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I think it's about the same as axiology and ethics. Axiology can definitely be attributed to philosophy, but I doubt about ethics.Philosophy is a conversation about extreme definitions. Where the scientist is interested in the effective cause of a phenomenon, the philosopher asks the question – “what is the cause?” Thus, political philosophy, imho, is a discussion about what a polis is, what are its essential-distinctive features, and then abstracting to the state (Plato), values, etc. Political science, like ethics, is probably a normative and applied thing.
We'll have to first understand the terms. We often call” political philosophers ” idiots and geniuses, each of whom invents his own General Theory of Everything, because he believes that nothing can be proved in philosophy anyway. However, it is no coincidence that the synonym for “political philosophy “is” political theory ” – a branch of philosophical thought that addresses fundamental issues of human co-existence. This means that political philosophy is a field with strict principles of theory building, techniques for obtaining new knowledge, rules of research and reasoning.
At the same time, the word “political science” is used mainly in Russia, and it often refers to political strategists, publicists, or simply “informed people” who have “insiders” from the corridors of power – in short, people who have nothing to do with scientific knowledge. In the main languages of the world, the phrase “political science” is much more often used – it refers to a discipline with its own methods of obtaining and verifying objective knowledge.
There are several major differences between political science and political philosophy. First, political science is built primarily as a “non-evaluative” science that dispassionately tells about things as they are. The key task of political philosophy, on the contrary, is to develop normative value judgments, to talk about what is desirable and what is dangerous, that is, to answer the question “how should it be?”. Of course, to do this, it is necessary to understand how things are objectively, but political theory is not limited to this, its responsibility is higher.
Second, despite its supposed neutrality, political science is actually built on the ideal of modern liberal democracy. She understands the inner workings of liberal regimes best, and it is with them that she usually compares all other forms of political organization. However, liberal democracy has significant drawbacks – today it is clear that it leads to an increase in social and economic stratification around the world, and it has historically tended to limit and minimize popular rule itself. At the same time, no matter how much we value its merits, we must admit that today it is going through difficult times. That is why political science is unable to predict and explain the key phenomena of our time – social explosions, political and economic crises, the growth of populism, and so on.
Political philosophy is more than two thousand years older, so it provides a historical perspective. For her, modern regimes are not a dogma; she knows how they came into being and understands how they can disappear. This gives her a wider view and a better view of trends.
Third, political science is much more like positive science – it actively develops mathematical tools, calculates correlations and draws conclusions based on them. At the same time, for example, few people will question the key indexes that political theorists use, such as the civil liberties and political rights index, which Freedom House considers, or the democracy index. from The Economist – it is generally accepted that these are more or less objective tools. For political philosophy, such ratings themselves raise questions and are the subject of research. After all, the more often they are used, the more we believe that they reflect the concepts of democracy and freedom, although these concepts themselves are by no means unambiguous, and there are many opposing views on what democratic government is and what kind of person should be considered free.
At the same time, political science gives a good idea of how stable liberal regimes function, how political and electoral technologies work in them, and what the distribution of power looks like. Therefore, for a political philosopher, familiarity with modern political science is essential.
Political philosophy is basically an interpretation of texts and an attempt to put them in a contemporary context. What does Tocqueville tell us about modern democracy? What does Plato tell us about feminism? As a rule, researchers in the field of political philosophy specialize in a single author or period. Someone is a “specialist in the classics” (meaning the Greeks and Romans), someone is a ” specialist in the Renaissance “(in the sense of texts by Thomas More, Erasmus and others).
Political science (political science) is the study of processes related to power in one way or another. It answers questions about why, say, civil wars and wars between countries occur, or how different political regimes behave in times of economic crises. In other words, research questions are not related to texts, but to real events. Therefore, political scientists specialize either in specific issues – “wars”, “institutions”, ” politics in autocracies “or in specific regions of the world – “The Middle East”,” Africa”, and so on. In addition, mathematical modeling and statistical data analysis are much more widespread in political science.