Political Science: The Discipline

The paper reviews the general development of Political Science as a discipline over the past 20 years. It takes as its point of departure the last most important account as presented by Greenstein and Polsby (1975) in their Handbook of Political Science. The analysis provides evidence of a professional maturation of Political Science. On the one side one can observe increasing differentiation and specialization. On the other side, however, there is increasing integration across all the separate subdisciplines. This is due to an increas­ ingly shared intellectual agenda across most of the subdisciplines. Thus, theoretical innovations travel more easily across subdisciplinary boundaries. Today rational choice (and new institu­ tionalism) has carved out a predominant role for itself but the insights of the behavioral revolu­ tion arc not lost. The general picture is a happy one of a fractious discipline of enterprising scholars constantly looking over the fences that used to separate subdisciplines. These conclusions reflect insights gained while editing the New Handbook of Political Science (Oxford University Press 1996) and reading the 34 chapters upon which it is based.

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