LOWI, The State in Political Science

7/31/2019 LOWI, The State in Political Science

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T H E S T A T E I N P O L I T I C A L S C I E N C E : H O W W E B E C O M EW H A T W E S T U D YTHEODORE J. LOWI Cornell University

Am erican po litical science is a product of the Am erican state. There are political reasons w hyparticu lar subdisciplines becam e hegem onic w ith the em ergence of the "Second Republic"after W orld W ar II. The three hegem onic subdiscip lines of our tim e are pub lic op inion,public policy, and pub lic choice. Each is a case study o f consonance w ith the thought-ways andm ethods o f a m odern bureaucratized governm ent com mitted to scientific decision m aking. Fo llow ingLeviathan too closely results in three principal consequences: (1) fa ilure to catch and evaluate therep lacem ent of law by econom ics as the language of the sta te , (2) th e lo ss o f p assio n in p olitica l scien ced isc ou rse , a nd (3) th e fa ilu re o f p olitic al sc ie nc e to a pp re cia te th e sig nifica nc e o f id eo lo gic al sea c ha ng esa cco mp an yin g reg im e ch an ges.

This presidential pilgrimage is over, and I canreport that the American Political Science As-sociation is alive and well. But a pilgrimage isnot a journey into happiness. A pilgrimage is asearch, and no pilgrimage is fulfilled until the thepilgrim returns and shares the pains of discovery.

From out of their early pilgrimage, the Quakerscried, "Speak truth to power." From out of mypilgrimage I responded, "Who's listening?" and"What truths do we have to impart?" On my pilgrim-age I listened in on the conversation between politicalscience and power, and it is my duty to report thatthe terms of discourse have been set by power . Weare not the teachers we thought ourselves to be.

The insights of my pilgrimage began with myawakening to three facts: (1) U.S. political science isitself a political phenomenon and, as such, is aproduct of the state; (2) there is not one science ofpolitics but several, each the outcome of a particularadaptation to what it studies; and (3) even assumingthat we are all sincerely searching for the truth (and itis more interesting to assume that), there are reasonsother than the search for truth why we do the kindsof political science we do and why particular subdis-ciplines become hegemonic. In sum, every regimetends to produce a politics consonant with itself;therefore every regime tends to produce a politicalscience consonant with itself. Consonance betweenthe state and political science is a problem worthy ofthe attention of every political scientist.

To explore the relation between the state andpolitical science, I have chosen case studies of thethree hegemonic subdisciplines of our time-s-publicopinion, public policy, and public choice-precededby an overview of the transformation from the old to .the new state and the old to the new political science.I will conclude with a brief evaluation of the conse-quences for political science of being a "dependentvariable. "

There is no need to document for political scientiststhe contention that the American state until the 1930swas virtually an oxymoron. The level of national

government activity was almost as low in 1932 as ithad been in 1832. However, although a number oflarge social movements had failed to expand thenational government after the Civil War, they hadsucceeded in nationalizing the focus of U.S. politics.The Civil War and industrialization made us onenation in fact. W abash , S t. L ouis , and Pacific R ailw ay v.Illinois of 1886 (118 U.S. 557) contributed with thedoctrine that the state governments were constitu-tionally incompetent to confront the nationalizingeoonomy. The media transferred their dependencefrom the highly localized political parties to thecorporations seeking mass sales through advertising.

Political science as a profession was a product ofthis nationalization of political focus. Intellectual his-torians such as Somit and Tannenhaus (1967) andSeidelman (1985) report that the APSA was part ofthe progressive reform movement. Somit/Tannen-haus report that only 20% of the first decade's mem-bership were "professors and teachers" (p. 55). Fromout of the beginnings in the 1890s, where the writingwas "legalistic, formalistic, conceptually barren andlargely devoid of what would today be called empir-ical data" (p. 69), the founders of the association werecommitted to political realism, which meant facts, thehere and now, and the exposure of the gap betweenthe formal institutions and the realities. James Brycein his address as the fourth association president in1909, urged political scientists to "Keep close to thefacts. Never lose yourself in abstractions .... TheFact is the first thing. Make sure of it. Get it perfectlyclear. Polish it till it shines and sparkles like a gem"(quoted in Somit and Tannenhaus 1967, 70). The titleof Woodrow Wilson's presidential address to theseventh annual meeting of the APSA was "The Lawand the Facts." Early in his speech he said, "I take thescience of politics to be the accurate and detailedobservation of [the] processes by which the lessons ofexperience are brought into the field of conscious-ness, transmuted into active purposes, put under thescrutiny of discussion, sifted, and at last given deter-minate form in law" (1911, 2). But these were not

