Notes for Government and Politics Chapter 1 Politics: Setting the Stage

Chapter ONE
Politics: Setting the Stage
I. What do political scientists study?
Study politics and analyze it.
Ex. Measure just how much it actually costs a country to lose a war, devise a new system of voting in primaries that might have led to a different set of candidate for most presidential elections, study the spread of welfare reforms across the states, study why democracies almost never wage war on other democracies.
II. Politics: What is it?
Politics is the making of common decisions for a group of people through the exercise of power by some members of the group over other member…