Political Values and Professional Values: The Recognition of Conflict in Both as Essential to Education in Political Science

1973 ◽  
Vol 6 (04) ◽  
pp. 404-405
Author(s):  
Marian D. Irish ◽  
James W. Prothro
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
Political Values ◽  
Equal Time ◽  
Academic Literature ◽  
The Third ◽  
Full Circle ◽  
New Political Science

Academicians are properly suspicious of efforts to characterize all the intellectual currents of a decade by a single phrase. But perhaps our less cautious friends in journalism are not so far wrong in suggesting that we are returning in the 1970s to the conservatism of the 1950s. The first edition ofThe Politics of American Democracy(1959) was denounced by a John Birch group in California for its left-wing orientation. The only previous broadside attack on the book to appear in print was directed at the third and fourth editions (1965, 1968); this attack, which appeared in a 1970 issue of theNewsletterof the Caucus for a New Political Science, denounced the book for its right-wing, pro-system biases. Now we have come full circle and find the fifth (1971) edition denounced because “spokesmen of the left seem to have been given more than equal time.” In some respects we are gratified to think Mr. Stevens' critique must prove we have not grown more conservative with each edition, and we shall certainly display his comments to our children, nieces, nephews, junior colleagues, and students.More seriously, however, we cannot be gratified to have our scholarship and our integrity impugned. We do not wish to overreact, but the charge that we are guilty of “bizarre statements of ‘fact’ and misrepresentations of the academic literature” and the suggestion that we “can no longer claim to be speaking as … political scientists[s]” can hardly be interpreted to mean that we have merely slipped into occasional error.

ARENA

2021 ◽  
pp. 126-165
Author(s):  
James Loxton
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Military Rule ◽  
Death Squad ◽  
Powerful Source ◽  
Fourth Section ◽  
The Third ◽  
History Of ◽  
High Level

This chapter examines ARENA in El Salvador and argues that, like the UDI in Chile, its success was the product of authoritarian inheritance and counterrevolutionary struggle. The first section discusses El Salvador’s long history of right-wing military rule. The second section examines the October 1979 coup and the resulting establishment of a left-wing Revolutionary Governing Junta. The third section discusses the intense counterrevolutionary response that the junta triggered. This included large-scale death squad violence, with future ARENA founder Roberto D’Aubuisson playing a key role. The fourth section examines the formation of ARENA in response to an impending transition to competitive elections. The fifth section shows how D’Aubuisson’s role as a high-level official in the pre-1979 military regime endowed ARENA with several valuable resources. The final section discusses how ARENA’s origins in counterrevolutionary struggle served as a powerful source of cohesion.

scholarly journals Legitimacy in Autocracies: Oxymoron or Essential Feature?

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 652-665 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johannes Gerschewski
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Democratic Theory ◽  
Essential Feature ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Semantic Map ◽  
Elusive Concept

Legitimacy is a key concept in political science. It has deep normative roots in democratic theory and refers usually to righteous, just, fair, and therefore acceptable rule. However, non-democracies also try to create a following among their citizens. They also engage in justifying their rule through politicization, be it of religion, ethnicity, or ideologies ranging from left-wing communism to right-wing nationalism. Against this backdrop, I pose the question: does it make sense to use the concept of legitimacy for both types of regimes, democracies and autocracies alike? Or, do we overstretch the concept when transplanting it to the non-democratic realm? And, empirically, how can we assess to what degree a non-democracy is viewed as legitimate by its citizens? I aim therefore at defining what legitimacy and legitimation is in autocratic settings; drawing a semantic map of rival concepts like support, trust, and loyalty; and tackling concrete challenges in measuring this elusive concept.

scholarly journals How Labor Market Inequality Transforms Mass Politics

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 344-355
Author(s):  
Silja Häusermann ◽  
Achim Kemmerling ◽  
David Rueda
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Structural Changes ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Mass Politics ◽  
Labor Market Inequality

AbstractWhy do left parties lose vote shares in times of economic crisis and hardship? Why do right-wing governments implement seemingly left-wing policies, such as labor market activation? Why is representation becoming more and more unequal? And why do workers vote for right-wing populist parties? Several political science theories propose meaningful and important answers to these key questions for comparative politics, focusing on identity politics, programmatic convergence of parties or exogenous constraints. However, there is an additional and distinct approach to all of the questions above, which emphasizes socio-structural transformations in the labor market: most of the processes above can be understood with reference to increasing labor market inequality and its political implications. The relevance and explanatory power of labor market inequality for mass politics have not been fully acknowledged in comparative political science and this is the reason for this symposium. Labor market inequality affects political preferences and behavior, electoral politics, representation, and government strategies. The main purpose of our symposium is to make broader comparative politics research aware of the crucial structural changes that labor markets have undergone in the advanced capitalist democracies of the OECD, and of the tremendous implications these changes have had for politics.