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facts for themselves alone. Some early political scien-tists were active reformers, others were radical muck-rakers, and a few may have been completely aloof.But facts were to be put in the service of assessment:Did a given political institution meet its purpose?According to Wilson, political scientists should serveas a kind of "self-constituted commission ... to dis-cover, amidst our present economic chaos, a commoninterest, so that we might legislate for the wholecountry instead of this, that, or the other interest, oneby one" (pp. 6-7).There is no evidence to suggest that the foundinggeneration were trying to form an intelligentsia, de-fined as an organization of intellectuals in oppositionto the state. There was, in fact, no state to organizeagainst. If anything, there was a memory trace of thetwo states that conducted the most devastating totalwar in history up to 1865. But both states weredismantled quickly after the Civil War and werefolded back into the "stateless polity" of the restoredUnion (Bensel 1990). One could say, however, thatthe early APSA was a kind of counterintelligentsiaformed in defense ofa state that did not yet exist. Thepolitical science of the entire first generation of theAPSA was formed around politics-the observable,the immediate, and the short-run purpose to beserved. But politics was not only a phenomenon, itwas a problem. For example, to Goodnow, the pur-pose of the political science was to show "particularlyfrom a consideration of political conditions as theynow exist in the U.S., that the formal governmentalsystem as set forth in the law is not always the sameas the actual system" (quoted in Ross 1991,274).Andfor most of them, there was a handy solution to theproblem ofpolitics-government, properly character-ized as the "building of a new American state"(Skowronek 1982).This goal of a new American statecan, in turn, be characterized as a stateless govern-ment, or an enlightened administration. WoodrowWilson, while still an obscure professor of politicalscience at Johns Hopkins, sounded the call for thestudy of administration in 1887. This should beunderstood, however, within the context of his stilllarger declaration that the era of constitution makingwas closed "so far as the establishment of essentialprinciples is concerned" (quoted in Ross 1991, 275).Administration could be a solution to politics be-cause, in Wilson's words, we could have the Prussianstate breathe free American air (Wilson 1887). AsSeidelman puts it, "the study of politics for Wilsonthus had to evolve into a study of America's culturaluniqueness and European administration" (1985,44).Wilson was confirming the unarticulated majorpremise of political science, namely, that the Ameri-can system was permanent and that the science ofpolitics involved the study and assessment ofpoliticalthings within a permanent and unique context. Wewere one republic, then and forever. Political scien-tists could remain a counterintelligentsia not becauseallmembers shared the Lockean liberal consensus butbecause they were scientists in the state-buildingbusiness even while, as with Bentley, they were

attacking the very concept of the state as "soul stuff"(ibid., 70-71). For the same reason, political sciencewas atheoretical. Works produced by the foundinggeneration stand up well even by today's standardsof science and are superior to most of ours in thequality of the knowledge they brought to bear and intheir use of the English language. But the workremained essentially empirical and became almosttechnocratic in its participation in the reform move-ment, primarily because it had no concept of analternative regime in the United States.

It should have been unmistakably clear to anypolitical scientist of 1887 or later that the Americansystem after the CivilWar was a new regime, deserv-ing a new name. Why not the Second Republic? Theanswer is that that would have suggested an imper-manence to the American regime. If a Second Repub-lic, why not a Third and Fourth? My wife sometimesintroduces me to her friends as her first husband.That is a sobering sobriquet. Political science wasatheoretical because it had no concept of a SecondRepublic or of any other alternative regime. Eventu-ally, political scientists would virtually rewrite dem-ocratic theory to accommodate political parties andwould rewrite republican theory to accommodate thedevolution of constitutional powers from Congress tothe presidency. But this was not a self-conscious actofpolitical theory; itwas part of "the study ofpoliticalconditions as they exist." In the stateless polity of thefounding epoch, the science of politics was the studyof politics and of political institutions within a time-less, as well as a uniquely American, framework.

