Suchergebnisse

A comment on Andrew Bennett, Ahron Barth, & Kenneth R. Rutherford's & Peregrine Schwartz-Shea's articles on methodological trends in political science instruction & scholarship (both, 2003) is concerned that the former excludes most political theory & the latter may have overstated the diversity of methodological training, although taken together, their findings ring true. It is argued, however, that the idea that quantitative methods are the only way to do political science, as signaled in their essays, is misleading. Their findings suggest that students must be offered many methodological choices. It is contended that students learn method best by doing & courses ought to require research projects utilizing qualitative methods rather than the easier to employ quantitative methods. The persistent structure of political science subfields (eg, American politics, comparative politics, international relations) is discussed in terms of how the discipline trains to hire & vice versa, perpetuating a division of labor in the discipline that lacks intellectual sense. Although conceding that this structure is organically generated rather than imposed from the top down, it is seen as time to consider pursuing a new structure. 2 References. J. Zendejas

An econometric model of economic development is estimated with data from leading European countries between 1300 and 1800. The model explores the impact of population, enclosure, empire, representative government, technology, and literacy on urbanization, agricultural productivity, proto‐industry, and the real wage. Simulations show that the main factors leading to economic success in north‐western Europe were the growth of American and Asian commerce and, especially, the innovations underlying the export of the new draperies in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The enclosure of the open fields, representative government, and the spread of literacy did not play major roles.

Abstract. Henry George was more fortunate than many authors of classics. His Progress and Poverty won understanding, appreciation and recognition from the start. The book presented a theory of the business cycle based on monopoly of which theorists must take account. It also represented the peak of the development of the classical school. George shared with the school's great figures, particularly Adam Smith and David Ricardo, a Utopian vision of a free economy. But George went beyond them in envisioning a free society in a new moral order; he was one of the great libertarian philosophers. Moreover, as Teilhac has shown, he projected into economics a social rationalism that opened the way for a reborn political economy based on scientific method. Though his is one of the enduring creations of the human mind which spur the species on to greater cultural achievements, it is, first and foremost, an economic classic. Insofar as George pointed to monopoly and privilege as socially disastrous institutions, his teaching has been adopted by economists everywhere. His doctrine that all men share a common right to the earth now rules space exploitation—that is, the universe—and the deep oceans and it is winning grudging recognition in the one‐fourth of the earth humanity inhabits.