Political Science

Political science is the social-scientific discipline that analyses the state, government, sovereignty, political institutions, processes, and the distribution and exercise of power. Its intellectual lineage runs from Aristotle—who in the Politics (4th century BCE) called it the "master science" and classified constitutions into monarchy, aristocracy and polity with their perversions—through the social-contract theorists Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan, 1651), John Locke (Two Treatises of Government, 1690) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (The Social Contract, 1762). The traditional definition by R.G. Gettell described it as the study of the state "as it was, as it is and as it ought to be," while Harold Lasswell reframed the modern behavioural focus as the study of "who gets what, when, how." The American Political Science Association (founded 1903) institutionalised the discipline, and David Easton's systems theory (1953), with its model of inputs, outputs and feedback, marked the shift from legalistic to empirical analysis.

The discipline is conventionally divided into several sub-fields: political theory (normative ideas of justice, liberty, equality, rights), comparative politics (cross-national study of institutions and regimes), international relations (the anatomy of the inter-state system, balance of power, diplomacy, war and peace), public administration (the machinery of governance and bureaucracy), and public policy. Methodologically it has passed through the behavioural revolution of the 1950s–60s—emphasising quantification, value-neutrality and verifiable hypotheses—and the post-behavioural reaction led by Easton in his 1969 APSA address, which insisted that relevance and action must accompany rigour. It draws on allied concepts such as legitimacy (Max Weber's three types of authority—traditional, charismatic and legal-rational), constitutionalism, federalism, separation of powers, rule of law, and the typologies of democracy and authoritarianism.

Concrete applications anchor abstract theory: the framing of constitutions (the Constitution of Pakistan, 1973; the Constitution of India, 1950), the design of electoral systems (first-past-the-post versus proportional representation), and the operation of international institutions such as the United Nations (1945) and its Charter. In the Pakistani context, political science illuminates the parliamentary federal structure, the role of the bicameral Majlis-e-Shoora, the 18th Amendment (2010) devolving powers to provinces, and recurring debates over civil–military relations. As of 2026 the discipline increasingly engages with digital governance, populism, identity politics and the erosion of liberal-democratic norms worldwide.

For the CSS examination, political science is central to Pakistan Affairs and is also an optional subject in its own right, while its concepts underpin Current Affairs and International Relations. Candidates should master the contractarian thinkers, Aristotle's classification, definitions of the state and its four elements (population, territory, government, sovereignty), and the distinction between de jure and de facto sovereignty. Typical question angles ask candidates to compare traditional and modern definitions of the discipline, evaluate the behavioural revolution, or apply theories of the state and federalism to Pakistan's constitutional evolution. Precision in attributing ideas to named theorists and dated works distinguishes high-scoring answers.