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Theory and the Study of Politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

W. H. Greenleaf
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Extract

Political science or political studies or government is a rather odd subject, something of a mixture, as indicated by its diverse origins and the various influences which have moulded it. In our universities it was affected by and grew out of the study of the classics, philosophy, law and jurisprudence, economics, history, geography, literature, and so on. The list of pre-existing and established academic subjects which acted as a sort of hydra-headed godfather is considerable. An important impulse in its development was provided, too, by ideology and practical purpose. I have in mind here the ethos represented, for instance, by the Webbs and the foundation of the LSE, by the teaching of people such as Cole, Laski, Hobhouse, Tawney and, more remotely, Green and Jowett. The idea was that the subject was one of considerable pragmatic value and offered practical advantages to be achieved, perhaps, by some sort of reforming doctrinal emphasis. But the general effect of this variety of influences and stress is that there is no obvious or uniform academic focus: the subject seems (in terms of the intellectual and other forces at work) essentially eclectic. Nevertheless something like a traditional form did emerge. Generally there was a distinction between ‘institutions’ and ‘theory’, though naturally, given the dissimilar sources and influences mentioned, what has been comprised by these titles has varied somewhat. ‘Institutions’, for example, could cover a concentration on the formal machinery of government simply or it might expand to embrace parties, groups, the formation of opinion and so on.

Type
Articles
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 2 , Issue 4 , October 1972 , pp. 467 - 477
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1972

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References

1 This condition can take an acute form. For instance, only four or five years ago there reached the shores of Britain echoes of an apparently bitter controversy that seemed to be taking place in some American universities about the respective roles in a political science department of the naturalistic and more traditional approaches. And in a recent number of the American Political Science Review (December 1969), there may be read the shrill cries of those rather strange bedfellows, Professors Easton and Wolin, about the failure of political scientists to help effectively in tackling the many major problems now manifest in American life.

2 Mackenzie, W. J. M., Politics and Social Science (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1967).Google Scholar

3 Weldon, T. D., The Vocabulary of Politics (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1953).Google Scholar

4 Reprinted in A. G. N. Flew, ed., Logic and Language, First Series (Oxford: Blackwell, 1951), and Laslett, Peter, ed., Philosophy, Politics and Society, First Series (Oxford: Blackwell, 1956).Google Scholar

5 Hart, H. L. A., The Concept of Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961).Google Scholar

6 E.g. the difficulty of conducting experiments in sufficiently stringent conditions, intrusion of the observers’ values, free will as an obstacle to generalization and prediction, the selffulfilling and self-denying prophecies. Though of course, these are not fundamental obstacles to the naturalistic enterprise.

7 For a cursory indication of what might be done in this particular respect, see my ‘Idealism, Modern Philosophy and Politics’ in King, P. and Parekh, B. C., eds., Politics and Experience (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969).Google Scholar

8 In fact, this last is a question that arises largely from a scientific bias itself.