Political Science is the study of justice and authority, peace and conflict, public policies and elections, government and law, democracy and autocracy, freedom and oppression. More than any other social science, Political Science pursues a wide variety of approaches in explaining how and why political events and institutions come about as they do, and in evaluating ways in which polities, policies, and leaders are good and bad, laudable and criticizable. Some of these approaches are like those found in Sociology (survey research), or in Anthropology (ethnography), or in economics (cost-benefit analysis), or in the interpretive branches of history, philosophy, and literary criticism. The variety of complementary approaches housed within the same department is the great strength of Political Science as an undergraduate major or minor.
A minor in political science consists of six courses distributed across at least two fields. At least two of the courses must be at the 300 level. At least three of the courses must be taken from the Bryn Mawr Department of Political Science course offerings.
Fields are not fixed in advance, but are set by consultation between the student and the faculty adviser. The most common fields have been comparative politics, international politics, American politics, and political philosophy, but fields have also been established in women and politics, political development, East Asian studies, ethics, legal studies, environmental studies, and political psychology, among others.
All Haverford Political Science courses will count toward the Bryn Mawr minor, the same is generally true for courses at Swarthmore and the University of Pennsylvania. Everyone minoring in Political Science at Bryn Mawr must take at least three courses in Political Science at Bryn Mawr.