Systematic Political Science and Communist Systems

Abstract

I concur with Professor Meyer that Communist area studies must rejoin the main lines of the discipline of political science. An unfortunate methodological separation has existed much too long, a separation that might be figuratively characterized as a “loose, bipolar system,” with Sovietology at one pole and systematic political science at the other. The schism between Kremlinology, deductive reasoning, and, frequently, spectral evidence, on the one side, and scientific concept formation, empiricism, verification, and theory-construction, on the other, must come to an end. Professor Meyer's paper is a contribution toward this objective, both on its own merits and for the critical discussion that it will undoubtedly stimulate.