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This introductory textbook provides the ideal basis for students coming to Politics for the first time. The book opens with thequestion 'What is Politics?' and then explores the four major 'elements' : Comparative Institutions, Political Ideologies, Public Administration and International Relations. The book has been divided into five easy-to-use sections, each with a guide to literature for further study. Each chapter ends with two essay questions, making this an ideal teaching and revision tool.Key FeaturesCovers the core elements of a Political Science undergraduate degreeIdeal for revision of the subject: includes 50 essay questionsOffers helpful guides to the literature in each areaWritten by a distinguished team of authors with many years of teaching experience

Research Highlights and Abstract The study of gender, sexuality—and, in particular, queer theory—is central to the social sciences and humanities. Our analysis of citation practices shows that queer theorist Judith Butler is one of the most cited social theorists of all time. Yet political science remains distinctly untroubled by queer theory, and gender and sexuality are frequently treated as marginal (not central) concerns. We argue that queer theory has much to offer political science, not only by highlighting the importance of sexuality and the body but also in analysing 'power' and in politicising 'the political' itself. We suggest that the 'queering' of political science is long overdue, not least through politicising processes of knowledge-production in the discipline. There is something queer (by which we mean strange) going on in the scholarly practice of political science. Why are political science scholars continuing to disregard issues of gender and sexuality—and in particular queer theory—in their lecture theatres, seminar rooms, textbooks, and journal articles? Such everyday issues around common human experience are considered by other social scientists to be central to the practice and theory of social relations. In this article we discuss how these commonplace issues are being written out of (or, more accurately, have never been written in to) contemporary political science. First, we present and discuss our findings on citation practice in order to evidence the queerness of what does and does not get cited in political science scholarship. We then go on to critique this practice before suggesting a broader agenda for the analysis of the political based on a queer theoretical approach.

For some time, the growing stature of political science as an independent social science has been a notable feature in American universities. Yet, up to the present time, the categories of this new field of scientific endeavor have not found their way into the indexing departments of libraries, nor have they been recognized by indexers of other collections. Even the editors of encyclopedias, people of great learning and ability, have omitted some of the most significant topics of political science, because of the lack of any accepted index indicating the range of the field and focusing attention upon its primary categories. The American Political Science Review itself is confronted with the problem of a suitable subject-index. The growing complexity of all kinds of materials bearing upon the work of political scientists, and more particularly the increasing mass of public documents, has become more and more baffling. Even the skillful indexers of the Congressional Record, for example, seem unaware of the major topics of interest for political science, and thus no sign-posts of the usual kind have been made available to workers in our field.

This text demonstrates that there is a politics model that unifies the discipline and structures its relationship to the other social sciences. It shows how this model underlies important works of applied research in all the main political science subfields.