Top Research Papers on Political Science

PROFESSOR LAZARSFELD ONCE REFERRED TO SOCIOLOGY AS BEING IN A sense a residuary legatee, the surviving part of a very general study, out of which specializations have successively been shaped. The same might be said of political science. In the West the first deliberate and reflective studies of political life were made in Greece at the end of the th century BC, and in the succeeding century. The histories of Herodotus and Thucydides, some of the pamphlets attributed to Xenophon, above all the normative and empirical studies of Plato and Aristotle were among the direct ancestors of contemporar...

The Human Polity: An Introduction to Political Science Kay Lawson San Francisco State University About 512 pages • cloth Instructor's Manual with Test Items Just published Recognizing the interdependence of nations, Lawson develops the idea that all people are part of a larger political whole — the human polity. Through the skillful use of examples and questions, the author presents the basic concepts of political science in a way that helps students understand the relevance of each concept to their own lives. Among the text's outstanding features: a broad comparative perspective, a straightfo...

Designed for political science students, this guide takes you through the Library’s resources to improve your research. Designed for political science students, this guide takes you through the Library’s resources to improve your research.

Throughout my life, politics and political science have been intertwined. I handed out leaflets for Adlai Stevenson at age 12, participated in protests at Oberlin and Berkeley, and, as I developed professional expertise, worked with national security agencies. Conflict has been a continuing interest, particularly whether situations are best analyzed as a security dilemma or aggression. In exploring this question, I was drawn into both political psychology and signaling, although the two are very different. I have continued to work on each and occasionally try to bring them together. My thinkin...

ReseñaTítulo: The Politics of Political Science: Re-Writing Latin American ExperiencesAutor: Paulo RaveccaAño de publicación: 2019Edición: PrimeraPáginas: 292ISBN: 978 0815363088Editorial: Routledge   La Política de la Ciencia Política de Paulo Ravecca ofrece un magnífico análisis sobre varios puntos fundamentales dentro de la institucionalización de la ciencia política y su epistemología. El libro de Ravecca es, en esencia, novedoso tanto en los temas que aborda como en su aproximación metodológica: un análisis comparado que triangula con investigación autoetnográfica, una forma poco conve...

p. 136). Basically this posed the question whether legislation which restricts political processes should not be subjected to more exacting scrutiny than other types of legislation. Mason goes on to note that those who emphasize the First Amendment freedoms are on more solid constitutional ground than those whose preference runs to property rights since the only constitutional safeguard to property is "due process of law" while the First Amendment sets forth the specific injunction that "Congress shall make no law . . . ." Chapter Nine, "State Power Today," in the Roettinger book cannot be too...

In this literature review, we aim to answer the question, is political science a science? through revisiting the work of Gabriel Almond and Stephen Genco, titled Clouds, clocks, and the study of politics (1977). We will show the paradigm shift in understanding the subject matter of social sciences in terms of epistemology, ontology, and methodology, from the positivist clock-like model to the plastic model of the post- behavioralist schools, relying on the three-stage metamorphosis of Popper’s metaphor of clouds and clocks. Then, we will show how our definition of science has transformed from ...

Students often tell me that they feel disconnected from politics and that they do not participate in politics because their voices do not matter. At the beginning of my introductory course this year, I provided a classroom space for students to address these concerns. Students anonymously filled out an online survey and their responses appeared behind me on an overhead screen. One of the questions I asked in the survey was whether they have faith in American democracy. As the responses populated the screen, it was clear that they were strikingly similar: “I believe that American democracy is m...

The challenges of including factual information in public policy and political discussions are many. The difficulties of including scientific facts in these debates can often be frustrating for scientists, politicians and policymakers alike. At times it seems that discussions involve different languages or dialects such that it becomes a challenge to even understand one another’s position. Oftentimes difference of opinion leads to laws and regulations that are tilted to the left or the right. The collaborative balancing to insure public and natural resource interests are protected ends up bein...

