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174 W. J. M. Mackenzie
But few political scientists would claim that political science is concerned with
laws only. It is certainly in some sense idiographic and normative, as well as
nomothetic.
I. Idiographic
Political science as Statecraft is concerned with a single unique entity, the
world system of States; and with about 130 States, each of which (whether
great or small) has grown in one special situation, has been influenced by the
personalities of individual leaders, and has developed its own characteristic
set of institutions. This does not exclude the use of scientific methods: the
earth sciences study the physical world as a unique entity, and explore quite
limited sections of it, one by one, for various practical purposes. A science such
as geology spans a wide range, with (at one extreme) the application of general
principles of physics and chemistry, (at the other extreme) detailed study of a
particular case in the attempt to define its character geologically.
Much line work has been done by political science in the study of special
cases, and the tradition continues. It involves close collaboration with history
and geography as well as with the other social sciences reported on in this
volume.
A political scientist studying a single country and framing an argument about
it will certainly be concerned to establish its historical and geographical unique-
ness, and this is perhaps a matter of art rather than of science. But he will also
look for the general in the particular, and this in two ways :
a) Each nation or country is unique, but it can be described (as can an indivi-
dual personality) only in terms of generalization about its behaviour. A nation
or individual is from this point of view a pattern of behaviour persisting through
time; knowledge of the pattern is usually acquired informally, and without
rigorous method, but it is nevertheless the basis of predictions which may be
confirmed or falsified. There are scientific problems of similar types about the
personalities of individuals and about the individuality of political cultures.
b) In the process of analysis, a political scientist draws upon a common
stock of concepts which are not specially the property of political science. These
conceptual tools may be formalized, as for instance in games theory, and in the
theory of information. More often they are relatively loose in texture - Festin-
ger on Cognitive Dissonance,1o Homans on The Human Group,I1 Cherry on
Human CommunicationIz - and they are used to give structure to an argument
rather than to frame hypotheses.
There is no special methodological problem about idiographic research in
the first sense, that of defining the special character of any one political system.
There are, as in all sciences, problems of research tactics, but it is not disputed
that one legitimate way to proceed is by using the variate language referred to
by Professor Lazarsfeld.
But dispute arises about the use of individual cases as laboratories for the
development of general theory. In principle general and partial theories of
political society should yield hypotheses testable by reference to individual
States, and the results of testing should 'feed back' into the structure of theory.