psychologists they took definitions, propositions, and concepts to help in understanding why human beings act in certain ways. History was used as a source of facts to be analysed by the political scientist. Economics was relegated to a supplementary position, although the economists' ability to collect quantifiable data became the envy of many students of politics. As a result of these borrowings from other social sciences, political science came to be seen as an important field in its own right; no longer was it considered merely an adjunct to the fields of moral philosophy, law, political economy, or history.