Suchergebnisse

It is a question, said David Hume, "whether there be any essential difference between one form of government and another and, whether every form . . . may not become good or bad, according as it is well or ill administered," administered well by men of virtue -- that is, people of good character, wisdom, and high principle -- or administered badly by fools and knaves who know or care nothing for justice and the common good. Were it once admitted, Hume continued, "that all governments are alike, and that the only difference consists in the character and conduct of the governors, most political disputes would be at an end, and all zeal for one constitution above another, must be esteemed mere bigotry and folly." Hume imagines people who take that view adopting the maxim of Alexander Pope in the Essay on Man: "For forms of government let fools contest/Whateer is best administerd is best.". Adapted from the source document.

The most incisive twentieth century students of language converge from different premises on the conclusion that language is the key creator of the social worlds people experience, and they agree as well that language cannot usefully be understood as a tool for describing an objective reality. For the later Wittgenstein there are no essences, only language games. Chomsky analyzes the sense in which grammar is generative. For Derrida all language is performative, a form of action that undermines its own presuppositions. Foucault sees language as antedating and constructing subjectivity. The "linguistic turn" in twentieth century philosophy, social psychology, and literary theory entails an intellectual ferment that raises fundamental questions about a great deal of mainstream political science, and especially about its logical positivist premises.While the writers just mentioned analyze various senses in which language use is an aspect of creativity, those who focus upon specifically political language are chiefly concerned with its capacity to reflect ideology, mystify, and distort. The more perspicacious of them deny that an undistorting language is possible in a social world marked by inequalities in resources and status, though the notion of an undistorted language can be useful as an evocation of an ideal benchmark. The emphasis upon political language as distorting or mystifying is a key theme in Lasswell and Orwell, as it is in Habermas, Osgood, Ellul, Vygotsky, Enzensberger, Bennett, and Shapiro.

A review article of David Butler's THE STUDY OF POLITI- CAL BEHAVIOUR, with special emphasis on the fact that it is an appraisal by an American of a book by a British pol'al sci'st. There is first a short summary of the 5 'approaches' which characterize the current study of pol'al behavior.. And the bulk of the article is devoted to an analysis of why the behavioral approaches are so popular among Americans, whereas they are so conspicuously avoided by the British. 7 reasons, themselves based on an informal 'behavioral' analysis of the pol'al sci professions in the respective countries, are advanced for this diff in orientation. AA-IPSA.

Examines political thinking as a necessary dimension of politics; includes feminism, sustainable development, toleration, religious zealotry, foreign relations theories, and doctrines of law on political activity; 9 articles.

This essay applies existing research in new institutional economics to early modern European political theory so as to offer an interpretive proposal. Using Hobbes, Hume, and James Madison as examples, the essay proposes that understanding early modern European political theorists as inhabitants of developing countries (in a particular sense of that term) can benefit contemporary readers in interpreting some of these theorists' normative prescriptions. Early modern political theorists faced significant risk of large-scale violence, political instability, and state repression in polities that still struggled to accomplish goals such as implementing rule of law, protecting property rights, and widely distributing material resources using impartial criteria. By contrast, many contemporary readers of these writers live in the developed and liberal-democratic West. Contemporary readers are thus liable to normalize their own conditions and to underestimate the political-economic constraints under which early modern political theorists wrote, thereby misreading some of the latter's normative prescriptions. By interpreting early modern political theorists as writers who faced institutional constraints that have significantly receded in today's West, contemporary readers can enrich their understanding of these writers' objectives.

Using ADA roll call voting scores for the 1947-2006 period, I find that senators shirk in their last term. The degree of shirking is limited by political parties, which constrain the politician in his last term, and varies by post-Senate career choices. The results highlight the importance of political parties in the repeated game that is electoral politics. Adapted from the source document.

This article develops directions of thought for evaluating how faithfully political narratives represent "political reality," and suggests several strategies for performing this evaluation. Based on a discussion of these strategies it claims that the concept of political narrative can be used by scholars with an entire range of perspectives or "basic views," and not only by those who adhere to a radical relativism. Studying the role of these basic views in the political domain can also facilitate our understanding of the possible coexistence between different political narratives.