Political Science Abstracts is an annual supplement to the Political Science, Government, and Public Policy Series of The Universal Reference System, which was first published in 1967. All back issues are still available.

What are the social sciences? What do they do? How are they practised in Australia? The Poor Relation examines the place of the social sciences - from economics and psychology to history, law and philosophy - in the teaching and research conducted by Australian universities. Across sixty years, The Poor Relation charts the changing circumstances of the social sciences, and measures their contribution to public policy. In doing so it also relates the arrangements made to support them and explains why they are so persistently treated as the poor relation of science and technology.

Everyone knows what intoxication and drunkenness are, what they look like, how to define and measure them and what their consequences are. At least we might assume so given the ways these words are used by the media, by politicians and policy makers and by various medical, educational and legal experts in Australia and around the world. A whole variety of concerns about young people, individual and public health, road safety, sexual assault and violence are connected to these taken-for-granted understandings of intoxication and drunkenness. Drawing on an extensive review of research from bio-medicine, psychology, sociology and legal studies, and from news media reporting, the authors reveal a far more complex picture. This is a picture marked by little agreement on how to define intoxication and drunkenness, how to measure intoxication, what getting drunk means to those who drink (including young people, men and women and people from different cultural and national backgrounds), and where responsibility lies for many of the individual, social, medical and legal consequences of intoxication and drunkenness. Smashed! presents an overview of the history of these concerns and an extensive account of the many meanings of intoxication and drunkenness at the start of the 21st century. It provides a valuable resource for researchers, policy makers, the media and members of the community who are involved in these ongoing, often emotive, debates.