the nature of contemporary political science: a roundtable

The Profession

—that the Federal government makeseach year in basic research in polit-ical science.

About the AuthorHerbert A. Simon of Carnegie Mellon Uni-versity received the APSA's James MadisonAward in 1983. He was awarded the NobelPrize in Economics in 1978.

The Nature of Contemporary Political Science:A Roundtable Discussion

Kristen Monroe, Gabriel Almond, John Gunnell, Ian Shapiro,George Graham, Benjamin Barber, Kenneth Shepsle, and Joseph Cropsey

Kristen MonroeUniversity of California, Irvine

What is the nature of contempo-rary political science? What sharedconcerns bind us together as a disci-pline, providing a common definitionand direction to our intellectualenterprise? These questions were onmy mind as I organized the sectionon formal and normative politicaltheory for the 1989 APSA meetings.Initially, I had wanted to sponsor apanel to address the nature of formaland normative theory. I knew I wasa bit uncertain about the precisenature of these fields and sensed thatother scholars shared my desire forgreater clarity. Then I read GabrielAlmond's "Separate Tables" (PS:Political Science and Politics, 1988).The surprisingly diverse and intensereaction this article generated in theprofession suggested the confusionextended beyond my own subfieldand into the discipline as a whole.All of this provided the impetus forthe round table whose discussion issummarized below.

Since Almond's article argues thereis a methodological separateness thatlimits us as a discipline, I tried tochoose panel discussants to reflectthe disparate parts of political sci-ence. I spoke with each panelist inadvance and, drawing on their sug-gestions, I constructed and circulateda few key questions around whichour discussion would be organized.As is obvious in the followingremarks, panelists expressed quitedifferent views, but each participanttouched on the following questions insome way: Is there a core to con-temporary political science? If so,what is it? If not, does its absence

matter? Should there be a core? Andhow important is communicationamong the different branches ofpolitical science?

Each panelist made a brief state-ment on this topic, focusing on theseparticular questions. Their remarksare reprinted below, with their per-

Is there a central core topolitical science? Yes.

mission, and in the hope that suchdiscussion may foster our commonintellectual vitality.

My own thoughts on these ques-tions can be expressed succinctly. Isthere a central core to political sci-ence? Yes. What is it? For me, it's alittle bit like love. I know it. I recog-nize it when I see it. I respond to itwith great excitement and a feelingof being alive. And I'm prepared tofollow it wherever it leads me intel-lectually. But it's still hard to define.For most of my early professionallife, I would have said that the cen-tral core had something to do withpower and influence. After spendingthe last five years talking to DavidEaston and Harry Eckstein, I wouldalso now include a consideration ofthe authoritative allocation of values.(This concept was articulated inanother form by Lucian Pye in his1989 Presidential address.) Finally,my deep and enduring intellectualfriendship with Joseph Cropseyprompts me to add a third com-ponent for our discipline to consider:the proper and the actual relationshipof the individual to the society inwhich he or she lives.

Does the absence of a central corematter? Can we produce good, com-petent work by just replicating whatwe've traditionally done and withoutthe kind of periodic, continual, andeven heated discussion and debateover the proper nature of our com-mon enterprise? It's possible thatwithout such periodic intellectualshocks we can produce competentwork, but such work will remainrather banal. Is such work what mostof us would call good? Probably not.

Finally, is it necessary to talk toeach other, to be forced to table-hop,in Almond's metaphor? Yes, I thinkit is. Some shared vocabulary prob-ably is necessary for the most fruitfulexchange. Certainly given the vastamount of literature existing in anysubfield in the discipline, specializa-tion is inevitable, if only to producea common set of concepts in whichto converse and disagree. But it iscertainly more interesting to talk withpeople who are different. It gives avitality and excitement to our workwhich is otherwise lacking. It forcesus to rethink the basic assumptionsand preconceptions which drive ourindividual research. It keeps us intel-lectually young and makes us alive.And that, I suspect for most of us, isthe main reason we do this job.

Gabriel AlmondStanford University

In my recent sermons to the pro-fession, I have felt a bit like aminister or rabbi of a rich congrega-tion in a prosperous season, remind-ing his parishioners of their mortalityand their spiritual obligations. Wehave grown enormously, five-fold,during the course of my own profes-sional career. We have acquiredpowerful skills, proliferated subdisci-plines, and have extended our influ-ence all over the world, most signifi-cantly in the Communist-Marxist-Leninist world. My most striking andmoving experience during my 1989teaching stint in the Soviet Unionwas my encounters with the membersof Chairs in Scientific Communismat the universities in Moscow, Lenin-grad, and Kiev. With almost noexception, they were quite dis-enchanted with Marxism-Leninism

34 PS: Political Science & Politics

The Nature of Contemporary Political Science

and were turning to empiricalWestern-style political science, whichthey called politology. I carried backwith me about a dozen curriculavitae of Soviet colleagues who wouldlike to be retooled in the U.S. It is atthis historical moment of the vindica-tion of the Western political sciencetradition that I want to remind mycolleagues of the state of the disci-pline. If we look inside our depart-ments, we see a loose aggregation ofspecial interests, held together byshared avarice in maintaining orincreasing the departmental share ofresources: tenure-track billets, salaryincreases, reductions in teachingloads, liberal leave policies, and thelike. And in allocating the resourceswithin departments, typical log-rolling and coalition behavior are theorder of the day.

The situation I described in mypaper, "Separate Tables," makesthis kind of departmental policyinevitable. Straussian political theo-rists share no professional valueswith their behavioral colleagues.Public choice theorists have comeinto the discipline largely throughlateral immigration from economics.For them, the rest of the political sci-ence profession is engaged in doubt-ful projects, misallocating scarceresources. Critical and Marxist theo-rists evaluate their positivist brethrenaccording to the religious criteria ofsin and error, and they question ourvery professionalism. Any depart-ment in which these schools and sectshave taken root cannot decide pro-fessional issues on the basis of prin-ciple, since they have no principleson which they agree. They can onlyact jointly on the basis of a commoninterest in rewards and benefits.

