POLITICAL THEORY AS A VOCATION

The purpose of this paper is to sketch some of the implications, prospective and retrospective, of the primacy of method in the present study of politics and to do it by way of a contrast, which is deliberately heightened, but hopefully not caricatured, between the vocation of the "methodist" and the vocation of the theorist. My discussion will be centered around the kinds of activity involved in the two vocations. During the course of the discussion various questions will be raised, primarily the following: What is the idea which underlies method and how does it compare with the older understanding of theory? What is involved in choosing one rather than the other as the way to political knowledge? What are the human or educational consequences of the choice, that is, what is demanded of the person who commits himself to one or the other? What is the typical stance toward the political world of the methodist and how does it compare to the theorist's?

The discussion which follows will seek, first, to locate the idea of method in the context of the "behavioral revolution," and, second, to examine the idea itself in terms of some historical and analytical considerations. Then, proceeding on the assumption that the idea of method, like all important intellectual choices, carries a price, the discussion will concentrate on some of the personal, educational, vocational, and political consequences of this particular choice. Finally, I shall attempt to relate the idea of the vocation of political theory to these same matters.

I. THE IDEA OF "METHOD" IN THE BEHAVIORAL REVOLUTION

In compiling its recent Biographical Directory, the American Political Science Association distributed a questionnaire which in its own way helped raise the present question, "What is the vocation of the political theorist?" Political Theorists were invited to identify themselves by choosing among "Political Theory and Philosophy (Empirical)," "Political Theory and Philosophy (Historical)," and "Political Theory and Philosophy (Normative)." Although the choices offered may signify vitality and diversity, they may also testify to considerable confusion about the nature of political theory. For their part, political theorists may think of it as an identity crisis induced by finding themselves officially assigned a classification which others have defined, a classification traceable to a set of assumptions about the nature of the theoretical life perhaps uncongenial to many theorists.

Beyond the matter of professional identity there are far more compelling reasons for raising the question of vocation. Whatever one's assessment of the "behavioral revolution," it clearly has succeeded in transforming political science. What is less clear is the precise nature of that revolution. Among leading spokesmen of the profession it has become stylish to interpret that revolution as a close facsimile of the sorts of scientific changes discussed by Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Accordingly, the behavioral revolution is described as the inauguration of a new theoretical paradigm. Such a view, I think, is mistaken. It blurs the significance of the change. A more accurate account is suggested by the following: "One of the most significant recent developments in the social sciences is the revolution in data gathering and data evaluation. This revolution depends upon the developments in techniques by which data can be collected and analyzed."

Assuming that this statement reflects a widespread sentiment which guides the actual practice of the profession, it provides a clue to the nature of the changes, what they are and what they are not, and what they signify for the vocations of political scientists and theorists. Despite claims to the contrary, political science has not undergone a revolution of the type described by Kuhn in which a new and dominant theory is installed. Although an abundance of new "theories" is available to the political scientist, it should be remembered that, by Kuhn's canon, the mere existence of new theories, or even the fact that some theories have attracted a following, are not conclusive evidence of a revolution. What counts is the enforcement by the scientific community of one theory to the exclusion of its rivals.

Although it is sometimes contended that "systems theory" constitutes the paradigmatic theory of the revolution, it is doubtful that this claim is tenable. Not only is there confusion about which of the several versions of the theory is the preferred one, or even whether any version is useful, but, above all, the popularity of systems theory followed rather than produced the behavioral revolution.

Whatever else it may be, a revolution without an initiating theory cannot qualify as a revolution by Kuhn's criterion. It may be, rather, a typically American revolution in which theories play a minor role. American political scientists, for the most part, have not only generally supported the traditional American diffidence toward theories, but they have elevated it to scientific status. The suspicion of theories is alleged to be a powerful contributor to the political stability of America and to its genius for pragmatic rather than ideological politics. In making this assertion I am not unmindful that there is hardly to be found a journal of political science in which some contemporary has not noted that "the mere accumulation of data without a guiding theory is, etc." Nor has it escaped my attention that a wide variety of theories exists for the political scientist to choose among. To call them political theories is, in the language of philosophy, to commit something like a category mistake. Systems theories, communication theories, and structural-functional theories are unpolitical theories shaped by the desire to explain certain forms of nonpolitical phenomena. They offer no significant choice or critical analysis of the quality, direction, or fate of public life. Where they are not alien intrusions, they share the same uncritical — and therefore untheoretical — assumptions of the prevailing political ideology which justifies the present "authoritative allocation of values" in our society.

