women's right, political science assignment help

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(chapter 7)This paper should be a minimum of three pages long, double spaced. Before writing the paper read the pamphlet on why women should not be allowed to vote and the essay by Mary Wollstonecraft and respond to the following two prompts:

1. Take the list of arguments from the pamphlet and compare and contrast them to the arguments made by Wollstonecraft. For each one state whether or not she would agree with the argument, and cite something from her essay that supports your argument.

2. Look at three of her arguments in the essay and answer whether or not her arguments something that would still be argued today or are the arguments settled and done with. In other words, are women still fighting the same fight or have they at least won the points she raises?

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Analyzing Politics An Introduction to Political Science SIXTH EDITION ELLEN GRIGSBY University of New Mexico Australia • Brazil • Mexico • Singapore • United Kingdom • United States Copyright 2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. This is an electronic version of the print textbook. Due to electronic rights restrictions, some third party content may be suppressed. Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. The publisher reserves the right to remove content from this title at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. For valuable information on pricing, previous editions, changes to current editions, and alternate formats, please visit www.cengage.com/highered to search by ISBN#, author, title, or keyword for materials in your areas of interest. Copyright 2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. Analyzing Politics: An Introduction to Political Science, Sixth Edition Ellen Grigsby Product Director: Suzanne Jeans Product Team Manager: Carolyn Merrill Content Developer: Jennifer Jacobson, Ohlinger Publishing Services Content Coordinator: Eireann Aspell Product Assistant: Abigail Hess Media Developer: Laura Hildebrand Marketing Manager: Valerie Hartman Rights Acquisitions Specialist: Jennifer Meyer Dare Manufacturing Planner: Fola Orekoya Art and Design Direction, Production Management, and Composition: PreMediaGlobal Cover Image: © Laborant/ Shutterstock © 2015, 2012, 2009 Cengage Learning WCN: 02-200-203 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 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For product information and technology assistance, contact us at Cengage Learning Customer & Sales Support, 1-800-354-9706 For permission to use material from this text or product, submit all requests online at www.cengage.com/permissions Further permissions questions can be emailed to permissionrequest@cengage.com Library of Congress Control Number: 2013944150 ISBN-13: 978-1-285-46559-3 ISBN-10: 1-285-46559-8 Cengage Learning 200 First Stamford Place, 4th Floor Stamford, CT 06902 USA Cengage Learning is a leading provider of customized learning solutions with office locations around the globe, including Singapore, the United Kingdom, Australia, Mexico, Brazil and Japan. Locate your local office at www.cengage.com/global. Cengage Learning products are represented in Canada by Nelson Education, Ltd. For your course and learning solutions, visit www.cengage.com Purchase any of our products at your local college store or at our preferred online store www.cengagebrain.com Instructors: Please visit login.cengage.com and log in to access instructor-specific resources. Printed in the United States of America 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 17 16 15 14 13 Copyright 2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. BRIEF CONTENTS 1 INTRODUCTION 1 2 POLITICAL SCIENCE AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS IN STUDYING POLITICS 12 3 KEY CONCEPTS IN POLITICAL SCIENCE 45 4 POLITICAL THEORY: EXAMINING THE ETHICAL FOUNDATIONS OF POLITICS 78 5 POLITICAL IDEOLOGIES I: LIBERALISM CONSERVATISM, AND SOCIALISM 102 6 POLITICAL IDEOLOGIES II: FASCISM 133 7 POLITICAL IDEOLOGIES III: FEMINISM, ENVIRONMENTALISM, AND POSTMODERNISM 151 8 COMPARATIVE POLITICS I: GOVERNMENTAL SYSTEMS: DEMOCRACY AND NONDEMOCRACY 173 9 COMPARATIVE POLITICS II: INTEREST GROUPS, POLITICAL PARTIES, AND ELECTIONS 203 10 COMPARATIVE POLITICS III: GOVERNING DEMOCRACIES: EXECUTIVES, LEGISLATURES, AND JUDICIARIES 243 11 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS I: 266 12 INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS II: CONTEMPORARY ISSUES 289 Copyright 2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. CONTENTS PREFACE 1 ix Introduction 1 ANALYZING POLITICS AS A STUDY OF PUZZLES 2 11 Political Science and Scientific Methods in Studying Politics THE RANGE OF POLITICAL SCIENCE 12 15 Historical Developments 15 Traditionalism, Behavioralism, and Postbehavioralism 15 THINKING SCIENTIFICALLY: SOME FOUNDATIONS OF SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY 20 THINKING SCIENTIFICALLY ABOUT POLITICS 24 Case Studies 24 Survey Research 27 Experiments and Quasi-Experiments Quantitative Analysis 32 SCIENCE: LIMITATIONS 31 34 How Can We Have a Science of Human Behavior if Human Behavior Is Potentially Unique? 34 How Do We Know Our Findings Are Correct? 35 Does the Pursuit of Science Lead Us to Ignore Important Questions? 36 Does Science Sometimes Contradict Its Own Logic? 36 Can Science Avoid Coming into Conflict with Ethics? 38 SUMMING UP 42 ANALYZING THE PUZZLE OF SENATOR RUBIO’S RESPONSE 43 STUDY QUESTIONS 43 GO BEYOND CLASS: RESOURCES FOR DEBATE AND ACTION 44 3 Key Concepts in Political Science POWER 46 Types of Power 47 Debates in the Study of Power 61 iv Copyright 2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 45 CONTENTS STATES 61 STATES: STATE FORMATION, DEVELOPMENT, AND CHANGE Debates in the Study of States NATIONS 65 72 States and Nations: Relations and Interactions Debates in the Study of Nations 75 72 SUMMING UP 75 ANALYZING THE PUZZLE OF PROJECT PREVENTION 76 STUDY QUESTIONS 77 GO BEYOND CLASS: RESOURCES FOR DEBATE AND ACTION 4 64 77 Political Theory 78 ANALYZING POLITICAL THEORY: PLATO’S ALLEGORY OF THE CAVE 80 SOME FUNDAMENTAL ETHICAL QUESTIONS IN POLITICS 82 What Purpose Should the State Serve? 83 Should States Promote Equality? 86 Should States Be Organized to Maximize Their Own Power or Organized to Restrain This Power? 91 Should States Try to Help Us Be Ethical? 94 SUMMING UP 98 ANALYZING THE ETHICAL PUZZLES OF DRONES 99 STUDY QUESTIONS 100 GO BEYOND CLASS: RESOURCES FOR DEBATE AND ACTION 5 Political Ideologies I LIBERALISM 100 102 103 Classical Liberalism 103 Modern Liberalism 108 Classical and Modern Liberalism Today CONSERVATISM 111 112 Traditional Conservatism 112 Traditional Conservatism Today 116 Traditional Conservatism and Classical Liberal Conservatism in Conflict Socialism 120 Marxism 122 Marxism–Leninism 126 Social Democracy 128 117 SUMMING UP 130 ANALYZING THE PUZZLE OF PRESIDENT OBAMA’S IDEOLOGY 130 STUDY QUESTIONS 131 GO BEYOND CLASS: RESOURCES FOR DEBATE AND ACTION 131 Copyright 2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. v vi CONTENTS 6 Political Ideologies II 133 THE FASCISM OF MUSSOLINI AND HITLER Fascism: Origins and Attacks on Other Ideologies Fascism and Totalitarianism 139 The Nazi State 143 134 134 NEOFASCISM 146 SUMMING UP 148 ANALYZING THE PUZZLE OF THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF GERMANY’S PERPETUAL OBLIGATION 149 STUDY QUESTIONS 149 GO BEYOND CLASS: RESOURCES FOR DEBATE AND ACTION 150 7 Political Ideologies III FEMINISM 151 152 Liberal Feminism 157 Radical Challenges to Liberal Feminism ENVIRONMENTALISM 158 162 Basic Principles 163 Diversity within Environmentalist Ideology 167 A NOTE ON POSTMODERNISM 169 SUMMING UP 170 ANALYZING THE PUZZLE OF CLIMATE DISPLACEMENT AND ITS GENDER DIMENSIONS 171 STUDY QUESTIONS 171 GO BEYOND CLASS: RESOURCES FOR DEBATE AND ACTION 172 8 Comparative Politics I 173 DEMOCRACY AS A FLUID AND VARIED GOVERNING PROCESS 174 Components of Democracy 174 Complexities Associated with the Five Components of Democracy DEMOCRACIES COMPARED 177 179 Participation: The United States and Switzerland 179 Pluralism: The United States and Germany 182 Developmentalism: The United States and Argentina 185 Protection: The United States and Great Britain 188 Performance: The United States and India 190 NONDEMOCRACY: A FLUID AND VARIED GOVERNING PROCESS Questions about China SUMMING UP 197 199 Copyright 2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 192 CONTENTS ANALYZING THE PUZZLE OF COMPETING VOICES FROM THE ARAB SPRING 201 STUDY QUESTIONS 201 GO BEYOND CLASS: RESOURCES FOR DEBATE AND ACTION 202 9 Comparative Politics II INTEREST GROUPS 203 204 Interest Groups in the United States 205 Interest Groups Compared: Democracies 214 Interest Groups Compared: Nondemocracies 217 POLITICAL PARTIES 218 Political Parties in the United States 219 Political Parties Compared: Democracies 223 Political Parties Compared: Nondemocratic and Transitional Systems ELECTIONS 226 227 Elections in the United States 227 Presidential Elections in the 1990s 228 Presidential Elections: 2000–2012 230 Elections Compared: Democracies 237 Elections Compared: Nondemocracies 239 SUMMING UP 240 ANALYZING THE PUZZLE OF HOW REPUBLICANS CAN WIN IN THE 2016 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION 241 STUDY QUESTIONS 242 GO BEYOND CLASS: RESOURCES FOR DEBATE AND ACTION 242 10 Comparative Politics III 243 EXECUTIVE–LEGISLATIVE RELATIONS: PRESIDENTIAL AND PARLIAMENTARY SYSTEMS 244 The U.S. Presidential System: The Executive 245 President Bush and the Department of Homeland Security President Obama and Health Care Reform 246 Presidential Powers, Persuasion, and Effectiveness 248 The British Parliamentary System: The Executive 252 Other Examples of Executive–Legislative Relations 254 The U.S. Presidential System: The Legislature 254 The British Parliamentary System: The Legislature 259 245 JUDICIAL REVIEW VERSUS PARLIAMENTARY SOVEREIGNTY SUMMING UP 263 Copyright 2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 261 vii viii CONTENTS ANALYZING THE PUZZLE OF PRESIDENTIAL–CONGRESSIONAL INTERACTIONS AFTER THE SANDY HOOK ELEMENTARY SCHOOL KILLINGS 264 STUDY QUESTIONS 264 GO BEYOND CLASS: RESOURCES FOR DEBATE AND ACTION 265 11 International Relations I MODELS OF ANALYSIS 266 269 269 271 Liberalism REALISM INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: OUT OF BIPOLARISM AND INTO THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY 274 Bipolar Politics 274 After Bipolarism 276 International Security Questions 277 SUMMING UP 287 ANALYZING THE PUZZLE OF U.S. RESPONSES TO 2011 BAHRAIN PROTESTS DURING THE ARAB SPRING 287 STUDY QUESTIONS 288 GO BEYOND CLASS: RESOURCES FOR DEBATE AND ACTION 288 12 International Relations II 289 LESSONS FROM 9/11 291 MEDIA AND POLITICS 293 Is Global News Really Global? 