Suchergebnisse

Explanations for the disappearance of the Chicago school of political science are sought. After reviewing the significant contributions that the Chicago school made to US political science between the 1930s & the 1960s, factors that contributed to the emergence of the Chicago school during the early 1920s are examined. Specifically, it is contended that Charles E. Merriam's personal charisma & professional acumen solidified the Chicago school's place within US political science from 1920-1940. Nevertheless, it is asserted that the efforts of Merriam in establishing the Chicago school remain overlooked by contemporary scholarship; for example, it is noted that the Chicago school of political science was not mentioned in publications commemorating the university's centennial anniversary. In addition, it is lamented that current scholars have failed to acknowledge the Chicago school's contributions to anti-behavioralism. 5 References. J. W. Parker

Few political scientists can claim to have made significant substantive as well as methodological contributions as has Harry Eckstein. His theory of political stability has won a lasting place in the systematic literature on the properties and conditions of democratic stability. His case study typology is one of the most original and significant contributions to the methodology of political science and is an impressive contribution to the metamethodology of political science of this or any generation. His theory of social science as cultural science is an impressive contribution to the metamethodology of the social sciences.

Les tables séparées. Ecoles et sectes dans la science politique américaine.
Gabriel A. Almond [39-57].
Cet article utilise une métaphore pour décrire l'état de la science politique américaine dans les années quatre-vingt, science politique qui est aujourd'hui une discipline divisée. Les différentes écoles et sectes de la science politique sont assises maintenant à des tables séparées, chacune ayant sa propre conception de la science politique et chacune se protégeant l'une de l'autre. Les politistes sont séparés selon deux dimensions : une dimension idéologique et une méthodologique. Les extrêmes sont très visibles mais, selon Almond, une majorité écrasante de politistes se trouvent quelque part au centre -partageant une idéologie libérale et modérée, ecclectiques et ouverts d'un point de vue méthodologique. Almond en appelle à un retour à une grande tradition de la science politique.

Joseph Schumpeter, a great economist and social scientist of the last generation, whose career was almost equally divided between Central European and American universities, and who lived close to the crises of the 1930s and '40s, published a book in 1942 under the title, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. The book has had great influence, and can be read today with profit. It was written in the aftergloom of the great depression, during the early triumphs of Fascism and Nazism in 1940 and 1941, when the future of capitalism, socialism, and democracy all were in doubt. Schumpeter projected a future of declining capitalism, and rising socialism. He thought that democracy under socialism might be no more impaired and problematic than it was under capitalism.He wrote a concluding chapter in the second edition which appeared in 1946, and which took into account the political-economic situation at the end of the war, with the Soviet Union then astride a devastated Europe. In this last chapter he argues that we should not identify the future of socialism with that of the Soviet Union, that what we had observed and were observing in the first three decades of Soviet existence was not a necessary expression of socialism. There was a lot of Czarist Russia in the mix. If Schumpeter were writing today, I don't believe he would argue that socialism has a brighter future than capitalism. The relationship between the two has turned out to be a good deal more complex and intertwined than Schumpeter anticipated.

Three important questions are raised by the "return to the state" movement of recent years. First, are the pluralist, structural functionalist, and Marxist literatures of political science societally reductionist, as this movement contends? Second, does the neostatist paradigm remedy these defects and provide a superior analytical model? Third, regardless of the substantive merits of these arguments, are there heuristic benefits flowing from this critique of the literature? Examination of the evidence leads to a rejection of the first two criticisms. The answer to the third question is more complex. There is merit to the argument that administrative and institutional history has been neglected in the political science of the last decades. This is hardly a "paradigmatic shift"; and it has been purchased at the exorbitant price of encouraging a generation of graduate students to reject their professional history and to engage in vague conceptualization.