The New Revolution in Political Science

1969 ◽  
Vol 63 (4) ◽  
pp. 1051-1061 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Easton
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Political Crises ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
American Political Science ◽  
Initial Impulse

A new revolution is under way in American political science. The last revolution—behavioralism—has scarcely been completed before it has been overtaken by the increasing social and political crises of our time. The weight of these crises is being felt within our discipline in the form of a new conflict in the throes of which we now find ourselves. This new and latest challenge is directed against a developing behavioral orthodoxy. This challenge I shall call the post-behavioral revolution.The initial impulse of this revolution is just being felt. Its battle cries are relevance and action. Its objects of criticism are the disciplines, the professions, and the universities. It is still too young to be described definitively. Yet we cannot treat it as a passing phenomenon, as a kind of accident of history that will somehow fade away and leave us very much as we were before. Rather it appears to be a specific and important episode in the history of our discipline, if not in all of the social sciences. It behooves us to examine this revolution closely for its possible place in the continuing evolution of political science. Does it represent a threat to the discipline, one that will divert us from our long history in the search for reliable understanding of politics? Or is it just one more change that will enhance our capacity to find such knowledge?

Political Science as a Discipline: A Statement by the Committee on Standards of Instruction of the American Political Science Association

1962 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 417-421 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriel A. Almond ◽  
Eric C. Bellquist ◽  
Joseph M. Ray ◽  
John P. Roche ◽  
Irvin Stewart ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Psychology ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
American Political Science Association ◽  
Conceptual Schemes ◽  
The Social ◽  
American Political Science ◽  
Factual Data ◽  
Science Association

Political science is a basic discipline in the social sciences. Although it must necessarily maintain close scholarly association with the disciplines of history, economics, sociology, anthropology, geography, and social psychology, political science cannot be considered a part of any of these other social sciences. Political science has its own area of human experience to analyze, its own body of descriptive and factual data to gather, its own conceptual schemes to formulate and test for truth.

Area Studies and the Disciplines: A Rejoinder

1997 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-31
Author(s):  
John W. Harbeson
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
American Political Science Association ◽  
Important Work ◽  
Area Studies ◽  
The Social ◽  
American Political Science ◽  
Science Association

Robert Bates’ letter entitled “Area Studies and the Discipline” (American Political Science Association, Comparative Politics 1, Winter 1996, pp. 1-2) uses the occasion of the SSRC’s abolishing of area committees to announce that “within the academy, the consensus has formed that area studies has failed to generate scientific knowledge.” As someone who has done some of his most important work on African development issues, Bates deplores declining investment in area studies as a “loss to the social sciences, as well as to the academy,” at an inopportune moment, “just when our [political science] discipline is becoming equipped to handle area knowledge in a rigorous fashion.”

Are Two (or Three or Four … or Nine) Heads Better than One? Collaboration, Multidisciplinarity, and Publishability

2009 ◽  
Vol 42 (03) ◽  
pp. 507-512 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lee Sigelman
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Collaborative Research ◽  
American Political Science Review ◽  
Science Review ◽  
The Social ◽  
Per Se ◽  
American Political Science ◽  
Better Than

ABSTRACTAlthough collaborative research has become much more common in the social sciences, including political science, little is known about the consequences of collaboration. This article uses papers submitted to theAmerican Political Science Reviewto assess whether the widely acknowledged benefits of collaboration produced papers that were more likely to be accepted for publication. The results indicate that collaboration per se made little or no difference, but that the disciplinary configuration of the authors did result in differences in the success of these submissions.

The Threat of Genes: A Comment on Evan Charney's “Genes and Ideologies”

2008 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 329-335 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca J. Hannagan ◽  
Peter K. Hatemi
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Biological Sciences ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Political Behavior ◽  
American Political Science Review ◽  
Theoretical Models ◽  
Science Review ◽  
The Social ◽  
American Political Science

In his essay, “Genes and Ideologies,” Evan Charney wrangles with the question of the role of genes in the formation of political attitudes via a critique of Alford, Funk, and Hibbing's 2005 American Political Science Review article. Although critical evaluations are necessary, his essay falls short of what is required of a scientific critique on both empirical and theoretical grounds. We offer a comment on his essay and further contend that it is naïve to proceed on the assumption that a barrier exists between the biological and social sciences, such that the biological sciences have nothing to offer the social sciences. If we look beyond our discipline's current theoretical models we may find a more thorough, and not just competing, explanation of political behavior.

A View from Europe

2005 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Talcott Parsons ◽  
History Of Sociology ◽  
Habsburg Empire ◽  
Classical Economics ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Divided Subject ◽  
Good Research

The history of sociology can be likened to the history of the Habsburg Empire, which claimed to have legitimate sovereignty over the whole of Europe but eventually became a discontented jumble of margins. In the same way, Talcott Parsons tried to claim that sociology was the empress of the social sciences; economics, political science, and the others being allocated their places within its realm. But sociology could not match the tougher, tighter theoretical structures of political science, economics, psychology, and even possibly anthropology. It became an internally divided subject, cultivating the margins. There is a field called neo-institutionalism in which an increasing amount of good research is being done and which is challenging some of the orthodoxies of the neo-classical economics and neo-liberal political science which have come to dominate the intellectual world since the decline of Keynesianism in the 1970s.

