Anyone attending a political science conference these days is likely to be overwhelmed by the extreme heterogeneity of viewpoints and approaches, a heterogeneity sometimes resembling a hopeless Babel of tongues. For decades there had been talk of paradigm changes and of the erosion of “mainstream” assumptions in the discipline; more recently, this ferment has been heightened by the influx of novel perspectives whose vocabulary and intellectual style bear a distinctly continental cast. Professional reaction to these perspectives has been varied: greeted by some as instant remedies they are bemoaned by others as alien intruders threatening an already fragile consensus. I perceive them as idioms in an ongoing conversation whose lines of argument are not merely whimsical and deserve the attention of political science teachers.
Sixth european social science conference Amsterdam, The Netherlands, March 22–25, 2006