Excluded Within? Political Theory vis-à-vis Political Science in the Americas

• In Event: Political Theory, Discipline, and Method

Abstract

While we write this abstract, a collective letter signed by more than six-hundred political scientists protests the lack of a field editor of political theory in the The Journal of Politics’ newly appointed editorial team. This speaks of the persistent marginalization of political theory within the discipline and of the understandable discontent that such situation generates among political theorists. Certainly, there is evidence that this is not just an American problem but a seemingly global – and never-ending – one. In this paper we revisit the topic and expand the conversation to the Latin American scholarly milieu. Concretely, we tackle what we call the “exclusionary inclusion” of political theory in political science in the Americas. We do so by reflecting on our experiences as scholars born and educated in Latin America who obtained their doctoral degrees in the US/Canada and are familiar with the dynamics of both North and Latin American academes. We look at particularities and commonalities of how this exclusionary-inclusion plays out in north and south.

We argue that – geography regardless – what is at stake in the type of inclusion that political science allows of political theory is the pluralism, and the plurality, of the former. As its most reflexive and philosophical moment, theory can exercise the immanent critique of the discipline, contributing to protect and custody its democratic imagination and tolerance towards dissent at several levels (ideological, epistemological, political, and so on). In other words, theory might help political science to incarnate the democratic ideal, to which most political scientists are committed, in its everyday institutional and interpersonal praxes. We end our exercise by exploring the actual and potential role of political theory in Latin American politics vis-à-vis the neoliberal state. If political theory is going to exercise a (more) robust critique in the public realm, political scientists from other fields, and the discipline as such, ought to empower it and help to raise its voice. This part of our reflection engages with the investigations done by American political theorists about the role of theory in the neoliberal era.

Authors

• Paulo Daniel Ravecca, Universidad de la República

• Diego Hernan Rossello, Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez

• Guillermina Seri, Union College