Government and Politics

Course summary

Few subjects are more central to your everyday life than ‘government and politics’. Politics dominates domestic and foreign news. Political decisions determine how you are educated, housed, cared for in hospital, kept secure from crime and, regardless of your hopes and aspirations for the future, it will shape the society you inherit as adults. In short Politics is arguably THE definitive study of the human condition; self-interested, but social creatures, we seek security and order through complex systems of governance and government. Politics is the study of the state, government and nation. It deals extensively with the practice and theory of political systems and political behaviour. Academically codified in the 19th Century, the study of politics originated 2,500 years ago with Plato and Aristotle, thus making Politics one of the oldest subjects ever studied.