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We are now entering a new era of computing in political science. The first era was marked by punched-card technology. Initially, the most sophisticated analyses possible were frequency counts and tables produced on a counter-sorter, a machine that specialized in chewing up data cards. By the early 1960s, batch processing on large mainframe computers became the predominant mode of data analysis, with turnaround time of up to a week. By the late 1960s, turnaround time was cut down to a matter of a few minutes and OSIRIS and then SPSS (and more recently SAS) were developed as general-purpose data analysis packages for the social sciences. Even today, use of these packages in batch mode remains one of the most efficient means of processing large-scale data analysis.

We are now entering a new era of computing in political science. The first era was marked by punched-card technology. Initially, the most sophisticated analyses possible were frequency counts and tables produced on a counter-sorter, a machine that specialized in chewing up data cards. By the early 1960s, batch processing on large mainframe computers became the predominant mode of data analysis, with turnaround time of up to a week. By the late 1960s, turnaround time was cut down to a matter of a few minutes and OSIRIS and then SPSS (and more recently SAS) were developed as general-purpose data analysis packages for the social sciences. Even today, use of these packages in batch mode remains one of the most efficient means of processing large-scale data analysis.

Psychology departments seldom take their students back to the thicket of Freud's Collected Works. Medical schools turn to Hippocrates mostly for his oath, not for his skills at analyzing the pathologies of female hysteria. Those learning to study the universe today do not work through the elliptical paths of the stars and planets that Ptolemy developed so that he might keep the earth at the center of things. So, why should the discipline of political science be any different? Why should we teach our students about those methods employed by political scientists generations ago, methods that often look quite primitive next to the sophisticated tools of analysis and measurement that dominate current political science curricula?Why should one resist the forces that drive a discipline and a society to a sort of methodological amnesia? History may repeat itself, as the adage suggests, but methods of analysis often build on themselves to correct past inadequacies or they are replaced by those more able to address with precision the concerns of the discipline.

Machiavelli is presented as the founder of modern political science, with due regard to the fact that he never spoke of "political science." His usage of "prudence" and "art" in The Prince is examined to see whether, as founder, he was a teacher or a ruler of future generations. His comprehensive attack on classical political science is outlined and developed through two essential points, the cycle and the soul.

At the 1980 APSA meeting in Washington, a group of approximately 25 political scientists and others, out of a much larger network of contributors and sympathizers, agreed to form an Association for Politics and the Life Sciences dedicated to the advancement of an integrated biosocial perspective in our discipline. Although this short article is intended primarily to announce that fact and detail plans for the immediate future, we feel that this might also be an appropriate occasion to review briefly the history and rationale behind this intellectual activity and describe some of the objectives of the Association.The study of the relationship between biology and politics (sometimes called "biobehavioral political science" and sometimes also "biopolitics") drew its initial impetus in the latter 1960s and early 1970s from emergent developments in a number of other disciplines, particularly (a) ethology (the naturalistic study of animal behavior and adaptation), (b) psychophysiology (specifically, efforts to correlate various physiological characteristics and "indicators" with various mental and behavioral states), (c) psychobiology (including neurological and endocrine influences on social behavior), (d) behavior genetics (involving both human and non-human animal research), (e) psychopharmacology (especially the chemical manipulation of behavioral states), (f) sociobiology (the application of modern Darwinian theory to the explanation of social behaviors), and (g) ecology (the study of the relationships between organisms and their environments, which gained visibility when the so-called "environmental crisis" erupted).

Native Americans have been structurally excluded from the discipline of political science in the continental United States, as has Native epistemology and political issues. I analyze the reasons for these erasures and elisions, noting the combined effects of rejecting Native scholars, political issues, analysis, and texts. I describe how these arise from presumptions inherent to the disciplinary practices of U.S. political science, and suggest a set of alternative formulations that could expand our understanding of politics, including attention to other forms of law, constitutions, relationships to the environment, sovereignty, collective decision-making, U.S. history, and majoritarianism.

Originally published in 1975, this book advocates a certain approach to the study of government: the focus should be institutional, the method comparative and the level practical. The book divides into 2 sections on political science and public administration but the themes are common, as is much of the subject matter. Chapters on the institutional and comparative approach are intended to show how political institutions are often designed to reflect political theories, how institutional engineering may take place and how lessons for domestic reform may be learnt from foreign experience. The second section looks at the state of public administration studies in Britain, the nature of the subject, drawing on the work of earlier theorists, the role of the universities and the civic contribution such study can make