John Gunnell’s account of perestroika is written in the shadow of earlier efforts to reform the discipline. “Perestroika was,” as Gunnell writes, “distinctly a call for reform rather than a revolutionary challenge.” His recollection of the more revolutionary challenges raised in the midst of the greater struggles of the 1960s reminds us of a more radical set of proposals and debates.
I am less interested in the discipline of political science than I am in politics. Consequently I did not realize that the threatened secession of political theory was central to the conflicts Gunnell describes. It was evident, however, that the passion for politics that had animated disciplinary struggles in the 1960s was absent from perestroika. Should political theory be part of the discipline of political science? Should politics be part of political science? These questions are, I think, dependent on one another. The field of political theory belongs in the discipline of political science, I would argue, only while politics is primary.
No one needs to be told that political theory lives uneasily in the discipline. The coda “except for political theory” is ubiquitous. Political theorists could be quite comfortable outside the discipline. The history of political thought could be readily accommodated in history. Normative political theorists could be, with a bit less ease, taken into philosophy. Comparative political theorists, if they have a regional specialty (as they generally do) could move to into area studies, Near Eastern languages or (in some cases) religious studies. Many of us have joint appointments. Many have had the opportunity to move to another discipline. Most of us have not. The problem is power.
Political theorists are bound to each other, and to the discipline, by a common set of central concerns: power and resistance, legitimacy, efficacy, dominion and oppression. A little time in departments of history or comparative literature or philosophy reminds us that questions like the form of the novel or the metaphysical foundations of modal semantics do not command our attention. Theorists are not confined to a single place or period. For theorists, the questions that matter are questions concerning power: questions that are, or once were, or ought to be at the heart of political science.
The enduring irony is that while political theory has remained in political science to study the political, other subfields have attempted to excise politics from political science. It is possible, in some circles even desirable, to come to political science from economics, or math, or computer science with a “tool box” and without knowledge of the political institutions, texts, practices, history, or present struggles of any place or people.
This imperative (the imperative to cleanse political science of politics) is a legacy of the profound misunderstanding of Weber that drove debates over “facts and values.” Certain forms of behavioralism and positivism, afflicted with imperial ambitions, have from time to time attempted to separate political science from the political. Indifference to immediate political concerns became the mark of the political scientist.
Political theory has widened when political science has narrowed. People who once might have been accepted in the fields of Comparative or American politics have, from time to time, been obliged to find a place in Theory. They are generally not much disturbed by this. The company is good in theory, and if the salaries are a bit lower, the prestige is high. The discipline, however, is damaged. The intellectually straitened subfields, “cleansed” of politics and committed to technical prowess, become arid and parochial. Their connections to other disciplines are diminished, or disappear.
Perestroika was a victory for reform and, like most reformist victories, it resulted in disappointment. A few doors were opened, a few careers were advanced. A few more journals were marked as appropriate venues for publishing, a few more methods taught in methods courses. These were small gains, but they have been transformative, permitting a slightly (though only slightly) more open, adventurous, and at the same time rigorous political science. Perestroika made life easier for scholars whose work is valuable. It made things harder for those who sought to claim the mantle of science without satisfying the demands of science: who claimed title to rigor on the basis of an aesthetic formality and the concealment of carelessness in numbers. But these are dark times and that is not enough.
Political scientists can no longer insist with any decency that they are engaged in forms of research whose distance from political concerns cleanses and clarifies them.
Let me be clear. I have nothing but contempt for the “scholar-activist” for whom all questions are subordinated to a cause. No one among us knows enough to give that kind of unquestioning allegiance. This is not a matter of serving a master. It is a matter of refusing all masters in the pursuit of the knowledge we need. Weber wrote that politics is “the slow drilling through hard boards.” The study of politics demands the same patience and sacrifice but offers nothing of the camaraderie and glory of political work. Scholars are obliged, from time to time, to tread heavily on dreams they share and hopes they can no longer sustain. Yet it is still the long struggle for the political that drives most of those who study politics.
A political science that turns away from politics in the name of science is no place for political theorists. In such a case, the best service political theorists could give would be to raise again the possibility John Gunnell recalls, and establish an alternative venue for studying politics. Political theory could be the field where political questions are pursued. Those who once were ranged under different subfields, but remain committed to the struggle for the political could find a place there, as so many already have. The rest would remain, mocked by the name of the politics and the sciences they have abandoned.
Perhaps, however, it remains possible for political scientists to acknowledge the primacy of the struggle for politics. Perhaps ours could become a different disciplinary unity: more dangerous, more demanding, more contentious, and more useful. Perestroika also gave the discipline Perspectives on Politics, and with it a vision of what the discipline of political science might become. The range, power, and salience of the journal point a way forward, one that binds diverse forms of theoretical and empirical work in a common enterprise. The diverse approaches in political science, born of different circumstances and different intellectual genealogies can find their unity not in method but in substance and commitment. There would be great conflicts, but those conflicts would concern what matters most. The reformist pluralism of perestroika could become a revolutionary force in a quiet struggle of very longue durée.
