For many political scientists, 'politics' means who gets what, when and how in society (Lasswell and Kaplan, 1950).The concept of politics adopted by political scientists influenced by American and British traditions is narrow, confined to the political system whose functions are: rule making, rule application and rule adjudication (Almond and Coleman, 1960). If that was so, what has changed in the outlook of political scientists in the past fifty years? Are they still looking to find solutions when problems arise or are they looking at the needs of the end users - people, their aspirations and dreams - and calibrating the old (even if it means to cast off the old like Democracy, Socialism, Capitalism, etc) to find newer systems that are in tune with the times?
I agree with the statement. I feel that more recent publications like Fukuyama's Origins of the Political Order point towards an interest in historical reconstructions of the present political order [Democracy?]. A deep seated association with the present order explains the pragmatic interest of thinkers in institutions rather than the people and their dreams. For me, this interest, that seems to be relegating the end users to the status of a by-product of institutional practices (at least in the intellectual realm), confirms the statement given above.
I'm afraid that statement in wrong, on many grounds. First of all a significant branch of political science is not focused on the study of institutions. Political scientists who study political psychology, public opinion, and political movements may not approach this from an institutional perspective. Second, a long-standing branch of political science focuses on philosophy (political philosophy) and may begin with central questions of what is the nature of man and society, what is just(ice), and what is the purpose of political order.
"The general trend that has been seen in the schools of political philosophy post WW II is to take either Capitalism or its newer form, Liberalism, and or Marxism as the starting point and then analyse the issues of governance in front to bring forward some solutions.
If we take capitalism (Liberalism) or Marxism as institutions, then most of the political scientists are merely tampering or tinkering with the institution of their choice to suggest solutions to the problems of governance that the society faces.
There is also a marked 'feeling' that the political philosophers are elitist either by mental make up or other wise from the upper economic strata of society. So their philosophies are what one may say 'arm chair' philosophies, far removed from the actual perceptions of ordinary citizens, on issues of governance. It is also unfortunate that most of the political philosophers of the developing world are either ardent admirers of philosophies that have been evolved in contexts that were far removed from the contexts of the societies to which they advocate its application. This in real terms leaves out people who are actual stake holders of the societies that they represent.
There is therefore a need to adopt a multidisciplinary approach to studying political science. The culture, history, social processes, and social structure of the society (nation) needs to be studied before any theory of governance can be put forward. In other words, sociology needs to be integrated into political science to evolve systems for our future".
I thought it would be more useful to add the above content to define my question further, in view of what Kamran and Brian have said in their comments.
I'm tempted not to say anything, rather than get caught up in answers that I can barely understand to a question that initially seemed fairly clear. Basically, Brian Silver nailed it. It's enormously important that philosophy, especially political philosophy, remains a province of political science.
Underscore the "science" part of political science, using something as close as possible to the scientific method to understand anything political or sociological.
As long as the world was legitimately or tolerably ruled by more-equal-than-thou nobles and the henchmen leaders of their establishment churches, no scientific thought, study or analysis was possible.
Political science isn't "confined" to narrow stuff, but it is underpinned by a common understanding of the essential nature of human beings and society. And science requires comparable or equal units of analysis (the old apples and oranges thing).
Chapter 13 in part 1 of Hobbes' Leviathan begins, "Nature hath made men so equall..." Political science, even today, is bound up in that, a philosophical argument.
At least in the field, I am studying - that is, the indigenous movement in Ecuador- I have to tell you, Srinivasan: yes, you are right! Most publication on this topic are done by political scientists - and, even though the indigenous movement in clearly a social movement, they do not focus on civil society or local institution, but almost exclusively on the state and political parties. At the time when the indigenous movement founded a political party in order to have representation in parliament (for structural reasons not called "party" but "political movement" - the difference is that a movement is easier to form and needs less infrastructure) - everyone started to talk about the development from a social movement into a political movement. Leaving a sociologist like me with the question: What exactly is political for those guys? Seemingly, a social movement is not political.
So, this experience would indicate that political sciences is state-centered and obsessed with institutions and governance.
@ james. Thank you for the input.
@ Philipp. Thank you. The question that you asked "what exactly is political for these guys?" is at the heart of politics per se. Currently I am looking at social movements in India in the past century. Whether they are agrarian (peasant?), social reform, human rights, environment, etc., at some point of time a trend emerges where the leaders of such movements seek space in the power structure - either directly contending for positions in polity or at least attempting to make themselves a power centre that would influence policy. Though it is premature to come to conclusions, I feel that such a trend is good for democracy and participative governance. How good is a question I will have to wait till I get a grasp of the movements and their objectives. Till then, I would go with you that Political Science concerns State, Institutions and governance.
@ Francesca. Thank you and if not physically at Auro, I will make it a point to convey your 'Hello' in my prayers!! You have brought in a beautiful element into politics, Francesca - spirituality. Some great leaders of our times, though they started as 'political' leaders actually pursued their inner explorations from where they received the courage of conviction, resulting in great achievements on the political domain too. In particular, I would refer to Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela. It would be gross understatement to just class them as great political leaders. They were men who actually sought their own spiritual salvation through selfless service to humanity. In the process they became what they became. Please accept a real warm 'thank you' for your input.
