Almost 17 percent of all jobs in the United States are federal, state, or local government positions. Positions vary widely from city council representatives, communications directors, staffers to elected representatives, city planners, state or federal agency employees environmental protection, education, etc.
Most government jobs have decent pay and excellent benefits health care, retirement plans, etc. Many Political Science graduates work in political fields outside the government. Some examples would include working for groups advocating for immigrant rights, stronger environmental protections, or greater individual liberties.
There are millions of community and political advocacy groups across the United States. Each year some Political Science students also strike out on their own and establish new political organizations. Social media and new technological developments provide especially fertile grounds for political entrepreneurs. Political Science provides excellent preparation for work in the U. State Department, Foreign Service, and other agencies oriented toward foreign affairs. It is also prepares students for employment with the millions of NGOs non-governmental organizations that work around the world on issues in areas such as public health, economic development, political development, and security.
Policy analysts propose new public policies, regulations, and laws and assess the impact of existing ones. They may work in government agencies or for non-government organizations. Some businesses also employ policy analysts to study how regulations affect them and to propose changes to existing legislation. Lobbyists are individuals who work on behalf of businesses and other organizations ranging from oil companies to environmental groups, the Chamber of Commerce to labor organizations, and even churches and charities to persuade legislators to pass laws that would benefit their group.
Lobbyists often function simply to alert law-makers to the ways in which some law or regulation might negatively affect some of their constituents. Many lobbyists begin work as staffers for elected officials and then move into private careers. Government liaison specialists work for companies to manage relations with governmental agencies and ensure compliance with government regulations.
Many Political Science students go on to law school and enter into legal careers. Some go to work for the government as district attorneys, judges, or military lawyers or in government agencies such as the FBI or IRS. Many go into private practice. Some work for large corporate firms or for NGOs. Not everyone who wants to go into business needs a business degree. In fact, there are many advantages for those who want to work in business to studying Political Science.
Political Science equips students with an understanding of the political institutions and laws that govern all businesses function.
A degree in Political Science can lead to a career in banking, advertising, human relations, multinational corporations, international trading companies, and private contractors with links to government, among other business fields. Because most Political Scientists are interested in people and in many cases want to improve society, many tend to gravitate toward teaching.
We're giving people the inaccurate impression, that there's this huge debate when in fact there's this growing consensus, and we've just hung the readers out to dry. And we've done that, in part because we're covering this like politics, right?
You start to see science writers just write about climate change as if it's a fact. And that, to me, represents a profound shift. If we're good as journalists, we try to cover reality, and we owe our readers or listeners or viewers, we owe them reality, right? We owe them an accurate reflection of what's going on. Not that science gets everything right, every step of the way. And so you have to acknowledge that too. But the consensus is squarely that this is real.
And we try to reflect accurately where the weight of the evidence is. To Deborah, communicating not just the facts but also the certainty — the level of consensus — that is vital if you want to about science objectively and accurately. Smart journalists do their homework, they figure out where the weight of the evidence is.
And they report from that position of scientific strength, and that is actually contrary to what any Republican would tell you in the United States of America. That's actually apolitical reporting. But in a world where science is intertwined with politics, where everybody has an agenda and where values frame every story — even attempts to be apolitical can be interpreted as something quite different.
It's muddied by the swirls of politics that you know continually spiral through society. And so it interferes, I think, quite often politics interferes far too often with people's ability to actually see the reality. It seems that at every stage, the authority of science, evidence and expertise is only one step away from being tarnished — being used and abused to push agendas. And any attempt to solve this by crudely separate science and politics — well that is not much more helpful than it is realistic.
So what do we do? Can there be such a thing as an evidence-based society? So it's through more democratization and greater openness that we're going to have more accountability for decision making. This is Beth Simone Noveck, a researcher who focuses on how to tackle societal problems, who has advised government herself.
Politicians should of course make political decisions, but they should be upfront about what their basing this on. It's perfectly fine to say I am making this decision based on values. But we need transparency and how we do that we need to actually have institutions that are set up in a way that allow us to tap into an evidence base, and then to have transparency in how the decision is made, whether it's with regard to or by ignoring the evidence base, that should be clear and accessible to people.
