Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-29T00:00:37.845Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The State in Political Science: How We Became What We Study

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Theodore J. Lowi
Theodore J. Lowi*
Affiliation:
Cornell University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

American political science is a product of the American state. There are political reasons why particular subdisciplines became hegemonic with the emergence of the “Second Republic” after World War II. The three hegemonic subdisciplines of our time are public opinion, public policy, and public choice. Each is a case study of consonance with the thought-ways and methods of a modern bureaucratized government committed to scientific decision making. Following Leviathan too closely results in three principal consequences: (1) failure to catch and evaluate the replacement of law by economics as the language of the state, (2) the loss of passion in political science discourse, and (3) the failure of political science to appreciate the significance of ideological sea changes accompanying regime changes.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 86 , Issue 1 , March 1992 , pp. 1 - 7
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1992 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bensel, Richard F. 1990. Yankee Leviathan—the Origins of Central State Authority in America, 1859–1877. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Goldfield, Michael, and Gilbert, Alan. 1990. “The Limits of Rational Choice Theory.” Presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, San Francisco.Google Scholar
Jensen, Richard. 1969. “American Election Analysis.” In Politics and the Social Sciences, ed. Lipset, Seymour Martin. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lowi, Theodore J. 1991. “Knowledge, Power, and the Congress.” In Knowledge, Power, and the Congress, ed. Robinson, William H. and Clay, H. Wellborn. Washington: Congressional Quarterly.Google Scholar
Mannheim, Karl. 1936. Ideology and Utopia. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.Google Scholar
Mills, C. Wright. 1959. The Sociological Imagination. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Porter, Theodore M. 1986. The Rise of Statistical Thinking, 1820–1900. Princeton: Princeton University Press.10.1515/9780691210520Google Scholar
Robinson, Joan. 1962. Economic Philosophy. New York: Doubleday Anchor.Google Scholar
Ross, Dorothy. 1991. The Origins of American Social Science. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Schwarz, John E. 1988. America's Hidden Success. New York: W. W. Norton.Google Scholar
Seidelman, Raymond. 1985. Disenchanted Realists: Political Science and the American Crisis, 1884–1984. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Skowronek, Stephen. 1982. Building a New American State: The Expansion of National Administrative Capacities, 1877–1920. New York: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511665080Google Scholar
Somit, Albert, and Tannenhaus, Joseph. 1967. The Development of Political Science: From Burgess to Behavioralism. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.Google Scholar
Vining, Joseph. 1978. Legal Identity: The Coming of Age of Public Law. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Wiebe, Robert. 1967. The Search for Order, 1877–1920. New York: Hill & Wang.Google Scholar
Wilson, Woodrow. 1887. “The Study of Administration.” The Political Science Quarterly 2:202–17.10.2307/2139277Google Scholar
Wilson, Woodrow. 1911. “The Law and the Facts.” American Political Science Review 5:1–11.10.2307/1945988Google Scholar
Wood, Gordon S. 1969. The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.