Reduced to its simplest terms, political science is a systematic study of the state and government. The word "political" is derived from the Greek "polis," meaning a city, or what today would be the equivalent of sovereign state; the "science" comes from the Latin "scire," "to know".
1. The science of politics, therefore, has, as its formal object, a basic knowledge and understanding of the state and of the principles and ideas which underlie its organization and activities.
2. It is primarily concerned with the association of human beings into a "body politic," or a political community (one organized under government and law).
3. As such, it deals with those relations among men and groups which are subject to control by the state, with the relations of men and groups to the state itself, and with the relations of state to other states.