Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-04T11:51:23.528Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Political Science on the Cusp: Recovering a Discipline's Past

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 October 2005

JOHN G. GUNNELL
JOHN G. GUNNELL
Affiliation:
State University of New York at Albany
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

As Thomas Kuhn noted, it is almost inevitable that scientific practitioners read the history of their field backward and perceive earlier stages as, at best, prototypical of the present. This is the manner in which political scientists, and even historians, have imaged the relationship between the debates about science and democracy that took place during the 1920s and 1950s. Despite the importance of Charles Merriam's role in the history of American political science, his work was not the discursive axis of the paradigmatic disciplinary shift that took place in the first quarter of the 20th century. It was the arguments of G. E. G. Catlin and W. Y. Elliott that most distinctly represented the transformation in both the theory of democracy and the image of science, and that, for the next two generations, set the terms of the debate about these issues as well as about the relationship between the mainstream discipline and the subfield of political theory. And, despite the theoretical and ideological differences between Catlin and Elliott, their exchange points to the intensely practical concerns that originally informed the controversy about the scientific study of politics.

Type
ARTICLES
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 99 , Issue 4 , November 2005 , pp. 597 - 609
Copyright
© 2005 by the American Political Science Association

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

Almond Gabriel. 1996. “Political Science: The History of the Discipline.” In A New Handbook of Political Science, ed. Robert Goodin and Hans-Dieter Klingemann. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 50– 96.
Beard Charles A. 1927a. “Time, Technology, and the Creative Spirit in Political Science.” American Political Science Review 21 (February): 1– 11.Google Scholar
Beard Charles A. 1927b. “Review of Catlin.” The Science and Method of Politics. American Political Science Review 21 (August): 652– 3.Google Scholar
Catlin G. E. G. 1925. “The Doctrine of Power and Party Conflict.” American Political Science Review 19 (November): 718– 34.Google Scholar
Catlin G. E. G. 1927a. “The Delimitation and Measurability of Political Phenomena,” American Political Science Review 21 (May): 255– 69.Google Scholar
Catlin G. E. G. 1927b. “Is Politics a Branch of Ethics?” Monist (July): 384– 404.Google Scholar
Catlin G. E. G. 1927c. The Science and Method of Politics. New York: Knopf.
Catlin G. E. G. 1927d. “The Like-Minded Group.” The Philosophical Review 36 (May): 237– 52.Google Scholar
Catlin G. E. G. 1929. “Review of Elliott.” The Pragmatic Revolt in Politics. Political Science Quarterly 44 (June): 259– 65.Google Scholar
Catlin George E. G. 1930. A Study of the Principles of Politics: Being An Essay Towards Political Rationalization. London: George Allen and Unwin.
Catlin G. E. G. 1933. In symposium on “What Can Philosophy Contribute to the Study of Politics.” Aristotelian Society, Supp. Vol. 12, 100– 17.Google Scholar
Catlin G. E. G. 1935. “Review of H.D. Lasswell.” World Politics and Personal Insecurity. Political Science Quarterly 50 (June): 278– 81.Google Scholar
Catlin George E. G. 1956. “The Future of Political Science.” Western Political Quarterly 9 (December): 815– 25.Google Scholar
Catlin George E. 1957. “Political Theory: What Is It?” Political Science Quarterly 72 (March): 1– 29.Google Scholar
Catlin Sir George. 1972. For God's Sake, Go! Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe.
C. B. D. 1929. Review of Elliott, The Pragmatic Revolt in Politics. Journal of the Royal Institute of International Affairs 8: 283.
Crane Robert T. 1927. “Review of Catlin.” The Science and Method of Politics. American Journal of Sociology 33 (November): 483– 5.Google Scholar
Crick Bernard. 1959. The American Science of Politics. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Dahl Robert. 1956. A Preface to Democratic Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Dewey John. 1927a. “Politics and Human Beings.” New Republic 50: 114– 5.Google Scholar
Dewey John. 1927b. The Public and Its Problems. New York: Henry Holt.
Dewey A. Gordon. 1927c. “Review of Catlin.” The Science and Method of Politics. Political Science Quarterly 42: 617– 21.Google Scholar
Dickinson John. 1930. “Democratic Realities and Democratic Dogma.” American Political Science Review 24 (May): 283– 309.Google Scholar
Drysek John S., and Stephen T. Leonard. 1988. “History and Discipline in Political Science.” American Political Science Review 82 (December): 1245– 60.Google Scholar
Easton David. 1953. The Political System. New York: Knopf.
Easton David. 1965. A Framework for Political Analysis. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice–Hall.
