The Science of Politics: New and Old

Abstract

pOLITICAL scientists will soon need a vocabulary to describe, not, as the layman in his innocence might suppose, the world of politics with which they purport to deal, but rather the cleavages within the profession itself. For the purposes of this review, it will be sufficient to distinguish the Political Scientist and the Political Theorist. The Political Scientist is often a theorist-in one sense, he is always a theorist-and frequently he believes strongly that an important requirement of theory is that it be explicit; therefore, he is not called a theorist. The Political Theorist, oddly enough, is often not a theorist at all but a historian, and insofar as theory is embedded in his history, it is more likely to be implicit than explicit; hence he is known as a Theorist. Between the Political Scientist and the Political Theorist, serious intellectual tension seems presently to exist. Inevitably, each caricatures the aims and methods of the other, and in time each even comes to believe in the caricature; straw men are set up and knocked down with great gnashing and thrashing; and the bones of old skeletons are rattled with such furious energy that one has the momentary illusion of life. It might all be good fun if the participants were not deadly serious. Professor Easton (a Political Scientist) administers as thorough a drubbing to American political science as it is likely to get for some time. He attacks it because of its failures as a science. Professor Voegelin (a Political Theorist) argues in effect that it has been too much a science and insufficiently the Science of politics. It is clear, then, that among other disagreements the two authors conflict over the elementary meaning of words. Alas, much of the