Politique et science politique

1975 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 367-380 ◽  
Author(s):  
Léon Dion
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Social Group ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The Political ◽  
Minor Importance ◽  
Democratic Process ◽  
Political Status ◽  
The People ◽  
Industrial Age ◽  
Elected Representatives

The political use of political sciencePolitical scientists claim for science and for themselves, as scholars, a maximum of independence in their dealings with government and Parliament. At the same time, science finds itself so inextricably bound up with the actual political process that it has become an “establishment” as strong and formidable as religion was in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Liberal political scientists put themselves into a contradictory position when they demand for themselves, in the pursuit of their task as scholars, a political status which would protect them from the scrutiny of the elected representatives of the people, a condition which, they would refuse to grant to any other social group, and yet simultaneously in their teaching and writing set themselves up as the ardent defenders of representative and responsible democracy. What must one sacrifice, science or democratic responsibility? Is it necessary to aim at excluding science from the democratic process, at the risk of seeing our society regress towards a pre-industrial age, or should one regard representative and responsible democracy as relevant to questions of minor importance while significant issues which concern the present and future of society are to be dealt with by other political methods?

The Institutions of Deliberative Democracy

2000 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 181-202 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Nelson
Keyword(s):  
Deliberative Democracy ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The Political ◽  
Democratic Process ◽  
Current Interest ◽  
Democratic Institutions ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
The People ◽  
The Will ◽  
Over Time

A theory of democratic institutions should provide us with a coherent combination of definition and justification. It should explain how it defines democratic institutions and also how they will or should function; but it also should explain why democracy, so understood, is desirable. We are all familiar with stories about the fiscal excesses to which democracies are prone, stories about the ignorance of voters, and stories about the venality of legislators. Some of us may also be suspicious of concepts such as “consent” or “the will of the people” associated with traditional arguments for democracy. Against this background, the current interest in deliberative democracy seems promising. This conception of democracy does not rely, for example, on the idea of rational and knowledgeable voters satisfying preferences they have independent of the political process. Nor does it rely on any notion of an independent popular will. Instead, it offers a picture of the democratic process as one in which men and women engage in constructive discussion, seeking a principled resolution of their differences and developing, over time, a conception of the terms on which they will live with one another.

Judicial Legislation

1989 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-18
Author(s):  
Oliver Aylmerton
Keyword(s):  
Judicial System ◽  
Democratic Process ◽  
Central Topic ◽  
The People ◽  
Parliamentary Debate ◽  
The Law ◽  
Elected Representatives

The author describes the main characteristics of the English judicial system and its methodology. A central topic is the so-called judicial legislation, as is illustrated by the developing case lawwith respect to the tort of negligence. The method has the twin advantages of flexibility and pragmatism and it also has the advantages of speed. But there is a minus side also. First, the development of the law in this way can only be achieved at the expense of certainty. Secondly, it involves the alteration of the law, sometimes a quite radical alteration, without any extensive consideration of the practical and economic results such as would take place in the course of parliamentary scrutiny and debate. Judges are not the elected representatives of the people and the methodology of English Judges which results in the development and alteration of the law without the benefit of parliamentary debate may not perhaps be altogether a satisfactory democratic process to a constitutional purist.

Working Groups and Fashion Signals

Fit for War ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Elizabeth Fitts
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Work Groups ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Glass Beads ◽  
The Political ◽  
Ceramic Analysis ◽  
Collective Identities ◽  
The People ◽  
Working Groups ◽  
Personal Adornment

According to the model of coalescence discussed in chapter 4, the political process of merging previously distinct communities should result in the integration of labor and collective identities. In this chapter, mid-eighteenth-century Catawba pottery and items of personal adornment are enlisted to assess whether this was the case for the people living around Nation Ford. Ceramic analysis is used to delineate constellations of practice, thereby providing information about the size of the work groups making pottery as well as the character of interaction between them. Next, patterns in the distribution of artifacts associated with mid-eighteenth-century Catawba adornment, including glass beads and metal fasteners, are examined in an effort to determine if they were being used to communicate generalized Southeastern Indian identities, matrilocal community identities, or both.

