ABSTRACT
Politics is a (if not the) quintessential human activity – the “master science” of the sphere within which all other human activities must take place. Its goal is to domesticate the inevitable conflicts that arise from our need to live together in communities under conditions of scarcity. This requires coordination, which, in turn, necessarily involves the controlled exercise of power. Politics involves the development of mutually agreed upon rules, norms, institutions and/or reliably applied practices that permit conflicts to be resolved pacifically to preclude the resort to violence. Yet, it also produces constant contestation, which makes politics inherently dynamic and always unbalanced. It also involves units that are not equivalent, and that are conscious and themselves transformed as they interact. They do so through highly imperfect processes of communication. Politics is also inherently historical, since humans are always affected by their experiences and institutions. For all these reasons, politics is a very different kind of realm from the natural world, with its predictable regularities and objective processes. So is the “science” that studies it. Thus, it would be appropriate to give the study of politics its own name that captures its uniqueness as a science: politology.
