Politics: American and Non-American

1984 ◽  
Vol 17 (03) ◽  
pp. 545-548
Author(s):  
Suzanne Berger
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
American Politics ◽  
American Political Science Review ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Past ◽  
Foreign Governments

Tocqueville, considering how Americans compare their nation with others, observed that general ideas about politics testify to the weakness of human intelligence. “The Deity does not regard the human race collectively.… Such is, however, not the case with man. … Having superficially considered a certain number of objects, and remarked their resemblance, he assigns to them a common name, sets them apart, and proceeds onwards.”As it is for human beings, so, too, for political scientists. And of the generalizations which have helped Americans and American political scientists organize the confusing mass of differences and similarities between this country and others, none has been more important and enduring than the notion of the uniqueness of the American political community. This conception is reflected in the split within the discipline between those who study the U.S. political system and those who study comparative politics, a field understood to encompass various foreign countries. The rubric that in theAmerican Political Science Reviewuntil the 1950s used to read “Foreign Governments and Politics” has been replaced by a subsection of the book reviews that is entitled “Comparative Politics.” But today as in the past, it is rare to find teaching or research in political science that truly integrates the analysis of American politics within a comparative framework.Why this should remain the case is difficult to understand, for over the past half-century there have been many shifts in the discipline and in the world that challenged the premises of research based on American exceptionalism. Already in the interwar period, significant work in political science was moving beyond configurative case studies of individual countries. C. J. Friedrich's importantConstitutional Government and Democracy(1937), indeed, included the United States in its examination of how well certain general political theories explained the experiences of major political systems. Whatever reservations one might have had about the methodologies of comparative research on which Friedrich relied, the broad influence of his work promised a new integration of American politics into an expanded field of comparative politics.

The Diffusion of Policy Diffusion Research in Political Science

2012 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 673-701 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erin R. Graham ◽  
Charles R. Shipan ◽  
Craig Volden
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
American Politics ◽  
Systematic Approach ◽  
Policy Diffusion ◽  
Network Analyses ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Science Journals

Over the past fifty years, top political science journals have published hundreds of articles about policy diffusion. This article reports on network analyses of how the ideas and approaches in these articles have spread both within and across the subfields of American politics, comparative politics and international relations. Then, based on a survey of the literature, the who, what, when, where, how and why of policy diffusion are addressed in order to identify and assess some of the main contributions and omissions in current scholarship. It is argued that studies of diffusion would benefit from paying more attention to developments in other subfields and from taking a more systematic approach to tackling the questions of when and how policy diffusion takes place.

A Response to Jeffrey Isaac

2010 ◽  
Vol 43 (04) ◽  
pp. 739
Author(s):  
Gregory J. Kasza
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
American Political Science Review ◽  
Comparable Data ◽  
Science Review ◽  
Political Research ◽  
The Past ◽  
Regional Association ◽  
American Political Science

The purpose of the present symposium was to evaluate Perestroika's impact. Since theAmerican Political Science Review(APSR), theAmerican Journal of Political Science(AJPS), and theJournal of Politics(JOP) were all targets of criticism in the movement, whereas other national and regional association journals such asPerspectives on PoliticsandPolitical Research Quarterlywere not, I looked for change in the former. Comparable data on the past contents of theAPSRandAJPShad already been published, so I focused my recent surveys on those two. This focus implies no judgment as to the relative prestige of these journals. They pretend to represent the discipline as a whole and are paid for by all association members, and these are sufficient reasons to address their editorial biases.

scholarly journals Reflections on the Challenges of Writing a (Pre-)History of the “Polarized” Present

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 403-408
Author(s):  
Thomas Zimmer
Keyword(s):  
American Politics ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cultural Norms ◽  
Intellectual Life ◽  
Master Narrative ◽  
Severe Problem ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S

Polarization is everywhere. It is, according to the Pew Research Center, “a defining feature of American politics today.” Elected officials, journalists, and political pundits seem to agree that it is a severe problem in urgent need of fixing, maybe even the root of all evil that plagues the United States, from dysfunction in Congress to the decay of social and cultural norms. Many historians, too, have embraced the concept of polarization for its explanatory power: It has emerged as the closest thing to a master narrative for recent American history. In this interpretation, the “liberal consensus” that had dominated mid-twentieth-century American politics and intellectual life—the widely shared acceptance of New Deal philosophy and broad agreement on the desirable contours of society and the pursuit of certain kinds of public good—gave way after the 1960s to an age of heightened tension, dividing Americans into two camps that since then have regarded each other with deepening distrust. Yet too few historians have reflected on the limits and potential pitfalls of using polarization as a governing historical paradigm. It is high time, therefore, to pause to consider the larger implications of approaching the past through the prism of polarization.

Rationalizing Politics: The Emerging Synthesis of International, American, and Comparative Politics

1998 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 759-786 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen V. Milner
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Research Agenda ◽  
International System ◽  
Ir Theory ◽  
Strategic Interactions ◽  
The Past ◽  
Cross Fertilization ◽  
Separate Discipline

International relations has often been treated as a separate discipline distinct from the other major fields in political science, namely American and comparative politics. A main reason for this distinction has been the claim that politics in the international system is radically different from politics domestically. The degree of divergence between international relations (IR) and the rest of political science has waxed and waned over the years; however, in the past decade it seems to have lessened. This process has occurred mainly in the “rationalist research paradigm,” and there it has both substantive and methodological components. Scholars in this paradigm have increasingly appreciated that politics in the international realm is not so different from that internal to states, and vice versa. This rationalist institutionalist research agenda thus challenges two of the main assumptions in IR theory. Moreover, scholars across the three fields now tend to employ the same methods. The last decade has seen increasing cross-fertilization of the fields around the importance of institutional analysis. Such analysis implies a particular concern with the mechanisms of collective choice in situations of strategic interaction. Some of the new tools in American and comparative politics allow the complex, strategic interactions among domestic and international agents to be understood in a more systematic and cumulative way.

