Having read the difference between political science and political commentary, apply that knowledge to two recent news articles (from within the last four weeks). 1) Find a report that applies politic

Having read the difference between political science and political commentary, apply that knowledge to two recent news articles (from within the last four weeks). 1) Find a report that applies politic
The History of Political Science Author(s): James Farr Source: American Journal of Political Science , Nov., 1988 , Vol. 32, No. 4 (Nov., 1988), pp. 1175-1195 Published by: Midwest Political Science Association Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2111205 JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected] Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms Midwest Political Science Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to American Journal of Political Science This content downloaded from 66.77.17.54 on Tue, 08 Mar 2022 18:29:19 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms The History of Political Science James Farr, University of Minnesota Political science is once again rediscovering its past and retelling its history. In the last few years several works have brought an end to an era when our disci- pline’s historical reflections were limited to the rather brief presidential addresses of the American Political Science Association, to the even briefer literature re- views that prefaced articles in professional journals, and to the never brief contri- butions to that more general enterprise of the history of political thought, from Plato to Pareto. Indeed from the late-1950s to the mid-1980s, works in the his- tory of political science stand out by their sheer rarity (among them, Somit and Tanenhaus, 1967; and, more narrowly, Kress, 1973, and Karl, 1974yf $ V W K H D X – thors of one such work pointed out in 1967, this had taken its toll: “Most Ameri- can political scientists are largely unfamiliar with the origins and early evolution of their discipline. . . . An adequate history of the field has yet to be written; and the available literature . . . affords at best a fragmentary and partial account” (Somit and Tanenhaus, 1967, p. 2yf . By contrast, earlier political scientists were rather (though not exceptionallyyf more historical in their disciplinary self-understanding. For those writing in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this was perhaps a consequence of their being more historical in general about the scope and methods of political science. This was the view, at any rate, of Francis Lieber, the first officially named Professor of Political Science in the United States, a position granted him by Columbia College in 1857. This was also a message of Frederick Pollock’s 1890 Introduction to the History of the Science of Politics, as well as of J. R. Seeley’s motto: “History without Political Science has no fruit; Political Science without History knows no root” (1896, p. 3yf : K L O H & K D U O H V 0 H U U L D P O D W H r would brook none of this historicism in the study of politics (at least once he deserted the comparative-historical methods of his teacher William A. Dunningyf , his majestic pronouncements on the discipline of political science were nonethe- less cast in historical terms when in 1925 he spoke of New Aspects of Politics emerging from “the recent history of political thinking” (1925, ch. 3yf , Q W K e same year, and with a less recent past in mind, Robert H. Murray prefaced his History of Political Science from Plato to the Present with the observation that there was not “a single controversy of our day without a pedigree stretching into the distant ages” (1925, Prefaceyf 7 K H V D O O R Z H G I R U S H G D J R J L F D O U H I O H F W L R Q s of a historical kind by Anna Haddow on Political Science in American Colleges and Universities, 1636-1900 (1939yf . Even the opening salvos of the behavioral revolution in the early 1950s were fired by competing narratives of the history of political science. In The Political System, David Easton’s (1953yf E H K D Y L R U D O S U R J U D P I R U J H Q H U D O V V W H P V W K H R U y This content downloaded from 66.77.17.54 on Tue, 08 Mar 2022 18:29:19 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 1176 James Farr (modeled on the methodological assumptions of the natural sciencesyf I R O O R Z H G R n the heels of his diagnosis of the “malaise” of political science “since the Civil War” and his historical sketch of “the decline of modern political theory” (pp. 38, 233-65yf 7 K U H H H D U V O D W H U % H U Q D U G & U L F N U H S D L G K L V Y L V L W W R W K H 8 Q L W H d States by writing a dissertation on the history of American political science later to become The American Science of Politics: Its Origins and Conditions (1959yf $ S U L Q F L S D O W K H P H R I K L V Z D V W K D W W K H E H K D Y L R U D O L V W D V S L U D W L R Q V W R V F L – ence” were neither new nor politically innocent nor much worth holding. “By scorning history and philosophy,” Crick noted in conclusion, “the idea of a sci- ence of politics” showed itself to be but “a caricature of American liberal de- mocracy” (p. 227yf 6 F R U Q I X O O L E H U D O R U Q R W S R O L W L F D O V F L H Q F H L Q W K H V , 1970s, and early 1980s rarely recalled its (or any otheryf K L V W R U . Now, almost suddenly, political science has (reyf F D S W X U H G W K H D W W H Q W L R Q V R f historians in and out of the discipline. In each of the last four years at least one major work has been published on the history of political science: in 1983, Stefan Collini, Donald Winch, and John Burrow, That Noble Science of Politics: A Study in Nineteenth-Century Intellectual History; in 1984, David Ricci, The Tragedy of Political Science: Politics, Scholarship, and Democracy; in 1985, Raymond Seidelman, with the assistance of Edward J. Harpham, Disenchanted Realists: Political Science and the American Crisis, 1884-1984; in 1986, An- drew C. Janos, Politics and Paradigms: Changing Theories of Change in Social Science. Other works continue to be published (among them, Finifter, 1983; Weisberg, 1986; Anckar and Berndtson, 1987yf . The reasons or causes for this veritable renaissance are not altogether clear, though any list of them might include the need of a new generation of scholars to understand the crises that continue to beset political science, the recent revolu- tion in historiography at last breaking upon political science, and the increasing historical self-awareness of the other social sciences. As but one sign of the latter, consider the emergence or continuing viability of journals like the History of Sociology, the History of Anthropology, and the Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences (the catholicity of whose title fails to conceal the hegemony of psychology withinyf ( Y H Q H F R Q R P L F V D V G L V P D O D Q G D K L V W R U L F D O D V H Y H U K D s the History of Political Economy to salve the historical consciences of several of its members. Perhaps it is only a matter of time before political science, too, comes to have a journal dedicated to its history. For the present, we can take stock. It is the purpose of this essay to review and critically assess the four above-mentioned recent works in the history of po- litical science. These works forward different intents, demarcate different peri- ods, cover different episodes, and remember different lessons-so much so that they deserve and below will receive separate treatment. Despite the differences, however, something of a composite-and discomforting-image of political sci- ence, past and present, emerges from them. In conclusion we may briefly draw This content downloaded from 66.77.17.54 on Tue, 08 Mar 2022 18:29:19 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms HISTORY OF POLITICAL SCIENCE 1177 out this image in order to underscore the relevance of and need for more histories of political science. Some preliminary observations will help us situate our four works, provide a thematic structure for critical analysis of them, and remember some of their more important predecessors. One evident conclusion of these observations, which we may state in advance, is that very different sorts of contributions to the history of political science are possible and inevitable because different histo- rians will be party to different judgments about the doing of history, the nature of politics, and the methods of science. Writing a history of political science, in short, is very much a partisan activity. At its simplest, a history of political science-like a history of any