The cumulation problem

In Western Europe and especially West Germany, introducing a new approach in political science, biopolitics, is not an easy task. German political science has a very strong and effective philosophical tradition (Aristotle, Aquinas, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Weber), which separates it from the life sciences. Traditionally, political science is a theoretical branch of study, and politics is regarded principally as a rational process. Based on well-known historical experiences, German social scientists raise ideological objections to biology, and, with some exceptions (Flohr, 1979, 1983; Buhl, 1981, 1982), they neglect the findings of the life sciences. Political science mainly operates in a vacuum, adhering to the discipline's traditional monistic conceptions of what politics ought to be. Thus, in Germany the first problem is how to change monistic approaches and create a new kind of scientific conception of the world, one that is open and dynamic (Radnitzky, 1971) and able to integrate findings from the life sciences. Only then can biopolitical perspectives become anchored in the discipline. Thus, introducing biopolitics in Germany depends on a mental change, from traditional monistic conceptions to an open conception.

After a period of almost total absence in political science, field experimentation has become a common research design. In this chapter, I discuss some of the reasons for the increasing use of field experiments. Several chapters in this volume provide comprehensive introductions to specific experimental techniques and detailed reviews of the now extensive field experimental literatures in multiple areas. This chapter does not duplicate these contributions, but instead provides background, arguments, opinions, and speculations. I begin by defining field experiments in Section 1. In Section 2, I discuss the intellectual context for the emergence of field experimentation in political science, beginning with the recent revival of field experimentation in studies of voter turnout. In Section 3, I describe the statistical properties of field experiments and explain how the approach addresses many of the common methodological deficiencies identified in earlier observational research on campaign effects and voter participation. Section 4 reviews the range of applications of field experimentation. In Section 5, I answer several frequently asked questions about the limitations and weaknesses of field experimentation. In Section 6, I briefly discuss some challenges that field experimentation faces as it becomes a more frequently employed methodological approach in political science. This includes a discussion of the external validity of field experimental results and consideration of how difficulties related to replication and bias in experimental reporting might affect the development of field experiment literatures.

This paper is a reflective and experiential piece on practising interpretive policy research — a meaning focus sed approach to studying politics. Much effort in recent years has gone into defining and defending interpretive methods against positivist approaches in political science. Yet surprisingly little is known about how researchers actually ‘interpret’ the political world, and what issues they face in practice. This paper follows the journey of an interpretive project and reflects on a series of methodological issues it posed. The discussion reveals that interpretive methods can be demanding on researchers: they needto immerse themselves in policy practice, engage iteratively, embrace uncertainty, and work with multiple interpretations. To encourage learning and improve the practice of interpretive research in political science, this paper calls on scholars to be more reflexive about what they do by sharing their research experiences.

The restoration and development of political science as a discipline in China since 1980 benefits from its methodological improvements that were made largely by introducing research approaches from western academia. The aim of this paper is to examine the evolution of the introduction based on articles published in Chinese academic journals since 1990. There exists a wide diversity in research approaches in political science, and the authors try to explain why each approach has a different impact on Chinese political studies and how the introduction of such knowledge has changed the way Chinese political researchers understand the methodology and political science as a discipline.

Austerity politics, war in the Middle East and at other borders of the European Union, the rise of nationalisms, the emergence of populist parties and politicians, Islamophobia and the refugee crisis are amongst the recent developments suggesting the need for discussions about the theories and concepts that academic disciplines provide for making sense of societal, cultural and political transformations. In this article, we focus on the capacities of feminist political theories to undertake this task. By assessing different feminist approaches to political analysis that range from focusing on women and men, to analysing gender, to doing intersectionality and to adopting post-structural and new materialist approaches, we explore the contributions and the limitations of each framework. This allows us to consider where feminist theoretical debates on gender and politics currently are, to assess old and new developments and to address lacunae in the debate. Our argument is that dominant approaches in political science influence the emergence and marginalisation of particular feminist frameworks for political analysis, but also that feminist theorising of gender and politics, in striving for recognition within mainstream political science, reproduces its own hegemonies and marginalisations.

This research addressed theoretical approaches in political science arguing that the American electorate is either poorly informed or dependent on party label cues, by assessing performance on political judgment tasks when party label information is missing. The research materials were created from the results of a national opinion survey held during a national election. The experiments themselves were run on nationally representative samples of adults, identified from another national electoral survey. Participants saw profiles of simulated individuals, including information about demographics and issue positions, but omitting party labels. In Experiment 1, participants successfully judged the likelihood of party membership based on the profiles. In Experiment 2, participants successfully voted based on their party interests. The results were mediated by participants' political knowledge. Conclusions are drawn with respect to theories from political science and issues in cognitive science regarding categorization and reasoning.