293 Patterns in Broadcast Media Ownership and Funding Differ across Countries 294 Reporting News or Making News 295 Whom You Watch Affects What You Know 296 Changing Perceptions of Journalists and Journalism 297 ECONOMICS AND POLITICS 299 SUMMING UP 306 ANALYZING THE PUZZLE OF MEDIA COVERAGE AND THE BOSTON MARATHON BOMBING OF 2013 307 STUDY QUESTIONS 307 GO BEYOND CLASS: RESOURCES FOR DEBATE AND ACTION 308 NOTES 309 GLOSSARY 358 INDEX 364 Copyright 2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. PREFACE I believe that among the most satisfying moments in teaching are those when we help students realize that the more complex we allow questions to be, the more exciting it is to study those questions. As I enter my third decade of teaching undergraduates, I find myself increasingly convinced of the importance of helping students understand that analytical approaches to the study of politics have many practical and immediate uses, whether in clarifying the logic behind divergent perspectives on international security questions or in identifying the shared ontological assumptions of individualist conservatism and classical liberalism. In fact, I believe that introductory students—no less than graduate students—need to begin to see that academic disciplines are constituted by the scholarly debates that they themselves unleash. To this end, the sixth edition incorporates a new theme: It introduces the reader to some ways in which political science evaluates and seeks to unravel some of the complexities of twenty-first-century politics. Because politics is rarely straightforward, students of political science need to be prepared for surprises—surprises so multilayered that they can be conceptualized as puzzles or riddles. The new edition confronts these complexities directly and brings them into every chapter of the book. Indeed, an image of the Egyptian sphinx—an iconic memorial of the centuries-old importance of riddles and puzzles in human societies—is used in each chapter as a visual guide for students as they are challenged to analyze some of the ways in which political questions defy quick and easy answers. The new theme is carried out pedagogically throughout the text, serving as an explicit intellectual framework: Each chapter begins with a contemporary puzzle that relates to the chapter’s topic and poses questions that will be examined throughout the chapter. These puzzles include the following: the discrepancy between what people have the potential to know regarding political issues and what they do, in fact, know (Chapter 1); Senator Marco Rubio’s 2012 response to a question about the Earth’s age (Chapter 2); Project Prevention, a controversial California organization that pays people to get sterilized (Chapter 3); the use of drones (Chapter 4); the disagreement surrounding President Obama’s ideological identity (Chapter 5); Chancellor Merkel’s statement about Germany’s special and perpetual obligation to make ever present knowledge of the Holocaust while taking measures to ensure the absence of Nazism itself (Chapter 6); climate displacement and its gender dimensions (Chapter 7); competing voices of the Arab Spring (Chapter 8); the Republican Party’s Growth and Opportunity Project, about how they can win in 2016 (Chapter 9); presidential–congressional interactions after the Sandy Hook Elementary School killings (Chapter 10); comparatively muted U.S. support for 2011 Arab Spring protests in Bahrain (Chapter 11); and media coverage of the Boston Marathon bombing as a case study pointing to patterns in media coverage of international politics (Chapter 12). Sphinx puzzle icons appear in the margins within the chapter to identify explicitly concepts or details that are especially relevant to the opening puzzle. These icons also draw students’ attention to key evidence in analyzing the opening puzzle within the larger context of the chapter’s themes. “Analyzing the Puzzle” sections at the end of each chapter address the questions posed at the start. I have revised this edition also by creating new “Controversies In” boxes to highlight issues that reviewers identified as especially interesting to their students and to themes that I find, in my own teaching, to be particularly intriguing to students. Examples include Controversies in Science, which discusses DNA testing procedures in newborns (Chapter 2), Controversies in States and Power: Is the U.S. Playing Terrorball? (Chapter 3), Controversies in Presidential–Congressional ix Copyright 2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. x PREFACE Relations: Presidential Signing Statements (Chapter 10); and Controversies in Media Coverage of Political Topics: What Makes Someone an Expert? (Chapter 12). The goal of encouraging students to think critically about political science topics has also motivated every decision made about this text. Analyzing Politics is written not only to instruct but also to challenge and sometimes to unsettle readers. Furthermore, I hope the text invites students to explore a broader range of perspectives and sources than those traditionally incorporated into introductory political science textbooks. I have thus included more advanced topics, such as postmodernism, mitigation versus adaptation policy approaches in environmental politics, and a discussion of the Taliban’s Islamic fundamentalism within the context of larger questions relating to the ethical foundations of politics. Included also in this edition is new attention given to the topic of accuracy in political science forecasting, new data on nongovernmental organizations and transnational advocacy networks, a discussion of the implications of the work of Philip Tetlock and Nate Silver on political science expertise for media studies, and analyses of 2012 presidential campaign and election data. The major organizational features of this text reflect the logic of trying to balance (1) acknowledgment of the breadth of the discipline of political science with (2) awareness of the benefits of keeping the length of the text manageable. The historical development of political science as a science is discussed in Chapter 2, a chapter in which students are also asked to reflect on controversies relating to both the practice and philosophy of science. Key concepts in political science analysis are presented in Chapter 3 but are also integrated into later chapters, as those concepts relate to elections, parties, and transnational issues. Chapter 4 explores how ethical frameworks for evaluating politics can be informed by Socratic, Platonic, Aristotelian, Machiavellian, Hobbesian, Madisonian, Millian, and Nietzschean insights. Chapters 5 through 7 introduce students to liberal, conservative, socialist, fascist, feminist, environmentalist, and postmodern theory. Chapters 8 through 10 discuss U.S. and comparative politics, with attention given to democratic– nondemocratic analytical frameworks (Chapter 8); comparative electoral, political party, and interest group strategies and patterns (Chapter 9); and comparative executive, legislative, and judicial institutions (Chapter 10). Chapters 11 and 12 close the text by introducing students to models of analysis as well as contemporary media and global poverty controversies in international relations. Due to the superb work of Development Editor Jennifer Jacobson, this edition also has a new reader-friendly format with a larger font, easier-to-read design format and shading, more accessible headings and subheadings, better writing, more logically organized boxes, and brighter photographs. As an instructor, I know the challenges involved in encouraging students to read texts closely, and I understand that art, design, and copy decisions have profound pedagogical effects. Ms. Jacobson’s editorial direction turned this into a text wherein the visuals, organization, content, and fonts serve to help students with reading and learning, not distract from it. Numerous individuals have helped in the production of this text. I owe many thanks to Executive Editor Carolyn O. Merrill, Senior Content Project Manager Joshua Allen, Editorial Assistant Eireann Aspell, and PreMediaGlobal Senior Project Manager Rathi Thirumalai. I wish to thank the following individuals for reviewing the text and offering thoughtful suggestions for improvement: Jody Neathery-Castro, University of Nebraska at Omaha, and Willie Fowler, Parkland College. I thank also the many students who, through e-mail or in person in my own classes, have shared questions and offered insights about the topics covered in the text. My most enduring thanks go to Tracie Bartlett. Despite all the help and support, I find the process of writing an introductory text challenging and humbling, and all errors I failed to identify and correct are my responsibility alone. I think that political science is analyzed most effectively and enjoyably within the context of community, live or virtual. I invite both instructors and students to e-mail me at egrigsby@unm .edu to raise comments and questions beyond those I include in these pages. Copyright 2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. PREFACE SUPPLEMENTS FOR STUDENTS AND INSTRUCTORS Instructor’s Manual/Test Bank Online for Grigsby’s Analyzing Politics, 6th Edition ISBN-13: 9781285781426 A revised Instructor’s Manual and Test Bank offers suggestions for class discussions, writing assignments, Internet and research projects, and exam questions to make course preparation easier. The instructor’s manual and test bank have been updated with new material to reflect changes in the new edition. Free Companion Web Site for Grigsby’s Analyzing Politics, 6th Edition ISBN-13: 9781285855554 Students will find open access to learning objectives, tutorial quizzes, chapter glossaries, flashcards, and crossword puzzles, all correlated by chapter. Instructors also have access to the Instructor’s Manual. All content, including learning objectives, tutorial quizzes, chapter glossaries, flashcards, and crossword puzzles, has been updated for the new edition. This is a free, passwordprotected website. Access your resources by logging into your account at www.cengage.com/login. CourseReader 0–30: Introduction to Political Science PAC ISBN: 9781133232162 IAC ISBN: 9781133232155 CourseReader: Introduction to Political Science allows you to create your reader, your way, in just minutes. This affordable, fully customizable online reader provides access to thousands of permissions-cleared readings, articles, primary sources, and audio and video selections from the regularly-updated Gale research library database. This easy-to-use solution allows you to search for and select just the material you want for your courses. Each selection opens with a descriptive introduction to provide context, and concludes with critical-thinking and multiple-choice questions to reinforce key points. CourseReader is loaded with convenient tools like highlighting, printing, note-taking, and