No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Communications
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 November 2022
Abstract
![Image of the first page of this content. For PDF version, please use the ‘Save PDF’ preceeding this image.'](https://static.cambridge.org/content/id/urn%3Acambridge.org%3Aid%3Aarticle%3AS0030826900606471/resource/name/firstPage-S0030826900606471a.jpg)
- Type
- Letter
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The American Political Science Association 1973
References
* Since PS is chiefly for persons associated with political science departments, I believe I should add that only one member of my committee, by chance, was generally labelled as a political scientist. He did not ask me for this information (merely confining himself to theoretical issues which I found more objectionable!), and I would have trusted his discretion; the issue was in part resolved by the committee's arranging for Ithiel Pool, my collaborator, to sit in on the examination and in effect verify I had not invented anything in the way of data.
P.S. Vice versa, in some situations ANONYMITY can NOT be guaranteed. What I think is far superior to anything else I have ever written, bearing on political science, as generally interpreted, is a study of local politics in Watertown, Massachusetts — I knew that anything I reported would bitterly hurt one of the leading participants in the conflict studied in the very core of his self-image. I knew also that other participants would be irritated and exasperated. Awareness of these points was a factor in leading me constantly to postpone and delay and drag my feet on publication and revision; and it is only now after the most important figure from this standpoint is dead, and after (I hope) time will have made the matters of less account to other participants, that I have faced up to revising it and trying to get it published. This meant that I waited fourteen years. Of course, the tendency to “produce” offsets such abstention, but I think it needs to be part of our ethical code. (I don't claim any great credit here, because this was not a major effort when first started and I was writing a lot of other things and I had other reasons for delay; but I would be ashamed if I had published it when I was first supposed to, in 1960–1. As it turned out, it worked for the best; as the years of reflection let me see far more in the case).