On the logic of it, political theoryought to be the core of the politicalscience discipline. It ought to codifythe history of the discipline, thedevelopment of central ideas, con-cepts, and theories. And it ought tocodify these concepts all the way upfrom Plato and Aristotle to Dahl,Converse, and Riker. It ought toface toward the discipline, interactclosely with its various parts, andrelate them to one another. Politicaltheory hasn't been performing thisfunction in the last decades. Rather,it has, with few exceptions, beentraumatized by the diffusion of scien-

tific aspirations and methods intopolitical science, and seduced by thesimplistic temptations of 1960s and1970s thinking.

The idea of political theory as acore subject matter persists in thePh.D. qualifying examination ofsome graduate departments, wherethe history of political theory is theonly required subject, either throughexamination or through courserequirements. But it is not a genuinedisciplinary core; rather, it is more inthe nature of a pro forma tribute totradition. In the first decades of pro-fessional political science in theUnited States, the substantive focusof the discipline was on governmen-tal institutions and processes. APh.D. in political science wasassumed to be knowledgable aboutthese institutions and processes—inthe descriptive and historical sense,in the real sense, and in the philo-sophical sense. A Ph.D. in politicalscience and the universities whichgranted these degrees required themastery of all the fields of politicalscience: American government andpolitics, comparative government and

Pericles. Library of Congress.

politics, and international organiza-tion and politics. He or she was sup-posed to be able to analyze theseinstitutions in historical, legal, andphilosophical terms. While there wasspecialization, there was still theassumption of mastery of the whole,and this was more than anassumption.

In this early conception of the dis-cipline, the history of political theorywas the core subject. One movedfrom Montesquieu to the FoundingFathers and the Federalist, and fromthese concepts to comparative polit-ical institutions, in the legal and thedescriptive sense, and to empiricaland normative theory.

That was what was special aboutthe Ph.D. degree. You had to knowit all, a part of it better than the rest,but you had to have more than pass-ing familiarity with it all. You couldunderstand the discourse of all ofyour colleagues, and were able tojudge their performance of the stu-dents of any political science subjectmatter, the qualifications of new fac-ulty appointees, and qualificationsfor promotions in rank, and totenure. One could speak of the unityof political science in these decades.

Without this professional unity,departments as such cannot makesound decisions on how they oughtto grow, which subspecialties tofoster, which faculty to reward forperformance, how to select our stu-dents or evaluate their performance.Inevitably, these decisions get madeby the subgroups, the specialists, Orthe sects, as the case may be. Andthere is no one to watch over thelarger professional interest. I do notspeak of the decline of departmentalcivility, which has its own costs, dif-ficult to measure, but of greatimportance.

Does it make any sense to speak ofthe unity of political science today?Is it thinkable that the Straussianscan begin to acknowledge profes-sional brotherhood with contempo-rary empirical political science? Canthe public choice people recover theold institutionalism still abundantlyaround them, before venturing offinto a new institutionalism? Can thecritical political theorists and theMarxists accept a common obligationto seek scholarly objectivity howeverdifficult that search may be?

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The Profession

The final question Kristen Monroeput to this Roundtable was, "Whatissues should concern us as politicalscientists over the next ten years?" Iwould hope that this problem of theunity of the discipline, of the rela-tionship among its parts, and of therequirements of its professionalismwould be high among thosepriorities.

John GunnellSUNY at Albany

What I take to be the core of pro-fessor Almond's argument is thatthere is at present in political sciencean uneasy separateness which he hasschematized in a four-cell matrixconsisting of the soft left (an attackon the mainstream profession and acall to join the political fray), thehard left (socialist and dependencytheories), the soft right (Straussians,etc.). and the hard right (formaltheory and classical political eco-nomic assumptions). Each cell has itsown, somewhat self-serving, accountof the history of the discipline, but ineach case there is a failure to repre-sent history adequately. This in turndistorts what political science is allabout, and the real center of the fieldis obscured by separate and outlyingtables.

Almond argues that we must getour professional histofy straight, andonce we give an account of the realhistory of the discipline, we will seethat it does not lead to peripheraland separate tables but to a method-ological pluralistic but objectivity-aspiring core. This real history, hesuggests, is represented in a lineagefrom Plato and Aristotle, leadingthrough subsequent classics of polit-ical thought to Alexander Hamilton,and eventually to Robert Dahl andSeymour Martin Lipset. This, hemaintains, is the historically correctversion of our disciplinary history—adiscipline which has made importantcontributions to the perennial effortto bring knowledge to bear on thehuman condition.

I agree with Professor Almond ontwo counts: we have an uneasyseparateness in political science, andto understand it, we must get ourdisciplinary history straight. But evenas a broad sketch, I am unable to

accept Professor Almond's image ofthat past which, I am afraid, is atleast as self-serving as accountsemanating from any of the separatetables. Looking for the past ofAmerican political science in anancestry stretching from Aristotle toMax Weber is, indeed, a dubiousgenealogical project. We can, I sup-pose, understand why the pantheonof classic political philosophy is amore comfortable image of ourroots. Studying the real history ofpolitical science is, as Gene Posch-man has suggested, something likeinvestigating the origins of sausagesand legislation—matters which wemight not wish to scrutinize too care-fully lest we risk disillusionment. Butmaybe disillusion is better thandelusion.

The real history of American polit-ical science requires looking less attruly remote and tangential figures,such as Aristotle, than at the found-ers of the discipline, such as FrancisLieber and John Burgess. It alsomeans facing the fact that individualssuch as Burgess were racists andimperialists, and that many of theothers who were most instrumentalin shaping the discipline were simply,in themselves, not very interesting.

