Methodology and the Study of the Political Executive

Author(s):  
Robert Elgie

The predominant methodologies that are used in the study of the political executive are closely linked to the various approaches that have been applied in this domain. The intellectual history of the study of political executives shows the familiar evolution from the ‘old’ institutionalism via behavioralism to varieties of ‘new’ institutionalism, without any approach being replaced completely by another, resulting in more methodological pluralism than ever before. Each of these quantitative and qualitative methods has its own strengths and weaknesses, but to a greater or lesser extent they share several problems concerning the material they use. Most notably, the very nature of political executives brings with it severe limitations to data availability. This chapter ends with a plea for more systematic attention to methodological issues such as case selection, and with suggestions for new methodological techniques that may help improve the validity of the conclusions that scholars wish to draw about the political executive.

2021 ◽  

The political scientist and former Bavarian Minister of Culture Hans Maier has created a historically profound, theologically educated, literarily and musically highly sensitive, politically mature body of work, with which he has inscribed himself in the (intellectual) history of the Federal Republic. This book is the first to contain contributions by renowned scholars and politicians on the rich work and impact of the Catholic scholar and politician Hans Maier. It thematises and appreciates in detail his view of German history and the traditions of political thought, his critique of political language, political theology, totalitarianism and political religions, but also his contributions on Catholicism and modernity, his writings on literature and music, and finally his influence as an academic teacher, public intellectual and politician.


Author(s):  
William Ghosh

V.S. Naipaul is one of the most internationally acclaimed twentieth-century writers from the Caribbean region. Yet it is usually assumed that he was neither much influenced by the Caribbean literary and intellectual tradition, nor very influential upon it. This chapter argues that these assumptions are wrong. It situates Naipaul’s life and work within the political, social, and intellectual history of the twentieth-century Caribbean. Naipaul’s work formed part of a larger historical debate about the sociology of slavery in the Caribbean, the specificity of Caribbean colonial experience, and the influence of that historical past on Caribbean life, culture, and politics after independence. The chapter closes with a reading of Naipaul’s late, retrospective book about Trinidad, A Way in the World.


1972 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 16-19
Author(s):  
Kenneth Kirkland

The subject suggested in the title is so broad as to make it rather difficult to decide what boundaries to draw around the study of various resources available to the historian or other social scientist who sets out to study labor history, the social history of Italian workers and peasants, and the political and intellectual history of socialism and other radical movements. Keeping in mind that the following discussion is not intended to be exhaustive, but rather an indication of the necessary starting point to begin an investigation is probably the best way to understand this note.


1972 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 16-19
Author(s):  
Kenneth Kirkland

The subject suggested in the title is so broad as to make it rather difficult to decide what boundaries to draw around the study of various resources available to the historian or other social scientist who sets out to study labor history, the social history of Italian workers and peasants, and the political and intellectual history of socialism and other radical movements. Keeping in mind that the following discussion is not intended to be exhaustive, but rather an indication of the necessary starting point to begin an investigation is probably the best way to understand this note.


1959 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 662-692 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith N. Shklar

It is well known that each age writes history anew to serve its own purposes and that the history of political ideas is no exception to this rule. The precise nature of these changes in perspective, however, bears investigation. For not only can their study help us to understand the past; it may also lead us to a better understanding of our own intellectual situation. In this quest the political theories of the 17th century and particularly of the English Civil War are especially rewarding. It was in those memorable years that all the major issues of modern political theory were first stated, and with the most perfect clarity. As we have come to reject the optimism of the eighteenth century, and the crude positivism of the nineteenth, we tend more and more to return to our origins in search of a new start. This involves a good deal of reinterpretation, as the intensity with which the writings of Hobbes and Locke, for instance, are being reexamined in England and America testify. These philosophical giants have, however, by the force of their ideas been able to limit the scope of interpretive license. A provocative minor writer, such as Harrington, may for this reason be more revealing. The present study is therefore not only an effort to explain more soundly Harrington's own ideas, but also to treat him as an illustration of the mutations that the art of interpreting political ideas has undergone, and, perhaps to make some suggestions about the problems of writing intellectual history in general.


Author(s):  
Stefania Tutino

This chapter analyzes the role that accommodation, dissimulation, equivocation, and mental reservation played in Jesuit spirituality, theology, and culture. These doctrines came to represent a fundamental component of the religious, theological, and intellectual identity of the Society of Jesus. Indeed, Ignatius Loyola himself made discreción one of the principles differentiating the Society from all other Catholic religious orders. The chapter demonstrates the centrality that these forms of accommodation and dissimulation acquired in the political, religious, and intellectual history of the early modern world, becoming useful tools to articulate one’s political and religious allegiance and thus becoming an integral part of post-Reformation culture. As post-Reformation Catholicism assumed an increasingly global dimension, these doctrines became politically, spiritually, theologically, and hermeneutically necessary for the Catholic missionaries to approach, come to terms with, and adapt to geographically and culturally different contexts, places, and people.


2013 ◽  
Vol 411-414 ◽  
pp. 283-286 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yu Ping Tong

This paper explores the explicitation strategy (one of the translation universals) in the political text .We adopt the quantitative and qualitative methods in the present study with the help of the self-compiled corpus to detect if the explicitation strategies of personal pronouns is prominent in the Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping, Volume III (1982-1992). It is found that the percentage of the personal pronouns were added or explicated purposely all together come to all most 31% compared with the total number of 5024 aligned sentences in the corpus.


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