In this dimension, I must go back to James and agree with him that politics is not to remain just a 'science', it must transcend into 'philosophy' to produce good leaders!!
@ james. Thank you for the input.
@ Philipp. Thank you. The question that you asked "what exactly is political for these guys?" is at the heart of politics per se. Currently I am looking at social movements in India in the past century. Whether they are agrarian (peasant?), social reform, human rights, environment, etc., at some point of time a trend emerges where the leaders of such movements seek space in the power structure - either directly contending for positions in polity or at least attempting to make themselves a power centre that would influence policy. Though it is premature to come to conclusions, I feel that such a trend is good for democracy and participative governance. How good is a question I will have to wait till I get a grasp of the movements and their objectives. Till then, I would go with you that Political Science concerns State, Institutions and governance.
@ Francesca. Thank you and if not physically at Auro, I will make it a point to convey your 'Hello' in my prayers!! You have brought in a beautiful element into politics, Francesca - spirituality. Some great leaders of our times, though they started as 'political' leaders actually pursued their inner explorations from where they received the courage of conviction, resulting in great achievements on the political domain too. In particular, I would refer to Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela. It would be gross understatement to just class them as great political leaders. They were men who actually sought their own spiritual salvation through selfless service to humanity. In the process they became what they became. Please accept a real warm 'thank you' for your input.
In this dimension, I must go back to James and agree with him that politics is not to remain just a 'science', it must transcend into 'philosophy' to produce good leaders!!
Political science is an essentially contested academic terrain.
Its many substantive sub-fields from international relations to individual attitudes and actions attest to the fact that political scientists can address everything from global structures to personal attitudes.
Political science embraces (or, better, sustains rivalries among) many methodological approaches from mathematical models to phenomenological self-referential investigations.
Some political scientists try to understand ideology; some deal with matters of political institutions and public policy; still others employ sophisticated statistical methods to parse public opinion and explain human behaviour at the individual or group levels.
Political scientists may explore normative or empirical inquiries, they may (indeed, they must, whether they acknowledge it or not) investigate a vast range of matters from conservative, liberal or radical viewpoints and with competing human interests in mind.
And, of course, they may join forces (colonize, blend in with) other disciplines, so that it is possible to speak of practitioners of political sociology, political philosophy or (my favourite) political economy.
Some political scientists rely on the old classics from the 1950s and 1960s as foundations for for their work. Some have taken to more recent European alternatives from Foucalt to Habermas. And some continue to work within revitalized Marxist traditions (though Americans, in particular, may shy away from such initiatives).
Having attended lectures by Talcott Parsons and Seymour Martin Lipset and audited a course by Abraham Kaplan, I have some reasonably fond memories of such antique personalities (regardless of how I felt, then or later) about the content of their work, I can only urge that people take the trouble to read one of my old mentors, Henry S. Kariel (1924-2004), who annoyed some senior members of the professions. His books from "The Decline of American Pluralism" (Stanford, 1961), through "The Promise of Politics: (Prentice-Hall, 1966) to "Saving Appearances" (Duxbury, 1972), "Beyond Liberalism" (Chandler & Sharp, 1977) and, finally, "The Desperate Politics of Postmodernism" (University of Massachusetts, 1989) would help sort out a good deal or what was right and what was wrong with the discipline ... and still is!
No individuals or bodies have the authority or ability to "confine" a discipline to any particular approaches or areas of study. Disciplines are strongly influenced by their roots. For example, the fact that American Political Science emerged as an association of teachers of American Government strongly shaped the discipline and influenced the directions it took. The body of teachers of American Government who formed the American Political Science Association was very diverse in its interests and approaches. Hence, the discipline has never had a unifying theory or approach or subject matter. Yet, the discipline has also changed and evolved. Influential teachers, scholars, and academic entrepreneurs have established new sub-fields and launched new approaches and paradigms. Such fads come and go for many different reasons, yet some approaches and theories survive and remain influential.
An interesting insight into one of the most compelling disputes in the APSA among so-called traditionalists and behavioralists can be found in John Gunnell's article "The Reconstruction of Political Theory: David Easton, Behavioralism, and the Long Road to System," in the Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 49(2), 190-210, 2013.
Gunnell, of course, does not take the story down the road to the even more compelling arguments between the (democratic revisionist) behavioralists and the robustly democratic "post-behavioralists" that pretty much defined my own life in political science between 1963 and about 1980). He also leaves alone the inheritors of the "traditionalist" mantle of Strauss and Voegilin - some of whom took off to Washington and to join with some Trotskyist apostates to create the revitalized "conservatism" that helped launch the catastrophic wars against Iraq and so on.
Such, such were the days.
Incidentally, I just learned that the US National Science Foundation has just reversed a year-long ban on funding research in political science. Since March, 2013, the "know-nothings" in American government had successfully blocked federal money for research, except that which directly involved national security and economic interests.
The change of mind, while welcome, won't mean much because the neoliberals in office are not exactly generous in their support of anything in the social sciences ... but it might mean something, though probably not enough to set an example and help break the blockage north of the border, where Canadian Prime Minister Harper has declared war on all academic work except, perhaps, for projects that could make bitumen more commercially viable.