One of the individuals who be-longs to the real history of politicalscience, and who Professor Almonddoes include in his history, is CharlesMerriam. Merriam is indeed an inter-esting and pivotal figure, and, asrecent scholarship indicates, a com-

Nicol Macchiavelli. Library of Congress.

plex and circumspect person. But inProfessor Almond's history, Merriamappears as merely one of the ven-erable figures who furthered theprogress of mainstream political sci-ence and the process of bringingknowledge and power into accord.One reason why I am uneasy aboutProfessor Almond's account of thehistory of political science is that Iam working on a book on this sub-ject, and, as part of my research, Ihave read a number of oral histories,including that of Professor Almond.Part of his discussion of Merriam inthis more private history involves anepisode in which Merriam requiredAlmond to delete portions of his dis-sertation dealing with wealth andpower in politics, because of poten-tially embarrassing references to theRockefellers, who were benefactorsof the SSRC and the University ofChicago. I think that this tells usmore about the real history of polit-ical science than any reference toAristotle, and it also tells us aboutthe difference between real historyand rhetorical history.

The real history of political sciencewould inquire carefully into the rela-tionship between public and aca-demic discourse in the United Statesand into the relationship between theAmerican university and the structureof political authority. At least in theearly years of the discipline, the con-versation about this issue signifi-cantly structured the field of politicalscience. And from its earliest begin-nings in the 19th century, politicalscience was conceived as a practicalscience. Every major argument aboutestablishing scientific purity andobjectivity was primarily an instru-mental claim in service of the ideathat the authority of knowledgeshould have a claim on politicalauthority. In the American context,the social sciences, and the universityas a whole were not institutionallyintegrated into the structure of polit-ical authority, and as practical sci-ences, with an end in action, the per-sistent issue was how to speak truthto power. The internal history of thediscipline could easily and accuratelybe interpreted as the history of suc-cessive strategies for closing the gapbetween public and academic dis-course.

Does political science have a core?



The answer must be no. To someextent, we can explain the lack ofsuch a center by looking at the realhistory of the discipline. From itsbirth as a professional association in1903, political science as a field wasmore a holding company for somediverse enterprises dealing with thestudy of politics than a field with atheoretical core, as economics, forexample, tended to be. A large partof the history of political science hasbeen involved with a dream of find-ing a core and establishing a totalidentity. And Professor Almond'ssanguine public history is simply onemore chapter in this search for a wayto hold the centrifugal forces incheck.

Nevertheless, the notion of sepa-rate tables suggests something morethan a perennial malaise about iden-tity. Political science in recent yearshas become increasingly dispersedand pluralistic. As divisive as thedebate about behavioralism in polit-ical science, for example, may havebeen during the 1950s and 1960s,there was at least an argument thatjoined the tables to one another.And in the early stages of the post-behavioral era, with claims such asthose of David Easton about a newrevolution in political science, theconstitutive conversation- about therelationship between public and aca-demic discourse was reawakened as acommon concern. There is indeedseparateness in dispersion today, butit is more than spatial, more thansimply a factor of conditionsendemic to political science from itsorigins.

The dispersion today is accentu-ated by the lack of an animatingargument. This loss is in large mea-sure due to the exit of politicaltheory, or much of what constitutedthis subfield, from intellectual andeven institutional involvement inpolitical science. This was in manyrespects welcomed by both sides whoparticipated in the debate aboutbehavioralism. But the separatenessengendered by liberal pure tolerancehas divested political science of con-flict, let alone agreement. Politicaltheory exited political science less forintellectual reasons than to meet thedemands of academic professionalismin the modern university. Its absencehas contributed not only to separate

Charles F. Merriam

tables but to separate conversations.For most of the history of political

science, political theory was the basiclocus of disciplinary self-conscious-ness. It was in this literature thatquestions about the state and identityof political science were posed. Itwas here that the issue of theory andpractice was confronted. With theemigration of political theory to itsown intellectual and professionalarchipelago, from which it makesonly occasional visits to its now alienhomeland, and largely only as a loca-tion for discussing its own internalaffairs, political science lost a largemeasure of its critical self-awareness.And political theory lost its connec-tion to the principal piece of institu-tional reality that tied it, howeverindirectly, to politics.

Ian ShapiroYale University andCenter for Advanced Studiesin the Behavioral Sciences

I agree with much of GabrielAlmond's diagnosis, but I think theproblem is more serious yet. Thebelief that an increasingly specializedand fragmented discipline of politicalscience can be unified only by turn-ing to a political theory core assumesthat there is such a core. In fact the

specialization that has been charac-teristic of many social sciences overthe last few decades has afflictedpolitical theory as well as—perhapsmore than—other subdisciplines ofpolitical science. Historians of ideasof various partisan stripes, moraltheorists in the stamp of John Rawls,game theorists and public choicetheorists, anti-theorists who subscribeto a family of related "post-isms,"and a variety of others all lay claimto the mantle of political theory.Notable about these groups is thattypically they either ignore or polemi-cize against one another, that theymultiply esoteric terminologies, andthat whenever possible they travel inpacks.

