Come on all you political scientists!
It is clear that those in the White House have either challenged or trumped theory at some many turns over the past eight years.
Cognitivists and political psychologists at the fringes of the Social Sciences have been ignored too long. They have a lot to offer to political science and other humanities or social studies.
At this junction in history, it is certainly time to start reworking/overhauling the past emphasis (biases) on statistics and codification of processes in governance and political party transformation!
New revamped theories are needed imminently for testing now that the”babies have been thrown out with the bathwater.” These must absorb the psychological and cognitive aspect of research by key actors and stakeholders
What will be recovered?
Only time will tell.
However, if both political and social scientific research are going to become more relevant to Americans, they will need to tie in good theories with good observation on the ground. (They will have to have both “barefoot social sciences” as well as “number crunchers” working hand-in-hand with theorists from now on.) Further, specialists from other humanities and from the field of education must be invited into the process of revival.
SUMMARY
Returning to Dr. Kenneth Meier’s disappointment that political institutional studies don’t match up to psychological profiling and histories of presidencies, it is time for Political Science in America to regain a balanced means of theory development.
Political scientists and other social scientists who have been for far too-long enamored with statistics and game theory must get out from under their computers and meet the public and world at the face-to-face level.
Otherwise, these same good social scientists might as well recognize themselves and their publications as no better than those journalists sitting at the bar who watch CNN report the news which they should be doing. (i.e. Quality of communication and level of differentiating information shared broadly are damaged in such processes of number-centered analysis that excludes good face-value analyses.)
NOTE: Again, one tip I can give to political scientists is to look at where history and psychology are strongest at interpreting presidential and other government (institutions) actors’ behaviors. Appropriate those tools and use them often in political science more broadly. Eventually, this will make the profession more respected and appreciated by the masses and end-users of the research.
