Political Science, Political Theory and Policy‐Making in an Interdependent World

1993 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 242-260 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Dunn
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Habits Of Mind ◽  
Human Populations ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Modern Politics ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
Policymaking And Implementation

For Anyone Interested in Modern Politics There Could scarcely be a more pressing issue than how best to approach the task of identifying and comprehending the novel political challenges and opportunities which flow from the ever increasing interdependence of the destinies of human populations. At the intersection between challenge and opportunity there lie both fresh processes of policymaking and implementation and distinctly older political routines and habits of mind: the attempt at worst to pour very new and volatile wine into disturbingly antiquated bottles, or at best to bring the accumulated resources of centuries of statecraft to bear upon a bewildering array of often unprecedented hazards.

Ernest Barker and Greek Political Thought: Aristotle

2006 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 243-262
Author(s):  
Quentin Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Significant Advance ◽  
Civic Life ◽  
Pragmatic Approach ◽  
Modern Politics ◽  
Ethical Vision

Ernest Barker is best remembered for his study of Plato and his Predecessors (1918), yet his early efforts to mine Greek political theory for relevant insights centred on Aristotle.While not as original as his teacher, Aristotle represents a significant advance in political science, first, by avoiding Plato’s extremes, second, by forwarding a naturalistic and ethical vision of civic life, and finally, by adopting a pragmatic approach to improving ‘deviant’ regimes. Both thinkers serve as a foil for exposing the shortcomings of modern politics, particularly the atomistic individualism of Hobbes, Locke, and Bentham. Unlike Plato, Aristotle exhibits an ‘English spirit’ of compromise, moderation, and balance, although from a distinctly Burkean perspective. Barker’s sympathies did not, however, blind him to the ‘reactionary’, ‘primitive’, and ‘illiberal’ aspects of Aristotle’s teaching. His failure to reconcile these discordant elements—culminating in a quixotic call for an ‘aristocratic democracy’ — merely echoed the ambiguity and equivocation that marked his treatment of Plato. Barker maintained a grudging respect for Plato, but knew he was politically incorrigible. Aristotle showed farmore promise, but in the end could not be made to fit the mould of the Edwardian progressive.

Reading Statelessness

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lyndsey Stonebridge
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
The Novel ◽  
History Of The Novel ◽  
Political Sovereignty ◽  
History Of

Hannah Arendt’s analysis of the failure of human rights to address statelessness is well known. Less commented upon is how important literature was to her thought. This chapter shows how Arendt’s 1940s essays on Kafka connect the history of the novel to shifting definitions of legal and political sovereignty. Arendt reads The Castle as a blueprint for a political theory that is also a theory of fiction: in the novel K, the unwanted stranger, demolishes the fiction of the rights of man, and with it, the fantasy of assimilation. In a parallel move, Kafka also refuses to assimilate his character into the conventions of fiction. Arendt’s reading changes the terms for how we might approach the literature of exile and of human rights.

Citizens, Elites, and Social Media Methodological Challenges and Opportunities in the Study of Persuasion and Mobilization

2019 ◽  
pp. 1036-1058
Author(s):  
Philip Habel ◽  
Yannis Theocharis
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Big Data ◽  
Supply And Demand ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Complete Understanding ◽  
Social Media Data ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
Media Data

In the last decade, big data, and social media in particular, have seen increased popularity among citizens, organizations, politicians, and other elites—which in turn has created new and promising avenues for scholars studying long-standing questions of communication flows and influence. Studies of social media play a prominent role in our evolving understanding of the supply and demand sides of the political process, including the novel strategies adopted by elites to persuade and mobilize publics, as well as the ways in which citizens react, interact with elites and others, and utilize platforms to persuade audiences. While recognizing some challenges, this chapter speaks to the myriad of opportunities that social media data afford for evaluating questions of mobilization and persuasion, ultimately bringing us closer to a more complete understanding Lasswell’s (1948) famous maxim: “who, says what, in which channel, to whom, [and] with what effect.”

