‘Persistent Centrism’ and Its Explanations

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 260-265
Author(s):  
Ujjwal Kumar Singh ◽  
Anupama Roy
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The State ◽  
Situated Knowledge ◽  
Constitutional Design ◽  
Area Studies ◽  
Indian Politics ◽  
Indian State ◽  
National Congress ◽  
American Political Science

Susanne Rudolph and Lloyd Rudolph believed that ‘situated knowledge’ could be realized through area studies, which they argued was consonant with epistemic pluralism and comparative generalization. Their writings reflect a critical relationship with their field as well as the American Political Science academia particularly in the way they envisaged area studies of ‘a different kind’. The Rudolphs proposed that the Indian state and political process could be comprehended through analytical categories ‘adapted’ to capture its particularity. They found ‘a persistent centrism’ to be the most striking feature of Indian politics with the Indian National Congress crucial to the arrival at ‘centrism’. In their later writings, the Rudolphs addressed the contests that emerged in the domain of the state, particularly in the context of the diminished ‘interventionist state’, grappling with contests over political power, the institutional matrix of the state and constitutional design.

Area Studies and the Disciplines: A Rejoinder

1997 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-31
Author(s):  
John W. Harbeson
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
American Political Science Association ◽  
Important Work ◽  
Area Studies ◽  
The Social ◽  
American Political Science ◽  
Science Association

Robert Bates’ letter entitled “Area Studies and the Discipline” (American Political Science Association, Comparative Politics 1, Winter 1996, pp. 1-2) uses the occasion of the SSRC’s abolishing of area committees to announce that “within the academy, the consensus has formed that area studies has failed to generate scientific knowledge.” As someone who has done some of his most important work on African development issues, Bates deplores declining investment in area studies as a “loss to the social sciences, as well as to the academy,” at an inopportune moment, “just when our [political science] discipline is becoming equipped to handle area knowledge in a rigorous fashion.”

The Illinois Congressional Redistricting Case

1946 ◽  
Vol 40 (5) ◽  
pp. 958-962
Author(s):  
Franklin L. Burdette
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Political Science ◽  
The State ◽  
District Court ◽  
American Political Science Association ◽  
Federal Law ◽  
Congressional Districts ◽  
State Supreme Court ◽  
The University ◽  
American Political Science

Unsuccessful as plaintiffs and appellees in a prayer for relief under the Federal Declaratory Judgment Act of 1934, as amended, from the effects of the inequitable and outmoded act of Illinois of 1901 creating the present Congressional districts, Kenneth W. Colegrove (who in other capacities is chairman of the department of political science at Northwestern University and secretary-treasurer of the American Political Science Association), Peter J. Chamales, attorney, and Kenneth C. Sears, professor of law at the University of Chicago, have nevertheless received from the District Court and from the Supreme Court encouraging dicta and dissent which foreshadow new developments in election law.The legislature of Illinois has repeatedly refused to redistrict the state for Congressional representation, despite grave and increasing population shifts. A new but inequitable Congressional redistricting act, passed by the General Assembly in 1931, was declared unconstitutional by the state supreme court because it violated federal law and the provision of the Illinois constitution requiring that “all elections shall be free and equal.” Ten years later, when a similar attack was made on the long-standing and much more discriminatory act of 1901, the Illinois supreme court took an opposite view, declaring that the constitutional section is addressed primarily to the legislature and that to argue for a requirement, in all cases, that districts be equal in population “is to assert a millennium which cannot be reached.”

(Not) Getting Religion: Has Political Science Lost Sight of Islam?

2011 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-228 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sultan Tepe ◽  
Betul Demirkaya
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Annual Meeting ◽  
North Africa ◽  
American Political Science Association ◽  
Area Studies ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
American Political Science ◽  
Middle East Studies ◽  
Science Association

AbstractIn this analysis, we expand the debate on the place of religion in political science by using the predictions of Wald and Wilcox as our starting point. Following in their footsteps, we ask how political scientists have studied Islam since 2002 and identify the studies on Islam and Muslims at the flagship conference of the discipline, the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association. We evaluate not only the quantity but also the approaches employed by these studies. In order to gauge the balancing of roles (or lack thereof) between the discipline and area studies, we also take a closer look at the Middle East Studies Association, the largest association focused on the Middle East, North Africa and the Islamic world and its annual meetings during the same period. Our findings suggest that, unless carefully addressed, the prevailing patterns are likely to result in a crippling knowledge gap among political scientists.

