Towards a “Practical Political Science”

Interaction and Crossover amongst Approaches to Politics

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to introduce new trends within theories of Political Science, to attempt to nudge the discipline of Political Science into a more practical direction, and also to clarify the significance of the Asian Legal Assistance Project, currently being carried out by the Graduate School of Law at Nagoya University. Firstly, Political Science is often referred to as “the discipline divided, ” but this situation has seen a degree of change recently. There are sincere discussions and interactions among the three kinds of Institutionalism in search of fruitful cooperation. To demonstrate this dialogue, I introduce some books as good examples. Secondly, a number of political scientists have started projects to apply their knowledge to the solving of practical political issues. I introduce the book Democracy at Risk as an example of this. Democracy at Risk is a report by the Standing Committee on Civic Education and Engagement of the American Political Science Association. It tests the proposition that modern political science has useful insights into the state of democratic life and what might be done to improve it. Thirdly, I evaluate the Asian Legal Assistance Project which was commenced by the Graduate School of Law at Nagoya University as one of the practical projects organized by Japanese social scientists. The aim of this project is to establish modern legal systems within the Graduate School's target countries, including Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Mongolia, and Uzbekistan. This project aims at assisting the transition from planned to market economies of these countries. While this is still a very new project, I think it shows a possible future direction for fruitful cooperation between practitioners and academicians within legal and political sciences.