The causes of this fragmentationare various. Like the economic divi-sion of labor, once begun it is to adegree self-generating. But thisdynamic is reinforced by other fac-tors, both intellectual and institu-tional. We live in an age when thereis no predominant paradigm or set ofproblems or methods or even pre-occupations in the discipline. Partlyfor this reason the impetus to focuson small and sharply delineatedproblems remains powerful, even if itmakes considerably less sense than itwould were there a widely agreed-upon intellectual agenda. The lack ofsuch an agreed upon agenda obviatesthe felt need to explain or jus"Gfy-the—broader relevance of one's work.Indeed, in such circumstances inter-disciplinary ambition almost inevit-ably seems risky and grandiose. Themore prudent path less fraught withthe possibility of quixotic failure istoward smaller problems or parts ofproblems, and it cannot be surprisingthat many people opt for it. For theintellectual sources of fragmentationare underpinned by institutionalones. The organization of politicalscience departments is confederal, asBrian Barry has noted, and so—inevitably—is the structure of incen-tives for survival and advancement.Search committees and promotionsdecisions generally operate withinsubfields, at least as a decisive firsthurdle, and as a result the "rational"strategy for young scholars is toshape their thinking and research tofit within the existing confederalstructure.' The intellectual divisionof labor within and among subfields

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The Profession

of political science seems here tostay, and political theory is notspecial in this respect.

A second reason why politicaltheory is not likely to supply theremedy Almond seeks is a by-product of the first. If empiricalpolitical scientists show little interestin the concerns of political theorists,a large part of the blame lies withthe theorists themselves for showingso little interest in politics. Useful asthe infiltration of moral philosophyand the methods of microeconomicsinto political theory in the past twodecades have been in some respects,their internal complexity, preoccupa-tion with counterfactual analysis, andrelative disregard for problems ofimplementation have fueled analready prevalent tendency amongpolitical theorists to write primarilyfor one another. Much too muchpolitical theory, I have argued else-where, feeds exclusively off its owncontroversies via the mutual opposi-tion to one another of gross concepts—misleading abstractions that canappear plausible only when attentionis fixed on the evident defects of anopposing misleading abstraction.2

The major theorists of the traditiondid not behave in this way. Plato,Aristotle, Augustine, Hobbes, Locke,Rousseau, Marx, Mill, Tocqueville,and Dewey all took holistic andinterdisciplinary (to the extent thatthey were aware of what we think ofas disciplines) views of politics andsociety; they worked their theoreticalarguments through the problems andconflicts of their times, they grappledwith issues of evidence and causalargument, and they thereby assumedthe responsibility to make their argu-ments pertinent to the concerns ofothers. In contrast, many of today'spolitical theorists seem most bent ondividing up and squabbling over theterrains of ideal theory and textualexegesis; as a result they have onlythemselves to blame if no one else isinterested in what they have to say.3

In a rare but revealing momentRawls (1971, 51) concedes that theo-rizing about justice cannot be"founded solely on truths of logicand definition" on the grounds that"the analysis of moral concepts andthe a priori is too slender a basis."Yet from this he draws the inferencethat "moral philosophy must be free

to use contingent assumptions andgeneral facts as it pleases," assertingthat this assumption informed theview of the subject "adopted bymost classical writers through Sidg-wick." Rawls is plainly wrong here.Much of the political and moraltheory of Hobbes, Locke, Bentham,Marx, and Mill was really philosoph-ical psychology and accounts of thecausal dynamics of power, and theirpolitical arguments depended fortheir force on the persuasiveness ofthose accounts. Whatever the diffi-culties of conceiving the task of thetheorist in this classical way (andthey are many), Rawls fails to appre-ciate that refusal to do so is boundto be self-defeating. In his own casehe simply asserts that his assump-

If we look inside ourdepartments, we see aloose aggregation ofspecial interests, heldtogether by shared avaricein maintaining orincreasing thedepartmental share ofresources.

tions about these matters are uncon-troversial and widely shared when itis easily shown that they are not(1971, 12, 131, 137).4 The result isthat methods like Rawls's tend toturn political theory into preachingto the converted; at best they con-firm the prejudices of those whoagreed with their controversialassumptions in advance while rein-forcing the opposition of those whodo not. At worst—and often in fact—they generate internal preoccu-pations with the small nuances ofself-generating debates that noneexcept initiates have the time or theinterest to disentangle.

What to do differently in these cir-cumstances of advanced and self-replicating division of labor in polit-ical science and political theoryalike? The injunction I would offer isthat instead of worrying about how

much we should be talking to oneanother we should be worrying moreabout talking directly about politicsthan we characteristically do. It isnot my claim that the various eso-teric methods that students of politicshave found helpful should be aban-doned, but these devices should belinked more often and explicitly toactual problems in a commonsenseidiom. This would militate againstthe powerful tendencies in all of oursubfields toward method-drivenrather than problem-driven analyses,which is undesirable in its own rightand fuels the intellectual division oflabor from yet another direction. Putin the terms of Almond's metaphor,we should worry less about where wesit in the cafeteria, how many tablesthere are, how they are arranged,and who sits where and talks towhom, and worry more about whatis going on outside and about howwhat we have to say about it can bemade intelligible to these who areliving the reality of what we takepolitics to be.

Following this course of actionwould not necessarily produce amore unified discipline, but it mat-ters to get clear on why this is so.What we disagree about most basic-ally is not what political science is orshould be. That disagreement is amere symptom of what really dividesus, namely competing conceptions ofwhat politics is and what it shouldbe. Given this fact, it is inevitablethat there will be a degree of conten-tion among students of politics aboutboth method and object of study,and a comparatively eclectic disci-pline of political science as a result.But if we all aim our critical capaci-ties more directly at what we take thereality of politics to be and assumethe obligation to explain its signifi-cance to the uninitiated in non-esoteric terms, at least we might havesome confidence that our disagree-ments will be about something realrather than about artifacts of ourown intellectual processes. Some willfind my skepticism about the possi-bilities for a more unified disciplinedifficult to accept. To them I wouldnonetheless offer the same injunc-tion, because if there is ever to be amore unified discipline of politicalscience it must surely find its founda-tion in a measure of agreement on



what politics is and what it might inprinciple become.

