Our Enemies and US: America's Rivalries and the Making of Political Science PDF
Preview Our Enemies and US: America's Rivalries and the Making of Political Science
Our Enemies and US Our Enemies and US America's Rivalries and the Making of Political Science IDO OREN Cornell University Press Ithaca and London Copyright © 2003 by Cornell University All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. First published 2003 by Cornell University Press Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Oren, Ido, 1958- Our enemies and US : America's rivalries and the making of political science / Ido Oren, p. cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8014-3566-8 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Political science—United States—History—20th century. 2. United States—Politics and government. 3. United States—Foreign relations. I. Title: America's rivalries and the making of political science. II. Title. JA84.U5 O73 2003 320 ' .0973—dc2i 2002009409 Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the fullest extent possible in the publishing of its books. Such materials include vegetable-based, low-VOC inks and acid-free papers that are recycled, totally chlorine-free, or partly composed of nonwood fibers. For further information, visit our website at www.comellpress.comell.edu. Cloth printing 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 IHN ü » ™ ,>ttN Few discoveries are more irritating than those which expose the pedigree of ideas. Lord Acton, History of Freedom All knowledge of cultural reality, as may be seen, is always knowledge from particular points of view. Max Weber, "'Objectivity' in Social Science and Social Policy" Preface, ix Introduction American Political Science as Ideology, 1 Chapter i Imperial Germany, 23 Chapter 2 Nazi Germany, 47 Chapter 3 Stalin's Soviet Union, 91 Chapter 4 Cold War Politics, 126 Conclusion Toward a Reflexive Political Science, 172 Notes, 183 Index, 227 A decade ago I was working on a mathematical and statistical study of arms races that fell well within the substantive and epistemological bounds of mainstream political science. I published the results in profes sional journals, and I remain proud of the work's quality. But even a cur sory glance at this book will show that my intellectual horizon has shifted considerably. This book questions the very presuppositions of the science of politics into which I had been socialized. How did this reorientation come about? After the end of the Cold War, scholarly interest in the previously pop ular subject of the arms race waned. With the collapse of communism and the apparent spread of democracy, many scholars were intrigued by the prospect of a "democratic peace." By the mid-1990s, the proposition that democracies do not fight one another, which had had little resonance just a few years earlier, was gaining widespread acceptance. It received sup port from numerous statistical analyses, and the Clinton administration invoked it as a rationale for its foreign policy of "democratization." I was skeptical of the notion that peace between states was enhanced by the shared democratic character of their regimes, but had to admit that the statistical studies of the relationship seemed technically sound. To be ef fective, a critique of these studies would have to rest on a foundation other than their own scientific grounding. In this context, a question crossed my mind: How did Woodrow Wil son perceive Imperial Germany — not in 1917, when he declared war "to make the world safe for democracy," but twenty to thirty years earlier? Wilson's legacy was consciously embraced by proponents of the demo cratic peace thesis, and I thought that the thesis might be undermined if it turned out that Wilson's characterization of Germany as "autocratic" followed, rather than preceded, the German-American conflict. I vaguely knew that Wilson was a political scientist before he entered politics, but I knew little else about the history of political science. At that point, I was extremely fortunate to be able to turn to a wise colleague, Jim Farr, for in dispensable tutoring in disciplinary history. Jim suggested, among other things, that my investigation might be profitably expanded to include John Burgess, an ardent Germanophile who founded the first graduate school of political science in the United States. In my research on arms races, I had come to appreciate the power of mathematical models to generate insights that might not have been read ily apparent otherwise. As I immersed myself in the academic writings of
The list of books you might like