Decision Rules and Policy Outcomes

1971 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas Rae ◽  
Michael Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Model ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Decision Rules ◽  
Policy Outcomes ◽  
The Political ◽  
Complex Relationship ◽  
Legislative Voting ◽  
The Public

Contemporary political science is rightly concerned with the complex relationship between the political process and the public policies in which it results. In understanding this relationship, it may be useful to distinguish two complementary aspects of the political process: (1) those which are relevant because they account for the policy preferences of elite-members and, (2) those elements, like voting and bargaining, which are of interest because they determine policy outcomes from given configurations of elite preferences. This paper offers a theoretical model for an important component of this second aspect: it is explicitly addressed to legislative voting processes and the underlying strategies of legislators as these contribute to the determination of policy outcomes. And, for the present, we take preference-formation as given.

Rights, Reflection, and Reciprocity: Implications of the Same-Sex Marriage Debate for Tolerance and the Political Process

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 630-648 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul A. Djupe ◽  
Andrew R. Lewis ◽  
Ted G. Jelen
Keyword(s):  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Political Process ◽  
State Level ◽  
Culture War ◽  
The Political ◽  
Democratic Process ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
Group Boundaries ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Evangelical Protestants

AbstractContentious battles over state-level Religious Freedom Restoration Acts suggest a fundamental refashioning of the “culture war” clashes in American politics. Conservatives — particularly religious conservatives — have come to champion a politics of rights, using “liberal weapons” (rights) to win battles or at least stave off loses. This raises important questions about the long-run effects of making rights claims. Does rights claiming lead to balkanization and reinforce group boundaries or is rights claiming an education in the democratic process that promotes tolerance? Drawing on evidence from an experimental design, we find that exposure to rights claims made by clergy regarding exemptions from participation in same-sex ceremonies acts as a prime to boost tolerance of selected least-liked groups, an effect particularly potent for evangelical Protestants.

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.

scholarly journals Political Science Funding Black Out in North America? Trends in Funding Should not be Ignored

2013 ◽  
Vol 46 (03) ◽  
pp. 599-604 ◽  
Author(s):  
David J. Plazek ◽  
Alan Steinberg
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
North America ◽  
Political Science ◽  
National Science Foundation ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Science Funding ◽  
National Science ◽  
One Year

AbstractRecent actions in Congress that threaten political science funding by the National Science Foundation (NSF) have caught the attention of political scientists, but this was not the first attack and not likely to be the last. Less than one year ago, the Harper government ended the Understanding Canada program, an important source of funding for academics in the United States and abroad. This article stresses the value of the program and the importance of this funding steam by demonstrating what the grants have done both more generally as well as for the authors individually. In addition, by looking at the political process that led to the end of the Understanding Canada program and the similarities in the attacks on NSF political science funding, this article identifies potential reasons why these funds were and are at risk. We conclude by arguing that normative action in support of political science is a necessity for all political scientists.

Research in the Political Process

1951 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oliver Garceau
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Party System ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The Political ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Democratic State ◽  
Democratic Polity ◽  
Individual Capacity ◽  
Democratic Faith

A discipline, like an individual, may in some measure be known by the dilemmas it keeps, or more properly by the manner in which it keeps them.A central conceptual controversy, probably inescapable for political scientists because of their disciplinary heritage, is that involved in perceiving uniformities in behavior, describing recurring patterns, identifying the determinants and yet reconciling this effort and its underlying premises about the roots of behavior with the liberal, democratic faith in man's individual capacity to determine his own ends, to think rationally and to reach individual and creative decisions. On this faith rests the political structure of rights, the machinery of the democratic electorate, the party system and the values of the constitutional democratic state whose political process we are concerned to describe and analyze. Cultural anthropologists, social psychologists of many disciplinary schools, hard-boiled “realists” in political science, have recently drawn back from determinist or whole-heartedly relativist positions. Some are concerned that political science, in a fresh enthusiasm for empirical research, may become so engrossed with uniformities and determinants that it will obscure or abandon the normative commitments of a democratic polity.

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.

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