George GrahamVanderbilt University

The relation between separatetables and the "Cafeteria of thecenter" that Almond refers to bringsto mind the quality of food oneexpects from a cafeteria. The sepa-rate table is better designed for theleisurely extensive discussion of par-ticulars. One may not achieve detailof comprehension of flavors ornuance, as one rattles through thecafeteria line. The major need is notfor unseasoned meals, for blandflavors, acceptable to anyone as acompromise. What we must focus onhere is a means of comprehendingwhat it is that is so important to thevarious chefs and what it is that theyare creating. One does not learn thisfrom a cafeteria meal. Food forthought need not be bland.

The problem is not one of diver-sity or variety per se within the pro-fession. The problem is one of theintensity of the commitments to theparticular approach—to the compre-hension of politics—one advocates.The intensity comes from those whoare most active within the profession,most interested in exploring newadvancements in political understand-ing. Interestingly enough, in the con-text of Almond's selection of diningmetaphors, the first words of theclassic discussion of the intensityproblem in democratic theory are"Dinner is over" (Kendal and Carey,APSR, March, 1968: 5-24). Theproblem of intensity and its resolu-tion is exemplified by conversationafter dinner which entails the intro-duction of reasons for preferences.The task in terms of democratictheory parallels dealing with theintensity of feelings over approacheswithin the profession. There must beinstitutional resolutions to the prob-lem, the problem being learning howto converse between the tables sothat we can go beyond mere majorityrule of control within the discipline.Discourse and deliberation are neces-sary. The framework for appropriatediscourse within the professionrequires that individuals, together,attempt to comprehend what it is

that is so interesting to others. I donot find this in most of the discus-sions that have been in print so farabout the separate tables. Instead ofwriting off as less important what isdifferent, one must try to compre-hend why a certain way of studyingthe political is fascinating to anotherperson. One is reminded of MichaelOakeshott:

It is with conversation as with gam-bling, its significance lies neither inwinning nor in losing, but in wagering.Properly speaking, it is impossible inthe absence of a diversity of voices: init different universes of discoursemeet, acknowledge each other andenjoy an oblique relationship whichneither requires nor forecasts theirbeing assimilated to one another. . . .final measure of intellectual achieve-

Looking for the past ofAmerican political sciencein an ancestry stretchingfrom Aristotle to MaxWeber is, indeed, adubious genealogicalproject.

ment is in terms of its contribution tothe conversation in which all universesof discourse meet. (Oakeshott, 1962,198-199)

Oakeshott is describing a process thatmost of us recall as the most excitingpart of graduate school, the timewhen talking with other people aboutwhat they were doing and learningwas our primary and shared concern.

In speaking of conversation, I wishto emphasize the setting of quietness,of friendly and common interest inthe activity. A multiplicity of para-digms exists, and standards mayemerge from intellectual conflict.Debate is in one sense true butpotentially in another sense falsebecause the conflict cannot be treatedas parochial.

The problem within the professionis a problem of intensity. It's a prob-lem of personality conflict. If we canovercome those kinds of conflictsand can find ways to develop thedeliberative processes, then we'll

make some advances towards havingdifferent people learn what differentschools are trying to accomplish inthe process. The history of politicalscience can be written in many ways.But the history has constantly goneback to the problem of our substance—politics—defining what is the core.And the core has essentially focusedon questions and problems thatemerge from a study of governmentand governmental processes. The keyis to focus on these issues so that weallow the different kinds of questionsthat people want to pursue to guidewhich sort of theory is used to definethe problems. If one focuses on thesubstance or nature of political sci-ence, one can then start looking atthe differences and the conflicts dif-ferently; that is, as means to answerdifferent kinds of questions. Wemust explore how different schoolsof theory contribute to answeringdifferent important questions aboutpolitics as we enter this post-paradigm era of the discipline.

One of the most important pointsthat can come out of such discus-sions is a reflection on the institu-tional consequences, especially in thecase of graduate education. Notmany people on this panel probablywill change their view of politics verymuch in the next 25 years. But cur-rent graduate students tend to learn.They want to know more than weknow. They are willing to look atmore than one approach before wetell them, if we employ our ownappropriate rhetorics, that there isonly one approach. It's the diversityof the various tables from which theycan learn different theoreticalapproaches, different languagegames, that (in the graduate students'minds) will develop the kind ofenergy to go beyond all of us withour particular limiting commitmentsat this particular time.

An obvious point is that much ten-sion is institutionally caused. Univer-sities have limited positions for ourfriends. It is also true that there arelimited resources within the profes-sion. Often, our intellectual battlescome from the self-doubt of peoplepursuing their own perspective andlegitimating their perspective ratherthan from an intellectual commit-ment to uncover better truth aboutpolitics. If you trace through some

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The Profession

battles raised by the various schoolswithin political philosophy, or theprofession as a whole, you oftenhear, buried in the second and thirdparagraph, a concern about variousways of defining faculty positions foradvertisements, whether or not cer-tain journals will accept certain kindsof articles, and so forth. It is unfor-tunate that we as political scientistsare often driven by such human con-cerns. The university structures andrewards seem to be set up so theyintensify the conflict over theseapproaches more than is necessary. Ifinstead of seeing our situation as a"resource struggle" we took the timeto try to learn what other people aredoing within their models, we wouldnot be limited to seeing politics onlyas seen through our own separatejargons.

Benjamin BarberRutgers University

The central question for politicalscience as a discipline concerns notthe nature of our discipline's "core"but how and why it continues toreflect the inequalities and disparitiesof power and influence found in thesociety we affect objectively to study.

If we look at the larger societyrather than our own little society, itseems apparent that we are at onceaffected by its inequities withoutbeing moved to examine them criti-cally. Why are there so few blacks,so few women, in the political sci-ence discussions we conduct on thethemes of race or gender? Lookaround this room, and ask yourselveswhether our subject matter is reallyas white and male as we are?

