However, because many things apparently outside of ?politics? can be made quite relevant to politics, political science also covers many other subjects, employs diverse methods, and interests a broad range of students.
As a result, political science is one of the most popular majors at Middlebury College. Some students come to political science because they seek careers in politics or academics; others study political science to gain a greater knowledge of this central human concern.
Consequently, the curriculum is designed to train students in a discipline, reveal the possibilities of politics, meet the demands of thoughtful citizenship, and prepare those students who intend to pursue further work in either graduate or professional school.
Course offerings are divided into four subfields:
- Political Theory
- American Politics
- Comparative Politics
- International Relations and Foreign Policy.
Political Theory
Political theory courses focus on the different ways, or methods, of studying politics. Political theory may include inquiry into the truth about politics in general or a particular form of politics, such as democracy or tyranny. The mode of inquiry may follow the model of natural science and seek out causes for certain behavior, or it may take politics on its own terms and try to move from opinion to knowledge about what is right and wrong, good and bad, noble and base.
Comparative Politics
Comparative politics entails the study of different governments and regime types. By comparing distinct political systems, analysts seek to derive propositions that are valid for all political systems. Thus, the comparative subfield encompasses not only various regional area studies, but also the cross-national study of political institutions, processes, and behavior.
While some comparativists study the politics of a single country or of culturally similar countries (i.e., Europe, Latin America), and others compare the politics of culturally (or economically) dissimilar nations, the comparative method facilitates the study of issues central to the concerns of all the subfields of political science. These include the sources of political stability and instability, political prerequisites of economic backwardness and development, and the origins of democracy, dictatorship, and revolution.
American Politics
Americanists conduct behavioral, institutional, and theoretical analyses of topics in domestic and international politics, using a variety of methodologies ranging from moral and legal reasoning to historical analyses to mathematical modeling. Topics of study include the major governing institutions and actors?Congress, the Presidency, the courts, public bureaucracies, state and local governments, the media and interest groups?and the primary modes of political participation, including lobbying, social movements, elections, public opinion and voting.
Typically, Americanists draw on several approaches when conducting these studies. Political theorists examine the philosophical foundations of America?s constitutional democracy and the ways these political principles play out in practice. Institutional studies focus on how rules and enduring governing structures shape political processes and outcomes. Behavioral analyses examine how individuals?from activists to the general public?think about and engage in political activity. Whereas political theorists are primarily concerned with the normative aspects of American politics?who should govern, and to what ends??institutionalists and behavioralists focus more on identifying and explaining empirical regularities through hypothesis generation and testing.
International Relations and Foreign Policy
International relations is the study of political, strategic, military, and economic interactions across national boundaries. It is generally concerned with the relations between sovereign states, but increasingly it also analyzes the role of non-state actors.International relations also includes the analysis of foreign policy, international law, international institutions, nuclear weapons, arms control, and international economic relations. Although international relations and comparative politics are distinct, sometimes they intersect. In general, comparative politics looks at patterns of domestic politics and political development in various countries, whereas international relations examines relations between states and the foreign policies that states adopt. This distinction, however, can become blurred when domestic politics influence foreign policy.
