scholarly journals Methodology and political science: the discipline needs three fundamentally different methodological traditions

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Johann Lauer
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Practical Knowledge ◽  
The Third ◽  
Political Reality ◽  
Catching Up ◽  
Political Events ◽  
Practical Politics ◽  
Descriptive Knowledge

AbstractScience is driven by methodology. In this article, I will show that political science, like all other social sciences, can draw on three fundamentally different methodological traditions. The first is a descriptive tradition to generate descriptive knowledge to describe political phenomena and interpret political symbols (text, image, audio and video). The second is an explanatory-prognostic tradition to generate explanatory and prognostic knowledge to explain and predict political events. The third is a genuine practical (not applied!) tradition to generate and scientifically legitimate practical knowledge for political standardization and regulation. Furthermore, I will show that political science would greatly increase its relevance to practical politics and to society if all methodological traditions within the discipline were used complementarily and applied in their updated forms. The descriptive tradition makes it possible to describe political reality as well as sociologists, for example, do. The explanatory-prognostic tradition is necessary to be heard alongside the economic sciences. The practical tradition allows catching up with jurisprudence.

scholarly journals Ideology and Truth

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 7-39
Author(s):  
Krešimir Petković
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Political Science ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
The Public ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
The Third ◽  
Western Philosophical Tradition ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Public Sphere

The author argues that any discourse analysis, as well as other approaches in social sciences and humanities, cannot ultimately avoid the truth and ideology distinction. The first part of the article provides several glimpses at the Western philosophical tradition that preserves the value of truth. In the second part, an idea for political science, grounded in such a history of ideas, is sketched. After a brief discussion of what is ideology as opposed to truth, the author proposes a thesis about ideology, identity and power, and several heuristic ideas how to develop it. In the third part, he briefly provides examples from political and policy analysis that correspond to such a project. In the final part, he explains the importance of preserving the distinction between ideology and truth in the discursively postulated “post-truth” era. This combination of epistemology, science, analysis and teleology is reflected together in one political area of utmost importance for political science operating in the public sphere: the politics of naming.

Clouds, Clocks, and the study of Politics

1977 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 489-522 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriel A. Almond ◽  
Stephen J. Genco
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
Human Subject ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
Hard Science ◽  
Political Events ◽  
The Social ◽  
Psychology And Economics

In its eagerness to become scientific, political science has in recent decades tended to lose contact with its ontological base. It has tended to treat political events and phenomena as natural events lending themselves to the same explanatory logic as is found in physics and the other hard sciences. This tendency may be understood in part as a phase in the scientific revolution, as a diffusion, in two steps, of ontological and methodological assumptions from the strikingly successful hard sciences: first to psychology and economics, and then from these bellwether human sciences to sociology, anthropology, political science, and even history. In adopting the agenda of hard science, the social sciences, and political science in particular, were encouraged by the neopositivist school of the philosophy of science which legitimated this assumption of ontological and meta-methodological homogeneity. More recently, some philosophers of science and some psychologists and economists have had second thoughts about the applicability to human subject matters of strategy used in hard science.

scholarly journals Konflikt polityczny: interdyscyplinarny i wielopłaszczyznowy przedmiot badań

2017 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
pp. 7-20
Author(s):  
Leszek Sobkowiak
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
Psychological Processes ◽  
Political Reality ◽  
Conflict Situations ◽  
Material Goods ◽  
Unequal Access ◽  
Different Levels

Political conflict: interdisciplinary and multi-faceted subject matterCategories and theories that describe and explain conflicts and their properties, which derive from soci­ology, psychology and political science, use different levels of social-political reality: from meta-theories for example functional and coercive to theories concerning psychological processes. The aim of social sciences is to study political conflict in the following perspectives: social systems featured by unequal access to valued symbolic and material goods; cognitive, emotional and motivational processes of people partici­pating in conflicts; patterns and actual behaviors in conflict situations; mechanisms of conflict dynamics — cause-and-effect relationships that determine phases of conflict development; functions of conflicts, their creative and destructive effects on individuals, groups, societies and global society; integrative methods of conflict-solving as an element of positive sum game strategy; and at last, shaping the institutions of social systems capable of „civilizing” conflicts through limitation of their destructive sources, methods and effects.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Lewens
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Potential Functions ◽  
Human Psychology ◽  
Human Culture ◽  
The Third ◽  
Current State ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
The Social ◽  
Compare And Contrast

Many evolutionary theorists have enthusiastically embraced human nature, but large numbers of evolutionists have also rejected it. It is also important to recognize the nuanced views on human nature that come from the side of the social sciences. This introduction provides an overview of the current state of the human nature debate, from the anti-essentialist consensus to the possibility of a Gray’s Anatomy of human psychology. Three potential functions for the notion of species nature are identified. The first is diagnostic, assigning an organism to the correct species. The second is species-comparative, allowing us to compare and contrast different species. The third function is contrastive, establishing human nature as a foil for human culture. The Introduction concludes with a brief synopsis of each chapter.

