Лекция: A political science subject. Structure of a political science

Discussion about a subject of a modern political science is not finished till now. Absence of uniform understanding is caused by distinctions of national political experience which formed traditions of research of a policy in the developed countries. The greatest influence on formation of modern shape of a political science was rendered by the European and Anglo-American schools.

The European tradition bears on itself influence of traditional directions of development of public thought: philosophical, legal, historical. The roots the European politological school leaves in государствоведение, therefore the political science has concentrated the attention to studying of the state, other political institutes which are carrying out imperious functions. In this connection in the European political science two directions in treatment of a subject of political science were designated: supporters of one of them understood its subject narrowly enough, another -

Much more widely. Followers of traditional methods of the analysis identified political science with a science about the state. This tradition has been put still by Aristotle. Representatives of other direction treated political science as a science about the power (кратология). However both those, and others experienced considerable difficulties in an explanation of a changing reality. The matter is that behind political institutes which are only external forms of political relations, sometimes it is impossible to see the original reasons and real motive forces of political changes, to understand, in whose interests the power is exercised. Supporters of broad treatment expressed doubts concerning possibility of definition of the power. As the French political scientist F.Buriko has noticed, «in the political form the power puts the most terrible riddle».

In 30th of XX century under the influence of technological and social and economic changes in Europe crisis of understanding of a policy through a prism of imperious political institutes was found out.