Political science, paradigms and socio-cultural construction

Abstract

This article joins the current debate over the many perspectives applicable to contemporary political thought, with the aim of incorporating a broader view that would have its origin in border areas such as Legal Sociology, Political Anthropology, Sociobiology, Evolutionary Biology or Neuroscience. Such prospects are requiring nowadays a cultural and political evolution of societies, in order to cope with the crisis of the existing model. After a brief summary of the paradigmatic shifts that are affecting the political thought, the article reflects on the need to expand the foundations of political analysis and political study sources. The author defends the need of maintaining the specific methodologies of each perspective, although integrated into a common epistemology. The paper concludes affirming that, contrary to any methodological reductionism, a complex epistemology is probably the more convenient way to respond to the current uncertainty of the political science. All this, provided that this approach is supported in a paradigmatic renewal which should be commited to social construction as the original vocation of the political thought that was born in Greece. Finally, the article cites some of the most recent studies that advance in this direction. The article continues by taking a position within the controversy created last decade around the visions of Cansino-Sartori-Colomer authors.