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Theories in political science
Political science is an integrative or transdisciplinary science. It borders on various other sciences and has numerous overlaps with them. These include the social sciences, economics, but also law and history. In addition to content-related fields such as foreign policy, social policy, internal and external security, and economic policy, as well as procedural topics such as legislative procedures and organisational considerations such as parliaments, authorities, and other state institutions, political science also addresses questions such as how a society should live together. This includes questions such as how independence from state institutions can be achieved, but also considerations of fair participation in the distribution of wealth and income in a society. These considerations also include theories about the design of participatory planned economy or the utopia of communism.
In addition, topics from other scientific disciplines are also applied in political science. When it comes to questions of fair distribution of wealth and income, one quickly finds oneself in the realm of economics. In environmental policy, for example, the concept of CO₂ certificates stems from economic analyses that have determined that CO₂ certificates are significantly superior in terms of efficiency and effectiveness to solutions involving CO₂ taxes, bans and penalties, or other methods of limiting carbon dioxide emissions.
Game theory, which is a branch of mathematics, is also considered in the field of political science. Game theory deals with the decisions made by actors in cooperative or uncooperative behaviour in conflict situations. For example, it addresses questions such as: Why was it possible to ban the use of CFCs in refrigeration units or as propellants in spray cans or foams, thereby reversing the formation of the ozone hole over Antarctica and later over the Arctic? Why is this not so easy to achieve with CO₂ emissions? Why do restrictions on fishing in the North Sea and Baltic Sea work to protect fish stocks, while deforestation of the rainforest can hardly be curbed?
Other theories that are considered are theories about war and peace. These deal with questions such as how wars come about in the first place, given that all those involved in war repeatedly lose so much. How can wars be prevented? What logic leads to repeated instances of genocide?
Further considerations focus primarily on historical developments. These concern the question of how civilisations came into being in the first place and why some peoples underwent enormous technological development and became rich, while others developed only slightly and remained poor. These questions naturally also include the question of why individual nations formed huge empires, which then usually fell apart again. In contrast, however, numerous peoples and cultures have also disappeared.
Of course, it is not possible to answer all these questions empirically. In most cases, only a theoretical consideration is possible, together with an analysis of whether the cause-and-effect relationships from the respective theories can be found in reality through frequent, chronologically plausible sequences of events seen as causes and subsequent events seen as effects.
