Search

Confronted by a number of home-grown Islamic terrorist attacks, many Americans incorrectly assume that Muslim religiosity correlates with anti-American values and that the American mosque is the center of radical socialization efforts. This paper examines the nature of the relationship between mosque involvement and political engagement. It finds that mosque attendance is positively associated with political engagement only when the attendance engages congregants in ways beyond religious ritual. Attending mosque to pray does not significantly impact political identities or engagement like following politics, registering to vote, voting, or party membership, while participation in other social or religious activities at a mosque is associated with an increased probability of engagement. These results suggest that not all mosque involvement is equally beneficial for promoting political engagement and that religious participation must proactively engage with the social lives of the congregants to have a substantive political effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For generations, Mexican and American Indian populations reciprocally and ritualistically took captives from one another’s societies in what are today the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. These captive-taking wars breached the expansion of the American state into the west (1850s) and tested the ability of the American state to enforce law and policy in a frontier environment. This intriguing history, however, has yet to be addressed in legal and social science research on race. Our goal in this article is two-fold: (1) to determine whether the captive status of individuals taken in these endemic borderland wars is visible within surviving U.S. administrative materials (e.g., census); and (2) to determine whether close analysis of census materials can be used to ascertain whether federal liberators were able to abolish the captive-taking trade relative to their official mandate. The authors analyze a core sample of 1860s-era census materials from the City of Santa Fe, New Mexico—which has a documented history of Indian captivity and enslavement—as well as church records to determine whether these materials indicate the continuance of captivity even after federal liberators had the opportunity to abolish the trade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on the challenge raised by a group of young radical economists on the boundaries of economics. The radicals claim that economic science and politics are represented as overlapping. A brief overview is given on the boundaries and migrations in economics. It discusses the core activities of radical economists at Harvard University. It also explores the formation of the Union for Radical Political Economics (URPE). It also discusses the boundary work of radicals in social science upon the emergence of radical economics. It explains how radicals reconstruct the cultural map of economics to force a realignment of interests.

By combining normative philosophy and empirical social science, we craft a research framework for assessing differential expectations embodied in normative conceptions of the economic social contract in the United States. We argue that there are distinct views of such a contract grounded in individualist and communitarian philosophical ideologies. We apply this framework to organizational downsizing, postulating that certain human resource practices, in combination with the respective ideological orientations, will affect perceptions of the justice of downsizing policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hans Morgenthau's Scientific Man vs. Power Politics appeared in 1946, one year after he received tenure at the University of Chicago. Thus, the monograph demarcates the beginning of Morgenthau's career in the United States, to which he had emigrated nine years earlier. Three main aspects seem important for understanding this work. The first is Morgenthau's bewilderment about American political culture and, as he perceived it, its cheerful optimism about the betterment of politics, society, and humanity in general. The second aspect is the nature of the argument: Scientific Man is a dogmatic tract, an attempt to hammer home certain philosophical positions—positions that were largely unpopular in the U.S. social sciences in the 1940s (and later)—rather than a reflective scholarly elaboration of certain philosophical commitments. The third is Morgenthau's place between two academic cultures: Morgenthau's language in his American writings partly stems from, but also tries to leave behind, his European academic socialization. The monograph thus reflects the author's peculiar situation, as he inhabits two sometimes crucially different semantic and cultural contexts, but fails to bridge or broker them. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Although a great deal has been written about the perestroika movement in turn-of-the century political science its actual place in the history of the discipline has been poorly understood by its founders, defenders, and critics. Perestroika can be best understood as a manifestation of the persistent crises of identity that have characterized the discipline of political science, and it cannot be explained apart from the manner in which it was reflection of issues that attended both the origins of the field and periods such as the 1920s and aftermath of the behavioral era. What has been particularly important in each case has been the impact on both American politics and political science of the ethic of pluralism, which has created significant difficulties for both the practical and epistemic relationship between the discipline and its subject matter. — John Gunnell.This essay is followed by responses from James Farr, Robert O. Keohane, David D. Laitin, Kristen Renwick Monroe, Anne Norton, and Sanford F. Schram. John Gunnell then offers a response to commentators. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses several issues of concern related to the status of the United States specially its image as a nation on the one hand and as an empire on the other. The author cites the exceptionalism concept which argues that the United States is not an empire and has never been on account of the fact that it espouses anti-colonial tradition, supports liberal institutions, as well as promotes democratic values. A school of thought harbored by some scholars which criticize the exceptionalism thesis proposes that in denying the empire issue, the United States exhibits an imperial amnesia about its past.

