Introduction or the Subject Matter of Man in the Society

What is now called a civil society did not emerged in a day, before the emergence of the civil society, there was no civilization. More importantly, there was nothing like government. That is to say, no civil society, no government and no government, no civil society. Life in such society was highly individualistic. This implies every individual was a governor of his or herself. We can summarize four major conditions that characterised this ugly society:

1. No Government
2. No human interaction
3. No rules and regulations
4. No economic development.

Later, through human reasoning realized that individualistic existence in the society should change for better. This led to the emergence of government in the society.

A simple question that arises is “what is government?” In a simple definition, government can be regarded as a group of men and women that come together to rule the people under a legitimate constitution. Government therefore constitutes itself or herself as AUTHORITY.

In a country where we have authority or government, there are certain features or characteristics that can be identified;

1. Policy Formulation
2. Policy implementation
3. Policy evaluation
4. Existence of constitution, either written or unwritten.
5. The rule of law
6. Certain economic organization
7. Admission of such a government into various international organization.
8. Intergovernmental relations.
9. Capital formation
10. Peaceful coexistence.

Types of Government

Generally, or broadly divided, there are two major types of government namely:

• Democratic government
• Undemocratic government.

Having known the two types, the organs of Democratic government can be divided into three namely:

1. Legislature
2. Executive
3. Judiciary

The legislature is the organ that is responsible for the making of laws. For example, in Nigeria, we have the Senate and House of Representative.

Executive is to implement the laws made by the legislature.

The Judiciary is charged with the responsibility of interpreting the law. One important aspect of judiciary is what we refer to as “rule of law”. Rule of law is a notion of the supremacy of the law as administered by the court. The rule of law implies that laws are supreme over anybody. The rule of law has three basic principles:

1. Supremacy of the law
2. Equality before the law
3. Fundamental Human right.

Among the three principles of the rule of law, principle number 1 says

• No one is above the law
• No one can suffer if he does not offend. A person cannot be made to suffer any physical disablement unless tried by the competent court and according to the regular law of the land.

Finally, in studying political science as a discipline, one major question arises “is political science a science” or “what makes political science to be scientific.” The answer to this question is “yes” or “no” but emphasis should be placed on the “yes” answer, with the approach we are now using since after the end of the second world war.  We can categorically assert and proclaim that political science is a science. This bring us to the approaches to the study of political science. The two major approaches are:

1. Traditional approach
2. Behavioural approach

The traditional approach is the non- scientific approach used in the olden days before the beginning of the second world war.

The behavioural approach is the one that emerged after the end of the second world war. This approach makes political science a science.