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Political Science and Political Fiction*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

James F. Davidson
James F. Davidson*
Affiliation:
University of Tennessee
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Extract

C. P. Snow, in his Rede Lecture on the scientific and literary worlds as separate cultures, lists four groups needed by a country if it is to “come out top” in the scientific revolution. First, as many top scientists as it can produce; second, a larger group trained for supporting research and high class design; third, educated supporting technicians; and “fourthly and last, politicians, administrators, an entire community, who know enough science to have a sense of what the scientists are talking about.”

It seems increasingly clear that the growing army of “political” scientists—meaning natural scientists in politics—is more likely to be aided by students of politics prepared to understand the effects of science in political terms than by most of the recent efforts to understand politics in scientific terms. When one looks over the journals in political science, and in related areas of public opinion and social psychology, searching for significant conclusions in articles where much time has been spent on the elaboration of method, it is difficult to avoid V. O. Key's conclusion “that a considerable proportion of the literature commonly classified under the heading of ‘political behavior’ has no real bearing on politics, or at least that its relevance has not been made clear.”

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 55 , Issue 4 , December 1961 , pp. 851 - 860
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1961

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Footnotes

*

From a paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, New York, September 10, 1960.

Suggestions that political fiction is worth serious attention from those engaged in political study include Dwight Waldo, Perspectives on Administration (Univ. of Alabama Press, 1956), ch. 4; Rowland Egger, “The Administrative Novel,” this Review, Vol. 53 (1959), pp. 448–55; Morton Kroll, “Politics in Literature,” PROD, Vol. 3, No. 5 (1960), pp. 3–6; Edwin A. Bock, “P I & E,” in Public Administration Review, Vols. 17–18 (1957–8).

References

1 The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1959), pp. 39–40 Google Scholar.

2 “The Politically Relevant in Surveys,” Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 24 (1960), p. 54 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Cf. Ranney's, Austin review of Leiserson's, Parties and Politics in the Midwest Journal of Political Science, Vol. 3 (1959), pp. 108–9Google Scholar; Eulau, Heinz, “H. D. Lasswell's ‘Developmental Analysis,’ “ Western Political Quarterly, Vol. 11 (1958), pp. 229–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and especially Havens', Murray C. review of Truman's, David The Congressional Party: A Case Study in the Journal of Politics, Vol. 22 (1960), pp. 545–6Google Scholar.

4 Merejkowski, Dmitri, The Romance of Leonardo da Vinci (Random House, 1931), pp. 143–45Google Scholar.

5 See Honey, John C., “Research in Political Science: A Further Note,” Public Administration Review, Vol. 17 (1957), p. 239 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wallace S. Sayre, “Premises of Public Administration: Past and Emerging,” ibid., Vol. 18 (1958), pp. 102–5; Redford, Emmette, Ideal and Practice in Public Administration (University of Alabama Press, 1958), pp. ix–x, and ch. 1.Google Scholar

6 Cf. the discussion of the practical impulse in the origins of American political science as a whole, and its shortcomings, in Morgenthau, Hans, “Reflections on the State of Political Science,” Review of Politics, Vol. 17 (1955), pp. 433–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar. A more recent critique of the development and nature of American political science, from a perspective outside it, is found in Crick, Bernard, The American Science of Politics (University of California Press, 1959)Google Scholar.

7 “It was hard to separate the elements or fix the blame. It was the early New Dealers' scorn for established procedures, without the sense of social purpose which gave administrative integrity to their experiments. It was the war-time attitude that all means must be used toward the end, without the steadying pressure of one overriding end. It was the disillusioned liberal insisting on Machiavellianism, with all the bitter worldli-ness of a disappointed lover covering and assuaging painful memories with a pride in his hard-bought wisdom. Perhaps, too, there was a kind of final devotion to the vanished vision in proving that, if it has not been real, nothing real was good.” Davidson, James F., “The Public Servant,” Antioch Review, (Summer, 1956) p. 217 Google Scholar.

Cf. C. Wright Mills on the transition from liberal to illiberal practicality, The Sociological Imagination (Oxford Univ. Press, 1959), pp. 88–92 Google Scholar. Crick, op. cit., speaks of “the cult of realism in the Progressive Era” (ch. 5), and treats scientism as a refuge taken by American liberals; see comments by Oliver Garceau and H. Mark Roelofs in this Review, Vol. 53 (1959), pp. 1117–19, and Vol. 54 (1960), pp. 496–7, respectively.