I am a lapsed political scientist. This is not a confession but a statement of fact. Not that I have been drummed out of the American Political Science Association (hereafter APSA or Association). Quite the contrary, like thousands of fellow lapsees, I am permitted to hold nominal membership in the Guild through the annual payment of dues. In defiance of the poly sci gospel that elections don't really count, I even have continued to discharge my electoral responsibilities for the selection of APSA officers and Council.

Plenty of political science textbooks have formed the game pattern each other.The main topics can be generalized into 12 schools.The formed game pattern reflects the breadth and complexity of the political science contents,and also shows that the academic field and political themes emphasize only on political power and management,but neglect political rights.To enhance the scientific level of political science,it must be guided by scientific theory,applied science research methods,construct a scientific system of game theory.Game theory in political science focus on political rights and politi...

This edition of the Journal contains a series of articles that focus on firearm-related death and injury and it might be profitable to consider the interplay among science, politics, and policy within the American system of government.

There was a time in Africa when a very high premium was placed on the study of law and political science. Those African elites who had been to British universities, in so far as their education was related to politics, tended to emphasize law. This was partly a function of the local needs. As nationalism started to create an impact, often against unsympathetic colonial administrations, defence of nationalists demanded legal expertise.

Note: Each chapter ends with a Summary and Conclusion and Questions to Consider. I. The Work of Political Science in an Era of Globalization 1. Political Science in an Era of Globalization Political Science and the Human Polity The Subjects of Political Science The Work of Political Science II. Shaping Political Thought 2. Political Ideologies What Is an Ideology? Is an Ism Always an Ideology? Beyond Ideology 3. Politics and Culture The Political Culture of the Nation-State Culture Bases of Subnationalism Impact of Cultural Divisiveness on the Nation-state: Yugoslavia and Canada Explaining Com...

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Against the backdrop of Ferguson and the Black Lives Matter movement, we ask what the American politics subfield has to say about the political lives of communities subjugated by race and class. We argue that mainstream research in this subfield—framed by images of representative democracy and Marshallian citizenship—has provided a rich portrait of what such communities lack in political life. Indeed, by focusing so effectively on their political marginalization, political scientists have ironically made such communities marginal to the subfield's account of American democracy and citizenship....

The article shows the weakness of mainstream Polish political science. Its main weakness, according to the author, is omitting the industrial and corporate power conflict among the factors determining the contemporary politics. As a result, the relations between political science and political economy have become weak. Its place as a source of inspiration for political scientists has been taken by social philosophy. It seeks the various non-economic sources of politics. The postulated critical political science puts in the spotlight the main processes of the global capitalist economy located i...

Ecological politics is a kind of phenomenon of social politics, which takes place in industrialized countries and industrializing countries. Ecological political science is on the relationship of political system and ecological environment. Researching ecological politics, we should both stick to scientific line of technology and use correct research method.

Part 1: Society: Its Rules and Their Validity 1. Society and Types of Social Regulation 2. Moral Theory 3. Legal Theory 4. Rights Part 2: Social Principles and Their Implementation 5. Justice and Equality 6. Justice and the Distribution of Income 7. Property 8. Punishment 9. Freedom and Responsibility 10. Freedom as a Political Ideal Part 3: Principles of Association and the Democratic State 11. Individuals in Association 12. Sovereignty and the Moral Basis of State Supremacy 13. The State and Other Associations 14. The Grounds of Authority and Political Obligation 15. Democracy Appendix Inter...

Forty years ago, Isaiah Berlin published an essay in which he argued that political theory would never become a science because of the character of the questions with which it is concerned. Normative questions are among those “that remain obstinately philosophical.” And what is “characteristic of specifically philosophical questions is that they do not . . . satisfy conditions required by an independent science, the principal among which is that the path to their solution must be implicit in their very formulation.” According to Berlin, both formal and empirical sciences satisfy these conditio...

