A Dynamic Labor Market: How Political Science is Opening Up to Methodologists, and How Methodologists are Opening Up Political Science

Extract

If disciplines can be likened to living things, then perhaps political science is best characterized not by familiar symbols—e.g., the elephant, the donkey, or the eagle—but by a small sea creature: the hermit crab. Rather than generating its own protective cover, the hermit crab adopts the foreign shells that it comes across; it makes a home for itself by utilizing the previous works of other crustaceans. For many years, the discipline of political science—like other areas within the social and behavioral sciences—built its own frameworks using the analytical tools found in outside disciplines. Borrowing heavily from econometrics, psychometrics, and biometrics, political scientists examined empirical data as they tested theories about individual behavior, organizational dynamics, and governmental processes. The substantive ends were of primary interest, and therefore less attention was paid to the means of inquiry.The authors wish to thank Michael Brintnall for sharing the American Political Science Association's data on job postings, and David Campbell, Tom Carsey, Suzanna DeBoef, Jeff Gill, John Jackson, Jonathan Nagler, Herb Weisberg, and Sarah Wilson for helpful comments and suggestions on previous versions of this article.