Introduction
Politics is the art and rough-and-tumble of diverse persons attempting to live together in civil society. In a world characterized by uncertainty, scarcity, conflict, and power relationships, politics enables us to make collective choices by debate and negotiation rather than brute force. Aristotle wrote that politics aims at the highest human good, the best of ends, and that the study of politics constitutes the most comprehensive and ennobling of disciplines. The contestable nature of politics is both challenging and provocative.
As one of the ancient disciplines, politics is about how people grapple with fundamental questions of freedom, order, and equality, about the nature of justice, and about legitimacy, community, individualism. Politics asks such questions as: How are we to act as citizens? How do our public institutions, and those in other countries, function? What is the nature and practice of citizenship? What values inform, or should inform, public policies? How does political change occur? Since the study of politics is characterized by disciplinary fragmentation, political scientists employ a variety of perspectives and methods in their work. Much of this disciplinary variety is available at Pomona College, where politics may be addressed through the study of values, institutions, processes, or behavior, and where literary and historical methods coexist with quantitative approaches.