Why would politicians show what their basing their decisions on if it could be used against them? But in fact, in many places this is happening. And they have made now over two dozen pieces of national legislation with engagement of hundreds of thousands of citizens through a transparent process that works online. That term expertise often gets very distorted to mean a specific kind of credentialed knowhow of people with certain kinds of degrees, when expertise is really something that we have to understand very broadly, to include people's experience, to include experiential wisdom to include their situational awareness, we've typically thought about expertise and therefore about the role of science in political decision making much too narrowly, and conflated that with the with a set of professions or a set of professional degrees.
At a certain point, you just have to realize that science is part of the mix. It's not this magic thing. In governing, we're seeing lots of examples of when governments are doing it right, opening up how they work, listening and working with people who have expertise, not in the credential sense, but in the sense of lived experience.
So you take the federal government, which back in , started in the United States started a platform called challenge. And you've had over 1, of these prized-backed challenges that have been run in the United States. In these complex situations, scientists are often asked to do a political job.
And so the thing we need to do is be clear about that. And to recognise that, that actually good politics is more important than good science.
So there's an irony here that I think needs to be kind of unraveled. And that unraveling is going to require more humility around what science can and can't do in the political realm, and more, putting politicians feet to the fire. So they actually have to say what it is that they're after, rather than saying, well, I'll just bring in my expert to say why my side is right.
If you had to chose one place in which Nature has a clear political position - it is that we believe policy is stronger when it is supported by evidence. But if we care about achieving that goal, the evidence suggests that we have to think holistically.
To look beyond just the pure output of research. We have to look at how research is funded, who is carrying it out, the values they hold, the systems they operate within, the balance of the evidence, and prevalence of power.
To put it bluntly — the politics. I think the world would be a better place if more people had access to the kind of reliable knowledge that science produces. In order for that to happen, people have to have a much better understanding of what science is. And I do not mean a specific content of science, I do not mean an idealised hypothetico-deductive method of science.
I mean, the complex social reality of how science has produced. The fact that politics is deeply ingrained in how science gets funded. The fact that competition between research groups, is not particularly different than competition between football clubs.
That human emotion drives many scientists, that scientists choose problems based on particular concerns. If you talk to cancer researchers find out how many of them got into the field because someone in their family had cancer. They didn't choose this at random. They chose it because this is a field that matters to them. Science, society and politics — they are inseparable. Now this could be a good or it could be a bad thing — but either way it is a true thing — and it is something which has real consequences.
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Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily. Advanced search. Skip to main content Thank you for visiting nature. You have full access to this article via your institution. Download PDF. Episode 1: A brief history of politics and science We look back at the history of the knotty relationship between science, politics and power, and ask how Nature fits in.
Transcript - Episode 1: A brief history of politics and science Social media quote Your devisive political ponderings are irrelevant. Stick to the science. Quotes Science and politics benefit from the perception that science is objective and separate. Saying that the two spheres should be separate I think misses the point. Interviewee: Magdalena Skipper Nature as a whole has an important role to play in that interface. After-all, science and politics are not exactly easy bed-fellows.
Interviewee: Anna Jay So a lot of the responses that we see take place on social media and social media is its own special kind of ecosystem, where you get all kinds of people saying all kinds of things. Social media quote Stay out of politics, Trump Social media quote Keep opinions out of a science page. This page should be about studies with empirical data!
Interviewee: Anna Jay One of the things I think is particularly important, is being able to have empathy for your readers. Host: Nick Howe In this episode I am going to focus in on one of these assertions. Social media quotes Stick with your nature thing, politics not your forte. That moment, when Academia and scientific publishers become political.
Politics should not feature in Nature 's aims and scope. Interviewee: Melinda Baldwin The Second World War, interestingly, has a pretty unexpected impact on the way that Nature talks about politics Host: Nick Howe This is Melinda Baldwin, a historian of scientific publications, who very literally wrote the book on Nature.
