Question

Short note on disciplinary approach of political science

Answer 1

The beginning of American political science as an organized discipline can be dated to December 30, 1903, when John Burgess, Frank Goodnow, Westel W. Willoughby, and others founded the American Political Science Association (APSA). The association's journal, the American Political Science Review (APSR), followed in 1906. Even though most schools still lacked separate political science departments, the appearance of the APSA, and thereafter its journal, legitimated professional commitment to political science as a coherent area of study. The APSA gave political scientists, in and out of the university, a sense of common purpose, and the APSR offered an outlet for original research and scholarly exposure.

As the discipline was established, political scientists increasingly incorporated political knowledge as their peculiar domain. Political scientists, after "authorizing" themselves through the creation of a discipline, began cordoning off political research as their area of study. The study of politics started to become a professional pursuit, sanctioned by a professional association. This trend toward professionalism in the field of political research became more clear during the behavioral revolution's move to "pure" science. With behavioralism, the discipline settled on a scientific identity, an identity that has changed little since its inception. Behavioralism, though, has its roots in the "science of politics movement," which began in the 1920s.

Political scientists believed that a scientific, disciplinary, and professional identity (that is, acceptance as "legitimate" producers of knowledge) depended on a common and useful methodology to separate trained "political scientists" from methodologically untrained amateurs. Scientific method would allow political scientists to arrive at objective, value-free truth (or truths) about a certain aspect of (usually) American politics in order to aid a modernizing polity in a purely technical way. There could be no normative goals in a value-free science. Political scientists, in other words, should not seek to express what ought to be done. Instead, their goal must be simply to explain the political world.



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