About this Book

 The Wit and Humour of Political Science is
the serendipitous product of two senior scholars working across the world from
one another and who independently collected funny and satirical articles on
political science over the years with the intent of someday publishing them for
a wider audience. 

The lead editors— Kenneth Newton (Professor Emeritus,
University of Southampton, Visiting Professor, Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin, and
Hertie School of Governance, Berlin) and the late Lee Sigelman (Columbian School
of Arts and Sciences, Distinguished Professor of Political Science, George
Washington University) — learned by chance of each other's projects. Newton and
Sigelman joined forces with Kenneth Meier (Charles H. Gregory Chair in Liberal
Arts and Distinguished Professor of Political Science, Texas A&M University)
and Bernard Grofman (Jack W. Peltason (Bren Foundation) Endowed Chair in the
Department of Political Science, University of California, Irvine) to publish
this collection under the joint imprint of APSA and ECPR.

The collection
includes previously published essays as well as original pieces never formally
published.

From the editors: This volume collects what in our opinions
are the wittiest and funniest pieces about political science and political
scientists. We are confident that even a small investment of the reader's time
will be sufficient to disprove Baker's slur on our discipline. Like all good
humour, much of the work we have chosen for inclusion has a serious point. It
helps scholars keep an open and skeptical mind, it picks out our weak points in
theory and methods, points out how research may be going wrong, and it pricks
the balloon of bombast, pretentiousness, and jargon. And, not only that, it's
fun... Its contents make essential reading for all political scientists, even
the most senior, but it may be enjoyed by younger scholars, especially those
without tenure (or worse yet, without a job), by other social scientists, and
even— gasp—by readers unaffiliated with any academic discipline.