Perhaps the question we need toask is whether we are a discipline ora club? Are the boundaries that mat-ter those that divide us from withininto subspecialties that have diffi-culty communicating? Or those thatdemarcate our conversation from theconversation of outsiders? We mayhave difficulty talking to oneanother, but we are all participantsof equal standing in the conversa-tion. What of those excluded from italtogether? They are without voices,and are thus disempowered in a sub-tle but consequential fashion. Theirintellectual powerlessness in the con-

versations of the club mirrors thesocial and economic powerlessness ofthe groups they represent.

Recently, Americans, and especial-ly, American political scientists havebeen celebrating, even reveling in, thedemise of communist systems—as iftheir breakdown were somehow aproof of our virtues, their weak-nesses testimony to our strengths.Yet America is afflicted with its ownproblems and is closed in ways,though less visible, that are debilitat-ing in their own way. The closedsocieties of the East seek liberty onthe Western model, admiring theefficiency and liberty of the opensociety. Yet our societies are openonly with respect to those alreadyadmitted to the conversation. Youhave to be in the club to appreciateand utilize its discourse. Open to

Does political science havea core? The answer mustbe no.

many, it remains closed to some, notsimply because they are "disadvan-taged" or "oppressed" but because,more damagingly, they are renderedsilent. Silence is the most toxic formof powerlessness.

Comparatively speaking, we arefreer than most societies; but thisonly suggests how misleading com-parison across normative values suchas liberty and participation can be.America is an open but not a com-pletely open society. Political scienceis an open, but scarcely a totallyopen profession. Its chief problem isneither jargon nor "separate tables"but its inability to achieve genuineinclusiveness; the impermeability ofits membranes. Inasmuch as it re-mains a club—however inadvertently—its potential as a liberating conver-sation of everyone in society aboutthe nature of that society will remaincurtailed.

This is not just a theoretical objec-tion. Take a walk around Atlanta atnight, and you will experience thelimits of the open society. I do notjust mean for us—because of thefear of crime in the streets. I mean

for those who live in Atlanta, in itsless advantaged neighborhoods, thosepushed aside to make room for thesterile metropolis that is the newdowntown, those whose problemsremain on the periphery of main-stream political science.

Political science does in fact havea core: it is called politics. But poli-tics must be defined by what occursin the streets, not what we can con-veniently observe or systematize asdata in the laboratory. AlfredCobban quipped over thirty-fiveyears ago that political science wasmostly a device for avoiding sciencewithout achieving politics. We haveovercome the behavioral pretensionsof the Sixties when some insisted theself-conscious study of human in-stitutions and the consciousness thatproduced them could be studied inthe same way we studied molecularphysics. Scientism is dead in socialscience.

But the tendency to exclude thegenuinely political from the study ofpolitical science—because it is sooften messy, ambiguous, controver-sial, and in tension with standardparadigms—continues. I am suggest-ing that this may in part be a conse-quence of the clubbiness of our con-versation, our inability to hear orgive voice to those who have themost to teach us, who have beenshut out of our conversation—ormarginalized in it by the establish-ment of academic slums and back-waters with names like Afro-Ameri-can studies, or women's studies.Above all, what our discipline doesnot need is complacency. For com-placency is the enemy of freedomand democracy, and those who studywhat they aspire to be, rather thanwhat they are, quickly are trans-formed from political scientists intoideologists. And, much in the sameway, those who celebrate their libertyrather than practice it are the first tolose it.

Kenneth ShepsleHarvard University

As the only hard-core rationalchoice theorist on the panel, thereasons for my presence here shouldbe obvious. I shall try not to dis-



appoint, though in qualification letme note that the portrait I paint inthese next few minutes employs,mostly for dramatic effect, morebroad-brushed rather than pointillis-tic technique.

The question posed to us by chair-person Kristen Monroe is whether ornot there is a core to contemporarypolitical science and whether thereshould be one. My brief answers areno and yes, respectively. Let meelaborate.

Is there a core in contemporarypolitical science? When I first readProfessor Almond's PS piece on"Separate Tables," I resonated to itsvarious themes. To paraphrase itsconclusion, though giving it my ownemphasis, there are pockets of disci-pline within the profession. But forthe most part, the discipline is un-disciplined.

The pockets of discipline are self-contained communities—islands orkeys off the mainland is the meta-phor I would use. Closed intellectualeconomies, if you will, is Almond'sview. Intellectual trucking, barteringand exchanging takes place withinthe community's boundaries. Forisland intellectuals, off-islanders areeither hostile tribes, located on otherislands, or the great unwashed,located on the mainland. There areattempts to export ideas, but rarelyany effort to import them. Exportingtakes the occasional form of con-quest (other islands), but more oftentakes the shape of conversion (main-land). Island economies are protec-tionist, establishing various barriersand other restraints on imports.

The mainlanders, on the otherhand, are blithely indifferent to, ifnot ignorant of, the internecine quar-rels, both among and within thevarious islands off their shores. Theyare mildly amused by the numerousattempts at converting them. Theyare content to sample the spices andother exotica exported from theisland intellectual economies. On thewhole, life goes on on the mainland,changing slowly but mostly stayingthe same. Mainlanders are content intheir undisciplines. They share nocommon church; indeed, many don'tgo to church at all.

This is a highly-stylized version ofthe Almond view. I don't have manyquarrels with it, but let me make

some observations. In principle,intellectual communities that importideas, but don't export any, are self-indulgent. This is the problem facedby the mainland in my parable. Un-discipline risks degenerating furtherinto sloth and other vices that sap itsproductivity. Those that export, butbar imports, ultimately lose vitalityonce their natural resources aredepleted. Those that neither importnor export ideas—a colleague ofmine suggests that developmentaleconomics is such a field—are quick-ly ignored in the world intellectualeconomy. Some are more self-suffi-cient than others, but none countsfor much in the broader world.