8 Sayre, op. cit., p. 103; Waldo, op. cit., pp. 13, 18; Kaufman, Herbert, “The Next Step in Case Studies,” Public Administration Review, vol. 18 (1958), p. 58 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On administrative fiction see Waldo, Egger, and Bock, as cited in the title note to this article. Other references to fiction have appeared from time to time in articles in the Public Administration Review.

9 Simon, Herbert: Administrative Behavior (Macmillan, 1947), pp. 43–4Google Scholar, and Organizations, with March, James G. (John Wiley & Sons, 1958), pp. 5, 30 Google Scholar; Leiserson, Avery, “Problems of Methodology in Political Research,” Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 68 (1953), pp. 558–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also the exchange between Simon, and Banfield, Edward C., Public Administration Review, Vol. 17 (1957), pp. 78–85, and Vol. 18 (1958), pp. 60–66 Google Scholar.

10 Cf. Almond, Gabriel, “Comparative Political Systems,” Journal of Politics, Vol. 3 (1956), pp. 408–9Google Scholar; Smith, David G., “Political Science and Political Theory,” this Review, Vol. 51 (1957), pp. 737–40Google Scholar; John P. Roche, “Political Science and Science Fiction,” ibid., Vol. 52 (1958), pp. 1026–9; Stauffacher, Charles B., “Organizations: An Executive's View,” Public Administration Review, Vol. 19 (1959), pp. 124–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 “The Mystery of Matter,” Adventures of the Mind, ed. Thruelsen, and Kobler, (Knopf, 1959), p. 67 Google Scholar. See also “Analogy in Science,” The American Psychologist, Vol. 11, No. 3, March, 1960 Google Scholar, in which Oppenheimer declares that analogy is “an indispensable and inevitable tool for scientific progress,” and that “monism is the born enemy of analogy.” Surely this gives us a clue as to why one-cause and one-concept explanations of politics are essentially unscientific, and why one-method fixations about science are uncreative.

“If the scientist has during the whole of his life observed carefully, trained himself to be on the look out for the analogy, and possessed himself of relevant knowledge, then the ‘instrument of feeling’ … will become a powerful divining rod … in creative science feeling plays a leading part.” Harding, quoted in Beveridge, W. I. B., The Art of Scientific Investigation (Modern Library, 1957), p. 78 Google Scholar. See also chs. 5–8, on “Imagination,” “Intuition,” and “Reason.”

Waldo, op. cit., pp. 29–30, discusses analogies or idioms in the study of administration, and includes a reference to Stephen Pepper, World Hypothesis: A Study in Evidence, on analogies and root metaphors in philosophy. In making a qualified defense of political science as science, Waldo stresses (pp. 1–25) the necessity for a loose rather than a strict construction of the word “science,” to avoid both feelings of inferiority and blind alleys in social science.

12 “Fact and Fiction in Physics,” Bucknell Review, Vol. 9 (1960), pp. 1, 9 Google Scholar. Cf. Arendt, Hannah, “The Modern Concept of History,” Review of Politics, Vol. 20 (1948), pp. 577–8Google Scholar; and the earlier discussion of scientism in Morgenthau, Hans, Scientific Man vs. Power Politics (University of Chicago Press, 1946), ch. 5.Google Scholar

13 In Blanshard, (ed.), Education in the Age of Science (Basic Books, 1959), pp. 204–5Google Scholar.

14 “[In] the theory of relativity, the quantum theory, and to a certain extent also in the theories of biology … we can see the similarity between the actions of the humanist who works with intuition or imagination and the creativeness of science. The creation of a scientific theory, to my mind, is ultimately just as much a work of art as the painting of a great picture or the composition of a piece of music. It represents the same kind of mental activity.” Ibid., p. 211. For a further roll call of distinguished scientists on science as “a strange voyage where imagination, beauty and pattern are our signposts,” see Coulson, op. cit., pp. 11–12.

