Article: “The Founding of the American Political Science Association:

Discipline, Profession, Political Theory, and Politics”

Author: John G. Gunnell

Issue: November 2006

Journal: American Political Science Review

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American Political Science Review Vol. 100, No. 4 November 2006

The Founding of the American Political Science Association:

Discipline, Profession, Political Theory, and Politics
JOHN G. GUNNELL State University of New York, Albany

I
n the evolution of the social sciences, disciplines (forms of research, training, and instruction)
preceded professions (distinct occupational identities). Although professionalism has often been
viewed as a conservative force, what was arguably the most prominent transformation in the history of
political science was the result of a professional challenge to the discipline. The founding of the American
Political Science Association represented not only an ideological break with some of the principal voices
in the discipline but a reformulation of the reigning vision of the relationship between political science and
politics. Despite the markedly different circumstances, the dissenting claims emanating from the subfield
of political theory during the behavioral era reflected, in many respects, a similar form of confrontation.

The new journal promises to take its
place among the special publications of the
country.
—–W.W. Willoughby (1906)
publication in 1890, or the Political Science Quarterly,
which was instituted at Columbia in 1886, as its official
organs. At least on the surface, what Munroe Smith of
Columbia had referred to in the first issue of the PSQ
as the “domain of political science,” that is, the study
of the “State,” was still embraced by those who estab-

A
considerable body of scholarship and opinion
suggests that the practical and often reformist
motives that animated early American social
science foundered as a consequence of conservative
tendencies inherent in professionalization. The claim is
that the search for “objectivity” and scientific status has
ultimately been at the expense of “advocacy” and even
the pursuit of democratic values (e.g., Furner 1975).
Although there is surely some truth to this thesis, it
tends, if embraced as a general premise, to yield a
misinterpretation of certain important aspects of the
history of political science as well as of the social sci-
ences as a whole.1 More specifically, it obscures the
extent to which professionalism has at times been both
conceived and deployed as a vehicle for challenging dis-
ciplinary inertia and confronting entrenched images of
the relationship between political science and politics.
This was the case with the founding of the American
Political Science Association and, more than a half-
century later, it was again manifest in the resistance of
certain political theorists to the dominance of behav-
ioralism. Although the difference and the relationship
between the concepts, and exemplars, of discipline and
profession are complex, it is clear a discipline of polit-
ical science preceded a national professional associa-
tion, and it is important to understand the distinction
as well as the manner in which the two are entwined.
Today, someone might very well ask what
Willoughby meant by “special” and wonder why the
founders of the APSA expressed “a strong sentiment”
(1905, 25) in favor of creating a new quarterly rather
than choosing to adopt the Annals of the American
Academy of Political and Social Science, which began
John G. Gunnell is Professor of Political Science, State University of
New York, Albany, New York 12222 (jgg@albany.edu).
1 In recent years, a significant scholarly corpus has emerged on the
history of the social sciences, including political science. For exten-
sive bibliographical resources as well as a general overview, see, for
example, Ross 2003 and Farr 2003. An elaboration of some of the
themes and contexts represented in the present essay can be found
in Gunnell 1993, 2004.
lished the APSA. Although the founding of the APSA
in 1903 represented a recognition of, and commitment
to, political science as an autonomous discipline, it was
also the beginning of a redefinition of that discipline,
and it reflected the experience of past failures of social
science to achieve practical purchase. Part of the expla-
nation for the manner in which the APSA in some re-
spects distanced itself from earlier institutions involves
the extent to which the creation of the profession was
a rebellion against the discipline. This rebellion was
in part an ideological insurgence as well as the begin-
ning of a theoretical revolution involving the concept
of the state and an attending methodological redirec-
tion. More importantly, it involved a strategic shift in
dealing with the perennial and endemic issue of the
relationship between the academy and public life.
THE WEBERIAN PARADOX
In 1885, when Richard Ely led the movement to create
an American Economics Association, the first profes-
sional social science organization to break away from
the reformist but ideologically and vocationally diverse
American Social Science Association, he was in part re-
volting against the political and methodological domi-
nance of laissez-faire doctrines defended by individuals
such as William Graham Sumner. More significantly,
however, he acted on the belief that professionalization
would underwrite normative academic claims regard-
ing public policy. Ely’s assumption was that the new
AEA, located primarily in the context of the university,
which was becoming the seat of scientific authority,
would lend greater practical influence to the claims of
economists and, particularly, the quasi-socialist poli-
cies he wished to advance. His model was, to a large
extent, derived from his perception of the role of the
German professoriate, and particularly those historical
economists associated with the Verein fur Sozialpolitik,
during the last quarter of the nineteenth century (Ely
1884). Political scientists took definite notice of the

