Suchergebnisse

Not very long ago quantitative historians were on the offensive. Only a decade back the eminent "Annales School" French historian Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie stated in the English language translation of a work he had published a decade earlier in his native language that "tomorrow's historian will have to be able to program a computer in order to survive," and that "history that is not quantifiable cannot claim to be scientific." In America, where even more champions of quantitative work resided, several new journals were founded in the 1970s such as the Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Historical Methods, and Social Science History which were explicitly devoted to new social scientific approaches to the study of history and above all to quantitative approaches. And even in Germany, which seemed the most immune to the quantitative contagion of all the major western lands, owing perhaps to its long entrenched historicist traditions and to its historians' preoccupations with the tragic happenings of its still recent past, the decade of the seventies saw the development of several new outlets for quantitative and social scientific historical research such as Geschichte und Gesellschaft and Historical Social Research/Historische Sozialforschung. Hence to most professional historians, whether they liked it or not, quantitative history appeared to be the wave of the future, and ignoring the new possibilities offered by the computer appeared to risk being relegated to the proverbial dustbin.

"These volumes have been prepared to present in more convenient form for present reference the series of articles on 'American political history,' contributed to Lalor's Cyclopædia of political science, political economy, and political history, by the late Professor Alexander Johnston."--Pref. ; I. The revolution, the Constitution, and the growth of nationality, 1763-1832.--II. The slavery controversy, Civil War and Reconstruction, 1820-1876. ; Mode of access: Internet.

"These volumes have been prepared to present in more convenient form for present reference the series of articles on 'American political history,' contributed to Lalor's Cyclopædia of political science, political economy, and political history, by the late Professor Alexander Johnston."--Pref. ; I. The revolution, the Constitution, and the growth of nationality, 1763-1832.--II. The slavery controversy, Civil War and Reconstruction, 1820-1876. ; Mode of access: Internet.

In social sciences, a law can be defined as a finding of certain regularities in the interrelationships between social facts. These regularities observed, and then validated by the experiment cited, make it possible to propose laws, even if they are not necessarily universal and permanent in nature, as in some cases in physical science. In line with this approach and applying the principles of Claude Bernard's experimental method, we propose two of the demography laws of politics, the number law and the differential law. By means of the experiment referred to, their veracity can be established. The geography of the population can therefore provide useful lessons for political science. ; International audience In social sciences, laws result from interrelationships between social facts that can be frequently observed. These laws are not universal as they can be in physical sciences. However, once observed and experimented, regular events can lead to the recognition of laws. This is what we propose to do, following the principles of Claude Bernard's experimental method, in order to deal with two demogeographic laws of politics : the law of number and the law of differential. Hence we will see how useful for political science population geography can be. ; In social sciences, a law can be defined as a finding of certain regularities in the interrelationships between social facts. These regularities observed, and then validated by the experiment cited, make it possible to propose laws, even if they are not necessarily universal and permanent in nature, as in some cases in physical science. In line with this approach and applying the principles of Claude Bernard's experimental method, we propose two of the demography laws of politics, the number law and the differential law. By means of the experiment referred to, their veracity can be established. The geography of the population can therefore provide useful lessons for political science. ; Dans les sciences sociales, une loi peut se définir comme le constat de ...

It has been said of Alexis de Tocqueville that he is the most frequently quoted and least read author of all, rivaling and surpassing even William Shakespeare for this dubious honor. Virtually every American social scientist who as much as pays lip service to tradition manages to quote Tocqueville at least once. But this deference is to the author of Democracy in America, not of The Old Regime and the Revolution, for the latter book is, with the exception of one passage, neither read nor quoted. The Old Regime is neglected today because it is a political history, and today political history is not appreciated. What is "political history"?Tocqueville's "political history" belongs to a genre of which he considered Montesquieu's "Sur la grandeur et la decadence des Romains" to be the finest example. Tocqueville thought that the nature and habits of his intellect suited him to evaluating modern societies and foreseeing their probable futures, but at the same time he believed he could do this most effectively in historical studies. While flatly denying that one can learn lessons from history in any simple sense, he did nonetheless hold that from an examination of historical particulars one can grasp the universal principles of social existence. His intention in writing The Old Regime was to enable his reader to achieve this same grasp. He, like Montesquieu, would not merely recount facts, but make known their causes and consequences and judge them. He would have to choose his facts well, so that they supported his theses. He would have to present them without making "the character of the work … visible" in the hope that "the reader would be conducted naturally from one reflection to another by the interest of the narrative." Thus what I have called political history is understood by Tocqueville to be a selective, but not necessarily incorrect, use of the facts of history for the purposes of shedding light on the present and of teaching others to see and judge the present for themselves. Given Tocqueville's stated intention, we cannot read his work as either scientific history or political polemic.

This article moves away from issues of the impact of women and feminist scholarship on political science to examine the relationship of feminist political science to a political constituency. It traces the trajectory of feminist political science from its close relationship with women's movement activism in the 1970s to the highly professionalised disciplinary subfield of today. It highlights some of the dilemmas resulting both from professional imperatives and from the norms of research excellence stemming from new forms of research governance. It finds that feminist political science has been pushed towards addressing an international community of scholars in a language inaccessible to local publics. But it finds that despite such pressures, feminist political science has still sought to produce work that is of direct relevance to achieving women's movement goals, whether within public policy or within political institutions broadly conceived. While it may no longer be speaking the same language, it is still seeking to identify the obstacles to change and the possibilities for transformation. This can be seen particularly clearly in the area of research on the intersection of electoral systems, quotas and party structures. Yet even here tensions can emerge, as with the concept of 'critical mass', perceived by activists as a crucial discursive tool but problematised by feminist scholars.