From its very beginnings political science has been a complex discipline torn in conflicting directions. Consider Aristotle's Politics, the first book that looks like a contemporary political science monograph. In the book, Aristotle presented two opposing strands of argument that he managed with tolerable success to hold together. On the one hand, Aristotle treated the study of politics as a branch of practical knowledge, its aim being action (praxis), not theory. Political action is always contextual or circumstantial, the action of particular agents faced with a particular set of circumstances. Therefore, the student of politics needs to be concerned above all with learning the art of political judgment, with how to think and deliberate well under specific circumstances. Aristotle wrote the Politics for men situated in popular assemblies, courts of law, and councils of war. He presented politics as inseparable from rhetoric, the art of public persuasion. Aristotle believed that the perspective of the political theorist should not depart too far from that of the citizen or statesman.

Yet, at the same time, Aristotle acknowledged that politics is a form of knowledge with its own distinctive subject matter and set of truth claims. Good student of Plato's that he was, Aristotle saw himself as turning the study of politics into a science (episteme) inasmuch as it constituted the search for a comprehensive or general explanation of some particular branch of knowledge.

What is the utility of classical political theory and modern writing about it for current-day positive (that is, explanatory) political science? By “classical,” I mean works from Plato through at least Weber.

In modern American political science, the conventional answer to this question has been that classical theory offers normative illumination. It helps out with certain “should” questions—that is, recommendations about how political systems should be constructed or how individuals acting as political beings should behave. Important as this line of thinking may be in its own terms, I believe that it has worked to marginalize or trivialize classical theory for many writers and teachers in the positive sectors. It has allowed the kind of dismissal that Ayer (1948), writing at the high tide of logical positivism, gave to normative concerns. Classical theory scholars made a tactical mistake a few generations back, if they had any choice in the matter, to let themselves become labeled “normative.”

It is much better to see classical theory as a source of ontological illumination—that is, as a window to the nature of political reality. What is the nature of the political reality that political scientists should be studying? If we members of the profession possessed a clear, singular answer to this question, we might not feel the need to keep classical theory alive. But we do not possess a clear, singular answer, or at least we do not agree on any.

One of the most hotly debated issues of the past four years has been the method to be used to count the population in Census 2000. Broadly, the debate is over whether to incorporate statistical sampling in the decennial census for the purposes of enumerating the population. Each of the previous 21 U.S. censuses has failed to count all persons. Both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were certain that the state population totals tallied for the first census in 1790 were wrong (Skerry 1992). To make matters worse, the census must do more than simply tally the number of people in the country; it must also report exactly where each of these people live. By any metric, this is a Herculean task. Indeed, enumerating and fixing geographically 100% of the population without some error is impossible.

In this article I outline the plan for Census 2000, define the political debate, and offer an assessment of the plan itself. I argue that deciding how to conduct the census has been, and will continue to be, an inherently political process, and that there are reasonable, scientific arguments against adjusting the census. I became interested in this issue during my tenure as an APSA Congressional Fellow, when I staffed the Subcommittee on the Census in the House of Representatives. Before I began my fellowship on Capitol Hill, I was suspicious of the argument against adjusting the census statistically. How could anyone possibly be against adjusting the census with statistical methods?

Political philosophy as we know it blossomed with the arrival of European immigrants like Hannah Arendt, Leo Strauss, and Eric Vogelin after World War II. These refugee scholars challenged their American colleagues in at least three important ways. They dared political scientists to be more morally conscientious, to focus on matters of real importance, and to develop a more refined historical sensibility.

These authors suggested that the fact/value distinction at the center of the social scientific enterprise was indicative of a moral decay at the center of Western civilization. This decay paved the way for Nazism in the twenties and thirties, and possibly would contribute to Soviet victory in the Cold War if changes were not made. Less Cassandra-like was their charge that political scientists were primarily interested in refining the study of the insignificant. What they could measure through their dominant methods—public opinion, voting patterns, etc.—was trivial in comparison to the classical analysis of regime types, or the nature of man, or the purpose of the common life.

