Relationship Of Sociology With
Political Sciences
Definition of Political Science
Political science is generally defined as a scientific study of state, government and politics.
Here, probably, the most frequently used concepts are politics, state,power, political
socialisation, leadership, governance, decision taking, policymaking and its impacts. The
concept of politics is central to political science. In fact, sometimes both are used
interchangeably. In general, politics is also defined as a process whereby people form,
preserve and modify general rules whichgovern their lives. Such processes generally
involve both cooperation and conflict. Politics as an art of governance is thus engaged with
the issues of publicaffair, conflict, multiple decisions making, compromises and consensus
at different levels and, thus, essentially delineating concerns related to power and
distribution of resources. Now, let us look at some of the meanings attached to the word
politics;
Firstly, politics is often considered as an art of government. There are however competing
arguments whether politics is a science or an art just as we often have debates on
scientific status of sociology as a discipline. If fact, as various scholars note, the word
politics is derived from the word, ‘polis’ which literally means, ‘the city state’. In the
ancient times, Greek society was divided into independent city states, each of which had
their own system of governance. In this context, politics or political science is often
referred to affairs of polis means the concerns or the matters related to state and its
affairs. Political science as an academic discipline has largely adopted this definition of
politics or political science.
Secondly, most essential aspect which defines politics and its nature is what we most
often refer to public affair or related to public. Truly, the realm, definition and scope of
political science go beyond narrower definition of political science which is simply
considered as the study of government or state. Furthermore, the word public as
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mentioned above may be contested with the word ‘private’. These distinctions often
classified basing itself on two divergent views of human life. The same categorisation
further corresponds to distinction between the state and the civil society as two
conceptual categories. For instance, various institutions of state such as bureaucratic
machinery, the ministries, the court and tribunals, the police, the army, the social security
system and so on can be regarded as public in the sense that these are responsible for the
society at large for its organisation, management, and the smooth functioning of social life
in the state.
Moreover, they are funded at the public expenses, primarily out of tax payers’ money. In
contrast to this, the civil society is consisted of various social institutions such as family,
kinship groups, trade unions, clubs, community groups, private businesses, and so on. They
are private in the sense that they are funded and set up by individual citizens to satisfy
their own needs and interest rather than those of the larger society at many a times.
Thus, there nature is private or individual centric.
Thirdly, politics is often defined in terms its distinctive nature in engaging withthe
critical issues of compromise, decision making and consensus. Politics is often related
with the social machinery aiming towards resolving conflict, mostly through compromise,
conciliation and negotiation rather than through the force and naked power all alone.
It is primarily in this context that various scholars often define politics and its related
processes as, ‘the art of possible’ which is mainly due to the in politics to bring peaceful
solutions through dialogue, debates and arbitrations as alternate means of resolving
conflict as against often
called military solutions. In this effect, rather politics is also qualified to be defined as
dispersal of power and resources, as societies required running their community life
smoothly and peacefully.
Lastly, the politics is often associated with power and exercise of influence. Scholars
thus often define politics as the heart of all collective social activity embedded with
formal and informal, public and private binaries in all social groups and institutions. In this
sense, politics takes place at every level of social interaction in the society. It can be
found within families, peer and kin groups, organisations and nation-state at regional and
global levels. In its broadest sense, politics is essentially related to power which is the
ability to influence others and achieving desired outcome by whatever possible at one’s
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disposal. Given the competing demands and limited resources, human beings often put
contesting claims and counter claims. Politics is thus often seen as a struggle over limited
resources. And power can be seen as the means through which the struggles for such
resources take place.
In nutshell, Political science is primarily an intellectual discipline, a body of knowledge
about structure and function of politics, power, governance and the state. Like the
discipline of Sociology, its special task is to impart knowledge about politics rather than
the providing practical training to learners about the politics. However, over the period of
time the discipline of political science in terms of its nature and scope transformed due its
openness to borrow concepts, terms and methods from other disciplines, more so from
sociology, thus becoming an intellectual discipline with interdisciplinary approach. It is
important to understand that such shift, and appreciate the same before examining
relationship between sociology and political science.
Shift in the Focus of Political Science
Nature of political science as a discipline has transformed and changed over a period of
time. Hence, the changes from politics to political systems, government to governance and
political reasons to social determinants too has taken place in the past. This
transformation in political science did not occur in isolation from society. The changes in
contemporary globalised and interconnected world essentially reflected in the changing
scope and nature of the discipline. Political science is not only shifted its focus but
subsequently refined its concepts and approaches towards becoming more of typical social
science intellectual discipline in its orientation and approach. Though the historical roots
may be deeper, cold war period make political scientists to think around critical issues such
as democratic capitalism and authoritarian socialism, political identity focusing on national
membership, class, status and hegemony which later on evolved as issues of teaching and
research in political science departments across the world.
Furthermore, as mentioned above, it is actually during the cold war years that approach to
see political world changed drastically. In fact, the major changes in political science took
place with the advent of behaviourism after World War II. Since then political science
began to study political processes and behaviour. The aim of political science became to
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study and analyse political phenomena by examining nature of politics, political leadership,
decision making and behaviour patterns of individuals and groups as most part of a political
system. Moreover, the period from the World War II through the 1990s experienced the
disappearing of dominance of Western Europe powers and the rise of new nations in the
continents of Africa and Asia. This dismantling of empires eventually coincided with the
collapse of Soviet Union and many other communist powers of that time.
