Riassunto:
In the writing of prefaces for works of this sort, most editors report being faced with similar challenges and have much in common in relating how these challenges are met. They acknowledge that their paramount ob jective is to provide more than an overview of topics but rather to offer selective critical reviews that will serve to advance theory and research in the particular area reviewed. The question of the appropriate audience to be addressed is usually answered by directing material to a potential audience of social scientists, graduate students, and, occasionally, ad vanced undergraduate students. Editors who are confronted with the problem of structuring their material often explore various means by which their social science discipline might be subdivided, then generally conclude that no particular classification strategy is superior. In elabo rating on the process by which the enterprise was initiated, editors typ ically resort to a panel of luminaries, who provide independent support for the idea and then offer both suggestions for topics and the authors who will write them. Editors usually concede that chapter topics and content do not reflect their original conception but are a compromise between their wishes and the authors' expertise and capabilities. Editors report that inevitable delays occur, authors drop out of projects and are replaced, and new topics are introduced. Finally, editors frequently con fess that the final product is incomplete, with gaps occurring because of failed commitments by authors or because authors could not be secured to write certain chapters.
Contenuti:
1 Small Groups in Political Science: Perspectives on Significance and Stuckness.- Four Basic Small-Group Orientations: Tracing the Literature’s Major Themes.- Social Facilitation or Inhibition: Better or Worse Performance in Groups?.- Social Attraction: How/Why Do I Love/Like You?.- Social Comparison: You’re OK—How Am I?.- Social Control: How Are Individuals Tied into Broad Purposes?.- Some Small-Group Dimensions: Toward Differentiating the Species.- A Primer on What We Know about Central Properties: Components of a Small-Group Model.- Five Particulars Disregarding What We Know: Some Garden-Variety Misunderstandings.- Four Cases of Small Groups in Politics: Dynamics/Dimensions as Emergent/Contrived.- Groups as Engines of Conformity: Groupthink on Kennedy’s “Best and Brightest” Team.- Groups as Supports for Deviant Voting Behavior: The Case of Republican Auto Workers.- Groups and One-to-One Control: A Runaway Norm on Nixon’s “Young Team”.- Groups and the Development of Truth-Seeking Norms: One Deliberate MARTA Intervention.- Overview of Significance and Stuckness: The Condition of Small-Group Analysis Today.- Elaborating on Past, Present, and Future Significance: What the Small Group Can Do for Political Scientists.- Understanding and Escaping Contemporary Stuckness: Whatever Happened to Small-Group Research?.- References.- 2 Government Learning: An Overview.- A Model for Theory Development: Medical Diagnosis Capability.- Overview and a Preliminary Caution.- Defining Learning.- Types of Individual Learning.- Organizational Learning.- Learning Agendas.- Normative Issues.- Trends.- Motivation and Cognition—Individual Bases.- Three Images of Individual Learning.- Selected Additional Issues.- Organizational Structure and Dynamics.- “Smart” Organization Theory.- Organizational Memory.- Qualitative Differences of Public Bureaucracies.- Intelligence Functions and Decision-Making Processes.- The Washington Political Environment.- The Structure of Time in Washington.- Lobbying.- Accountability and Review Systems: Legitimacy Trade-Offs.- News Media Effects.- Uniqueness and Self-Transforming Capacity.- Societal, World, and Historical Contexts.- Truth Theory.- Secularization and Orthodoxy Theories.- Government Learning: A Dependent Variable?.- Problem Types.- No Problem.- Technology-Dependent Problems.- Resource-Dependent Problems.- Known-Answer Problems.- Unproductively Conceptualized Problems.- Problems Amenable to Full Scientific Method.- Strong-Norm-System Problems.- Pluralist, Low-Norm-Salience or Rapid-Change Problems.- Forecasting with Uncertain Precedents.- Problems Unanswerable or Unposable from Brain Constraints.- Secrecy Penetration Problems.- Different People and Different Cultures Problems.- Time-Constraint Problems.- Incoherent-Policy Problems.- Diagnostic Repertoires.- Overview.- Illustrative Individual Diagnoses.- Concluding Reflections.- The Design of Institutional-Memory Capabilities.- Increasing Effective Transitions and Competence of Political Appointees.- Quality of Watchdog and Critic Systems.- Dependency Theory of Motivational Blockage.- Good Judgment.- Overload and How to Cope.- The Critique of Ideology and Overconfidence.- References.- 3 Political Violence: A Critical Evaluation.- Frequency of Conflict.- Overview.- Large-Scale Conflict.- Assassination.- Conflict in the United States.- Comment on Periodicity and Randomness.- Dimensions of Conflict.- Selected Studies.- A Typology Including Structural Violence.- Hypotheses About Violence.- The Feierabend Group.- Gurr.- Other Studies.- Summary.- Overall Conclusions: Macroanalyses.- Some Other Areas in the Study of Political Violence.- Concluding Comment.- References.- 4 Rationality and Collective-Choice Theory.- Rationality.- Individual and Collective Choice.- Axiomatic-Choice Theory.- Arrow’s Social-Choice Theory.- Arrow’s Conditions.- Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem.- Probability of the Voter’s Paradox.- Single-Peakedness and Value Restrictedness.- Preference Priority.- Cardinal Utility and the Independence Condition.- Logrolling and Vote Trading.- The Paradox of Vote Trading.- Economic Theories of Politics—Spatial Models.- Information and Rationality.- Party Strategies.- Game Theory.- Games in Extensive, Normal, and Characteristic-Function Form.- Two-Person Zero-Sum Games.- Individual and Collective Rationality in Games.- Solution Concepts.- Mixed Strategies.- Prisoner’s Dilemma.- N-Person Games.- Rationality Conditions.- Imputations.- Domination.- The Shapley Value.- Nash Equilibrium.- The Shapley Solution.- Harsanyi’s Risk-Dominance Relations.- Collective Goods.- Free Riders.- Free Rider and Prisoner’s Dilemma.- Problems of Preference Revelation.- Noncooperation without Prisoner’s Dilemma.- Altruism.- Conclusion.- References.- 5 Political Symbolism.- Sources of the Research Focus.- Philosophic Concepts of Symbolic Systems.- Linguistic and Anthropological Approaches to Symbolism.- Theories of Political Symbols.- A Survey of Applications of Symbolic Theory.- Law as a Symbol System.- The Relation of Metaphor and Political Symbolism.- Conclusion.- References.
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