479
The Founding of the American Political Science Association November 2006

fate of Ely and his organization as well as of similar ef-

forts, such as that of his acquaintance, Jesse Macy, who FIGURE 1. W. W. Willoughby, First Editor of
had created the first, but short-lived, Political Science the Review
Association. Despite the ideological difference, Ely’s
approach was based on much the same understanding
of the relationship between academic intellectuals and
politics that had informed John Burgess’s creation of
the School of Political Science at Columbia. The forma-
tion of the APSA was inspired not only by a change in
ideological perspective but also by a subtly yet crucially
different image of the relationship between empirical
science and normative judgments that was also emerg-
ing in the context of the German university.
Between the institution of the APSA and the ap-
pearance of the first issue of the American Political
Science Review, Max Weber published his 1904 essay
on “The ‘Objectivity’ of Knowledge in Social Science
and Social Policy” in the newly created Archiv fur
Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik, which he shared
in editing. There is little to suggest any direct relation-
ship between Weber’s essay and the ideas of American
political scientists, but in both theme and context there
were a distinct family resemblance and mediated in-
tellectual connections. Weber’s argument was in part a
response to the failure of the Verein and the ideologi-
cal and methodological disputes that had characterized
its history. Although he presented his essay as an in-
tervention in controversies about the nature of social
scientific explanation, he also explicitly addressed it to
a wider public audience with the aim of vouchsafing
the cognitive authority of academic social science. He
stressed that the commitment of the journal was to
Courtesy of the American Political Science Association.
the scientific pursuit of “the facts of social life,” but
it was also concerned with “social policy” and “the
training of judgment in respect of practical problems
arising from these social circumstances.” This raised an a mistaken image of the unity of empirical and ethical
issue about the compatibility of “aim” and “means” claims had persisted among both social scientists and
or, more specifically, about how the empirical claims of “practical men of affairs,” it was necessary to realize
social science were related to, and could be reconciled that two distinct forms of commitment were involved
with, political “value-judgments” and a “critique of and that “the task of an experimental science can never
socio-political work,” which were, at least de facto, the be the determination of binding norms and ideals, from
province of politicians and legislators (Weber, 359–60). which in turn guidelines for practical application might
Weber (1904) pointed out that the social sciences be derived” (360–61).
“arose historically from practical perspectives” and, Weber’s statement about the separation of fact and
more specifically, for the purpose of making judgments value was less a philosophical imperative than the
about public policy. Although he did not elaborate this recognition of an ineluctable difference, by the turn
claim, he was historically accurate in recognizing that of the century, between the university and politics.
in both Germany and the United States the modern It was, however, a difference that was often denied
social sciences had taken shape as the confluence of or neglected by his contemporaries, on both the left
two discursive tributaries: elements of academic moral and right, who continued to speak politically from the
philosophy devoted to civic education and other practi- podium. His point was not that it was logically incorrect
cal purposes; and ideologically informed reform move- or impossible for social scientists to engage in making
ments that invoked the authority of science in their pur- value-judgments but rather that it was no longer a prac-
suit of various dimensions of social amelioration. As ticable role. In an increasingly ideologically and cultur-
these tributaries coalesced in the context of the modern ally pluralized society, the academy was in no position
research university during the latter part of the nine- to perform this function. The university was no longer
teenth century and evolved as academic or “scientific” an integral part of the structures of political power,
disciplines, they had failed, Weber claimed, to take full and, like society as a whole, it was politically hetero-
account of their new situation and to formulate ade- geneous. Furthermore, the dominance of philosophy
quately a “principled distinction” between “‘existential within the academy was giving way to the specialized
knowledge”’ of what “‘is”’ and “‘normative”’ claims empirical sciences. An attempt by social scientists to
about what “‘should be.”’ Weber argued that although persist in their moralizing attitudes would undermine