In my opinion, the golden age of U.S. politicalscience came toward the end of this founding epoch,which corresponds, of course, with the end of thestateless polity. Works ofpolitical science of the 1930sand 1940swere magnificent in their ability to describea complex political whole; thorough, honest, andimaginative in their use of statistics to describe adynamic reality; and powerful and cogent in pointingout flaws and departures from U.S. ideals. But thiswas the sentimental part of my journey. To yearn forthose particular studies of elections, case studies ofinterest groups and policymaking, histories of partysystems, and representation in Congress is to yearnalso for the luxury of the First Republic, now that weare irreversibly in the Second and possess at least thebare beginnings of an awareness of the possibility ofregime change in the United States.Surely by now there has been, in fact, a change ofregime, which I call the Second Republic, for lack ofan established enumeration. It is not the French stateor the Prussian state; but at least, we can say that theAmerican state is no longer an oxymoron. Here, alltoo briefly, are its relevant high spots: (1) it is apositive, not a reactive, state, from the start centeredon the executive branch; (2) constitutional limits onthe powers of the national government over theeconomy and on the distribution of power among thebranches within the national government were veryquickly laid to rest; (3) many aspects of politics thathad traditionally been private (e.g., registration, bal-

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lots, election administration, nomination, job patron-age, polling, and campaign finance) have been gov-ernmentalized-that is, modern government hasassumed responsibility for its own politics; (4) politi-cal parties, like nuclear families, have declined forlackof enough to do; (5)bureaucracy, independent ofparty and Congress, has expanded in size and scaleapproaching autonomy as a social force; and, (6)intimately connected with (5), government has be-come intensely committed to science. This was noaccident, and it is no mere policy. Science is aninherent part of the new, bureaucratized state, in atleast two dimensions: First, it involves a commitmentto building science as an institution, that is, a com-mitment to government fo r science; and second, itinvolves a commitment to government by science-that is to say, it involves scientific decision making.This has been properly characterized as iechnocraiiza-tion, which I take to mean "to predict in order tocontrol" (compare Mills 1959, 113). But another to-me-more-interesting but less appreciated part of thisaspect of the expansion of science is that e co no m ic s h asreplaced law as the language of the state.What Tocqueville said of the First Republic we maysay of the Second: "A new science of politics isneeded for a new world" (quoted in Wood 1969,v).But life is not quite so simple. If modern states aredifferentiated, there are almost certain to be severalsciences of politics, rather than just one. We tend tocall these subdisciplines; but despite continuities andoverlaps, they are quite distinct. Each can be under-stood as a product of the phenomena it studies; but Iam concerned here not to explain or place them allbut only to understand the "hegemonics" of disci-plines-why public opinion, public policy, and publicchoice became hot topics and when.Some callpublic opinion behavioral science. I thinkI am more accurate calling it public opinion. Observ-ers from an alien intellectual planet would find itmost peculiar that the study of individual opinionsand attitudes could be called behavioral-until theydeconstructed the discourse between the new bu-reaucratized state and the new political science. Hereis my deconstruction:

1. If science is to be public, it must be neutral.2. It must also be rational and therefore concernitself with rational phenomena, that is, orderly, re-peatable, predictable phenomena. This is preciselywhat makes science and bureaucracy so compatible.Karl Mannheim, in 1929, over 20 years before thebehavioral revolution, wrote, "Bureaucratic thoughtis permeated by measurement, formalization, andsystematization on the basis of fixed axioms ...[such that] only those forms of knowledge werelegitimate which touched and appealed to what iscommon to all human beings" (1936, 167).3. Science also has to be microscopic, down to theirreducibly smallest unit. It is no paradox that as ourstate grew larger, the units of analysis in our socialscience became smaller. This is a profoundly impor-tant aspect of rationality: out of small units, largenumbers grow; and large numbers behave according