Dear Howard,
I could not help smiling at what you have said and the way you said it. While social sciences may have not had great funding in America, in the case of India (perhaps) all over the developing world, they lacked an objective. Political science is not just another field of study so that we could make few more professors in our universities. It is the science that is directly connected to the lives of six billion people in the earth, because it deals with how our society and institutions of government act or interact with each other. Our destinies, since the time we evolved into coherent societies have been shaped to the extent that we applied our minds to this science.
Apart from the military science, no other field has led millions of people to rise, fall or wither into oblivion. Even military science has always been subordinate to this field, for without political ambitions there would be no need for any military.
Thank you for provoking!!
As Aristotle said, we are all "political animals."
Aristotle also intimated that politics (attention to and involvement in the "polis" and public life in general) was our most ennobling activity. Following in the tradition of Pericles, he endorsed the idea that to be too heavily invested in our private lives ("oeikos" or its modern derivative "economics") was to "denature" ourselves. He was probably right.
Absolutely not. Some of us study institutions, some study policies, some study people. Topics, approaches, and methods all vary immensely
And some of us study political thought, sometimes called political philosophy or even "normative theory" ... fortunately nobody in that particular subdiscipline has come up with anything new for a while, so we're just content to pick apart the proto-fascistic Plato and his marionette Socrates, or was that Socrates and this meticulous secretary Plato?.
Incidentally, does anyone else think it's hilarious that, although Socrates condemned philosophy in its written form, his most ardent admirers are thrilled that Plato wrote that down ... or maybe made that up?
As for Michael Bruter's comment that, in political science, "topics, approaches, and methods vary immensely," isn't it nice to know that there's no agreement about what we do or how we do it? Or, to put it in Kuhnian terminology, there is no paradigm!
Some "science"!
To go somewhat though not completely off on a tangent, I think that when the word "science" is added to political science, it is often for doctrinal rather than explanatory reasons. That is, "political science" is often about institutional projects aimed at dehistoricizing or ironically depoliticizing or disempowering political science by closing off avenues for questioning. In short, I agree with those above who speak of many perspectives animating the "discipline." One can reference James Scott's dictum that if half of one's reading is not outside one's discipline (in the case he referenced, comparative politics), then one risks the extinction of the discipline. In the same forum, Peter Evans speaks of an "eclectic messy center." (http://www.rochelleterman.com/ComparativeExam/sites/default/files/Bibliography%20and%20Summaries/Kohli%201995.pdf)
With those points in mind, I suggest addressing this question in the context of political anthropology, political geography, political economy and political ecology among others. The question almost loses any meaning because, as Howard in particular articulates, there is no one paradigm and perhaps not even a "science."
http://www.rochelleterman.com/ComparativeExam/sites/default/files/Bibliography%20and%20Summaries/Kohli%201995.pdf
Dear Nicholas,
James Scott could not have said it more appropriately because the notion that ideas and ideologies no more existed in their strait jacketed confines. Even History which normally we take for mere chronological narration narration of yester years is meaningless unless it takes into account the geological, geographical, climatological, economic, and such other perspectives for a more comprehensive understanding.
There is however, a subtle difference between political 'science' and other non-physical-science disciplines. With the use of mathematics/statistical tools, political science can predict future - an ability that other disciplines lack. Take for example the 'gallop polls'. See the number of factors, ideas, manifestos, principles, expectations, aspirations and vilifications that are taken, mathematically analysed and predictions given.
One may argue that 'gallop' is motivated, and is just a hunch couched in numbers. Let us not forget that all the original research in pure sciences is also a 'hunch' only. Who can guarantee that the experiments will produce 'X'? Take Meteorology for example. It is applied math in action and yet, the weather prediction could go absolutely wrong!!
We do accept these as 'science', don't we?
An interdisciplinary and we may even say - an inter sub-disciplinary- approach to political science is necessary if we are to use this 'science' for betterment of humanity.
Political science can predict the future?
Please, give some examples! I'd be fascinated to learn where and when such a miracle suddenly appeared. I got my first degree in political science in 1967, and I am aware of no one before or who since has managed to achieve the results you suggest.
Dear Howard,
What a wonderful question you asked – Prediction…political science, eh?
I am tempted to ask a similar question presuming that I am in 1967 (sorry I ‘borrowed’ the year from you), ‘Can USSR survive the next quarter century?’. We all know that by 1967 USSR was a robust and equal super power. There was no reason to even think that its fall was possible, let alone work on a probability theory of prediction. But then there were analysts and thinkers who not merely thought it was possible; they actually foresaw it! See the ref below:
Andrei Amalrik (1970) – ‘Will the Soviet Union Survive Until 1984?
Emmanuel Todd (1976) – The Final Fall: An essay on the decomposition of Soviet sphere
Ravi Batra (1978) – The down fall of capitalism and communism
Flora Lewis (1987). Europe: A Tapestry of Nations. USA: Simon and Schuster. p. 364.
We can fault them for having predicted the fall of USSR a decade this way or that way. However, we cannot say that political scientists or analysts cannot predict. Given the particular nature of political science – dealing with so many factors that are beyond comprehension and calculation like we do in laboratories – political predictions are subject to more vagaries than nature (rather, including nature in some cases!!). I am of the view therefore, that we must give them that much of allowance.
