How Political Science Can Enrich Other Disciplines

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/106125/1/scps12012.pd

An Analysis of the Philosophical Foundations of Behaviouralism and Constructivism:any Imperative to Modern Political Science?

Three broad paradigms initially dominated the deliberations among political analysts on what best mode of analysis exists when it comes to analyzing political issues and phenomenon. Recent studies however reveal that evolving trends of thoughts in political science and generally in the social sciences - with regards to the questions above - now exist among contemporary thinkers in the 21st Century. Consequently, against the existing institutionalists’, pluralists’ and elitists’ approaches to political analysis, contemporary thinkers have proposed the behaviouralists’ and the constructivists’ approaches, among other new modes of analysis, as a more empiric method of analysis which increases the scienticity of deductions made during political analysis. This study, in the light of the various criticisms presented against these new approaches, examines via critical and analytical philosophical methods, all available literature on the behaviouralists’ and constructivists’ approaches with the view to identifying the vivid imperatives which these new approaches offer researchers in political science and in the social sciences. The study concludes that the behaviouralists approach in practice totally embraces all that lends to a scientific character. The constructivist approach on the other hand takes into consideration the various complexities that now exist in human phenomeno

Do You Trust Scientists About the Environment?

In this brief, author Lawrence Hamilton examines the results of a Granite State Poll conducted by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center in late January–early February 2014. The poll asked about public trust in scientists, along with other questions on science, political, and social issues that help to place the science-trust results in perspective. Almost two-thirds of New Hampshire residents surveyed say that they trust scientists to provide accurate information about environmental issues. Only 12 percent do not trust scientists to provide this information. Wide disparities occur along party lines, however, regarding this and other questions about science. The 53 percent gap between Democrats and Republicans on climate change is one of the largest for any issue. Trust in scientists shows a somewhat narrower Democrat–Republican gap (37 percent), which is larger than those for historically divisive social issues such as abortion or the death penalty. Answers to these survey questions also relate to respondents’ news media sources, even after statistical adjustments for political party, age, gender and education. People who often listen to New Hampshire Public Radio are more likely to say they trust scientists, and respond differently from other New Hampshire residents on several other science-related questions. People who often watch local television news or read newspapers, on the other hand, respond differently on questions about the death penalty or gun control

The crown of sciences: Can it be just a science? The journey of political sciences in the 20\u3csup\u3eth\u3c/sup\u3e century

Throughout history political science has been recognised as the peak of the hierarchy of disciplines. To Aristotle, politics touches on all the aspects of public life which the rulers should deal with. Therefore, political science, by nature, is not like any other field of knowledge. The history of its development in the twentieth century is a manifestation of this thesis and in fact a realistic reflection of it. From the second half of the nineteenth century until the 1970s, political science has tried to become a discipline just like other social and sometimes natural sciences. Nonetheless, the question is still hanging: Has political science become a discipline independent from other social sciences? Or has the circle been completed and political science, after a century of struggle, is back to the first question? [This study, however, attempts to develop a different approach for studying the evolution of political science in the twentieth century by incorporating three approaches: history of science, sociology of science, and epistemology of science. These approaches will be spun together in the stages of development of political science. These stages are: 1. the stage of independence of political science from other disciplines, like history, philosophy, economy and law, 2. The stage of the shift of political scholarship to a science in the logical positivist sense, and 3. The stage of revision, criticism and post-isms

The constraining role of political culture in the deepening of new democracies: the case of Chile

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts in Political Science with Honors.This paper examines the role of political culture in the development of Chilean democracy as a case study for other third-wave democracies in the Latin American region. The prioritization of political stability during the years of democratic transition - seen as essential by the political elite to prevent the political polarization that led to the 1973 coup d’etat - resulted in limited social reform and the dissatisfaction of the average Chilean with his political parties. Differences in the political culture of the political elite and at the mass level resulted in a delegitimization of democracy for the average citizen. The Chilean case highlights a growing issue of representation in Latin America and a general loss of faith in the democratic project