In this essay, I rely primarily on unpublished documents from the Rockefeller Foundation Archives as well as the annual reports of the Ford Foundation and the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) to show that rather than being in a torpor, political theory in the 1950s was a large and eclectic field, marked by contest and rapid change. I focus on the Rockefeller Foundation's policy making for its program in Legal and Political Philosophy (LAPP), the largest grant program for political theory in the 1950s, both to see how the Foundation justified the creation of the program and how it defined its scope. I argue that when faced with the task of settling on a working definition of ‘political theory’ for the purpose of awarding grants, the Foundation's officers and the academics who assisted them opted, after prolonged debate, for an eclectic definition of political theory. I read the emergence of this eclectic definition of political theory, however, not as evidence of pacific pluralism but as an attempt to contain some of the new challenges to the field by incorporating them into it, albeit in a subordinate position. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intellectual developments since the mid-1960s have served to assist the efforts of those responsible for American policy in the Vietnam war subsequently to empty the history of that conflict of ethical critique. This article argues for the necessity of ethically informed historical enquiry and, with respect to Vietnam, proposes that there now exists the best opportunity for a generation for scholars to construct afresh and credible moral history of the war. Increasingly, we have access to the perspectives of the ‘other side/s’: the revolution in the south, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam regime in Hanoi, the People's Republic of China, and the USSR. An examination of the motivations and interactions of these parties, combined with the continuing exegesis of American policy debates, makes clear just how critical concerns (and failures) of ethics were to the development of the conflict. In particular, it clarifies the manner in which US leaders abdicated responsibility in exaggerating the relatively limited strategic challenge that they faced in south-east Asia. Vietnam was not a ‘necessary war’; nor can the decision to fight it given its predictable consequences for south Vietnamese civilians and American soldiers alike — simply be explained away through the discourse of the honest ‘mistake’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the relationship between sociology and bioethics in the United States. History of bioethics and sociology; Comparison between sociology in bioethics and sociology of bioethics; Consequences of moral advice-giving.

Analyzes the sociological impact of the amateur blackface minstrelsy being done in the post-World War II United States as late as the 1970s. Reasons why and manner by which the Ohio community view and value these shows; Vague awareness with regards to racism embedded in them; Possible intentions of whites for the exhibition of minstrel shows; Recovery of the community's own perception about the show.

An essay is presented on the implications of ethnocentrism in the social science. It offers the development literature of political science, sociology or economics of the Western European countries and the U.S. Moreover, the author relates the concepts and interpretations of corporatism, dependency, patron-client relations, center-periphery relations and organic-statism.

This article is concerned to analyse Keynes's ideas on theoretical choice. It argues that, notwithstanding his rationalism, Keynes had something approaching a Kuhnian understanding of the process of theoretical change. It is an ambiguity in the logic of theory choice and adherence which, it is argued, has significance for both our understanding of the 'Keynesian revolution" and also the process of theoretical change in social thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the internal flaws found on the budget-maximizing models of bureaucratic behavior acquired through public choice models. Among the listed flaws of the model includes: collective action problems exist for officials in trying to increase budgets; bureaucrats' utilities are associated with only parts of overall program budgets; there are major variations between agencies in the extent to which officials' welfare is improved by program budget increments; and rational officials will maximize budgets only up to an equilibrium point.

The article investigates the presidential and congressional relations during the administration of former U.S. President Jimmy Carter. It focuses on the thought that a president will organize such relation to suit his policy goals and personal style. During his administration, President Carter illustrated an anti-political style in pursuing policy goals that was uncomplimentary to Congress. It discusses the role of a congressional relations staff, which permitted the president to sustain his personal style of independence.

