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Political Science and Political Theory*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

David G. Smith
David G. Smith
Affiliation:
Stanford University
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Extract

Among political scientists, even among political theorists, there is a widespread conviction that political theory has entered upon a time of troubles. Few, however, regard it simply as a “dead dog,” and political theorists continue, as they should, to administer critical self-analysis, and to define and defend their methodological and philosophical positions. The basis for a unity of opposites is still a subject for dispute. This paper is offered, not as a solution, but as a statement of one conception of the role of political theory.

A time-honored technique of dialectic is to seek well-reasoned objections to the view one does not hold. A medicine often commended to the political scientists is a body of systematic, scientific theory akin to economic theory in approach and methodological sophistication. Accordingly, this article takes issue with that interpretation which conceives of political theory as, ideally, the master discipline whereby the science of politics is to be unified and systematized, and empirical investigation oriented and guided. A few definite and carefully developed proposals for reconstruction along these lines, familar to political scientists, are G. E. G. Catlin's The Science and Method of Politics, Harold D. Lasswell's and Abraham Kaplan's Power and Society, and David Easton's The Political System. These works can serve as an initial point of purchase for analysis and discussion.

Type
A Symposium
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 51 , Issue 3 , September 1957 , pp. 734 - 746
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1957

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References

1 For some representative essays, see Pennock, J. Roland, “Political Science and Political Philosophy,” this Review, Vol. 45 (December, 1951), p. 1081Google Scholar; also in this Review, Hackers, Andrew, “Capital and Carbuncles: The ‘Great Books’ Reappraised,” Vol. 48 (September, 1954), p. 775Google Scholar, and Eckstein, Harry (Rapporteur), “Political Theory and the Study of Politics: A Report of a Conference,” Vol. 50 (June, 1956), p. 475Google Scholar; Easton, David, “The Decline of Modern Political Theory,” Journal of Politics, Vol. 13 (February, 1951), p. 36CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Glaser, William A., “The Types and Uses of Political Theory,” Social Research, Vol. 22 (Autumn, 1955), p. 275Google Scholar.

2 See Harry Eckstein, loc. cit., at p. 486.

3 Catlin, G. E. G., The Science and Method of Politics (London, 1927)Google Scholar; Lasswell, Harold D. and Kaplan, Abraham, Power and Society: A Framework for Political Inquiry (New Haven, 1950)Google Scholar; Easton, David, The Political System (New York, 1953)Google Scholar.

4 Catlin, op. cit., pp. 131–134; Lasswell and Kaplan, op. cit., p. xi; Easton, op. cit., p. 44.

5 Catlin, op. cit., pp. 207–208, 215; Lasswell and Kaplan, op. cit., p. x; Easton, op. cit., p. 318.

6 Windelband, Wilhelm, “Geschichte und Naturwissenschaft” (1894), in Präludien—Aufsätze und Reden zur Einfurhung in die Philosophie, Bd. II, (Tubingen, 1910), p. 145Google Scholar; Rickert, Heinrich, Kulturwissenschaft und Naturwissenschaft (Tubingen, 1910), pp. 38, 40Google Scholar.

7 Rickert, op. cit., p. 5.

8 Ibid., pp. 38, 40. See also, von Hayek, F. A., The Counter-Revolution of Science (Glencoe, 1952), p. 18Google Scholar.

9 Rickert, op. cit., p. 42.

10 Ibid., especially pp. 73, 76, 80–105. Also, Kroeber, A. L., The Nature of Culture (Chicago, 1952), pp. 66–70Google Scholar.

11 Kroeber, op. cit., pp. 70–71; Collingwood, R. G., The Idea of History (Oxford, 1946), pp. 243–246Google Scholar.

12 Wisdom, John, Philosophy and Psychoanalysis (Oxford, 1953), pp. 154, 260–261Google Scholar.

13 Easton, op. cit., p. 44.

14 See, for example, Pap, Arthur, Elements of Analytic Philosophy (New York, 1949), pp. 100–107Google Scholar; Cohen, Morris R. and Nagel, Ernest, An Introduction to Logic and Scientific Method (London, 1939)Google Scholar, Abridged Edition, p. 235; Field, G. C., “The Place of Definition in Ethics,” in Sellers, W. S. and Hospers, John, Readings in Ethical Theory (New York, 1952), pp. 95–96Google Scholar; Cohen, Jonathan and Hart, H. L. A., “Symposium: Theory and Definition in Jurisprudence,” Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume XXIX (London, 1955), pp. 216 ff.Google Scholar

15 Northrop, F. S. C., The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities (New York, 1947), p. 28Google Scholar.