God, Woman, and Morality: The Democratic Family in the New Political Science of Alexis de Tocqueville

1995 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-30
Author(s):  
William Mathie
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Alexis De Tocqueville ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
American Women ◽  
The Family ◽  
The World ◽  
Role Of Women ◽  
New Political Science

Tocqueville says that the superiority of American women is the chief cause of the power and prosperity of American democracy. That superiority is the result of an education that treats women as capable of freedom, but the use of that freedom is to maintain the bonds that restrict women to the household. The present article examines the role of the family and women in the new political science Tocqueville thought necessary for the defence of democratic liberty. It is argued that as the primary influence of democracy upon the family for Tocqueville has been to eliminate the authority of fathers who were the “arbiters of mores” and thereby the defenders of liberty in aristocracy, so democratic liberty depends for him above all upon the new role of women as the makers of mores. Through the agency of women, otherwise fragile religion constitutes an effective limit to the authority of the majority, but what makes it possible for religion to operate through women is their exclusion from the world of commerce, and what maintains this exclusion is the strict conjugal morality that women themselves defend in America. How far the role of women as guardians of democratic liberty might be justified is shown to depend for Tocqueville upon arguments for it that are other than those commonly accepted by American men.

scholarly journals Carlism Berween Liberalism and Right-Wing Conservatism. The Case of Juan III (1861–1868)

2021 ◽  
Vol V (2) ◽  
pp. 191-209
Author(s):  
Yuri Vasilenko
Keyword(s):  
Right Wing ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
The Third ◽  
Political Conditions ◽  
The Right ◽  
Xix Century

The article is dedicated to Juan III (1822–1887), the Carlist pretender to the Spanish throne in 1861-1868, who opposed himself to the Carlist «mainstream» by expanding the ideological framework of this movement to the left up to liberalism. As a liberal, Juan III becomes an exponent of the trend (left-wing bias within Carlist conservatism) which originates from Carlist general R. Maroto Yserns` activities who signed in 1839 the peace of Vergara with the Isabelites and expresses in Carlos VI`s attempts to find an agreement between the two branches of the Spanish Bourbons in the form of a dynastic marriage with Isabel II. The article analyzes the failures of Juan III as a political practitioner who sought to combine in his activities the desire to integrate himself into the New — liberal-bourgeois — Order (but for that it was necessary to find agreement with the liberal-conservative wing of the «moderados» on the right and the progressives on the left) and to remain at the head of the Carlist «mainstream» which stood on the positions of right-wing conservatism. To identify the contradictions between such incompatible intentions, Juan III's views are contrasted with — the second wife of Carlos V — Maria Teresa, Princess de Beira`s ideas who expressed the interests of the Carlist «mainstream» on the eve of the liberal-bourgeois revolution of 1868-1974 and the third Carlist war. It is shown that the figure of Juan III — for all its irrelevance in the socio-political conditions of Spain in the XIX century — becomes a kind of herald for the modern leaders of Carlism (traditionalist and liberal conservative ones) who live and act separately from the currently marginal “right-wing faction” of Carlism which still stands on the positions of right-wing conservatism.

Cancel Culture: Myth or Reality?

2021 ◽  
pp. 003232172110370
Author(s):  
Pippa Norris
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Spiral Of Silence ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Dominant Group ◽  
Ratchet Effect ◽  
Science Data ◽  
Individual Values ◽  
Empirical Survey ◽  
Speak Up

In recent years, a progressive “cancel culture” in society, right-wing politicians and commentators claim, has silenced alternative perspectives, ostracized contrarians, and eviscerated robust intellectual debate, with college campuses at the vanguard of this development. These arguments can be dismissed as rhetorical dog whistles devoid of substantive meaning, myths designed to fire up the MAGA faithful, outrage progressives, and distract from urgent real-world problems. Given heated contention, however, something more fundamental may be at work. To understand this phenomenon, the opening section defines the core concept and theorizes that perceptions of this phenomenon are likely to depend upon how far individual values fit the dominant group culture. Within academia, scholars most likely to perceive “silencing” are mismatched or non-congruent cases, where they are “fish-out-of-water.” The next section describes how empirical survey evidence is used to test this prediction within the discipline of political science. Data are derived from a global survey, the World of Political Science, 2019, involving almost 2500 scholars studying or working in over 100 countries. The next section describes the results. The conclusion summarizes the key findings and considers their broader implications. Overall, the evidence confirms the “fish-out-of-water” congruence thesis. As predicted, in post-industrial societies, characterized by predominately liberal social cultures, like the US, Sweden, and UK, right-wing scholars were most likely to perceive that they faced an increasingly chilly climate. By contrast, in developing societies characterized by more traditional moral cultures, like Nigeria, it was left-wing scholars who reported that a cancel culture had worsened. This contrast is consistent with Noelle-Neumann’s spiral of silence thesis, where mainstream values in any group gradually flourish to become the predominant culture, while, due to social pressures, dissenting minority voices become muted. The ratchet effect eventually muffles contrarians. The evidence suggests that the cancel culture is not simply a rhetorical myth; scholars may be less willing to speak up to defend their moral beliefs if they believe that their views are not widely shared by colleagues or the wider society to which they belong.

