Some say Plato founded political science. Hit Republic among other things describef an ideal polis but his reasoning was largely speculative and his ideal system ended up looking a bit like modern fascism or communism Plato student Aristotle on the other hand was the first empirical political scientist and sent out his students to gather data from the dozens of Greek city-states With these data he constructed hit greak work Politics Both Plato and Aristotel saw Athens in decline they attempted to understand why and to suggest how it could be avoided They thus began a tradition that is stll at the heart of political science a search for the sources of the good stable political system Aristotle was not shy about identifying what worked best as in this passage from Politics