The article reports that American schoolchildren are raised on the shibboleth Sucks and stones can break my bones, but words will never hurt me," and its wisdom imperfectly informs First Amendment defenses of freedom of speech. These defenses, however, have received stem challenge as of late, as scholars and activists have attempted to articulate novel responses to the persistence within a multicultural society of hateful and injurious speech. Such a claim is deeply at odds with the liberal tradition. AS a general matter, liberalism insists that speech be protected more robustly against state interference than conduct, an argument that commonly rests on three interrelated notions. First, the liberal theory of free speech insists that because the injuries inflicted bywords are qualitatively different from those inflicted by sticks or clubs, the power of the state should rarely be used to check excesses of speech. Second, liberalism asserts that such accesses should be tolerated in a society dedicated to one, or a combination, of the following: the discovery and articulation of novel truths; principles and institutions of self-governance; and a theory of the morally autonomous self.

Whether federalism is more than a legal fiction is a question that generates considerable controversy among scholars in law and the social sciences. Historians of nineteenth-century American federalism have differed about the workings of the federal system in the era characterized as "dual federalism." This article provides an analysis of these controversies and offers a theoretical position on the problem of real power under federalism. The historical literature, it is argued, provides legal scholars and social scientists with abundant data on the reach, diversity, and effects of governmental action in the different historical epochs of American federalism. The relationship of federalism in the United States to political freedom, governmental performance and efficiency, and the formation of public policy all receive attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on American social character. The focus on character showed up in the laments of the late 1970s about United States' "economic decline," the discovery by many commentators that the rate of increase in U.S. productivity was falling, a fact sometimes confused with absolute decline, and that the nation's "economic lead" over other economies was narrowing. In some quarters of opinion, the problem was seen as primarily economic and institutional; a matter of investment and the relationship between sectors.

This article discusses an uncertain destiny of Indian captivities on the upper Connecticut River. The captivity narrative has long been recognized as a significant source of frontier history and as an important genre of American literature. The prospect of being taken captive by Indians was one of the greatest terrors for pioneers on the American frontier. From seventeenth-century Massachusetts to twentieth-century Hollywood, Indian captivity has been regarded as a fate worse than death, and western frontiersmen advocated saving the last bullet for oneself to prevent it.

The article outlines a political science that is founded on principles different from those underlying the discipline at present in the U.S. politics. It notes that contemporary American political science is Newtonian and interactionist in orientation in a world in which scientific thought has become field oriented and transactionist.

The article focuses on the political lives of citizens during the Gilded Age in the U.S. The political leaders of the Gilded Age have almost invariably been described as conservatives, and the presidents have generally been characterized as respectable mediocrities who in their social and political thinking were convinced that their party's support of American individualism was in accord with some prearranged plan.

The article discusses the attempts of the American political science profession to conduct studies on politics in the U.S. It aims to make or remake an American conservatism which speculates the merging of understanding in politics and history. It also demonstrates the doubts to the sufficiency of American political thought to handle the problems of the changing experience of the U.S.

The article reports on the religion issues of the Baltimore Council's decrees and its effects on Americans in the United States. It notes that Council's decrees had few restraining effects because they took little notice of the basic and social and economic problems affecting Americans' lives in the late 19th century. The reasons for these problems include the gradual secularization of religious trends and the wide acceptance of Protestantism.

The effort to provide aid for development, undertaken on an unprecedented scale by the United Suites after World War II, provides an excellent opportunity for social scientists to contribute to the clarification and implementation of public policy. The relationship between given policies and the desired process of development has not been adequately understood. Nor has the nature of development been clearly Identified or conceptualized. in recent years, there has been an increasing awareness of these problems in Congress. This is particularly manifest in the hearings, debates, and reports which led to the passage of title IX of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1966, and the public statements of the Congressmen who were responsible for the passage of the title. Efforts at implementation of this section indicate the complexity of the problem and the need for a major contribution from the social sciences if the policy embodied in the act is to be effectuated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the author comments on the views of Michael Desch, professor of political science at University of Notre Dame, on researching in political science for academic reasons. Topics discussed include engagement of academics for solving problems related to political; science, collaboration between security policymakers of the U.S. and academics and relevance of social science for the U.S. national security policy.