This article reports on the evaluation of political science research internships and considers their costs and benefits for a political science education. Students indicated high levels of appreciation of the inaugural Political Science Research Internship Unit at the University of Western Australia in terms of its contribution to their personal development and work experience. A substantial number of interns gained insights into the policy process through this form of experiential learning. Many came to appreciate the contingency and the normative dimensions of knowledge in the policy process...

Find information and resources for your assignments and research in the politics of the U.S. Resources in political science

Abstract Given that critical reflection on politics is a core mission of political science, we might expect the geographic expansion of the discipline to bring a wave of critical consciousness of public affairs across the world. A tension has emerged, though, between a political science that is global and one that is critical. Sources of that tension lie in a universalizing tendency within the discipline, which squeezes out local conversations, and in the standardization of academic criteria that encourages faculty to engage external, “global” discussions rather than local ones. Political scie...

This article employs an interpretive approach, and in the light of contributions to this symposium by Butler and McAllister, and McLean et al., holds that metrics of research ‘quality’ are socially constructed and hence are as ‘subjective’ as peer review. Thus it rejects the use of stand-alone metrics as an ‘objective’ basis to inform funding allocations. Rather, the optimum method of ‘quality’ assessment is a panel-based exercise with expert judgement informed by a range of discipline-sensitive metrics and peer review of publications. The article maintains that the politics of metrics of poli...

Political science is not what the political scientist does. While the political scientist brings to a subject many orientations that create scholarship, what makes such work political science is its being embedded in a framed set of relationships that define disciplinary practice. These relationships involve institutions and networks that I characterize as an enterprise community. This paper explores characteristics of this enterprise community of political science and shows how it integrates with intellectual and geographic communities in the discipline. These ideas are applied to an understa...

Useful resources for politics, political science, public policy, and international relations.

Cross-disciplinary and critical in its approach, The SAGE Handbook of Housing Studiesis an elucidating look at the key issues within the field. The Handbook covers the study of housing retrospectively, but also analyses the future directions of research and theory, demonstrating how it can contribute to wider debates in the social sciences. A comprehensive introductory chapter is followed by four parts offering complete coverage of the area: Markets examines the perception of housing markets, how they function in different contexts, and the importance of housing behaviour and neighbourhoods Ap...

The basic feature of political rationality is its interpretation of the theoretical system i.e.,the ideology in the sense of form;and in the sense of feature it is group rationality with class interest and country interest as its feature.The nature of political rationality is the dialectical unity of the value-rationality,the theoretical rationality,the metaphysical rationality,the practical rationality and the instrumental rationality. the value-rationality of the political rationality, the political science must judge the value-nature of political rationality which control man's political be...

Among political scientists, even among political theorists, there is a widespread conviction that political theory has entered upon a time of troubles. Few, however, regard it simply as a “dead dog,” and political theorists continue, as they should, to administer critical self-analysis, and to define and defend their methodological and philosophical positions. The basis for a unity of opposites is still a subject for dispute. This paper is offered, not as a solution, but as a statement of one conception of the role of political theory. A time-honored technique of dialectic is to seek well-reas...

The key issues, concepts and figures are covered, from the analysis of voting to decision-making; philosophical issues from anarchism through human rights to utopianism; and the biographies deal with major thinkers such as Hobbes and Marx.

Abstract. Political scientists are increasingly studying public policy in interdisciplinary environments where they are challenged by the political and normative agenda of other disciplines. Political science has unique perspectives to offer, including a stress on the political feasibility of policy in an environment of power differentials. Our contributions should be informed by the insights of cognitive psychology and we should focus on improving governance, in particular the competence and integrity of decision makers. The discipline's stress on legitimacy and acceptability provides a norma...

Over two decades ago, anthropologist Gayle Rubin began a now-classic article with a deceptively simple declaration: “The time has come to think about sex” (1984). Although Rubin was not the first thinker to place sex at the center of her work, her systematic sketch of Western sexual ideology made it possible to think about the political ramifications of sex in new and productive ways by disentangling the physical acts of sex from gender and sexuality (i.e., how we understand, interpret, and ascribe meaning to those acts). Among her many useful insights was the recognition that sex and sexualit...

