ABSTRACT
The history of American political science is a field of study that, despite its problems, is considerably more developed than comparable endeavours in other countries. This should not be surprising, given the longer history of political science in the United States, but, at the same time, the reasonably large, and increasing, body of literature in this area has given rise to a number of methodological issues. Many of these issues will inevitably be encountered in other country studies of political science, and rather than offer a substantive contribution to the history of American political science, my concern is a critical analysis of the existing literature.
