Against Wishful Scholarship: The Importance of Engel

David Engel's Article on global consciousness¹ crystallizes a set of arguments he recently made in a number of publications, most notably in his coauthored book Tort, Custom, and Karma.² To me, the main point of his argument is by no means limited to questions of law or globalism. Rather, he argues against the dominant mode of writing among scholars across a wide range of social science and related disciplines—a mode of writing that might best be termed "wishful scholarship." In wishful scholarship, the starting point of the author is the world as she or he wishes to see it, or wishes to see it become.

When an academic begins with a strongly held normative premise, which could be anything from "Nigeria should become more democratic" to "Thailand would benefit from producing more cause lawyers" to "Britain ought to have a written constitution," the results are eminently predictable. Either insufficient evidence will be uncovered to validate the normative premise, and the subjects of study will be found wanting, implicitly or explicitly, or sufficient evidence will be uncovered to support the normative premise, which will therefore be validated and form the basis of teleological assumptions about the nature of change in the society being studied. In other words, either Nigeria is not becoming more democratic—in which case there is something wrong with Nigeria—or Nigeria is becoming more democratic—in which case the researcher has been proved right. The alternative explanations—that Nigeria is not becoming more democratic and that there is something wrong with the researcher's point of view, or that Nigeria is becoming more democratic, but in ways that the researcher failed to grasp—cannot be seriously contemplated. Yet, as Engel implies, the least palatable explanation may well be the most likely.³ Nigeria is not becoming more democratic, and the researcher is so overladen with assumptions that it never occurs to her that her own wishful scholarship is the core problem, rather than real or supposed deficiencies of the Nigerian political order. Engel's Article is a brilliantly crafted plea for us to understand the world as it is and not as we would wish it to become. The simple response is that we should do exactly as Engel suggests.

Nevertheless, it is hard to blame individuals for engaging in wishful scholarship. Take the question of the prospects for a military coup in Thailand. According to the logic of democratization theory, military coups have become obsolete in a country that has regular elections, has a number of well-established political parties, and has seen regular mass movements calling for greater freedom and openness.⁴ Yet, Thailand has experienced numerous military coups since 1932, most recently in 1991 and 2006.⁵ By granting media interviews supporting expectations that another coup could take place, any reputable political scientist—Thai or foreign—would help create the conditions for such a coup. It is, therefore, unsurprising that many political scientists, myself included, would be reluctant to publicly predict another military coup, even one that we fully expected to take place. In this sense, wishful scholarship may become a political act. Not talking about something may make it less likely to happen; talking about it may make it more likely. Defining the responsibilities of a scholar who believes in universal human rights or opposes the death penalty is not always simple. Who can help feeling uneasy, for example, that a Japanese suspect who has not yet been tried can sit in a Thai jail for several weeks after allegedly stealing items worth two dollars from a convenience store?⁶ Wishful scholarship does have its place, and sometimes standing at the sidelines when faced with injustice or the naked abuse of power is neither possible nor appropriate. What is most important is that wishful scholars practice in a self-conscious, reflective, and self-critical manner.

The second key argument in Engel's Article is his own advocacy of "legal pluralism"—the coexistence of multiple levels of legal reality, in which formal mechanisms such as criminal codes, trial proceedings, and sentencing guidelines coexist with...