Organization and Political Science

Abstract

POLITICAL scientists pay much attention to organization in government, but, somewhat paradoxically, they seem only slightly conscious of its importance in their professional affairs. In much of the think. ing of political scientists about procedural matters, the individual tends to crowd out the organizational. Thus they often speak of my work, my book, my course, and seldom use the word our in the same connections. Individual work seems quite naturally a thing in which to take pride, and it is doubtful that they very often think that the ends for which they work, both in research and teaching, might be achieved more easily and more adequately by the use of organizational, cooperative means. It is possible that some of the individualism of political scientists can be attributed to their long and early experience as pupils, in the course of which they came to accept the notion that honorable academic work is an individual matter and cooperation a mortal sin. The persistence of a habit often has nothing to do with the reasons for its inculcation, and so it seems to be with the individualism of scholars: its active encouragement when they were pupils made sense because it simplified their teachers' problems, but the habit persists into a new situation where it tends to obscure the advantages of cooperation. Persistence of the habit is reinforced by the fact that most of the erstwhile pupils are now teachers and, in their turn, find it convenient to brand as dishonorable most academic manifestations of the cooperative spirit among their charges. Although academic individualism in this country draws much of its life from competitive American culture, it is also strengthened by the traditions of post-mediaeval European scholarship. The beginnings of modern scientific thought often involved returning the hostility of a highly organized church. As a negative reaction, if for no other reason, individualism came to seem a good in itself. The resulting protestant tone of secular scholarship was accentuated in much of the political philosophy which is still influential today, partly because that philosophy was critical of the hierarchical church and the claims of the state and partly because it was much concerned with absolutes, the perception of which was believed to be an individual matter.