Simulation in Teaching Comparative Politics: Playing French Games

1970 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 462-470
Author(s):  
Stephen Clarkson
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Science Curriculum ◽  
Learning Experience ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Systems

Many practitioners of political science are currently questioning the bona fides of comparative politics as a valid academic subdiscipline in their trade. At the same time, in trying to perform comparative politics in the classroom over a period of five years, I have found the standard, multi-country comparative politics course to be increasingly unsatisfactory as a component of the political science curriculum. Many factors combine to make it extremely difficult to generate an adequate university learning experience from this kind of course:1. Superficial learning is inherent in multicountry comparative courses. Because of the pressure to deal with at least three political systems within the confines of a single course, relatively little time is devoted to each country. Moreover the bibliographical material varies wildly from country to country in its quantity, quality, methodology, and content. It can only be a rare instructor who is really competent, let alone expert, in the politics of all the fields he is expected to treat in his course.

The centrality of politeia for Aristotle’s Politics: Aristotle’s continuing significance for social and political science

2014 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 139-159 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clifford Angell Bates
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Global Concern ◽  
Political Communities ◽  
Regime Analysis

Political theorists today are addressing issues of global concern confronting state systems and in so doing are often forced to confront the concept of Homo sapiens as a ‘political animal’. Thus theorists considering Aristotle’s Politics attempt to transcend his polis-centric focus and make the case that Aristotle offers ways to address these global concerns by focusing on Empire. This article, contra Dietz et al., argues that Aristotle’s political science is first and foremost a science of politeia and that this approach to the operation and working of political systems is far superior to recent attempts at regime analysis in comparative politics. Thus Aristotle’s mode of examining political systems offers much fruit for those interested in approaching political phenomena with precision and depth as diverse manifestations of the political communities formed by the species Aristotle called the ‘political animal’. From this perspective, focusing on the politeia constituting each political community permits an analysis of contemporary transformations of political life without distorting what is being analyzed.

The Political Science Curriculum in War-Time: Report of the Committee of the American Political Science Association on War-Time Changes in the Political Science Curriculum

1942 ◽  
Vol 36 (6) ◽  
pp. 1142-1146 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ethan P. Allen ◽  
Rodney L. Mott ◽  
Kenneth O. Warner ◽  
Francis O. Wilcox ◽  
E. M. Kirkpatrick
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Science Curriculum ◽  
Educational Leaders ◽  
American Political Science Association ◽  
The Political ◽  
The People ◽  
The Common ◽  
Time Changes ◽  
American Political Science ◽  
Science Association

In these days of war, with democracy facing the greatest challenge in its history, it would be a sad mistake for anyone to assume an attitude of smug complacency. Such would be disastrous if not literally treasonable. Educators, therefore, along with labor and industry, business and agriculture, need to re-examine and revaluate their contribution to the common welfare of the community. Engaged in a war that threatens the very existence of freedom of thought, scholarship, and teaching, educational leaders have an obligation to see that the best possible use is made of one of democracy's outstanding institutions—a free educational system. If the democratic nations fail to train men in good moral and intellectual habits, fail to produce men of keen insight and critical judgment, fail to give us free minds that can join in our struggle toward a better life for all the people of the world, they will have failed in one of their most important obligations to the human race, no matter how the struggle upon the field of battle may end.

Toward a More Integrated Political Science Curriculum

1947 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 314-320 ◽  
Author(s):  
Landon G. Rockwell
Keyword(s):  
General Education ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Core Curriculum ◽  
Science Curriculum ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The Political ◽  
Arts Curriculum ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Field Of Inquiry

Recent concern with the liberal arts curriculum as evinced by the report of the Harvard committee on General Education in a Free Society, Colgate's adoption of a core curriculum, and a thorough reëxamination of their entire educational program by scores of other institutions sharpens the recurrent problem of attempting better integration within the constituent parts of the curriculum. Whenever political scientists, talking shop, lapse into general principles, there is inevitable discussion concerning the nature and focus of political science itself. Much hard thinking has been done on the subject. There is, however, as in every profession where individual specialties are earnestly pursued, a tendency toward intellectual myopia, a tendency to miss, by default rather than consciously, a synoptic view of the subject. This has resulted in a lack of integration, of comprehensive design, of sense of balanced purpose, in many political science curricula.The miscellany of unrelated, overlapping courses which one sometimes encounters in college or university catalogues, to say nothing of the neglect of important aspects of government, indicates that the political science curriculum has received inadequate analysis. Political scientists who teach are educators as well, and thereby have a dual professional responsibility to present their field of inquiry as an integrated, comprehensive whole, elucidated by specific course offerings. Only thus can political science realize its richest contribution to liberal education as well as to an understanding of the political process within and beyond academic halls.