Even pure science research cannot be definite about its findings. Our Mars explorer, as on date they say, needs to cover 687 million miles more to reach its destination. If finally, the destination turns out to be at 687.2 million miles or if some on board system fails beyond recovery or a rogue asteroid crashes into it, we would not like to say that space science cannot predict, would we?
The biggest criticism on political scientists today is precisely on their unwillingness to predict. I understand that in USA, Drs Michael Horowitz (Univ of Pennsylvania) and Tetlock are involved in an ongoing, multi-year project funded by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activities Agency (IARPA) that is attempting to create better metrics for evaluating analyst accuracy. With these kinds of studies, I presume we will be able to ‘politically’ predict our future and strongly hope that many more political scientists will apply themselves to ‘prediction’. There is no other science that connects to the lives of people the way political science does. Why should it remain merely theoretical?
You say "merely theoretical" as though that was a bad thing. The fact is that political science is a long way from becoming theoretical!
People (even political scientists) fail to understand that "facts" or "data" or whatever bits of information we assemble and the raw material of scientific understanding.
Next, we make hypotheses, which link facts into relationships - whether correlative or allegedly causal. Political science has done some of this, but has seldom done it well (e.g., the decades spent making conjectures about developing nations and modernization that failed to take into account the revival of toxic religions - and not just Islam).
Only when we have a number of reasonably well-formed generalizations confirmed (more or less) by the previous can we move ahead to formulating theories which are not "mere" abstract speculations, but are an attempt to discern the pattern that connects confirmed hypotheses.
As a result, we float about rather listlessly in a "pre-paradigmatic" stage (to borrow Kuhn's concept) of scientific evolution.
Of course, there is a tremendously interesting debate that can be had over whether politics should or could ever become a "science" in the kind of positivistic way you seem to imply. Speaking personally, I generally find those people who speak about the science of politics to be demonstrating a misplaced conceit. Moreover, their "science" carries an implicit "human interest" not in emancipating but in manipulating citizenship for their own (unacknowledged) ideological ends.
Sorry, I meant to say in the second paragraph:
"People (even political scientists) fail to understand that "facts" or "data" or whatever bits of information we assemble ARE the raw material of scientific understanding."
This site desperately needs an opportunity for correspondents to EDIT their remarks.
Dear Howard,
I fully agree with the express and implied meaning of what you said and I quote:
"Only when we have a number of reasonably well-formed generalizations confirmed (more or less) by the previous can we move ahead to formulating theories which are not "mere" abstract speculations, but are an attempt to discern the pattern that connects confirmed hypotheses".
"Moreover, their "science" carries an implicit "human interest" not in emancipating but in manipulating citizenship for their own (unacknowledged) ideological ends". Unquote.
As you said, I am a positivist - an optimist by default. Many of the contemporary political writers/analysts/scientists (particularly in my country) seem to be doing just what you said - manipulating public opinion for a certain 'ideological' ends, ends that suffer from temporal myopia, if I may say. It is extremely important to remember what you mentioned in the first comment that I quoted above. It is only in that manner that this field can justify the 'science' part of its existence.
Thank you.
The discussion seems to enter the long-standing battlefield between positivism and interpretivism. I would warmly recommend Bent Flyvberg's book "Making Social Science Matter" that largely settles these fights by a "phronetic turn" in social science. The mission of social science including political science is not to mimic natural sciences by producing cumulative and universally predictive and decontextualised theory (episteme), but rather to ethically guide the human action, examining what is the right or wrong thing to do (phronesis). Phronetic research employs mixed methods, both qualitative and quantitative, as needed to answer research questions. It is mostly problem-driven and not method-driven; it should be relevant to practice and look deeply at the context, exposing the hidden structures of power.
Phronesis is a pleasant concept, rooted in Aristotle, influenced by pragmatism and open (like Habermas, for example) to a wide variety of methodologies as it steers a course between positivism and relativism using an implicit sort of rationalism (though not of the idealistic Hegelian sort) to guide research and advocacy.
Its emphasis on revealing hidden power relations ("who [consistently] gets what ... etc.") and, more importantly, "structures of power" is an improvement over the foolish conceit/ideological cover of quasi-scientific or pseudo-scientific efforts of systems and behavioural social science over the past 60 or 80 years. Though the proponents from David Easton to Seymour Martin Lipset may have once be mild "progressives," their work and the work they inspired were mainly comfort to established interests and yielded little of use to significant social reform, much less emancipatory social transformation. Still, it is also nice to hear people talk about virtue and goodness and the like.
I do think, however, that the phronesis is preternaturally oriented toward theoretical and methodological eclecticism, which was well critiqued in Marvin Harris' "Cultural Materialism" (1980). It remains in danger of promoting research that is essentially conservative and provides ideological support for the very power relations and structures it purports to reveal and which even dispassionate but thoughtful reflection would judge "evil.".
Hello Howard,
I agree on most of what you say in your contributions, just not with the very last passage.
According to phronetists, researchers should strive to: (i) identify dubious practices within policy and social action; (2) undermine these practices through problematisation, and (3) constructively help to develop new and better practices. Flyvberg did compellingly show in “Making Social Science Matter” how he succeeded to fundamentally change dubious planning practices at a Danish municipality following the three steps above. Many more examples are provided in “Real Social Science. Applied Phronesis” by Flyvberg, Landman and Schram (2013).