Influence in the International Competition Network (Icn): Who Seeks It, How Do They Do This and Why?

No self-respecting economist, political scientist, or sociologist today ignores the importance of institutions. In standard economics, institutional analysis has found a central place: endogenous growth theory, transaction costs economics, as well as the new economics of organization imply an active incorporation of institutions into theory; and since the seminal article by March and Olsen (1984), even hard core behavioural political science has been forced to come to terms with the structuring effect of institutions, while game-theoretic approaches in political science underscore the role of institutions in shaping outcome sets.

Two important methodological debates in political theory concern (i) the place of historical research and interpretation in normative inquiry; and (ii) the importance of comparing different cultural traditions of political thought. The first question animates a long-standing controversy over the relative importance of ‘history of political thought’ versus ‘philosophy’ in political theory, while the second has been central to the recent growth of ‘comparative political theory’. Despite both debates being concerned, in fundamental ways, with history and comparison, they have remained surprisingly disconnected from broader debates in the humanities and social sciences about the use of comparative history and, in particular, of the prominent methodological approach in political science known as ‘comparative historical analysis’. This may reflect the fact that the debates over history of political thought and comparative political theory have fundamentally revolved around thought—history as the history of thought and comparison as the comparison of thought—whereas comparative historical analysis is more centrally focused on the study of political behaviour. In this paper I suggest that this neglect of comparative historical analysis in political theory represents a missed opportunity. Like other forms of social scientific inquiry, comparative historical analysis can yield important empirical knowledge for political theorists. But I wish to more ambitiously suggest that comparative historical analysis can also be adapted for conducting normative political theory itself. I summarise the key features of comparative historical analysis for political theorists, and explain how its use of historical cases can supplement both the use of imaginary thought experiments and the study of contemporary politics. I then delineate three specific ways in which comparative historical analysis might be used to support normative inquiry: deductive testing, inductive construction, and casuistic elaboration. All three, I argue, can help meet recent calls to bring the study of real political behaviour more centrally into political theory research.

The Disorder of Political Inquiry. By Keith Topper. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005. 336p. $45.00.The conceit framing Keith Topper's fine and necessary book is that the state of social science methods has grown so disordered it has even come to public attention, first when the journal Social Text unwittingly published Alan Sokal's parody of poststructuralist jargon and the now defunct Lingua Franca exposed the hoax, and then when the so-called Perestroika movement emerged to challenge dominant approaches in political science. Because the first instance attacked the perceived consequences of epistemic relativism in the social sciences generally and the latter the rigor mortis resulting from an allegedly hegemonic notion of scientific rigor in its discipline in particular, Topper's conceit allows him to play the role of Odysseus steering through the straits, lashed to his hermeneutic mast while shunning the Manichean siren songs of scientific monism to the one side and empty pluralism on the other, and heading for more open, ecumenical waters. It also enables him to claim that all this tacking to and fro has a public, political import. Indeed, he asserts that his primary concern in this book is “with a set of contemporary questions about the ways in which particular methodological commitments enable or constrain one's capacity to identify and act upon opaque power relations that sustain forms of domination” (p. 12).

The ideals of tolerance and cultural exchange associated with the interfaith past of Muslim Spain (al-Andalus) have become a symbol for Andalusian regionalism and for the integration of Moroccan communities. Nowhere is this more keenly felt than in the context of music. In cities such as Granada, Moroccan and Spanish musicians actively promote the ideals of intercultural dialogue through the performance of repertoires such as flamenco and Arab-Andalusian music that allegedly possess a shared cultural history. In this article, we examine the interrelationship between music and ‘intercultural regionalism’, focusing on how music is used by public institutions to ground social integration in the discourse of regionalism. Against a backdrop of rising Islamophobia and the mobilization of right-wing populist and anti-immigration rhetoric both within Spain and internationally, the authors consider how music can be used to promote social integration, to overcome Islamophobia and to tackle radicalization. We advance two arguments. First, we argue that the musical interculturalism promoted by a variety of institutions needs to be understood within the wider project of Andalusian regionalism. Here, we note that musical integration of Spain’s cultural and historical ‘Other’ (Moroccans) into Andalusian society is promoted as a model for how Europe can overcome the alleged ‘death of multiculturalism’. The preferential way to achieve this objective is through ‘intercultural regionalism’, envisioned as the combination of regional identity-building and intercultural interactions between communities that share a common cultural heritage. Second, we assess some of the criticism of the efficacy of al-Andalus as a model for contemporary intercultural exchange. Combining approaches in political science and ethnomusicology, we focus on one case study, the Fundación Tres Culturas (FTC). Through interviews with figures within the FTC, we examine why this model has become partly insufficient and how it is borne out in the sorts of musical activities programmed by FTC that seek to move beyond the ‘andalusí’ myth. We conclude by recognizing the continuing regional and international importance of this myth but we question its integrating capacity at a time of radical political, economic and environmental upheaval.