But there is a fourth alternative,

If [we] don't ask[ourselves] how do we . . .fit into the large world inwhich humanity is planted. . . there is somethingmissing [in our discourse].

one that allows both mainland andisland intellectual economies to sur-vive and even prosper, namely inter-national intellectual trade. And hereis where I think Professor Almondgoes astray. Causeways and bridges,taking traffic in both directions, arepossible. Some, like myself, feelquite comfortable in hailing from aspecific island, yet in traveling regu-larly to the mainland, sometimes topeddle my wares; other times, tosample mainland delicacies. I alsooccasionally island-hop. One doesnot have to be a complete Pan-glossian to come to a more sanguineconclusion about the state of theprofession than Professor Almonddoes. The mainland draws sustenancefrom the islands, whether behavioral,rational choice, Straussian, Marxist,or statistical. The islands prosper attheir respective tasks from havingfrequent intercourse with the main-land. As in so many other areas oflife, specialization need not entailisolation, suspicion, or antipathy.Trade and exchange make us allricher.

To this first question, then, I donot think there is a core in contem-porary political science. Rather, thereis an intellectual economy. But I donot take a particularly dim view ofthis to the extent that trade takesplace. I think Professor Almond dis-misses this possibility too readily.

While I cannot speak with author-ity about many island intellectualeconomies, I do believe that therational choice group in political sci-ence and economics have become,after some false starts and self-indulgence, fine practitioners of theart of international intellectualexchange. While some of our tribeare still Teutonic axiom-theorem-proof types, most rational choicemodelers do American politics, inter-national politics, political theory,and, increasingly, comparative poli-tics. We are as frequently on themainland as back home. We areinterested in legislative structure andprocess, international regimes,theories of justice, and electoral sys-tems. One should not mistake rigor,consistency, and an intellectually self-conscious point of view for isolation,or rigidity, or even religion. In myparticular field of legislative politics,for instance, my own work has beenenriched for having been a graduatestudent peer of Fiorina, Rohde, andSinclair; a student of Fenno; a col-league of Salisbury; a friend ofJones, Ornstein, Patterson, andPolsby. And legislative studies, inturn, has been enriched by rationalchoice approaches. It has becomeconventional to think of legislatorsmaximizing electoral prospects, ofleaders of forming coalitions, ofstructure and procedure inducingequilibria. It is precisely its rigor, itscumulativeness, its coherence thathas allowed the rational choiceapproach the influence it currentlyenjoys. In sum, intellectual truckingand bartering, entailing lowered tradebarriers, promotes rather thandiscourages a science of politics.

Should there be a core in contem-porary political science? The absenceof a core in political science is partlyan historical accident. AlthoughAlmond quite correctly points outthat numerous methodological andtheoretical advances had their originsin 19th and early 20th centuryEurope, the fact of the matter is that

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The Profession

technical developments are not onlymostly an American affair, but alsoare an American politics affair. Weare thus stuck in a perplexingdilemma in which many of our mostscientific tools, techniques, andtheories have been fashioned tounderstand a single, quite possiblyexceptional, political system. This isunfortunate and certainly no basisfor elaborating a foundation for thestudy of politics. In order to do so,and I think doing so would be agood thing, I think we need to re-structure our traditional fields. Afoundation should, in my view, reston two pillars: political theory andcomparative politics. The first shouldfocus on static principles of individu-als, groups, and institutions. Theymay be positive, normative, orempirical; it is of no matter to me.They are theorems about equilibriumtendencies, discourses on equilibriumdesideratum, or statistical forecastsof equilibrium practices. The secondpillar is expressly comparative, some-thing all too rare in contemporarycomparative politics. Its focus ischange, perturbation of equilibria,comparative statics and dynamics. It,too, may take either a positive, nor-mative, or empirical turn. It seeks todetermine what will or what shouldor what actually does happen whenrelevant parameters—history, culture,institutional practice, economic con-dition—change. It is an analytical,not a geographical, comparativepolitics.

I obviously do not have the timeto develop my view further. To sumup, there is currently no core or dis-cipline to political science, thoughthere are some pockets of discipline.Exchange among intellectual com-munities has allowed for some vital-ity, some growth, and some mud-dling through. I wish there were acore, a foundation, and I cannotimagine one without the rationalchoice school playing a significantrole. Adam Smith, to the contrarynotwithstanding, rarely can singleindividuals effect the restructuringI believe would facilitate this devel-opment. I am encouraged by thepace with which more traditionalpolitical science undertakings haveincorporated the rigor and coherence,if not always the substance, ofrational choice. When we reassemble

in 25 years—I am sure we are all pre-pared to wait—I expect that rationalchoice will still be with us, thoughdistinctly less American, distinctlymore comparative.

Joseph CropseyUniversity of Chicago

There are certain advantages tospeaking last. Everything's been said. . . almost. In a previous incarna-tion, I used to run around a lot witheconomists and there was a questionthat was raised among economists

If empirical politicalscientists show littleinterest in the concerns ofpolitical theorists, a largepart of the blame lies withthe theorists themselves forshowing so little interest inpolitics.

that led to an answer that comesback to me now. They used to askthemselves "what is economics?" Iforget who it was—I think it mighthave been Dennis Robertson—whosaid economics is what economistsdo. At the time, that struck me as arather inane answer to a questionthat betokens some lack of reflectionon the chief subject, which is "whatis it that they're doing and what arethey?" Now I am myself in the posi-tion of the person described by MarkTwain, who said that when he was ata certain early age, he thought hisfather was really very supid. But theolder he got, the more his fatherseemed to have learned. And it nowseems to me that the economists whogave the above-described answer tothat self-reflective question were notall that wrong. Whatever wisdomthere is in their answer might justpossibly be relevant to the questionthat we're asking now, which reallyamounts to "what are we doing?"What is a political scientist and whatis political science? Now, if some-

body were to suggest that politicalscience is what political scientists do,I think he might capture the spirit ofmuch of what's been said today.