sci- ence-will be a history of theories. The slightest scrutiny, however, reveals the complexities that such a history entails. In the first instance, theories cover a wide range of substantive or methodological topics; they never stand alone; and there is more to their history than mere chronological arrangement. Theories are organized in and by larger intellectual complexes whose transformations provide the relevant life scripts for them. Furthermore, these complexes and their trans- formations are open to different accounts. Paradigms (Kuhn, 1962yf U H V H D U F h programs (Lakatos, 1978yf D Q G R U U H V H D U F K W U D G L W L R Q V / D X G D Q f-to take three influential accounts-have recently vied for the partisanship of various his- torians of science, whose choices in any case reflect some deep-seated philo- sophical commitments about the nature of science (Agassi, 1963yf ) X U W K H U P R U H , within these complexes-however they are conceived-theories are best under- stood as solutions or attempted solutions to problems, and these problems are in turn best understood as being located in yet broader problem situations that re- flect their environments. Thus, as Karl Popper (1972yf R Q F H S R L Q W H G R X W 7 K e history of science should be treated not as a history of theories, but as a history of problem-situations and their modifications” (p. 177yf . By definition, theories in political science must be scientific, and they must be about politics. No reader of this essay need be reminded of the continuing agonies and antipathies generated in political science over deciding whether po- litical science is a “science” in any sense of the term and just who will get what, when, and how by determining ‘the content of “the political.” Nevertheless, some ineliminably partisan judgments in these connections are essential if only to determine relevant episodes of the history, to distinguish the “scientific” from the “extra-scientific” activities of past political scientists, or to distinguish the history of political science from the history of related activities, including, say, sociology, economics, or political thought more generally. Also in the balance may hang the nomination of a founder-or at least an honorable mention of fig- ures in a distant past-if, of course, the historian is into that line of business. If This content downloaded from 66.77.17.54 on Tue, 08 Mar 2022 18:29:19 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 1178 James Farr by political science, one means only the more-or-less empirical study of practical politics-as Murray (1925yf W U D G L W L R Q D O O G L G W K H Q $ U L V W R W O H I L J X U H V I L U V W , I R Q e means the historically inductive study of realpolitik, then Machiavelli deserves the honor. If one means the deduction of the character of the modern state from the first principles of motion, then Hobbes plays the part. If one means the New- tonian inspiration to “reduce politics to a science,” then Hume and other figures of the Scottish Enlightenment deserve initial mention (see Farr, 1988yf , I E S R – litical science, one means an academic discipline with a School devoted to study- ing the causal nexus of politics-as Somit and Tanenhaus (1967yf G L G W K H Q – R K n W. Burgess figures as founder; and everything before the School of Political Sci- ence founded at Columbia University in 1880 will be “prehistory.” Of course, the “science”- of these Founders-these Dead Heads, as one of my students once put it-may be questioned. Skeptics may well think that per- formance differed from promise, or that, say, certain normative commitments subverted their scientific quest. Such skeptics, accordingly, would date the ori- gins of political science in the more recent past, say with Merriam, Lasswell, the behavioral revolution, or the rise of positive political science (as Riker suggests in Finifter, 1983, p. 47yf 6 R P H P L J K W H Y H Q D U J X H W K D W D V R I H W W K H U H K D V E H H Q Q o “genuine” political science to speak of. Ironically, this is an old claim that scien- tific reformers in political science have been eager to press for well over a century now. John Stuart Mill did; so too did William B. Munro when in 1928 he spoke of “the backwardness in what may be called the pure science of politics” (1928, p. 1yf 6 L P L O D U V H Q W L P H Q W V K D Y H E H H Q K H D U G P R U H U H F H Q W O D V U H D G H U V Z L O O U H P H P – ber. This has at least one intriguing historiographical consequence. Since there is no genuine political science, there can be no history of it. One hopes for a fu- ture past. Facing the prospect of having no genuinely scientific past to remember, the historian of political science might find consolation in two ways. He or she might be satisfied, and wisely so, to identify “political science” nominally, that is, as a science in name only. Accordingly, he or she will prove to be relatively generous in telling the tales of those who, on their own reckoning and for whatever rea- sons, identified their theories and methods as contributions to “political sci- ence.” The historian here relaxes contemporary standards of “science” in order to identify his or her subject matter; and he or she follows the historiographical rule of thumb: wherever we- hear or read of “political science,” there is enough political science to tell its history. The historian of political science, second, might focus not so much on po- litical science, but on political science. This will entail not only saying what sort of politics political science studies but what sort of politics political science en- gages in. For on pain of writing utterly bloodless history, the historian of politi- cal science will want to tell the stories of political scientists and of the activities in which they were engaged. Science itself comprises a number of activities, of This content downloaded from 66.77.17.54 on Tue, 08 Mar 2022 18:29:19 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms HISTORY OF POLITICAL SCIENCE 1179 course, but beyond them are other activities of a more readily identifiable politi- cal sort. While these activities may vary, there is the historically predominant one of educating democratic citizens. One could even insist that political activi- ties such as this one, or even others of greater public visibility, represent those activities upon which the very identity of political science has rested and should again rest. No matter what choices a historian of political science makes in order to tell his or her story, other historians will complain and criticize. Whatever else they do, historians of political science do not merely record the past, and when they criticize one another, it is seldom simply over matters of fact. Our discussion to this point has tried to establish some of the extrafactual themes by which we can understand the accomplishments and criticisms of different historians of political science, and these themes are precisely those about which historians reveal their most partisan judgments. Whether about theories or science or politics or found- ers or episodes worthy of remembrance, such partisan judgments may well and usually will divide one historian from another. So, for example, if one historian fails to make perfectly clear the political as opposed to the scientific identity of political science (as Charles Merriam arguably did, if only in his 1925 bookyf , then he might incur the wrath of another historian of political science-like Ber- nard Crick (1959yf & U L F N W K R X J K W W K D W S R O L W L F D O V F L H Q F H D W O H D V W L Q $ P H U L F D K D U – bored some definite political beliefs of a distinctly liberal sort and that writing a history of political science according to scientific criteria simply recapitulated those liberal beliefs. He argued quite plainly that “the classification [of the devel- opment of political science] according to methodology is itself the expression of some substantive political beliefs, characteristic of American political thought” (1959, p. xvyf . Crick’s observation responded directly to Charles Merriam’s (1925yf L Q I O X H Q – tial periodization of “the chief lines of development of the study of political pro- cesses” (p. 132yf . 1. The a priori and deductive method, down to 1850. 2. The historical and comparative method, 1850- 1900. 3. The present tendency toward observation, survey, measurement, 1900-. 