ECONOMY

982 politics and scientific enquiry
how they may be predicted to act under differing circumstances; and how analytical
models of state action might generate scientifically falsifiable hypotheses to be tested.
An empirically based macropolitics might be constructed in some such fashion and
with some claim to genuinely scientific standing. 1
A science limited to the exposing of regularities in patterns of state action, without
some grounding of these regularities in the behavior of those persons who act as
agents of and for the collective unit, however, would be too truncated for the modern
investigative mindset. The organic state, as a metaphysical unit, is simply not philosophically
meaningful, and not only to the would-be scientist. To be sure, elements
of the “state as God” mentality may have been force fed during the socialist epoch,
and residues of such mentality may remain descriptive over some spectra of public
attitudes, but a science of “politics without politicians” will be almost universally
rejected. Any political science must be constructed on microfoundations.
History is not helpful here. With some notable exceptions, political units have
evolved from origins that locate authority in identifiable autocratic leaders, whose
choices are made without necessary or formal inputs from those who are externally
affected by such choices. In this setting, the monolithic political agent, the embodiment
of the state, is, quite simply, acting as an isolated individual who might be
modeled as maximizing an objective function subject to whatever constraints are
faced. Micro- and macropolitics merge into one. “The prince” becomes the ideal
type for any analysis, and Machiavelli becomes the direct precursor of any scientific
enquiry.
It is perhaps not surprising that those who ventured into enquiries about politics
shied away from the approach taken by Machiavelli and his Italian peers. The
ultimate normative purpose or motivation for science is control aimed at reform
or improvement, and Machiavelli’s advice to the prince did not sit well with those
whose interests were not coincident with those of the prince. One avenue of escape
involved the rejection of the scientific approach itself, a withdrawal of efforts aimed
at explaining how princes do, in fact, behave, and intensification of discourse about
how princes “should” behave.
3 The “Ought”Replaces the “Is”
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Ethical norms for the guidance of the behavior of those who make decisions for the
collectivity became center stage in discourse on politics, and Plato was recognized
as the fountainhead of ideas in the political theory that was to dominate enquiry
until the middle of the last century. Such elevation of normative discussion, to the
comparative neglect of positive analysis, might possibly have been justified so long
as political units were best described as principalities, under the authority of single
¹ Fortwoefforts that could be classified in this category, see de Jasay 1985,andvanCreveld1999.