A Note on “Public Policy”

1973 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 661-664 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Vaison
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Public Administration ◽  
Government Policy ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Studies ◽  
Policy Analysts ◽  
Government Body

Normally in political studies the term public policy is construed to encompass the societally binding directives issued by a society's legitimate government. We usually consider government, and only government, as being able to “authoritatively allocate values.” This common conception pervades the literature on government policy-making, so much so that it is hardly questioned by students and practitioners of political science. As this note attempts to demonstrate, some re-thinking seems to be in order. For purposes of analysis in the social sciences, this conceptualization of public policy tends to obscure important realities of modern corporate society and to restrict unnecessarily the study of policy-making. Public policy is held to be public simply and solely because it originates from a duly legitimated government, which in turn is held to have the authority (within specified limits) of formulating and implementing such policy. Public policy is public then, our usual thinking goes, because it is made by a body defined somewhat arbitrarily as “public”: a government or some branch of government. All other policy-making is seen as private; it is not public (and hence to lie essentially beyond the scope of the disciplines of poliitcal science and public administration) because it is duly arrived at by non-governmental bodies. Thus policy analysts lead us to believe that public policy is made only when a government body acts to consider some subject of concern, and that other organizations are not relevant to the study of public policy.

Democracy and Unfreedom: Revisiting Tocqueville and Beaumont in America

2015 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 466-494 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara M. Benson
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Alexis De Tocqueville ◽  
Research Practice ◽  
Democracy In America ◽  
Jacksonian America

This essay reexamines the famous 1831 prison tours of Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont. It reads the three texts that emerged from their collective research practice as a trilogy, one conventionally read in different disciplinary homes ( Democracy in America in political science, On the Penitentiary in criminology, and Marie, Or Slavery: A Novel of Jacksonian America in literature). I argue that in marginalizing the trilogy’s important critique of slavery and punishment, scholars have overemphasized the centrality of free institutions and ignored the unfree institutions that also anchor American political life. The article urges scholars in political theory and political science to attend to this formative moment in mass incarceration and carceral democracy.

Roger Boesche: The Strange Liberalism of Alexis de Tocqueville

1988 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 419-422
Author(s):  
James Schleifer
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Alexis De Tocqueville ◽  
History Of Political Thought ◽  
History Of

Roger Boesche, Chair of the Department of Political Science at Occidental College in Los Angeles, lias already written several thoughtful articles about Tocqueville, each marked by clarity of thought and expression: ’The Prison: Tocqueville’s Model for Despotism,” Western Political Quarterly 33 (December 1980):550-63; “The Strange Liberalism of Alexis de Tocqueville,” History of Political Thought 2 (Winter 1981): 495-524; “Why Could Tocqueville Predict So Well?” Political Theory 11 (February 1983): 79-104; “Tocqueville and Le Commerce’. A Newspaper Expressing His Unusual Liberalism,” Journal of the History of Ideas 44 (April-June 1983): 277-92; and “Hedonism and Nihilism: The Predictions of Tocqueville and Nietzsche,” The Tocqueville Review 8 (1986/87): 165-84.

British Politics

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter John
Keyword(s):  
Interest Groups ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
British Politics ◽  
Political Behaviour ◽  
Media Agenda ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Politics And Law ◽  
Institutional Foundations

British Politics provides an introduction to British politics with an emphasis on political science to analyse the fundamental features of British politics, and the key changes post-Brexit. Part A looks at constitutional and institutional foundations of the subject. Chapters in this part look at leadership and debating politics and law creation. The second part is about political behaviour and citizenship. Here chapters consider elections, the media, agenda setting, and political turbulence. The final part is about policy-making and delegation. The chapters in this part examine interest groups, advocacy, policy-making, governing through bureaucracy and from below, delegating upwards, and British democracy now.

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