Historical and institutional context

Political science first started to develop as a separate discipline in Britain in the 19th century. However, in this early period it was not clearly differentiated from the disciplines it grew out of, in particular philosophy and history. Indeed, this continued to be a problem for much of the 20th century. Historians argued that the proper way to approach politics was through the study of political history; sociologists argued that it should be subsumed in their discipline as political sociology; and economists thought that it could best be studied through applying the methodology of their discipline. For economists it was insufficiently quantitative to be taken seriously and for philosophers it was insufficiently rooted in their subject. Lawyers thought that insufficient attention was paid to constitutional and administrative law.

Being a ‘junction subject’ between many disciplines was thus both a strength and a weakness. It enabled political scientists to draw on the insights of many disciplines: for example, geography could be added to those mentioned above. However, it also meant that the study of politics often looked like a field rather than a discipline. It lacked a sufficiently well-defined territory of its own and its own distinctive theoretical perspectives, methodology and research techniques.

In the first fifty years of the 20th century, the subject was largely based in Oxford and the London School of Economics and Political Science (early developments at Cambridge had not been followed through systematically).