The Relevance of Norms to Political Description

Abstract

The dangers that arise when norms and personal values intrude upon scientific work are familiar to every political scientist—so familiar, that nowadays the dangers are likely to be shrugged off with undeserved contempt. “The ‘cult of objectivity’ has passed in social science,” one writer has recently proclaimed; and David Easton declares, less dramatically, that even though he assumes that “factual and moral propositions are logically heterogeneous, this does not mean that in practice it is possible to discover a proposition which expresses only a sentiment or states only a factual relationship.” In context, such remarks may be perfectly innocent. They stir up embarrassing associations, however, and merge with certain streams of thought that would wash away the distinction between facts and values, in the belief that this is the way to make values respectable again, or as a consequence, perhaps, of a failure of nerve—which may be only fatigue—in the defense of “objectivity.”