Political Science Revitalized: Filling the Jigsaw Puzzle with Metatheory

(Hardback)

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Political science has been described as a jigsaw puzzle with many specializations and subfields that do not talk to one another. This book offers a solution that will advance the field from mid-level theory to engage in cross-fertilization through metatheoretical paradigms. The book begins with a history of political science from the nineteenth century to the present, followed by a paradigmatic history of political science including 6 metatheories in the pre-behavioral era, 12 in the behavioral era, and the 4 major and several minor paradigms being developed today. The book advances the goal of David Easton by proposing a neobehavioral political science including multimethodological innovations, cross-testing of paradigms, and tenets of a new political science that can rise to become a truly theoretical science. Each paradigm is diagramed to demonstrate the key concepts and their causal interconnections. Political Science Revitalized: Filling the Jigsaw Puzzle with Paradigms poses an exciting and provocative argument for the future of the vast field of political science.

Reviews

Haas boldly advances an intriguing way for more synthesis among the various subfields and paradigms of political science. As a valuable bonus he provides an instructive review of the fractures that have beset our discipline. -- Charles F. Hermann, Texas A&M University
Michael Haas' Political Science Revitalized: Filling the Jigsaw Puzzle With Metatheory is an extraordinary accomplishment from a highly original and knowledgeable thinker. It is the culmination of a professional life of creative contributions to the theory and practice of political science. It is most welcome. Few academicians in the discipline could attempt such an undertaking and fewer even complete it. The scholarship is incisive, well integrated and impressively critiqued and varies from, among other issues, the traditional and institutional to a neoliberal political science, with a number of stops along the way. This book should be required reading for everyone, academicians, students, and an informed public, who are concerned with the discipline and its relationship to a vital democratic society. -- William Crotty, Northeastern University

Author Bio

Michael Haas, who taught political science at the University of Hawaii for 35 years, now lives in Los Angeles, where he teaches at local colleges and universities.