We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2014
THE TEST OF A THEORY IS IN ITS APPLICATION. THE DIFFICULTY IS that in political theory, application is rarely a sufficient test. This is especially true of the kind of theory in which I am interested. It is abstract, highly generalized, and for this reason, tends to be illustrated by means of applications which neither prove nor disprove. A lack of clear guides for disproof is one of the more serious deficiencies of highly general theory. If that is so, what is the point of doing it? One answer is that if such theory can lead in an a priori way to logically inferred predicaments which repeat themselves in many forms in the real world, this should allow us to anticipate events. This, in turn, allows us to compare these common predicaments in diverse settings to discover the necessary and separate it from the contingent. This can represent a big step forward if it results in new types of data and different forms of linkages between variables. The ‘tests’ then are more insightful generalizations rather than ‘validations’. If such generalizations can be made subject to quantitative proof, so much the better. In any case, the route to validation is bound to be indirect. Propositions locked into a logical structure of thought will remain for long cumbersome and wearisome. Despite this, as long as not too many people waste their time with it, a general theory approach seems worth the effort.
1 For fuller statements, see my forthcoming collection of essays, Political Change, Frank Cass, London. The main theory is in Apter, D. E., Choice and the Politics of Allocation, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1971.Google Scholar
2 See Shonfield, Andrew, Modern Capitalism: The Changing Balance of Public and Private Power, Oxford University Press, London, 1965, p. 84.Google Scholar
3 See Ellman, Michael, ‘Lessons of the Soviet Economic Reform’, in The Socialist Register, Millband, Ralph and Saville, John (eds.), Merlin Press, London, 1968, pp. 23–54.Google Scholar
4 The effects at times have been tragic. In Viet‐Nam, for example, the government ‘listened’ only to the experts it chose to hear and suppressed unpleasant information. See Ellsberg, Daniel, Papers on the War, Simon, and Schuster, , New York, 1972.Google Scholar