On what grounds do you claim that phronesis “remains in danger of promoting research that is essentially conservative and provides ideological support for the very power relations and structures”? This would be similar to saying that natural sciences fail to produce predictive theories because they aim to produce predictive theories. Or that interpretive science fails to interpret because it aims to interpret.
That's not quite what I intended.
All I meant was that: (a) I am impressed by the desire to "reveal ... hidden power relations" [though most power relations seem pretty open and obvious to me]; but (b) people who grapple with immediate, practical matters are often "at risk" of becoming part of the very projects and ideologies that they seek to criticize.
NB: I emphasize phrases like "in danger" and "at risk," for I don't think it's at all necessary that internal critics will be wittingly or unwittingly co-opted ... only that it's a constant temptation.
As well, I don't mean to endorse the "arm-chair" or "in the clouds" critic, who condemns what she doesn't engage. So, for example, I am somewhat cheered by Americans such as Gar Alperovitz, who is seeking to promote alternative ways of being - politically, economically and socially - within the "belly of the beast." I recommend him highly.
Political science is very broad. I can carelessly say political science is the basis of philosophy and philosophy is the ground for political theories new and old. That is where we find answers for our theories?
Instituions are but one aspect of the subject matter of political science. So are constitutions. But, more broadly, political science is the study of political activity, i.e., politics. In this regard, the central concept of politics, a dynamic, ongoing human activity, is power, in the way the central concept of physics is energy. Harold Lasswell described politics (pol. sci.) as the study of how power is exercised to determine who gets what, how. and why. Machiavelli's emphasis on the exercise of power makes him a formative figure in the discipline we now call political science. Perhaps the most important exercise of power in politics is used to determine the content of the dominant political agenda, i.e., the distinction between issues that receive the attention of the political decion making institutions, and potential or submerged issues and the interests of which they are an expression. The focus on power allows political scientists to include organiztions, such as business corporations, which though not explicitly political, do exercise power in ways that affect the distriibution of wealth, status, and power itself inside and between regimes, as well as they influence the dominant political agenda.
Power is a convenient locus/focus for empirical political analysis. It probably has been since Thrasymachus and certainly since Harold Lasswell and my old teacher Abraham Kaplan composed their classic little handbook "Power and Society" in the very early 1950s.
The exploration of the structure and exercise of power (whether within explicitly political institutions, the dominant corporate sector, the family or any other enduring group with two or more people in it) involves what's known as empirical analysis - whether using sophisticated statistical measures of this and that, or interpretive and hermeneutical exercises in semiotics, deconstruction or (who knows?) maybe just Foucault's ghostly gaze.
At the same time, most Political Science departments in most postsecondary educational institutions also allow for reflection on the goals and aspirations of political actors, questions of justice and equity, the semantics of democracy (is it a method of selecting rulers or a much broader matter of a "way of life"?). Such matters are generally described as normative and often stashed in the intellectual drawer known as "political philosophy" or some such.
I do look forward in optimistic futility to the day when the wretched fact-value dichotomy can be bridged or, better, jettisoned and when empirico-normative theory and research can finally emerge as some sort of practice/praxis. In the meantime, however, we must acknowledge that "political science" insofar as it seeks to come up with empirical answers to empirical questions isn't "political"; and, insofar as it encourages rumination upon what constitutes the 'good society' isn't "scientific."
No, Political Science is NOT "confined to studying institutional or systemic aspects of governance." Like all disciplines, Political Science is defined by whatever working Political Scientists are studying and the methodologies they are using. There is no universally-accepted or authoritative definition of the either the subject matter or the methodology of Political Science. This state of affairs can be explained in terms of the origins and financial support of the discipline. Unlike sociology, economics, and psychology, there is not even universal agreement that political science IS in fact a social science. Political Science emerged as an organized discipline as a result of requirement of the Land Grant Colleges Act that all students, regardless of discipline, take a full-year course on American Government. At first, professors were borrowed from a variety of disciplines to teach this course, but a body of academics gradually emerged who identified themselves "Political Scientists." Such academics, with a wide variety of intellectual persuasions, founded the American Political Science Association, and continue to constitute the membership of the American Political Science Association. In the course of its evolution, there a movement with several submovements emerged, aiming to make Political Science more "scientific." Although this view currently represents the dominant persuasion in Political Science, it is a long way from defining what Political Science is, either by subject matter or by methodology. The discipline still embraces, historians, biographers, legal scholars, economists, sociologists, and psychologists interested in politcs and government.
You may well have captured the origin of "American" political science in all its well-known parochialism; but, as for the discipline itself, to attribute the origin of the systematic study of politics to the patriotism of US land-grant colleges is akin to pretending that Abner Doubleday invented baseball. The truth is a lot more complicated.
My argument attempts to explain why Political Science, unlike sociology, psychology, and economics, lacks consensus on its subject matter, theory and methodology. The proposed explanation is that Political Science departments, like English departments, are funded mainly because of the large required introductory classes they teach, not because of their research product. Unlike sociology, psychology, and economics, they do not have shared classics, or research traditions emerging out of such classics. Nor are they disciplined by shared problems or shared theory. Instead, there is a cacaphony of different persuasions which do not communicate much with each other. What specifically is wrong or too simplistic in such an argument?
