Mainstream Political Science Research Articles

The Practical Process of Gender Mainstreaming in the Political Science Curriculum

Although the presence of women in the political science profession has increased rapidly since the 1980s, women still constitute less than 30% of the political science faculty nationwide and are more likely to find themselves in lower-paying and/or nontenure track positions (APSA 2011, 39; Evans and Moulder 2011). In the discipline, the position of gender and politics as a legitimate course of study has improved markedly since the 1970s (Lovenduski 1998; Mackay 2004; Murphy 2010; Tolleson-Rinehart and Carroll 2006). As Childs and Krook (2006, 19) point out, “mainstream editors, publishers and conference conveners no longer feel able to ignore the work of feminist political scientists.” But they also present evidence that this improvement stops short of full incorporation into the discipline and note that there is still skepticism about the value of feminist scholarship. This skepticism is also present at the intersection of the profession and discipline: while there are no systematic data on the employment of gender and politics scholars, it is not rare for a gender and politics scholar to be told that her employment prospects would be better if she were to research something else (Childs and Krook 2006). Given the position of women in the profession and the status of gender and politics in the discipline, it is unsurprising that there is continued resistance to integrating gender into mainstream political science education (Baldez 2010; Lovenduski 2005; Murphy 2010).

Embracing intellectual humility: A response to the biopolitics forum

T he study of politics depends upon a variety of perspectives and approaches. The political informs all aspects of our private and public lives. Understanding power, hierarchy and government requires not only an examination of biological, evolutionary processes but also an examination of cultural norms and power dynamics. In our paper, ‘‘The competing meanings of ‘biopolitics’ in political science: Biological and postmodern approaches to politics,’’ we distinguished between two different uses of the term biopolitics. We pointed to the different meanings and provenances of the term for those political scientists indebted to the life sciences and for those indebted to Foucauldian postmodern hermeneutics. We argued that the scientific biopolitical tradition loses little or nothing in relinquishing the use of the term to postmodernists. In this paper, we begin not by distinguishing the two traditions, as we did in the earlier paper, but rather by recognizing the importance of both approaches to a rich, complex, multifaceted investigation of the political. Both scientific and postmodern biopolitics continue to thrive within the study of politics. As Rebecca Hannagan demonstrates in her response to our piece on biopolitics, scholars adopting a scientific biopolitical approach abound, impacting the discipline of political science. She notes, ‘‘Political psychology has been expanding to encompass biological approaches for some time . . . The logical progression of the subfield is to incorporate the theoretical and methodological advances made in biology, neurobiology and psychology to the study of political attitudes and behaviors.’’ Articles examining the relationship between politics and biology, evolution, genetics, and neuroscience continue to increase their numbers in mainstream political science journals. For example, Peter Hatemi and colleagues recently published a paper in the Journal of Politics that examined the impact of both genetic and environmental variables on political attitudes, and Kevin Smith and colleagues last year published ‘‘Biology, Ideology, and Epistemology: How Do We Know Political Attitudes are Inherited and Why Should We Care?’’ in the American Journal of Political Science. At the same time, the study of politics is incomplete without postmodern approaches to power, context and language. As Amy Fletcher explains in her commentary on our paper, postmodernism teaches us to realize that the meanings we attribute to facts can and do vary according to ideology, culture, standpoint and historical context. We share with Fletcher the conviction that if we throw ourselves off the roof of a building, we doi: 10.2990/32_1_99

Thinking politically about HIV: political analysis and action in response to AIDS

AIDS has a uniquely political history. Its early association with stigmatised homosexual behaviour and more liberating gay identity activism set the precedent for highly effective mobilisation. The results were unparalleled in global health. AIDS was briefly treated as high politics and attracted increased funds to achieve the ambitious goal of universal access to HIV prevention and treatment. If AIDS is to maintain its visibility and contribution to global solidarity, human rights and dignity, its politics must evolve to reflect the profound geo-political, economic and social transformations currently underway. ‘Thinking politically about HIV’, an initiative of UNAIDS and the International AIDS Society, was convened in recognition of the need to better understand these politics and consider how the political sciences can further engage. This paper, and the edited volume it introduces, provides some insights into the Thinking Politically discussions as well as the wider scholarship on the challenges facing the AIDS response. The authors argue that while mainstream political science has largely ignored the epidemic, other disciplines and traditions provide rich accounts of the exceptional response. Given the changing context, the authors present an agenda of practically oriented, politically informed research to identify the levers that can be used to maintain the viability of the response.