to the regularities of mathematical probability. (Inthis context it is easy to understand why ArthurBentley's appeal "to fashion a tool" with the group asthe smallest unit of analysis was first uttered in 1907and not really heard, or responded to, until over 40years later [see Seidelman 1985, 72-74].)4. Science, like administration, has to follow aprescribed method. As Robert Wiebe put it, "Bureau-cratic thought ... made 'science' practically synony-mous with 'scientific method'. Sciencehad become aprocedure ... rather than a body of results" (1967,147).5. The language itself has to be microscopic; thatis, science has to be translated into the language ofvariables.The phenomena and methodology of public opin-ion obviously meet all the requirements of a sciencethat would be consonant with bureaucratic thinking.And now consider the units of analysis within thesample surveys that give public opinion its link topolitical behavior: voting and participation. Thesedisplay an even stronger consonance with the state,in that these are approved political behavior (i.e.,politicalbehavior sponsored by the state and neededby regimes and elites to maintain their legitimacy).Some see behavioral science as a large step towardhard science and, through that, an advancementtoward greater enlightenment about society and pol-itics. I do not disagree. But my political analysis tellsme also that the hegemony of the subdiscipline ofbehavioral science or public opinion was to a largeextent a product of its compatibility with bureaucraticthought-ways, rather than the result of successfuldiscourse within political science.

It is important to emphasize, however, that thehegemony of the subdiscipline of public opinion is acase of natural selection, not one of political maneu-vering or intellectual opportunism. Anyone person-ally acquainted with the people who made the behav-ioral revolution in political science would agree that ifpolitical skill were required to succeed, there wouldbe no survey research centers-probably no behav-ioral science at all. It is their very lack of attention toplaying the political game that makes the success oftheir field so interesting. The explanation is to befound not in politics in the vulgar sense but politics inthe higher sense-the politics of state building.The Second Republic, having put a new emphasison science, also determined what that science wouldbe. The capacity to engage in public opinion researchin political science had been in existence since at leastthe late nineteenth century. Statistics, which takes itsname from state and statist, reached maturity stillearlier in the nineteenth century and grew in impor-tance as states democratized and individuals began to"count" for something. Sampling was also well ad-vanced and widely practiced, especially in the agri-cultural sciences (Porter 1986, 23-25). Even opinionpolling in political campaigns was actually tried atleast as early as 1892, albeit over the objections ofmany defenders of the sanctity of elections (Jensen1969, 228-229)-and was picked up by advertising

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companies and newspapers soon after. Yet publicopinion did not become the hegemonic subdisciplineof political science until the Second Republic.

Public policy as a subdiscipline of political sciencehas an even longer genealogy than public opinion,although it was more than a decade later in emergingas a hegemonic subdiscipline. The study of publicpolicybegins, of course, with the study of legislation,whose history is usually traced out from divine lawthrough common law to something called positivelaw, to indicate the demystification of law and thedeliberateness of modern laws. There is, then, onelater stage called public policy, indicating the inter-vention of administration between legislature andcitizen. Public policy is a term of art reflecting theinterpenetration of liberal government and society,suggesting greater flexibility and reciprocity thansuch unilateralist synonyms as la w , sta tu te , o rd in an ce ,edict, and so on. Public policy began to gain somecurrency in public administration in the 1930s; andpublic administration had been one of the hegemonicsubdisciplines in the political science of the statelesspolity I refer to as the First Republic. The decline andtransfiguration of public administration gives us thekey to public policy. Traditional public administrationwas almost driven out of the APSAby the work of asingle, diabolicalmind, that ofHerbert Simon. Simontransformed the field by lowering the discourse. Hereduced the bureaucratic phenomenon to the small-est possible unit, the decision, and introduced ration-ality to tie decisions to a system-not to any systembut to an economic system. His doctorate was inpolitical science; his Nobel award was in economics.Now, Simon did not accomplish this all by himself.His intellectual tour de force was made possible byactual changes in the administrative institutions ofthe Second Republic. Administrative authority in theFirst Republic partook of a fairly well establishedtradition of separating public from private life by avariety of legal rules and procedures that comprisewhat Joseph Vining calls the "masterful myth of the'rule of law' "; in the Second Republic, these rulesand myths broke down-not spontaneously, but inface of the rise of economic thinking in the corporateworld, as well as in government (1978,27).

