gunnell - where is political science going

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Where Is Political Science Going?

Author(s): Giovanni SartoriSource: PS: Political Science and Politics, Vol. 37, No. 4 (Oct., 2004), pp. 785-787Published by: American Political Science AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4488908

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PS: Political Science and Politics.
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SYMPOSIUM

W h e r e is Political Science Going?

byGiovanni Sartori,ColumbiaUniversity

Politicalscience,as we currently nderstand

the label, was born, in WesternEurope, inthe early Fifties. One may say that it was"reborn";but that would be inaccurate,for inthe nineteenth century and until World WarTwo the label indicated a captive disciplinelargely dominated by juridical or historical ap-proaches (as in the case, e.g., of GaetanoMosca). So political science had a new startand became a field of inquiry in its own rightabout half a century ago. I was, at the time,one of its founders (with Stein Rokkan, JuanLinz, Mattei Dogan, Hans Daalder, ErikAllardt, S. N. Eisenstadt, and others. See:Comparative European Politics: The Story of aProfession, edited by H. Daalder, 1997). I amthus one of the witnesses of what the "youngturks" of the time had in mind, of how weconceived and promoted political science. I amnow an "ancient sage" and it now pleases meto reflect, some fifty years later, on where po-litical science has gone and on whether it hastaken the right course, the course that I hadwished for and expected. Thus to ask today, inthe middle of Mitteleuropa,where politicalscience has been heading is also to ask whetherthe new beginningsof the discipline inEasternEuropeshould or should notfollow the path en-tered by our "bigbrother,"I mean, by

American-type politi-cal science. I toohave been somewhat swallowed by our bigbrother (to be sure, a benevolent and wellmeaning one) in the sense that I have beenteaching in the United States for some thirtyyears. Let me add that I have largely benefitedfrom my American exposure. Yet I have alwaysresisted and still resist the American influence.And I take this occasion to say why I am un-happy about the American molding of presentday political science.Let me first go back, for a moment, to ourbeginnings. In the Fifties and to this day theBritish have generally dismissed the notion ofpolitical science; they cling to the label politicalstudies and/or government.What was the boneof contention? In retrospect,and in the face ofthe quantificationof political science, I havesome regrets on having fought on the side of"science." Yet at the time it made sense to doso. To say political studies leaves us with anordinary language, normal discourse that givesno distinctiveness to the endeavor. In particularit does not separatenarrative from cognitive

PS thanksGabriel Negretto, editor ofPoliticay Gobeirno, for allowing us toreprint he following Symposium.Thisdebate was originallypublishedinvolume 11, number2 of PoliticayGobeirno, Second Semester of 2004.

inquiry.In the second place it does not bringabout a "specialized" anguage (as any scientificinquiry is required to do). And, thirdly,"stud-ies" does not call for ad hoc methodologicalfoundations. For all these reasons we were rightin upholding the banner of science. For wecould not foresee the narrownessthat the notionof science would acquireon American soil.The foregoing leads me to the question:what kind of science can and should politicalscience be? I have always maintained that our"model" was economics. However, economistshave an easier task than others. For one, eco-nomic behavior abides by a criterion (utility,the maximization of interest, of profit),whereas political behavior does not (politicalman displays a mixed bag of motivations).Secondly, economists work with real numbers(monetary quantities) embedded in the behav-ior of their economic animal, whereas socialscientists work with assigned and often arbi-trary numerical values. Furthermore, the sci-ence of economics developed when it waswell understood that a science does need pre-cise and stable definitions for its basic termi-nology, and by the same token stable "datacontainers" that allow for a cumulative build-up of information, whereas American politicalscience-arriving some 150 years later--qui-ckly stumbled into Kuhn's "paradigms"andscientific revolutions, and happily entered theexciting but unsubstantial path of revolution-iziong itself every fifteen years or so in searchfor new paradigms, models and approaches.Overall, then, I take the view that main-streampolitical science has adopted an unsuitedmodel of science (drawnfrom the hard, exactsciences) and has failed to establish its ownidentity (as a soft science) by failing to estab-lish its own, distinctive methodology. To besure, my shelves are inundatedby books whosetitle is "methodologyof the social sciences";but these works simply address researchtech-niques and statisticalprocessing. They have al-most nothing to do with the "method of logos,"with the method of thinking. So we now have adismal science that lacks logical method and in-deed ignores pure and simple logic.

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Be that as it may (I shall exemplify later), let me firstidentify the main characteristics of the state of the art, that isto say of how political science has established itself in theAmerican Academia and, under its mighty influence, in mostof the world. Our discipline has sought its identity, I submit,as being:i) anti-institutionaland, by the same token, behavioral;

