Beyond Relativism in Political Theory

1947 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 470-488 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arnold Brecht
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Round Table ◽  
American Political Science Association ◽  
University Of Illinois ◽  
Scientific Methods ◽  
The University ◽  
American Political Science ◽  
Good And Evil

Modern science and modern scientific methods, with all their splendor of achievement, have led to an ethical vacuum, a religious vacuum, and a philosophical vacuum—so it has been said. For they have offered little or nothing to distinguish between good and evil, right and wrong, justice and injustice. All social sciences are involved in this calamity, but none has been so deeply affected as political science, which had to face the new creeds of Communism, Fascism, and Nazism as political phenomena of tremendous power. They settled down in the area abandoned by science, taking full advantage of the fact that, scientifically speaking, there was a vacuum.No political theorist can honestly avoid the issue, and certainly every scholar worthy of the name gives it serious thought. While each may publish his own ideas freely, there is one thing which we cannot do individually, but which we may do collectively—take stock of the various opinions that prevail among us, and clarify their meaning by question and answer. This the members of a round-table tried to do at the last meeting of the American Political Science Association, in two sessions held jointly with the Research Panel on Political Theory, represented by its chairman, Francis G. Wilson of the University of Illinois.

Are the Nation's Leading Political Science Programs Practicing the Egalitarian Values Espoused in American Democracy in an Age of Rising Inequality, And if Not, How Can They?

2008 ◽  
Vol 41 (03) ◽  
pp. 567-573 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth Oldfield
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Task Force ◽  
American Political Science Association ◽  
Participation Rates ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
University Of Illinois ◽  
The University ◽  
American Political Science ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Science Association

The American Political Science Association (APSA) has roughly 14,000 members. In fall 2002, APSA appointed a “Task Force on Inequality and American Democracy” (TFIAD). The group's 15 members represented various prestigious American universities, including, for example, Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. TFIAD was tasked with assessing the relationship between economic inequality in America and changes in political participation rates in our representative democracy.

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.”

Elinor Ostrom

2012 ◽  
Vol 31 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 107
Author(s):  
David Goetze
Keyword(s):  
Policy Analysis ◽  
Public Choice ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Science ◽  
American Political Science Association ◽  
Indiana University ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Choice Society ◽  
American Political Science ◽  
Science Association

On June 12, 2012 Elinor Ostrom died. She was Distinguished Professor, Arthur F. Bentley Professor of Political Science, and founder of the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University (now renamed in honor of her and her husband Vincent, who also passed away this year). Lin served as the President of the American Political Science Association and the Public Choice Society and was the first woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics (2009). She was an enthusiastic contributor to APLS Annual Meetings—she organized panels, served as a plenary speaker at our 2006 meeting on the IU campus, and gave the keynote address at the 2010 meeting in Bloomington.

scholarly journals A Conversation with Theda Skocpol

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Theda Skocpol ◽  
Eric Schickler
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Harvard University ◽  
American Political Science Association ◽  
National Academy Of Sciences ◽  
Arts And Sciences ◽  
Social Science History ◽  
The Social ◽  
The University ◽  
Academy Of Sciences ◽  
American Political Science

An interview with Theda Skocpol took place at Harvard University in December 2017. Professor Skocpol is the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology at Harvard University. Skocpol is the author of numerous books and articles well known in political science and beyond, including States and Social Revolutions, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers, Diminished Democracy: From Membership to Management in American Civic Life, and The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism (the latter coauthored with Vanessa Williamson). Skocpol has served as President of the American Political Science Association and the Social Science History Association. Among her honors, she is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the National Academy of Sciences, and she was awarded the Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science. She was interviewed by Eric Schickler, the Jeffrey & Ashley McDermott Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. The following is an edited transcript; a video of the entire interview can be viewed at https://www.annualreviews.org/r/theda-skocpol .

Rethinking African Politics: An Interview with Crawford Young

2002 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-114
Author(s):  
Mustafa Kemal Mirzeler
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Field Research ◽  
Assistant Professor ◽  
American Political Science Association ◽  
African Politics ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Professional Career ◽  
University Of Wisconsin ◽  
The University ◽  
American Political Science

For political scientists, and particularly scholars and students of Africa, Crawford Young needs litde introduction. However, as he has now achieved an emeritus status at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, it is time to present his intimate understanding of African politics in the last forty years.Born in Philadelphia in November 1931, Young received his B.A, from the University of Michigan in 1953. He studied at the Institute of Historical Research at the University of London from 1955 to 1956 and at die Institut d'Etudes Politiques, University of Paris, from 1956 to 1957. He dien entered graduate school at Harvard University, completing his doctorate degree in political science in 1964. In 1963 Young was offered an assistant professor position by the Department of Political Science at die University of Wisconsin–Madison. He remained tiiere for his entire career, retiring in January 2001. He has held visiting professorships at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda (1965–66), and at the University of Dakar in Senegal (1987–88). He also served as dean of the Faculty of Social Science at the Université Nationale du Zaire from 1973 to 1975. Among his publications are twelve monographs, over one hundred articles, and chapters in numerous books. Several of Young's works have been translated into different languages.Young's professional career includes extended field research in Congo-Kinshasa, Senegal, and Uganda. He has received many prestigious awards such as the Herskovits Prize (African Studies Association) and the Ralph Bunche Award (American Political Science Association) for The Politics of Cultural Pluralism (Wisconsin, 1976), and the Gregory Luebbert Prize (APSA) for The African Colonial State in Comparative Perspective (Yale, 1994).