Identity challenges Facing the Association for Politics and the Life Sciences

Founded in 1980, the Association for Politics and the Life Sciences (APLS) sought to establish biopolitics as a recognized field and to integrate biologically based research methods into mainstream political science. The association's founders established these goals to encourage a generation of scholars and promote the spread of biopolitical knowledge. There was early success when the American Political Science Association (APSA) recognized biopolitics as an organized section. However, this development did not leave an appreciable imprint on the political science profession and the experiment conjoining the two did not last long. The other goal of the founders, to integrate biologically based research methods into mainstream political science, faced more formidable obstacles and still faces challenges, though not without some progress.

Identity challenges Facing the Association for Politics and the Life Sciences

Founded in 1980, the Association for Politics and the Life Sciences (APLS) sought to establish biopolitics as a recognized field and to integrate biologically based research methods into mainstream political science. The association's founders established these goals to encourage a generation of scholars and promote the spread of biopolitical knowledge. There was early success when the American Political Science Association (APSA) recognized biopolitics as an organized section. However, this development did not leave an appreciable imprint on the political science profession and the experiment conjoining the two did not last long. The other goal of the founders, to integrate biologically based research methods into mainstream political science, faced more formidable obstacles and still faces challenges, though not without some progress.

The Measurement of Democracy: Towards a New Paradigm

Mainstream political science on democracy has been criticised for ‘regime bias’. This has led political scientists to draw on a narrow range of democratic theory that considers democratic potential only at the cost of ignoring democratic purpose, to ignore other units of observation than the regime, notably the individual citizen, and to overlook advances in measurement theory. A robust normative account of democratic quality, it is argued, should rest on three foundations. First, measurement should start with observations of the regime. No account of democratic quality should be considered valid without an account of the degree of democracy in the regime. This analysis should be grounded in standard democratic theory. Secondly, the measurement effort should follow through to observations of how the potential in the regime is manifested in the lives of citizens. No account of democratic quality should be considered valid without an account of how well the system delivers for citizens. This analysis should be grounded in a theory of the purpose of democracy. Thirdly, pronouncements on democratic quality should finally be made only from some combination or index of information from both systems analysis and individual analysis. That combined analysis should be grounded in measurement theory, specifically the law of methodological individualism and the principle of double book-keeping.

The Gender Lacuna in Comparative Politics

What accounts for the glaring inattention to work on gender within mainstream political science? Part of the problem lies in the substance of scholarship itself. The concepts, central questions, and key variables that predominate in the mainstream literature on comparative democratization and in the literature on gender and democratization have contributed to the gulf between them. But a more fundamental explanation lies in the starting assumptions of scholars in the two camps. Mainstream scholars rarely question whether gender is relevant to politics, and gender scholars rarely question whether gender isn't relevant to politics. I illustrate some ways in which gender could be incorporated into mainstream work, and discuss how gender research could be made more broadly comparative.

Does the Revolution in Presidential Studies Mean “Off With the President's Head”?

Terry Moe's expansive yet incisive article extolling what he calls the “revolution” in presidential studies explicitly ties the progress of the presidency subfield to theoretical developments that have been critical to the mainstream of political science. This commentary shares Moe's positive view of these developments but departs from his negative view of other streams of work, especially Neustadt's contributions and the scientific empirical studies that he indirectly helped generate. Most particularly, Moe is attracted to theories of invariant behavior—that is, how any person should or would have behaved in the face of similar conditions. In studying the presidency, this is a necessary place to begin, but not always a sufficient place to end. Presidents remain important to the presidency because of their decision‐making role amid uncertainty and ambiguity—precisely where people make a difference. Although we have virtually no usable theory of individual difference, which is usually unexplained residual variance, we can make use of observations to assess the way presidents do make decisions.