ii) as becoming as quantitativeand as statistical as possible;iii) and in privileging the theory-researchpath of inquiry at theexpense of the theory-practicenexus.My quick reaction to the above is (i) that politics is an in-terplay between behavior and institutions (structures), andtherefore that behavioralism has eliminated with the dirty wa-ter also the baby, thus overshooting the mark; (ii) that quanti-tativism is in fact driving us into a march of either falseprecision or of precise irrelevancy; and (iii) that by failing toconfront the theory-practice relationship we have created anuseless science.Since the first two indictments are familiar ones, they donot need to be explicated. I thus propose to dwell on the thirdone. The question is: knowledge for what? Just for the sake ofknowledge? In part yes; but in part no.Most sciences divide themselves into two branches: the purescience and the applied science. The pure science is not con-cerned with practical matters. It unfolds along the theory-research dimension seeking data and engaging in evidence-finding. The applied science unfolds, instead, along the theory-practice dimension and therefore as a knowledge for applica-tion, and indeed as a knowledge verified (or falsified) by itssuccess (or failure) in application. And the fact that our disci-pline has missed, or even dismissed, its applied branch entailsthat political science is a theory without practice, a knowledgecrippled by a know-how void.I was asking: knowledge for what? The answer is that po-litical science cannot answer this question. Practice-wise it isa largely useless science that does not supply knowledge foruse. Furthermore, in neglecting the application it also de-prives itself of its best truth-test. For the notion of truth is,in science, a pragmatic one. Something is true when it"works."In order to justify our practical and predictive failings wehave invented the theory of unintended consequences. But thisis very much an alibi for covering up the fact that we havenot developed an applied knowledge hinged on "if . . . then"questions and on means-ends analysis. While unintended con-sequences are always in the cards, their inevitability has beenlargely overstated. In the field of reform policies and of insti-tutions building most of our predictive failures were easilypredictable and most unforeseen consequences could have beeneasily foreseen (as ex post analysis almost invariably reveals).But let me leave this matter at that, because I now want to

pursue the point to which I had earlier promised that I wouldreturn, namely, that we have a methodology without logic, thathas lost sight even of logic.Take, to illustrate, the manner in which the topic of ourmeeting-democracy-is generally discussed in the discipline.What is democracy? If this is a request for a definition, thenthe reply is likely to be that we should not worry about defin-ing and that definitions are to be kept loose. Otherwise thereply is likely to be that this is an ill-formulated question that

leads to an ontological discussion, whereas the correct ques-tion is: to what degree is a polity and/ or a democracy demo-cratic? I take it, however, that both replies misconstrue theargument.The belittlement of definitions is wrong on three counts.First, since definitions declare the intended meaning of words,they ensure that we do not misunderstand each other. Second,words are also, in our research, our data containers. Therefore,if our data containers are loosely defined our facts will bemisgathered. Third, to define is first of all to assign limits, todelimit. Hence the definition establishes what is to be includedand conversely what is excluded by our categories. If democ-racy is defined as a system in which leaders are elected, mostcountries currently qualify as democracies; but if it is definedas a system of "free elections," then the countries included inour list would be halved. How can one say, then, that defini-tions are unimportant?The degree argument is even more arguable. Its familiar andendlessly repeated premise is that all differences are differ-ences in degree. But no. There is nothing in the nature ofthings that establishes that differences are of degree, just asthere is nothing that establishes that they are intrinsically inkind. Differences are continuous if so treated (logically). Like-wise differences are discontinuous under the classificatory pergenus et differentiam treatment. Whether differences are quan-titative or qualitative, of degree or of kind, is a matter of logi-cal treatment and thus a matter of deciding which handling isappropriatefor what purpose.If defined, democracy must obtain, by definition, an oppo-site, say, non-democracy. Question: how does democracy re-late, logically, to its opposite? Well, in two ways. We mayhold-applying Aristotle's principle of the excluded middle-that democracy and non-democracy are contradictories andthus mutually exclusive terms. If so, any given polity is eitherdemocratic or not. But we may also conceive democracy andnon-democracy as the polar ends of a continuum that admits,along the way, intermediate possibilities and thus many differ-ent degrees of democracy. In this case the principle of the ex-cluded middle does not apply; and that is all there is to it. Weare thus equally entitled to ask what is, or what is not, ademocracy, and to ask to what degree a democracy is more orless democratic (with respect to which characteristics). Bothare perfectly legitimate questions that are best asked, it seemsto me, in that order. The first question establishes the cut-offpoints. The second one deals with within-democracy varia-tions. But this is hardly the argument that you will find inmost American textbooks. There you are likely to learn thatdichotomous thinking is obsolete, that measurement replacesdefinitions, and so on and so forth. A sequel of slogans thatattest in my opinion, to logical illiteracy.I must conclude. Where is political science going? In theargument that I have offered here, American-type political sci-ence (to be sure the "normal science," for intelligent scholarsare always saved by their intelligence) is going nowhere. It isan ever growing giant with feet of clay. Visit, to believe, theannual meetings of the American Political Science Association;it is an experience of unfading dullness. Or read, to believe,the illegible and/or massively irrelevantAmerican PoliticalScience Review. The alternative, or at least, the alternative forwhich I side, is to resist the quantification of the discipline.Briefly put, think before counting; and, also, use logic inthinking.

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SYMPOSIUMUTHORS'IOSJosep M. Colomer is researchprofessorin politicalscienceat the HigherCouncilof ScientificResearch(CSIC)n Barcelonaand the Centerfor Research and Teaching n Economics CIDE)in Mexico. He has been a Fulbright cholarat the University fChicago and professorat New YorkUniversity nd Georg townUniversity.He is the author of more than 50 academic articlesand a dozen books, including Political Institutions OxfordUniversityPress, 2001), and editor of Handbook of ElectoralSystemChoice (Palgrave-Macmillan,004).

David D. Laitin is the James T WatkinsIV and Elise V WatkinsProfessorof PoliticalScienceat StanfordUniversity.Giovanni Sartori helped found the first political sciencedepartment n Italy.He is author of ComparativeConstitutionalEngi-neering:An InquiryntoStructures,ncentives nd Outcomes.

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gunnell - where is political science going

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