Hostname: page-component-cb9f654ff-65tv2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-08-31T08:14:38.579Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Political Science and the Crisis of Authoritarianism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Lucian W. Pye
Lucian W. Pye*
Affiliation:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Political science is a discipline in constant danger of fragmentation because of the centrifugal pulls of our subfields and the contradictions in our scientific and humanistic traditions. We are, however, periodically brought together by the need to respond to major developments that are reshaping the political universe. We are today confronted with a unifying challenge in the crisis of authoritarianism that is undermining the legitimacy of all types of authoritarian systems throughout the world, including the Marxist-Leninist regimes. The crisis will not necessarily produce democracies, but rather a variety of part-free, part-authoritarian systems which do not conform to our classical typologies. Although the crisis of authoritarianism stems from profound social, economic, and cultural trends, the outcome in each case will be decided by political responses. Political science, therefore, has the responsibility to lead intellectually other social sciences in analyzing the fundamental change in political life that involves the clash between individual political cultures and the world culture of modernization.

Information

Type
Articles
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 84 , Issue 1 , March 1990 , pp. 3 - 19
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1990

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Almond, Gabriel A. 1988. “Separate Tables: Schools and Sects in Political Science.” PS: Political Science and Politics 21: 828–42.Google Scholar
Bell, Daniel. 1981. “Invariance and Interpretation.” Presented at the American Academy of the Arts and Sciences' Focus on the Natural Sciences Conference. Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Bialer, Seweryn. 1988. “Gorbachev's Program of Change: Sources, Significance, Prospects.” Political Science Quarterly 103: 403–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bunce, Valerie. 1981. Do Leaders Make a Difference? Executive Succession and Public Policy under Capitalism and Socialism. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, Saul B. 1989. “A Question of Boundaries: The Response of Learned Societies to Interdisciplinary Scholarship.” In Learned Societies and the Evaluation of the Disciplines, ACLS Occasional Papers. New York: American Council of Learned Societies.Google Scholar
Crick, Bernard. 1959. The American Science of Politics: Its Origins and Conditions. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Crick, Bernard. 1972. In Defense of Politics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Dahl, Robert. 1979. Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Farr, James. 1988. “The State of the Discipline.” Polity 20: 727–33.Google Scholar
Finifter, Ada, ed. 1983. Political Science: The State of the Discipline. Washington: American Political Science Association.Google Scholar
Gellner, Ernest. 1988. “The Politics of Anthropology.” Government and Opposition. 23:290–303.Google Scholar
Goldfarb, Jeffrey. 1989. Beyond Glasnost: The Post-Totalitarian Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Haraszti, Miklos. 1987. The Velvet Prison. Trans. Katalin, and Landesmann, Stephen. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Harding, Harry. 1988. “Generational Change in American Scholarship on Contemporary China.” Presented at the Conference of Asian Program of Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D.C.Google Scholar
Hou, Chiming. 1965. Foreign Investment and Economic Development in China: 1840–1937. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kluckhohn, Clyde and Murry, Henry. 1953. Personality in Mature Society, and Culture. New York: Alfred Knopf.Google Scholar
Lerner, Daniel. 1958. The Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.Google Scholar
Lewin, Moshe. 1988. The Gorbachev Phenomenon. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Cheng, Li and White, Lynn. 1988. “The Thirteenth Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party: From Mobilizers to Managers.” Asian Survey 28: 371–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shizheng, Li. 1989. Looking Out from Death. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
MacIntyre, Alasdair. 1978. Against the Self-images of the Ages: Essays on Ideology and Philosophy. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.Google Scholar
Margolis, Howard. 1987. Patterns, Thinking, and Cognition: A Theory of Judgment. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Morris, Richard. 1987. The Nature of Reality. New York: Noonday Press.Google Scholar
Polanyi, Karl. 1944. The Great Transformation. New York: Rinehart.Google Scholar
Remer, Carl F. 1933. Foreign Intervention in China. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Ricci, David. 1984. The Tragedy of Political Science: Politics, Scholarship, and Democracy. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Rustow, Dankwart A. 1970. Transitions to Democracy: Toward a Dynamic Model. Comparative Politics 2:337–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sartori, Giovanni. 1970. “Concept Misinformation in Comparative Politics.” American Political Science Review 64: 1033–53.Google Scholar
Seidelman, Raymond, and Harpham, Edward J.. 1985. Disenchanted Realists: Political Science and the American Crisis, 1884–1984. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Somit, Albert, and Tanenhaus, Joseph. 1967. The Development of American Political Science: From Burgess to Behavioralism. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.Google Scholar
Wakeman, Frederic E. Jr., 1988. “Transnational and Comparative Research.” Items 42: 85–89.Google Scholar
Weisberg, Herbert, ed. 1986. Political Science: The Science of Politics. New York: Agathon.Google Scholar
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.