480
American Political Science Review
their epistemic authority, which was the only kind of
authority that they, in effect, now possessed and which
was the only source of potential practical influence.
Paradoxically, only by separating what Weber would
later refer to as the “vocations” of social science and
politics could the former have an impact on the latter.
Weber, however, emphasized various ways in which so-
cial scientific knowledge could, in principle, constrain
and direct policy decisions as well as the extent to which
scientific investigation necessarily proceeded from the
perspective of value-laden premises. The authority of
social science nevertheless depended, he argued, on
acceptance of the autonomy of empirical claims and
on the professional status and independence of those
who made such claims. The dilemma and solution that
Weber articulated bore remarkable similarities to the
situation attending the founding of the APSA.
DISCIPLINE AND PROFESSION
The primary issue that prompted American political
scientists to break away professionally from historians
and economists and form a separate association was not
one of method. Historical and economic approaches to
the study of politics were not significantly questioned,
and political scientists had already defined their disci-
pline in terms of a special subject matter. In fact, there
was a commitment to maintain “harmonious relations”
and continue a tradition of joint meetings (Willoughby
1904a). The principal concern that prompted this pro-
fessional innovation revolved around the relation-
ship between social science and politics. The AEA
had, by the turn of the century, become increasingly
conservative and once again dominated by the ideol-
ogy of classical economic theory, and the American
Historical Association was not only conservative but
relatively uninvolved with public policy. Although the
program at Columbia had, under the auspices of the
arch-conservative Burgess, contributed significantly to
the development of political science as a discipline,
those who took the lead in establishing the APSA
and the Review, much like Weber and those who edited
the Archiv, belonged, for the most part, to a different
generation and diverged markedly in their political and
philosophical orientation. Above all, though, they were
united by their dissatisfaction with the discipline’s ca-
pacity to have an impact on politics.
Several individuals from Columbia, including
Burgess and Frank Goodnow, were involved in the
early 1903 meeting where it was decided to embrace
the “whole field of Political Science” rather than create,
as originally contemplated during the previous year,
an American Society for the Study of Comparative
Legislation. No one from Columbia, however, was on
the subsequent committee designated to explore the
choice between remaining professionally affiliated with
the other associations or instituting a separate organi-
zation. The committee had sought reactions to these
alternatives before convening the foundational session
at the December meeting of the AEA and AHA in
New Orleans. Here, Willoughby, a graduate of and an
assistant professor at Johns Hopkins, emerged as the
Vol. 100, No. 4
central figure in the formation and early development
of the APSA. He and other principal architects of the
Association were part of the younger cadre at Hopkins,
including John Dewey, who were well aware of the fate
of a prior generation who had attempted to use the aca-
demic forum as a vehicle of political persuasion. Like
Weber, they recognized the anachronistic character of
such a strategy. Herbert Baxter Adams, the founder
of the program in History, Politics, and Economics at
Hopkins, had embraced a vision of the academy that
was similar to that of Burgess, but many of those who
had been nurtured in that curriculum and sought to
use their academic position to advance political goals
(including Ely, Edward Bemis, Henry Carter Adams,
Edward A. Ross, and John Commons) were exem-
plary cases of the practical failure of such a course
of action as well as objects of conservative institutional
and political prejudice. The age of the university man-
darin speaking to and for a homogeneous society was
past. This model had been not only represented in the
traditional American university curriculum in moral
philosophy but also imported from Germany by the
émigré Francis Lieber, who can reasonably be labeled
America’s first political scientist, and it continued to in-
form the vision of individuals as ideologically diverse as
Burgess and Ely. The principal actors in the formation
of the APSA were seeking an effective practical role for
social science, but they also were rejecting the stance
of Kathedersozialisten. Doubt about the efficacy of this
model was one of the basic reasons that Daniel Coit
Gilman, the first President of Hopkins, had resisted
efforts to incorporate the ASSA in the university.
The inquiries of the exploratory committee had con-
cluded that there was indeed a wide demand for a new
association “to take the scientific lead in all matters
of political interest” and to “advance the scientific
study of politics” (Willoughby 1904a). On its face, this
claim did not contradict any prior principle of the dis-
