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The founder of the discipline of political science is the famous Greek philosopher Aristotle (see Figure 1-1). He referred to political science as a master science, because everything in life can be political in nature. Aristotle was the first political scientist to collect data and then base his research on it.

Aristotle and his teacher Plato were concerned with the decline of his home city-state Athens. He wanted to know what caused the decline of his beloved Athens and more important how to save Athens. So he sent his students to the other Greek city-states to gather data. He wanted to know why some city-states were doing well and why others weren’t. Based on the data his students collected, Aristotle wrote his famous book Politics. In it, he describes the various forms of governments and institutions his students discovered in the Greek city-states. Then he discusses his own preferences. Political science and normative theory (see Chapter 2) were born.

The term politics comes from the ancient Greek polis, which means city-state. The first person to use the term was Aristotle, who lived during the time of the Greek city-states dominating Greek politics. So politics for Aristotle referred to the interaction between the Greek city-states.

Source: Bridgeman Images

FIGURE 1-1: Greek philosopher Aristotle is credited with founding political science.

A city-state, or polis, was the dominant political structure of ancient Greece. Each city-state had an urban center, walls for protection, and controlled a piece of the surrounding countryside. There were over 1,000 city-states, and the largest ones were Athens, Sparta, Corinth, Thebes, Syracuse, and Rhodes. Each city-state ruled itself and had a different form of government. For example, Athens was a democracy while Sparta was ruled by two kings and a council of elders.