American Political Scientist Quotes

The theory of evolution is based on the struggle for life and the survival of the fittest. Yet cooperation is common between members of the same species and even between members of different species.

Then what explains war among states? Rousseau's answer is really that war occurs because there is nothing to prevent it.

Kenneth Waltz
Kenneth Waltz
The Kennedy home was a place of much action and laughter, a lively, brawling mob of children overseen by a mother who knew when to look the other way.

Wilson's analytical theory assumed that the natural and inevitable tendency in any system of government is to have recourse to some sovereign body that will exercise "ultimate supremacy" and have the last say in making collective decisions. It is in this sense that we speak of a government as have a monopoly over the legitimate exercise of authority and use of force in society. Indeed, much of contemporary political science is based on this presumption.

By the late 1800s and into the early 1900s, political science courses had begun appearing on college campuses. This was followed by the establishment of political science departments and degree programs.

In the 1930s, Adolf Hitler believed that his great-power rivals would be easy to exploit and isolate because each had little interest in fighting Germany and instead was determined to get someone else to assume the burden. He guessed right.

John Mearsheimer
John Mearsheimer
The most remarkable change in the moral history of mankind has been the rise - and occasionally the application - of the view that all people, and not just one's own kind, are entitled to fair treatment.

The chances for a problem to rise on the decision agenda are dramatically increased if a solution is attached.

Alexander Hamilton spoke the language of legitimacy when, as Publius, he noted in Federalist 27 the connection between sound Public Administration and widespread popular support

In addition, a century or more of efforts to arrive at a feasible and politically acceptable mix of market and nonmarket elements has not produced a definitive, stable, or uniform solution.

I remain a religious agnostic, but, unlike most atheists, I not only am not hostile to traditional religion but consider it a highly valuable, not to say essential, social institution... I am convinced that the moral regeneration and repair of a frayed social fabric that this country so badly needs will not take place unless more people take their religion seriously.

Contingency Theory is not a theory at all, in the conventional sense of theory as a well-developed set of interrelated propositions. It is more an orienting strategy or metatheory, suggesting ways in which a phenomenon ought to be conceptualized or as approach to the phenomenon ought to be explained. Drawn primarily from large-scale empirical studies, contingency theory relies on a few assumptions that have been explicitly stated, and these guide contingency research.

'Canadian society' or the 'Canadian nation' cannot decide anything, because no one is in charge.

Philosophical literature has given scant attention to the problem of privacy as such; the framework of reference within which privacy has so recently and widely become a matter of controversy is a distinctly contemporary one. What has not been discussed, or at least made clear, is why privacy is commonly considered a right or a value to be protected by the law. There is no historical consensus, in philosophy, politics, or law, that it is such a right. Few philosophers would argue that privacy is a "natural" right or that the intrinsic nature of privacy establishes it as a legal right.

Until the modern era there was no single international system, but rather several international systems, with little or no contact with another.

The passing of Marxism-Leninism first from China and then from the Soviet Union will mean its death as a living ideology.... For while there may be some isolated true believers left in places like Managua, Pyongyang, or Cambridge, MA...

Francis Fukuyama
Francis Fukuyama
What is government? From the outside it looks like a security system based on the marriage of land and people, From the inside, it looks like and attempts to create a community. A government is like an oyster, hard on the outside and soft on the inside, and the outside and inside are utterly dependent on each other.

The G-Zero isn't aspirational, it's analytic. Unfortunately, it's also where we are.

Ian Bremmer
Ian Bremmer
Animals belonging to the same species are like-minded, just as they are like-headed, like-bellied, like-limbed.

I began to appreciate that authentic truth is never simple and that any version of truth handed down from on high - whether by presidents, prime ministers, or archbishops - is inherently suspect. The powerful, I came to see, reveal truth only to the extent that it suits them.

Scientific discovery, when viewed in detail, is an excruciatingly slow and painful process.

Herbert A. Simon
Herbert A. Simon
Procedure is not a unique feature of public administration. It is a concomitant of all organized activity, and many procedures are equally usable by private administration or public administration. Private as well as public "red tape" can be time-consuming and annoying to those affected, as anyone can testify who has tried to exchange a purchase without a sales slip or to cash a check without "proper identification.

The french revolution has not received more attention than it deserves; but in comparison disproportionately little attention has been given to the English Civil Wars of the seventeenth century. In a more modest way, these too helped fix the shape of the modern world. Specifically, most of the devices and ideas which have found expression in subsequent constitutions date from the experiments and theories of that day.

Cultural constraints condition and limit our choices, shaping our characters with their imperatives.

Jeane Kirkpatrick
Jeane Kirkpatrick
MANAGEMENT involves the concrete practices and the observable techniques of administration. Frequently the term management is used synonymously with administration, and it is invariably assumed that a good manager is a good organizer. All of these usages are justified in the general terminology of administration, but in its more specialized sense management refers to the following specific techniques: