DiSalvo Summary

Jacob Robinson

ENG 250

Summary assignment

 

 

In Daniel DiSalvo’s The Politics of Studying Politics: Political Science Since the 1960’s he describes the evolution of the study of politics; the shifting paradigms and research methods of the 1960’s to current. He explains that until recently political science was not commonly studied at universities; now most universities have a political science program. One would think that with this vast change in the number of people studying political science that the field would therefore gain legitimacy through peer review and the considerable amount of research being done. DiSalvo then delves into the philosophical difference between liberal democracies and true political research and analysis. He focuses heavily on the moral obligation of a true scientist to be willing to challenge liberal democracy, and pulls into question the validity of the majority of political scientists and their research because of this inability to ask real questions. With the field favoring liberal democracy there has formed illegitimacy in the way research is done and what is focused on.

            The author believes that around the 1960’s the field of political science began to change; primarily the focus of political research devolved from the analytical methods of qualitative research to quantitative research. This focus on quantitative research is still overwhelmingly present today. The change in political study during that era can be understood through the context of it being a post-WWII world. After the war there was a power vacuum for political ideologies, the prevailing ideology preferred by most of the western world was liberal democracy. The author asserts that at the end of the Cold war several developing nations began adopting and utilizing democratic systems of government, so the focus on qualitative criticism of liberal democracy has nearly disappeared altogether

 As a political scientist you are stuck with the dilemma of critical analysis of liberal democracy, which may, and in many cases did, lead to findings that are in direct contradiction with the scientists’ love of democracy; in which case many scientists would either approach the findings with a prejudicial bias or not publish their research in an attempt to keep their  precious liberal democracy from coming into question. Or on the other side of the dilemma one must cast aside their intransigent thought process’, and cognitive dissonance that inhibits critical ideological analysis “Hence if one were a good scientist one might be a bad citizen; and if one were a good citizen, one might be a bad scientist” (DiSalvo,135).

 This war of ideologies has had a considerable effect on the field of political science today, pre 1960’s many had begun calling into question the legitimacy of liberal democracies, and exposing several of the systems flaws, but with the war of ideologies political scientists became defensive of their ideologies and so the field changed with them. Now rarely is critical analysis of a democracy seen. Instead the field focuses on how democracies change or how other ideologies change into a democratic system. This one sided way of viewing politics excludes one of the two most largely recognized political perspectives, realism. Political scientists today favor the perspective of liberalism over realism twenty to one. This is a problem because it restricts critical thought, so debates are no longer right vs. left; rather left vs. far left. The author believes that when you lack legitimate critical analysis, then the “reigning political regime” will survive unchallenged, and therefore its possible corruptions unscathed. In the 1980’s political scientists placed an abundant focus on behavioral predictions in an attempt to discover or establish a set of laws like that of Newton. Today there is only theory, yet the search for political axioms continues, the emergence of a school of thought concerning individual actors has made it that much more difficult, but that’s kind of the point.

In conclusion writing in the field of political science is highly controversial, and has undergone several ideological and philosophical changes in the last five decades. These changes have not only set guidelines for political scientists today, but actively restrict knowledge and research in the field. Some scientists seek to “develop “laws” of political behavior” (DiSalvo,133); while others seek the furtherance of liberalism and the avidly defend liberal democracies regardless of their research’s findings. DiSalvo argues that this field has become oversaturated with parochialism which leads the majority involved with or affected by this parochialism to be subject to the reigning ideology. While most of this field has abandoned the concepts of true science and instead prefer biased conclusions, not all do especially in the fields of comparative and international politics; where qualitative research is still utilized.