The study of political relations between and within countries, political science covers topics as diverse as congressional committees in America, the development of cultural and political identities in Zambia and the arms race between Pakistan and India. In the American academy the discipline is usually divided into four sub-disciplines: American politics, which covers such topics as the study of American political institutions, the political actions of the American public and the study of policy formation within the US; comparative politics, involving the study of the internal politics of other nations with the goal of understanding how political institutions develop or operate in different settings; international relations, the study of the relations between countries, may focus on international institutions like the United Nations, or on the study of less formal networks of communication; and political theory which encompasses the study of more broadly theoretical approaches to politics and, in developing concepts for interpreting leadership and democracy, often has a more normative orientation than the work of the discipline as a whole.

American political science began to emerge as an academic discipline in the late nineteenth century. The creation of the discipline was tied in with the Progressive movement, a movement determined to end the practices of corrupt party politics and party machines, especially in cities. The discipline’s orientation towards reform lasted until the 1940s, when an increasing drive towards professionalization and establishment of political science as a “science” led to a decreased concern with political reform and greater attempts to consider politics in an objective, and hence uninvolved, manner.

Political scientists of the day considered questions of democratic legitimacy answered; interest groups insured that citizens’ wishes would be heard. The political upheavals of the 1960s brought on a re-evaluation of this neutrality within the discipline; however, many of should be removed from politics. Political science these scholars still accepted that political science remains a discipline that is generally not reformoriented.

Recently there has been some concern over whether the discipline has become too fragmented. As training has become increasingly focused on achieving mastery of one or maybe two subfields, and language becomes more specialized, it has become less likely that scholars will even be aware of work done outside their subfield. The use of sophisticated mathematical models excludes from dialogue those without advanced mathematical training. While this lack of communication between scholars from different subfields is of increasing concern, it is unclear whether anything can or will be done.