Contemporary political science is specialized, deeply concerned with its methods, and politicized. It also remains peripheral to most public debates. But the relationships among these characteristics are ambiguous and each yields advantages as well as costs.

Real politics, as it has been carried out and is implemented in the world for centuries, contributed to the fact that people formed an ambivalent relationship to it. Many understood politics as the manipulation by passions of people in a given area; they comprehend it as a dirty business or business segment, in which honest people do not wish to participate. Appeared even sayings that politics is an area of life into which “Angels do not want to enter” or “where enter anyone but man”. It is needless to say, such an attitude of the people is their natural reaction to the practice of power relat...

The dominant belief among both teachers and graduate students of political science seems to be that political theory constitutes the heart of their subject; yet political theory is not, in practice, the core of political science teaching. Such is the schizoid condition of political science and political scientists that is revealed by the investigations of the Committee for the Advancement of Teaching of the American Political Science Association. The hypothesis advanced in this note presents a dual reason for the unfortunate situation: it is partly that political theorists have failed to keep ...

MAY I BEGIN by thanking you for the honor you have done me in electing me to the presidency of the Pacific Northwest Political Science Association. I am especially gratified because in truth this office constitutes the final achievement of my political ambitions and the culmination of my political career. Can it be that all political scientists are frustrated politicians at heart? Perhaps I have just been overstimulated by the presidential politicking that is under way this year. Yet with all our knowledge of politics, campaign strategy, and voting behavior, I must confess that I have no idea ...

There is now a considerable literature about Scottish politics, most of it concerned with nationalism and devolution, but some of it consisting of institutional and administrative studies. The purpose of this article is to review the main books and articles in the field and to assess their successes and failures in accurately portraying and predicting the recent course of Scottish politics. I shall first consider the theoretical approaches which have been used. I shall then give an account of the principal texts, which will be evaluated with particular attention paid to their explanatory and p...

Like Rachel, Jacob's beloved but still childless bride, who asked herself and the Lord each morning, “Am I?,” or “Can I?,” so presidents of this Association on these annual occasions intermittently ask, “Are we a science?,” or “Can we become one?” My predecessor, David Truman, raised this question last September applying some of the notions of Thomas Kuhn in his recent book on scientific revolutions. I shall be following in Truman's footsteps, repeating much that he said but viewing the development of the profession from a somewhat different perspective and intellectual history. My comments wi...

January 19, 1980 trial development. In spite of efforts to develop appropriate technologies in developing countries, the fact is that a major source of technology, capital and management for many poor countries will be the transnational corporations (TMCs). The ability to increase industrial production in many countries will depend' on how effectively they can negotiate with TNCs and pursue policies which will make them serve national goals. There are a number of important efforts under way to strengthen the capacity of developing countries to deal with TMCs. UNlDO is also actively engaged in...

Much of this essay falls within the realm of speculative thought. Since it is in the nature of speculation that one's words may appear immodest and his conclusions often eccentric, I shall state my arguments at the outset without pausing to elaborate them. The arguments themselves are quite simple. Each of them will reappear later on clothed, I hope, in more attractive dress. Two varieties of political thought contended for the allegiance of the American people at the founding of the new nation. The two seem irreconcilable in certain crucial respects. One was notable for its expression of frie...

ABSTRACT Through a critical analysis of some of the most popular theoretical approaches in mainstream political studies, the paper draws attention to the dichotomist interpretations of the political made by political scientists in the context of social movements, either celebrating their ‘truly’ political and radical nature, or deeming them conformist and post-political. It suggests that both discourses, but especially the insistent discourse of de-politicisation by political scientists must be viewed critically as it contributes to what might be called as ‘outsourcing’ the political merely to...

