Introduction: The Methods Rebellion

Political Science today is a methodological free for all – well, not quite. The center of power in the profession is the editorial boards of the major journals. They determine what ideas will represent the profession. The research papers articulating that viewpoint are favored for publication in the prominent journals.

From those journals, hiring committees at the leading university political science departments take their cues. New Ph.Ds. that comply with its constraints have an advantage for hiring, and later tenure, in the prominent universities. Awards for books and papers primarily go to the methodologically correct. Research grant funds also favor the Alpha methodology.

Thus, the dominant paradigm persists because the power centers are committed to its persistence. The filigree of the profession are free to do as they please.

Two unifying principles of the controlling conceptual framework in political science are 1) imitate the methods of positivistic natural science; and 2) practice political neutrality by being “value free.”

Evidence for the allegations made here can be seen in the Data Access and Research Transparency (DA-RT) initiative and the Journal Editors Transparency Statement (JETS), which will be discussed in later posts.

The main aim of this Blog is to engage in a political science methods rebellion. The dominant positivism is not only elitist, it is the Wrong Conceptual Framework for understanding the subject matter of the profession – the political activities of human beings.

Comments

RIP Prop 33 😭 What happened?

Why did Prop 33 lose in California? Here are three reasons, although there could be more: 1) Out of state billionaire real estate special interests, combined with in-state millionaire Landlord orgs, spent over $121,000,000 on telling scary falsehoods to Californians. Like, rent control will cause rents to go up, and affordable housing will disappear. They just needed to cause enough confusion about the meaning of Prop 33 to get the voters – even tenants! – to vote no. 2) As I explain in a vid on YouTube,* the California Legislative Analyst presented a biased and negative summary of Prop 33 in the Voter Guide. That was sent out to 22M Californians. For many voters, it was the one and only thing they would read about Prop 33. The law requires the Legislative Analyst to suggest the economic impact of a prop for both state and local gov – but only a negative view was given, and only for the state gov – “tens of millions” would be lost in tax revenues, it said. But renters w...

Does Political Science Force Graduate Students into a Career of Irrelevancy?

Introduction In a 2014 New York Times op ed, columnist Nicholas Kristof drew numerous defensive responses when he criticized political science for having very little “practical impact” in “the real world of politics.” [1] Rather than exercising civic leadership, political science has been most noticeably AWOL from public policy debates since WWII, he claims. And, in his view, there are “fewer public intellectuals on American university campuses today than a generation ago.” How does he account for this absence? Primarily, it is due to the academic interest in pursuing the quantitative approach in political science research. This kind of research is too often unintelligible to both the politically interested general public and the policy making community. Also, the “value neutrality” required for such studies prohibits advocacy. The pattern persists, in part, because graduate students must conform to the expectations of their professors, as a requirement ...

Executive Immunity – Beyond the Hype

The media and fund raising emailers are having a ball screaming “the sky is falling! The Trump Supreme Court has given Trump ‘absolute immunity’ for whatever he wants to do as President. He’ll kill us all!” But that’s far from true. The United States v Trump The case is known as US v Trump . In its opinion, the Supreme Court didn’t give Trump anything. In fact, the Court remanded the case to the District Court, and told the lawyers for both sides to start all over again. This time, they have to consider three important points. Before explaining these, lets see how the case got to the High Court. As you probably know, Trump was indicted by a Federal Grand Jury for several criminal charges alleging a conspiracy to change the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. (SCt's Opinion, page 2. All references to the Opinion.) In the...

The Political Science Interpretivist

Search This Blog