The Role of Research in the Unification of a Discipline

Large-scale complex research project designs are providing a new impetus to the elimination of subfield boundaries within political science. Major projects are taking advantage of the methodology and technology of contemporary social research to include comparisons among institutions, across cultural boundaries, and extending through time. As a consequence, traditionally narrow field and subfield concentrations on segments of the political process are giving way to intellectual interests that bring together hitherto separate concerns. The full potential for discipline-unifying research will, however, not be realized until there is a strengthening of the organizational infrastructures for research, a broadening of training in research design and administration, and an increase in funding for large-scale projects. The execution and subsequent intellectual exploitation of large research projects will carry additional problems that will be solved only with substantial changes in the workways of the political scientist, but those problems are greatly outweighed by the positive contribution that such research will make to the future of the discipline.