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Political Science and Conservation Biology: a Dialog of the Deaf
Author(s) -
AGRAWAL ARUN,
OSTROM ELINOR
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
conservation biology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.2
H-Index - 222
eISSN - 1523-1739
pISSN - 0888-8892
DOI - 10.1111/j.1523-1739.2006.00468.x
Subject(s) - dialog box , politics , commons , library science , political science , humanities , sociology , philosophy , computer science , law , world wide web
Political scientists have largely ignored conservation bi- ology and its central concern, biodiversity. Consider two indicators and an anecdote. The indicators concern pub- lication trends and faculty hiring in political science. In the past 20 years, the top five political science journals, as measured by their impact factor scores, have published one article focusing on biodiversity conservation (out of more than 2000 published papers). And in the top five political science departments in the United States (ar- guably, Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, Yale, and Chicago), not a single faculty member considers biodiversity con- servation to be among his or her research interests. The anecdote concerns reflections on the discipline by 12 recent past presidents of the American Political Science Association. In remarking on the blind spots, research ac- complishments, and needed directions for the discipline, biodiversity was entirely absent; indeed, even the envi- ronment was. These facts should rightly generate pessimism about the past and future of conversations between political science and conservation biology. Political scientists and their discipline value work on biodiversity at best only to a limited extent. To the extent that political scientists consider conservation biology and biodiversity, they must do so by working against the disciplinary incentive struc- tures that reward research and teaching. The reasons political scientists neglect conservation bi- ology and biodiversity may lie even deeper than incen- tives related to publication and hiring. They may have more to do with what political scientists view as the most important issues and the appropriate scale at which to study them. Electoral systems and practices, democracy, political institutions, international regimes, public opin- ion, state-society relations, conflict, war, violence, race and ethnicity, policy making, strategic behavior, and pol- icy outcomes are properly the province of their discipline