Cover Page; Title Page; Copyright Page; Contents; Acknowledgments; Introduction; PART I: The Flyvbjerg Debate; 1. Return to Politics; 2. The Perestroikan Challenge to Social Science; 3. A Perestroikan Straw Man Answers Back; 4. A Statistician Strikes Out; 5. Reflections on Doing Phronetic Social Science; PART II: Phronesis Reconsidered; 6. Social Science in Society; 7. Power and Interpretation; 8. Contesting the Terrain; 9. The Bounds of Rationality; 10. Making Intuition Matter; PART III: Making Political Science Matter; 11. Conundrums in the Practice of Pluralism
12. Unearthing the Roots of Hard Science13. Political Science and Political Theory; 14. Finding New Mainstreams; References; About the Contributors; Index
Summary
Making Political Science Matter brings together a number of prominent scholars to discuss the state of the field of Political Science. In particular, these scholars are interested in ways to reinvigorate the discipline by connecting it to present day political struggles. Uniformly well-written and steeped in a strong sense of history, the contributors consider such important topics as: the usefulness of rational choice theory; the ethical limits of pluralism; the use (and misuse) of empirical research in political science; the present-day divorce between political theory and empirical science