¿QUO VADIMUS SARTORI? CIENCIA POLÍTICA Y POLÍTICAS PÚBLICAS EN EL MARCO DE UNA POLÉMICA

En este trabajo, utilizo el polémico artículo del profesor Giovanni Sartori, “¿Hacia dónde va la ciencia política?” (2004), para discutir algunos problemas de la compleja vinculación entre producción de conocimientos y toma de decisiones. Sostengo que el análisis crítico ofrecido por el profesor Sartori se aplica a algunos aspectos de los estudios de políticas públicas, pero no a todos; de otra parte, las críticas y propuestas sartorianas son hasta cierto punto adecuadas, pero también pecan de escaso realismo, y en cierta medida son insuficientes, toda vez que concentra su reflexión en los aspectos epistemológicos de los saberes sobre la política, y descuida en buena medida los aspectos político-institucionales.

Research Design in European Studies: The Case of Europeanization*

AbstractIn this article, we contribute to the debate on research design and causal analysis in European integration studies by considering the sub‐field of Europeanization. First, we examine the awareness of research design issues in the literature on Europeanization through a review of the debate on causality, concept formation and methods. Second, we analyse how much of the discussion of the trade‐offs in causal analysis in mainstream political science has percolated into Europeanization studies. We therefore construct a sample of the Europeanization literature, comparing it to a control group of highly cited articles on European integration. This enables us to control if some patterns are specific to the Europeanization literature or reflect a more general trend in European integration. We then look at trade‐offs in the Europeanization sample and in the control group. Our findings indicate that awareness of research design is still low. Europeanization articles differ from the control group in the focus on mechanisms (rather than variables) and the qualitative aspects of time in politics. Complex notions of causality prevail in Europeanization but not in the control group and the cause‐of‐effects approach is preferred to effects‐of‐causes in the control group but not in Europeanization – in both cases, however, the difference is slight. We conclude by explaining differences and similarities and make proposals for future research.

The Erosion of Democracy - The Beginning of the End?

‘Democracy’ today seems to be recognized as a universal normative concept, in politics as well as in mainstream political science. Despite its historical origin in a world quite different from that of ours today and the one most probable to evolve in the future, most political scientists seem to believe that mere organizational improvements could secure its future as a regime and its validity as a normative concept.

Struggling to be Noticed: The Civil Rights Movement as an Academic Agenda Setter

While the study of Black politics in the American context has not been a top priority in political science, it is indisputable that this topic in general is more likely to be discussed in the discipline's journals in recent decades than in the more distant past. What accounts for this noticeable increase in prominence? How did the study of Black politics move from total obscurity to occupying a more significant (although still relatively marginalized) position within mainstream political science? To answer these questions, we draw a parallel between politics and political science. Specifically, we posit that the increased focus on African American politics is due to Black agency in the form of social movement activity, which reached its zenith during the civil rights movement. Before the civil rights movement, we note as numerous others have, that the racially conservative views of American society in the nineteenth century resulted in Black politics being an understudied area. We argue, however, that as social movement activity increased the salience of racial issues in America, so too did it raise the importance of race for political scientists.

Mark Kesselman and the Study of Comparative Politics**

Throughout his career, Mark Kesselman has combined rigorous scholarship and a critical perspective on the political science mainstream with a concern for the world that is worthy of emulation. His interests have ranged far and wide, from local French politics and Mitterrand's socialist experiment to criticisms of modernization theory. Yet his core theoretical concerns have always been grounded in an effort to show the dilemmas of, and possibilities for, long-term social and political change. His early work on local politics and modernization theory exposed the conservative biases of those literatures. His analyses of the permutations of the French left sought to explain the failures of French socialism. And his textbooks sought to transform a critical perspective on comparative and European politics into a set of pedagogical tools.

Recent Economic Perspectives on Political Economy, Part II

In recent years some of the best theoretical work on the political economy of political institutions and processes has begun surfacing outside the political science mainstream in high quality economics journals. This two-part paper surveys these contributions from a recent five-year period. In Part I, the focus is on elections, voting and information aggregation, followed by treatments of parties, candidates, and coalitions. In Part II, papers on economic performance and redistribution, constitutional design, and incentives, institutions, and the quality of political elites are discussed. Part II concludes with a discussion of the methodological bases common to economics and political science, the way economists have used political science research, and some new themes and arbitrage opportunities.

