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A Reply to Orren and Skowronek

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 April 2011

George Thomas
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Extract

I write to note a fundamental area of agreement with Professors Orren and Skowronek. And yet given this shared concern I think the study of ideas should be at the center of developmental approaches to politics. Professors Orren and Skowronek write, “The time has passed when familiar claims about constitutional foundations and normative commitments can be ventured confidently without serious consideration of confounding evidence. Making inquiries into these areas specific and empirically tractable will be, we think, value added.” I agree with this general assessment. Indeed, I have written a book, The Madisonian Constitution, which seeks to examine tensions within American constitutionalism and empirically trace how constitutional understandings and constitutional change have necessarily been partial and incomplete. In fact, I suggest that constitutional conflict has been an ordinary feature of American constitutionalism precisely because the American constitutional order is structured around agonistic principles and institutions. From the perspective of political science, understanding these tensions might also prove helpful in sustaining the American polity. But let me be clear: I do not think there is an easy foundation to be arrived at in the study of the American polity, or any other polity. Nor do I long for a world untroubled by “facing the facts,” nor for a time untroubled by historicism, positivism, or social science. I do think, however, an at times uncritical acceptance of historicism and positivism has led political scientists unnecessarily to turn away from the study of ideas and values that make up the political community.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 73 , Issue 2 , Spring 2011 , pp. 301 - 304
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2011

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References

1 Thomas, George, The Madisonian Constitution (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008)Google Scholar, 4.

2 For what I envision as positive contributions to social science itself, see Thomas, George, “What Dataset? The Qualitative Foundation of Law and Courts Scholarship,” Law and Courts 16, no. 1 (2006): 5–12Google Scholar, and Thomas, , “The Qualitative Foundations of Political Science Methodology,” Perspectives on Politics 3, no. 4 (2005): 855–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Jacobsohn, Gary Jeffrey, Constitutional Identity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010)Google Scholar.

4 Muller, Jan-Werner, Constitutional Patriotism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007)Google Scholar, 14.

5 Orren, Karen and Skowronek, Stephen, “The Study of American Political Development,” in Political Science: The State of the Discipline, ed. Katznelson, Ira and Milner, Helen (New York: W. W. Norton, 2002)Google Scholar.

6 Blyth, Mark, Great Transformations: Economic Ideas and Institutional Change in the Twentieth Century (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 10.

7 Lilla, Mark, The Still Born God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West (New York: Knopf, 2007)Google Scholar.

8 For an interesting examination of how schooling and law have been important factors in “state building” and the development of secular revolutions in the former Ottoman states, see Kristin Fabbe, “Disciples of the State? Religion and State Building in the Former Ottoman World” (PhD dissertation, MIT, 2011).

9 Harris, William II, “The Architectonics of a Well-Founded Constitutional Order,” in The Limits of Constitutional Democracy, ed. Tulis, Jeffrey K. and Macedo, Stephen (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010)Google Scholar, 67.