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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

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Political Science

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Series

2022

Archipelago

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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

What Is Political Science? What A Disciplinary Archipelago Says About Political Scholarship And Academia As A Whole, Warren Burroughs Apr 2022

What Is Political Science? What A Disciplinary Archipelago Says About Political Scholarship And Academia As A Whole, Warren Burroughs

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

“‘Political Science’ is greatly in need of definition” (Smith, 1886, quoted in Sigelman, 2006). This statement is as true today as it was a century and a half ago when it was written in Political Science’s first independent journal’s first article. Throughout its history, the discipline’s purpose and objectives have been contested. A conflict between subdisciplines regarding approaches and desired research outcomes hinders the creation of a comprehensive disciplinary framework. Yet, division is inevitable given the objects of Political Science’s study – people and power. The discipline is having an identity crisis. To illustrate this, Political Science is compared to …