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The Political Science of Political Science*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

W. J. M. Mackenzie
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Extract

PROFESSOR LAZARSFELD ONCE REFERRED TO SOCIOLOGY AS BEING IN A sense a residuary legatee, the surviving part of a very general study, out of which specializations have successively been shaped.

The same might be said of political science. In the West the first deliberate and reflective studies of political life were made in Greece at the end of the th century BC, and in the succeeding century. The histories of Herodotus and Thucydides, some of the pamphlets attributed to Xenophon, above all the normative and empirical studies of Plato and Aristotle were among the direct ancestors of contemporary political science. Parallel examples are to be found in the intellectual history of China, India and Islam. It seems that at certain stages in the development of great societies questions of legitimacy, power and leadership assume supreme importance; and intense intellectual effort, using the best analytical tools available, is devoted to the study of man as brought to a focus in the study of politics.

Type
Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 6 , Issue 3 , 01 July 1971 , pp. 277 - 302
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1971

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References

1 Aristotle, , Politics, 1282 b, 1. 16, and Nie Eth., 1094 a, ll. 26–29.Google Scholar

2 Aristotle, , Politics, 1253, a 1. 3 Google Scholar. ‘Political’ is by no means an adequate translation of Aristotle's πOλιτιχoν. But I think that if one explored the problem of translation it would extend and deepen the present point, without changing it radically.

3 Parsons needs no citation, but it would be appropriate to refer here to Easton's most influential work, The Political System, New York, Knopf, 1953. Much has happened since 1953, and Easton is now by no means the only source of ‘systems language’ in political science. But it was he who first opened these perspectives.

4 MacIntyre, A., A Short History of Ethics, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967, P. 4.Google Scholar

5 See for instance, Galbraith, J. K., The New Industrial State, London, Hamilton, 1967,Google Scholar and Modrzhinskaya, Y., ‘Quiet Anti‐Communism’, International Affairs, Moscow, 08. 1967.Google Scholar

6 A reference to Medawar's, P. B. view that a truly professional scientist must be skilled in The Art of the Soluble, London, Methuen, 1967, p. 55.Google Scholar

7 Deutsch, K. W. and Rieselbach, L. N., Recent Trends in Political Theory and Political Philosophy, supplement to the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 360, 1965, p. 141.Google Scholar

8 The volume on Contemporay Political Science, published by UNESCO in 1950, serves as benchmark to indicate the advance made in less than twenty years.

9 This is at present a most fruitful area of collaboration between political science and social psychology.

10 Evanston (Ill.), Row, Peterson, 1957.

11 New York, Harcourt Brace, 1950.

12 New York, Wiley & M.I.T., 1957.

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17 There is an interesting personal narrative by Heinz Eulau, who attributes the initiative to individuals who had worked closely together in applied social research during the war years. ‘The Behavioral Movement in Political Science: A Personal Document’, Social Research, 1968, pp. 1–29.

18 American Political Science Review, 55, 1961, p. 763.

19 ‘Recent Trends in Research Methods in Political Science’, in A Design for Political Science, Monograph No. 6 of The American Academy of Political and Social Science, Philadelphia, December 1966. He seems to have forgotten judicial data, which are very rich and important.

20 The Swedish professional journal, Statsvetenskaplig Tidskrift was first published in 1898, the American Political Science Review not till 1906.

21 The Revue française de science politique was first published in 1951. There are important statements about the character and scope of the discipline in Duverger, M.: Méthodes de la science politique, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1959,Google Scholar and Prélot, M.: La science politique, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1961 Google Scholar.

22 Kornai, J., Overcentralization in Economic Administration, translated by Knapp, J., London, Oxford U.P., 1959.Google Scholar