Suchergebnisse

The article considers the development of electoral political science as a new direction of Ukrainian political science. It is noted that in connection with the democratization of post-Soviet political regimes, there is an objective need to conduct electoral research, which should explain the peculiarities of voter behavior and the prospects for the use of electoral technologies. The origins of electoral research in American political science (P. Lazarsfeld, B. Berelson, G. Goda, E. Katz) and their perspectives in the context of possible autonomy in Ukrainian political science are shown. The contribution of specific foreign and domestic scientists to the development of electoral political science is highlighted. It is concluded that in Ukraine electoral political science as a scientific discourse emerged in the last decade of the twentieth century almost "from scratch" and is now formed as an autonomous branch of domestic political science.

This paper serves as an exposition of the causal inference methods that are most popular in political science. Rather than focusing on technical details we present a brief summary of main ideas behind each method with the goal of making them accessible to a broad audience of researchers. We also provide a research design algorithm for each method. First, we focus on a general motivation behind causal inference methods. We discuss how the problem of causality arises in hypothesis testing and describe the relationship between democracy and economic development as a case in point. Second, we give an exposition of a general causality problem within the framework of Rubin Causal Model (RCM). We provide all basic definitions and then demonstrate how the problem of causal inference arise within RCM. Third, we describe the most frequently used methods of causal inference such as randomized experiments, regression discontinuity design, difference-in-difference design, and instrumental variables. For each method we give a reader a general description as well as steps of a research design. We also briefly discuss advantages and disadvantages of each method. Armed with this knowledge, a reader can use it to find the method that is the most appropriate for a research problem at hand. We conclude by arguing that the ideas of causal inference are useful for both quantitative and qualitative research.

Frontmatter -- Contents -- List of boxes -- Introduction: What are Parties For? -- Part I: The Major Parties -- 1. The Labour Party -- 2. The Conservative Party -- Part II: The Minor Parties -- 3. The Liberal Democrats -- 4. Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish Parties -- Part III: Peripheral Parties -- Introduction -- 5. Right-wing Peripheral Parties -- 6. Left-wing Peripheral Parties -- 7. Other Peripheral Parties and Independent Candidates -- 8. Conclusion: What Kind of Party System? -- References -- Index

How is foreign policy made? Who makes it? To what conscious and unconscious influences are policy-makers subject? What is distinctive about the immensely complex process as it unfolds in Britain? And what, therefore, is distinctive and characteristic about Britain's foreign policy today? Who in Britain, has the decisive word? Why is the Foreign Office the king-pin of the system? Why does Parliament count for so little? Does public opinion count at all? Originally published in 1968, these are some of the questions which this book considers in the course of a tightly argued but very readable analysis. Some had been considered on their own elsewhere, but this study represented the first attempt by a contemporary political scientist to pull together, in brief compass, all the relevant threads - including the constitutional, the political, the institutional and the sociological. It is done, moreover, on the basis of a sharp assessment of the type of foreign policy problem that most notably confronted Britain at the time. The author has been successively journalist, official of the Israel Government, and university lecturer in politics. Throughout, his special interests and activities have been in the sphere of international affairs and it was while teaching International Relations at the University of Sussex that he wrote this book. He combines the experience of one who has seen the policy being made from the inside with the theoretical insight of the political scientist; he assesses with a sympathetic but unemotional detachment the constraints on the formation of British foreign policy.

Peter Kerr (2002) recently argued in this journal that evolutionary theories could be of great benefit to political scientists' investigations of change. He is not successful in establishing a case for evolutionary theory in political science due to the misconception that evolutionary theory can have explanatory power without being functionalist. Two options for the use of evolution in political science are set out: firstly, leave the concept at the level of metaphor which might add richness to narratives of political change; or secondly, accept functionalism & construct political science theories along the lines beginning to develop in evolutionary economics. The conclusion is the need for a dynamic approach while avoiding functionalism, & that political science at this stage should remain agnostic & critical about when & where particular dynamic mechanisms may operate. 18 References. Adapted from the source document.