DegreeVenue Advance Your Career Today.

The Department of Government was founded and named by President A. Lawrence Lowell in 1910, but the field of political science is much older. It is by far the oldest of the social sciences and was invented when Socrates, it was said, first called philosophy down from heaven and placed her in cities.

In its oldest definition, political science was called the master science. More modern definitions are less comprehensive, but of the social sciences, political science has perhaps the least definite boundaries and the widest concerns. If political science is not the imperious master of other disciplines (as it was for so long in the Aristotelian tradition), it is their pliable servant and the most receptive to the data and methods of its neighbors and rivals. Almost anything that is not politics can be made relevant to politics, and a political scientist is almost never heard to say modestly, “That is a nonpolitical question.”

Consequently, political science covers many different subjects, uses several diverse methods, and appeals to a variety of students. The department is divided into four subfields: Political Theory, American Politics, Comparative Government, and International Relations. These fields cover “area studies” of the former Soviet Union and China, political development, voting behavior in American elections, forms of regimes, urban politics, strategy, and the presidency, among many other subjects. The methods used are borrowed from history, sociology, philosophy, economics, and psychology—and then refashioned and put to work in a discipline that includes them all. Political scientists may ponder old philosophical texts or gather data from a current opinion survey. They may form inductive generalizations or construct formal deductive models. They may call themselves institutionalist, behavioralist, or anti-, proto-, or postbehavioralist, or by some other name, or by none.

Students come to political science because they are interested in politics: some of them with an eye to a political career, some with a scholarly intent, and many wishing to know more about this central, inescapable human concern. The Government Department aims to make all students aware and critical of their first opinions (since human beings are at their most opinionated in politics), to open up the possibilities of politics, to reveal permanent political problems, to impart a discipline, and to supply a guide for choice. Some people think that political science comes out of the daily newspaper. But they are wrong. Since most citizens have their judgments influenced by others, one should say rather that political science goes into the newspaper; and it is the virtue of political scientists, not their defect, that they do not see differently from citizens, but farther and maybe sooner.

To acquaint students with the different topics, issues, and approaches in the study of government, the department requires each concentrator to take a course in each of the four subfields. In addition, to provide a foundation for thinking, reading, writing, and talking about questions of politics, each concentrator is required to take Government 97, the sophomore tutorial.

Although the department does not require a concentrator to declare any particular subfield as an area of specialization, students often focus on a specific field in their course selection guided by their individual intellectual bent and curiosity. For honors candidates this informal specialization may help to bring a focus to the senior thesis project. Because political science cannot be ordered in a system of prerequisites from easy courses to difficult ones, the appropriate choice of courses is a challenge. Students must take care to choose with a pattern of exploration and development in mind and to avoid scattering their interests. For advice on course selection, students should contact the Director of Undergraduate Studies, the Concentration Adviser, and government tutors in the houses. They should also be sure to consult the department website (www.gov.harvard.edu).

There are many ways to bring a sense of summation to the undergraduate experience and the program in Government. For some, the senior year is a time to explore new possibilities by enrolling in a graduate seminar, working with a professor on a directed reading, pursuing an independent study, or seeking a transition to life beyond college by joining a political, community, or business project. For others, who have an intense interest in a particular question of politics, the senior thesis may be the best capstone of their Government program. Many thesis writers regard the thesis as one of the high points of their undergraduate education. Writing a thesis is an endeavor that calls for planning, research, sustained thought and writing, and clarity and polish well beyond any previous experience in undergraduate work. For each concentrator the decision to write a thesis is an individual and personal one, governed almost entirely by the presence or absence of a desire to pursue a particular topic in depth over many months of concentrated effort. In past years, about half of the seniors in Government have written senior theses and become honors candidates.