downloadable PDFs and MP3 audio files for each reading. CourseReader is the perfect complement to any Political Science course. It can be bundled with your current textbook, sold alone, or integrated into your learning management system. CourseReader 0–30 allows access to up to 30 selections in the reader. Please contact your Cengage sales representative for details. Copyright 2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. xi Copyright 2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. Introduction 1 Copyright © 2015 Cengage Learning. Tuomas Kujansuu/iStockphoto.com In March 2013, the United Nations announced that the number of refugees from the Syrian civil war had reached SYRIA 1 million. During the previous month, a Pew Research public opinion poll found that only 50 percent of U.S. citizens could identify Syria on a map. However, the same survey pointed out that 91 percent of young (18–29 years), 88 percent of middle-aged (30–49 years), and 67 percent of older (50 years or older) American citizens could identify the Twitter logo. The gap illustrated here in 2013 between what people have the potential to know regarding political issues and what they do, in fact, know is not unprecedented; public opinion polls documented that at one point, almost 70 percent of the U.S. public believed that Saddam Hussein had been responsible for the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Bombarded with partisan talking points and confusing images, citizens can feel overwhelmed by political rhetoric. How can political science help citizens decide for themselves, in an informed manner, what they need to know? Sources: UNHCR, “Press Release: UNHCR Chief: Syria Refugees Reach One Million” (March 6, 2013), http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/uploads/Press_release_One_million_refugees.pdf/; Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, “What the Public Knows in Pictures, Graphs, Maps, and Symbols: News and Political Knowledge Quiz” (February 5, 2013), http://www.people-press.org/2013/02/05/what-the-public -knows-in-pictures-maps-graphs-and-symbols/; Lydia Saad and Frank Newport, “Gallup Poll: Americans Believe Saddam Hussein Behind 9/11—Bush Clarifies,” Gallup Poll News Service (September 23, 2003). T his text introduces you to some of the ways in which political science evaluates and seeks to unravel some of the complexities of twenty-first century politics. Because politics is rarely straightforward, students of political science need to be prepared for surprises, surprises so multilayered that they can be conceptualized as puzzles or riddles. Consider, for instance, differences between the two most recent U.S. presidents: One expanded the regulatory reach of the U.S. federal government so dramatically that it required 7,000 pages to describe all the new regulations put in place during his administration; the other reduced the pace of federal spending increases. One has been called a conservative and the other a socialist. However, it was the so-called socialist (President Obama) who reduced the growth in federal government spending and the so-called conservative (President Bush) who expanded the federal government.1 If that were not sufficiently surprising, consider also how confounding it can be to try to figure out what it even means to be a conservative in the United States 1 Copyright 2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 2 CHAPTER 1 Introduction these days. This label—conservative—is used by groups as diverse as gay rights activists (e.g., Log Cabin Republicans) and vocal opponents of gay rights (e.g., Focus on the Family) and by pro-choice groups (e.g., Republican Majority for Choice) and pro-life groups (e.g., Republican National Coalition for Life).2 And, as one thinks about how these and other groups seek to promote their political objectives, let’s consider how the U.S. Constitution accords each state two senators regardless of that state’s population. If you are a resident of Wyoming and you want to lobby in support of your political beliefs, you’re competing with about half a million people for your senators’ attention. If you are a resident of California, you are competing with more than 38 million others. Does this make sense? These and other complexities are the very soul of politics, and, rather than try to make politics seem simpler and neater than it actually is, this text confronts these complexities directly and brings them into every chapter of the book. Specifically, each chapter begins with an example of a contemporary puzzle that relates to the chapter’s topic—such as that posed earlier about the discrepancy between what people have the potential to know regarding political issues and what they do, in fact, know. Then, as you read each chapter, you will encounter puzzle icons in the margin; these icons identify especially relevant concepts or details found throughout the chapter and they alert you to key evidence you can use in analyzing the opening puzzle within the larger context of the chapter’s themes. As you study the various puzzles that political science takes as its subject matter, you may find that your conception of politics has been influenced by many factors. For example, consider how differently you might view your life, your goals, and your attitudes about politics if you could be transported across the boundaries of identity, gender, nationality, age, and/or economic status. Imagine, for instance, that you reside in Cairo’s City of the Dead, a sprawling, crowded cemetery in which tombs share space with satellite TV dishes. The City of the Dead has become home to many of Cairo’s poor and homeless as Cairo’s population growth has outpaced its infrastructure. If recent predictions by the United Nations prove to be correct, this life—one lived in congested urban quarters—will become the life of more and more men and women as the year 2030 approaches. Indeed, the United Nations cautions that the world is becoming “a planet of slums.” Now, imagine yourself a member of the Nukak-Maku, a nomadic, self-contained people living far away from cities and deep in the forests of Colombia. If you happened to be one of the approximately 80 members of your people who recently—for reasons unclear to outsiders—left the Amazonian jungle and entered San Jose del Guaviare, you encountered an unfamiliar world. You brought with you no word for money, you have no understanding of airplanes (you have asked if they move on hidden paths in the sky), and you have never heard of Colombia, the country in whose borders you and your people have existed for hundreds of years. Try to imagine sharing the experiences of Tsutomu Yamaguchi. Mr. Yamaguchi was working in Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, the day the atomic bomb was dropped on the city. The atomic bombing of Hiroshima killed 140,000 people, but somehow he survived. Feeling profoundly fortunate to be alive still, he left Hiroshima and headed for his home, Nagasaki. On August 9, an atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki and Mr. Yamaguchi, again, survived. One of perhaps more than 100 people to have survived two atomic bombs, Mr. Yamaguchi went on to become a teacher and to raise Copyright 2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 3 Toni L. Sandys/The Washington Post/Getty Images INTRODUCTION The controversies arising during President Obama’s second term in office offer glimpses into the complex nature of politics itself. In dealing with issues ranging from U.S. computer expert Edward Snowden’s public disclosure of classified U.S. surveillance programs to the Syrian civil war, the Obama administration faces many of the challenges of analyzing politics that will be discussed throughout this text. a family. It was only in his old age that he started speaking publicly about his life as a hibakusha (atomic bombing victim) and his views on nuclear war. Before his death in 2010, Mr. Yamaguchi stated that, in his opinion, the only people who should ever have the power to authorize the use of nuclear weapons were mothers with young children. Try imagining how your understanding of politics might change if your life were similar to that of Dena al-Atassi, the only Muslim student in her high school in Bunnell, Florida. A daughter of a Syrian father and a U.S. mother, Dena received death threats for simply wearing a headscarf (hijab). Her stepmother stopped wearing her scarf out of fear of a backlash against all Muslims after 9/11. However, she finds strength in following the example of Muslim women who wear the head covering and pledged never to let her fear compel her to alter her religious attire. Imagine crossing the boundary separating your experiences from those of Ehren Watada. Ehren was studying for a business degree at Hawaii Pacific University in Honolulu when the United States was attacked on 9/11. He joined the military to be part of the fight against terrorism, but, over time, he became increasingly critical of the Iraq war. Determined to serve his country and his conscience, he volunteered to be deployed to Afghanistan, but refused to serve in Iraq. The military brought charges against him and his court martial ended in a mistrial in February 2007. Imagine the political questions, challenges, and concerns you might have if you could trade places with Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. In 2005, Johnson Sirleaf was elected as Liberia’s first woman president and Africa’s first woman elected head of state. A winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011, she has directed numerous anti-poverty efforts in her country by pursuing debt relief/forgiveness for Liberia under the Heavily Indebted Copyright 2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. CHAPTER 1 Introduction Courtesy of Ellen Grigsby 4 City of the Dead, Cairo, Egypt. Cairo’s vast cemetery is also home to many of the city’s poor and otherwise homeless. The United Nations estimates that a billion people—more than one-third of all those living in urban areas—reside in slums. SOURCE: On the growth in global urbanization and slum rates, see Mark Jacobson, “Dharavi: Mumbai’s Shadow City: Some Call the Dharavi Slum an Embarrassing Eyesore in the Middle of India’s Financial Capital. Its Residents Call it Home,” National Geographic (May 2007). Poor Countries Initiative, a program discussed in Chapter 12. Johnson Sirleaf’s election was not the only milestone for feminist politics in recent years: Laura Chinchilla won the presidential election in Costa Rica in 2010, and Michelle Bachelet was elected Chile’s first female president in 2006, the same year in which the women of Kuwait, for the first time in history, were accorded the right to vote in parliamentary elections. Finally, imagine how differently you might view politics if yours were the experiences of Rahm Emanuel. Now the mayor of Chicago, Emanuel served as President Obama’s