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What Is Political Development? A Constitutional Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 April 2011

George Thomas
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Abstract

Development approaches to the study of politics, precisely because they focus on movement through time, seem uniquely positioned to illuminate the logic and experience of the polity in a manner that cannot be captured by more conventional political science methods. And yet, political development has come to be seen as whatever historical change happens to a regime, neglecting the normative nature of the polity. The result is an “a-constitutional” approach to political development. This paper argues that political science can and should examine development in normative terms and that attempts to fit political development more securely within value-free social science threaten to rob it of its promise.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 73 , Issue 2 , Spring 2011 , pp. 275 - 294
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2011

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