Parameterized Algorithmics for Computational Social Choice: Nine Research Challenges

Computational Social Choice is an interdisciplinary research area involving Economics, Political Science, and Social Science on the one side, and Mathematics and Computer Science (including Artificial Intelligence and Multiagent Systems) on the other side. Typical computational problems studied in this field include the vulnerability of voting procedures against attacks, or preference aggregation in multi-agent systems. Parameterized Algorithmics is a subfield of Theoretical Computer Science seeking to exploit meaningful problem-specific parameters in order to identify tractable special cases of in general computationally hard problems. In this paper, we propose nine of our favorite research challenges concerning the parameterized complexity of problems appearing in this context

How Prediction Markets can Save Event Studies

Event studies have been used in political science to study the cost of regulation (Schwert, 1981), the value of political connections (Roberts, 1990a; Fisman, 2001), the effect of political parties on defense spending (Roberts, 1990b), the importance of rules in congressional committees (Gilligan and Krehbiel, 1988), the reaction of different interests to trade legislation (Schnietz, 2000), how party control in parliamentary systems affects broad-based stock indices (Herron, 2000), the value of defense contracts (Rogerson, 1989), the effect of the political party of the US President and congressional majorities on particular industry segments (Mattozzi, 2008; Knight, 2006; Herron et al., 1999; Den Hartog and Monroe, 2008; Monroe, 2008; Jayachandran, 2006), and other questions

Dancing to the Partisan Beat: A First Analysis of Political Communication on TikTok

TikTok is a video-sharing social networking service, whose popularity is increasing rapidly. It was the world's second-most downloaded app in 2019. Although the platform is known for having users posting videos of themselves dancing, lip-syncing, or showcasing other talents, user-videos expressing political views have seen a recent spurt. This study aims to perform a primary evaluation of political communication on TikTok. We collect a set of US partisan Republican and Democratic videos to investigate how users communicated with each other about political issues. With the help of computer vision, natural language processing, and statistical tools, we illustrate that political communication on TikTok is much more interactive in comparison to other social media platforms, with users combining multiple information channels to spread their messages. We show that political communication takes place in the form of communication trees since users generate branches of responses to existing content. In terms of user demographics, we find that users belonging to both the US parties are young and behave similarly on the platform. However, Republican users generated more political content and their videos received more responses; on the other hand, Democratic users engaged significantly more in cross-partisan discussions.Comment: Accepted as a full paper at the 12th International ACM Web Science Conference (WebSci 2020). Please cite the WebSci version; Second version includes corrected typo

Credimus

We believe that economic design and computational complexity---while already important to each other---should become even more important to each other with each passing year. But for that to happen, experts in on the one hand such areas as social choice, economics, and political science and on the other hand computational complexity will have to better understand each other's worldviews. This article, written by two complexity theorists who also work in computational social choice theory, focuses on one direction of that process by presenting a brief overview of how most computational complexity theorists view the world. Although our immediate motivation is to make the lens through which complexity theorists see the world be better understood by those in the social sciences, we also feel that even within computer science it is very important for nontheoreticians to understand how theoreticians think, just as it is equally important within computer science for theoreticians to understand how nontheoreticians think

Political Science Collection Development Policy

The political science collection supports the teaching, learning, research, needs for political information, international exchanges and communications, and other related service activities of the entire university community. Its primary users are faculty, staff, and students of the Department of Political Science in the College of Arts and Sciences. Its essential focus is support for the undergraduate and graduate curricula for political science. The collection is supplemented through interlibrary loan services whenever special curriculum and research needs of political science faculty and students arise. Although the collection is not developed for the general public and community users, they may benefit from the collection for their information needs. The main focus of the collection are works classified in Library of Congress call numbers J (Political Science) and K (Law), however, curriculum and research needs of political science are substantially supported by works classified in philosophy, history, and other areas in social science