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.
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