IAPSS AC-GA 2009 “Political science: a different perspective” Jubljana May 4-9 A Future of Value for Political Science? Reassessing the Political. Facing

IAPSS AC-GA 2009 “Political science: a different perspective”Jubljana May 4-9

A Future of Value for Political Science? Reassessing the Political. Facing Normativity and Pluralism.

Benoit MonangeInstitute of Political Studies of Grenoble, France

[email protected]

“Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.”

Oscar Wilde

Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009

2 points of caution about the paper

•A challenge for young students to reflect on their disciplineAn exercise both indispensable and impractical

Indispensable because we will be responsible for the future direction of our discipline

Impractical because our limited experience as practitioners of the discipline constrains our capacity to understand completely its logic and dynamics

•Political science as discipline is hard to grasp because its is:A very large discipline – many sub-fields – many paradigmsAn international discipline with national or regional scientific traditions


1. Political science: a science without value?

2. Moving away from false neutrality, towards a normative, value-explicit political science

3. A plea for a political science

Conclusion: Towards a critical, pluralist political science


*A look at the development of the dominant form of political science from the point of view of its relation to value.




1st Stage: Institutionalisation of political science through positivistic influence

But counterbalanced by a belief in progressivism



Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009

1st stage: Institutionalisation of political science through positivistic influence. But counterbalanced by a belief in progressivism

2nd stage: the “behavioral revolution”





“the scientific method of the behavioralists emphasizes the collection of observable data and the use of statistical analysis based on many recorded cases. Behavioral political science claims to be “value-neutral” in the sense of separating fact from value and describing political phenomena without judging their goodness or morality.”

Vassilev, Rossen (2008)

Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009


“Behavioralism’s main methodological claim was that uniformities in political behavior could be discovered and expressed as generalizations, but that such generalizations must be testable by reference to observable political behaviors, such as voting, public opinion, or decision making. Most behavioralists equated observation with quantification to a degree that went beyond what Merriam, Key, or Laswell had considered “appropriate quantification.” Finally, the behavioralists proposed a “pure science” where the theoretical explanation of political behavior was to precede the solution of urgent practical policy problems in society.”

Clyde Barrow (2008)

Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009

1st stage: Institutionalisation of political science through positivistic influence. But counterbalanced by a belief in progressivism

2nd stage: the “behavioral revolution”

3rd stage: domination of rational choice theory models



Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009


“The behavioralists have evolved into “rational-choice” specialists whose highly abstracted model-building seems to be something of an end in itself, valued for the elegance of its mathematical configuration”

Michael Parenti (2006)

Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009


“the obsession with becoming as quantitative and as statistical as possible” is “in fact driving us into a march of either false precision or of precise irrelevancy”

Giovanni Sartori(2004)

Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009


Homo politicus

Homo economicus

Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009


Driving political science ever closer to an apolitical econometric vision of the world, isn’t it denying its very own identity as the discipline

that deals with matters political?

Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009


1) a highly sophisticated methodology that fails to produce substantively interesting new knowledge

2) a paradoxically de-politicized political science that seems to lose its identity

Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009


1) accepting normativity and pluralism in our practice of political science

2) reintroducing the political in our discipline.

Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009

2. Moving away from false neutrality, towards a normative, value explicit political science

* There is no such thing as a “value-free” or “pure” science.

Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009


“Even in the "pure" universe where the "purest" science is produced and reproduced, that science is in some respects a social field like all others-with its relations of force, its powers, its struggles and profits, its generic mechanisms such as those that regulate the selection of newcomers or the competition between the various producers.”

Pierre Bourdieu (1991)



“the simplest and perhaps the oldest version of the ideal of neutrality is that science may be used for good or for evil. The problem with this view, though, is that it ignores the fact that science has both social origins and social consequences. Who, one can ask, does science serve, and how? Who has gained from “miracle wheat” and who has lost? The power of which countries is augmented by chemical weapons, the power of which others is diminished? Who has been excluded from science; who has not? Whose economies have benefited from the neoclassical theory of the firm, whose have suffered? Science, in other words, does not always serve the collective we or the generic man but particular men – often those who control the means of its production and application. Science is not different from other aspects of culture in this sense.”

Robert Proctor (1991)



“even the most disengaged technicians in the ranks of the social sciences exhibit the influence of the social world around them in their choice of research terrains and problems”

Lisa Anderson (2003)



“the adoption of any methodological posture - whether right or wrong - is inescapably a form of political action.”

Douglas Torgerson (1986)

Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009


In the future, political scientists should avoid a false neutrality stance that is more often than not a value-entrenched position in disguise.

On the contrary the discipline would benefit from works that explicitly presents the value they are build upon and that do not dodge the normative implications of its results.

Our own value-judgment here is that scientific honesty is preferable to a scientific neutrality stand that actually hides political motivations. What should be encouraged is not value-neutrality but rather scientific freedom and social responsibility.



The product of a paradoxically de-politicized political science with ever abstract formal models of analysis:

Politikenstein: the monster of political science(watch out! He might be wandering in your faculty)

Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009


“The political scientist, in so far as he wishes to remain a scientist, is limited to the study of techniques. A good deal of what is called political science, I must confess, seems, to me a device, invented by academic persons, avoiding that dangerous subject politics, without achieving science”

Alfred Cobban (1960)

Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009


“Political science journals abound in rational choice models that are shrouded in jargon and largely impenetrable to the uninitiated. Yet all this technification didn't help political scientists offer wisdom to constitutional designers after the collapse of Communism. Nor have they said anything important about more conventional politics that was not previously known.

