Dimensions of political analysis: an introduction to the contemporary study of politics

Beginning students of political science rarely, if ever, have been given
the opportunity to acquire first-hand familiarity with the orientation and
methods of prominent twentieth-century studies in political science. This
book of readings is designed to reflect, as accurately as possible in one intro-
ductory volume, the diversity and vitality of modern political science by
delineating the major concerns of political science, the methods by which
political phenomena are studied, the central concepts of the discipline, and
some of the major questions which confront professional students of govern-
ment and politics. Naturally such an enterprise has demanded reappraisal
and successive modification of the organizational structure of the volume.
The framework ultimately employed has provided the editors with a useful
device for presenting introductory students with a coherent overview of the
discipline without preconceived, doctrinaire conceptions of what political
science ought to be.
In selecting the readings the editors tried, wherever possible, to meet each
of the following criteria: that the selections be written in language that the
beginning student can understand; that the selections be drawn from a
variety of subfields of political science; that the selections illustrate the con-
cepts operationally employed (where conceptualization is not self-conscious
they should illustrate the ideas implicitly at work); and that the selections
provide a tenable combination of commonly accepted perspectives, widely
acclaimed selections, less orthodox foci, and imaginative, lesser-known ma-
terials. The selections have been ordered in part by the complexity of
excerpted materials, in part by the relationship of the concepts illustrated,
and in part in terms of the gradual development of the volume from simple
ideas at the outset to more sophisticated,