Nonetheless, to say that there has been no political theory which has inspired the revolution in political science is not to say either that there has been no revolution or that no intellectual patterns are being widely promoted throughout the discipline. There has in fact been a certain revolution in political science, one that reflects a tradition of politics which has prided itself on being pragmatic and concerned mainly with workable techniques. Like all technique-oriented activity, the behavioral movement presupposes that the fundamental purposes and arrangements served by its techniques have been settled and that, accordingly, it reenforces, tacitly or explicitly, those purposes and arrangements and operates according to a notion of alternatives tightly restricted by these same purposes and arrangements. The emphasis upon methods does not signify simply the acquisition of a "kit" of new "tools," but presupposes a viewpoint which has profound implications for the empirical world, the vocation and the education of political scientists, and the resources which nourish the theoretical imagination.

To contend that the idea of method is the central fact of the behavioral revolution is merely to repeat what the revolutionaries themselves have stated. "Most important, perhaps, the criteria by which one accepts or rejects statements about social life are of a special nature. The ultimate criterion is the method by which they are gathered." If it should be the case that a widespread set of assumptions is commonly held among those committed to the primacy of method, it is of little consequence that the techniques are diverse and changing. What matters are the common assumptions and consequences which accompany the emphasis on technique. The extent of this transformation is such as to suggest that the study of politics is now dominated by the belief that the main objective — acquiring scientific knowledge about politics — depends upon the adoption and refinement of specific techniques and that to be qualified or certified as a political scientist is tantamount to possessing prescribed techniques. Concurrent with this development there has been an effort to imbue political scientists with what is understood to be the ethic of science: objectivity, detachment, fidelity to fact, and deference to intersubjective verification by a community of practitioners. These changes add up to a vocation, a vita methodica, which includes a specified set of skills, a mode of practice, and an informing ethic. This vocation, and the education which it requires, may mark the significance of the behavioral revolution.

At this point a protest might be made that too much is being read into the idea of method. Methods per se do not presuppose a philosophical view of things, but are neutral or instrumental, analogous to the technician in being indifferent to the purposes of their master. Such an argument is not only wrong but superficial. In the first place, the elevation of techniques has important curricular consequences. The requirement that students become proficient in an assortment of technical skills preempts a substantial portion of their time and energy. But more important, training in techniques has educational consequences, for it affects the way in which the initiates will look upon the world and especially the political portion of it. "Methodism" is ultimately a proposal for shaping the mind. Social scientists have sensed this when they have noted that research methods are "tools" which "can become a way of looking at the world, of judging everyday experience."

In the second place, the alleged neutrality of a methodist's training overlooks significant philosophical assumptions admittedly incorporated into the outlook of those who advocate scientific inquiry into politics. These assumptions are such as to reenforce an uncritical view of existing political structures and all that they imply. For the employment of method assumes, even requires, that the world be of one kind rather than another if techniques are to be effective. Method is not a thing for all worlds. It presupposes a certain answer to a Kantian type of question, What must the world be like for the methodist's knowledge to be possible? This presupposition is illustrated by a recent example which listed the major assumptions alleged to underly the "movement" of political behavior. The first item was: "Regularities. These are discoverable uniformities in political behavior. These can be expressed in generalizations or theories with explanatory and predictive value." It follows that the methodist is in trouble when the world exhibits "deformities" or emergent irregularities. As the unhappy state of theories of "development" or "modernization" suggests, similar trouble appears when the world manifests "multiformities."