This essay offers some experience-based observations about electoral phenomena that academic political science misses because of a focus on conceptual and theoretical debates that often take pride of place over the empirical phenomena that gave rise to the ideas and concepts that we highly value. We suggest that academic political science is increasingly committed to models and methods that serve a theory or an idea more than they account for observable empirical regularities. Practitioner methods and innovations for persuading voters and winning elections under varying electoral conditions ar...

Looking back at 1989 and attempting to determine its place in the history of the country, it is impossible not to see that this was truly a year of profound changes. It is not easy to agree with such an assessment against the backdrop of a deteriorating situation in the economy and great social tension. These alarming phenomena conceal the positive, qualitative movement which has taken place in the political sphere. Nonetheless this movement is evident. And changes taking place within the political system are creating the necessary preconditions for successful resolution of the tasks of perest...

The past 50 years of research into political ideology has left scholars with a contested paradigm. One side, founded on the research of Philip Converse, argues that the mass public is distinctly nonideological in their thinking. The other side argues that ideological thinking is not, in fact, beyond the public and can be found in forms similar to that of political elites. The way forward for research in political ideology does not lie in rehashing this debate but in moving forward in two new areas of work. The first considers the role that values and principles play in determining the politica...

C. P. Snow, in his Rede Lecture on the scientific and literary worlds as separate cultures, lists four groups needed by a country if it is to “come out top” in the scientific revolution. First, as many top scientists as it can produce; second, a larger group trained for supporting research and high class design; third, educated supporting technicians; and “fourthly and last, politicians, administrators, an entire community, who know enough science to have a sense of what the scientists are talking about.” It seems increasingly clear that the growing army of “political” scientists—meaning natur...

The Netherlands is a small country of about 1 5 million people, located in northwestern Europe, almost directly surrounded by the three major countries of Western Europe, namely the Federal Republic of Germany, France and the United Kingdom, and for around 50% of its national income dependent on international trade (general data source: CBS, yearly). In economic terms it belongs to the rich countries of the world. Private consumption is, in world-perspective, at an extremely high level. Since 1950 the number of people has grown by almost 50%. As of 1982 there live 347 people per square kilomet...

IF ANY LANGUAGE should prove invulnerable to mythological infiltration it would seem to be that language which is direct, literal, and used more to do something than to mean something. Such language was called by J. L. Austin "performative" language, that is, language which performs an action rather than states anything, as does our more common "constative" utterances. An example of a performative is the "verdictive" judgment: "We the jury do hereby find the defendant guilty." Another would be the "exercitive" action: "I vote 'no!' " Still another might be the "commissive" uttterance: "I pledg...

I review the respective claims of Frost, Mayall and Rengger about the normative benefits of knowledge of tragedy and the potential of global civil society to transform the international system. I argue that Thucydides and Morgenthau were more optimistic about the ability of human beings to learn from art, history and experience. They believed – as do I – that tragedy is part and parcel of the human condition, and will always be with us for the reasons Frost so effectively summarizes. This does not preclude significant improvements in human rights and conflict management at the domestic and int...

TION. By Howard J. Wiarda. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001. Pp. 417. $35.00 cloth.) LATIN AMERICA AT THE END OF POLITICS. By Forrest D. Colburn. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002. Pp 152. $35.00 cloth, $14.95 paper.) THE INTERNATIONALIZATION OF PALACE WARS: LAWYERS, ECONOMISTS, AND THE CONTEST TO TRANSFORM LATIN AMERICAN STATES. By Yves Dezalay and Bryant G. Garth. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Pp. 352. $50.00 cloth, $20.00 paper.) CITIZEN VIEWS OF DEMOCRACY IN LATIN AMERICA. Edited by Roderic Ai Camp. (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001. Pp. 304...

The relationship between political science and the "real world" of public policy and politics has long been a complicated one. Current calls for more relevance in political science research echo back to the discipline's early days. This essay traces the intertwined history of practice and ivory tower, with specific attention to the rise of economics as a policy-engaged social science. A mini-case study of political scientists' involvement in contemporary health policymaking provides a concrete focus.