Recent Economic Perspectives on Political Economy, Part I

In recent years some of the best theoretical work on the political economy of political institutions and processes has begun surfacing outside the political science mainstream in high quality economics journals. This two-part paper surveys these contributions from a recent five-year period. In Part I, the focus is on elections, voting and information aggregation, followed by treatments of parties, candidates, and coalitions. In Part II, papers on economic performance and redistribution, constitutional design, and incentives, institutions, and the quality of political elites are discussed. Part II concludes with a discussion of the methodological bases common to economics and political science, the way economists have used political science research, and some new themes and arbitrage opportunities.

Political Thought in an Intercivilizational Perspective: A Critical Reflection

AbstractIn the light of the emerging globalecumenethere is an ongoing intellectual discourse that focuses on the quest for a reorientation of political theorizing. It challenges the more or less canonized approaches to the understanding of political life and thought that dominate Western mainstream political and social science. This essay critically explores the epistemological assumptions underlying the prevalent paradigm of socio-political analysis, and points out its weakness in coming to grips with the multi-civilizational cosmos of human self-understanding which makes up the historico-political world. It argues that a genuine hermeneutical science is needed in order to restate the meaningful pattern of human self-interpretation across cultures and civilizations in its historical depth and global reach. It takes as its starting point the rise of the great civilizations in the axial times and their respective visions of order which still shape modernity. These post-axial visions, various as they were in appearance and content, merged with political power to provide the meaning-creating symbolic forms of societal self-understanding, thus providing society with a logic of order. This essay defines the common ground of the intercivilizational modality of human existence in history and society as the proper subject of comparative political theorizing, insofar as it intends to bring to our attention the essence of the political in all of its historical modalities.

When Political Science Championed Public Service Training

This article examines how Progressive-Era political scientists worked to promote public service training. It gives evidence that the Progressive-Era political science community had a broad view of its mission that included preparing civil servants. Since World War II, tension has permeated relations between mainstream political science and professional public administration programs. Participants in current debates on relations between the two fields can gain from knowing something about the broad interests that engrossed the American Political Science Association at its start.

Gender, Institutions and Power: A Critical Review

Both feminist and mainstream political science has taken an institutional ‘turn’, opening up possibilities for interchange between the two fields. This article explores the potential for theoretical synthesis between feminist gender analysis and new institutional theory, focusing particularly on issues of power. After providing a brief overview of approaches to power in the institutionalist and feminist literature, it outlines some initial possibilities for dialogue between the two fields. The article concludes by considering some potential insights that a gendered approach to institutions and power would offer to new institutionalism, establishing a preliminary foundation for a wider ‘feminist institutionalist’ research agenda.

C. Wright Mills, Power Structure Research, and the Failures of Mainstream Political Science

“Power Reconsidered” was the theme of the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association in 2006. In a steady stream of analytically focused and empirically rich books and articles over the last 40 years, G. William Domhoff had made a unique and challenging contribution to the study of power and politics in the United States. In this commentary, based on a presentation at an APSA panel sponsored by the New Political Science section, Domhoff criticizes the narrow and misleading ways in which the concept of power has been used by pluralist, state autonomy, and historical institutionalism approaches in political science. Drawing on the path-breaking work of C. Wright Mills and Floyd Hunter in the 1950s, Domhoff restates and develops his class and organizational interpretation of the American power structure. As a progressive and scholarly journal, New Political Science encourages authors to submit research articles that engage with the theoretical questions raised by Domhoff.

Political Parties and Party Systems in Africa: Themes and Research Perspectives

The last decade of the twentieth century was characterised by a resurgence of multipartism in Africa. The return of political parties produced a discontinuity not only in the continent's political life, but also in the study of African politics. A number of new researches were carried out that were largely based on existing theories and concepts in political science. These new works thus contributed to an increased integration of the study of politics south of the Sahara with mainstream political science. The present article provides an overview of the insights and advances that these studies have produced, focusing on the key issues raised by the return of party pluralism in Africa and on the utility of existing models, theories and approaches for its understanding. There is little doubt that recent research efforts have advanced our knowledge of the changing politics of the continent. However, neither the elaboration of theoretical frameworks nor the detail of empirical knowledge has achieved adequate levels of development as yet.