Suchergebnisse

JACK P. GUEISE, IN A REPLY TO GRAFSTEIN, SUGGESTS THAT ALTHOUGH GRAFSTEIN TENDS TO MAKE THE EXISTENCE OF FREEDOM INTO A SEMANTIC RATHER THAN POLITICAL ISSUE, LESS SEPARATES THE TWO WRITERS THAN MEETS THE EYE. GUEISE CONCLUDES, THE VIRTUE OF SEEING FREEDOM FROM THE PERSPECTIVE HE PROPOSES IS THAT IT COMPELS THE VERY SORT OF ATTENTION TO THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF OUR ACTIONS THAT GRAFSTEIN THINKS IS IMPORTANT. HENCE, FREEDOM IS TO BE SEEN NOT AS SOME ISOLATED PHENOMENON ASSOCIATED WITH THE AUTONOMOUS INDIVIDUAL BUT AS A POSSIBLE FEATURE OF INDIVIDUALS ACTING POLITICALLY. IT IS, AS WELL, A FEATURE THAT NEEDS NURTURING.

AbstractFifty years ago, Canadian political science (CPS) debated whether there was an "Americanization problem" in the discipline. Today, the idea does not have the same force. This article revisits the debate by focusing on one of the main points of concerns: the doctoral training of CPS faculty. The article presents an original dataset of tenure and tenure-track faculty at CPS departments. It then provides analysis of where these tenure and tenure-track faculty received their doctorates, by sub-field and rank, paying particular attention to the country of doctoral training. Unlike fifty years ago, Canadian-trained scholars form a much larger share of the professoriate. There is no evidence of a trend towards more American-trained scholars among recent hires of assistant professors. However, the results also suggest a continuing status hierarchy between the two countries. It concludes by arguing that CPS needs to be more reflective about its position within this status hierarchy.

On the face of it, there would seem to be little evidence suggesting that the political science of Thomas Jefferson owed much, if anything, to the speculation of Niccolò Machiavelli. The Virginian appears to have mentioned the Florentine by name but once, and he did so in a manner conveying his disdain for the author of The Prince. And yet, as I try to show in this article, Jefferson's commitment to limited government, his advocacy of a politics of distrust, his eager embrace of a species of populism, his ultimate understanding of the executive power, and the intention guiding the comprehensive legislative program that he devised for Virginia make sense only when understood in terms of the new science of republican politics articulated by Machiavelli in his Discourses on Livy.

DURING THE PAST DECADE, POLITICAL RESEARCHERS HAVE DEVOTED GROWING ATTENTION TO WOMEN'S POLITICAL INVOLVEMENT AND, TO A SOMEWHAT LESSER EXTENT, THEIR POLITICAL ATTITUDES IN WESTERN CULTURES. THIS INTEREST HAS BEEN A RESPONSE IN PART TO CONTEMPORARY FEMINIST MOVEMENTS AND, MORE SPECIFICALLY TO THE INCREASINGLY VISIBLE ROLE OF WOMEN AS SOCIAL ACTIVISTS, PARTISAN ELITES AND GOVERNMENTAL DECISION MAKERS IN WESTERN EUROPEAN AND NORTH AMERICAN SOCIETY. IN THE FRENCH ELECTORAL LITERATURE, RECENT ANALYSES OF WOMEN'S POLITICAL ATTITUDES HAVE ADDRESSED TWO MAJOR EMPIRICAL PHENOMENA, NAMELY THE EXTENT OF FEMALE POLITICIZATION DURING THE 1970S COMPARED WITH THE IMMEDIATE POST-WAR YEARS, AND PATTERNS OF PARTISAN PREFERENCE IN THIS SAME CHRONOLOGICAL PERIOD.2 SUCH STUDIES GENERALLY CONCLUDE THAT FRENCH WOMEN ARE INCREASINGLY POLITICIZED AND, AT THE SAME TIME, INCREASINGLY LEFTIST IN THEIR PARTISAN BELIEFS.3 DESPITE THE CONSENSUS WHICH HAS EMERGED AROUND BOTH OF THESE TRENDS, THE DEVELOPMENT OF WOMEN'S ATTITUDES IN FRANCE REMAINS IN NEED OF SYSTEMATIC ATTENTION. ON A CONCEPTUAL LEVEL, MANY EXISTING STUDIES HAVE FAILED TO RELATE SHIFTS IN FEMALE PUBLIC OPINION WITH BROADER PATTERNS OF POLITICAL AND SOCIAL CHANGE IN MODERN FRANCE. SUCH FACTORS AS THE DECLINE OF TRADITIONAL RELIGIOSITY.

There are very few freedom of information cases that have been heard by the High Court of Australia and this article discusses freedom of information rights in the context of the Court's recent important decision in McKinnon. After reviewing the judgments in the case, the author advocates that freedom of information rights must not be seen in isolation, but in the context of broader constitutional rights, including the implied right to political freedom of communication, as well as the doctrine of representative government. It is suggested that the effect of the decision is to unduly narrow the rights citizens would otherwise have under freedom of information laws, and is contrary to the spirit of such laws. It compromises the ability of the sovereign people to exercise that sovereignty over their elected representatives. Placing freedom of information rights into this broader constitutional perspective, the decision can be seen as out of step with the Constitution and its prescribed system of government. More broadly, it is considered that freedom of information principles must be interpreted within the existing constitutional rights framework.

The objectivist truth claims traditionally pressed by most political scientists have made the use of ethnographic methods particularly fraught in the discipline. This article explores what ethnography as a method entails. It makes distinctions between positivist and interpretivist ethnographies and highlights some of the substantive contributions ethnography has made to the study of politics, Lamenting the discipline's abandonment of a conversation with anthropology after Geertz, this review also insists on moving beyond the anthropological controversies so powerfully expressed in the edited volume Writing Culture (1986) and other texts of the 1980s and 1990s. I contend that interpretive social science does not have to forswear generalizations or causal explanations and that ethnographic methods can be used in the service of establishing them. Rather than fleeing from abstractions, ethnographies can and should help ground them. Adapted from the source document.