S1L3 - Les précurseurs de la science politique

In this lesson, we are going to learn about the pioneers of political science.

Asking questions such as “How should society be organized?”, “What holds together a community of human beings?” or “What makes it progress?” is not something new. For millennias, thinkers have been trying to understand how human communities gained social order and how to comprehend the order’s various aspects and impacts. Without going further back in time,

already in the 4th century BC, Aristotle had produced his classification of existing forms of government. Aristotle’s classification relies on two criteria: the number of people in power and who benefits from the use of power. On the one hand, power can be held by one person, a few people, a lot of people, or even by everyone.

On the other hand, power can be used in everyone's interest (meaning public interest), in the interest of a few rulers (or only one) or even in the interest of just a part of the population. This leads Aristotle to make a distinction between “pure” power (used for public interest) and “deviant” power used in favour of particular interests.

He therefore distinguishes six different forms of government: Monarchy, tyranny, aristocracy, oligarchy, politeia (what we would currently call democracy), and democracy (which refers to the modern-day term: demagogy). Prior to Aristotle, Plato had developed a theory of the institutions and requirements for a “good” polity. He wrote about it in his two famous publications entitled "Republic" and "Protogoras".

If we skip forward a few centuries, the author that often comes to mind because of his work on politics is Nicolo Machiavelli. He published "The Prince" in 1532 (although it was written in 1513), just a year after his other milestone book on politics: "Discourses on Livy". From "The Prince" many remember the famous quote "the end justifies the means"