Present Tendencies in American Politics

1920 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Henry Jones Ford
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Annual Meeting ◽  
The State ◽  
American Political Science Association ◽  
The Road ◽  
Standard Work ◽  
Running Away ◽  
American Political Science ◽  
First Time ◽  
Science Association

For the first time since its sessions began in 1904, the American Political Science Association was last year unable to hold its regular annual meeting. For fourteen years, in unbroken series, the association had brought its members together for conference and discussion; but last year, with more matter in its field engaging thought and provoking study than ever before, the association had to suspend its activities. This was due to circumstances so well known that the matter would be scarcely worth mentioning were it not that it exhibits a plight in which political science is apt to find itself whenever the ordinary course of events is interrupted by some great catastrophe.In President Lowell's standard work on Governments and Parties in Continental Europe, he remarks that to him “the State sometimes presents itself under the figure of a stage-coach with the horses running away. On the front a number of eager men are urging the most contrary advice on the driver, whose chief object is to keep his seat; while at the back a couple of old gentlemen with spy-glasses are carefully surveying the road already traversed.”

The State of American Political Science

Politics ◽  
1986 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 119-122
Author(s):  
Andrew Parkin
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
The State ◽  
American Political Science

The competing meanings of “biopolitics” in political science: Biological and postmodern approaches to politics

2012 ◽  
Vol 31 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 2-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurette T. Liesen ◽  
Mary Barbara Walsh
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Annual Meeting ◽  
Michel Foucault ◽  
Political Behavior ◽  
Life Sciences ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
American Political Science

The term “biopolitics” carries multiple, sometimes competing, meanings in political science. When the term was first used in the United States in the late 1970s, it referred to an emerging subdiscipline that incorporated the theories and data of the life sciences into the study of political behavior and public policy. But by the mid-1990s, biopolitics was adopted by postmodernist scholars at the American Political Science Association's annual meeting who followed Foucault's work in examining the power of the state on individuals. Michel Foucault first used the term biopolitics in the 1970s to denote social and political power over life. Since then, two groups of political scientists have been using this term in very different ways. This paper examines the parallel developments of the term “biopolitics,” how two subdisciplines gained (and one lost) control of the term, and what the future holds for its meaning in political science.

DO COMPARATIVE AND REGIONAL STUDIES OF NATIONALISM INTERSECT?

2005 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 587-612 ◽  
Author(s):  
Moshe Behar
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Political Science ◽  
American Political Science Association ◽  
Regional Studies ◽  
Regional Research ◽  
Area Studies ◽  
American Political Science ◽  
Middle East Studies ◽  
Science Association

The question behind this article evolved from two separate observations. While the expansion of comparative and cross-regional research has been actively promoted by leading scholars of the Middle East (and was later encouraged by such bodies as the Middle East Studies Association and this journal), so has the incorporation of scholarly insights from area studies been urged by leading political scientists as a prerequisite for revitalizing all of the discipline's subfields and institutionally endorsed by the American Political Science Association. Viewed as interrelated, these observations prompted the question framing this text: if the aims of many Middle East scholars and institutions are compatible with the aims of many political scientists and their association, why have they remained largely parallel, as suggested by scholars within both fields?

Crisis, Choice, and Change in Retrospect

1992 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 345-367 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriel A. Almond ◽  
Scott C. Flanagan ◽  
Robert J. Mundt
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
New Institutionalism ◽  
American Political Science Review ◽  
Program Committee ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Life ◽  
American Political Science Association ◽  
The Political ◽  
American Political Science ◽  
Science Association

THE ‘NEW INSTITUTIONALISM’ HAS BEEN THE MOST VISIBLE movement in American political science during the last decade. It is a recoil from reductionism that is said to have dominated the political science of the previous decades. During the American Political Science Association presidency of Charles E. Lindblom in 1981, with Theodore Lowi and Sidney Tarrow as co-chairs of the Program Committee, it was decided that all titles of panels and round tables at the annual meeting were to have ‘and the state’ tacked on. The implication was that the behavioural revolution had resulted in the neglect of the power and autonomy of the state. But this adding on ‘and the state’ had very little effect on the content of the papers, and seemed primarily to have ‘buzzword’ significance. A second manifestation of this discomfort was an article in the American Political Science Review of 1984 by James March and Johan Olsen, entitled ‘The New Institutionalism; The Organizational Factor in Political Life’, followed by a book by the same two authors called Rediscovering Institutions: The Organizational Basis of Politics.

Toward Hegemony

2019 ◽  
pp. 101-116 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suhas Palshikar
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Paradigm Shift ◽  
Party System ◽  
The State ◽  
Central Force ◽  
Indian Politics ◽  
The Public ◽  
Dominant Party ◽  
National Congress ◽  
The Public Sphere

This chapter discusses the paradigm shift in Indian politics beyond the realm of electoral hegemony. The historical mandate of 2014 was the watershed moment which has resulted in the restructuring of the party system and the emergence of a new ideological framework in the public sphere. The BJP succeeded in breaching linguistic, cultural and state barriers by creating an All India Imagination, this marks the dawn of the second dominant party system since the Indian National Congress in 1989. This vision of New India with Modi as the central force spells trouble for the state parties. The potent combination of development, Hindutva and nationalism shapes this new hegemony. Paradoxically, only an electoral upset can bring the BJP’s march to hegemony to a halt.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document