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The dominant belief among both teachers and graduate students of political science seems to be that political theory constitutes the heart of their subject; yet political theory is not, in practice, the core of political science teaching. Such is the schizoid condition of political science and political scientists that is revealed by the investigations of the Committee for the Advancement of Teaching of the American Political Science Association. The hypothesis advanced in this note presents a dual reason for the unfortunate situation: it is partly that political theorists have failed to keep up with the times and have not engaged in sufficient value-free theoretical study of the raw data of politics, and partly that vast numbers of political scientists have falsely concluded that one of the most important parts of the traditional study of political theory—political ethics—is not susceptible of scientific treatment and should rigorously be eschewed.

COLLEGE STUDENTS TODAY OFTEN LACK BASIC ACADEMIC SKILLS, THE DEVELOPMENT OF THESE SKILLS IS CLOSELY & INEXTRICABLY INTERWOVEN WITH TEACHING AN ACADEMIC DISCIPLINE, & EVERY COLLEGE INSTRUCTOR MUST COMBINE TEACHING HIS/HER DISCPLINE WITH WORK ON THESE SKILLS, INCLUDING WORK WITH STUDENT PAPERS. VARIETY OF TEACHING TECHNIQUES ARE DESCRIBED TO SHOW HOW AUTHORS DOES THIS IN TWO POLITICAL SCIENCE COURSES.

United States, British, and British Commonwealth country approaches to the redrawing of electoral boundaries.

Despite increasing interest in recent years, disability remains a neglected area of study within mainstream political science. Beginning with a brief overview of the ways that disability studies scholars have defined disability, I address the issues that have arisen in trying to measure disability as well as the limits and possibilities that follow from thinking of people with disabilities as a minority group with defined political beliefs and interests. To the extent that much of the work on disability in political science looks to the research on gender, race, ethnicity, and class as a touchstone, I consider the lessons that might be drawn from this work both as it relates to disability as a social category and regarding efforts to conceive of disability and ability in more structural and ideological terms. Turning to the literature on disability in political theory, I examine the ways that disability has been deployed to reveal the ableist assumptions that pervade canonical and more contemporary texts. I conclude by highlighting avenues for future research, including whether it is possible—or, indeed, desirable—to move beyond the civil rights and identity-based frameworks that have so defined disability politics and organizing. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Political Science, Volume 27 is June 2024. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

If at one time we thought that the movement to science would yield unification of the discipline, it is now apparent that there are many roads to science. Still it is important for us to consider yet again what the appropriate goals are for our scientific enterprise. What works in theory building; induction and deduction; prediction and control; the search for useful principles to guide us - examining these questions, we can build a better science. Political science has come so far as a discipline that different schools and scholars have different interpretations of science in the study of pol

Criticism of trends in political science centers on specific methodologies—quantitative methods or rational choice. However, the more worrisome development is scholasticism—a tendency for research to become overspecialized and ingrown. I define that trend more closely and document its growth through increases in numbers of journals, organized sections in the American Political Science Association, and divisions within the APSA conference. I also code articles published in the American Political Science Review to show a growth in scholastic features in recent decades. The changes affect all fields in political science. Scholasticism serves values of rigor. To restrain it will require reemphasizing relevance to real-world issues and audiences. To do this should also help restore morale among political scientists.

The current debate in political science over methods and fundamental
theoretical stances recalls similar debates in other fields. Part of
the debate focuses on the merits of the use of statistical methods
or the use of mathematics and quasi-mathematical reasoning, as in
game theory and much of rational choice. Among the critics of those
who use these approaches are many who focus more on interpretive
approaches to understanding social institutions and behavior. In
some ways, the debate seems dated in that the largest and most
compelling body of quasi-economic work is broad studies of the
relationships between political and economic development. Such work,
often with relatively sharply defined statistical models, spans more
than two generations of scholars in political science. Such work has
given compelling answers to many questions about the workings and
workability of democracy. It typically abstracts from culture and it
fits congenially with rational choice theory in its focus on
microfoundations for various claims.