Typically rational choice theorists either ignore or recycle conventional wisdom through their models or they specify the models so vaguely as to render them compatible with every possible outcome. Often this vagueness is obscured by intimidating mathematics, creating a misleading appearance of rigor.”

Shapiro and Green (2005)

Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009

Homo politicus

Homo economicus


Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009

Homo politicus

Homo economicus




“Over the past two decades, political science has been losing the struggle for the definition of goals to a new hegemonic paradigm: an economic theory of democracy in which free enterprise alone is sufficient to accomplish all the other goals.

The economic theory of democracy is not science but ideology, which we should fear. It gains its credibility from economic science and from anecdotal evidence about how capitalism vanquished authoritarianism, while ignoring contrary and unsupportive anecdotes. The point is that the free market does not make free all those who enter it, nor does it emerge or prosper without the substantial support of the state. Yet, for the past two decades, there has been a strong and dangerous tendency to denigrate the state—and therefore the political—as the primary source of irrationality in the world. […]

Political science is the discipline which studies most of the institutional phenomena that economics assumes away. It is through examination of these assumptions that we can gain the capacity to put economics in its place. And that should be our goal in this era of globalization: to advance an understanding of the institutions of government and the practices of politics that can actually improve the prospects for salvaging more democracy from the tyrant—whether that tyrant be repressive rule by malevolent political elites or repressive rule by mechanisms that recognize no law except the law of the market place.”

Theodore Lowi (2001)



“A political science which puts the question of human dignity and liberation as an integral part of intellectual work and practical action can be the way of guaranteeing a future for humankind and a more correct understanding of the past. Knowledge workers – or anyone – need not surrender the purpose of the knowledge project, to produce human progress. But the current task of humankind is to find ways of sustaining its existence. This means that the approach one takes to power, to description of the universe, to the construction of institutions, to the process of empathy and dignity, to the things that are made, to the question of participation of one with another – and to the relationship of all these questions to each other – is the stuff of a new political science. Knowledge workers will seek to transform their “disciplines” once they realize the limits of what can be known through them, but see that knowledge can play a central role in sustaining life and building a world civilization.”

Raskin, Marcus & Bernstein Herbert (1987)

Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009


“There is no single formula for carrying out good social science. A single best design or a superior method does not exist, as opposed to what we often read. Some methods, e.g. experiments, give the researcher better opportunities for testing and drawing causal inference than others, e.g. a single case study. But our knowledge is not always at a level where it is reasonable to propose and test causal theories, let alone test them using experiments. The question about analytical approach, research design and method is determined by the research question, which on the other hand is inspired and bounded by the researcher’s conceptualization and existing theoretical and empirical knowledge”

Asbjorn Norgaard (2008)



1. The lesson that we can draw here is that a valuable future for political science is one that accepts plurality. It is only through discussion, collaboration and mutualization, the use of triangulation, mixed-method, cross-fertilization, in a word in a form of an assumed critical pluralist discipline that a future of value for political science can be envisioned.

2. And this critical pluralism is not only one that should remain secluded to the methodological or paradigmatic fields but also encompass a strong cross-national effort. The better understanding of our globalized world requires a globalized political science discipline that does not remain in the shadow of the scholarly traditions of one or two influential nations; a discipline whose pluralism is also the result of cross-national contributions coming from all continents.

Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009Ben Monange - A Future of Value for Political Science? - IAPSS AC-GA 2009


“I think that the intellectual, the writer, the university scholar should never accept an unconditional and complete enrollment. Because their very social function is to reveal the flaws inherent in any system, even the one that has their personal preference. There is no such thing as a perfect system. Even the best of governments remains a structure of domination; it naturally tends to abuse its prerogatives. The intellectual must, not only uncover the flaws of the systems he opposes, but also the flaws in his own favored system. The intellectual cannot enter completely a system he approves, because he cannot completely approve a system. He must never stand entirely on the side of power but always stand somehow on the side of the opposition. To state that the intellectual ought to assume a critical function is not meant to say that he has to refuse to get involved or that he has to put every doctrine at the same level. One cannot refuse to ever get involved. The ones that pretend that they do are in fact engaged on the side of the established order. If they know it, they are liars. If they do not, they are idiots. No more than any other as the intellectual the right to consider equally the oppressors and the oppressed, the exploiters and the exploited, the executioners and the victims. But he has to know that this oversimplified dichotomy, even thought true in its principle, never dries out the complexity and the ambiguity of the real world. The oppressed tend to quickly become the oppressors once they have taken their position. Every system has a dark side. As good as it may be, every system tends to forget the others, to neglect them, if not to destroy them. The intellectual ought to show the dark side, ought to remind of the existence of the others, even if this goes again his own favored system. What am I saying? – Especially against his own favored system.”

Maurice Duverger (1977)

Documents

IAPSS AC-GA 2009 “Political science: a different perspective” Jubljana May 4-9 A Future of Value for Political Science? Reassessing the Political. Facing