chief of staff and as a member of the U.S. Congress. As 2007 Democratic Party Caucus Chair, he made a name for himself by working to dissuade Democratic politicians from appearing on Steven Colbert’s The Colbert Report. His strategy was clear, for he knew that Colbert had roughly 1.2 million viewers and an uncanny skill for maneuvering politicians into embarrassing situations. Colbert once asked Illinois Representative Phil Hare, “If you could embalm anyone in Congress, who would it be?” Colbert asked Georgia Republican Lynn Westmoreland, a cosponsor of a bill that would have required the posting of the Ten Commandments in the nation’s capital, to recite all ten and Westmoreland could come up with only three. Colbert coaxed Florida Democrat Robert Wexler to agree to complete the following sentence: “I like cocaine because . . . ” Emanuel was determined to use his skills to prevent more Democrats from boosting Colbert’s ratings.3 Copyright 2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 5 Gail Oskin/WireImage/Getty Images INTRODUCTION Stephen Colbert’s The Colbert Report subverts conventional presentations of “newsworthy” events. The challenges of trying to view the world of politics from so many different perspectives—perspectives ranging from that of a resident of a dense urban setting to that of the member of a remote, isolated people; from the perspective of a high school student experiencing religious discrimination to that of an African head of state; from the perspective of an ambitious politician trying to build a powerful political party machine to that of a young man who volunteered for the armed forces but decided to follow conscience at whatever cost to his own personal status—have threatened to overwhelm the most experienced and respected of political scientists.4 As you read this text, keep in mind what political scientist David Easton has observed: Politics involves “change.”5 In an increasingly interdependent world, even those changes that appear essentially domestic in nature may resonate with international significance.6 Politics also involves decision making over the world’s resources. Whereas we can look to Easton’s comments to appreciate the concept of change as central to politics, we can also draw on the teachings of political scientist Harold Lasswell to consider that politics is about deciding who does and does not get access to what the world has to offer.7 Lasswell’s insights are important for us to reflect on as we begin studying politics because they point us in the direction of questions both intriguing and disturbing in their complexity, such as why is an American citizen likely to live longer than a Liberian citizen? Politics, Lasswell’s insights would tell us, has a lot to do with it. Life expectancy, access to safe water sources, and opportunities for jobs paying livable wages are all areas of our lives affected enormously by political decisions of the world’s governments, as those governments make choices about how the world’s resources are to be distributed and how conflict is Copyright 2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. Introduction Box 1.1 Change and Politics What Were U.S. Citizens Concerned About 100 Years Ago? Studying politics involves studying change—change in governments, laws, and political–social attitudes and opinions. An examination of public attitudes held by U.S. citizens 100 years ago reveals that our counterparts 100 years ago had much to worry about: • Air pollution. Filthy air seemed an inevitable part of city living. In IN DEPTH CHAPTER 1 CONCEPT 6 • • • • • • 1881, New York’s State Board of Health found that air quality was compromised by fumes from sulfur, kerosene, manure, ammonia, and other smells, producing “an inclination to vomit.” The term smog was coined soon after the turn of the century, in 1905. Crowding. Busy city streets were hazardous. Pedestrians risked injury from trolleys and carriages. Indeed, Brooklyn’s beloved baseball team (the Trolley Dodgers) took its name from a dangerous, but unavoidable, urban practice of competing for scarce space with speeding trolleys. Food impurities. Americans of the late nineteenth century often found interesting additives in their basic foodstuffs. Milk, for example, was likely to contain chalk or plaster of Paris, in that both items could improve the appearance of milk produced from diseased cattle. Drunken cows were another problem. Distilleries often used waste products from whiskey production as cattle feed; milk from these cows could contain enough alcohol to intoxicate babies who consumed the milk. Epidemics. Smallpox and malaria were two diseases threatening Americans at the turn of the twentieth century. Women and men were vulnerable to these predators and were often fearful of losing their lives to diseases they could neither understand nor be assured of protection against. Race relations. Racism was pervasive as the twentieth century approached. Violence against African-Americans was widespread. Lynchings of African-Americans reached record numbers in the 1890s and declined with the turn of the century; from 1882 to 1968, however, 4,743 (of whom 3,446 were African-American) Americans were lynched. Family stability. In the years around 1900, approximately 20 percent of American children lived in orphanages because their parents were too poor to provide for them. In other families, children worked in factories and mines to supplement unstable family incomes. At the beginning of the twentieth century, approximately one-fourth of the employees in textile mills in the southern United States were children. Household budgets. Some historians have described the last half of the nineteenth century as the age of the “robber barons,” as millionaires such as Cornelius Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie, and John D. Rockefeller assumed positions of influence. As the nineteenth (Continued) Copyright 2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. INTRODUCTION century closed, the gap between rich and poor was vast, as average Americans struggled and saved to pay their bills. Indeed, more than 80 percent of the country’s wealth was controlled by just over 10 percent of the nation’s households in 1890. • Progress. X-rays, telephones, record players, electric lighting, combustible engines, and other inventions from the late nineteenth century promised to change life in the twentieth century. Americans had hopes that the changes would be for the good, as seen, for instance, in the optimism surrounding the World Fairs at which many of these inventions were showcased. At the same time, the new inventions could shock and frighten. One wonders, for instance, how many Americans could identify with the character in Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain when he remarked that looking at an X-ray was like looking into the grave. SOURCES: Otto Bettmann, The Good Old Days—They Were Terrible (New York: Random House, 1974); Stephen Kern, The Culture of Time and Space, 1880–1918 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983); Cynthia Enloe, Bananas, Beaches, & Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1989); Stephanie Coontz, The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap (New York: Basic Books, 1992); Benjamin Schwarz, “American Inequality: Its History and Scary Future,” New York Times (December 19, 1995): A19; Robert L. Zangrando, “Lynching,” in The Reader’s Companion to American History, eds. Eric Foner and John Garraty (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1991), pp. 684–686; Frederick Lewis Allen, The Big Change, 1900–1950 (New York: Bantam, 1965), especially Chapters 1–4; Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns, Baseball: An Illustrated History (New York: Knopf, 1994), p. xvii. to be resolved. The world of politics consists of those governmental decisions that extend life expectancies or shorten them, enhance or reduce access to basic necessities, and implement a rule of law or violate it. In other words, politics involves the choices governments make in shaping the process whereby medicine, water, food, housing, and jobs are made available or unavailable to the world’s people. Indeed, politics encompasses all those decisions regarding how we make rules that govern our common life. These rules may be made in a democratic or authoritarian manner, may promote peace or violence, and may empower state or nonstate actors (such as trade associations, media representatives, and multinational corporations). Whatever the rules, however, politics is based on the recognition that our lives are shared, as long as we live in common, public spaces such as state territories. If you have traversed a public road, used books at a public library, stopped at a public street sign, or walked across a public university campus today, you have shared space and resources governed by politically made rules implemented by states. Thus, whether you are conscious of it or not, as you go about your days, you are immersed in politics. As the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle taught, in essence, we are political creatures, inhabiting a world of shared problems and possibilities.8 As you analyze politics, you will see that politics touches everything, as political scientist Robert Dahl once suggested.9 If you doubt Dahl’s point, take a moment to think of an issue or topic that seems to have nothing to do with politics—it could Copyright 2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 7 CHAPTER 1 Introduction be art, love, emotion, or a myriad of topics seemingly personal and apolitical. If Dahl’s observations are correct, by the end of this text you may well see politics enveloping even these aspects of your life. This text seeks to introduce to you some of the ways in which political science analyzes politics by exploring different subfields of political science. This brief opening chapter introduces political science as a field of inquiry seeking to examine political processes in a manner that offers information without denying complexity and nuance. Chapter 2 looks at the ways in which political scientists analyze political data. Chapter 2 encourages readers to think about the process of thinking itself and to reflect on the proposition that the perspective from which you choose to view politics influences what you see; for example, traditionalists, behavioralists, and postbehavioralists may study the same political phenomenon but see different things. Chapter 3 examines key political science concepts such as power, states, and nations. Chapter 4 explores a number of theoretical debates that have intrigued students of politics. For example, we will examine debates about whether governments should try to promote equality, and we will evaluate philosophical disagreements over whether governments should try to enforce public morality. In Chapters 5 through 7, we will analyze different political ideologies and see how liberalism, conservatism, socialism, fascism, feminism, and environmentalism differ in their views of politics, government, and citizenship. Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times 8 Artist Renee Cox has challenged political and cultural sensibilities through her art. In this photo, she is standing beside her work “Yo Mama’s Last Supper.” The former New York City Mayor—and 2008 Republican presidential hopeful—Rudolph Giuliani responded to Cox’s work by raising questions about the appropriateness of displaying it in a publicly funded area. By articulating such questions, Giuliani suggested that the scope of politics—and the jurisdiction of government—includes setting boundaries on creative expression. Copyright 2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. CONCEPT IN DEPTH INTRODUCTION Box 1.2 What Is Political About That? Many parts of our lives may, at first, appear apolitical. Very rarely is this true, however. Political decision making can include almost everything in its reach. Consider how politics touches the following ostensibly “nonpolitical” issues: • Art. Robert Mapplethorpe is one of several artists whose work has elicited debate between conservatives and liberals. Mapplethorpe’s portfolio includes photographs of gay men. Critics have often described these works as pornographic, whereas many supporters have countered that they are representations of gay erotica. Should public dollars be used to subsidize and promote such art? Politics involves making such decisions. • Love. Two people in love may not believe that politics has anything to do with their relationship. However, politics greatly influences the ways in which love may be expressed. At what age may couples get married, for instance? Why can some couples (opposite-sex couples) get married in all 50 states within the United States, whereas others (same-sex couples) can marry in only some states? Governments answer such political questions. • Emotion. What could be more personal than emotions? How can your emotions have anything to do with politics? Your emotions are very political if, for instance, you are accused of committing what the government defines as a crime. A person’s “state of mind” may be one of the variables considered when the state brings charges and makes recommendations for sentencing in criminal cases. Chapter 8 looks at variations in democratic and nondemocratic governments. Chapters 9 and 10 focus on comparisons of different aspects of citizen participation (such as voting) and government decision making (such as executive and legislative authority). These chapters discuss U.S. politics and government within the context of comparative analysis. By thinking about U.S. political issues from a comparative perspective, you can, perhaps, better view the United States as other countries might. You can assess U.S. government and political decision making as part of the larger political world, not in isolation from this world. In Chapters 11 and 12, issues in international politics are examined. Realist and liberal debates on the nature of international affairs are scrutinized, as are questions concerning the place of the United Nations and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Globalization, media relations, and international economics are also discussed. For example, we will explore some of the dynamics by which the World Bank and other international financial institutions have become focal points for citizen groups wishing to discuss the connections among politics, change, resources, Copyright 2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 9 Introduction AP Photo CHAPTER 1 Should government have the power to deny interracial couples the right to marry? Should it have the power to deny this right to same-sex couples? In 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a Virginia law prohibiting marriage between AfricanAmericans and whites. Mildred and Richard Loving, the couple who challenged the interracial ban, are shown in the first photo. Lois Burnham and Holly Puterbaugh (shown in the next, along with an official who “civil unioned” them) had been in a relationship for 28 years by the time their government granted same-sex couples the option of a legally valid civil union ceremony. One of the songs performed at their service was “The Impossible Dream.” By 2013, Washington, D.C. and thirteen states—California, Connecticut, Delaware, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington—had legalized same-sex marriage, while 29 states had altered their state constitutions to prohibit same-sex marriages. Could it be that these cases illustrate that falling in love can be very political indeed? Paul Boisvert/The New York Times/Redux 10 SOURCE: Freedom to Marry, “States,” http://www.freedomtomarry.org/states/ Copyright 2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. ANALYZING POLITICS AS A STUDY OF PUZZLES and public decision making. As you explore the questions in this text, feel free to e-mail me directly with comments and/or questions. My e-mail address is egrigsby@unm.edu/. ANALYZING POLITICS AS A STUDY OF PUZZLES This chapter opened with a comparison of U.S. citizens’ abilities to identify (1) a country experiencing a refugee crisis and (2) a corporate logo. While the former is more politically relevant than the latter, its issues are more complex and harder to comprehend than a Twitter icon. As we have seen in this chapter, political science seeks to help students and citizens better assess the hard-to-grasp puzzling complexities of politics by studying the following: • Concepts such as change—changes, for instance, in one area of politics have an impact on other areas, whether the change is domestic or international in scope • Processes involving decision making over resources that affect war and peace, economic growth or depression, and high or low life expectancies • Political science subfields that focus on particular questions such as the scientific process (Chapter 2), conceptual foundations of politics (Chapter 3), political theory and ideologies (Chapters 4–7), and comparative and international politics (Chapters 8–12) Copyright 2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 11 2 Political Science and Scientific Methods in Studying Politics When an elected official is asked a basic question about science, one might expect such an individual to do his or her best to answer the question accurately. Who doesn’t want to look wellinformed? Moreover, elected officials are responsible for protecting and enhancing a country’s security, a security greatly Florida Senator Marco Rubio is often mentioned as a possible affected by political decision Republican presidential candidate for 2016 or beyond. making on matters relating to geothermal energy capacity, space exploration, natural disaster forecasting, and other science-based policy areas. Yet, when asked in 2012 about the age of the Earth, Republican Senator Marco Rubio made it clear that he wished to avoid such inquiries. “I’m not a scientist, man,” he responded, “and, besides,” he continued, “such questions are big ‘mysteries’ about which people of science and people of faith tend to disagree.” What might render comprehensible Senator Rubio’s decision to suggest that the Earth’s age was mysteriously unknowable? Why not point, rather matter-of-factly, to basic information routinely found in introductory Earth and planetary science textbooks—namely, that the Earth is thought to be at least 4.5 billion years old? The senator’s answer proved controversial, in part, due to his membership on a science policy (the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation) committee in the U.S. Congress. Sources: See Joshua Swamidass, “Rubio and the Age-of-Earth Question,” Wall Street Journal (November 29, 2012), http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324469304578141673721798486.html; Garance Franke-Ruta, “Rubio’s Perplexing Punt on the Age of the Earth,” Atlantic (November 20, 2012), http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/11/rubios-perplexing-punt-on-the-age-of-the-earth /265422/# This chapter will provide you with tools to investigate Senator Rubio’s answer within the larger context of political science and scientific methods and to decipher the following aspects of this puzzle: • Which group of political scientists— traditionalists, behavioralists, or postbehavioralists—likely would try to resolve this particular puzzle, and why? 12 Copyright 2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. Chris Maddaloni/Getty Images A Puzzle… POLITICAL SCIENCE AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS IN STUDYING POLITICS • • How is a scientific method of studying politics useful in investigating Senator Rubio’s answer? Is Senator Rubio’s suggestion that science and religion can be at odds unprecedented? • How can political science solve puzzles like this one? ✧✦✧ P olitical science’s identity as a social science has been both celebrated and challenged in recent years. On the one hand, in 2009 political scientist Elinor Ostrom (1933–2012) was named a recipient of the Nobel Prize, a recognition that signified international acknowledgment of the intellectual contributions that a discipline like political science could offer. Yet, in the same year, Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn argued for the termination of U.S. National Science Foundation funding for political science research. According to Senator Coburn, U.S. federal dollars should be awarded to scientific projects seeking more meaningful solutions to human problems than those typically studied by political science researchers and routinely included in political science textbooks. Senator Coburn’s criticism attracted national attention, but political science’s potential to raise controversy was nothing new. Political science—like other social sciences—seeks to study human behavior through the use of a scientific method that, at times, can prompt objections and debate. Perhaps no example in recent decades has more vividly conveyed science’s capacity to engender ethical controversy than the Zimbardo prison experiment at Stanford University in 1971. In this experiment, university students were recruited by Stanford psychology professor Philip Zimbardo to participate in a research project. All the students were in good mental and physical condition, all were well-adjusted (e.g., none had a record of criminal or disorderly conduct), and all were male. Professor Zimbardo was interested in exploring the interactions between individuals in situations where some had authority over others; to accomplish this objective, he set up a mock prison in the basement of the Psychology Department, and he randomly assigned some of the student participants to be “guards” in this prison and others to be “inmates.” He intended for the experiment to