4. The beginnings of the psychological treatment of politics. Proceeding in reverse temporal order, we have a bare dawn, 25 years, 50 years, and 22 centuries. (This may well send up warning flags for the historian of political science, in addition to those political insignia that Crick espied fluttering there. For other recent periodizations, see Easton, 1985, and Berndtson in Anc- kar and Berndtson, 1987yf % X W W K H L P S R U W D Q W S R L Q W K H U H L V W K D W 0 H U U L D P L Q W H Q G H d to be scientific and relevant when periodizing the history of political science in this way. In doing so, though, he too was being critical of those who would peri- odize the history of political science differently, and he was using this history This content downloaded from 66.77.17.54 on Tue, 08 Mar 2022 18:29:19 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms i i8o James Farr very explicitly to criticize those political scientists who were insufficiently meth- odological and insufficiently psychological in their practice. History, in sum, can be used to serve contemporary purposes. In Merriam’s case, it was used to underwrite his own program to provide political science with a methodological foundation in experimental psychology. In Easton’s case it was used to clear the deck for systems theory. In Crick’s case it was used to criticize the political assumptions of American political science. In Somit and Tan- enhaus’s case it was used to help the discipline assess its then present state in the latter days of behavioralism’s ascendancy. Indeed it is hard to imagine that his- tory will not serve this or that contemporary purpose. But here too is judgment and partisanship and the opportunity for future criticism. 2 The authors of That Noble Science of Politics introduce their work with some methodological criticisms of previous (tactfully unnamedyf K L V W R U L D Q V R I S R – litical science. Their first is too humorous and too important not to quote in full. No future historian of political science will want his or her history to fit their lampoon. There is an unfortunately familiar way of simplifying the complexity of the intellectual life of the past into a conveniently unified story, one that is particularly favoured when supposedly tracing the history of a modem academic discipline, especially, perhaps, a discipline drawn from what are now regarded as the social sciences. In essence it consists in writing history backwards. The present theoretical consensus of the discipline, or possibly some polemical version of what that consensus should be, is in effect taken as definitive, and the past is then reconstituted as a teleology leading up to and fully manifested in it. Past authors are inducted into the canon of the discipline as precursors or forebears, and passed in review as though by a general distributing medals-and sometimes reprimands-at the end of a successful campaign, with the useful implied corollary that if medals can be distributed the campaign must have been brought to a satisfactory conclusion and the discipline duly established. The list of canonical precursors, arrayed in chronological order, each wearing a label conveniently summarising his “contribution,” then becomes the history of the discipline in question. As with “official histo- ries” in recently established republics, rival teams of great predecessors may be assembled in this way, ostensibly to proclaim and honour a tradition of surprising antiquity, but in fact to legitimate the claims of the current protagonists in the struggle for power. (1983, p. 4yf No reader of That Noble Science of Politics will find an “official history” between its covers. What he or she will find is a first-rate intellectual history of nineteenth-century British political science that will set standards for the histo- riography of the social sciences for some time. He or she must, however, be pre- pared to encounter a “curiously alien” subject matter and forgo any hopes of mapping and defending the “nebulous province” that political science has be- come (pp. 3, 365yf . Collini, Winch, and Burrow have chosen “a subject which no longer ap- pears on modern maps of knowledge” and which is “only indirectly related to what the twentieth century has come to know as the discipline of political science This content downloaded from 66.77.17.54 on Tue, 08 Mar 2022 18:29:19 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms HISTORY OF POLITICAL SCIENCE I 181 (p. 3yf : L W K J O D Q F H V E D F N D W ‘ D Y L G + X P H $ G D P 6 P L W K D Q G W K R V H H Q O L J K W H Q H d Scotsmen who first popularized the very language of the “science of politics” in the eighteenth century, the authors offer a series of selective studies in nineteenth- century political science beginning with the later Scottish Enlightenment figure, Dugald Stewart and ending with the formal introduction of “political science” to the syllabus at Cambridge in the closing years of the century. Along the way- and often connected by little more than their nominal invocation of the term “po- litical science”-several greater and lesser figures make their appearance, to be treated at some length, among them Thomas Malthus, David Ricardo, Sir James Mackintosh, Thomas B. Macaulay, James and John Stuart Mill, Walter Bagehot, William Stubbs, Sir Henry Sumner Maine, E. A. Freeman, Sir John Seeley, James Bryce, Cliffe Leslie, William Cunningham, W. J. Ashley, Henry Sidg- wick, Alfred Marshall, Graham Wallas, and a host of walk-ons. Each of the eleven chapters (plus prologue and epilogueyf E U L Q J V W R O L J K W D n important episode of this neglected stretch of intellectual history. Each chapter displays close textual and contextual analysis. Theories, problems, situations, and scientists come to life, even if they are alleged to be “curiously alien.” The authors let the words of the past animate the past, and they neither “conduct an inquisition” nor impose an infallible version of science on the history of political science, for they confess to being “agnostic on fundamental . . . epistemo- logical problems” (p. 7yf , Q V K R U W L I S R O L W L F D O V F L H Q F H Z D V D J R R G H Q R X J h boast or aspiration a century ago, it is good enough for history today. That Noble Science of Politics borrows its title from Thomas Babington Macaulay’s extravagant encomium of 1829 to “that Noble Science of Poli- tics . . . which, of all sciences, is the most important to the welfare of nations,- which of all sciences, most tends to expand and invigorate the mind,-which draws nutriment and ornament from every part of philosophy and literature, and dispenses, in return, nutriment and ornament to all” (p. 128yf ( W F H W H U D H t cetera, et cetera. This is pretty heady praise, outdone only by John Adams’s somewhat earlier sermonizing about “the divine science of politics” delivered an ocean away. Now Collini, Winch, and Burrow are not taken in by Macaulay’s vision of that noble science. They share none of that famous Whig’s politics, historiography, or penchant for progress. While they are generally sympathetic (in the historians’ special sort of wayyf Z L W K 0 D F D X O D D Q G W K H R W K H U S R O L W L F D O V F L – entists they discuss, they never alloW him or them to be above criticism for this or that foible of intellection. And they never let John Stuart Mill rest, despite their denials of inquisition: “How utter was Mill’s failure to implement the program of Book VI” of the Logic (p. 151yf 2 Q H F R X O G Z H O O L P D J L Q H V X F K F U L W L F L V P L V V X L Q g in a narrative of subsequent progress, even success, in dealing with Mill’s pro- gram or with the program of others. But nothing of the sort happens here. The authors are so partisan about their being “anti-Whig” (p. 5yf W K D W Q R W K L Q J U H – motely like “progress” is espied. Even the words “tradition” and “continuity” and “development” are used sparingly and suspiciously. This content downloaded from 66.77.17.54 on Tue, 08 Mar 2022 18:29:19 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms II82 James Farr Consequently, the authors have alleged to offer neither a “comprehensive survey” nor a “continuous narrative” (p. 3yf 7 K H U H L V P R U H W K D Q D O L W W O H X Q G H U – statement in this, at least in that the book offers the most comprehensive survey to date, and the essays overlap in enough ways to at least intimate significant continuities. There was a certain steadiness of the categories and concepts of nineteenth-century British political life that allowed its science to enjoy a relative stability, if not some progress. Also, as the chapter subtitles themselves suggest, theories of method dominate each chapter, and they establish narrative continu- ity. (Indeed readers are presumed to know quite a bit about the substantive politi- cal theories of the political scientists under