Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-r6qrq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-28T15:56:46.446Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Lowi's Critique of Political Science: A Response

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Randall L. Calvert
Randall L. Calvert*
Affiliation:
University of Rochester
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Sometimes an emotional irritant can be intellectually productive and provocative. For me, this was the case with Theodore Lowi's APSA presidential address, reprinted in the American Political Science Review (Lowi 1992). While disagreeing at many points with Lowi's account of the development of political science and with his critiques of the currently “hegemonic” subfields of “public opinion, public policy, and public choice,” I am led ultimately to clarify my own understanding of the relationship between politics, ideology, and science. This response to Lowi's address is intended to sketch a different view of the relation between science, especially social science, and government; to argue with Lowi's assessment of the value of reductionist paradigms such as those employed by the three hegemonic subfields; and to say that many of the rest of us are passionate about politics too. In particular, it is intended to indicate how “public choice,” my own favored member of that holy trinity, is in fact well suited to address issues critical to the matters of social value with which Lowi is concerned.

Type
Research Article
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , June 1993 , pp. 196 - 198
Copyright
Copyright © The American Political Science Association 1993

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

The author is grateful to all his colleagues in the Department of Political Science, University of Rochester, for their helpful comments on an earlier draft. This essay makes no effort, however, to represent any opinion except that of the author.

References

Almond, Gabriel A. 1988. “Separate Tables: Schools and Sects in Political Science.” PS: Political Science & Politics 4: 828–42.Google Scholar
Arrow, Kenneth J. 1963. Social Choice and Individual Values, 2nd ed. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Calvert, Randall L. 1992. “Rational Actors, Equilibrium, and Social Institutions.” Photocopy, University of Rochester. Forthcoming in Knight, J. and Sened, I., Explaining Social Institutions. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Durkheim, Emile. 1982. The Rules of Sociological Method. Edited and with an introduction by Lukes, Steven; tr. Halls, W. D.. New York: Free Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferejohn, John A. 1991. “Rationality and Interpretation: Parliamentary Elections in Early Stuart England.” In The Economic Approach to Politics, ed. Monroe, K. R.. New York: HarperCollins.Google Scholar
Hammond, Thomas H., and Thomas, Paul A.. 1989. “The Impossibility of a Neutral Hierarchy.” Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization 5: 155–83.Google Scholar
Hardin, Russell. 1982. Collective Action. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hardin, Russell. 1988. Morality within the Limits of Reason. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Hechter, Michael. 1987. Principles of Group Solidarity. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Johnson, James. 1991. “Habermas on Strategic and Communicative Action.” Political Theory 19: 181–201.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Little, Daniel. 1991. Varieties of Social Explanation. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Lowi, Theodore J. 1979. The End of Liberalism, 2nd ed. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Lowi, Theodore J. 1992. “The State in Political Science: How We Became What We Study.” American Political Science Review 86 (1, March): 1–7.Google Scholar
Milgrom, Paul R., North, Douglass C., and Weingast, Barry R. 1990. “The Role of Institutions in the Revival of Trade: The Law Merchant, Private Judges, and the Champagne Fairs.” Economics and Politics 2 (1, March): 1–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, Gary J. 1992. Managerial Dilemmas: The Political Economy of Hierarchy. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Riker, William H. 1982. Liberalism against Populism. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman.Google Scholar
Shepsle, Kenneth A., and Weingast, Barry R. 1984. “Political Solutions to Market Problems.” American Political Science Review 78: 417–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, Michael. 1976. Anarchy and Cooperation. New York: John Wiley and Sons.Google Scholar