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The political science program of the National Science Foundation (NSF) announces its awards for basic research support and dissertation improvement grants for fiscal year 2010.

THIS ARTICLE IS AN INVESTIGATION OF THE INFLUENCE OF RELIGION ON POLITICS. IT SHOWS HOW CERTAIN EARLY NATIONALISTS RELIED ON A FORM OF MILLENNIAL THEORY TO SHAPE AN EARLY VERSION OF NATIONALISM. THESE "POLITICAL MILLENNIALISTS" ARE INTRODUCED THROUGH A REVIEW OF THEIR ORATIONS, PAMPHLETS, AND SERMONS. THEIR COMPLEX BRAND OF MILLENNIALISM IS DISCUSSED IN THE CONTEXT OF RECENT SCHOLARSHIP. THE ARTICLE DEMONSTRATES THAT THEIR RELIANCE ON MILLENNIAL THEMES LED THEM TO CREATE A FORM OF NATIONALISM CHARACTERIZED BY INTERVENTIONISM, ISOLATIONISM AND XENOPHOBIA. THROUGHOUT THE 1790S, THIS POLITICAL MILLENNIALISM EXACERBATED CONFLICT AND INSTABILITY IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC. AT THE END OF THE CENTURY, IT WAS REJECTED IN FAVOR OF A MORE PRAGMATIC POLITICS. BUT MILLENNIAL THEMES PERSISTED, AND FOR BETTER OR WORSE, THEY ARE SEEN IN OUR NATIONALISM EVEN TODAY.

This paper critically analyzes the means-ends rationality inherent in three ideologies of racial nationalism. Although such an instrumental rationality may be based on an irrational racist nationalist mythology that exploits the emotive power of mythic narratives & images of race & nation, nationalist ideology also appeals to people's reason & their need to rationalize or legitimize relations of political inequality & domination. In this sense nationalism offers a simple but compelling Machiavellian logic with mass appeal to quite 'normal'/rational people, like many of the adherents to German, Afrikaner & African nationalism. Moreover, in all three of these cases the exploited & oppressed mass publics largely consented to the self-serving ideological demands of authoritarian party elites. Through the applied critique, this analysis seeks to expose the seductive logic of nationalist ideologies, & its effectiveness in forging a mutually destructive nexus between mass consent & elite power. 28 References. Adapted from the source document.

Once sparce and sporadic, histories of political science have proliferated in recent years. We contend that such histories are a necessary feature of the discourse of political science, because there are essential connections between the history, identity, and actual practices of any rationally progressive discipline. In light of the fact that the objects political scientists study are historically and contextually contingent, there has been—and should be—a plurality of histories to match the diversity of approaches in politicalscience. Unfortunately, most histories of political science prove either "Whiggish" and condescending toward the past, or "skeptical" and negative. The consequence has been an inadequate understanding of the relationship between plurality, rationality, and progress in the discipline. Taking into account both the deficiencies and achievements of Whiggish and skeptical accounts, we argue that context-sensitive histories would better serve the rationality and progress of political science.

IT IS PERHAPS A SIGN OF THE GREATER MATURITY OF THE DISCIPLINE OF POLITICAL SCIENCE TODAY THAT THE 'GREAT DEBATE' OF THE IMMEDIATE POSTWAR PERIOD ON THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF THE SUBJECT HAS NOW DIED DOWN. THE VAST QUANTITIES OF INK THAT WERE SPILLED DID NOT RESULT IN A VICTORY FOR EITHER OF THE TWO GREAT CAMPS - THE TRADITIONALISTS OR THE BEHAVIOURISTS - BUT IN A RECOGNITION, THAT THE SUBJECT OF THE STUDY OF POLITICS WAS TOO GREAT, AND TOO COMPLEX, TO BE APPROACHED ONLY FROM THIS ANGLE OR THAT, BUT REQUIRED THE APPLICATION OF MANY DIFFERENT METHODS, AND OF MANY DIFFERENT KINDS OF MINDS, IF PROGRESS WAS TO BE MADE TOWARDS THE BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF THE WAYS IN WHICH MAN PROVIDED FOR HIS OWN GOVERNANCE. HOWEVER, IF THE STUDENTS OF POLITICAL THOUGHT, OF CONSTITUTIONS AND INSTITUTIONS, NOW WORK ALONGSIDE THE PRACTITIONERS OF 'EMPIRICAL', AND INDEED OF QUANTITITIVE, TECHNIQUES FOR THE STUDY OF POLITICS, IT IS IN LARGE PART DUE TO THE EFFORTS OF FRIEDRICH. THE NORMATIVE DIMENSION OF THE STUDY OF MAN AND HIS POLITICAL ACTIVITIES, IS AN ADDITIONAL COMPLICATION, BUT IT DOES NOT ABSOLVE THE THEORIST FROM THE NEED TO RELATE HIS THEORY TO PERCEIVED REALITY, NOR THE EMPIRICIST FROM THE NECESSITY OF PLACING HIS OBSERVATIONS WITHIN A CONTEXT WHICH ALONE WILL GIVE THEM SIGNIFICANCE.

A requirement of subject-matter concentration—generally to the extent of two full-year courses or their equivalent in the student's annual budget of four or five—during the last two years of the undergraduate curriculum is common to the great majority of colleges and universities granting liberal arts degrees. It complements a requirement of diversification that is also commonly prescribed as a restriction on the freedom students otherwise would have to concentrate still further in their choices among course offerings. Together, the two embody a philosophy of balance in the distribution of studies; but they do not define the scope or content of any particular area of concentration.The requirement of a "major" applies equally to a wide variety of fields of study, in the humanities and the natural as well as the social sciences. The aims and problems of the major in political science, therefore, are in large measure those of the major as such. They merge, indeed, into the broader question of the general goals of college education in the upper-class years, since the major figures so importantly in the work of juniors and seniors. They focus on two points chiefly: (1) the course content, or area, of the major in political science, and (2) the ways and means of instruction within the major, to the end of deepening its educational value. Put more briefly, the problems are what to learn and how to learn in the area of principal interest.