last two weeks. However, by the end of the second day, “guards” were acting aggressively toward “inmates.” By the fifth day, “guards” were forcing “inmates” to surrender their clothing, to wear head coverings, to endure sleep deprivation, and to submit to sexual humiliation. Upon the urging of a former graduate student, Professor Zimbardo called an end to the experiment after 6 days rather than allow the physical, sexual, and verbal taunts to continue. In 2007, Professor Zimbardo reflected on this experiment. He shared his conviction that his research could offer insights into the abuses that had taken place at Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq and that had been revealed to the public in 2004; at Abu Ghraib, a group of U.S. military and intelligence agency personnel engaged in acts of physical abuse and sexual humiliation of Iraqi detainees. In the Stanford prison experiment, Professor Zimbardo explained, students succumbed to situational cues (e.g., acting the role of “guard” over submissive “inmates” in a pretend prison) Copyright 2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 13 14 CHAPTER 2 Political Science and Scientific Methods in Studying Politics permitting of abusive behavior after only a few days; consider how much stronger the temptation toward aggressive action against submissive populations in an actual prison facility under the stress of war could become, Professor Zimbardo noted. Science—in this case, a social science experiment—revealed uncomfortable truths about human psychology, truths relevant to both citizens and political leaders struggling to understand how the abuses at Abu Ghraib could have happened.1 If Professor Zimbardo is correct—if science can provide reliable information about the ease with which power can be abused by otherwise “good” people— should science be accorded special claims to authority when studying politics? Should those investigating the political world scientifically have a greater voice than others on matters pertaining to politics? If scientists make claims to having a reliable and disinterested expertise, should you believe them? As indicated in Box 2.1, the values of a scientific community may be as likely to clash as to coincide with the values of members of the public. CONTROVERSIES IN SCIENCE Box 2.1 Government, Science, and Individual Rights: Harmony or Conflict? In 2010, CNN reported on a government practice that shocked many of its viewers. Unknown to many members of the public (including many parents), newborns in U.S. hospitals are routinely subjected to DNA testing procedures. Blood is drawn, and DNA is collected, analyzed, and, in some cases, retained for future use in scientific experimentation. Government regulations requiring such procedures are based on public health considerations. If, for example, a baby is found to have a genetic disorder, parents can be notified immediately and the baby can be given urgent medical care. However, some parents have objected to the fact that parental permission is not required for the collection of their baby’s DNA sample. Is this a case in which scientific advances and governmental health policy requirements are outpacing legal protections of individual rights and privacy? What do you think? To see the newborn DNA collection procedures in your state, go to the National Newborn Screening and Genetics Resource Center, Newborn Screening page and click on your state: http://genes-r-us.uthscsa.edu/resources /consumer/statemap.htm. SOURCES: Elizabeth Cohen, “The Government Has Your Baby’s DNA,” CNN Health (February 4, 2010), http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/02/04/baby.dna.government/index.html; “Newborn Screening Saves Lives Act of 2007,” http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/cpquery/T?&report=sr280&dbname =110&; Amy Harmon, “Where’d You Go with My DNA?” New York Times (April 24, 2010), http://www .nytimes.com/2010/04/25/weekinreview/25harmon.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0; American Civil Liberties Union, “Newborn DNA Banking,” http://www.aclu.org/free-speech-technology-and-liberty-womens -rights/newborn-dna-banking. Copyright 2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. THE RANGE OF POLITICAL SCIENCE This chapter seeks to help you sort through such questions by exploring what political scientists mean when they present their findings as scientific. It points out that political science has changed over the centuries; the chapter further analyzes relationships between political science and science, scientific processes, the use of scientific processes in analyzing political data, and limitations of science. THE RANGE OF POLITICAL SCIENCE Political science often traces its beginnings to ancient Greece and the teachings of political thinkers such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.2 Political science as an academic field, however, is much newer. Historical Developments In the United States, the first political science department was organized at Columbia University in 1880, and in 1903 the American Political Science Association (APSA) was formed. At the turn of the twentieth century, probably no more than a couple of hundred people in the entire United States thought of themselves as political scientists.3 In fact, fewer than 500 doctoral degrees in political science were awarded between 1936 and 1942, a number all the more striking when one realizes that—according to the U.S. Department of Education—more than 600 PhDs in political science were recently awarded in a single year (2003–2004).4 From these beginnings, political science has developed different subfields, as illustrated in Box 2.2, and research methods, and the discipline has grown to include more than 15,000 political scientists in the APSA alone. In 2013, APSA reported members in more than 80 countries.5 Some political scientists focus on studying normative issues (issues involving value judgments and ethics), others concentrate on empirical (observable and factual) investigations, and still others study both. Whatever the focus, political science begins by asking questions. Why do people vote as they do? Why are some people conservative and others not? Does money buy elections? The subject matter of politics is varied and complex, and political science is no less so. In this chapter, we will see that political scientists use a wide range of research methods and analytical approaches. Traditionalism, Behavioralism, and Postbehavioralism In its early years, political science generally involved the analysis of formal, legal, and official sides of political life.6 This approach is known as traditionalism. Traditionalists tried to understand politics by examining laws, governmental offices, constitutions, and other official institutions associated with politics; they tried to describe how institutions operated by formal rules and publicly sanctioned procedures. A traditionalist, for example, who wished to understand the U.S. Supreme Court might study the official rules the Court followed in making judicial decisions, or, perhaps, the formal/legal basis of the Court’s authority as spelled out in the U.S. Constitution. Copyright 2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 15 IN DEPTH CHAPTER 2 CONCEPT 16 Political Science and Scientific Methods in Studying Politics Box 2.2 Some of the Subfields in Political Science Political science has a variety of subfields. Each subfield focuses on a particular set of questions. The major subfields include the following: • Comparative politics, focusing on examining how different political • • • • • systems operate. It can include comparisons of systems at a macro or micro level, that is, comparing general political structures or focusing on individual elements of political systems. For example, comparative politics can include a comparison of how democratic and authoritarian political structures differ, as well as a comparison of how specific rules governing campaign contributions differ from one country to the next. American politics, consisting of an analysis of government and politics in the United States. This subfield encompasses studies of federal, as well as state and local, politics and government. Some political scientists view it as an element of comparative politics. International relations, focusing on relationships between and among states. Unlike comparative politics, which zeroes in on how government or politics operates within a country, international relations studies what transpires between states. Its subject matter includes war, regional integration, international organizations, military alliances, economic pacts, and so on. Public policy, studying how laws, regulations, and other policies are formulated, implemented, and evaluated. This subfield looks closely at such questions as “What makes a new policy necessary?” “How can policies be designed to meet specific needs effectively?” “What contributes to a policy’s effectiveness?” “Why are ineffective policies sometimes continued rather than discontinued?” and “What should be the standards for evaluating policies?” Political research methods, focusing on a study of the many details of empirical social science. Data collection, measurement, and analysis are key areas of inquiry in this subfield. The study of political methods seeks to understand the empirical research process in all its complexity and to develop means of achieving scientific rigor in the collection and interpretation of data. Political theory, in some ways unique among the subfields of political science insofar as it is concerned with normative questions. Political theory includes the study of the history of political philosophy, philosophies of explanation or science, and philosophical inquiries into the ethical dimensions of politics. In addition to these historical subfields, political science is organized into a number of more specialized groups. For instance, the APSA provides numerous specialized sections, including • • • • • • • Federalism/Intergovernmental Relations Law/Courts Legislative Studies Public Policy Political Organizations/Parties Conflict Representation/Election Systems (Continued) Copyright 2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. THE RANGE OF POLITICAL SCIENCE • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Presidency Political Methodology Religion/Politics Politics/Technology/Environment Urban Politics Women/Politics Information Technology International Security/Arms Control Comparative Politics Politics/Society Western Europe Political Communication Political Economy Political Psychology Politics/Literature/Film Foreign Policy Elections/Opinion/Voting Race, Ethnicity, and Politics SOURCES: David M. Ricci, The Tragedy of Political Science: Politics, Scholarship, and Democracy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984), p. 9; APSA Organized Sections (http://www.apsanet.org/content_4590.cfm). Traditionalists