Worst of Breed

The Collapse of Liberal Empire: Science and Revolution in the Twentieth Century By Paul N. Goldstene Yale University Press, 139 pp., $10 Paul N. Goldstene teaches political science at Cal State University, Sacramento. He writes as a political theorist —indeed, one of the worst of the breed. Political theorists—I know because I’m one myself—are the dinosaurs of the political science profession. They might not be extinct, but they are pretty definitely an endangered species. At a time when political science aspires to the precision and rigor for which natural science is known, the old-fashioned theorists lumber along in awkward fashion pursuing the Weighty Idea, the Big Insight. Whereas political scientists all too often tailor their topics of inquiry to fit the constraints of their methodologies—and consequently come up with verifiable claims about minute, indeed trivial, matters—the glory of the theorist is that he is mandated to probe the “perennial issues,” the issues that really count in life: What is justice? What is the good society? What does it all mean? No, political theory is not obsolete; it’s just hard, very hard to do. The beauty of political theory is that when it is done well it is immune to the obsolescence that shadows even the best work in science. Who honestly believes that such theorists as Plato, St. Augustine, or Machiavelli are obsolete?

The trouble with the book under consideration is that it is bad theory. The Big Insight forever eludes the author. He has written a book about current American politics, but that is not the problem either. Contrary to what some behaviorists may think, there is no reason why a theorist cannot address himself to empirical phenomena—but if he does, he is obliged to marshal empirical evidence of some kind. The evidence need not be quantitative; but simply to rest content, as Goldstene does, with the piling of abstraction upon abstraction will never do—certainly not when political science has advanced to the state where there is an abundance of information at the fingertips of even the most “humanistic” theorist.

DV

About the Author

Dale Vree

Featured Tags

The Collapse of Liberal Empire: Science and Revolution in the Twentieth Century By Paul N. Goldstene Yale University Press, 139 pp., $10 Paul N. Goldstene teaches political science at Cal State University, Sacramento. He writes as a political theorist —indeed, one of the worst of the breed. Political theorists—I know because I’m one myself—are the dinosaurs of the political science profession. They might not be extinct, but they are pretty definitely an endangered species. At a time when political science aspires to the precision and rigor for which natural science is known, the old-fashioned theorists lumber along in awkward fashion pursuing the Weighty Idea, the Big Insight. Whereas political scientists all too often tailor their topics of inquiry to fit the constraints of their methodologies—and consequently come up with verifiable claims about minute, indeed trivial, matters—the glory of the theorist is that he is mandated to probe the “perennial issues,” the issues that really count in life: What is justice? What is the good society? What does it all mean? No, political theory is not obsolete; it’s just hard, very hard to do. The beauty of political theory is that when it is done well it is immune to the obsolescence that shadows even the best work in science. Who honestly believes that such theorists as Plato, St. Augustine, or Machiavelli are obsolete?

The trouble with the book under consideration is that it is bad theory. The Big Insight forever eludes the author. He has written a book about current American politics, but that is not the problem either. Contrary to what some behaviorists may think, there is no reason why a theorist cannot address himself to empirical phenomena—but if he does, he is obliged to marshal empirical evidence of some kind. The evidence need not be quantitative; but simply to rest content, as Goldstene does, with the piling of abstraction upon abstraction will never do—certainly not when political science has advanced to the state where there is an abundance of information at the fingertips of even the most “humanistic” theorist.