A Note on “Public Policy”

1973 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 661-664 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Vaison
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Public Administration ◽  
Government Policy ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Studies ◽  
Policy Analysts ◽  
Government Body

Normally in political studies the term public policy is construed to encompass the societally binding directives issued by a society's legitimate government. We usually consider government, and only government, as being able to “authoritatively allocate values.” This common conception pervades the literature on government policy-making, so much so that it is hardly questioned by students and practitioners of political science. As this note attempts to demonstrate, some re-thinking seems to be in order. For purposes of analysis in the social sciences, this conceptualization of public policy tends to obscure important realities of modern corporate society and to restrict unnecessarily the study of policy-making. Public policy is held to be public simply and solely because it originates from a duly legitimated government, which in turn is held to have the authority (within specified limits) of formulating and implementing such policy. Public policy is public then, our usual thinking goes, because it is made by a body defined somewhat arbitrarily as “public”: a government or some branch of government. All other policy-making is seen as private; it is not public (and hence to lie essentially beyond the scope of the disciplines of poliitcal science and public administration) because it is duly arrived at by non-governmental bodies. Thus policy analysts lead us to believe that public policy is made only when a government body acts to consider some subject of concern, and that other organizations are not relevant to the study of public policy.

Political Science and Public Administration: A Note on the State of the Union

1952 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 660-676 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roscoe C. Martin
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Public Administration ◽  
Russell Sage Foundation ◽  
Special Study ◽  
Woodrow Wilson ◽  
State Of The Union ◽  
The Social ◽  
Original Essay ◽  
The Subject

By tradition public administration is regarded as a division of political science. Woodrow Wilson set the stage for this concept in his original essay identifying public administration as a subject worthy of special study, and spokesmen for both political science and public administration have accepted it since. Thus Leonard White, in his 1930 article on the subject in the Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, recognizes public administration as “a branch of the field of political science.” Luther Gulick follows suit, observing in 1937 that “Public administration is thus a division of political science ….” So generally has this word got around that it has come to the notice of the sociologists, as is indicated in a 1950 report of the Russell Sage Foundation which refers to “political science, including public administration….” “Pure” political scientists and political scientists with a public administration slant therefore are not alone in accepting this doctrine, which obviously enjoys a wide and authoritative currency.But if public administration is reckoned generally to be a child of political science, it is in some respects a strange and unnatural child; for there is a feeling among political scientists, substantial still if mayhap not so widespread as formerly, that academicians who profess public administration spend their time fooling with trifles. It was a sad day when the first professor of political science learned what a manhole cover is! On their part, those who work in public administration are likely to find themselves vaguely resentful of the lack of cordiality in the house of their youth.

Max Weber as an Economist: Revisiting Max Weber’s Legacy 100 Years after His Passing

2020 ◽  
Vol 140 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-222
Author(s):  
Marek Louzek
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Max Weber ◽  
Social Scientist ◽  
Ideal Type ◽  
Methodological Individualism ◽  
The Third ◽  
Value Neutrality ◽  
The Ideal

This article presents Max Weber as an economist and as a social scientist. Weber’s relations to economics, philosophy and sociology are discussed. Max Weber has more in common with economists than it might seem at first sight. His principle of value neutrality has become the foundation of the methodology of social sciences, including economics. The second point shared by Max Weber with standard economics is methodological individualism. The third point which a modern economist can learn from Max Weber is the concept of the ideal type.

Agency, Structure and Causality in Political Science: A Comment on Sibeon

Politics ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul A. Lewis
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Critical Realism ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Recent Contribution ◽  
Ontological Commitments ◽  
Political Analysis ◽  
The Social ◽  
Ontological Turn

Researchers in political science are devoting increasing attention to the ontological commitments of their theories – that is, to what those theories presuppose about the nature of the political world. This article focuses on a recent contribution to this ‘ontological turn’ in political science ( Sibeon, 1999 ). Tensions are identified in Sibeon's account of the causal interplay between agency and social structure. It is argued that these tensions can be resolved by reflecting explicitly on ontological issues, in particular the causal efficacy of social structure, using a particular approach to the philosophy of the social sciences known as critical realism. The value of such reflection for the explanatory power of political analysis is highlighted.

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