The investigation of power is a normative endeavor. As one of my former professors, Steven Lukes, has claimed: the identification of an exercise of power by either an individual or an organization is at the same time an ascription of moral responsibility for the effects of that action. The definition of power bridges the so-called is/ought dichotomy. Although many of its features and effects can be grasped empirically, it is "an essentially contested concept" as well, with competing conceptions of power having different and often conflicting moral and political implications. I have studied and taught political theory for some years, and I believe our understanding of power is intimately related to other fundamental concepts and values, such as consent, democracy and tyranny, liberty, justice, and legitimacy, all of which require facts AND moral values in order to be addressed properly. In fact, all the social "sciences" rest upon, imply, and consciously or not, advocate moral premises of one sort or another. (Please see e.g., Wm. Connolly's The Terms of Political Discourse)
One of the things that's "wrong" and "simplistic" is the ease with which you separate Political Science from the other disciplines you mention.
I find it hard, for example, to believe that there is a greater "consensus" in sociology, psychology and economics concerning subject matter, theory and methodology than in political science. Sociology is especially "all over the place" and I have a feeling that dissent in the domains of mental health and material wealth is just as intense but probably better suppressed.
I cheerfully grant, of course, that there is a "cacophony" in Political Science, but I have witnessed similar and equally long enduring battles in the others (and anthropology as well).
Just mention Marx and some lines are immediately drawn. Add "structural-functionalism" and "systems theory" and more fissures appear. Behaviorism adds a special source of competition and conflict - especially now that "behavioral economics" is all the rage ... in some places.
Speaking personally, I studied under Dorothy Smith for a time (in the late 1970s) I and learned quickly that her ideas (e.g., in "The Everyday World as Problematic," 1989) made all of sociology into a contested terrain (not that it wasn't divided six-ways-from-centre by adherents of C. Wright Mills on the one hand and Talcott Parsons on the other.
And psychology? Just peek at the quarrels and struggles behind the recently released DSM-5 and you'll see something akin to Picasso's painting of Guernica.
I also find it strange to hear that there are no "shared classics" in political science. Although I am not in agreement with its author on most matters, surely Hobbes' "Leviathan" counts as a "classic" and is nothing if not a primitive attempt at political science (benefiting as it did from Hobbes' association with the great Galileo himself). I'd add Aristotle and Machiavelli to the list, along with Tocqueville and Bagehot and ... reluctantly, Plato, though it's true that none of those fellows spent much time in the American Political Science Association. I know because I attended a number of its meetings about forty years ago and I saw none of the aforementioned in attendance, though their names were frequently mentioned by others in the papers delivered in large, bright hotels and the discussion of them in small, dark saloons.
My reading of Lasswell's description of politics as the study of who gets what how and why has always taken a normative twist. Those activities which determine the distribution of wealth, power, and status, and that reproduce this distribution over time must be investigated by those of us who have an interest in theories of justice as well as in the pursuit of justice.
I respectfully disagree with Howard's implcation that most power relations are open and obvious, at least to him. I suggest that the power to suppress political interests considered threatening to the dominant configuration of power relationships or the power to affect how people define their political interests in the first place, are often difficult mechanisms or structures to recognize. Perhaps, a failure to recognize these faces of power is to a degree attributable to the very definitions of some approaches to political science. If so, then debates about the nature of the discipline are at the same time political debates.
Some further thoughts on the differences between Political Science, on the one hand, and Economics, Sociology, and Psychology on the other hand.
The role that "classics" play in Economics, Sociology, and Pyschology differs radically from the role "classics" play in Political Science. Few empirically-oriented Political Scientists even classify thinkers like Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke, and their likes as Political Scientists.
In Economics, Neo-Classical Economics enjoys paradigmatic status, the status of orthodoxy. Research within this paradigm links directly to the work of such classical thinkers as Smith, Say, Ricardo, Malthus, Mill, Keynes, and Schumpeter. In psychology and sociology, although there are different research traditions, tracing back to different classical thinkers, most empirical research fits into traditions that can be traced back to 19th and early 20th century classics. There is sometimes debate, which is sometimes even fruitful, among scholars working in different research traditions. Students in these discipliens are required to take courses in the theory and history of their disciplines. What they learn in their required courses relates directly to their empirical research.
Not so with emprical Political Science. Political Scientists borrow indiscriminately from research traditions in other social sciences, but there one finds few courses on classical social science theory or social science history in Political Science curricula. Little empirical Political Science can be traced directly back to what are called the "classics" of Political Science. Rational Choice, which developed within a tradition launched by William Riker, is a notable exception. Most other attempts to launch approaches approaches to empirical Political Science have fizzled out--mainly due to lack of the kind of intellectual substance underlying the classics of the other social sciences. The difference between empirical Political Science and empirical research in the other social sciences can be understood in terms of the way empirical, or "scientific" Political Science emerged.
Earlier in this discussion, I suggested that the roots of Political Science in a community of teachers of American Government, that is, of civics teachers, helps explain the diversity of disconnected approaches in the discipline. The way "scientific" Political Science emerged after World War II also helps to understand the intellectual foundations of contemporary Political Science.