cipline, but the strategy embraced and the ideology
served would break sharply with prior commitments.
Goodnow, the only representative from Columbia, was
chosen to chair the foundational meeting in New Or-
leans, and Willoughby was elected secretary. It was
finally decided that a separate association should be es-
tablished, and new committees proceeded immediately
to draft a constitution and nominate officers. Goodnow
was elected President, and Willoughby Secretary-
Treasurer. Woodrow Wilson, another Hopkins gradu-
ate, was named First-Vice-President, but he declined in
view of his recent appointment as President of Prince-
ton. The selection of Goodnow clearly signaled the
identity of the new association. Although he had re-
ceived his law degree from Columbia and taught ad-
ministrative law at that institution for 30 years, be-
fore becoming the third President of Hopkins in 1914
and later an adviser to the first republic of China, he
had been a central figure in educating the emerging
generation, which included Charles Beard and Charles
Merriam. He had also been one of the founders of
the National Municipal League, which was devoted
to the reform of local government and which was an
outgrowth of the American Academy of Political and
481
The Founding of the American Political Science Association
Social Science. The latter organization had been
initiated by Edmund James at the University of
Pennsylvania, who was an acquaintance of Ely, and it
was designed to bring together political elites and social
scientists. Like Wilson before him, Goodnow had fa-
mously advanced a distinction between politics and ad-
ministration as part of a program of democratic reform
that envisioned impartial experts executing the will of
citizens. Moreover, in direct opposition to Burgess, he
was one of the principal critics of the Supreme Court’s
obstruction of progressive social and economic legis-
lation. Although the idea of separating administration
from politics has often been interpreted, as in Weber’s
distinctions between science and politics, as a conser-
vative stance, the motive was deeply embedded in a
particular vision of how best to achieve social and po-
litical reform.
SCIENCE AND POLITICS
Willoughby served continuously as the Secretary-
Treasurer, and guiding force, of the APSA until 1913,
when he was elected President, and he was managing
editor of the Review for the entire first decade of its
publication. He had been a student of Wilson, who in
turn had been a student of Ely. Willoughby endorsed
the idea of progressive legislation, and although he has
often been represented as a paradigmatic exponent of
the nineteenth-century theory of the state, he, probably
more than anyone else during the early years of the
twentieth century, was instrumental in the conceptual
transformation whereby the term “state” came to re-
fer to the institutions of government rather than to
a sovereign community behind the constitution. The
latter concept of the state had been the core of the
nineteenth-century theory of democracy, but it had also
served, in the case of Burgess and others, as a rationale
for limited government. When Wilson first claimed
that “administration lies outside the proper sphere
of politics” (1887), his concern was not simply with
governmental efficiency and how it had been inhibited
by institutions that “enthroned public opinion.” The
problem was that that such opinion, so highly touted
by James Bryce as the heart of American democracy,
was, as Walter Lippmann and others would soon stress,
not the opinion of any definable and observable entity.
The so-called “sovereign mind,” Wilson pointed out,
had “no definite locality” and tended to reflect only
the “unphilosophical bulk of mankind.” What individ-
uals such as Edwin Corwin (1929) and John Dickinson
would later refer to as the “democratic dogma” (1930),
the belief in the existence of and the need for the will of
an American “people,” continued to inform the work of
individuals as ideologically and philosophically diverse
as John Dewey (1927) and William Yandell Elliott
(1928). Even by the turn of the century, however, the
“democratic realities” of a pluralist society, so vividly
pictured by individuals such as Arthur Bentley, were
pointing toward a new image of the relationship be-
tween political science and politics. For someone like
Merriam, the task of a science of politics would be to
create a public, whereas for the early pluralists, it was
482
November 2006
to understand and prescribe the role of government in
a society characterized by diversity. In both cases, the
impartial authority of science was deemed essential.
The movement that led to the creation of the APSA
also involved a dispute about the nature of political
theory. Although political theory had typically been
viewed as a subject matter, that is, ideas in politics, what
it represented as a part of political science, in addition
to the study of the history of political thought, had been
much less clear. This matter was not directly confronted
until political theory was formalized by the APSA as
one of the divisions of the field. Willoughby chaired the
initial committee on political theory (one of six des-
ignated subfields), which included William Archibald
