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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.


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