scholarly journals Integrating Gender into the Political Science Core Curriculum

2012 ◽  
Vol 45 (02) ◽  
pp. 238-243 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erin C. Cassese ◽  
Angela L. Bos ◽  
Lauren E. Duncan
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Core Curriculum ◽  
Science Curriculum ◽  
Undergraduate Curriculum ◽  
Gender Mainstreaming ◽  
The Political ◽  
Pedagogical Practice ◽  
New Research ◽  
Science Major ◽  
The Impact

The New Research on Gender in Political Psychology Conference brought together new and experienced teachers with interests in gender politics. The conference session “Teaching Gender throughout the Curriculum” generated a great deal of discussion concerning the pedagogical practice of gender mainstreaming. Gender mainstreaming—the integration of gendered content into courses required for a major—was recognized as one of 11 recommendations for reforming the undergraduate political science curriculum in the 1991 APSA report “Liberal Learning an The Political Science Major: A Report to the Profession” (popularly referred to as the Wahlke Report). Little information is available on the prevalence of gender courses in the undergraduate curriculum, but the data that does exist suggest such courses are uncommon (Brandes et al. 2001). We found virtually no data on the practice of gender mainstreaming in political science and little data in the way of assessing the impact of gendered content when students are exposed to it. This absence of data suggests gender mainstreaming has not emerged as a serious priority for curricular reform.

Nationalism in Ukraine: Towards a New Framework

Politics ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 77-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Taras Kuzio
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
The Political ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
Area Studies ◽  
Comparative Framework ◽  
Political Spectrum ◽  
The Right ◽  
Civic Nationalism ◽  
New Framework

Nationalism is the most abused term in contemporary Ukrainian studies. The majority of scholars have failed to place its use within either a theoretical or comparative framework due to the dominance of area studies and the Russo-centricity of Sovietology and post-Sovietology. Instead of defining it within political science parameters, ‘nationalism’ has been used in a subjective and negative manner by equating it solely in an ethno-cultural sense with Ukrainophones. As a result, scholars tend to place Ukrainophones on the right of the political spectrum. This article argues that this is fundamentally at odds with theory and comparative politics on two counts. First, ‘nationalism’ is a thin ideology and can function through all manner of ideologies ranging from communism to fascism. Second, all liberal democracies are composed of ethno-cultural and civic features and are therefore permeated by state (civic) nationalism. The article proposes an alternative three-fold framework for understanding ‘nationalism’ in Ukraine.

Comment: African Arts and Political Science

1962 ◽  
Vol 5 (02) ◽  
pp. 27-29
Author(s):  
James S. Coleman
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Cultural Values ◽  
Social Stratification ◽  
Holistic Approach ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Political Factors ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Stratification System ◽  
The Impact

The study of Africa has helped to further several healthy trends in the development of the discipline of political science. Confrontation with the rich variety of structural forms and modes of human expression of contemporary Africa has compelled the political analyst to look beyond the narrow “political” realm and conventional “political” structures for a more complete understanding and explanation of political phenomena. This African impact upon the discipline has come at a most propitious time—a time of intensive self-criticism from which at least three new emphases in research are beginning to emerge. One is the holistic approach reflected in efforts to classify and to compare political systems as wholes. A second approach, obviously related to the first but independently pursued by its proponents, is an ever-increasing explicit concern with non-political factors (e. g., the family, voluntary associations, the economic system, the social stratification system, cultural values, and so forth) as they may be related to and effect the political system and political behavior. Here, the impact of other disciplines, and particularly sociology, anthropology and psychology, is clearly manifest not only in the type of data gathered but in such neologisms as “political socialization” and “political acculturation.”

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