Systematic, Quantitative Political Science in South Africa: the Road Less Travelled

Abstract

While it has clearly been a minority tendency within the discipline, there is a significant tradition of systematic, quantitative research on South African society, politics, and democracy that has contributed a great deal to our understanding of these issues. Yet much of this research has actually been carried out by South African psychologists and sociologists, not political scientists. And amongst the political scientists, a great deal of the work has been done by scholars located outside the country, or by non-South Africans located at South African universities. Very little of it is done by local political scientists, and even less by black South Africans.