“When I was appointed Program Chairperson of the 1982 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association by APSA President-Elect Seymour Martin Lipset, I chose as a guiding theme for the meetings, ‘the state of the discipline.’ Nineteen eighty-two seemed a good year for some stock-taking. The heady days of the growth of the social sciences in the 1960s were only a faint memory for many of the current members of the profession. Some of the attempts at applying social science theory to public policy problems had produced unclear, and occasionally questionable, results. The social sciences were under great pressure to prove their worth in the more budget-conscious 1970s, and that pressure had increased under the current administration in Washington. It seemed a good time to review where we were and where we might be going. Nevertheless, despite my own conviction that a review of the intellectual developments in the field over the past twenty to twenty-five years was due, I had little inkling that many scholars were feeling a similar need.

“The overall goal from this volume is to begin to fill the continuing need for a[n] … overview of political science research. It is intended to be used in teaching and for research purposes, as well as by foundation and government officials who need regularly updated information on current research in the discipline. I hope that the book will be useful in introducing graduate students to the problems about which political scientists are currently concerned and that it will help political scientists learn more about each other’s work. The volume should also be useful to foundation and government officials, as they consider research opportunities in the discipline, and to people working in government and other applied fields, who wonder what political scientists can contribute to their daily concerns.”

Ada W. Finifter
East Lansing, Michigan
June 19, 1983

For ease of access, this volume has been divided into five parts, each of which has been linked. The table of contents for the parts is listed below.

Part One: Political Science: The Discipline and Its Scope and Theory

• Preface
• Political Theory: The Evolution of a Sub-Field, John G. Gunnell
• Political Theory and the Art of Heresthetics, William H. Riker
• Toward Theories of Data: The State of Political Methodology, Christopher H. Achen
• Self Portrait: Profile of Political Scientists, Naomi B. Lynn

Part Two: American Political Processes and Policymaking

• The Scholarly Commitment to Parties, Leon D. Epstein
• The Forest for the Trees: Blazing Trails for Congressional Research, Leroy N. Rieselbach
• Judicial Politics: Still a Distinctive Field, Lawrence Baum
• Public Policy Analysis: Some Recent Developments and Current Problems, Susan B. Hansen
• Federalism: The Challenge of Conflicting Theories and Contemporary Practice, David R. Beam, Timothy J. Conlan, and David B. Walker

Part Three: Comparative Political Processes and Policymaking

• Comparative Public Policy: An Assessment, M. Donald Hancock
• Studying the Politics of Development and Change: The State of the Art, Joel S. Migdal 309

Part Four: Micro Political Behavior: American and Comparative

• Voting Behavior Research in the 1980s: An Examination of Some Old and New Problem Areas, Herbert B. Asher
• Diversity and Complexity in American Public Opinion, Donald R. Kinder
• Changing Paradigms in Comparative Political Behavior, Ronald Inglehart
• The Elusive Paradigm: Gender, Politics and Political Behavior, Marianne Githens 

Part Five

International Politics

Theory of World Politics: Structural Realism and Beyond, Robert 0. Keohane
International Interactions and Processes: The Internal vs. External Debate Revisited, Bruce Russett

Addresses from the 1982 Lasswell Symposium: The Uses of Social Science

Politics and the Uses of Social Science Research, Donna E. Shalala
Basic Inquiry and Applied Use in the Social Sciences, Donald E. Stokes

Part Six: Contributors and Index