I have thought a little bit aboutthis question over a long period oftime. If one were to propose thatpolitical science is what political sci-entists do, you would in a wayalready have given an answer, animplicit answer, to the question: Isthere such a thing as political science,which is a conversion of the ques-tion: Is there a core? I take it thatthere is such a thing as political sci-ence. I take it that it can be dis-tinguished from nursing education,archaeology, and lots of other sub-jects that appear in university cata-logues. Going back a long way,which is a bad habit of mine, 1 amthinking of a certain passage in thePlatonic dialogue Theaetetus. I'mreminded that if you can give some-thing a name and have somebodyelse understand what you're talkingabout when you pronounce thatname, then there must be somethinghere which is being named. Now,how far can you get with this sort ofirenic approach to the question: Isthere something that we are in facttalking about when we pronouncethe name of our discipline? We'restruck, and rightly struck, by thediversity. Every department, everydecent department, will reflect thediversity that exists in the minds ofserious people who put their thoughtto the question: What about politics?Well, there are a lot of differentways of approaching that questionand it's a good thing that there arethat many different ways. I wouldsay that the political science depart-ment copies the paradigm of the uni-versity. There would not be a lot of •departments in a university if anyone department had the truth. Therewouldn't be a lot of differentapproaches to political science ifthere were not a lot to be said forthe different ways in which politicalscientists approach their questions.Now, if we are sometimes struck bythe fact that there is tension andthere is intensity and there is evensometimes—I regret to say—hostilityamong the votaries and partisans ofthis and that, I think that we'rebeing impressed by something thatsimply has to be there. If it were not



there, I think it would be a sign thatpeople don't take themselves veryseriously. Now, this is not an argu-ment in favor of people being uncivilto each other or disrespectful of themerit of the things that others do.Obviously, in principle nobody is infavor of that. So it appears as ifonce again we're compelled to bereminded of a piece of wisdom that'sprobably something like 2,800 yearsold. It's a little embarrassing torediscover something that's beenaround for 2,800 years but it's betterlate than never.

There were people a very long timeago who said that all is strife. Youcan read the fragments of the pre-Socratics and find this said. Andthen somebody else will say all islove. Well, there is a centripetalityand centrifugality, or whatever theright word is, in the affairs of menin the cosmos. That seems to be ofthe nature of things. More impressivethan the fact that there is a driftingapart and a coming together is thefact that the drifting apart and com-ing together coexist at the same time,that there is a tendency for us tomove apart and also for us tocoalesce. There is something, and Idon't know what it is, that causesthat tendency to drift and tocoalesce, the two of them to livetogether. This is a paradigm, if youlike, but it is indicated to us not onlyby the affairs of men but by the con-stitution of the cosmos. It's a veryold piece of wisdom generated bypeople who faced the same problemthat we're now addressing on ourvery modest scale.

This leads me to a conclusion of asort. If it could be said with anydegree of plausibility that the thingsthat occur to us now, when weaddress our questions, generallyresemble in important respects thethings that seem to have occurred topeople of thousands of years back,

then it looks as if there's somethingpermanent in the affairs of humanbeings. There's something that won'tgo away, and something that persistsas a question and also that persists asan answer. I would suggest that if wewere to look for a core to politicalscience, it would have the characterof a relatively small number of ques-tions that will not go away. Theyhave not gone away and I dare saythey will not go away. It takes agreat deal of audacity to propose oneof these questions to you. Not every-body here has to be committed topolitical theory, and certainly noteverybody has to be committed tothe history of political theory. Thereare some good reasons for being

. . . instead of worryingabout how much weshould be talking to oneanother we should beworrying more abouttalking directly aboutpolitics than wecharacteristically do.

dubious about that enterprise. It'swhere I've spent my life but I under-stand that. Nevertheless, I would beso bold as to put forward a question,not the only question, but I think it'sa question which if political scientistsdon't address, they are indicatingthat our discipline has undergone acertain impoverishment. I don'tknow whether to say I blush or Itremble or what but at any rate Ihesitate to put this question to you.But I'm going to do it. I would saythat if political scientists or socialscientists don't ask themselves how

human beings fit into the largercontext of existence, if they don't askthemselves how do we somehow orother fit into the large world inwhich humanity is planted, I thinkthere is something missing. I don'tsay this is the only question. I don'twant to say it's the most importantquestion. But I think it is an indis-pensable question. It's a questionthat men in all ages have raised, andto the best of their ability. It comesdown to us not only in science andnot only in philosophy but it comesdown to us through scripture andprobably other religion. It is the uni-versal question. I leave it with you asa question that should be raised,around which a core may develop.Maybe not. But at any rate, withoutthis question I suggest to you ourdiscipline is somehow impoverished.

Notes

1. See Brian Barry, "Do Neighbors MakeGood Fences? Political Theory and the Terri-torial Imperative," Political Theory, Vol. 9,No. 3 (August 1981), pp. 293-301.

2. See my "Gross Concepts in PoliticalArgument," Political Theory, Vol. 17, No. 1(February 1989), pp. 51-76.

3. As one of my colleagues remarked withjustifiable chagrin on laboring through anextended theoretical discourse on the dif-ference between equality of opportunity andequality of advantage as principles of dis-tributive justice that revealed not the slightestinterest in how either could be implementedeven in principle, "this stuff is three points tothe right of the decimal!"

4. For an extended discussion of the roleof empirical assumptions in political theory,see my The Evolution of Rights in LiberalTheory (Cambridge University Press, 1986),pp. 208-10, 217-18, 230-32, 238, 281-82 and295-97).

ReferencesOakeshott, Michael. 1962. Rationalism in

Politics and Other Essays. New York:Basic Books.

Rawls, John. 1971. A Theory of Justice.Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

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the nature of contemporary political science: a roundtable

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