Reflections on a Discipline

Abstract

Presidential addresses in our Association are frequently discourses on the state of our discipline. In the past twenty years nine presidents have reflected on its status, trends and needs. It would be presumptuous for another president to return to the topic now if the moment did not validate the need. After a period of novel developments, accompanied by uncertainties and tensions, there is need to reemphasize our community of interest and our common obligation.It is a community extending across diversities and an obligation with many components. The study of the science and art of government has many facets which reflect search in that eternal triangle of science, values, and utility.In the beginning it is well to remark that we are constantly drawn toward two poles in a dual quest. We would like to find verifiable propositions or working assumptions about political activity which, like the law of gravity or the laws of motion, transcend time, and technology and culture variations. We would like even to extend our vision further: just as the biologist seeks for the origins of life and the astronomer for the initial creative impulse for the universe, we want to know if there is a universal plan in history and a destiny for man.Such cosmic vision must be based on the assumption of some constants in human behavior, such as self-love; or in human relations, such as power; or in natural morality, such as justice. Yet grasp for certainty fades as we wonder whether all such things are relative to environment, and hence whether ecology and the search for the laws of change must be the centers of inquiry. As we contemplate how such great cultural changes as the secularization of thought in the Enlightenment, or such tremendous physical events as the discovery of America have upset the assumptions of thought, and as we try to think of what nuclear energy, automation and the dominion of scientists may mean, we are humble before the task of building an endurable science of politics.

Understanding Government: Four Intellectual Traditions in the Study of Public Administration

“…At the same time, public administration must always balance the theoretical interests of its scholars with those of its practitioners since, in the end, the latter must be synthesizers of social wisdom (Brownlow 1934, as quoted in Stillman 1999b, pp. 116–17; Dimock 1936, p. 129; Tead in 1935 and Durham in 1940, as quoted in Waldo 1984, p. 95 – as applied science –Simon 1966, p. 35; Redford 1961, p. 758; Waldo 1984; Wilson 1998, p. 269). Interdisciplinarity breaks through the linguistic and conceptual isolation that may come from being too focused on unified theory and methodology (on economics, see Nelson and Winter 1982, p. 405).…”

“…This is reiterated in Yankelovich’s reference to the philosopher Bernstein who believes objectivism to be a destructive force that distorts reality and undermines wisdom and common sense (Polanyi 1966, p. 20; Yankelovich 1991, p. 197). Too much emphasis on empirical public administration may jeopardize ‘the use of imagination’ where ‘small matters’ studied by the scholar carries him into the ‘larger questions’ (Dahl 1961, p. 772; Davidson 1961, p. 854; Redford 1961, p. 759). In addition, in the pursuit of scientific knowledge, there is a danger of too much focus on method.…”

“…A fourth problem is normative by nature and questions a positivist study of public administration that lacks attention for the moral challenges administrators face and the value‐laden choices they must make every day (Redford 1961, p. 759; Waldo 1984). Simon is dismissive of any other than the positivist approach (see Crowther‐Heyck 2005) but this has met with objections.…”

What Good Can Political Science Do? From Pluralism to Partnerships

“…Periodically in ensuing decades, other APSA presidents openly worried about the growing fragmentation of the discipline (e.g., Redford 1961, 757-58; Truman 1965, 869-873; Leiserson 1975, 181-82; Miller 1981, 9-10; Pye 1990, 3-4). For a brief time in the 1960s, great figures like Truman, Almond, and Easton hoped political science could unite around the analysis of groups in relation to the inputs and outputs, or structures and functions, of systems (Truman 1965, 869-870; Almond 1966, 875-879; Easton 1969, 1058-1061).…”

“…And since the 1960s, a number of APSA presidents have worried that the goal of methodological rigor was being given undue priority over exploration of large, important questions. They suggested this imbalance contributed to the discipline’s embarrassing slowness to recognize major developments like the civil rights and protests movements of the 1950s and 60s, the burgeoning of religious conservatism in the 1970s and 80s, and the deepening popular distrust of establishment leaders in the late twentieth century that fueled recent populist uprisings (Redford 1961, 757-762; Easton 1969, 1057; Lowi 1992, 3-6; Barker 1994, 10-12; Holden 2000, 2-6; Putnam 2003, 250-52; Katznelson 2007, 10-12; Pinderhughes 2009, 7-8).…”