Profile Analysis of Political Science Theses and Dissertations in Brazil (2013-2020)

• Autor(a) principal: Sainz, Nilton
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Outros Autores: Silva, Rodrigo da, Codato, Adriano
• Tipo de documento: preprint
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: SciELO Preprints
• Texto Completo: https://preprints.scielo.org/index.php/scielo/preprint/view/4565
• topic: Ciência Política brasileira; pós-graduação; teses de doutorado; dissertações de mestrado; análise de redes sociais; Brazilian Political Science; graduate studies; doctoral theses; master’s dissertations; social network analysis

Postgraduate courses in Political Science in Brazil have proliferated considerably since the 2000s, surging from three doctoral courses to eleven. This expansion has been accompanied by several studies on the intellectual configuration of this academic area and the profile of this community. However, the predominant sources of such analyses have been research articles published in academic journals. In this paper we explore another type of data: Masters dissertations and PhD theses defended in eleven postgraduate programs in Political Science between 2013 and 2020. Our research investigated the metadata (titles, abstracts, and keywords) of 1,849 theses and dissertations and mapped the patterns and hierarchies of this scientific production, underlining the prevailing topics, objects, and methodologies. Our analysis of social networks revealed three main findings. In methodological terms, dissertations and theses are divided into two well-structured universes: empirical (related to “data”) and theoretical (related to the notion of “interpretation”). The prevailing research technique seems to be case studies. Thematically, we found three dominant communities – “parties and elections”, “State and international relations”, and “public policies”, with a slight predominance of studies about Legislative and Executive institutions.