Political science

Political science, study of government and political institutions and processes. It was initiated by Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Politics, and well-known political theories have included those of Niccolò Machiavelli, Jean Bodin, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Montesquieu, Jeremy Bentham, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Karl Marx.

Traditionally, the study was primarily concerned with the nature of the state, sovereignty, and government. Today greater emphasis is placed on the human associations, the behavior of interest groups, and the decision-making processes. Past theories cannot provide for the complexity of modern society; a standard view today regards society as a set of interacting interdependent systems.