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.

How International Is Political Science? Patterns of Submission and Publication in the American Political Science Review

2018 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 789-798 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marijke Breuning ◽  
Ayal Feinberg ◽  
Benjamin Isaak Gross ◽  
Melissa Martinez ◽  
Ramesh Sharma ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Review Process ◽  
American Political Science Review ◽  
Geographic Location ◽  
The United States ◽  
Science Review ◽  
Global North ◽  
American Political Science ◽  
The Impact

ABSTRACTHow international in scope is publishing in political science? Previous studies have shown that the top journals primarily publish work by scholars from the United States and, to a lesser extent, other global-north countries. However, these studies used published content and could not evaluate the impact of the review process on the relative absence of international scholars in journals. This article evaluates patterns of submission and publication by US and international scholars for the American Political Science Review—one of the most selective peer-reviewed journals in the discipline. We found that scholars from the United States and other global-north countries are published approximately in proportion to submissions but that global-south scholars fare less well. We also found that scholars affiliated with prestigious universities are overrepresented, irrespective of geographic location. The article concludes with observations about the implications of these findings for efforts to internationalize the discipline.

Polarization

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nolan McCarty
Keyword(s):  
American Politics ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Conflicts ◽  
System P ◽  
2016 Election ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
Legislative Districts

The 2016 election of Donald J. Trump invoked a time for reflection about the state of American politics and its deep ideological, cultural, racial, regional, and economic divisions. But one aspect that the contemporary discussions often miss is that these fissures have been opening over several decades and are deeply rooted in the structure of American politics and society. Nolan McCarty's Polarization: What Everyone Needs to Know® is an accessible introduction to polarization in America. McCarty takes readers through what scholars know and don't know about the origins, development, and implications of our rising political conflicts, delving into social, economic, and geographic determinants of polarization in the United States. While the current political climate makes it clear that extreme views are becoming more popular, McCarty also argues that, contrary to popular belief, the 2016 election was a natural outgrowth of 40 years of polarized politics, instead of a significant break with the past. He explains the factors that have created this state of affairs, including gerrymandered legislative districts, partisan primary nomination systems, and our private campaign finance system. He also considers the potential of major reforms such as instating proportional representation or single-transferable voting to remedy extreme polarization. A concise overview of a complex and crucial topic in US politics, this book is for anyone wanting to understand how to repair the cracks in our system.

FROM ANCIENT TO MODERN IN VICTORIAN IMPERIAL THOUGHT

2006 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 735-759 ◽  
Author(s):  
DUNCAN BELL
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Roman Empire ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Significant Group ◽  
Prudential Value ◽  
The Past ◽  
Of Greece

This article argues that during the closing decades of the nineteenth century a significant group of British imperial thinkers broke with the long-standing conventions of political thought by deliberately eschewing the inspiration and intellectual authority provided by the examples of the ancient empires. While the early Victorian colonial reformers had looked to the template of Greece, and while many later Victorians compared the empire in India with the Roman empire, numerous proponents of Greater Britain (focusing on the settler colonies, and associated in particular with the movement for imperial federation) looked instead to the United States. I argue that the reason for this innovation, risky in a culture obsessed with the moral and prudential value of precedent and tradition, lies in contemporary understandings of history. Both Rome and Greece, despite their differences, were thought to demonstrate that empires were ultimately self-dissolving; as such, empires modelled on their templates were doomed to eventual failure, whether through internal decay or the peaceful independence of the colonies. Since the advocates of Greater Britain were determined to construct an enduring political community, a global Anglo-Saxon polity, they needed to escape the fate of previous empires. They tried instead to insert Greater Britain into a progressive narrative, one that did not doom them to repeat the failures of the past.

Tocqueville on Religion, the Enlightenment, and the Democratic Soul

2015 ◽  
Vol 109 (3) ◽  
pp. 523-534 ◽  
Author(s):  
AARON L. HEROLD
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Religious Psychology ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
New Political Science

This article proposes a new interpretation of Tocqueville's thought, one that focuses on his account of religious psychology. From his observations of America, Tocqueville concludes that human beings have a natural hope for immortality—a hope that is driven by a paradoxical but ineradicable desire to affirm and forget oneself simultaneously. Tocqueville formulates this insight as a critique of the Enlightenment thinkers who laid the foundations for liberal democracy; I argue that he crafts his “new political science” to provide healthy outlets for the religious hopes whose existence these thinkers largely denied and whose anomalous presence in the United States has accordingly led to unforeseen dangers. Tocqueville's analysis not only helps us understand and begin to remedy those dissatisfactions that characterize democracy today but it also reveals his theoretical depth, political moderation, and sober assessment of our moral psychology in a way not seen before.

scholarly journals Bayesian Approaches for Limited Dependent Variable Change Point Problems

2007 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 387-405 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arthur Spirling
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Change Point ◽  
American Politics ◽  
International Political Economy ◽  
Bayesian Approaches ◽  
Limited Dependent Variable ◽  
Good Advice ◽  
Type Data

Limited dependent variable (LDV) data are common in political science, and political methodologists have given much good advice on dealing with them. We review some methods for LDV “change point problems” and demonstrate the use of Bayesian approaches for count, binary, and duration-type data. Our applications are drawn from American politics, Comparative politics, and International Political Economy. We discuss the tradeoffs both philosophically and computationally. We conclude with possibilities for multiple change point work.

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