discussionyf , Q W K L V V W R U S R O L W L F D O V F L – ence proves to be an intellectual practice, or the aspiration toward one, whose methodological theories and foundations were contested in and between genera- tions. Thus, although never in “overly neat patterns” (p. 280yf W K H K L V W R U R I S R – litical science is the history of the competition between the philosophic method, the historical method, the comparative method, and the method of reflective analysis. The categories of induction versus deduction are often heard. For those contemporary political scientists raised on a diet of scope-and-method texts, the rich varieties and subtle defenses of induction and deduction make for fascinat- ing reading-for a change. Furthermore-and this too could have been better articulated as a theme of narrative continuity-the methodological debates had their political bearings. In particular, the travails of representative democracy were felt in political science. At one point in the seventh chapter, on “the appeal of the Comparative Method,” the authors intimate as much in general terms: “Demonstrating or denying the possibility of successful popular government had, of course, been one of the most important practical spurs to the development of a science of politics from at least the middle of the century” (p. 237yf . The method of politics and the politics of method are hardly distinguishable when turning to particular episodes, as well. Thus, for example, readers are re- minded of “the political character of political economy” because “it was, above all, its commanding role in the discussion of public affairs that made political economy a prize so clearly worth fighting for” (ppr 261, 274-75yf 7 K H F R P – parative method, to take another example, began not as a mere methodological exercise in classification (much less “remorseless cataloguing,” p. 243yf E X W D V D n adjunct to a developmental framework on essentially Aryan-racialist lines that naturally had its uses in the Empire. Or, yet again, consider the methodological plea by James Bryce for “Facts, Facts, Facts.” American political scientists might remember the words of this future fourth president of the APSA as an epi- graph in the Political System where it became a convenient target of Easton’s (1953yf D V V D X O W R Q K S H U I D F W X D O L V P D Q G F U X G H H P S L U L F L V P S S f. In the story by Collini, Winch, and Burrow, however, Bryce’s “energetic empiri- cism” is presented not only as a methodological position but also as a political This content downloaded from 66.77.17.54 on Tue, 08 Mar 2022 18:29:19 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms HISTORY OF POLITICAL SCIENCE II83 one that was enlisted to fight ignorance and so-in one of the best lines of the book-“to make America safe for democracy’s supporters” (p. 240yf . In the end, what did it come to and what does it mean to us today? Collini, Winch, and Burrow are forthcoming in answering the former question: “It is tempting to conclude that for over a century the category of a ‘science of politics’ had been as empty as a dress-maker’s window, ready to be filled by the latest wave of fashion” (p. 376yf 2 Q H L V D O V R W H P S W H G W R V D W K D W W K H G U H V V P D N H U L V V W L O l in business. But the authors do not themselves say this; they only remotely hint at what sort of practices they think inhabit the “nebulous province” of political sci- ence in our century. Indeed, they say hardly anything at all about contemporary political science or its connection with the past. The “curiously alien” subject matter of That Noble Science of-Politics is allowed to remain curious and alien. While there is something refreshingly honest about this historiographical posture, one wonders if it does not sell itself short. In any case, one wonders how to encourage contemporary political scientists who take their discipline seriously to read this important book-assuming, as is likely, that they will yearn to see some connections between past and present, and even some hopes for the future. Well, contemporary political scientists assuredly will not find a long-lost catalog of ready-made problems or theories or data which might be resumed forthwith. They might, however, find their predecessors considerably less alien than adver- tised, not only in their methodological disputes, many of which continue today in virtually the same terms, but when considering their broader attachment to democratic politics. This connects past and present, and perhaps points beyond. As one historian of political science has recently observed, political science “co- incided with the growth of representative democracy. The logical conclusion seems to be that the development of political science as we understand it is de- pendent on the future of representative democracy” (Berndtson in Anckar and Berndtson, 1987, p. 98yf , I H Y H Q L I W K L V V H H P V W R J L Y H S R O L W L F D O V F L H Q F H D S D U W L F X – larly fragile identity in the present context-which, as we shall see below, Ricci and Seidelman both intimate-then perhaps the nineteenth century provides us with materials for reflection not because of its noble pretensions, but because of its very “shortcomings” (p. 376yf $ U H Z H G R R P H G W R U H S H D W W K H S D V W ” , I V R O H W L t not be because we forgot those aspirations now a century and more old, or failed to learn from their failures. 3 Two purposes inform the very different enterprise of Politics and Para- digms. In tracing the change in theories of change, Andrew C. Janos sets out (1yf “to write an intellectual history, however sketchy, of the evolution of modern political science” and (2yf W R W D N H V W R F N W R F O D U L I D Q G W R F U H D W H R U G H U D P R Q J W K e recent crop of competing theories” (p. 4yf 7 K H I L U V W S X U S R V H K R S H V W R H Q O L J K W H n the discipline about its recent “trials and tribulations.” The second hopes to This content downloaded from 66.77.17.54 on Tue, 08 Mar 2022 18:29:19 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms II84 James Farr benefit political scientists “in organizing empirical research and in comparing political phenomena in Western, non-Western, and Communist societies, within a single, unified intellectual construct” (p. 4yf 6 L Q F H W K H E R R N H Q G V R Q D Y H U y “cautious” note-that “instead of formulating yet another general theory, we seem to be content with discerning loci of indeterminacy in larger cycles of change” (pp. 153-54yf R Q H F D Q Q R W E X W F R Q F O X G H W K D W W K H V H F R Q G S X U S R V H K D s not been fully realized, since no unified intellectual construct in fact emerges. Indeed Janos’s penultimate line hints at something just shy of despair: “social scientists create robust structures in the knowledge that they may be standing in quicksand” (p. 154yf . As our center of gravity sinks, the book deserves its due. It is, in the spirit of the second purpose, a helpful bibliographical essay for advanced students (of all agesyf L Q W H U H V W H G L Q D Q R Y H U Y L H Z R I P R V W O U H F H Q W f theories of political change. It should prove especially aidworthy for those students who, like Janos himself, have a particular theoretical problem and who want to assess or to introduce that problem in broader intellectual terms. Originally, Janos planned his book as “the introduction to a larger study designed to compare the politics of Eastern Europe in the pre-Communist and Communist periods” (p. viiyf . The first purpose of Politics and Paradigms-to write an intellectual his- tory of modern political science-concerns us here. Unlike Collini, Winch, and Burrow, Janos designs an unabashedly disciplinary history that leads up to and tries to inform the present. He focuses very selectively on theories of change, as opposed to the discipline as a whole or to the methodological idea of “political science” itself. And, most important, he organizes his history around a much stronger and more scientific narrative device-namely, paradigms, or rather paradigm shifts, in the sense given to this notion some 25 years ago by Thomas Kuhn. While this last feature of the book is a presumptive strength, it is in fact its central weakness. The antipositivist model of scientific change that Kuhn sketched in the Structure of Scientific Revolutions (published in 1962 ironically in the positivist Encyclopedia of Unified Scienceyf K D V S U R P S W H G V R P X F K G L V F X V V L R Q D Q G V R P X F h criticism that one scarcely needs to gloss it at all. Janos himself makes short work of it in his introduction and conclusion and, in