Subsequently, the post cold war period witnessed proliferation of transnationaleconomic
entities such as the old European market, North American Free TradeAgreement, World
Trade Organisation, and the development of regional political
bodies such as European Union, Non-Alignment Movement, African Union and
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the growth of may
transnational/multinational corporations as well as movement organisations such
as on environment, labour and human rights groups. All of these generated new
forms of political community, debates of political identity and critical concerns
around various sociologically crucial issues such as rights, identity, religion,
and politics development. Further, in 1990s and afterwards we can also notice a
visible spurt in the development of identity politics or politics of identity. For
instance, politics around racial and ethnic issues gender justice, communalism
and secularism, immigrant politics, ecology and development, indigenous
people’s politics, politics and issues of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender
(LGBT), along with globalisation as a major discourse; cosmopolitan citizenship,
transnational social movement occurred which were earlier absent from the
political science discipline (Smith 2004) emerged forcefully. Resultantly, the
scope and nature of the discipline has not only widened over the period of time
but it has significantly transformed from a traditional base to a new and modern
one by incorporating more of an interdisciplinary issues, debates and thus it
refined its conceptual categories. Political science in this context has taken a
turn and has covered more of sociologically relevant issues such as ethnicity,
identity, religion, etc. as discussed earlier. The debates on globalisation,
transnationalism, secularism, communalism, identity politics and issues of new
media and many other contemporary debates around development significantly
revamped political science as mature and typically social science discipline.
Relationship between Sociology and Political Science
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Sociology and political science are closely related to each other in many respects.It is said
that the disciplines of sociology and political science are closelyinterwoven in their analysis
of power, authority structures, administration and governance (Lipset 1964). Similarities
between sociology and political scienceare many. Firstly, political science relies heavily
upon sociology for its basic theories and methods. For example in mid 20th century
Michigen social psychologists and Parsonians at Harward significantly shaped political
science agendas in political behaviour and political development respectively. Secondly,
focal specialities in both the discipline borrowed from similar third party disciplines such
as economics, history, anthropology and psychology.
Thirdly, a large number of scholars such as Marx, Weber, Gramsci, Pareto, Parsons and
Mosca, etc. equally have contributed to the growth and development of both the
disciplines.
In the same vein, Harol Lasswell’s treatise, ‘Politics: Who Gets what, When and How’ (1936)
was an important work from which both sociologist and political scientist get inspired and
take lead to work in an interdisciplinary framework (Lipset 1964) . It may be noted that
given the changing societal need and
aspirations in contemporary globalised world an interdisciplinary approach is
necessary to understand social problems and find answers to the problems of
modern society.
Sociology is often defined as scientific study of society. We may also note that
society is nothing but a complex network of various groups, institutions,
communities, associations, people and their everyday life activities. Politics and
power dynamics forms integral to all of these conceptions of human lives.
Notably, polity or political formations has always been the essential components
of any human society. In modern times, no society can be imagined without
polity, political institutions or, so to say, any form of political life. State and
governance are basic to any society both in terms of its function, development
and meeting essential needs of social life such as law and order, security and
development. Sociology too essentially reflect on status of social world with a
focus on social issues and on the condition of human society, the network of
social relationships in an increasingly globalised interconnected world, the
growing variety of political traditions, caste and politics, ethnicity, cultural
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background, economic conditions and linguistic affiliations. Sociology examines
various aspects of political behaviour with special focus on their social
implications. This in fact indicates deeper intersection between sociology and
political science. However both the disciplines differ in their approach. Political
scientists investigate into rise, fall and changes of governments and their leaders
whereas sociologists see governments as social institutions, political behaviour
as outcome of social dynamics and leadership as social phenomena having
multifarious implications for social developments.
Both sociology and political science intersect at multitude of points and provide
a broader analysis of the social reality. Thus, the similarities, between the two,
are well appreciated by scholars. However, both the disciplines have differences
too which also need to be critically assessed. Sociologist most importantly talk
of interaction system, be it within groups, institutions or organisations, whereas
political science talk about control mechanism within such groups or
organisations. Hence, the frame of reference or perspectives of sociology and
political science differ. The former primarily concerned about interactionist views,
whereas later focuses on power structure, order and control mechanisms. Scholars
argued that when sociological perspective of interaction system is applied to the
analysis of political phenomena it tends to become political sociology.
According to Jain and Doshi (1974), when vocabulary of political science is
translated into the vocabulary of sociological analysis it is then what we call
political sociology. It is in this sense that we can say that Almond Coleman’s
The Politics of Developing Areas (1960) and Rajni Kothari’s Politics in India
1970) are earlier examples of growing political Sociology. Resultantly, political
sociology which is basically an outcome of intersection between sociology and
political science, is relatively a newer branch of sociology, studies various
political intuitions, associations, organisations, interest groups and multitude of
power dynamics in society. Political sociology, which we would elaborate in the
subsequent section in this unit, also studies interest groups, political parties,
administrative and bureaucratic behaviour, social legislations, state policies,
reforms and political ideologies as its areas of the study.