Interviewee: Melinda Baldwin They start supporting an editorial regime that tends not to take political stances.
Interviewee: Magdalena Skipper When science is threatened by politics we will stand up for science and scientists. Interviewee: Magdalena Skipper Nature is a journal of science of research, first and foremost. Voice of Nature : Jen Musgreave First, to serve scientists through prompt publication of significant advances in any branch of science, and to provide a forum for the reporting and discussion of news and issues concerning science.
Interviewee: Magdalena Skipper There's a bit in the mission statement where it speaks to us offering a forum for a discussion of issues that are pertaining to science. Why Nature needs to cover politics now more than ever. Science and politics are inseparable — and Nature will be publishing more politics news, comment and primary research in the coming weeks and months… Host: Nick Howe With a few exceptions, Nature has always been involved in the political debate and has reported on politics.
So was there a connection between science and politics? There was an intimate connection. Interviewee: Steven Shapin I think the ideal in terms of deep historical past probably comes from the idea of religious separation from the world as a way of producing authentic and valuable knowledge. Host: Nick Howe This separation ideal comes up a lot when Nature covers politics. Social media quotes My bad, I was always under the impression science was about the discovery of truth.
Host: Nick Howe But according to Steven, the idea that science and politics were separate throughout history is murky at best — for him — even the concept of what a government or a state is, is inseparable from science. Interviewee: Steven Shapin You think of things like maps, think of things like statistics, how many people, what kinds of people, what diseases and they suffer from?
Host: Nick Howe And Steven is not alone in his position. Interviewee: David Edgerton The assumption that they are separate is not I think a helpful one. Interviewee: Steven Shapin You know the expression that scientists are on tap, but not one top?
Host: Nick Howe This continues across the world right up to the twentieth-century. Interviewee: Steven Shapin So the Manhattan Project, which is probably the greatest technoscientific project of the twentieth-century, happens within government. Host: Nick Howe And yet, despite centuries of documented intimacy between science and state, the ideal of clean separation persists.
And across the board, well you get answers like this: Quotes Well.. I ermm.. So answering the question of what is science is particularly challenging. Interviewee: Chiara Ambrosio So I do pose this question at the beginning of my courses to my first year students, and of course, they all have a very clear cut opinionated view of what is science.
Interviewee: Chiara Ambrosio They are absolutely crucial they are, I would never dare to deny that. Host: Nick Howe The problem is that both objectivity and empiricism become somewhat unobtainable when we consider humans are performing science. Interviewee: Chiara Ambrosio So then you need to go one step down, and you need to think about why is it that scientists are actually investing so much in objectivity, and I think it's more about a matter of accountability.
And I think that's where negotiating what is the best way to decide which values we pursue as a scientific community becomes very, very important Host: Nick Howe In science there is a process that aspires to objectivity and empiricism — often referred as the scientific method. The process though, is inseparable from the institutions and people who are a part of it.
Interviewee: Chiara Ambrosio Even just how even just the architecture of a building somehow affects the kind of science that is carried out in that building. Interviewee: Chiara Ambrosio Scientists are not just these neutral characters that kind of levitate like ghosts in the corridor of scientific institutions, they're actually like human beings with their own political convictions with their own political ideas.
Interviewee: Shobita Parthasarathy So politics, generally speaking, is really about power. Interviewee: Shobita Parthasarathy Science and politics benefit from the perception that science is objective, and separate.
Host: Nick Howe And in recent history the value of this perception has been demonstrated by the way scientists wanted state funding to work. Interviewee: Bruce Lewenstein So coming out of World War II scientists were making a rhetorical argument that science should be independent of politics. Interviewee: Bruce Lewenstein Science would like to be independent. Transcript - Episode 2: Politics of the life scientific Interviewee: Mayana Zatz The funding for research is going down every year.
Host: Nick Howe And what do you think will be the effects if this bill did pass? Interviewee: Mayana Zatz Certainly, it won't have any approval of new projects during probably the next two more years. After all, scientists are human. Interviewee: Shobita Parthasarathy They're equally part of society and politics. Interviewee: Shobita Parthasarathy Politics shapes science in a whole bunch of ways, right?
