What is Politics?
Politics is an area of study which seeks to understand the societal arrangements through a political framework. Politics is generally the interdisciplinary collection of human activities which are related to making political decisions in societies, groups, or similar forms of political power relationships between people, including the distribution of communal resources or state status. The field of political science is also known as social science because it studies the study of politics and government. Unlike many subjects in college, history, and other academic disciplines which focus mainly on the time period or topic, politics has wide-ranging influences on all aspects of society, as well as politics, society, and history at large. It also covers a wide range of diverse topics such as government, war, culture, labor, identity, and rights.
Politics involves analysis, interpretation, and prediction of politics and public policy. A political scientist usually specializes in one of these three areas, but may teach a broader range of academic subjects such as philosophy, sociology, and history. A PhD program in political science offers students the opportunity to specialize or pursue a broader Doctorate Degree. Areas of concentration within the PhD program are: the social sciences, government, history/counter-insurgency, and political philosophy.
Politics may have many different effects on society at large, ranging from direct outcomes of political actions, to indirect outcomes that affect public opinion, or both. Public opinion, for instance, can be affected by a rise or fall in the popularity of a particular political party or government. Popularity can also be influenced by various social issues, such as race or gender, and also by the climate in which politics occurs. Because politics can have so many different effects on society at large, graduate students in political science may choose to specialize either in a specific political area such as history or public policy, or in a more generalized area of interest to them.