15 Fesler, James W., “Asphalt vs. Concrete, and Other Comparisons,” Public Administration Review, Vol. 19 (1959), p. 75 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lipson, Leslie, “The Comparative Method in Political Studies,” Political Quarterly, Vol. 27 (1957), pp. 372–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Frankel, Charles, “Philosophy and History,” Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 72 (1957), pp. 353–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar. “The historical fact is in someone's mind or it is nowhere …. How can the historian deal with vanished realities? He can deal with them because these vanished realities give place to pale reflections, impalpable images or ideas of themselves, and these pale reflections and impalpable images which cannot be touched or handled are all that is left of the actual occurrence …. He has to be satisfied with these, for the very good reason that he has nothing else.” Becker, Carl, “What are Historical Facts?” (1926), published in Western Political Quarterly, Vol. 8 (1955), p. 331 Google Scholar. See also Tom Burns' comments on social concepts as fictions, in “The Idea of Structure in Sociology,” Human Relations, Vol. 11 (1958), pp. 217–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 “The Vocabulary of Social History,” Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 71 (1956), pp. 13–15 Google Scholar.

18 Cf. the “translations” of Talcott Parsons in Mills, op. cit., ch. 2. The same sort of operation can be performed—in fact, has to be performed in the pursuit of significant meaning—on too much of the writing in political science. The tendency to prop conclusions with verbiage has been particularly noticeable in opinion studies.

19 In Blanshard, op. cit., p. 229. See also Beveridge, op. cit., pp. 105–8, on “scientific taste”; and Mills, op. cit., Appendix, on “intellectual craftsmanship,” especially pp. 217–22, on style.

20 E.g., Howe, Irving, Politics and the Novel (Horizon Press, 1957), pp. 11, 16–17 Google Scholar. The first chapter is an excellent short treatment of “The Idea of the Political Novel.” See also Blotner, Joseph L., The Political Novel (Doubleday, 1955), pp. 1–2 Google Scholar.

21 Jaffa, Harry V., “The Limits of Politics: An Interpretation of King Lear, Act I, scene i,” Vol. 51 (1957), pp. 405–27Google Scholar; Bloom, Allan D., “Cosmopolitan Man and the Political Community: An Interpretation of Othello,” Vol. 54 (1960), pp. 130–57Google Scholar; Sigurd Burkhardt, “English Bards and APSR Reviewers,” ibid., pp. 158–66; and the Bloom-Burkhardt exchange, ibid., pp. 457–73.

22 E.g., Rideout, Walter, The Radical Novel in the United States, 1900–54 (Harvard Univ. Press, 1956)Google Scholar.

23 Richard C. Snyder's description of fictional characters as “dummies,” in his introduction to Blotner, op. cit., applies mainly to didactic fiction. The best authors testify that successful characters must take on an individuality which is real to them, and which they cannot violate without weakening their whole effect. Cf. Allott, Miriam (ed.), Novelists on the Novel (Columbia Univ. Press, 1959), pp. 285–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also the contrast of American and English political novels in Speare, Morris E., The Political Novel (Oxford Univ. Press, 1924), pp. 334–6Google Scholar, written at a time when the American novels were primarily concerned with reform. On later writers who found “a special virtue in not writing about political and social problems,” see Hicks, Granville in the New York Times Book Review, August 12, 1956, p. 5 Google Scholar.

24 Wolfe, Humbert, “Some Public Servants in Fiction,” Public Administration, Vol. 2 (1924), pp. 39–57 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (I am indebted to Professor Charles S. Ascher for this reference). Smith, Howard R., “The American Businessman in the American Novel,” Southern Economic Journal, Vol. 25 (1959), pp. 265–302 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, presented as the presidential address to the Southern Economic Association in 1958, and an admirably systematic treatment which concludes (p. 301) that those who think the businessman has been dealt special punishment in fiction are wrong. See also French, Warren G., “Timothy Shay Arthur: Pioneer Business Novelist,” American Quarterly, Vol. 10 (1958), pp. 55–65 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Van R. Halsey, “Fiction and the Businessman: Society Through All Its Literature,” ibid., Vol. 11 (1959), pp. 391–402; and the articles on this subject in Fortune, November 1948, December 1952, January 1955, and August 1959.

