Suchergebnisse

by James Wilford Garner ; Volltext // Exemplar mit der Signatur: München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek -- Pol.g. 1091

Social science is a social activity as well as a method of discovery. The researchers' values and politics colour their work and so do their choices of scientific method. This book is about both - the technical effects of values and the political effects of technique. The author reports what social scientists and historians actually do. He sorts out the scientific from the political content in a wide range of old and new work in history, sociology, political science and economics. The overall work is a detailed political and technical criticism of the 'scientistic' programme which would hav.

For some time, the growing stature of political science as an independent social science has been a notable feature in American universities. Yet, up to the present time, the categories of this new field of scientific endeavor have not found their way into the indexing departments of libraries, nor have they been recognized by indexers of other collections. Even the editors of encyclopedias, people of great learning and ability, have omitted some of the most significant topics of political science, because of the lack of any accepted index indicating the range of the field and focusing attention upon its primary categories. The American Political Science Review itself is confronted with the problem of a suitable subject-index. The growing complexity of all kinds of materials bearing upon the work of political scientists, and more particularly the increasing mass of public documents, has become more and more baffling. Even the skillful indexers of the Congressional Record, for example, seem unaware of the major topics of interest for political science, and thus no sign-posts of the usual kind have been made available to workers in our field.

In all societies, the quality of government institutions is of the utmost importance for the well-being of its citizens. Problems like high infant mortality, lack of access to safe water, unhappiness and poverty are not primarily caused by a lack of technical equipment, effective medicines or other types of knowledge generated by the natural or engineering sciences. Instead, the critical problem is that the majority of the world's population live in societies that have dysfunctional government institutions. Central issues discussed in the book include: how can good government be conceptualized.

This book, originally published in 1959, makes explicit the social principles which underlie the procedures and political practice of the modern democratic state. The authors take the view that in the modern welfare state there are problems connected with the nature of law, with concepts like rights, justice, equality, property, punishment, responsibility and liberty and which modern philosophical techniques can illuminate.

There have been a number of attempts in recent years to define the subject-matter of political science and to provide a theoretical framework within which the discipline may be expected to develop. Among these, the work of David Easton occupies a leading place.1 This article discusses how successful Easton has been in adumbrating a general theory embracing the discipline. It then offers a rather looser and less ambitious framework within which the theories collectively called 'political science' may be placed and their interrelationships perceived.

Intro -- Contents -- Preface -- Abbreviations -- A Note on the Text and Sources -- Prologue -- Introduction: The Debate about Party Government -- Chapter 1. Drafting a Report, 1946- 1950 -- Chapter 2. Arguments within APSA -- Chapter 3. The Public Reception -- Chapter 4. The Academic Debate -- Chapter 5. The Responsible Party Government Model -- Chapter 6. Toward a More Responsible Two- Party System and British Politics -- Chapter 7. American Political Science and the United Kingdom after 1945 -- Chapter 8. V. O. and Schatt -- Chapter 9. What Happened to the Committee on Political Parties? Partisan Argument and McCarthyism -- Conclusions -- Notes -- Selected Bibliography -- Index.