Political Theory and Partisan Politics

EPILOGUE

Epilogue 215 E P I L O G U E In one of the rare instances of memorable rhetoric in our discipline a well-known political theorist, after likening the supposed scientific study of political affairs to Nero’s fiddling, added that its practitioners might be excused because they realized neither that they fiddled nor that Rome burned (Strauss 1962, 327). This was thirty years ago. Today such rhetoric would be pointless because the great majority of political scientists no longer read or listen to political theorists. This disregard is reciprocated. Many, perhaps most political theorists, irrespective of whether they think Rome burning, no longer concern themselves with whether the discipline of which they are a part is fiddling. They tend to write for one another, for philosophers, and for the politically committed intellectual.1 In the initial years of the estrangement between political theorists and the increasingly influential champions of a strictly empirical science of politics, the former often accused the latter of being apolitical if not anti-political (e.g., Morgenthau 1946; McCoy and Playford 1967). They argued that to advocate a “value-free” science of politics inevitably is to trivialize its subject matter because it excludes from serious consideration that which makes politics important to its practitioners. And by concentrating upon behavioral arrangements or mechanisms rather than ends, political science is unlikely to serve whatever higher purposes might be affirmed by serious reflection on rational priorities (see Brecht 1959). Whether rational reflection really can conclusively affirm such priorities, or whether it is possible to even think about social and political affairs without them, are questions too weighty to be resolved here. We would like to suggest in these closing pages, however, that the mutual indifference which has replaced the explicit hostility between the field of political theory and the rest of the discipline has contributed to the theoretical impoverishment of political science and the enervation of political theory. In addition, we venture that the only way that theorists are likely to engage the serious attention of other political scientists is to seriously address themselves to the nature and implications of partisan politics. 215 216 POLITICAL THEORY AND PARTISAN POLITICS Political science has been theoretically impoverished not so much because it has lacked theory, but rather because its theory has been lacking. Since political science has become a genuine social science, based upon the systematic testing of hypotheses rather than documented commentary, it has had three successively dominant conceptual frameworks: First group theory, then systems theory, and at present rational choice theory.2 Despite their very real differences, each of these theoretical approaches consigns the goals of political actors to a subsidiary status, to what Carl Hempel referred to in his book, Aspects of Scientific Explanation, as the “antecedent conditions” of explanation as opposed to the explanatory regularities (1965, 249). For group theory subjective priorities enter as something for groups to organize, for systems theory they provide the demands to be processed, and for rational choice theory they constitute the ante which defines costs and benefits. Group theory lost currency largely because it cannot explain why some interests become organized and others do not, while the most obvious theoretical flaw of systems theory is its inability to specify non-tautological system requisites. And because both attempt to provide essentially mechanical explanations for political phenomena, political conflict itself is just so much sound and fury, not something to be taken at face value.3 Rational choice theory, on the other hand, being essentially about strategy, takes politics very seriously. It, too, is largely unconcerned with the origin of political ends or their relative priority. Moreover, it has difficulty accounting for such momentous decisions as the willingness to die for one’s country in war or such relatively inconsequential ones as whether to vote. Nonetheless , rational choice theory has proven to be much more resilient than its predecessors, largely no doubt because many political phenomena can be understood as the result of competing strategies. More fundamentally, we think, rational choice owes its tenacious grip on the discipline to the fact that it is an interpretation of political conflict, and does not attempt to dismiss politics as somehow epiphenomenal. If political theory is to reestablish its voice within the discipline of political science, it too must focus upon political conflict. Perhaps the subject matter of the discipline should be peace, stability, justice, or equality; in fact, however, most political scientists are largely occupied with partisan conflict. As the essays comprising this...