often tended to focus on what was going on inside government as opposed to looking at social and economic processes in the country.7 Traditionalist approaches were often both historical and normative: historical in outlining the processes by which the formal rules of politics were modified over time through court decisions, laws, executive orders, and the like, and normative in the sense of hoping to provide information for improving these rules.8 Although traditionalist approaches are still present in political science research, additional approaches have supplemented traditionalism. Behavioralism is one alternative to traditionalism. Behavioralism became popular in political science after World War II. The roots of behavioralist political science have been traced back to the 1920s and the works of political scientists such as Charles Merriam. Merriam asserted the usefulness of looking at the actual behavior of politically involved individuals and groups, not only the formal/legal rules by which those individuals and groups were supposed to abide.9 Thus, a behavioralist approach to the study of Congress might include an examination of what members of Congress actually do. For example, a behavioralist might ask the following type of question: How much time is devoted by members of Congress to such tasks as writing laws, interacting with lobbyists, giving speeches, studying domestic issues, attending committee and subcommittee meetings, or building support for their next campaign? Thus, a behavioralist would be very interested in seeing how a candidate like Republican Senator Marco Rubio, who is thought to have an interest in running for the presidency in a future campaign, would, while still in his Senate seat, respond to a question involving evolution, given that antievolution evangelicals comprised 26 percent of the voting population in 2012 and voted in Copyright 2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 17 18 CHAPTER 2 Political Science and Scientific Methods in Studying Politics astoundingly high (78 percent) percentages for Republican Mitt Romney. The behavioralist, therefore, is less interested in how Congress looks officially “on paper” (e.g., what the U.S. Constitution says about Congress) and more interested in how Congress becomes an arena of actions, the origins and motivations of which may be found outside the formal sphere of government. That is, a behavioralist may look for informal sources of power emanating from economics, ethnic cleavages, and social relationships.10 Thus, to a behavioralist, traditionalist approaches, focused so exclusively on government per se, were inadequate for understanding the larger context of political life.11 Behavioralist approaches stress the importance of empirical observational analysis. Behavioralists ask how better to study behavior than through careful examination of specific actions. Indeed, behavioralism is almost synonymous with empirical observation, according to many political scientists. 12 From an empirical standpoint, X is a fact if X is observed (whether or not X is required in an official document like that studied by more traditionalist-oriented political scientists).13 Behavioralists often favor statistical, mathematical, and economic models of analysis, insofar as they allow for a more minute empirical investigation of phenomena than would be provided by assessing the content of constitutions, laws, and governmental procedures. Given its focus on empiricism, behavioralism tends to reject historical analysis, finding little reason to explore the past (for interpretations, insights, and opinions on matters of politics) when observation of what is actually going on is regarded as the most reliable route to knowledge. 14 The empirical orientation toward the analysis of what is (observable) also stands in contrast to an orientation that asks what should be. Indeed, one of the defining attributes of behavioralism is its rejection of the normative questions associated with traditionalism.15 A behavioralist studying Congress does not ask how a senator or representative should act. Rather, a behavioralist examines how a senator or representative does act. Postbehavioralism is an alternative to both traditionalism and behavioralism. In 1969, David Easton announced that a postbehavioral orientation had arrived in political science.16 What had inspired it? Easton was very explicit in his answer: Postbehavioralism emerged as a reaction against the exclusively empirical orientation of behavioralism by political scientists who found such an orientation excessive and irresponsible. Empiricism, if taken to the extremes of denying the importance of values and ethics and encouraging a narrowing of research questions to only those matters self-evidently observable, could undermine political science. In such cases, postbehavioralists warned, political science would produce data that were scientifically reliable (empirically observed) but irrelevant. Moreover, postbehavioralists asserted that behavioralism is not truly value free because it implicitly affirms that understanding comes from observation, not ethical assessments. Behavioralism is not in opposition to values but is itself a value statement insofar as it upholds as reliable what is observable and distrusts as unreliable what is intuited as ethical or moral. In other words, behavioralism values the observable and devalues the unobservable. Thus, if the postbehavioralists are correct, Copyright 2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. THE RANGE OF POLITICAL SCIENCE behavioralism is as normative as traditionalism. While postbehavioralists have tried to reformulate political science perspectives in order to address the importance of acknowledging the normative implications of political science research, postbehavioralists have not rejected empirical observational research as a means of studying the world and collecting data. Rather, postbehavioralists argue for the importance of observational studies of relevant questions, questions with implications beyond those of knowledge for its own sake. 17 Postbehavioralists argue that political science should be relevant as well as empirically reliable and that the information produced by political science has ethical implications. Easton tried to remind political scientists that political phenomena were often matters of life and death—matters pertaining to war, population growth, environmental degradation, and racial and ethnic conflict. Political scientists have a responsibility to acknowledge that what they choose to investigate through the empirical methods of political science and what they discover by means of these methods affect the lives of women and men.18 We can see the influence of postbehavioralism in Lucius J. Barker’s presidential address to the APSA in 1993. Barker challenged political scientists to be engaged citizens, actively taking part in reforming their own societies. Barker specifically recommended that political scientists promote civil rights for all citizens through such measures as the recruitment of African-Americans into the discipline of political science.19 Note the remarkable difference between Barker’s view of the responsibilities of the political scientist and the view of the behavioralists who rejected normative judgments. The debates among traditionalists, behavioralists, and postbehavioralists are important not only for illustrating the tensions and conflicts within the discipline of political science as it evolved but also in raising questions at the center of political science today: • What is the nature of scientific inquiry? How is science different from ethical and/or religious perspectives on truth? • How can political science be scientific? How can anyone study complex political phenomena in a scientific manner? What are the methods of the scientific study of politics? • Should science be value free? Will science be corrupted by bias if it is not value free? • How relevant is political science? What are other sources of knowledge about politics? The questions are difficult ones, and political scientists often disagree on how best to answer them. In fact, one student of the discipline of political science has suggested that the discipline’s history has been tragic: Political scientists have often failed to integrate the demands of science and humanity, falling short of Easton’s plea for relevance and reliability, even as the discipline has opened up to include multiple research and analytical approaches.20 It seems that the historical debates refuse to die, as we will see as we examine the preceding questions in greater detail. Copyright 2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 19 20 CHAPTER 2 Political Science and Scientific Methods in Studying Politics THINKING SCIENTIFICALLY: SOME FOUNDATIONS OF SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY In 2009, political scientist Robert O. Keohane summarized the process of political science inquiry as the following: As scientists, Keohane asserted, political scientists identify complex “puzzles,” use clear language in describing the process of trying to solve them, and offer conclusions based on their interpretations of documented facts relating to that which was puzzling. Professor Keohane’s observations recall the earlier teachings of Albert Einstein. Einstein believed that science puts forward concepts for elucidating reality.21 Scientists search for ways to identify, define, analyze, clarify, and understand the world. Religion, art, and philosophy also seek to produce languages and models to make the universe comprehensible.22 Each of these pursuits—science, spirituality, religion, art, and philosophy—may be conceptualized as ways of coming up with names and categories for what is considered to be real. Spirituality may name as real what is known by faith; some philosophies may name as real what is known through reason. Science differs from these two endeavors in terms of what and how it goes about naming phenomena as real, but, like spirituality and philosophy, science can be thought of as a type of naming system connecting what we think of as mind and world.23 To illustrate this point, we can look to the writings of Phillip Converse. Converse was president of the APSA in the early 1980s. According to Converse, science uses names to point to what it sees as truth. That is, science tells us that its names truly correspond to reality. However, science by its very nature is a process of continuously renaming and improving on older naming schema. Science is therefore premised on the understanding that truth, at any particular time, is incompletely named (and incompletely known). Religion, according to Converse, is premised on an understanding that there is a truth outside that is capable of being named by science, even by a science so rigorous as to overcome its own errors of naming. Converse’s