"Scientific" Political Science did not emerge out of a research tradition. Its main drivers were adesire for "scientific" respectability and a desire to receive the kind of funding received by social scientists who did quantiative research (Operations Research) during the War. The so-called "Behavioralist" movement had little to do with establishing a distinctive scientific approach to the study of politcs. It was, rather, an attempt to forge a broad coalition for "science," based on a vague set of principles which came to be called "Behavioralism." The movement fizzled out. As Robert Dahl put it, it died of success. Almost everyone had become a Behavioralist." A different view was that of James Steintrager, who wrote that Behavioralism had died because it hadbecome incoherent. In order to achieve the broadest possible coalition in support of "scientific" Political Science, everyone had to be made to feel comfortable with the Behavioralist label.
It is revealing that, at the 2000 APSA meeting at which the "Mr. Perestroika" petition was discussed, no one mentioned Behavioralism. Some of Mr. Perestroika's criticisms of Political Science were identical to the kinds of criticism of Behavioralism that pervaded Political Science journals in the 1950s and 1960s. Several of the drivers of the Mr. Perestroika movement were old enough to remember the frustrating, boring, fruitless debates surrounding Behavioralism, yet none of them mentioned it.
The classics of scientific social science, which constitute the basis of the other social sciences (e.g. Comte, Marx, Durkheim, and Weber in Sociology) actually do grapple with foundational problems of a science of society. Some scholars in the other social science, those which have genuine classics, choose to study these classics. They occasionally pick up on such foundational problems and grapple with and debate them. Such discussions are virtually absent from Political Science, with the huge gap between its "classics" and its practice of empirical research.
Note to Fred Eiden:
To me, the end of the "frustrating, boring and fruitless" debates over "behaviorism" marked the death throes of political science. I still read the American Political Science Review, the Canadian Journal of Political Science and even (sometimes) journals in related fields such as Public Administration. I do so, however, in a desultory fashion. Not wishing to conflate distinguishable aspects of political science by joining revisionist democratic theory (including Dahl), liberal pluralism and the implicit ideology of behaviorism, but I'd point people to my old mentor Henry S. Kariel (1924-2004) and books such as "The Promise of Politics" (1966), "Saving Appearances (1972), "Beyond Liberalism" (1977) and "The Desperate Politics of Postmodernism (1989) and to some of the work done (and still being done) by his younger colleague and my friend Michael J. Shapiro (especially "Deforming American Political Thought" (2006) and, more recently, "Discourse, Culture, Violence."
I'll let Mike speak for himself: "The biggest challenge for contemporary IR (International Relations) is to wake up from its pre-Kantian slumber. Most of the discipline remains uncritical because it is predicated on an anemic, empiricist philosophy of social science which treats mere appearances. The Kantian/post Kantian innovation is to focus on the conditions of possibility for something to appear. More concretely, the dominant forms of realism and rationalism in the discipline tend to naturalize the geopolitical world of states and to allow an unreflective discourse on sovereignty to dominate the problematics that mainstream inquiry entertains. From critical perspectives, the discipline or IR is an object of analysis rather than a set of norms for creating and analyzing global phenomena. IR and empiricist social science in general is tied to appearances. If we follow the trajectory of post-Kantian critical thinking, our concerns become involved with the alternative ways in which the world is politically partitioned and note the economies of what is able to appear versus what is concealed. The experiences of slavery, forced migration, violent usurpation of indigenous territories, global trading in bodies and body parts all produce perspectives and voices that challenge security-minded and war-strategy focused versions of “international relations.” One critical question, then, is why the dominant sovereignty-predicated focus remains; the others involve recognizing and analyzing global exchanges that operate outside of or below the level of inter-state relations. My strategy? Forget IR."
Note to David Risser:
I respectfully agree with David that there has always been an available "normative twist" in Harold D. Lasswell's work. My complaint is that much of "mainstream" political science prefers to succumb to the dominant ideology of the discipline (and too much of social science generally) and leave that particular tail untwisted - largely in pursuit of government/military research grants (even without considering the temporary shut-down of federal funds to political scientists who could not provide a clear link between their projects and American "security" and/or "economic interests" (a ban lifted by Congress just a few weeks ago).
As well, I take to heart David's disagreement with what he infers as my belief that "most power relations are open and obvious." He suggests "that the power to suppress political interests considered threatening to the dominant configuration of power relationships or the power to affect how people define their political interests in the first place, are often difficult mechanisms or structures."
That may be so, but it is surely the task of political scientists "to recognize these faces of power" and to reveal them to an already unfortunately inattentive public which seems to have inchoately understood what Henry called "the irrelevance of pluralist analysis."
So, I couldn't agree more that "debates about the nature of the discipline are at the same time political debates." Nothing (not even patterns of power in governance, the competition for academic employment, research funds, the classroom and the domain of the "public intellectual" could be more obvious.
Note to David Risser (Part 2):
You mention Lukes and Connolly. They were not part of my adolescence, but they were certainly important in my young adulthood in the discipline.
I suspect we may have more in common that is superficially apparent.
Note to Fred Eiden (Part 2):
You say that few empirically-oriented Political Scientists even classify thinkers like Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke, and their likes as Political Scientists." Therein lies a large part of the problem.
