Perspectives on Pluralism

In: PS: political science & politics, Band 36, Heft 3, S. 387-389

Abstract

Comments on Andrew Bennett, Ahron Barth, & Kenneth R. Rutherford's & Peregrine Schwartz-Shea's articles on methodological trends in political science instruction & scholarship (both, 2003), suggesting that the discipline is more & less pluralistic than either claim. It is contended that the raw data are misleading because qualitative & quantitative course offerings are not directly comparable as units of analysis, thus there is more pluralism than Schwartz-Shea found. However, Bennett, Barth, & Rutherford may have found more pluralism than warranted because long-term trends indicating increasing or at least steady pluralism are deemed hard to glean from their data. Questions raised when trying to implement methodological pluralism are delineated. Overall, the authors are lauded for their efforts. 1 Figure, 2 References. J. Zendejas