Host: Nick Howe To put it bluntly, money makes things messy. Interviewee: Mayana Zatz If we don't have the money, we have to restrict our questions. Interviewee: Peg AtKisson Every federal agency in the United States were created by political entities, because these are taxpayer dollars that go into funding this research at that level.
Interviewee: Susannah Gal And people were very upset, because they couldn't see the value of the science that was given — why would you want to put shrimp on a treadmill? Interviewee: Peg AtKisson I will ask people to shift language in the abstract so that they do not become targets later or so that the program officers don't have to ask them later. Host: Nick Howe Scientists and funders have been playing this game for a long time, and to some extent it makes sense.
They decided that they would shut the science down. Interviewee: Allen Rostron And the amendment said that the money that was allocated to the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control, it said that they can't use that money to advocate for gun control. Interviewee: Allen Rostron You could interpret that narrowly as meaning you can't fund research to write articles that are basically political propaganda or political advocacy.
Interviewee: Mark Rosenberg This was a shot across the bow. Interviewee: Mark Rosenberg They also took away all the money that we were using to do the gun violence prevention research. Interviewee: Mark Rosenberg It was a very direct threat, because they said, if you do gun violence prevention research, whether you do it at the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, or whether you give grants to academic researchers to do it, we can make your life miserable.
Interviewee: Allen Rostron You know, you're somebody who works for the CDC or the NIH, and you're in charge of allocating this money, you might err on the side of caution of not wanting to get in trouble with really powerful forces, like people in Congress, or interest groups like the NRA, you don't want to offend them, and then have there be a backlash.
Host: Nick Howe This uneasy standoff continued until when several horrific shooting incidents compelled Congress to finally clarify the Dickey Amendment. Host: Nick Howe Power and politics permeate the professional life of a scientist. Interviewee: Alice Bell Scientists like to construct an identity of themselves, which I think is often very positive, and helps them do scientific work as standing outside of what they might dub a political realm. Host: Nick Howe The ways in which political issues in society are translated into science has become a really hot button topic, especially in recent years.
Interviewee: Shobita Parthasarathy Why is it that we tend to answer questions, for example, using genetics and molecular biology techniques, for example? Host: Nick Howe The direction of research is influenced by powerful people, but not all people have access to power. Host: Nick Howe Inequity like this is born out all over science. Interviewee: Shobita Parthasarathy And if we can think about that more carefully, and also, as scientists be a little bit more reflective about it, then we can actually start to think about the systems that shape this kind of these kinds of decisions, and then do a better job, I think, of actually addressing the things that most of us do want to address these kinds of biases and structural inequalities.
Actually, good politics is more important than good science. Host: Nick Howe Science journalists act as one of the most direct links between researchers and the rest of society. Interviewee: Deborah Blum So I don't believe that science exists in a vacuum, separate from the rest of humanity or human endeavours, which include political issues, right, or politics and I don't think that's ever been true.
Interviewee: Bruce Lewenstein So part of that part of the reason for arguing that science and politics are distinct is so that you can define things you don't like as being politics, and define things that you do like as science. Host: Nick Howe The tricky thing is that sometimes when a line is blurry, there is no hard and fast rule to point to. Interviewee: Deborah Blum It's always situational ethics, right? Host: Nick Howe And that can confuse matters.
Interviewee: Bruce Lewenstein When people like what they're seeing, then they support it, and when they don't like what they're seeing, they don't support it, if it conflicts with other values, then science is only one set of values. Host: Nick Howe Value systems are not constant. Interviewee: Bruce Lewenstein And so when something like climate change, which means that in order to control it, there is going to have to be more government control and more limitations on what you can do in business or with your land, or something like that people say you're attacking my independence.
Host: Nick Howe And, herein lies a danger. Host: Nick Howe Deliberately distorting scientific evidence to support an agenda — politicisation at its worst by those nasty politicians.