It is in this context that modern public policybecame a hegemonic subdiscipline in political sci-ence, overshadowing behavioralism itself. The studyof public policy in the political science of the FirstRepublic drew upon public law and institutionaleconomics. Some of that old-fashioned public policystudy exists today. But the modern approach is moreappropriately called public policy analysis, whichdraws upon macroeconomic methods and economicsystems thinking. The best way to demonstrate thesize and character of this new subdiscipline of polit-ical science is to point to the presence of the policyanalysis courses within political science departmentsand the explosive growth of the separate policyanalysis programs and the economics requirementsin the schools of public affairs and public policy and

in the law schools. Allthe students in those places arelearning the new language of the state.It does no disservice to the subdiscipline of publicchoice to tie it to another of Karl Mannheim's obser-vations dating from 1929,namely, that in the politicalscience of a bureaucratic state "an economic man, apolitical man, etc., irrespective of time and race,could be constructed on the basis of a few axiomaticcharacteristics" (1936,167-68).Mannheim continues:"Only what could be known by the application ofthese axioms was considered as knowable. Every-thing else was due to the perverse 'manifoldness ofthe real', concerning which 'pure' theory need notworry itself" (p. 168). Compare this to KennethArrow's assertion made in a boastful spirit nearly 40years later that any assumption other than the ra-tional actor leads to mysticism and irrationality (Gold-field and Gilbert 1990, 14-15). This gives us a starttoward a political explanation for why public choicehas become probably the hottest thing going in

political science today.Quite aside from whatever merits it may have as amethod and however true its truths may be, publicchoice is hegemonic today for political reasons or (tobe more dignified about it) for reasons of state. Letme dramatize this in quite tangible rational actorterms: most of the luminaries in this subfield ofpolitical science came from, serve in, or are substan-tially associated with the same freshwater universi-ties that kept burning the flame of laissez-faire ideol-ogy: Chicago, Rochester, Washington University ofSaint Louis (nor should we overlook the Saint LouisFederal Reserve staff) (Johnson 1991). Here, again,we are confronting not political opportunism butinstitutional consonance-a symbiotic relationshipbetween state and political science.The affinity between modern bureaucratic govern-ment and economics-already strong-was furtherstrengthened by the revival of the political popularityof laissez-faire ideology within the Republican party.For most of this century, laissez-faire liberalism (er-roneously called conservative) had been the Repub-lican party's center of gravity; but after the Depres-sion, it had had little effect on voters and even less onintellectuals in the social sciences. Few intellectualsfigured in national Republican party circles. Conserv -a t iv e i n te ll ec tua l was just another oxymoron. Today, ofcourse, Republican administrations are overflowingwith intellectuals, as are affiliatedthink tanks and theop-ed pages of the major newspapers. I see no signsyet of a Republican takeover of the APSA;but I do seeone beneficiary ofthe Republican party era in politicalscience, namely, public choice. People of merit in-habit this subfield, but its hegemony has little to dowith their merit. Their success as a group was entirelyfortuitous.We political scientists enjoy the primitive wisdomof Mr. Dooley; and probably Mr. Dooley's best-known scientific proposition was, "No matterwhether th' constitution follows th' flag or not, th'supreme court follows th' iliction returns." A moredignified Dooley would say, "The APSA follows

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Leviathan." I conclude with what are to me the threeprincipal consequences of following Leviathan tooclosely. First, we have as a consequence failed tocatch and evaluate the significance of the coming ofeconomics as the language of the state. Second, wehave failed to appreciate how this language made usa dismal science like economics. Third, having beenso close to Leviathan, we failed to catch, characterize,and evaluate the great ideological sea changes accom-panying the changes of regime.