discussion is valuable in highlighting the similarities of science and religion (both are naming systems), as well as their dissimilarities (they name different phenomena as real, and they rest on different understandings of the nature of truth).24 Science can name reality by means of a scientific method, a set of procedures (for gathering information) resting on certain epistemological assumptions. Epistemology is a branch of philosophy that examines evaluations of what constitutes truth; thus, epistemological assumptions are assumptions about the essence of truth. The scientific method is characterized by epistemological empiricism (insofar as it is based on the assumption that what is true is what is observable). Its procedures reflect this epistemological assumption, for pursuing truth by means of the scientific method entails the collection of data. The data selected for collection are the set of data observed (not what is assumed, intuited, revealed by faith, or judged to be good or bad on normative grounds). In this manner, scientific method’s epistemological empiricism is reflected in its methodological (procedural) empiricism. Copyright 2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. THINKING SCIENTIFICALLY: SOME FOUNDATIONS OF SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY Once collected, the sets of data are analyzed, and when the analysis leads to assertions concerning the nature of the data, these assertions are subject to testing. The testing of assertions provides verification (acceptance of the assertions) or falsification (rejection of the assertions). Through these steps of data collection, analysis, testing, verification, and falsification, the scientific method offers explanations of reality. Science’s explanations are necessarily incomplete and tentative, insofar as they are always subject to falsification at a later time. Political scientists use science’s methods to study questions as diverse as the causes of war and the origins of public opinions. Studying political questions in a scientific manner often involves the following: • • • • • • Formulating hypotheses Operationalizing concepts Identifying independent and dependent variables Clarifying measurement criteria Distinguishing between causation and correlation Developing scientific theories Formulating a hypothesis can be a key step in the application of the scientific method to the study of politics. A hypothesis is a statement proposing a specific relationship between phenomena.25 A hypothesis puts forward an idea that X and Y are connected in a certain identifiable way.26 An example can help illustrate the different dimensions of hypothesis formulation. A political scientist may be intrigued by the following question: Is support for President Obama in the 2012 presidential campaign related to age? The political scientist may suspect that younger adults are more likely than older adults to vote for President Obama. This hunch may be articulated as a hypothetical statement such as “U.S. citizens younger than 30 years of age will vote in higher numbers for President Obama than will U.S. citizens 30 years or older.” This hypothesis exemplifies the definition just noted—two phenomena (age and voting for a particular candidate) are posited as having a specific relationship. Once formulated, hypotheses are tested. Data collection proceeds according to the logic of the operational definitions contained in the hypothesis. An operational definition is a definition so precise that it allows for empirical testing.27 Unless a hypothesis defines the phenomenon in question precisely enough to measure that phenomenon, the hypothesis cannot be tested empirically. We cannot confirm/ verify or falsify if we cannot measure degrees of correspondence between what a hypothesis states as a relationship and what we observe as actual facts. This is very important because verification often involves multiple tests of a hypothesis. For example, “young” is a general concept. We turn the concept into an operational definition when we define young as “those who are under 30 years of age.” Once we have thus operationalized “young,” young is something that we can observe and test. We can measure the correspondence between what we expect to see this group doing (as stated in our hypothesis) and what we actually see it doing. And what about our hypothesis regarding the 2012 presidential election? Political scientists found that Mitt Romney was more popular (by 2 million votes) than President Copyright 2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. 21 22 CHAPTER 2 Political Science and Scientific Methods in Studying Politics Obama among 2012 voters aged 30 and older, but President Obama received 5.4 million more votes than Mitt Romney among young voters.28 Scientists often refer to the phenomena linked together in a hypothesis as variables. In our example, age is one variable, and voting for a particular candidate is a second variable. A variable is something that varies, changes, or manifests itself differently from one case to another. Independent variables are presented as those that act on or affect something. Dependent variables are what the hypothesis presents as being acted on by the independent variable. Which is the independent variable and which is the dependent variable in our example? Age is put forth as having an impact on voting for a particular candidate. Age, therefore, is the independent variable, which has an effect on levels of voting for a given candidate (the dependent variable).29 As scientists proceed to test hypotheses (with the operationalized variables), they must clarify their means of testing, or measuring, the correspondence between hypothetical relationships and what is observable empirically. This clarification involves specifying what is taken as an indicator of the variable. An indicator is evidence. How could we obtain evidence regarding our variable of voting? We could survey individuals and ask about their voting behavior. Their responses would provide evidence. As noted, operationalizing concepts and determining measurement (indicator) criteria are closely related. In our example, we could change our dependent variable from voting for a particular candidate to political participation in support of a particular issue; our operationalizations and indicators would also change. How could we operationalize and identify indicators for political participation? We could survey individuals and inquire about not only such activities as voting but also joining interest groups, attending demonstrations, sending e-mails, writing letters to local newspapers, and creating Facebook pages. In addition to testing hypothetical relationships, political science also points to the importance of understanding the difference between correlation and causation. Correlation is a relationship in which changes in one variable appear when there are changes in another variable (e.g., being younger and being more likely to vote for President Obama in 2012). Correlation is not the same as ultimate, indisputable causation (one variable absolutely causing or creating the other). Were we to confirm our hypothesis on age and voting choice, for instance, we could not say that we have proven that age absolutely determines whether someone will vote for a particular candidate. Perhaps additional variables (e.g., income, educational level, or mobility) are associated with this person’s voting behavior. As political scientist Duncan MacRae Jr. has noted, there is often an alternative explanation for what we think we have confirmed.30 MacRae’s insight points back to the usefulness of Converse’s assertion—that science can name reality, but only in an incomplete manner that is subject to continuous testing and research. Scientific research often involves the construction of scientific theories based on empirically verified hypotheses. Although based on observable data, scientific theory attempts to transcend the limits of the observable. Scientific theories seek to offer explanations about why and how correlations occur. In this manner, scientific theory also seeks to predict.31 For example, after having found a relationship between age Copyright 2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. THINKING SCIENTIFICALLY: SOME FOUNDATIONS OF SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY and voting choice, the political scientist might theorize that this relationship is related to different political values among different age groups. Theory building can be one of the most interesting aspects of science because it takes the political scientist beyond the task of merely describing and observing. Descriptions alone may offer little in the way of meaningful additions to our understanding of politics. Explanations delving into the why and how of politics seek a more profound level of understanding. In fact, the search for such explanations can be one of the most productive sources for generating new hypotheses for future testing and research. The processes associated with different usages of the scientific method— hypothesis formulation, operationalization, and so on—can be fascinating. Political scientist James Rosenau has described his own experience with the excitement of scientific research by noting the intense anticipation, curiosity, and expectation one feels while testing hypotheses an...
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Introduction
Supporting women’s suffrage which was rising in early 20th century and expanded rights, antisuffragists opposed some of the rights basing themselves on civilization stability and basic
traditional roles of women as written by the anti-suffragist Grace Duffield Goodwin who
outlined several reasons why women should reject the right they had to vote in the pamphlet
‘New York Tribune’.
Contrary, liberal feminists today base their writings with the 18th century philosopher articles,
Mary Wollstonecraft in her book ‘a vindication of the rights of woman, 1792’. During her time
women were denied rights and freedoms such right to hold office, custody over their children,
control property as well as divorcing their husbands. She further argued that Lockean rights of
self-governance, freedom and rationality of human beings were not applicable to women and
men were seen as superior. According to her this was a major cause of vice and women
detrimental.
Comparing between two articles
Now, briefly comparing between two articles, it is pointed out that;
Both articles were written by women but had conflicting ideas, specifically Wollstonecraft
appears to support equality between men and women not confusing it with suffragist
characteristics. Grace Goodwin is completely against suffragist especially regarding voting

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rights.
Both article touches specifically on women ri...


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