For students of School of Political Sciences
The University of Haifa
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For the Greeks and the Romans, as for us, all political science was in a sense comparative politics. Political science has its beginning when an observer notes that another people is not governed as we are. Why? W.J.M. Mackenzie, Cited by Rose, 1991
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"To have mastered "theory" and "method" is to have become a conscious thinker , a man at work and aware of the assumptions and implications of whatever he is about. To be mastered by "method" or "theory" is simply to be kept from working" (C. Wright Mills). The sentence applies nicely to the present plight of political science. The profession as a whole oscillates between unsound extremes. At the one end a large majority of political scientists qualify as pure and simple unconscious thinkers. At the other end a sophisticated minority qualify as over-conscious thinkers [Those who refuse to discuss heat unless they are given a thermometer], in the sense that their standards of method and theory are drawn from the physical, "paradigmatic" sciences" ( Sartori, 1970, 1033). |
Comparative politics...
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"A person who knows only one country |
"Comparative enquiry resembles foreign travel. Both are expensive, time consuming and bewildering. Both are also best done in the spirit of parochialism. We learn about abroad by comparing foreigners with ourselves. The most rewarding comparison, like the most rewarding travel, thus consists in a continuous series of surprises – sometimes at the strangeness and sometimes at the familiarity of foreign practices"(Moran, Michael, 1991, The Politics of the Financial Services Revolution: The USA, UK and Japan, St. Martin's Press, New York, p. 1)
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