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Redeeming American Political Theory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Judith N. Shklar*
Affiliation:
Harvard University

Abstract

American political theory has been accused of being uniformly liberal; but its history is diverse and is worth studying to understand the development of political science and the institutions it reflects (representative government, federalism, judicial review, and slavery). While modern social science expresses a slow democratization of values, it has been compatible with many ideologies. This can be seen in Jefferson's anthropology, Madison's theory of collective rationality, and Hamilton's empirical political economy. Jacksonian democracy encouraged social history, while its opponents devised an elitist political sociology. Southern defenders of slavery were the earliest to develop a deterministic and authoritarian sociology, but after the Civil War Northern thinkers emulated them with Social Darwinism and quests for causal laws to grasp constant change in industrial society. Though social critics abounded, democratic empirical theory emerged in the universities only in the generation of Merriam and Dewey, who founded contemporary political science.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1991 

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References

Note

This essay is the presidential address presented on 30 August 1990 at the 86th annual meeting of the American Political Science Association in San Francisco. I offer these remarks for the records of the Association rather than as a scholarly paper.