As a result, these philosophers offered history, unabashedly Western history, as a resource for studying these timeless questions of political inquiry. To their minds, questioning the nature of tyranny, or the status of authority, was still worthwhile; fundamental, in fact. They encouraged other political scientists to incorporate these themes into their practice. Indeed, Steven Smith's contribution to this colloquy represents a renewed effort in this vein.

Over a decade has passed since the practice called “service learning” began its ascendance in higher education. While internships have long been used as an experiential teaching tool in the discipline, it is only recently that political scientists have grappled with using community-based service experiences as vehicles for teaching students about politics. In many ways, political scientists have led the way in advancing the theory and practice of service learning, publishing one of the first volumes in the AAHE series on service learning in the disciplines (Battistoni and Hudson 1997), and designing and reporting pioneering efforts to link service to the academic curriculum (e.g., Barber and Battistoni 1993; Beamer 1998; Koulish 1998; Ehrlich 1999). Tony Robinson's essay in this volume stands as yet another bold attempt to challenge political scientists to “do politics” through advocacy-based community service work.

This symposium is offered to advance service learning yet further. The featured authors highlight recent research on the impact of service learning on students' political knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors, and draw new connections between service learning and important perspectives in political science scholarship and teaching.

The first essay, by Mary Hepburn, Richard Niemi, and Chris Chapman, thoroughly details current research on how service learning affects the civic outcomes traditionally advanced by college-level political scientists. They draw lessons from the research about what service learning does and does not do for political education, and also raise important questions for future political science research.

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness …. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to fulfil it.

—George Santayana, 1905-06

Those who are familiar with the “equal proportions” formula used to reapportion the U.S. House of Representatives each decade are aware how sensitive it is to small changes in states' population data. In 1990, this sensitivity took on new significance as statisticians and politicians debated the merits of adjusting the decennial census data to correct for the differential undercount. The “official” apportionment results from the 1990 Census were published in December 1990, and the reapportionment of Congressional seats among the states proceeded on the basis of those data. Adjusted census results were released in July 1991. These data would have changed the reapportionment of Congress and shifted two seats in the House: one each from the states of Wisconsin and Pennsylvania to the states of California and Arizona.

Adding to the complexity of the debates about which set of data to use, and in the midst of the ensuing litigation between New York City and the U.S. Department of Commerce, the Census Bureau discovered a computer coding error in the adjusted data estimates and issued “revised adjusted data” in January 1992.

For many years, Democrats have waited patiently to preside over good times. No Koreas, Vietnams, or Irans. No stagflation. Just nice, tranquil prosperity—the sort of happy circumstances that make not only for short-run electoral success, but also for the recruitment of tried-and-true Democrats. Since the early 1980s, the Democratic Party has been short on Democrats. In the 1970s, Democrats comprised roughly two-thirds of all party identifiers; at the close of the century, that figure stood at approximately 57%.

At long last, the Democrats seem to have their chance. By every measure, the economy has been booming. In particular, consumer confidence, which MacKuen, Erikson, and Stimson (1989) have hailed as one of the driving forces behind partisan realignment, has soared. During Ronald Reagan's “Morning in America,” the Michigan Index of Consumer Sentiment stood at 95. Clinton's mornings have been even rosier, given the 100+ scores that have been posted every quarter since the spring of 1997 (see http://www.fcnbd.com/cor/fccm/Research-Fixed/usdata/sentiment/sentiment.htm). Indeed, the Index of Consumer Sentiment has regularly achieved the highest levels ever recorded since 1953.

Another driving force behind partisan realignment, presidential popularity, has also soared. Say what you will about President Clinton's travails in office; his Gallup Poll approval ratings have always been respectable. No Nixon-, Carter-, or Bush-like scores in the 30s for him. Indeed, Bill Clinton has at times achieved Kennedyesque scores in the 60s, and his average rating easily surpasses that of Ronald Reagan.