the process, fails or chooses not to mention key terms like “normal science,” “exemplars,” “puzzle-solving,” “in- commensurability,” or “scientific revolutions.” The relativistic features are not underscored, especially Kuhn’s own skepticism about any cross-paradigm no- tions of theoretical progress. Trimming and simplifying, then, Janos says that paradigms are “constructs identifying broad relationships between two or more general categories, together with some basic assumptions concerning the nature of a larger universe” (p. 1yf 7 K H R U H W L F D O O S D U D G L J P V R U J D Q L ] H U H V H D U F K D Q G S V – chologically and sociologically, they bind researchers into a community. It is in the nature of things that paradigms discover anomalies, though these are shelved This content downloaded from 66.77.17.54 on Tue, 08 Mar 2022 18:29:19 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms HISTORY OF POLITICAL SCIENCE II85 whenever possible. But over time these anomalies mount and lead to crisis. “In the end, the discipline may simply collapse” (p. 2yf R U L W P D L V V X H L Q D Q H Z S D U D – digm that, strictly speaking, is incompatible with the former one. Janos mentions the history of physics as the archetypal example of all this. He goes on to ac- knowledge, as he must, that “Kuhn’s critics may well be justified in questioning the universal relevance of the model. Still,” he continues, “the sequence of events he suggests and the concept of a paradigm shift seem to be eminently ap- plicable to the experience of the social sciences, and within them, to the experi- ence of political inquiry” (p. 3yf . This is a surprisingly sanguine judgment. Kuhn’s own misgivings about the social sciences being “pre-paradigmatic”-their interminably warring schools of thought, their inability to share exemplars or a common set of puzzles-are cited but not heeded by Janos. Instead, readers are assured that “over the years, however, the paradigm concept gained quick and widespread acceptance among students of social science and the humanities” (p. 157, n. 6yf 7 K L V L V D W E H V W D n overstatement; at worst, simply false. And the basis for the judgment is never made clear. Indeed in comparison with the rich and nearly exhaustive citation of works about theories of political change, Janos only cites the Structure of Scien- tific Revolutions itself and three essays in an edited volume (Gutting, 1980yf W o support his historiographical claims. But almost every other (unmentionedyf H V V D y in that very volume-not to mention numerous others (for beginnings in political science alone, see Landau, 1972; Moon, 1975; Ball, 1976; and Bernstein, 1978yf U H M H F W R U T X D O L W D W L Y H O W U D Q V I R U P . X K Q V L G H D V H V S H F L D O O I R U W K H V R F L D l sciences. M. D. King says that “sociologists cannot . . . expect to find in Kuhn’s work a ready-made theory of scientific change” (Gutting, 1980, p. 115yf 0 D U k Blaug offers the summary judgment that “the term ‘paradigm’ ought to be ban- ished from economic literature” (p. 137yf D Q G W K H H G L W R U K L P V H O I G H F O D U H V W K D W L t would almost surely be a good idea to declare a moratorium on applications of Kuhn to the methodology and history of the social sciences” (p. 18yf . Even if the idea of a paradigm were in principle irreproachable, one might still question some of the particular historiographical judgments in Politics and Paradigms. Consider, for starters, the identity of the first “classical” paradigm. It turns on the concept of innovation and especially the human attempt to master the material environment, whether such mastery is further explained in terms of individual self-interest or in terms of overall social equilibrium. This paradigm is founded in the 1760s by Adam Smith, and its principal protagonists thereafter include all the sociological masters of the nineteenth century: Karl Marx, Au- guste Comte, Herbert Spencer, Emile Durkheim, and Max Weber. The neo- classical variant of the paradigm-developed to extend its implications to non- Western societies-found champions in Thorstein Veblen, V. I. Lenin, Talcott Parsons, and a host of relatively recent scholars, including Walt Rostow, Seymour Martin Lipset, Samuel Huntington, Karl Deutsch, Lucien Pye, Barrington Moore, This content downloaded from 66.77.17.54 on Tue, 08 Mar 2022 18:29:19 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms II86 James Farr and Reinhard Bendix (to whom the book is dedicatedyf 7 K H Q V R P H W L P H L Q W K e mid to late 1960s, the “classical paradigm” could no longer explain new anoma- lous developments-in Latin America, in Africa, in Eastern Europe. A new para- digm emerged, we are told, one which took a more global purchase on political change and emphasized cultural and postindustrial, as well as material, factors. Perry Anderson, Theda Skocpol, Daniel Bell, Morris Janowitz, Immanuel Wal- lerstein, Andre Gunder Frank, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Seweryn Bialer, Kenneth Jowett, and Jurgen Habermas-to begin a much longer list-came to and con- tinue to articulate this new paradigm. One could be forgiven for thinking that these various theorists faced such significantly different problems in such radically different situations that they do not form two coherent wholes-, much less paradigms in Kuhn’s sense. Janos’s two “paradigms” appear to be heuristic devices-holding tanks, really-for a sweeping diversity of theories that overlap in various ways and that, without ty- pological violation, could be sorted into very different sets and into a far greater number of them than two. On the matter of dates and changes in general, Janos is right: something happened in the late 1960s which influenced a wide range of (liberal, conser- vative, and Marxistyf W K L Q N H U V $ Q G K H G R H V K L Q W D W D Q L P S R U W D Q W H [ S O D Q D W L R Q I R r changes in theories of change (even if they do not comprise a paradigmyf + e suggests, rightly, that “the dominant position of neo-liberal social science and of the theory of modernization [associated with the so-called classical paradigm] came to an abrupt end in the late 1960s under the impact of developments that shattered the complacent world of established social science,” especially “the rise of radical sentiment during the Vietnam era” (p. 70yf 3 R O L W L F D O V F L H Q F H L Q – deed often changes its theories because of new political developments external to its theories and the academy itself. Janos could and perhaps should have made even more of this and its bearing on the history of modern political science, espe- cially given his knowledgeable sensitivity to the political leanings of different theories and theorists of political change. But one thing merits final notice: if true, not Kuhnian. Kuhn’s sketch of scientific change-in general and, espe- cially, in the particular case studies he provides-depends upon developments internal to the scientific community. In the end, then, we should look beyond paradigms for a narrative-and especially for a political narrative-to tell the history of political science. 4 If Kuhn does not provide an appropriate narrative framework for the history of political science, he nonetheless plays a significant part in one of its episodes. Indeed so suggestive was he in the 1960s that he seemed capable of performing virtually any task, at least in the hands of his many taskmasters. When he was not being used to condemn Political Theory and praise Political Science, he was This content downloaded from 66.77.17.54 on Tue, 08 Mar 2022 18:29:19 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms HISTORY OF POLITICAL SCIENCE II87 being used to condemn Political Science and praise Political Theory. In David Ricci’s (1984yf W H O O L Q J R I W K L V F R Q W U D G L F W R U H S L V R G H . X K Q S O D H G D S D U W D O R Q J – side the Counterculture, the Caucus for a New Political Science, the shift to policy studies, and mainstream political scientists who “co-opted” him-in the disci- pline’s development during that “decade of disillusionment” when the universities exploded in student demonstrations, liberalism lost most of its vitality, behav- ioralism sighed the last gasp of “Popperism,” and the crisis of democracy be- came a crisis in the discipline. If this seems a sweeping story line that is in equal parts sociology of knowl- edge, methodology, democratic theory, and drama, then it is a plot by design. The Tragedy of Political Science tells a dramatic story of “American political science as an academic discipline” (p. 3yf V R F L R O R J L F D O O I R U P H G D Q G W U