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The Tragedyo f PoliticalS cience The Tragedy of Political Science PoliticsS, cholarshipa,n d Democracy DAVID M. RICCI Yale University Press New Haven and London This publication was prepared under a grant from the \\'oodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, \\'ashington, D.C. The statements and views expressed herein are those of the author and are not necessarily those of the Wilson Center. Copyright© 1984 by Yale University. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections I 07 and I 08 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Designed by James J. Johnson and set in Electra and Janson types by Huron Valley Graphics. Printed in the United States of America by Vail-Ballou Press, Binghamton, New York. The paper in this book meets the guidelinesf or permanencea nd durability of the Committee on ProductionG uidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. Library of CongressC ataloging in PublicationD ata Ricci, David M. The tragedy of political science. Includes index. I. Political science. I. Title. JA71.R48 1984 320 84-3510 ISBN 0-300-03088-6 !098765432 For my mother and father, who deserveth is bookv ery much; for Iry, Ronit, and Anat, who haveb eenm y supporfto r so long; and for Tali, who camel ast, but not least. Contents Preface IX Acknowledgments Xlll Introduction 1. Political Science as a Profession 3 The Early Years 2. The Locus of Higher Education 29 3. The Contradictions of a Political Discipline 57 The Mid-Century Liberal Matrix 4. The New View of Science and Politics 99 5. The Behavioral Persuasion 133 6. The Decade of Disillusionment 176 The Community of Political Scholars 7. Politics, Publishing, Truth, and Wisdom 209 8. Political Laws, Community Power, and Critical Theory 249 Conclusions 9. The Tragedy of Political Science 291 Epilogue on Political Theory 319 Index 325 Preface This book originated in my perception of two important trends that have charac terized the development of modem political science. The first emerged in the history of political thought. For the most part, the ideas which form the basis of that history are found in writings of men like Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aqui nas, Bodin, Locke, Burke, and Marx, whose works are considered to be part of the corpus of great books that come down to us as a legacy of Western civiliza tion. For centuries, those books served in the academic world as the touchstone of teaching about politics, but they were not themselves mainly the product of an academic environment. Some of their authors taught for a living, but most were busy with practical affairs, and their tradition of discourse therefore owed more to experience in the realms of culture and society than to enthusiasm for a narrow and scholarly view of public life. Who, then, are the great thinkers of today? To ask this question is to become aware of the first trend that marks the development of modem political science, because, according to most political scientists, the line of first-rate thinkers in the Western tradition came to an end around the close of the nineteenth century. Thus on the subject of, say, liberalism, not since John Stuart Mill, roughly speaking, has a really impressive political thinker appeared. Now oddly enough, just at about the time that men like John Stuart Mill were presumably becoming so scarce, universities were unquestionably growing into the enormous centers of learning that they are today. Here was a second trend relevant to political sci ence, because, as the universities expanded and provided academic appoint ments for political scholars, they stressed the importance of a scientific approach to natural and social affairs, in fields ranging from biology and physics to anthro pology, sociology, and political science. The longer I thought about the declining number of great thinkers and the IX x Preface growing prominence of universities, the more I was convinced that these two trends must be significantly related. What happened, or so it seemed to me, was that people teaching politics in the ever-expanding universities managed to re place the old tradition of political thought with their own work. This they did by expounding the virtues of a scholarly way of analyzing politics, whereupon, by comparison, any more traditional sort of speculation about public affairs ap peared to be either less incisive or plainly mistaken. As the years passed, great quantities of that scholarly work accumulated, while more and more prestige accrued to the universities in return for the scientific knowledge which their faculty members, in various fields, produced and placed at the service of society. Eventually, the new expertise of academicians as a class became so highly regarded that, for political scientists at least, it seemed reasonable to honor the older tradition of political ideas more for its historical stature than for any recent representatives. Ergo the present situation, where most college courses on poli tics arc designed to stress not an aggregate wisdom of the ages but the contempo rary conclusions of political science professors regarding what, on the basis of scholarly research, appears to them true of the political world. The peculiar consequence of all this is that, beginning quite recently, large numbers of American citizens have come to learn about public life from a particular aggregation of academic specialists rather than, as in the past, from a tradition based upon the works of great men in many walks of life. Yet we know very little about those specialists and about how shared vocational circumstances may affect the quality of their teachings. What if, for example, the conditions of work in universities direct the findings of political research in some specific directions and not in others? And what if, as a result, political scientists, as a group, tend to endorse certain views of the polity as opposed to others? In short, what is the nature of political science as a learned discipline, and what is the impact of that character on the form and content of political education in America today? Such broad questions may indicate the need for an inquiry larger than any one investigator can handle comprehensively, because thousands of political scientists have taught and written in America since universities emerged a cen tury ago, and no one can possibly read, or otherwise acquaint himself with, all they have said. I will concede this point even before my critics make it. I will also add that, having attempted the job, I probably know better than anyone else just how painfully limited one researcher's talents are in relation to the enormous quantity of materials that might be surveyed. Nevertheless, operating under the assumption that if nothing were ventured, nothing would be gained, I decided that a basic overview of the discipline's development, and of representative works which its members published in several eras, could lead at least to some enlight enment on the subject of political studies. And that is what I set out to achieve. Preface xi In its final form, one written aspect of The Tragedy of Political Science deserves explanation. With no male chauvinism intended, the book refers more frequently to men than to women. Part of this imbalance I caused by avoiding stylistic awkwardness while dealing with matters entailing gender, especially in the singular. Most of the disparity, however, stems from my concern for human beings taken collectively. Men and women all belong to the species of man, as in Charles Darwin's Descent of Man and Jacob Bronowski's Ascent of Man, and no other term but that one, and its derivatives, can yet evoke so powerfully the qualities of grandeur and achievement that lie within our grasp as members of the human race. In the text, I sometimes speak of individuals, persons, and people, in order to preclude being written off as an incorrigible troglodyte. But I have not yielded to modem usage entirely, because replacing the older terms with newer expressions on every occasion means losing some of the historical and emotional connotations still conveyed by the former. And some of those connotations I wished to retain because this is, after all, a book about tragedy, which encourages readers to recall and reaffirm the ideals of a great civilization where those are embodied, as the term tragedy itself, in an age-old tradition of humanistic discourse. I therefore ask the same readers for forbearance and hope that they will tolerate what may be rated, nowadays, an eccentric ratio of mascu line to feminine references. Acknowledgments Some of the early research for this book was conducted while I spent a sabbatical leave at the University of Pennsylvania dming the academic year of 1976-77. I am grateful to the Penn-Israel Exchange Program for financial support received during that year. Drafting of the manuscript took place mainly from September 1981 to September 1982, when I was a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Interna tional Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. Members of the staff there provided library facilities and administrative services that made possible the completion of the writing within its appointed time. Moreover, conversation with other Fellows, and attendance at the Center's many seminars and collo quia, provided intellectual stimulation throughout the year and contributed many ideas that found a place in my writing. For their critical reading of the manuscript, I am grateful to my father, Thomas A. Ricci, to Marian Neal Ash of Yale University Press, and to Robert E. Brown. James C. Scott and Richard J. Bernstein were very helpful for uncovering some unexplained assumptions in my work, and these I strove to explicate fully before going to press. For tracking down many detailed citations, I owe a special note of thanks to J. David O'Donnell, my research assistant in Washington. For whatever merit this book enjoys, all those who helped me are entitled to share the credit. The errors I accept as mine alone. Xltt