Dunning of Columbia and the latter’s student, Mer-
riam, by now an assistant professor at Chicago; and,
with Dunning, Willoughby was a principal in the cre-
ation of political theory as a distinct area of study. It
was 15 years before anything that today would likely be
categorized as political theory appeared in the Review,
and what brought it to the fore was the crisis in demo-
cratic theory that had fully emerged by the 1920s. The
first mention of “political theory” in a political science
publication was a pejorative reference to “abstract po-
litical theory” in the Political Science Quarterly’s 1895
retrospective (Jameson 1890, 213); political theory was
viewed there as part of politics, and it was noted that
“pure political theory, is quite alien to the American ge-
nius, which tends to scorn ultimate philosophy” (567).
Perhaps more than anyone else, it was Willoughby who
sought to provide an identity for academic political
theory and to valorize it as a part of political science,
and Merriam (1925) would pursue a similar goal. In his
discussion of the formation of the APSA, Willoughby
noted that political science could be viewed as consist-
ing of three parts, the first of which was “the province
of political theory or political philosophy, the aim of
which is the analysis and exact definition of the con-
cepts employed in political thinking,” that is, in political
science (1904b, 108). He repeated this basic definition
on a number of occasions, but his principal point was
to distinguish political theory in political science from
ideas in politics—–in effect, to drive home the point that
science and politics were two different vocations.
The Constitution of the APSA stated that the As-
sociation would “not assume a partisan position upon
any question of practical politics,” even though such
questions could be freely discussed among members.
These individuals, like Weber, obviously held par-
tisan positions, but they believed that they could
not advance their cause by speaking as partisans.
Willoughby stressed this idea from the outset, and
his Weberian cast of mind was evident when, in the
same year that he described the formation of the
APSA, he directly confronted the formidable figure
of Burgess. Willoughby differed from Burgess on ideo-
logical grounds, but he also began to question frontally
the core claim of the traditional theory of the state, that
is, that state and government were two different things.
Willoughby’s depreciation of this difference supported
the idea of active and authoritative governmental
policy, but his principal complaint was that Burgess
American Political Science Review
consistently confounded the spheres of political the-
ory and politics. This, Willoughby claimed, was evi-
dent in Burgess’s distinction between “real” states (by
which Burgess meant countries such as the United
States, England, and Germany) and what he considered
to be lesser forms of political organization. Burgess,
Willoughby argued, was speaking less as a social sci-
entist than as a statesman and attempting to deduce
practical moral principles from “pure political theory,”
which should properly be limited to an objective study
of the state in all its dimensions and manifestations
(1908).
In his presidential address at the first annual meeting
of the APSA in 1904, Goodnow noted that a basic
rationale for the autonomy of political science as a
profession was to recognize, validate, and support a
disciplinary identity, which was defined by its focus on
subjects that had “not been systematically treated by
the other societies,” namely, and primarily “the State.”
The fundamental purpose of the Association and its
“work,” however, were to achieve reciprocity between
the “closet philosopher” and “those engaged in the
active walks of political life” and to exert influence on
the “world of action” (Goodnow 1904, 35). It could do
this, he claimed, only by achieving the status of science,
and he saw his own research in law as an example of
the manner in which scientific knowledge provided a
check on the tendencies of political theory “to soar
in the empyrean realms of speculation” and thereby to
turn political science into “a realm in which the political
philosopher is to be permitted to roam at will, subject
to no check on the exuberance of his fancy or caprice.”
It was, he argued, important to be a “political scientist”
and not a “mere political philosopher.” Political theory,
he acknowledged, was nevertheless an important ele-
ment of politics, because “however contemptuous may
be one’s belief in the practical value of the study of
political theory, it is nonetheless true that every gov-
ernmental system is based on some more or less well
defined political theory” (37–38, 42, 45). Once again the
emphasis was on distinguishing the realms of politics
and political science—–but for the purpose of gaining
influence over the former.
Even allowing for rhetorical excess, it is evident
that the formation of the Association constituted a
basic strategic reformulation in which the authority
of science, rather than, for example, neo-Hegelian
claims about the meaning of human history were be-
ing advanced as a basis of social policy. The extent
