American Political Science before the Mirror: What Our Journals Reveal about the Profession
T HE NATURE AND DIRECTION of American political science has been much discussed in recent years, and there can be little doubt that a great deal of the dialogue is carried on in the shadow of Thomas S. Kuhn and his many critics and allies.' Although Kuhn applied his analysis of scientific activity to the physical sciences, terms such as "paradigm," "preparadigm," "normal science," and "revolution" have rapidly swept through the social sciences and are conspicuously evident in the literature of political science during the past decade. Possibly the best known and most discussed point of Kuhn's 1962 work is that of paradigms which he relates to normal science which "include