Читать книгу Political Science For Dummies - Marcus A. Stadelmann - Страница 33

The concept of a paradigm was developed in 1962 by Thomas Kuhn in his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (University of Chicago Press). A paradigm is a scientific worldview (ideology) that shapes and guides a researcher in political science. The paradigm tells the political scientist what to research, how to research the specific problem, and what type of conclusions the researcher can draw. In other words, it sets the parameters for research. Paradigms can help with research but are also very restrictive. For example, traditionalism is a paradigm. It tells the political scientist what to study, in this case, institutions and constitutions, how to study the two, by describing them, and what type of conclusions to draw. To study actual human behavior would be outside of the paradigm and wouldn’t be acceptable to the rest of academia. The researcher would be shunned by his colleagues and his research wouldn’t be published. The researcher’s career would be over.

To gain respect from the other real sciences, political science started to attempt to turn itself into a hard science beginning in the 1950s. Suddenly, political scientists tested theories and attempted to create grand theories, necessary to qualify as a natural science.