Sociology, political science and anthropology: institutionalization, professionalization and internationalization in Argentina

2005 ◽  
Vol 44 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 227-282 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miguel Murmis
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Labor Market ◽  
Political Science ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
National Level ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Military Interventions ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of

Full institutionalization of sociology, anthropology and political science occurred in Argentina in the late 1950s. While sociology started out as an established field having radically broken with the past of the discipline, both anthropology and political science established linkages with traditional versions of their fields. Although there were differences between them, the three disciplines evolved through a process of frequent crises, resulting mostly from military interventions at the national level. Institutionalization brought with it an expansion of the labor market and the opportunities for obtaining research funds, thus generating growing professionalization. This expansion as well as the response of social scientists to repression in universities was strongly related to links with foreign foundations and international organizations. Until 1983, the dramatic history of the social sciences was marked by disappearances (desapariciones) and exile. In recent years the three disciplines have grown and diversified.

Reasons for Journal Rejection: An Analysis of 600 Manuscripts

1978 ◽  
Vol 11 (04) ◽  
pp. 480-483 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles M. Bonjean ◽  
Jan Hullum
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Political Science ◽  
American Political Science Review ◽  
Rejection Rate ◽  
American Economic Review ◽  
Southern Economic Journal ◽  
The Social ◽  
Economics Journals ◽  
Economic Journal ◽  
American Political Science

The rejection of manuscripts by journals is clearly the norm in the social sciences. For example, in 1976 about 700 manuscripts were submitted to theAmerican Economic Reviewand more than 500 were rejected; theAmerican Sociological Reviewrejected more than 500 of about 600 submitted; and of the 525 manuscripts reviewed by theAmerican Political Science Review, almost 500 were rejected. To be sure, these are the top journals in their disciplines; but other respectable journals display the same pattern for that year: theSouthern Economic Journalturned down well over 400 of the 500 manuscripts received; theSocial Science Quarterlyrejected about 425 of the almost 500 received; and theAmerican Journal of Political Sciencereceived about 320 and rejected 270. That a perusal of the editorial reports of other journals would yield comparable findings is documented by a survey of 72 economics journals which collectively reported a rejection rate of 77 percent.

American Political Science and Congressional Reform: The American Political Science Association’s Committee on Congress (1941-1945) and Study of Congress (1965-1973)

1981 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-120
Author(s):  
Donald R. Matthews
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Action Research ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Theoretical Knowledge ◽  
Congressional Reform ◽  
The Social ◽  
American Political Science

In recent years the social sciences have been asked to demonstrate that they are of some practical use. Knowledge for its own sake is a difficult policy to defend in a time of many crises, escalating costs, and shrinking resources for research. The result has been a tilt by the social sciences toward “relevance” and a growing emphasis on “applied” or “policy-oriented” or “action” research. Increasingly, the search for general, theoretical knowledge has become secondary to (or a fortuitous by-product of) more immediately “practical” endeavors.

Forty Years of Publishing in Quantitative Methodology

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael S. Lewis‐Beck
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Quantitative Methods ◽  
American Political Science Review ◽  
Political Scientist ◽  
Quantitative Methodology ◽  
Political Methodology ◽  
Political Analysis ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
American Political Science

This article describes the forty-year history of publications in quantitative political methodology. It also illustrates that the range and scope of outlets now available stands in dramatic contrast to what existed forty years ago. It begins with material in leading general journals, the American Political Science ReviewAPSR and the American Journal of Political Science (AJPS). From there, it traces the development of more specialized venues, such as Political Methodology (POM), Political Analysis (POA), the Political Methodologist (TPM), and the Sage Quantitative Analysis in the Social Sciencesseries (QASS). From the vantage point of today, the mid-2000s, a political scientist seeking to publish a paper in quantitative methods has at least five opportunities.

The Problem

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mats Alvesson ◽  
Yiannis Gabriel ◽  
Roland Paulsen
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Research Papers ◽  
Prestigious Journal ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Academic Researchers ◽  
History Of ◽  
Wide Gap

This chapter introduces ‘the problem’ of meaningless research in the social sciences. Over the past twenty years there has been an enormous growth in research publications, but never before in the history of humanity have so many social scientists written so much to so little effect. Academic research in the social sciences is often inward looking, addressed to small tribes of fellow researchers, and its purpose in what is increasingly a game is that of getting published in a prestigious journal. A wide gap has emerged between the esoteric concerns of social science researchers and the pressing issues facing today’s societies. The chapter critiques the inaccessibility of the language used by academic researchers, and the formulaic qualities of most research papers, fostered by the demands of the publishing game. It calls for a radical move from research for the sake of publishing to research that has something meaningful to say.

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