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Political Science in the United States: The Discipline and the Profession

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

John Dreijmanis
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Extract

WRITINGS ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE FREquently deal with either the discipline or the profession. There is also a tendency not to relate political science to national and international political, intellectual and educational developments. In this article political science is treated as a discipline and a profession and viewed to a more significant degree than is usually the case as the dependent variable rather than as an independent one. Although political science in the United States is being dealt with, and the emphasis is upon the post- 1945 period, it is worth remembering that the ‘content and style of political science in any country is no less international in character than it is national. At the very least differences in national styles (as well as content) are a function of international styles as the latter are mediated by national factors’. There is in the United States neither a single school of political science nor a unitary style or content.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 18 , Issue 2 , 01 April 1983 , pp. 194 - 217
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1983

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References

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51 Ibid., p. 89.

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53 Ibid..

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90 Ibid., p. 14.

91 Ibid., p. 15.

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96 The literature on the academic labour market problems is vast. Among the best works are Cartter, Allan M., PhD.’s and the Academic Labor Market, New York, McGraw‐Hill Book Co., 1976 Google Scholar, and Freeman, Richard B., The Overeducated American, New York and London, Academic Press, 1976 Google Scholar.

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101 Ibid..

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103 National Research Council, op. cit., pp. 7, 33.

104 Calculated by the author from data provided in Hugh G. Thorburn, ‘Graduate Studies in Political Science in Canada: Their Relationship to the Development of the Discipline and the Profession’, paper presented at the 1976 annual meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association, Université Laval, 30 May‐2 June 1976, Table 20.

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112 Ibid., p. 56.

113 Ibid., p. 30.

114 Ibid., p. 52.

115 ‘Political Science Faculty and Student Data’, p. 334; ‘Political Science Degrees Awarded and Graduate Students Enrolled: 1982 Update’, P. S., Vol. XV, No. 3, Summer 1982, p. 459.

116 Calculated by the author from data provided in the American Political Science Association’s Guide to Graduate Study in Political Science 1974 and 1982, Washington, DC, 1974 and 1982, pp. 3–16 and 347–50, respectively.

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125 Walker, op. cit., p. 489.

126 Ladd and Lipset, ‘Us Revisited’, pp. 44–6.

127 Sheilah K. Mann, ‘Placement of Political Scientists, 1980–1981’, p. 89.

128 Somit and Tanenhaus, The Development of American Political Science, p. 220.