Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and power, and the analysis of political activities, political thought, political behavior, and associated constitutions and laws.
Rhetoric is the art of persuasion, which along with grammar and logic is one of the three ancient arts of discourse. Rhetoric aims to study the techniques writers or speakers utilize to inform, persuade, or motivate particular audiences in specific situations. Aristotle defines rhetoric as "the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion" and since mastery of the art was necessary for victory in a case at law, for passage of proposals in the assembly, or for fame as a speaker in civic ceremonies, he calls it "a combination of the science of logic and of the ethical branch of politics". Rhetoric typically provides heuristics for understanding, discovering, and developing arguments for particular situations, such as Aristotle's three persuasive audience appeals: logos, pathos, and ethos. The five canons of rhetoric or phases of developing a persuasive speech were first codified in classical Rome: invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery.
Richard Whately was an English academic, rhetorician, logician, philosopher, economist, and theologian who also served as a reforming Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin. He was a leading Broad Churchman, a prolific and combative author over a wide range of topics, a flamboyant character, and one of the first reviewers to recognise the talents of Jane Austen.
Communication studies or communication science is an academic discipline that deals with processes of human communication and behavior, patterns of communication in interpersonal relationships, social interactions and communication in different cultures. Communication is commonly defined as giving, receiving or exchanging ideas, information, signals or messages through appropriate media, enabling individuals or groups to persuade, to seek information, to give information or to express emotions effectively. Communication studies is a social science that uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge that encompasses a range of topics, from face-to-face conversation at a level of individual agency and interaction to social and cultural communication systems at a macro level.
Public Administration is the implementation of public policy, administration of government establishment, management of non-profit establishment, and also an academic discipline - a subfield of political science taught in public policy schools known as Public Policy and Administration that studies this implementation and prepares civil servants specially for administrative purpose for working in the government and non profit sector. As a "field of inquiry with a diverse scope" whose fundamental goal is to "advance management and policies so that government can function." Some of the various definitions which have been offered for the term are: "the management of public programs"; the "translation of politics into the reality that citizens see every day"; and "the study of government decision making, the analysis of the policies themselves, the various inputs that have produced them, and the inputs necessary to produce alternative policies." The word public administration is the combination of two words—public and administration. In every sphere of social, economic and political life there is administration which means that for the proper functioning of the organization or institution it must be properly ruled or managed and from this concept emerges the idea of administration.
Aristotle's Rhetoric is an ancient Greek treatise on the art of persuasion, dating from the 4th century BCE. The English title varies: typically it is titled Rhetoric, the Art of Rhetoric, On Rhetoric, or a Treatise on Rhetoric.
Clifford Dwight Waldo was an American political scientist and is perhaps the defining figure in modern public administration. Waldo's career was often directed against a scientific/technical portrayal of bureaucracy and government that now suggests the term public management as opposed to public administration. Recognized the world over for his contributions to the theory of bureaucratic government, Waldo is only now taking his place as one of the most important political scientists of the last 100 years.
Simon J. Bronner is an American folklorist, ethnologist, historian, sociologist, educator, college dean, and author.
Norman Arthur Stillman, also Noam, b. 1945, is an American academic, historian, and Orientalist, serving as the emeritus Schusterman-Josey Professor and emeritus Chair of Judaic History at the University of Oklahoma. He specializes in the intersection of Jewish and Islamic culture and history, and in Oriental and Sephardi Jewry, with special interest in the Jewish communities in North Africa. His major publications are The Jews of Arab Lands: a History And Source Book and Sephardi Religious Responses to Modernity. In the last few years, Stillman has been the executive editor of the "Encyclopedia of Jews in the Islamic World", a project that includes over 2000 entries in 5 volumes.
John Louis Lucaites is an American academic. He is a professor emeritus of rhetoric and public culture at Indiana University. In 2012, Lucaites was appointed as associate dean for arts and humanities and undergraduate education at Indiana University. His research concerns the general relationship between rhetoric and social theory, and seeks to contribute in particular to the critique and reconstruction of liberalism in contemporary social, political, and cultural practices in the United States.
Christopher Cropper Hood is a visiting Professor of the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford, and an Emeritus Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. Hood was Gladstone Professor of Government at All Souls College, Oxford, from 2001 to 2014, and Director of the ESRC Research Programme Public Services: Quality, Performance and Delivery from 2004 to 2010. His books include The Limits of Administration (1976), The Tools of Government (1983), The Art of the State and A Government that Worked Better and Cost Less?. He chaired the Nuffield Council on Bioethics' Working Party on medical profiling and online medicine from 2008 to 2010.
Richard Eugene Vatz is an American academic, lecturer and writer who is a professor of Rhetoric and Communication at Towson University.
Kevin Vincent Mulcahy is the Sheldon Beychok Distinguished Professor of Political Science Emeritus at Louisiana State University. He was on the faculty from 1980–2020.
Richard John Toye is a British historian and academic. He is Professor of History at the University of Exeter. He was previously a Fellow and Director of Studies for History at Homerton College, University of Cambridge, from 2002 to 2007, and before that he taught at University of Manchester from 2000.
Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar is a Professor in Rhetoric and Public Culture and the Director of Center for Global Culture and Communication at Northwestern University. He is also Executive Director of the Center for Transcultural Studies, an independent scholarly research network concerned with global issues based in Chicago and New York. Gaonkar was closely associated with the influential journal Public Culture from the early 1990s, serving in various editorial capacities: associate editor (1992-2000), executive editor (2000-2009), and editor (2009-2011).
Colin Hay is Professor of Political Sciences at Sciences Po, Paris and Affiliate Professor of Political Analysis at the University of Sheffield, joint editor-in-chief of the journal Comparative European Politics. and Managing Editor of the journal New Political Economy.
Kenneth J. Meier is a distinguished scholar in residence at American University and holds faculty appointments at the Cardiff School of Business (UK) and Leiden University. He is known for his studies on public management and public administration, as well as his extensive and widely referenced journal articles.
Cultural studies is an interdisciplinary field that examines the political dynamics of contemporary culture and its historical foundations. Cultural studies researchers generally investigate how cultural practices relate to wider systems of power associated with, or operating through, social phenomena. These include ideology, class structures, national formations, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, and generation. Employing cultural analysis, cultural studies views cultures not as fixed, bounded, stable, and discrete entities, but rather as constantly interacting and changing sets of practices and processes. The field of cultural studies encompasses a range of theoretical and methodological perspectives and practices. Although distinct from the discipline of cultural anthropology and the interdisciplinary field of ethnic studies, cultural studies draws upon and has contributed to each of these fields.
A Government That Worked Better and Cost Less? Evaluating Three Decades of Reform and Change in UK Central Government is a book written by Christopher Hood and Ruth Dixon, and published by Oxford University Press in 2015. The authors attempt to assess the success of three decades of New Public Management, which was intended to create "a government that works better and costs less", concluding that "The short answer seems to be: higher costs and more complaints". The book was described by Michael Moran as "brilliant, highly original", and he concluded that "Future researchers will see further precisely because they will be able to stand on the shoulders of these scholars". In November 2015 the book was awarded the Louis Brownlow Book Award of the National Academy of Public Administration "for its comprehensive study of reform, cost and performance". In November 2016 it was awarded the W. J. M. Mackenzie award of the Political Studies Association, the jury stating that the book "carries considerable implications for policy-making, as well as the field of academic enquiry which it addresses." The book was repeatedly cited in Michael Barber's report Delivering better outcomes for citizens: practical steps for unlocking public value.
Eric M. Patashnik is an American political scientist, author, professor of public policy and political science at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs and Department of Political Science at Brown University.