This is but to say that there are inherent limits to the kinds of questions which the methodist deems appropriate. The kind of world hospitable to method invites a search for those regularities that reflect the main patterns of behavior which society is seeking to promote and maintain. Predictable behavior is what societies live by, hence their structures of coercion, of rewards and penalties, of subsidies and discouragements are shaped toward producing and maintaining certain regularities in behavior and attitudes. Further, every society is a structure bent in a particular and persistent way so that it constitutes not only an arrangement of power but also of powerlessness, of poverty as well as wealth, injustice and justice, suppression and encouragement.

It is symptomatic in this connection that political scientists have increasingly taken to describing themselves as "normal scientists." The phrase is Kuhn's and he used it to designate a type of scientist whose vocation is not to create theories or even to criticize them but to accept the dominant theory approved by the scientific community and to put it to work. But if we ask, what is the dominant theoretical paradigm of our normal (political) scientists, the answer is that, in Kuhn's sense, there is none. Yet, surely, although there is no paradigm derived from what Kuhn calls "an extraordinary theory," such as Galileo or Newton produced, there must still be some guiding assumptions or framework which the methodist follows. The answer, I have suggested, is that there is such a framework of assumptions. It is the ideological paradigm reflective of the same political community which the normal scientists are investigating. Thus when a researcher takes "the normal flow of events in American politics" as his starting point, it is not surprising to find him concluding that "the long-run stability of the system depends on the underlying division of party loyalties."

These considerations become even more compelling if we concentrate for a moment upon the "systems" theorist. If society is conceived to be a system of decision-making, and if the recurrence of unjust decisions is commonly acknowledged, it follows that the system is, to some persistent degree, a structure of systematic injustice, otherwise the idea of a system is an inadequate account. The built-in embarrassments of a particular system have sometimes been recognized, as when it is asserted that a supposedly democratic system requires a certain measure of indifference or apathy, especially on the part of the poor and the uneducated. This reservation about systems which purport to be democratic, and hence participatory, is sometimes stated more bluntly when the system in question is non-Western:

In the Congo, in Vietnam, in the Dominican Republic, it is clear that order depends on somehow compelling newly mobilized strata to return to a measure of passivity and defeatism from which they have recently been aroused by the process of modernization.

For the most part, however, the systems theorist prefers to emphasize more formal regularities. Thus, for example, the political system is defined as a special form of "social interactions ... that are predominantly oriented toward the authoritative allocation of values for a society." What is most revealing about this definition is the location of the word "predominantly": it is placed so as to qualify the "interactions" and thereby to enable subsequent research to distinguish political from social interactions. If the same word had been used, instead, to qualify the "allocations," a substantially different view of a system would have emerged, one in which the allocations would be seen to favor some interactions rather than others. It is acknowledged in the work cited that the favored theory may "inadvertently" exclude "some elements of major importance," but not that a system may require deliberate and systematic exclusion of major elements. Rather, it is agreed that "a systems approach draws us away from a discussion of the way in which the political pie is cut up and how it happens to get cut up in one way rather than another." The remedy for this "status quo bias" is to fall back upon "partial theories" which deal with selected aspects of the same system, e.g., theories of "decision-making, coalition strategies, game theories, power, and group analysis." What is conveniently overlooked by this recipe is that it merely reaffirms in different form, the same culinary assumptions about the common pie, for each partial theory claims to be a plausible account of the same whole.

That a discussion of method should naturally lead to considering some prominent theories current among political scientists is not surprising. Most contemporary theories are dependent upon the behavioral revolution, not only in the methodological sense that the theories in question look to behavioral techniques for confirmation or disconfirmation, but in the more important sense of sharing the same outlook regarding education, philosophical assumptions, and political ideology. The close linkage between contemporary ideas of theory and of methods justifies treating them as members of the same family, forming a community of common features which I have labeled "methodism." As the earlier pages have tried to suggest, the idea of method has come to mean far more than was implied by Bentham, for example, when he called it "the order of investigation." It can be better understood as constituting an alternative to the bios theoretikos, and, as such, is one of the major achievements of the behavioral revolution. To grasp the nature of the vita methodica is not only important for its own sake, but should help in distinguishing it from the activity and vocation of theory.