The State of Political Science in Mexico: An Empirical Portrait

Abstract

There are some scholars who believe that Mexican political science has followed the standard of American political science and the former has accumulated the same flaws of the later, whereas other scholars consider that the practice of the discipline is still far from the American standard but that should be its goal. The current discussion is dominated by personal impressions rather than by empirical evaluations on the actual state of the discipline. This paper analyzes a sample of 231 published articles in three leading political science journals between 1990 and 2007. Contrary to beliefs about the Americanization of Mexican political science, results show that the later is dominantly descriptive, monographic and qualitative. The main conclusion is that beyond debating the preeminence of any method in particular, the discipline in Mexico will contribute more to the extent that it starts debating substantive aspects of the research methods and processes.