First, then, why economics? Of what use is eco-nomic analysis to politics? Since economics was al-ways a deeply flawed predictive science, why was itso attractive to policymakers and bureaucrats in thenew state? Why was it so attractive to political sci-ence? My evaluation was inspired in part by anobservation made 30 years ago by the distinguishedeconomic philosopher Joan Robinson: "Economics... has always been partly a vehicle for the rulingideology of each period as well as partly a method ofscientific investigation" (1962, 1). My answer is thateconomic analysis is politically useful because itcloses off debate, especially in a highly public repre-sentative assembly like Congress. The rise of eco-nomics as the language of the state parallels thedecline of Congress as a creative legislature. (I arguethis point more extensively in Lowi 1991.)Policymak-ing powers are delegated less to the agency and moreto the decisionmaking formulas residing in theagency. The use of economic analysis to close offdebate was strengthened as Republicans discoveredthat economic analysis could be used as effectivelyforthem as for the Democrats-by manipulating thecost, rather than the benefit, side of cost-benefitanalysis. I recommend John Schwarz's evaluation ofMurray Weidenbaum's outrageous manipulation ofthe "costs of regulation" that supported the Reaganadministration's commitment to deregulation (1988,90-99). But I must confess that both the Democraticand the Republican politicians were smarter than thepolitical scientists, because they took the stuff asweaponry, while we took it as science. We swallowedeconomics before subjecting it to a political analysis.

We should have seen that economics rarely evenpretends to speak truth to power. If substantivetruths were claimed, there would be room for argu-ment. But economics, particularly as a policy science,stresses method above all. And the key to the methodis the vocabulary ofeconomics, which is the index. Anindex is not a truth but an agreement or conventionamong its users about what will be the next best thingto truth. MIt the Dow, the CPI, unemployment,GNP:This is the new representative government-anindex representing a truth. Indices have analyticpower because they fit into defined systems; and ofcourse, systems are also not truths but only usefulfictions. (This, by the way, is not an attack on indicesor systems. It is just a political evaluation of indicesand systems.)

Now to the second of my consequences, that is,that the modern bureaucratic state has made politicalscience just another dismal science. By dismal I do not

mean merely the making of gloomy forecasts, in theMalthusian tradition: I mean the absence of passion.During my pilgrimage, the most frequent com-plaints I heard were against the A m eric an P olitic alS ci en c e R e vi ew . I join in at least one of these, which Ido not limit to the APSR. Too few of the articles seekto transcend their analysis to join a more inclusivelevel of discourse. There is consequently little sub-stantive controversy. The response is that a scientificjournal must be dedicated to replication and disproof.But actually, very few pieces independently replicateanything; and even if they did, replication alone isdismal stuff. Political science is a harder science thanthe so-called hard sciences because we confront anunnatural universe that requires judgment and eval-uation. Without this, there can be no love of subject,only vocational commitment to method and process.The modern state has made us a dismal science, andwe have made it worse by the scientific practice ofremoving ourselves two or three levels away fromsensory experience. Political scientists have alwaysquantified whatever and whenever they could, andmost tried to be rigorous; but they stayed close tosensory experience. Even with our original mechan-icalhelper, the counter-sorter device, it was possibleto maintain a sensory relation to the data. What apleasure it was to watch the cards seek their slots!And what a pity today that the empiricists have onlytheir printout!

Finally, I turn to our failure to catch or evaluateadequately the ideological sea changes accompanyingthe changes of regime. Time permits only the barestinventory of missed opportunities, but I think theywill speak for themselves.

The perspective of nearly 50 years makes it easy tosee what we did not catch about the New Deal as aregime change. Although political scientists caughtthe new liberalism in the air, they failed to evaluatewhether all the elements of this ideology were con-sistent with liberalism or with constitutionalism.They failed, for example, to capture and evaluate thesignificance of "administrative law." They noticed,but merely celebrated, the delegation of power fromCongress to the executive branch. At the time itmeant only the fulfillment of the New Deal program.Even as time passed, our tendency was to rendereach change consistent with our existing model of thepolitical system. There was virtually no serious polit-ical science inquiry into whether the changes inconstitutional doctrine, governmental structure, andpolicy commitments constituted a regime change.Some Republicans suggested that the United Stateshad become a socialist regime, but political sciencedid not respond to this challenging formulation. Itshould be a matter of ultimate interest, as well asenjoyment, to fight intensely over the identificationof criteria for determining when a political change issufficient to constitute a regime change. The NewDeal helped give us a new political science but didnot provide sufficient inclination to evaluate whatwas new.

