Political science often uses the findings of other social sciences, but one feature distinguishes it from the others - its focus on power: A gets B to do what A wants.
Our second founding father (after Aristotle) is the Renaissance Florentine philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527), who emphasized the role of power in Politics. You can take all the factors and approaches mentioned previously, but if you are not using them to study power-which is a very broad subject-you are probably not doing political science.
Some people dislike the concept of political power. It smacks of coercion, of inequality, and occasionally of brutality. Some speakers denounce "power politics," suggesting governance without power, a happy band of brothers and sisters regulating themselves through love sharing. Communities formed on such a basis do not last, or if they do last it is only by transforming themselves into conventional structures of leaders and followers, buttressed by obedience patterns that look suspiciously like power. Political power seems to be built into the human condition. But why do some people hold political power over others? There is no definitive explanation of political power. Biological, psychological, cultural, rational, and irrational explanations have been put forward.