D Q V I R U P H d as a profession within the modern university, methodologically fixated on the “Temple of Science” (p. 54yf S R O L W L F D O O D Q G W K H R U H W L F D O O G H G L F D W H G W R X Q G H U – standing and transmitting the values of democracy. But trouble broods over this story because the discipline’s pursuit of science conflicts with its devotion to democratic politics. Time and again, political scientists discover things that deny key tenets of democratic theory, particularly the rationality and informedness of ordinary citizens. Commitment to value-free inquiry and the refinement of scien- tific techniques also proscribe the scope of study into indispensable democratic values, such as patriotism and mutual respect. The organizational pressures of the modern university perpetuate the conflict between science and democracy, particularly by counseling safe science at the expense of publishing works of risk and relevance to democracy. Indeed so persistent is the conflict between the dis- cipline’s two “good ends” (“the acceptance of scientific techniques and attach- ment to democratic ideals,” p. 24yf W K D W L Q L W 5 L F F L I L Q G V K L V Q D U U D W L Y H G H Y L F H + e analogizes the predicament of political science to a literary tragedy, reminiscent of Oedipus, Antigone, or Billy Budd. “As a tragic protagonist, the discipline’s collective shortcoming is located in a stubborn insistence on studying politics scientifically, even though inquiry in that mode cannot insure the health of a democratic society” (p. 25yf . The whole history of political science is a stage, then, and each of its epi- sodes plays to tragedy. The Kuhn episode is only one, or rather part of one, and it begins the story in media res. After a general introductory chapter, Ricci be- gins his history proper with some general sociological observations about “the locus of higher education” in the late nineteenth century when the universities replaced colleges and when the learned disciplines created professional associa- tions consistent with middle-class culture. In chapter 3 we witness the birth of political science as an academic discipline at the turn of the century, though the “contradictions” of its development up to 1930 reflect the intellectual and politi- cal commitments to liberalism which predisciplinary political science had forged as early as 1825. From the beginning, then, there was a tragic telos. This content downloaded from 66.77.17.54 on Tue, 08 Mar 2022 18:29:19 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms I i88 James Farr Because America was so overwhelmingly devoted to the principles and practices of democratic liberalism, the end for political science was virtually laid down in advance, and any discoveries the discipline might make would either engender support for that end or-and here was the danger-detract from existing support by revealing the existence of bad citizenship and en- couraging more of the same. (p. 70yf Chapters 4 through 6 (“The New View of Science and Politics,” “The Be- havioral Persuasion,” and “The Decade of Disillusionment”yf P D N H X S W K H K L V – torical centerpiece of the book. They span and periodize “the midcentury liberal matrix” from 1930 to about 1975. The subsequent two chapters are more ana- lytical, especially the eighth on the methodological debates over nomothetic laws which attended community power studies and critical theory. In discussing “the loss of wisdom” (pp. 236ff.yf W K H V H Y H Q W K F K D S W H U D Q W L F L S D W H V W K H H V V H Q W L D O O y moral reflections of the last chapter, which shares the book’s title, but which also asks “can something be done?” Each chapter keeps up an energetic pace just short of breathtaking. Debates over methodology and democratic theory sustain the tragic narrative set in the university. Scores of political scientists make ap- pearances, most of them rather brief-from Francis Lieber and John W. Burgess to Woodrow Wilson and Charles Merriam to Robert Dahl and William Riker. Ironically-if only because they were not academic political scientists-John Dewey and Karl Popper receive the most sustained attention of all. So influential does Ricci find their reflections on science and democracy that he even has two ideologies emerge from them, namely, Deweyism and Popperism. The overall framework for Ricci’s thoughtful and ambitious history of Ameri- can political science seems absolutely the right one: the connection of American political science with American politics, which in the nature of the beast means liberalism and representative democracy. Moreover, the history helps serve con- temporary moral and political reflections on the discipline’s loss of and hopes for recovering wisdom and democratic service. In passing in review so many events, theories, and theorists, The Tragedy of Political Science amasses a bibliographic treasure. The footnotes alone will assist practicing historians of American politi- cal science, especially those who will want to chase down this or that theorist, this or that disciplinary crisis. Doubtless, some skeptics will join this chase. Some might, for example, challenge the treatment of Popper, or rather Popperism. While not a political sci- entist, Popper does seem to fit the story quite well. He was influential in the post- World War II period, especially for his books which espoused a liberal and scien- tific “open society.” (Popper called these books his “war work.”yf + R Z H Y H U K L s methodological influence on political science, especially behavioral political sci- ence, is much less clear, and Ricci’s discussion and footnotes do not establish it. When behavioralist tenets and their philosophical bona fides were articulated (and often, of course, they were left somewhat vagueyf W K H I U H T X H Q W O H P S K D – sized positivistic notions of verification, operationalization, and psychological This content downloaded from 66.77.17.54 on Tue, 08 Mar 2022 18:29:19 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms HISTORY OF POLITICAL SCIENCE I I89 hypotheses about human behavior. But Popper intended his doctrine of falsifica- tion to refute not supplement verification; operationalization emphasized the im- portance of redefining concepts, a task that Popper thought was relatively minor for the growth of knowledge; and the method of situational analysis was for- warded to displace if not replace psychology. No wonder he boasted of “killing positivism” (1976, p. 88yf , I D V 5 L F F L F O D L P V 3 R S S H U L V P F D Q E H I X U W K H U F U H G – ited with providing an accumulationist or “building-block” conception of the growth of science (p. 141yf D V W U D L J K W O L Q H Y L H Z R I N Q R Z O H G J H S f, and a call for piecemeal research (as opposed to piecemeal social engineeringyf W K H n Popper was no Popperist. Given this, Popperism seems to fit the story rather too well, as if it were required to. Suspicions along this score are not allayed with transitions of this kind: “And so, for our story to continue smoothly, it was nec- essary that a large-scale shift to Popperism take place. It did, conveniently, in what came to be called ‘the end of ideology’ movement” (p. 126; empha- sis addedyf . The very idea of tragedy also seems more than a trifle strained. While it makes for a rhetorically charged title and promises a dramatic narrative device, there is no real fall of the collective protagonist (political scienceyf I U R P D J U H D t height. And though each generation cries “crisis,” political science has not suf- fered a prolonged agony of historical self-revelation, much less self-destruction, characteristic of an Oedipus or an Antigone. Less grandly, it is not clear that political science must fail tragically to achieve science and serve democracy. Ricci himself hints at this and never more so than when he asks in conclusion, “Can something be done?” He is not wildly optimistic about the discipline as a whole, since there is “nothing or very little” it can do (even though he adds, rather surprisingly, that “there is great virtue in the overall shape of the disci- pline,” p. 308yf % X W D V L Q G L Y L G X D O S R O L W L F D O V F L H Q W L V W V Z K R W H D F K L Q X Q L Y H U V L W L H s and colleges, we can be more historical (p. 311yf Z H F D Q H Q F R X U D J H U H I O H F W L R n into the admittedly intangible “realm of morals” (p. 304yf D Q G Z H F D Q V H D U F h out wisdom via renewed dedication to continuing a great conversation embodied in great books, new and old” (p. 315yf . Ricci is wise not to make overly much of these proposals. But we might notice one final thing about