ABSTRACT
Before we begin this overview of political science in the United States, it would be helpful to have some idea of what this discipline covers. How are we to describe its subject matter?
Political science has been defined in many ways-as the study of power, the study of the monopoly of the legitimate use of force, the study of the good life, of the state, and so on. If there is one thing that distinguishes Western political science, it is that it has not yet arrived at a consensus on how to describe its subject matter at the most inclusive level. For reasons that are elaborated at length elsewhere (see Easton 1981a), I have chosen to characterize political science as the study of the way in which decisions for a society are made and considered binding most of the time by most of the people. That is to say, to seek to understand political life is to address oneself to the study of the authoritative allocation of values (valued things) for a society.