to which the Association represented a distinct the-
oretical break with the nineteenth-century theory of
the state was less clear. Goodnow (1904), for exam-
ple, noted that “one of the peculiar developments of
American political practice has been the attempt to
separate both in organization and action the sovereign
State from the government.” Like many Progressives,
he was still committed to the image of the “realiza-
tion of the State will” through the “organs” of gov-
ernment (37–39). The prevailing concept of democracy
still presumed a distinction between the people and
the government with sovereignty residing in the for-
mer. It is, however, important to recognize the extent
Vol. 100, No. 4
to which the anomalies of this theory were involved
in the transformation effected by the creation of the
APSA. It was one thing for political science to make
“scientific” claims about the visible institutions and
operation of government and quite another thing to
profess to know and speak for the mind of an invis-
ible public. Although the issues were not in the first
instance primarily methodological, empiricism and the
new strategy for achieving political impact were closely
connected.
The same commitments were expressed by Henry
Jones Ford, another central figure in the founding of the
Association. Originally a newspaper editor, he lectured
at Hopkins after the creation of the APSA and was sub-
sequently appointed by Wilson to several administra-
tive positions in the federal government. Like Wilson
and Goodnow, he emphasized the need for effective
administration, which, he argued, could be achieved
by centralized government control and consolidation.
In his discussion, at the second annual meeting of the
APSA, of the “scope of political science,” Ford posed
the question of whether the discipline would “ever sup-
ply general principles for the guidance of statecraft.”
Although he lamented that at present there seemed
to be “little if any connection between them,” he con-
tended that the primary goal of the Association—–even
if it took “generations”—–was “to bring political science
to a position of authority as regards practical politics.”
It was to do this, however, not on the basis of moral
authority or as a representative of the public, but rather
by putting the discipline on an “objective basis” that
reflected the “reconstruction which the general body
of science has undergone at the hands of inductive phi-
losophy” (1905, 198, 203). He had complained that “or-
dinary political theory” was “oblivious” of facts (1904),
and, like Willoughby, he criticized Burgess’s restriction
of the concept of the state to Western societies. Such a
position, he claimed, reflected a tendency of the disci-
pline “to gather its concepts from the mental deposits
of our own rare experience” and to assume that they
were “universal in their application and should guide
enlightened statesmanship.” This, he argued, unduly
narrowed the scope of the field and, in the end, had
the effect of diminishing the possibility of making a
connection to political practice. Political science, he
suggested, was still suffering from a syndrome that
characterized the end of the eighteenth century, when
“the word ‘ideology’ was coined to discredit statecraft
assuming to be founded on scientific theory” (202). He
recommended that the discipline focus on an impartial
study of “public authority” in all its forms and discover
the laws of its operation and development. Scientific
knowledge would, he affirmed, ultimately lead to social
control.
Thus, the dilemma that faced the founders of the
Association was how to eschew partisanship but gain
authority in matters of public policy. This quandary was
evident in the second presidential address to the Asso-
ciation at the third annual meeting, which marked the
initiation of the Review. Albert Shaw, who succeeded
Goodnow, was a journalist, editor of the Progressive
Review of Reviews, advisor to Theodore Roosevelt,
483
The Founding of the American Political Science Association
proponent of local government reform, coiner of the
phrase “municipal socialism,” and another graduate
of Hopkins and student of Ely. In announcing that
“our Political Science Association has entered upon
the publication of a quarterly review,” he emphasized
once again that the subject matter of political science
could not be studied “at the historian’s table or in the
alcove of the economist”(1907, 178). His principal aim,
however, was to demonstrate that “this organization
of ours is not partisan, sectional, or propagandist in
nature” and that it was “not a body of reformers.” Its
work was to be done “without bias and in the purely
scientific spirit,” for “nobody cares any longer whether
members of an association like this are classed as re-
publicans or democrats; protectionists or free traders;
nationalists, or states’ rights men; socialists or individu-
alists; municipal traders, or anti-public ownership men;
for corporations, or against them; for or against trades-
unionism.” He predicted that “without departing in the
smallest degree from its scientific methods,” the work
of the Association would “have an almost monumental
character and importance.” He claimed that despite its
