The european geneses of american political science

Abstract

Although American political science is, as Bernard Crick emphasised, in many respects a distinctly American science of politics, its evolution has been deeply informed by European ideas. This was quite obviously the case during the nineteenth century, when the German concept of the state dominated the discourse of the field, as well as in the early part of the twentieth century, when English scholars made significant contributions to the theory of democratic pluralism. By the middle of the century, German emigres had contributed to a fundamental transformation in political theory which challenged the mainstream vision of political enquiry; but what is less well understood is the extent to which the reaction to this challenge in behavioural political science was also based on ideas that were the product of the European exodus.