them. Although they are tendered as contributions to something other than the “Temple of Science,” they do revive and remember the meaning of “science” in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in those intel- lectual practices explicitly called “moral science” and “political science” (of the sort Collini, Winch, and Burrow discussedyf 2 Q H V W H S E D F N P L J K W K H O S X V W D N e two steps forward. But this suggests not only that we might yet learn from the past, but that in doing so we are doing nothing less and nothing more than what political science has always done, namely, engaging in that disciplinary ritual of reconceptualizing “science” (and perhaps “democracy,” tooyf , Q W K L V W L P H – honored way we continue to hope to avoid tragedy, not suffer it. This content downloaded from 66.77.17.54 on Tue, 08 Mar 2022 18:29:19 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms II90 James Farr 5 The prospects of this hope coming to good account may well depend upon a future beyond liberalism. This would be an enchanted new world for American political scientists, a profession of realists heretofore disenchanted with their very own programs for liberal reform. Given the past, the future can only look bright. Consider the not altogether optimistic closing paragraph of Disenchanted Realists, the last of our four recent histories of political science. Historically, political science professionalism has only obscured fundamental conflicts and choices in American public life, for it has treated citizens as objects of study or clients of a benign political paternalism. The democratic delusions of American political science have al- ways excluded and feared a future beyond liberalism. Until political scientists realize that their democratic politics cannot be realized through a barren professionalism, intellectual life will remain cleaved from the genuine if heretofore subterranean democratic dreams of American citizens. Political science history has confirmed this separation, even as it has tried to bridge it. Modem political science must bridge it, if delusions are to be transformed into new democratic realities. (p. 241yf No inductive fallacy is committed here, to put it mildly. The future of politi- cal science must be different, since its past-or at least on Raymond Seidelman and Edward Harpham’s telling of a good part of its past-reveals a “tradition” marked by generational cycles of optimism with the prospects of realistic politi- cal reform turning sour in the face of the realities of state politics and popular indifference. The intractability of these “raw slabs of reality” (p. 85yf V H H P V W o have finally done in this tradition-this “third tradition,” a century less vener- able than the other two traditions, the institutionalist and the radical democratic- that it intended to replace. Until the “eclipse of unity,” roughly contempo- raneous with the postbehavioral era, political scientists who were part of this third tradition “blended scholarship and political advocacy, a science of politics with a science ‘for’ politics” (p. 3yf , Q S D U W L F X O D U W K H V R X J K W W R P R O G D Q H w State with what they [saw] as native American forms of democratic legitimacy” (p. 8yf % X W G L V H Q F K D Q W P H Q W D Q G G L V L O O X V L R Q P H Q W R Y H U F R P H H D F K J H Q H U D W L R Q I U R m 1884 to 1984, until we can now speak of the veritable, if not quite apocalyptic, “end of the third tradition” (ch. 7yf : K D W H Y H U L W V V F L H Q W L I L F D V S L U D W L R Q V F R Q W H P – porary political science is at present largely apolitical, at least in that we now witness “the increasing insulation of political science from the realities of poli- tics, power and protest in twentieth century America” (p. xixyf . Seidelman and Harpham spread this story out over seven chapters, the cen- tral five of which are historical. Each of these five chapters presents the theories and activities of two leading political scientists in the third tradition. Lester Ward and Woodrow Wilson represent the impulses toward a science of political reform in the late nineteenth century. Arthur Bentley and Charles Beard bring out the muckraking tendencies of Progressive political scientists. Charles Merriam and This content downloaded from 66.77.17.54 on Tue, 08 Mar 2022 18:29:19 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms HISTORY OF POLITICAL SCIENCE II9I his finest pupil Harold Lasswell end up disillusioned with the reformist New Deal. V. 0. Key and David Truman forge the transition from reformism to be- havioralism. Theodore Lowi and Walter Dean Burnham preside over the eclipse of unity of the third tradition and bring us to its end. Each of these thinkers is treated at some length, in the manner of Collini, Winch, and Burrow. Their po- litical theories dominate the analysis, at the expense of their methodological ones, when these two can be separated. Of course, often they cannot be sepa- rated. As in the case of Charles Beard, “questions of scientific method were of direct political relevance” (p. 83yf , Q G H H G W K L U G W U D G L W L R Q W K L Q N H U V K H O G D F X O – tural definition of the scientific ideal. Not only a method of study, social science [was] more important as a peculiarly American disposition to political thought and practice” (p. 8yf 6 R L W L V W K L V V W R U R I S R O L W L F D O V F L H Q F H D V D S H F X O L D U O y American disposition” that is told in Disenchanted Realists. While each of the ten political scientists receives respectful treatment, there is no romance what- soever. Their “impossible contradictions and tensions” (p. 3yf D U H N H S W H Y H U L n view, and in the end, they are chastised for having “for too long thought about and defined and looked for reform in all the wrong places” (p. 229yf . Not since Bernard Crick’s American Science of Politics has the history of political science been so critical in intent or execution. “If we have erred,” the authors acknowledge at the outset, “we hope it is on the side of provocation rather than pedantry” (p. xixyf 6 X U H O W K L V K R S H K D V E H H Q I X O I L O O H G 5 H D G H U V Z L O l not find pedantry in these pages; the book is lively, intelligent, and thought- provoking throughout. Alternatively, many readers will feel the sting of provoca- tion, no matter whether they consider themselves “acritical” behavioralists who accept “the givenness of American democracy” (pp. 16, 185yf Q H R F R Q V H U Y D W L Y H s who would reverse Woodrow Wilson and breathe Prussian air back into the American state; left-leaning rebels of the stripe once or still in that “curious mode of professionalized dissent” known as the Caucus for a New Political Sci- ence; or liberal reformers of the nearly extinct or “phantom” variety (p. 200yf , like Theodore Lowi (who writes a generous if unrepentant foreword to the bookyf . Provocations aside, Disenchanted Realists makes some historiographical choices and partisan judgments that are not above question or criticism, particu- larly those attendant to the very idea of a “third tradition.” The book, on pain of “sanity,” does not claim to offer a “complete” history of political science (p. xixyf L Q G H H G L W I R U V Z H D U V D Q W K L Q J R W K H U W K D Q D V H O H F W H G L Q W H U S U H W D W L R Q R f those [political scientists] who built the discipline as a science of democracy”” (p. 2yf < H W I U H T X H Q W O W K H V W X G R I V R P H O L E H U D O U H I R U P H U V D P R Q J S R O L W L F D O V F L H Q – tists gives way, and understandably so, to more sweeping statements about American political science as such. (And how many political scientists would disavow theirs as a science of democracy?yf ) X U W K H U P R U H W K H V W U D W H J R I G L V V H F W – ing pairs of heavies for each generation has evident merits. But it seems to imply greater conformity of self-conception than any generational study could probably This content downloaded from 66.77.17.54 on Tue, 08 Mar 2022 18:29:19 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 1192 James Farr withstand. Even so, the particular choices of the 10 political scientists, as repre- sentatives of political science, are instinctively quite good ones, and no one, I suspect, would challenge them, even if they would like to see other figures cov- ered as well, or as substitutes. But other figures could materially affect the story. In his foreword, for ex- ample, Lowi protests the neglect in Disenchanted Realists of “an important in- tellectual Right, sometimes called neo-conservatism” (p. xviiyf 6 D P X H O + X Q W – ington does appear in the