non-partisan character, the Association consisted of in-
dividuals whose “point of view has not been merely that
of detached scientific observers” and who were “willing
and eager to see the results of their scientific study of
political life and conditions converted to the practi-
cal ends of statesmanship.” Consequently, “the poli-
tical scientist must lose no chance to influence the
statesman on the one hand, and to supply intellectual
pabulum to the people on the other hand” (180–81,
184–85).
The members of the new Association were in fact
“a body of reformers,” many of whom did “care” and
worry about their political commitments. It was fears
regarding the motives and attitudes of these political
scientists that Shaw wished to allay. The paradox in-
herent in the Association’s simultaneous commitments
to neutrality and relevance was evident in the tension
between Shaw’s own avowed objectivity and, for exam-
ple, his advocacy of the “use of the State, that is, to say,
of governmental power and agency, for the conduct or
for the modification of tendencies in the economic life”
(1907, 181). The early years of the Review were char-
acterized by discussions that were far from impartial
such as those revolving around “Negro suffrage” and
the regulation of corporations.
The basic conception of the relationship between po-
litical science and politics that characterized the found-
ing period of the APSA would be embraced by Mer-
riam and the Chicago School and would remain at the
core of the mainstream discipline through World War
Two. The questions that were left unanswered were
how, exactly, “objective science” was to yield norma-
tive results and how such results were to be imparted to
and deployed by political actors. For those such as Mer-
riam and Harold Lasswell, political science was to be a
policy-science and, in some manner, find a way to speak
truth to power, but exactly how this was to be achieved
remained unclear. By the late 1960s, many had come
to believe that the emphasis on science had obscured
or overwhelmed practical concerns and that the “be-
484
November 2006
havioral movement” or “revolution” constituted an
intellectually and politically conservative disciplinary
hegemony in which the biases of such values as norma-
tive pluralism were sublimated in “scientific” theories
and methods. The principal challenge to the growing
behavioral orthodoxy emanated from what had been
the intellectual habitat of many of the principal figures
of the discipline—–the subfield of political theory. In
a strange way, the scenario that had characterized the
founding of the APSA was in some respects re-enacted.
For Willoughby and Merriam, political theory was
the center of political science as a science, and, to a
large extent, the study of the history of political the-
ory, from its nineteenth century beginnings through
the publication of George Sabine’s paradigmatic text
(1937), served as a provenance for both the discipline
and the concept of American liberal democracy that it
embraced. During the 1950s and 1960s, however, a sig-
nificant and well-documented estrangement developed
between many political theorists and the discipline as a
whole. The dimensions of this alienation were complex,
but part of what was involved was a new professional
challenge to the discipline that once again called into
question its relationship to politics.
THE REVOLT OF POLITICAL THEORY
In 1969, Sheldon Wolin presented an account of politi-
cal theory as a distinct “vocation,” that is, a calling that
he claimed was exemplified in the “vision” of “epic
theory” manifest in the classic canon. He spoke for
many when he urged the image of this vocation as an
alternative to the approach of the “methodist,” which,
he argued, characterized behavioral political science.
Wolin advanced this vocation as an identity for polit-
ical theorists whose principal mission, in his view, was
to redress the lack of political relevance that had be-
fallen the discipline as a consequence of its scientism
and the complacency and quiescence engendered by
the research agenda and tacit conservatism embedded
in behavioralism. From Wolin’s perspective, the better
self of political science could at this point be redeemed
only by reconstituting it as a separate vocation that
embraced a different vision of democracy and spoke
directly to matters of public concern and moral judg-
ment.
What is instructive was Wolin’s choice of the term
“vocation,” which literally means profession, and it
was Weber’s references to the vocations of science and
politics that resonated in his remarks. This was, how-
ever, an image that challenged Weber’s conception of
how the academy might achieve practical significance.
Wolin construed political theory as mediating between
politics and the academy, but his essay was to a large
extent less a plea for a future course of action than
the validation of a nascent professional persona that
had been evolving for more than two decades. In some
respects it was also a return to the belief, represented
in the vision of individuals such as Ely, that practical
moral claims could be fused with and predicated upon
academic authority. Although Wolin was ideologically
American Political Science Review Vol. 100, No. 4

