In the first part of the two-part study the author posits that it is an exciting challenge for political
science to take stock of the scientific paradigms of the past 50 years based on their perspective
of time. The study looks at the past 50 years solely based upon the perception of time and
highlights the four paradigms deemed the most important: political development, transitology,
new historicism, and the school of American Political Development (APD). The study reviews the
authors representative of each paradigm and the most important elements of their arguments. Political scientists were susceptible to the historical perspective between the 1960s and the 80s. Later on, during the 90s until the mid-2000s the perspective for interpretation became
the present. In the last decade however, it seems that the interest in historical perspectives has
returned. The author concludes that a cyclical rotation can be demonstrated within political
science between the two perspectives, the logic of which would be advisable to study.