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Political science 22 I
b. Partial theories. Others would stress the importance of theory at a much
lower level of generality. This may take two forms. On the one hand, there are
areas in which mathematical models are helpful, even though our political data
are too limited for their strict application. Favourite examples are games theory
and information theory; theories which are stated by mathematicians strictly,
and are used by political scientists in a loose way to illustrate particular processes
and their limiting conditions. On the other hand, generalizations can be built
up from observation, by a process of trial and error, in which comparison plays
a large part. Such a method does not despise theory, provided the theory
arises out of empirical study and is deeply involved in it. That is to say, its
concepts should not be so precise, its range so wide, that it loses contact with
ordinary experience and ordinary language.74
The former style might be illustrated from the work of Schelling74 and Riker,75
the latter from that of S. E. Fir1er.7~
c. Historical. Political theory is often taught through the history of political
thought, with emphasis both on the logical structure of each theory and on the
historical context in which it emerged. Such schemes can be extremely valuable
in teaching care in statement and respect for the mutual influence of theories
and their environment. It also teaches indirectly that no theory is final and that
our own contemporaries wil in the end take a place in the history books, if
their work has been influential enough to justify it. Its unexpressed doctrine is
that eclecticism is prudent and indeed correct. No theory which made an impact
can be wholly false, but none can be wholly true, either. Theories are as it were
keys adapted to particular locks; now one is the right theory, now another. They
do not add up either to a science or to a philosophy of a comprehensive kind:
their precarious and transient character is itself a characteristic of human politics.
It would be tempting to say that the taste for grand theory is strongest in the
super-powers, the United States of America and the USSR: that the historical or
eclectic style is strongest in EngIand: that partial theory is necessary, in all
political science, but has no separate tradition of its own. But one cannot push
this sort of speculation very far; the conflict of styles exists everywhere, and it
strengthens and enriches the discipline.
NOTES
I. ARISTOTLE, Politics, 1282 b, 1. 16, and Nie Eth., 1094 a, 11. 26-29.
2. ARISTOTLE, Politics, 1253 a, 1. 3. ‘Political’ is by no means an adequate translation
of Aristotle’s TCO~LTLX~V. But I think that if one explored theproblem oftranslation it
would extend and deepen the present point, without changing it radically.
3. Parsons needs no citation, but it would be appropriate to refer here to Easton’s
most influential work, The Political System, New York, Knopf, 1953. Much has
happened since 1953. and Easton is now by no means the only source of ‘systems
language’ in political science. But it was he who first opened these perspectives.
4. A. MACINTYRE, A Short History of Ethics, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul,
1967, P. 4.