University of Political Science
The Encyclopedia of Political Science
The early protestant reformers. The Protestant Reformation mixed political theory with differences of religious belief and with questions of theological dogma more closely than had been the case even in the Middle Ages. There is, however, no simple formula for this relationship. Everywhere political theories were defended with theological arguments and political alliances were made…
Niccolo Machiavelli The Father of Modern Political Science. The failure of the conciliar party to carry the principles and practice of medieval constitutionalism into the church anticipated by only a generation or two a general recession of representative institutions in the state. And the revival of papal absolutism in the middle of the fifteenth century,…
The Conciliar Theory of Church Government. In the century that followed William of Occam’s writings, the controversy over absolute papal authority in the church was spread far and wide through Europe, so that it became the subject of a vast and popular debate. The pope’s absolute power in the church was no academic question, touching…
Marsilio of Padua and William of Occam. Hostility to the theory of papal sovereignty, already evidenced by the criticism of John of Paris, was enhanced by the failure of Boniface’s grandiose claims in France and more particularly by the seventy-five years residence of the popes at Avignon under the influence of the French monarchy. For…
Philip the Fair and Boniface VIII. St. Thomas and Dante stood so completely within the tradition of a single European society that they failed to realize how insecure the foundations of this tradition or how imminent were the changes that would destroy the system they took to be eternal. Dante failed to see how hollow…
Universitas Hominum. As scholarly performances the controversial tracts described in the preceding article were quickly outmoded in the extraordinary intellectual rebirth that began in the latter years of the twelfth century and which made the thirteenth one of the most brilliant in the history of Europe. This new scholarly activity, in so far as it…
The American Political System. The United States is a representative federal democracy driven by-elections in which citizens and lobbyists, diverse interests compete. The concentration of Economic Power:- In the United States, Professor C. Kaysen notes, “There are currently some 4.5 million business enterprises. Corporations formed only 13 per cent of the total number.” The United…
Origin of the Party System in the USA. Political parties are indispensable for the working of a democratic government; without them, says MacIver, ‘‘there can be no unified statement of principle, no orderly evolution of policy, no regular resort to the constitutional device of parliamentary elections nor of course any of the recognized institutions using…
The investiture controversy. The latter part of the eleventh century brought a resumption of intellectual labor upon the body of political and social ideas preserved from antiquity in the Christian Fathers tradition. It began a development that was produced in the centuries following an astonishingly brilliant and virile culture. Order emerged from chaos and, especially…
The folk and its law. The church Fathers’ period, extending down to the sixth or seventh century, still belongs to antiquity. Despite the vast changes -social, economic, and political-which occurred in the first six Christian centuries, Seneca and St. Gregory were still both Romans. Both men lived within the circle of Roman political ideas; both…