The concept of the developmental state emerged to explain the rapid growth of a number of countries in East Asia in the postwar period. Yet the developmental state literature also offered a theoretical approach to growth that was heterodox with respect to prevailing approaches in both economics and political science. Arguing for the distinctive features of developmental states, its proponents emphasized the role of government intervention and industrial policy as well as the significance of strong states and particular social coalitions. This literature blossomed into a wider approach, firmly planted in a much longer heterodox tradition, that explored comparisons with states that were decidedly not developmentalist, thus contributing to our historical understanding of long-run growth. This Element provides a critical but sympathetic overview of this literature and ends with its revival and a look forward at the possibility for developmentalist approaches, both in the advanced and developing world.

A surprising range of scholars return to the works of Aristotle as a source of fresh perspectives on their disciplines. Furthering that aim, an eclectic group of classicists and political scientists discusses the importance of Aristotle's political and ethical writingsfor example, the Poetics, the Rhetoric, the Politics, and ethical and historical treatisesto contemporary approaches in political and social science. The collection examines underlying concepts such as production, race, class, and gender, as well as more traditional Aristotelian topics such as justice, monarchy and democracy, and the relationship between law and constitution. Emphasizing contemporary relevance and following Aristotle himself, this volume proceeds on the premise that the human sciences do not seek simply to increase knowledge but rather to benefit human life.

The article is devoted to the peculiarities of the development of modern Cuban society and the means of managing its affairs based on the analysis of the main conceptual provisions of the new Constitution of the Cuban Republic in 2019. The author analyzes the features of formation of a separate constitutional concepts and categories, examines the essence of the concept of the rule of law in a socialist path of development of Cuban society, studying features of diverse forms of ownership in Cuba and the importance of the organizing role of the Communist party of Cuba in matters of governance. The author states that it is necessary to make changes to the current Cuban legislation based on the prospects for new forms of participation of citizens in the management of society and the state. The article is of considerable interest to Russian lawyers, since it is presented from the position of a synergetic approach of philosophy, political science and jurisprudence to the forms and ways of existence of ideological legal systems of the modern world (on the example of Cuba of the XXI century).

Despite the fact that attempts to make this type of collaboration permanent failed during the years which followed, the Euro-Arab Dialogue was a significant moment in the field of international relations and of the history of the European Community, especially analyzing the global scenario and the American opposition. Thought by the Quai d’Orsay to be an alternative strategy to the Washington deals during the 1973 oil crisis, it certainly represented an important attempt to develop an EC foreign policy that did not necessarily imply – as it turned out –incompatibility with the wishes of the White House. The purpose of this paper is to examine the development of the EAD and to compare it with the Trans-Atlantic dealings. Nevertheless, the typology and the methods of Washington opposition changed over time; in some circumstances Kissinger seemed to control the evolution of the EAD, pressing the Western European governments to confront and oppose the Arab intention to transform the dialogue into a base for political claims. This manuscript aims at investing the beginning of the EAD and the relations with the Trans-Atlantic limits and constraints, mainly using archival documents available at the Historical Archives of the European Union, at the National Archive, at the National Archives and Record Administration. There is not much literature about the EAD and this is mainly focused on the poor results. Beside the first academic works with a political science approach (i.e.: Al-Dajani, 1976; Allen, 1977; Taylor, 1978; Jawad, 1992), in the new articles the EAD is not always the main subject (i.e.: Miller, 2014; Mockli, 2009). Furthermore, Bat Ye’or (2005) attaches too much importance to the political issues, while Zakariah (2013) focuses its analysis on the ‘real’ attitude of the British policy towards the EAD.