Some Contributions of Sociology to Modern Political Theory

1921 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 487-533 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harry Elmer Barnes
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
New York ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Science ◽  
American Political Science Association ◽  
The Subject ◽  
American Political Science ◽  
Published Paper ◽  
Science Association

The fact that a sociologist has been requested to appear upon the program of the American Political Science Association is in itself far more significant than any remarks which may be made upon the subject of the relation of sociology to political theory. It is an admission that some political scientists have at last come to consider sociology of sufficient significance to students of politics to be worthy a brief survey of its contributions to modern political theory.Many of the more liberal and progressive political scientists will doubtless ask themselves if this is not erecting a man of straw, and will inquire if there was ever a time when political scientists were not willing to consider the doctrines of sociology. One or two brief reminders will doubtless allay this suspicion. It was only about twenty years ago that a leading New York daily is reputed to have characterized a distinguished American sociologist as “the fake professor of a pretended science.” About a decade ago an ex-president of this association declared in a twice published paper that sociology was essentially worthless and unscientific and that all of its data had already been dealt with more adequately by the special social sciences.

109th Annual Meeting, Chicago, Aug. 29–Sept. 1, 2013

2013 ◽  
Vol 46 (04) ◽  
pp. 899-903
Author(s):  
Lauren West
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Annual Meeting ◽  
American Political Science Association ◽  
London School ◽  
Meeting Program ◽  
Social Events ◽  
Northwestern University ◽  
London School Of Economics ◽  
The University ◽  
American Political Science

The American Political Science Association returned to its roots for the 2013 Annual Meeting and Exhibition. In 1904, the association held its first Annual Meeting at Northwestern University and the University of Chicago. While the meeting attendance in 1904 was a modest gathering with a dozen presentations, the 2013 APSA Annual Meeting brought together more than 6,000 political scientists from all over the world for a variety of programmatic, networking, and social events. Some 800 panels were offered. From August 29 to September 1, scholars gathered in historic Chicago to explore an exciting program focused on the themePower and Persuasion. The 2013 Annual Meeting Program Chairs Catherine Boone, now at London School of Economics and Political Science, and Archon Fung, Harvard University, framed the meeting around the theme statement: “To help societies meet the needs for political interactions of increasing complexity and scale, political scientists need to understand better the uses and abuses of both persuasion and power in varying contexts and scales. This year's theme encouraged scholars to consider the politics of persuasion and power, along with their many intersections.”

Political Theorists

2010 ◽  
Vol 43 (02) ◽  
pp. 263-264
Author(s):  
Matthew J. Moore
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Graduate Training ◽  
American Political Science Association ◽  
The Core ◽  
Relative Value ◽  
American Political Science ◽  
Science Association

The question of the role of normative or historical political theory within the broader discipline of political science has been controversial at least since the founding of the American Political Science Association (see Gunnell 2006 for a brief overview). Perhaps it goes without saying that during that same period people who think of themselves as engaged in political theory have disagreed among themselves about the core concerns of the field, the appropriate kinds of graduate training, the relative value of various authors and texts, and, of course, about theory's role within political science.

Elinor Ostrom

2012 ◽  
Vol 31 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 107-107
Author(s):  
David Goetze
Keyword(s):  
Policy Analysis ◽  
Public Choice ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Science ◽  
American Political Science Association ◽  
Indiana University ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Choice Society ◽  
American Political Science ◽  
Science Association

On June 12, 2012 Elinor Ostrom died. She was Distinguished Professor, Arthur F. Bentley Professor of Political Science, and founder of the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University (now renamed in honor of her and her husband Vincent, who also passed away this year). Lin served as the President of the American Political Science Association and the Public Choice Society and was the first woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics (2009). She was an enthusiastic contributor to APLS Annual Meetings—she organized panels, served as a plenary speaker at our 2006 meeting on the IU campus, and gave the keynote address at the 2010 meeting in Bloomington.

Fact and Fiction in Government

1934 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isidor Loeb
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Science ◽  
American Political Science Association ◽  
Governmental Organization ◽  
Inaugural Meeting ◽  
Profound Influence ◽  
The Government ◽  
And Function ◽  
American Political Science ◽  
Science Association

Three decades have elapsed since the first president of the American Political Science Association at its inaugural meeting described the objects and purposes that it should pursue. Some of his successors have discussed various details of this program and others have reviewed the results achieved. Due recognition has been accorded to the significance of historical backgrounds, legal systems, and political theory. In addition, emphasis has been placed upon the importance of an understanding of the government as it actually functions. Hence, much of the work of this Association and its members has been devoted to the investigation and exposition of those customs, procedures, and institutions which, with or without any recognition by constitution or statute, exercise a profound influence over governmental organization and function.It is natural that during this period significant changes should have appeared in the scope of Political Science and in the character of the techniques employed, with resulting differences in data and conclusions.

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