Yes, it is a large part of the problem. When I attended my first CHEIRON meeting years ago (history of psychology), I was surprised to hear papers on the epistemologies and ontologies of such thinkers as Hobbes and Locke. My impression is that Political Scientists who study such thinkers focus exclusively on the political aspects of their philosophies, ignoring their work on the foundations of knowledge. Ironically, although Hobbes and Locke are typically classifed as "normative theorists," they both took the natural sciences much more seriously than do contemporary empirical Political Scientists, and they devoted considerable efforts into inquiring about the foundations of knowledge underlying their theories. .
Funny, I never thought of such classics are either "normative" or "empirical," but as a varying combination of both (though none if their authors, I suspect, would have used either term). In fact, I never bought into all those lazy dichotomies such as "fact/value" or, worse, "nature/nurture" and the irrepressible "mind/body" (call me a closet dialectician!).
Incidentally, anyone who can read the closing pages of Weber's "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" which had already nicely summed up the 20th century in 1904, and still think that he was much taken with "objectivity" should ... take my class!
Anyway, I don't know if I can or would want to call myself a "political scientist" anymore (though I have three degrees in the discipline) and occasionally find myself compelled to teach one or two sections of this or that. The fact is that I do think that much political science today has succumbed to trivialities, bent to accommodate the unacceptable and is just not as much fun as it was when I took it much more seriously some decades ago.
Still, I don't want to make that sound like a criticism and I certainly don't want to claim that political science is any worse than its siblings ... maybe it's just me and I should shut up in public.
I will, however, continue to read the "dead white males" sporadically and to learn things that I missed 50 years ago when I was first introduced to the "canon" and to behavioral analysis and techniques as well. I recall that experience fondly if for no other reason than that nobody talked nonsense about "learning objectives" and strategies for "mastery" and "core competencies" and all the other hogwash that increasingly drowns the otherwise fertile soil of students (and their teachers alike).
Although your mode of discourse is not my own (I have very little time for "sages" and "enlightenment"), you might profit by reading some of the books written by my old mentor Henry S. Kariel (1924-2004).
If nothing else, Henry has a particular style that I found sufficiently engaging that I travelled half-way round the world to study with him in 1967.
Try these:
The Promise of Politics (Prentice-Hall, 1966);
Saving Appearances (Duxbury, 1972);
Beyond Liberalism (Chandler & Sharpe, 1977);
The Desperate Politics of Postmodernism, 1989); or
almost any of the almost countless articles he published in journals such as The American Political Science Review, Politics and Society, and lesser venues.
Sorry, I omitted the publisher for The Desperate Politics ...
It is the University of Massachusetts Press (Amherst MA).
Howard, I also suspect our views have more in common than it may appear. Having had the good fortune to study with Peter Bachrach as well as Lukes, I am keenly aware that in the social sciences, what is advertised as empirical research, is quite often ideology in disguise. For example, Bachrach's critique of pluralism and the interest group explanation of American democratic politics as another version of elitism, is still influential.
I envy you.
Not that I haven't had (more than) my share of fine teachers, but my copy of Bachrach's Theory of Democratic Elitism (well-worn) sits among my classics of the 1960s (no counter-cultural reference implied).
@Francesca - The statements/narratives and subtle questions you have made are interesting since they point towards the thin line where politics (as a 'science' and practice) must meet morality. This itself is a huge subject of debate. There is an interesting book by the title "The Ethics of Global Governance" [ed. Antonio Franceschet, originally published by Lynne Rienner, Boulder Colarado and by Viva Books in India in 2010] in which there is a thought provoking argument that
i quote:
"A politics separated from ethics, however demanding and intractable the moral dilemmas that we face, is unacceptable and dangerous. Thus, politics and ethics are neither categorically dichotomous nor identical activities. Rather, they are symbiotic and mutually constitutive. Each is an essential domain of responsibility and obligation for human beings; both pose no easy solution to the demands of human interrelatedness".
Food for thought and debate,Francesca and would appreciate your views.
@ Howard, David and Fred: Thanks indeed for valuable comments. Stepping aside from what has been so far stated, there are a few thoughts that I would like to present:
1. Generally we accept that the concept of politics (as a discipline of study) and governance as an expression of the science of politics developed in the world when the concept of nation-state was also transforming. As industrialised Europe went east searching for markets and raw materials, its concept of politics transformed from nation-state into a concept of expression of political power. The power to decide who gets what and how much, etc. From then on, we tend to see political science as a medium to study how political power is expressed through its institutions and systems.
2. Post WWII and the rise of America has added a different dimension to this concept of expression of power. American civil war, the Four Freedoms speech, Rosa Parks, and Martin Luther King added the concept of 'Rights' and 'Equality' to the dialogue on political power. Decolonisation elsewhere, rise of socialism and its concept of power to the proletariat, struggle against and demise of Apartheid in South Africa and the genocides in Africa introduced 'people and their right to life' into the dialogue on political power.
3. Increasing evidence of environmental degradation and its effect on peoples' lives, the looming threat of scarcity of drinking water, etc, have further introduced 'sustainable development' as an integral element in politics and concept of power.
How far do these developments actually have changed the contours of political science? Will eagerly await your comments, please.
Have a great day!
The proper study of politics is not man but institutions, as John Plamenatz advocated. Well it is open to debate but institutions still constitutes the heart beat of political science, and will continue to be....
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Political Science