ECONOMY

chapter 55
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POLITICS AND
SCIENTIFIC
ENQUIRY
RETROSPECTIVE ON A
HALF-CENTURY
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james m. buchanan
1 Introduction
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As the new century moves forward, the ranks of those who can personally recall
the state of play in political analysis at the middle of the last century are
rapidly thinning. And without personal recollection, which must itself sometimes
be forcefully imposed on what seems best forgotten, it remains impossible to appreciate
the depth of confusion that described the then-prevailing “science” of
politics. To modern scholars who must work within the constraints of published
works, the glaring failure of social scientists to dispel the fog, or even to recognize
that the fog exists, seems both inexplicable and inexcusable. They should
recognize, however, that while with modern tools of analysis the fog may seem
to lift, thereby offering more satisfying explanatory results, many of the sources
of the basic confusion have not been fully displaced. Potential value has been
extracted from the “science of politics” as it has developed over a half-century, but
this “science” itself has generated its own critics, perhaps an indirect measure of
some success.