Four books mark the beginning of modern political theory: Anthony Downs's An Economic Theory of Democracy (1957), Duncan Black's Theory of Committees and Elections (1958), William H. Riker's A Theory of Political Coalitions (1962), and James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock's The Calculus of Consent (1962). These volumes, along with Kenneth Arrow's Social Choice and Individual Values (1951), began such a wealth of research that political scientists today have difficulty digesting and synthesizing all but small parts of it. Consequently, the full value of this research often goes unrealized, and teaching it seems increasingly difficult. These problems remain especially true of formal political theory as against, say, approaches that emphasize sociological or psychological perspectives, pure statistical empiricism, or more traditional historical research. Curiously, these problems grow out of the strengths and successes of political theory.

First, because this research seeks to satisfy a rigid definition of “theory,” and not some ambiguous criteria of good journalism and insightful comment, it forms a collective whole. Consequently, unfamiliarity with one of its subparts, such as social choice, spatial models of elections, public economics, or game theory, precludes a full understanding of the theory's implications and generality. Second, because political theory itself is closely connected to the discipline of economics and rejects the notion that economic and political activity remain separable, much of the research appears in economics as well as in political science journals.