Interviewee: Dan Sarewitz We sometimes take political issues that are about values and make them seem as if they're issues of facts and who is asserting facts most correctly. Interviewee: Hannah Schmid-Petri Trump and his supporters are Corona deniers, and are especially against masks, for example, or other preventive measures. Interviewee: Hannah Schmid-Petri And he regularly attacked science and scientific advisors who try to convince him of the necessity and importance of preventive measures.
Interviewee: Deborah Blum At that time, science journalism really followed what I think of is, you know, it was the political model of reporting, right? Host: Nick Howe And it got to the point where Deborah realised that the whole industry of scientific journalism was making a mistake. Interviewee: Deborah Blum At some point, we started having discussion in the National Association of Science Writers, and I was president of that group, right in the early aughts of the 21st century.
Host: Nick Howe Something had to change — and it did, dramatically. Interviewee: Deborah Blum You start to see science writers just write about climate change as if it's a fact.
Interviewee: Deborah Blum If we're good as journalists, we try to cover reality, and we owe our readers or listeners or viewers, we owe them reality, right? Host: Nick Howe To Deborah, communicating not just the facts but also the certainty — the level of consensus — that is vital if you want to about science objectively and accurately.
Interviewee: Deborah Blum Smart journalists do their homework, they figure out where the weight of the evidence is. Host: Nick Howe But in a world where science is intertwined with politics, where everybody has an agenda and where values frame every story — even attempts to be apolitical can be interpreted as something quite different.
Interviewee: Deborah Blum It's muddied by the swirls of politics that you know continually spiral through society. Host: Nick Howe It seems that at every stage, the authority of science, evidence and expertise is only one step away from being tarnished — being used and abused to push agendas.
Host: Nick Howe This is Beth Simone Noveck, a researcher who focuses on how to tackle societal problems, who has advised government herself. Host: Nick Howe But to achieve this, there needs to a shift in how we define expertise. Interviewee: Beth Simone Noveck That term expertise often gets very distorted to mean a specific kind of credentialed knowhow of people with certain kinds of degrees, when expertise is really something that we have to understand very broadly, to include people's experience, to include experiential wisdom to include their situational awareness, we've typically thought about expertise and therefore about the role of science in political decision making much too narrowly, and conflated that with the with a set of professions or a set of professional degrees.
Host: Nick Howe To put it bluntly — science — its not all about you. Here is Dan Sarewitz again. Interviewee: Dan Sarewitz At a certain point, you just have to realize that science is part of the mix. Host: Nick Howe Opening up political decision making to more kinds of expertise can have a surprising impact. As the world has become more interdependent, scholars have become more aware of the importance of international economic activity.
As a result, scholars are analyzing world trade, communications, development, foreign investment, and international finance. How states make foreign policy decisions is another important area of study. National security policy, nuclear deterrence, arms control and defense spending decisions are typical examples of foreign policy decisions. This is the foundation for a wide variety of offerings at the and levels, such as American foreign policy, global environmental politics, international political economy, and international conflict.
Students of American government and politics seek an understanding of politics as practiced in the United States. In addition to courses on the American presidency, the U. Congress, and the courts, the department offers specialized courses on such topics as the political role of mass media, the politics of race and ethnicity, constitutional law, policy formation, state politics, and American political thought.
Some of the broad questions that concern students in this field are: How and why did American political institutions, ideas, and practices develop as they have? How does one go about evaluating them? Are American political institutions, ideas and practices unique, or are they similar to other societies? How might American politics be improved? To acquire first-hand experience with the American political system, students are encouraged to participate in academic internships in Washington D.
The subfield of political methodology is concerned with the philosophical bases of political science, social science, empirical research design and analysis, and practical field research experience. Courses in the political methodology field cover philosophical issues regarding the possibility of a science of politics, the similarities and differences between political science and other social sciences, alternative modes of explanation, and the truth of knowledge claims.
They also examine the formulation of experimental and non-experimental research designs for making causal inferences about political processes and behavior and explore the. Students are also provided an opportunity to conduct individual and group research projects through seminars.
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