Suchergebnisse

Provides possible reasons for the fact that President Clinton's job approval ratings in the initial ten days of the Lewinsky matter went up from 60 to 70 percent, suggesting that political substance can move public opinion more than media politics; US.

In Western Europe and especially West Germany, introducing a new approach in political science, biopolitics, is not an easy task. German political science has a very strong and effective philosophical tradition (Aristotle, Aquinas, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Weber), which separates it from the life sciences. Traditionally, political science is a theoretical branch of study, and politics is regarded principally as a rational process. Based on well-known historical experiences, German social scientists raise ideological objections to biology, and, with some exceptions (Flohr, 1979, 1983; Buhl, 1981, 1982), they neglect the findings of the life sciences. Political science mainly operates in a vacuum, adhering to the discipline's traditional monistic conceptions of what politics ought to be. Thus, in Germany the first problem is how to change monistic approaches and create a new kind of scientific conception of the world, one that is open and dynamic (Radnitzky, 1971) and able to integrate findings from the life sciences. Only then can biopolitical perspectives become anchored in the discipline. Thus, introducing biopolitics in Germany depends on a mental change, from traditional monistic conceptions to an open conception.

It has become an article of faith that political history has fallen on hard times in recent years. "[T]he status of the political historian within the profession," William E. Leuchtenburg observed in his 1986 presidential address to the Organization of American Historians (OAH) has "sunk to somewhere between that of a faith healer and a chiropractor." Hugh Davis Graham, in an insightful analysis of policy history, reached a similar conclusion. "The ranks of traditional political history are depleted," he wrote in 1993, "their assumptions and methods discredited along with the Great White Men whose careers they chronicled."

Examines the role of social science in understanding human behavior patterns, & the functions of the humanities & social sciences at the end of the twentieth century. The social sciences emerged out of the study of history in the nineteenth century. On one hand, there has been a proliferation of new methodologies & subject matters, & large & diverse sets of communities of scholars. On the other hand, institutional rigidities have developed & professional practices compromise intellectual creativity within universities. Future challenges include finding new ways to reconfigure scholarship & continue the quest for knowledge in ways the larger public understands while resisting political infuences. Also, institutions must be reshaped to demonstrate social science's utility to society. 13 References. C. Whitcraft