Since emerging in the late nineteenth century, political science has undergone a radical shift--from constructing grand narratives of national political development to producing empirical studies of individual political phenomena. What caused this change? Modern Political Science--the first authoritative history of Anglophone political science--argues that the field's transformation shouldn't be mistaken for a case of simple progress and increasing scientific precision. On the contrary, the book shows that political science is deeply historically contingent, driven both by its own inherited ideas and by the wider history in which it has developed. Focusing on the United States and the United Kingdom, and the exchanges between them, Modern Political Science contains contributions from leading political scientists, political theorists, and intellectual historians from both sides of the Atlantic. Together they provide a compelling account of the development of political science, its relation to other disciplines, the problems it currently faces, and possible solutions to these problems. Building on a growing interest in the history of political science, Modern Political Science is necessary reading for anyone who wants to understand how political science got to be what it is today--or what it might look like tomorrow.

Most theories of elections assume that voters and political actors are fully rational. This title provides a behavioral theory of elections based on the notion that all actors - politicians as well as voters - are only boundedly rational.

Changes in the thinking of science are usually accompanied by lively intellectual conflicts between opposing or divergent points of view. The clash of ideas is a major ingredient in the stimulation of the life of the mind in human culture. Such arguments and counter-arguments, of proofs and disproofs, permit changes in the arts and sciences to take place. Political science is not exempt from these conflicts. Since the middle of the twentieth century, the study of politics has been rocked by disagreements over its scope, theories, and methods. These disagreements were somewhat less frequent than in most sciences, natural or behavioral, but they have been at times bitter and persuasive. The subject matter of political science politics and all that is involved in politics has a halo effect. The stakes of politics make people fight and sometimes die for what they claim as their due. Political scientists seem to confuse academic with political stakes, behaving as if the victories and defeats on the battleground of the intellect resemble those on the battleground of political life. Three issues seem critical to political science at the time this volume first appeared in the 1960s: First, disagreement over the nature of the knowledge of political things is a science of politics possible, or is the study of politics a matter of philosophy? Second, controversy over the place of values in the study of politics a controversy that makes for a great deal of confusion. Third, disagreements over the basic units of analysis in the study of politics‘should the political scientist study individual and collective behavior, or limit the work to the study of institutions and large-scale processes? This collection brings together the most persuasive writings on these topics in the mid-1960s.