We are at this moment in the presence of another

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failure, namely, a failure to catch the nature andsignificance of the ideological shift accompanying thecurrent Republican era. The inability of the Reaganadministration to terminate any important New Dealprograms should at least have led to a reflection onthe nature of the New Deal as a regime change. Evena post hoc evaluation would be useful. Meanwhile,the Republican era has brought with it some pro-found ideological changes that political science isfailing to capture even though our own public opin-ion polls are sensing them. Political science has failedto catch and evaluate the two separate components ofthe Republican coalition: the old, laissez-faire liberal-ism and the genuine, native conservatism. Politicalscience has stood by and permitted Republican can-didates and staff intellectuals to treat the traditionallaissez-faire core of the Republican party as conserv-ative and then to compound the felony by stigmatiz-ing liberalism as an alien belief system akin to social-ism. This profound misuse of rich terminology isliterally poisoning political discourse in the UnitedStates, and political science has to take a lot of theblame for this. We also did not catch the rise of thegenuine conservatism; although our polls were pick-ing up significant reactionary movements, we contin-ued to treat the Falwell phenomenon and such pre-decessors as the Christian Anti-communist Crusadeas aberrant. And we have passively witnessed thejoining of laissez-faire liberalism with genuine right-wing conservatism as though they are consistent intheir opposition to big government. Laissez-faire lib-eral Republicans, supported by their economists,embrace an ideal of radical individualism and view allgovernment as a threat to freedom. In contrast,genuine conservatives are not individualists but stat-ists. The state they want consists of tight and restric-tive police control by state and local governments,but they are statists nevertheless. Genuine conserva-tives were never really at home with purely marketrelations; and they have never espoused the ideal(much less the methodology) of rational individual-ism. (Many conservative Catholic lay intellectualshave tried in vain to establish a comfortable concor-dance with free market liberalism.) Conservative in-tellectuals are now writing the poetry of executivepower and are the authors of most of the writing thatbashes Congress and the politics of representativegovernment. Just as political scientists did not catchthe ideological significance of the propresidentialpower writings of the New Deal supporters in the1950sand early 1960s, we are now not catching thesignificance of the fact that most of the currentpropresidential power writing is by the Far Right.The far right-wing intellectuals are also writing asignificant proportion of the new work on the found-

ing intended not only to contribute to historicalscholarship but to reconstitute the constitution insuch a way as to place the presidency above the lawand affirmative action beneath it.No effort has been made to camouflage my antag-onism to Republican era ideology. But my own per-sonal position is irrelevant. Political scientists of theLeft, Right, and center are a unity in their failure tomaintain a clear and criticalconsciousness of politicalconsciousness. Causal and formal analyses of therelations among clusters of variables just will notsuffice. Nor will meticulous analysis of original in-tent. It is time we became intellectuals.At the end of my pilgrimage, I have come to theconclusion that among the sins of omission of mod-ern political science, the greatest of all has been theomission of passion. There are no qualifications formembership in the APSA; but if I had the power toestablish such standards, they would be that a mem-ber should love politics, love a good constitution,take joy in exploring the relation between the two,and be prepared to lose some domestic and evensome foreign policy battles to keep alive a positiverelation between the two. I do not speak for thepassion of ideology, though I do not count it out. Ispeak for the pleasure of finding a pattern, theinspiration of a well-rounded argument, the satisfac-tion in having made a good guess about what makesdemocracy work and a good stab at improving theprospect of rationality in human behavior.Regime changes throughout the world since 1989ought to give us a clearer perspective on some newsciences of politics. Although only a few of theworld's regime changes will be liberal democracies,they are stimulating tremendous demand for trans-ferrable insights about the workings of liberal demo-cratic institutions, especially U.S. institutions. Maythis demand draw U.S. political scientists out of theshadow of Leviathan upward and outward toward alevel of discourse worthy of the problem. This is notan opportunity to play philosopher-king. It is anopportunity to meet our own intellectual needs whileserving the public interest. And we need not worryhow to speak truth to power. It is enough to speaktruth to ourselves.

NoteMy thanks to Professors Mauro Calise, Raymond Seidel-

man, David Collier, Walter Mebane, Richard Bensel, andMichael Goldfield for their help along the way.

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Theodore J . Lowi is John L. Senior Professor of American Institutions, CornellUniversity, Ithaca, NY 14853.

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LOWI, The State in Political Science

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