World Uprisings: a Paradigm Shift in Political Sciences?

World Uprisings: a Paradigm Shift in Political Sciences?

We are witnessing general revolutions and many movements all over the world from the Middle East to Athens, Madrid and even in the US streets. Regardless of their causes, motives and even their effects on the real world, I think these movements have great influences on the political sciences and even in international relations as scientific disciplines in two ways. First, these uprisings are the people’s revolt against their governments and the structure of power of the states within which they are living. In Hobbesian words, people learned that their man-made leviathan- government- is not that horrific and can be toppled or altered in a way that their interest be achieved. In better words, the new world requires the new structure of government and that’s why even in developed European and American countries such protests have been occurring. Second, borrowing Joseph Nye’s theme in IR, we can discuss that advances in technology- especially in information technology- have helped people compete on a national level with their governments, leading to a “diffusion of power” in which the new source of power relations emerged. Consequently, we're on the brink of a fascinating experiment of changing relation between people and governments. In this case the science of explaining, theorizing etc of these relations –politics- should be changed.