as far removed from someone such as Leo Strauss to rend the Association, but his recommendations, such
(Storing 1962) as Ely had been from Burgess, Wolin as that for the creation of an international federation
and Strauss, as well as others who, in the 1950s and of social scientists that would serve as a guide to public
1960s, were instrumental in redefining political theory policy, were as utopian as the vision of the founders of
and institutionalizing it as an increasingly distinct form the APSA that they echoed.
of scholarship, were at one in their conception of aca-
demic political theory as a repository of moral judg-
ment regarding matters such as democracy and justice. CONCLUSION
An irony of Wolin’s (1969) challenge to discipline
One might argue that behavioralism was ultimately
was that the idea of an epic tradition of political thought
marked by a failure to remember what the original
that he embraced and even the conception of politi-
commitment to science had been all about, but the lead-
cal theory as both a subject matter and an academic
ers of the behavioral movement, like their forebears,
practice were inventions of the discipline of American
were at some level still convinced that the practical
political science. Furthermore, his extensive genealogy
impact of political science depended on its claim to
of “methodism,” from the Greeks to modernity, did
scientific authority as well as wary, particularly in the
not actually include the history of American political
Cold War context of the 1950s, of combining science
science to which he attributed the contemporary man-
and partisanship. Although the mood represented by
ifestation. Wolin delivered the original version of his
the new “policy turn” that followed Easton’s presiden-
article as part of the inauguration of the Conference
tial address may to some extent have been a pragmatic
for the Study of Political Thought, which was devoted
reaction to indigenous criticism, it was in part the dis-
to extricating the study of the history of political theory
cursive residue of a vision that attended the birth of the
from the confines of mainstream political science, but
APSA. The critique of that position by political theo-
the presentation was made at the 1968 annual meet-
rists such as Wolin (1969) and the rise of much of what
ing of the American Political Science Association. It
came to be termed “normative political theory” were
was subsequently published in the American Political
the resurgence of an early vision of the relationship
Science Review, in the same issue in which David Eas-
between political science and politics and a return to
ton, who had been the most articulate promulgator of
the idea that social science could speak politically on
the tenets of behavioralism announced, in his presi-
the basis of moral authority.
dential address, a “new revolution” which involved a
A century after the founding of the APSA, the con-
professional re-commitment that would, at least in the
genital dilemma continues to reverberate below the
short term, redirect the discipline away from the further
persistently diverging discourses of mainstream polit-
pursuit of “pure” science and toward more immediate
ical science and political theory. Although the profes-
practical concerns.
sion of political science continues to defend the idea
Easton’s announcement of a “postbehavioral” era
of the discipline as a source of knowledge with prac-
might have seemed a precipitous departure from his
tical significance, any distinct tactic for joining these
earlier emphasis on the priority of scientific pursuits,
realms seems nebulous. During the last quarter of the
but he was calling less for change in the discipline than
twentieth century, the subfield of political theory did
for a return to the professional orientation that had
not succeed in transforming the discipline of political
originally inspired and defined the APSA, that is, the
science and continued to be torn between, on the one
commitment to an objective science with an end in
hand, the institutional benefits of the profession and,
action. Wolin’s argument reflected concerns not unlike
on the other hand, an allegiance to an emerging inter-
those Easton had voiced almost two decades earlier,
disciplinary field that has also struggled to come to grips
even though Easton’s solution to the “decline of polit-
with the contemporary relationship between academic
ical theory” (1951) had been to bring normative and
and public discourse.
empirical theory into a more symbiotic relationship
rather than to view them as divergent vocations. Nu-
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