The Old Orthodoxy and the New Orthodoxy in the Study of Middle Eastern Politics

Extract

It is said that the old political science attempted to be explanatory and the new political science is interpretive. A key question then is what is the meaning of political interpretation. Does it mean that political analysis is simply subjective and that intellectual anarchy reigns? The old political science had its apparent orthodoxy of the canons of the scientific method. The new orthodoxy refers to these and resembles the old in its underlying liberal, pluralist value assumptions.

The old orthodoxy in comparative politics focuses on develop-mentalism; the new orthodoxy emphasizes democratization, market-oriented economics, rational choice theory, and political economy. Developmentalism stressed the importance of the welfare of the individual as well as at the same time the need for secularization and political participation. Developmentalism was also teleological. The goal was to achieve secularization and participation, in the process replicating the advanced industrial states from which the ideas originated. The values implicit in developmentalism were obscured by the old orthodoxy's patina of behavioralism and “scientific objectivity.”

The new orthodoxy has abandoned behavioralism and “scientific objectivity,” but in neither a systematic nor a philosophical way. Instead, the validity of the criticisms seems to be tacitly conceded even while the spokespersons of the new orthodoxy operate within a “new” scholarly and foreign policy culture that shows evidence of having characteristics similar to those of the old.