The Unhappy Marriage of Political Theory and Political Science

• In Event: Strauss, Arendt, Churchill, and Liberalism

Abstract

The political theorist, as Sheldon Wolin once said, is typically the one who responds to political crises and, in so doing, helps reshape the concept of the political for the future. Yet many of the political theorists of the mid-20th century (particularly those in the American university) were alarmed at the seeming inability of political theory to keep up with the increasingly rapid social and economic changes of the post-War era. The accelerating pace of change seemed inimical to the object of political theory: the political itself. At the very moment when the prospects of political theory began to dim, the future looked much brighter for political science (especially American and Comparative Politics), spurred on by the behavioral revolution, the imperatives of “scientific” study, and a wealth of government funding. The academic marriage of political theory and political science was an unhappy one, even fraught, with luminary figures like Hannah Arendt, Leo Strauss, and Wolin arguing forcefully against the diminishment of theory in the face of social scientism. In this paper, I situate these thinkers at a moment when political theory’s special object -the political- seemed to be in decline at the same time that political science’s implicit special object- democracy- appeared to be growing throughout the world. As we are now confronted with a wave of de-democratization and authoritarianism which threatens both political theory and political science, I look to recover from Arendt, Strauss, and Wolin insights that might help the unhappy marriage to survive the present crisis, and work towards reshaping the political for what lies ahead.

Author

• Carmen Caporizzo Melillo, CUNY Graduate Center