1. Political Science Leonardo Morlino Introductory Course 2013-14 – Fall term

2. Definition of politics (I) a specific kind of power either held by a central institution, ( state, government, ruling class), or used by a power holder who is considered to be legitimate. 1.first perspective approaches politics as the science of the state and implies that traditional and weakly institutionalized societies lack the centralized power that is necessary for politics to exist. 2.second promotes the concept of legitimate authority as the real essence of politics and suggests that in this sense politics is more evident in democracies than in than authoritarian or totalitarian systems.

3. Definition of politics (II) All activities, performed by one or more than one individual and/or collective actors, characterized by leadership, power, conflict, but also by participation, cooperation, consensus, over a community that have the responsibility of controlling violence and internal allocation of costs and benefits, material as well as non material.

4. Definition of (social) science The intellectual activity characterized by: search for regularities the principle of empirical control as the main criterion of validity; development of methods and (quantitative and qualitative) research techniques ; explanation as the main goal; Wertfreiheit, or freedom from values, as the main virtue of a political scientist, neutralization of values.

5. The path toward autonomy From Constitutional Law: what ough to be vs. what is Contemporary History: idiographic research vs. search for regularities, patterns Political Sociology: explanation going into opposite directions Political Phylosophy: meta-observed concepts vs. empirical concept

6. Effective influence from other disciplines Key hypothesis political science is influenced by the discipline or the other social science that in the immediately previous years has developed new salient knowledge.