political science exports?
Question: What theories or research methods have been exported by political science to other social sciences? Poli sci has been a big importer. They sucked up rational choice and identification from econ, and now they are importing social network analysis from sociology. Do they have a trade imbalance?
orgtheory.net 
OK, so they imported rational choice and social networks, but they sell economists and sociologists some space in their journals. Sounds good to me.
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Mike M.
March 4, 2010 at 7:14 pm
mike,
would that be disciplinary reserve currency seignorage? if so, what is the disciplinary equivalent of long-term bonds, grad student enrollments?
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gabrielrossman
March 4, 2010 at 7:21 pm
It’s diffusion, not importation/exportation. It’s all math. Social science, in any form, doing quantitative work is “just” doing application. Some is very sophisticated and very creative, some is either one or the other and not both, and some is neither. That econ picked up on mathemati..ci..zation..alisis…ification….er, using numbers and methods to analyze numbers is just timing. The rest of us simply see more or less use in various applications.
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SavageHenry
March 4, 2010 at 7:50 pm
you forgot:
path dependence –from economic history
punctuated equilibrium–from evolutionary biology
transaction cost economics –from management/contract theory
constructivism–from philosophy of science
set theory –from engineering by way of charles ragin
experimental methods –from psychology
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benny profane
March 4, 2010 at 8:18 pm
Discipline as pastiche?
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fabiorojas
March 4, 2010 at 8:20 pm
Wasn’t James March a political science PhD? Regardless, many of his seminal contributions were made in political science and the reason for this may be that they were initially more interested in theories of agenda-setting and coalition building. Theories about agenda setting have been exported from political science (e.g., Kingdon) and have influenced both management science and political sociology. Seems like a distinctive contribution of political science to org theory.
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brayden
March 4, 2010 at 8:38 pm
March is an interesting case. He says, with Simon, in Organizations ’58 that he’s drawing from math, computer science, & psychology. So early Carnegie school seems like an application of other ideas; org routines, satisficing are both comp sci 101 ideas. But I’d more agree that garbage can modelling (Kingdon) is distinctive and has had a big impact.
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fabiorojas
March 4, 2010 at 8:44 pm
Herbert Simon was a Chicago Political Science Ph.D.
There was a lot of cross-pollination/argument in the the areas of theories of power, influence, and voting (Dahl, etc), political economy, framing (Edelman), revolutions & relative deprivation, and comparative welfare state/egalitarianism stuff.
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Kieran
March 4, 2010 at 8:48 pm
There’s a lot of cross-pollination between political sociology and political sociology; in fact, the subfield of comparative politics and comparative-historical sociology are often indistinguishable.
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Trey
March 4, 2010 at 10:10 pm
I think the bigger point is that research communities/traditions (often interdisciplinary), not disciplines have distinctive contributions. Disciplines are inefficient actually pretty bad at aggregating/producing distinctive “contributions” as a whole. Groups of scholars are quite the opposite.
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benny profane
March 4, 2010 at 10:15 pm
I’m surprised no one here decided that political science “imported” addition and subtraction. I’m incredibly disappointed to see sociologists thinking in such parochial terms – especially inaccurate ones. The developers of transaction cost economics, new institutional analysis, etc. were by and large political scientists, if economists by training. And really? Psychologists invented the experimental designs used by all political scientists? Mathematical psychology proceeded political science by, what, a few centuries? Either way, you all need to take a moment to thank mathematicians, from whom you can be said to have imported 100% of your ideas.
Anyone who wishes to retort will have to give proper citation and appreciation to political science for importing personal preferences. Because that’s how it works, apparently.
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John
March 4, 2010 at 11:00 pm
As a grad student in sociology, this is a great blog to keep me in the loop while I’m off doing my research. But sometimes your ivory tower controversies crack me up. Keep up the good work.
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Justin Kraus
March 4, 2010 at 11:56 pm
Rather than acknowledge your condescension with a response, I’ll let xkcd do the talking.
http://xkcd.com/435/
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Drew Conway
March 5, 2010 at 1:11 am
I love it when Fabio stirs the pot like this. If nothing else, it generates a lively conversation.
I gotta agree with benny on this one. It’s hard for me to bash political science when so much of my own theoretical toolkit was directly inspired by work in political science. And I’d say the same is true for you Fabio. Much of social movement theory either found its origins in political science or evolved out of conversations between sociology, political science, and org. theory. The political opportunity structure concept developed from a long chain of papers by both sociologists and political scientists. One of the first to coin the term was Kitschelt, a political scientist.
Resource mobilization theory, although we often claim that it found its origins purely in theories of business competition, was actually inspired by research on interest group theory. Here’s a quote from McCarthy and Zald: “the unacknowledged intellectual foundation of the resource mobilization perspective is the American political science tradition of interest group theory that viewed politics as a continual contest for influence by groups with different levels of power. This tradition offered a more palatable view of political conflict and protest as part of the normal influence processes of a pluralistic society” (398).
Pretty clear that they saw political science as influential in formulating RM theory.
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brayden
March 5, 2010 at 1:16 am
when in doubt, neil smelser has an answer:
http://www.reflectedknowledge.com/clients/WZB/smelser.htm
I specifically like the following:
“Another form of learning (adaptation might be a better term) is the exportation and importation of concepts, theories, frameworks between disciplines—also known as imperialism and lack of scientific confidence, respectively, by those who sneer at the processes. All disciplines export and are borrowed from, though the flow varies. I would suggest that economics is a net exporter (mainly of market models, rational choice models, and formal quantitative models), that geography is a net importer (Marxist geography, political geography, feminist geography, postmodern geography, queer geography), and that sociology, anthropology, and political science are intermediate—though political science has had heavy seasons of wholesale importing of behavioralist approaches, functionalist approaches, and rational-choice and game-theoretical approaches.
Whatever the precise picture, exporting and importing are widespread phenomena. Willard van Orman Quine, the late philosopher who did not love the social sciences very much, once compared them to the Cargo Cults of Melanesia—that is, groups of despairing peoples who are forever waiting for magical arrivals of ships filled with unlimited supplies in the form of tinned foods, transistor radios, and personal salvation. The unflattering analogy was that social scientists seek their salvation by waiting for new theories, models, and insights from outside. While caricatured, Quine’s dig struck a nerve and was not altogether out of touch with reality. Exporting and importing are, of course, one form of interdisciplinarity, and two of their consequences are to make the social-science disciplines more diverse internally and less distinguishable from one another.”
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benny profane
March 5, 2010 at 2:43 am
Trey’s certainly right that political sociology and political science (specifically the comparativists) are often indistinguishable from one another in method and topic of inquiry.
If you look at recent scholarship, however, it is apparent that political science (ie work by political scientists or in polisci journals) often relies heavily on theory developed by sociologists in sociological publications for its frame. In some senses, I think it is appropriate to say that political sociology is the theory wing of the study of politics.
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cwalken
March 5, 2010 at 5:16 am
True that, Brayden. If you were to press me, I’d admit that much of my work is inspired by the anthropologist St. Clair Drake and his observations on ethnicity in higher education. But don’t tell anyone!!!!
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fabiorojas
March 5, 2010 at 5:31 am