Political Science and Beyond: Presidential Address to the American Political Science Association

Abstract

This is the Presidential Address delivered at the American Political Science Association Annual Meeting, Chicago, IL, August 30 to September 2, 2007. The theme is that the discipline of political science has benefited from imports from many other fields, but it also has a lot to offer in the way of exports to other fields. A personal example is the export of cooperation theory to cancer research. The main recommendation is to cultivate your curiosity by: reading up in a variety of fields so your mind will be well prepared, teaming up with others who can help you, loading up on research related to your problem, and lightening up when you need to escape from the problem for a while. Promising opportunities exist for political science to export to public health, cognitive and neuropsychology, and the design of web-based institutions.Robert Axelrod is the Mary Ann and Charles R. Walgreen, Jr. Professor for the Study of Human Understanding at the University of Michigan (axe@umich.edu). This text is a renamed, footnoted and slightly revised version of his presidential address at the 2007 American Political Science Association Annual Meeting. For help in preparing this address, he wishes to thank John Aldrich, David Axelrod, Vera Axelrod, Lily S. Axelrod, Michael Brintnall, Joshua Epstein, Rick Hall, Liz Gerber, Ross Hammond, Rob Hauck, Lisa Koch, Justin McCrary, Ken Pienta, Robert Putnam, Eric Rabkin, Amy Saldinger, Jasjeet Sekhon, and PhillipTetlock. For financial support he thanks the National Science Foundation.