16 Durkheim, Emile, The Rules of Sociological Method (Chicago, 1938)Google Scholar.

17 This same point has been effectively argued in respect to law. For example, the definitions of “intent,” “causation,” and “defamation” in law are necessarily merged and interwoven with ordinary language and “common sense” ideas of the subjects. See Williams, Glanville, “Language and the Law,” II and IV, Law Quarterly Review, Vol. 61, at pp. 181, 190, 191, 393, 394Google Scholar; and Hart, H. L. A. and Honore, A. M., “Causation in the Law: I—A Survey of Common-Sense Principles,” Law Quarterly Review, Vol. 72, at pp. 60, 64Google Scholar.

18 R. G. Collingwood supplies some support, on philosophical grounds, for the views here presented on this subject. He argues that the language of ethics—particularly when structured about such terms as “expedient,” “pleasure,” “happiness,” “good,” “just,” “right”—has its own specific syntactical qualities of overlapping classes, contextual relation, and hierarchical ordering that defy any attempt to reduce the subject matter of ethics to neat or final categories and statements. See his An Essay on Philosophical Method (Oxford, 1933), pp. 33, 49, 86–89, 92–101Google Scholar.

19 For an illustrative and compelling example of systematic bias, compare Trilling, Lionel, “The Kinsey Report,” in his The Liberal Imagination (New York, 1950), p. 216Google Scholar.

20 Catlin, op. cit., pp. 95–131; Easton, op. cit., p. 318; Lasswell and Kaplan, op. cit., pp. xxi–xxii. See also Morton A. Kaplan's article on models of international systems, published in this issue of the Review, ante, p. 684.

21 Knight, Frank H., The Ethics of Competition (London, 1935), pp. 141–4Google Scholar.

22 Ibid., pp. 135–145.

23 Ibid., pp. 141–144.

24 Thompson, Clara, Psychoanalysis: Evolution and Development (London, 1952)Google Scholar. Karl Marx is also an instance of the manner in which conceptual rigor can lead away from intellectual light. In passages where Marx uses his materialistic interpretations of history as “levers for construction,” his depicting of history or analysis of contemporary events as lifeless and unconvincing. Only where he or Engels employed their philosophy of history more tolerantly and more loosely, using concepts to probe and illuminate rather than to shape materials to an analytical model, does the interpretive power of Marx's insights become evident. The example is imperfect, however, because Marx also committed the error of reductivism—reducing a complex issue to a logically simpler level, as, for example, by explaining a psychological phenomenon in the language and concepts of biology; in short, a form of over-simplification, which accounts for part of his difficulties.

25 See Knight, op. cit., pp. 124–126, for a discussion of the role of common-sense in prediction.

26 Barnard, C. I., The Functions of the Executive (Cambridge, 1938)Google Scholar includes in the Appendix an interesting example of the fallibility of deductive reasoning when the relation of abstract concepts is vague.

27 Merton, R. K., Social Theory and Social Structure (Glencoe, 1949), p. 99Google Scholar.

28 Stone, Julius, The Province and Function of Law (London, 1947)Google Scholar, esp. Ch. VII, “Fallacies of Logical Form in Legal Reasoning.”

29 As examples of a similar type of analysis in law, see Hart, H. L. A., “Definition and Theory in Jurisprudence” (Oxford, 1953)Google Scholar; also, Jonathan Cohen and H. L. A. Hart, loc. cit.

30 Weldon, T. D., Vocabulary of Politics (London, 1953)Google Scholar.

31 Examples of discussions concerned in part or entirely with linguistic analysis are Plamenatz, John P., Consent, Freedom and Political Obligation (Oxford, 1938)Google Scholar; Polanyi, Michael, The Logic of Liberty (London, 1951)Google Scholar; Pennock, J. Roland, “Responsiveness, Responsibility and Majority Rule,” this Review, Vol. 46 (September, 1952), p. 790Google Scholar.

32 The term is Prof.Ryle's, Gilbert: “Systematically Misleading Expressions,” in Flew, Antony, Logic and Language (Oxford, 1951)Google Scholar.

33 The most representative examples of a systematic philosophy of politics, as the concept is here discussed, are Barker's, ErnestPrinciples of Social and Political Theory (Oxford, 1950)Google Scholar, and MacIver's, Robert M.Web of Government (New York, 1947)Google Scholar.

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