Political Values and Professional Values in Conflict: Irish and Prothro's The Politics of American Democracy

1973 ◽  
Vol 6 (04) ◽  
pp. 400-403
Author(s):  
Stephen V. Stephens
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Peace Movement ◽  
Professional Values ◽  
The Political ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
American Government ◽  
Considerable Effort ◽  
Political Values ◽  
Competitive Position ◽  
Science Community

It may be an unfortunate commentary on our achievements as “scientists”, but an American government textbook tends to be a rather topical document, and the ones that are good enough to justify the effort must be updated every several years, in order to maintain their competitive position. One of the best, I think, and surely one of the ones most highly recommended to me by other political scientists, was Marian Irish and James Prothro'sThe Politics of American Democracy(Prentice-Hall: 4th edn., 1968; 5th edn., 1971). I used the 1968 edition in classes several times, with such satisfaction that I ordered the new fifth edition in the summer of 1971, sight unseen. As the following comments indicate, I had reason to regret the decision. Since textbooks are rarely reviewed, and since Prentice-Hall reports that this edition will be current through 1975, I have reluctantly chosen this medium to bring some rather strange attributes of this book to the attention of the political science community.In common with many of the texts that have appeared in the last one or two years, the authors have gone to considerable effort to make their new edition more relevant to the great political disturbances we have just experienced and — to a lesser extent — are still experiencing: ghetto riots, the Vietnam peace movement, and women's liberation.

scholarly journals The circular and linear structure of political values and the three stereotypes about the left, center and right

2020 ◽  
pp. 59-72
Author(s):  
Przemysław Maj
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Linear Structure ◽  
Psychological Theory ◽  
Political Values ◽  
The Third ◽  
The French Revolution

The aim of the article is to give arguments against the presence of three stereotypes in political science concerning leftism, centrism and rightism. The first one involves the classification of political entities by indicating their place on the left-centre-right axis. The second is based on the belief that leftism, centrism and rightism can be narrowed down to specific levels of competition (e.g. views on the economy or religion). The third stereotype is “dogma” that the conflict over political values was initiated during the French Revolution. The author explains his position with reference to the psychological theory of Shalom H. Schwartz and the circular matrix of meta-value.

Disaggregating the Court: A Methodological Survey of Research on the Supreme People’s Court of China

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 154-176
Author(s):  
Taisu Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Quantitative Analysis ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Institutional Economics ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
Academic Literature ◽  
The Third ◽  
First Category ◽  
Behavior Based

This article surveys recent academic literature on the Supreme People’s Court of China, sorting existing studies into three basic categories: those that study what the Court is allowed to do, those that study what it actually does, and those that study why it does those things. Moving from the first category to the second and third is, in many ways, a progression from a predominantly formalist method to more realist ones. The article argues that the field suffers from a lack of rigorous political economy modeling and that this affects not only the thoroughness of studies in the third category, but also those in the first and second categories. Remedying these problems will depend on whether future scholarship can successfully make use of the theoretical and empirical tools developed by political science and institutional economics. Most importantly, the field needs to develop a usable model of individual judge behavior, based on their material incentives, political aspirations, and ideological commitments, which can then provide the foundation for modeling of the Court as an institution. At the early stage, ethnography and bibliographical analysis may be more useful than quantitative analysis.

The 1971 APSA Elections

1972 ◽  
Vol 5 (03) ◽  
pp. 278-291
Author(s):  
Bernard Grofman
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
American Political Science Association ◽  
Women Candidates ◽  
The Third ◽  
American Political Science ◽  
New Political Science ◽  
Science Association

For the third consecutive year there was a contest for offices of the American Political Science Association. The 1971 APSA election saw two groups fielding complete slates: the APSA nominating committee, and the Caucus for a New Political Science (overlapping in one Council nominee, Christian Bay) and two groups nominating or endorsing candidates, the Ad Hoc Committee and the Women's Caucus. The Ad Hoc Committee endorsements coincided with the nominations of the APSA nominating committee, while the ten Women's Caucus endorsements went to seven nominees endorsed by the New Caucus (three of whom were women) and four nominees of the APSA Nominating Committee (two of whom were women), the overlap being Christian Bay. (See Table 1).The 1971 Election had much in common with its predecessors. The principal differences shown in Table 2 are a continuing decline in voter turnout, a slow but continuing increase in the number of women candidates, and the entry of the Women's Caucus into the electoral lists.

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