Easton David. 1969. “The New Revolution in Political Science.” American Political Science Review 62 (December): 1051– 61.Google Scholar
Elliott W. Y. 1922. “The Metaphysics of Duguit's Pragmatic Conception of Law.” Political Science Quarterly 37 (December): 639– 54.Google Scholar
Elliott W. Y. 1924a. “The Political Application of Romanticism.” Political Science Quarterly 39 (June): 234– 64.Google Scholar
Elliott W. Y. 1924b. “The Pragmatic Politics of Mr. H. J. Laski.” American Political Science Review 18 (May): 251– 75.Google Scholar
Elliott W. Y. 1925. “Sovereign State or Sovereign Group,” American Political Science Review 19 (August): 475– 99.Google Scholar
Elliott W. Y. 1926. “Mussolini, Prophet of the Pragmatic Era in Politics.” Political Science Quarterly 41 (June): 161– 92.Google Scholar
Elliott W. Y. 1927a. “An Ethics of Politics.” Political Science Quarterly 42 (June): 259– 67.Google Scholar
Elliott W. Y. 1927b. “Review of R. M. MacIver.” The Modern State. American Political Science Review 21 (May): 432– 4.Google Scholar
Elliott W. Y. 1928a. Fugitives: An Anthology of Verse. New York: Harcourt, Brace.
Elliott William Yandell. 1928b. The Pragmatic Revolt in Politics: Syndicalism, Fascism, and the Constitutional State. New York: Macmillan.
Elliott W. Y. 1931. “The Possibility of a Science of Politics: With Special Attention to the Methods Suggested by William B. Munro and George E. G. Catlin,” with “Appendix: Commentary” by George E. G. Catlin, in Methods in Social Science: A Case Book, ed. Stuart A Rice, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 70– 94.
Elliott W. Y. 1940. “The Pragmatic Revolt in Politics: Twenty Years in Retrospect.” Review of Politics 2.
Ellis Ellen Deborah, 1927. “Political Science at the Crossroads.” American Political Science Review 21 (November): 73– 91.Google Scholar
Follett Mary Parker. 1918. The New State: Group Organizations, the Solution of Popular Government. New York: Longmans, Green.
Farr James. 2003. “Political Science.” In The Cambridge History of Science, vol. 7, The Modern Social Sciences, ed. Theodore M. Porter and Dorothy Ross. 306– 28.
Gosnell Harold F. 1933. “Statisticians and Political Scientists.” American Political Science Review 27 (June): 392– 403.Google Scholar
Gunnell John G. 1993. The Descent of Political Theory: The Genealogy of an American Vocation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Gunnell John G. 2004a. “The Real Revolution in Political Science.” PS: Political Science and Politics 37 (January): 47– 50.Google Scholar
Gunnell John G. 2004b. Imagining the American Polity: Political Science and the Discourse of Democracy. College Park: Pennsylvania University Press.
Herring Pendelton. 1940. The Politics of Democracy. New York: Norton.
Kuhn Thomas. 1970. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Kuhn Thomas. 1993. “Afterwords.” In World Changes: Thomas Kuhn and the Nature of Science, ed. Paul Horwich. Cambridge: MIT Press, 311– 39.
Kuhn Thomas. 2000. The Road Since Structure. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lasswell Harold, and Abraham Kaplan. 1950. Power and Society. A Framework for Political Inquiry. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
MacIver R. M. 1929. “Review of Elliott.” The Pragmatic Revolt in Politics. American Political Science Review 23 (February): 194– 6.Google Scholar
Merriam Charles E. 1931. Review of Catlin's A Study of the Principles of Politics. International Journal of Ethics 41 (April): 375– 6.
Menand Louis. 2001. The Metaphysical Club. New York: Farrarr, Strauss, and Giroux.
Munro William B. 1928. “Physics and Politics—An Old Analogy Revisited.” American Political Science Review 22 (February): 1– 11.Google Scholar
Murphy Arthur. 1929. Review of Elliott's The Pragmatic Revolt in Politics. International Journal of Ethics 39 (January): 239– 44.
Ricci David. 1984. The Tragedy of Political Science: Scholarship, Politics, and Democracy. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Ross Dorothy. 1991. The Origins of American Social Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sabine George H. 1928. Review of Catlin, The Science and Method of Politics. The Philosophical Review 37 (May): 266– 9.
Seidelman Raymond, with the assistance of Edward Harpham. 1985. Disenchanted Realists: Political Science and the American Crisis, 1884–1984. Albany: State University of New York Press.
de Selincourt O. 1929. Review of Elliott, The Pragmatic Revolt in Politics. Mind 38 (January): 106– 10.
Smith Rogers M. 1997. “Still Blowing in the Wind: The American Quest for a Democratic, Scientific Political Science.” Daedalus 126 (Winter): 253– 87.Google Scholar
Somit Albert, and Joseph Tanenhaus. 1967. The Development of American Political Science: From Burgess to Behavioralism. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
Wolin Sheldon S. 1960. Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought. Boston: Little-Brown.
Wolin Sheldon S. 1969. “Political Theory as a Vocation.” American Political Science Review 62 (December): 1062– 82.Google Scholar
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.