last chapter, where Seidelman and Harpham allow that “neo-conservatives have effectively mixed academic research with influence over an enlightened corporate and governmental elite” (p. 237yf : K D W H Y H U H O V e one may want to say about this (and one senses that the authors have plenty more to say about ityf L W G R H V Q R W V X V W D L Q R X U V X E M H F W Q D P H O W K H L Q F U H D V L Q J L Q – sulation of political science from the realities of politics, power and protest in twentieth century America” (p. xixyf , Q V K R U W W K H G H P L V H R I W K H W K L U G W U D G L W L R Q R r the exhaustion of liberal reform in political science is not the demise of political advocacy or the exhaustion of political reform as such. Neoconservative political scientists, or others, have simply assumed the mantle once worn by liberals. Or take a very different sort of example. Would the story not be materially influenced if Robert Dahl were headlined in the penultimate chapter? At one point the authors state that “whatever his contribution to the discipline, Dahl did little during the behavioral era to move the third tradition beyond the logic found in the work of Key and Truman” (p. 159yf 3 H U K D S V V R G X U L Q J W K H E H K D Y L R U D l era.” But what of Dahl’s concern with workers’ democracy expressed all along, or his even more explicit democratic socialist leanings earlier and later? Did he then move the third tradition beyond its logic? Did he move beyond the third tradition? Does this tell us something different about the history of American political science in the midtwentieth century? This raises a more general question about the 10 political scientists, as rep- resentatives of the “third tradition,” leaving aside political science as a whole. The pair of behavioralists-Key and Truman-seem to be at odds over some- thing as fundamental as whether to trust citizens or elites, not only between themselves but each with his former self: Key turning coat to trust citizens; Truman, elites. Bentley’s striking antistatism and Beard’s anticapitalism seem hardly supportive or definitive of the liberal third tradition, and more of the radi- cal second tradition which traces its paternity back to Thomas Paine. And the “strange populism of the founder of American sociology,” Lester Ward, is not only drastically out of character with Woodrow Wilson, but he is occasionally described by the authors as a “radical democrat,” which is the very description given to the second tradition (p. 38yf $ W W K L V S R L Q W W K H T X H V W L R Q G R H V Q R W V H H P W o be merely a typological one: Into which “tradition” do these 10, or other, politi- cal scientists fit? Rather, it seems to be whether the third tradition really exists or ever existed. While Disenchanted Realists does not fall victim to the most evi- This content downloaded from 66.77.17.54 on Tue, 08 Mar 2022 18:29:19 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms HISTORY OF POLITICAL SCIENCE 1193 dent myths associated with the idea of a tradition (see Skinner, 1969; Gunnell, 1979yf L W G R H V Q R W V X F F H H G L Q H V W D E O L V K L Q J W K H E R X Q G D U L H V R U G D W H V R U F K D P S L R Q s associated with the three so-called; traditions, especially the third. If it were to turn out that the beginning and the end of the so-called third tradition were but literary events of a book, nothing much would hang on it as regards the history of political science or the -power of Disenchanted Realists. Liberal reform helped frame much of the political identity of American political science, and the disillusionment, which its perceived and real failures helped bring on, is part of the history of political science since the late nineteenth cen- tury, “traditions” notwithstanding. If liberalism, like capitalism, proves more re- silient in the face of the future than some have suggested and others have feared, it will require a shot of optimism presently absent from political science. As Seidelman and Harpham rightly note-and in fact help to bring about-we do need more “self-examination within the political science discipline” (p. xixyf W K e rekindling of which can find its air, if not its heat, in the history of political sci- ence itself. 6 Inattention to the history of political science has clearly come to an end. Thanks in good part to the authors of the works discussed here, political science in Britain and America in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has once again become an object worthy of serious historiographical and critical attention. Stu- dents of political science will doubtless find things to criticize in these works, and I have tried to suggest some of those things, in particular the narrative de- vices offered by paradigms, tragedy, and traditions. But the inevitable criticisms aside, students of political science are lucky to find such diversity in these histo- rians: in critics like Seidelman and Harpham; in a reflective moral theorist like Ricci; in a chronicler of significant theories like Janos; in intellectual histo- riographers like Collini, Winch, and Burrow. And despite their very many differ- ences, something of a composite image of political science, past and present, emerges from their collective efforts. Political science appears from the very beginning, however we date that, to be a diverse and pluralistic enterprise, even though it cannot be said to display genuine theoretical progress. It sustains crisis after crisis in its theories and meth- ods, and it is fully involved with the political crises of the world around it, espe- cially those attendant to liberalism and democracy. Politically and scientifically, political science harbors an alien past, a tragic or disenchanted present, and an unknown future. Other recent historians of political science have drawn similar conclusions. David Easton (1985yf K D V R E V H U Y H G W K D W W K H U H D U H Q R Z V R P D Q D S – proaches to political research that political science seems to have lost its pur- pose” (p. 143yf – R K Q * X Q Q H O O W R R K D V Q R W H G D G L V S H U V L R Q R I S R O L W L F D O V F L H Q F e and drawn an equally anomic conclusion. “Archaeological analysis tends to This content downloaded from 66.77.17.54 on Tue, 08 Mar 2022 18:29:19 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 1194 James Farr produce skepticism, since it demonstrates the inevitability of mortality and the demise of the present. Digging into the past of American political science is no exception” (in Finifter, 1983, pp. 5, 38yf . This is not a comforting image of political science, and for that reason some political scientists will resist it or seek to reinterpret it or even try to change it. But to do this is to engage in the same general enterprise. That is, writing a his- tory of political science, albeit a different one, will prove to be the most appro- priate response from those who wish to see something else prevail over this dis- comforting image of our discipline. The digging will continue. In the meantime we should all agree that the various historians of political science discussed above have raised and tried to answer some broader questions that are well worth raising and trying to answer: How have others written and how should we write about the history of political science? What, if anything, might we learn from the political science of the nineteenth century or earlier? What is the relation, if any, between political science’s less-remote past, its present state, and its future pros- pects? What is or should be scientific about political science? What is or should be political about political science? The identity of political science depends upon the answers we give to these questions, and since our answers ineluctably will involve judgments about the history of our discipline, we can see in conclu- sion how our identity depends upon how we understand our history. Manuscript submitted 21 July 1987 Final manuscript received 4 April 1988 REFERENCES Agassi, Joseph. 1963. Towards an historiography of science, History and Theory, Beiheft 2:1-117. Anckar, Dag, and Erkki Berndtson, eds. 1987. The evolution of political science: Selected case stud- ies. International Political Science Review, 8: 5- 103. Ball, Terence. 1976. From paradigms to research programs: Toward a post-Kuhnian political science. American Journal of Political Science, 20:151-77. Bernstein, Richard J. 1978. The restructuring of social and political theory. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Collini, Stefan, Donald Winch, and John Burrow. 1983. 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