25 Albrecht, Milton C., “The Relationship of Literature and Society,” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 59 (1953–1954), pp. 425–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and “Does Literature Reflect Common Values?” American Sociological Review, Vol. 21 (1956), pp. 722–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also Gelfant, B. H., The American City Novel (University of Oklahoma Press, 1954)Google Scholar; and Coan, O. W. and Lillard, R. G., America in Fiction: An Annotated List of Novels That Interpret Aspects of Life in the United States (Stanford Univ. Press, 1945)Google Scholar. More directly political examples include Howe, Susanne, Novels of Empire (Columbia Univ. Press, 1949)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kroef, J. M. van der, “The Colonial Novel in Indonesia,” Comparative Literature, Vol. 10 (1958), pp. 215–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Two political comments on currently identified literary groups are Burdick, Eugene, “The Politics of the Beat Generation,” Western Political Quarterly, Vol. 12 (1959), pp. 553–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Morton Kroll, “The Politics of Britain's Angry Young Men,” ibid., pp. 555–57.

26 Hacker, Andrew, “Dostoevsky's Disciples: Man and Sheep in Political Theory,” Journal of Politics, Vol. 17 (1955), pp. 590–613 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Kessler, Martin, “Power and the Perfect State: A Study in Disillusionment as Reflected in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and Huxley's Brave New World ,” Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 72 (1957), pp. 569–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 Waldo, , op. cit.,; Bock, Public Administration Review, Vol. 17 (1957), p. 285 Google Scholar. The series of case stories published by the American Foundation for Political Education represents an attempt to combine the case study method with some of the techniques of the short story. See also Porterfield, Austin L., “Some Uses of Literature in Teaching Sociology,” Sociology and Social Research, Vol. 41 (1957), pp. 421–26Google Scholar; and Strode, Josephine, Social Insight Through Short Stories (Harper, 1946)Google Scholar.

28 “Which Side of the Atlantic?” Harpers, October 1959, pp. 163–66Google Scholar. See also Blotner, op. cit., pp. 3–4.

29 Cf. Tinder, Glenn, “Human Estrangement and the Failure of the Political Imagination,” Review of Politics, Vol. 21 (1959), p. 612 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 Granite and Rainbow (Harcourt, Brace, 1959), pp. 46–7Google Scholar.

31 Ten Novelists and Their Novels (Wm. Heinemann, Ltd., 1954), pp. 6–8 Google Scholar. Cf. Egger, op. cit., p. 448.

32 E.g., Gordon, Caroline, How to Read a Novel (Viking, 1957), ch. 1Google Scholar. For a discussion which is also of interest to political scientists as an attempt to achieve a more scientific literary discipline through rigorous analysis of structure, see Kridl, Manfred, “The Integral Method of Literary Scholarship,” Comparative Literature, Vol. 3 (1951), pp. 18–34 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33 Roman Experimental, quoted in Allott, op. cit., pp. 68–9, 316–17. Maupassant's dissent stressed the same point as the quotation from Cary: “Selection is … necessary and that is the first blow to the theory of ‘the whole truth.’ … To make true, then, one must give a complete illusion of truth by following the ordinary logic of events and not by slavishly transcribing them in the haphazard way they come.” Ibid., p. 71.

34 Cambridge Press (1958), pp. 5, 9–10. On the nature of fiction, see also Lubbock, Percy, The Craft of Fiction (Viking, 1957)Google Scholar, and Forster, E. M., Aspects of the Novel (Harcourt, Brace, 1927)Google Scholar.

35 Cf. Wilson, F. M. G., “Cases and Case Study: American and British,” Public Administration, Vol. 38 (1960), p. 66 Google Scholar.

36 Scott, Andrew M. on Hofstadter, Richard in “The Progressive Era in Perspective,” Journal of Politics, Vol. 21 (1959), pp. 685–701 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 “What makes one find a metaphysical theory implausible is … a feeling that it fails to cover the facts …. Those whose business is with the humanities, and who know how hard it is to produce knock-down arguments to support a literary reading or even a large-scale historical interpretation, may recognize the metaphysician's predicament here as their own.” Walsh, W. H. in Philosophy, Vol. 35 (1960), p. 141 Google Scholar.

38 On the abstractions of the scientist and the poet, see Boynton, Robert, “A Poetic Approach to Politics: A Study of the Political Philosophy of George Santayana,” Journal of Politics, Vol. 4 (1958), 689–92, 694 Google Scholar. On the literary objection to abstracting from fiction, see Arnold, Aerol, “Why Structure in Fiction: A Note to Social Scientists,” American Quarterly, Vol. 10 (1959), 325–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 Op. cit., p. 369. Cf. Berlin's discussion of Tolstoy's dilemma, op. cit.

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