Political Theory and the American Scholar

Abstract

While both many political scientists and political theorists are quite content with the distance between political theory and political science, my argument is unequivocally for reintegration, or at least great wat someer complementarity, as well as for a broader view of political science and social science as metapractices. Calling for a closer relationship between political theory and mainstream political science might seem to ally me with the spirit of the Foundations of Political Theory section of the American Political Science Association (APSA) that, in 2007, sent two letters of complaint to the department of political science at pennsylvania State University because of that department’s decision to eliminate political theory as a course of study in the graduate program. There was, however, no suggestion that political theory had any obligation to alter its character or even to specify exactly what constituted that character and its contribution to a graduate degree in political science. Political theory is a highly pluralistic field and tends to lack even the limited sense of identity that adheres to the other subfields that belong to the professional holding company of political science, and this raises the issue of exactly what was being excluded at Penn state. What constitutes the study of political theory differs widely among various departments, and political theory as a whole does not represent any particular approach or even subject matter.KeywordsPolitical SciencePolitical TheoryPolitical TheoristAcademic DiscourseAmerican ScholarThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.