В своей статье, являющейся вступлением к книге The Oxford Handbook of Political Science, Роберт Гудин делает краткий обзор современного состояния политической науки как академической дисциплины. В начале он старается описать некоторые общие положения политической науки, как-то: ее миссию, ее внутреннюю структуру и ее противоречия . Потом он вкратце пересказывает историю политологии, выделяя в ее становлении три этапа, обозначенные тремя «революциями»: революция, связанная с появлением политологии как науки в целом, революция, связанная с появлением бихевиоралисткого подхода, и революция, связанная с внедрением теории рационального выбора. Однако Гудин отмечает, что не только этими «революциями» определяется развитие политологии, и предлагает свою концепцию ее трансформации, выделяя исследования, внесшие значительный вклад в развитие политологии, термином «большие идеи» (big things). Гудин утверждает, что именно «большие идеи» определяют облик научной дисциплины. Он подробно описывает сущность, возможности и перспективы «больших идей», тем самым представляя нам свое видение на развитие политической науки в будущем.

R.E. Goodin

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THE STATE OF THE DISCIPLINE, THE DISCIPLINE OF THE STATE

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1 The Discipline .............................................................................................................................................

1.1 A Mission Statement

Political science is a discipline with a mission. The main task of this chapter is to describe the former. Before turning to the state of the discipline, however, let me say a few words about how I conceive its mission.

The most oft-cited definition of “politics” is Lasswell’s (1950): “who gets what, when, how.”Certainly that is a correct assessment of why we care about politics. If politics carried no consequences, if it made no material difference in the larger world, it would hardly merit serious study. At most, the study of politics would then amount to an exercise in purely aesthetic appreciation of courtly intrigues, deft maneuvers, clever gamesmanship, and such like: cute, but inconsequential.

We should, however, separate out “why politics matters” from “what it is.” Laswell’s “who gets what, when and how”—broadly construed, per Lowi (1964)—is a good answer to the former question as to why politics matters. As to what politics is, however, I suggest a better answer would be this: politics is the constrained use of social power.

…Power of course takes many forms, and is constrained in many interestingly different ways (Lukes 1974/2005; Scott 1986; 1997). Systematically mapping all that is the fundamental task of political science….

…Attempts at manipulating power always confront countervailing power and the constraints that come with that. Much though the strong might try to bend others to their will, their capacity to do so is inevitably limited. The weak have weapons of their own (Piven and Cloward 1979; Scott 1986). In politics, there is no such thing as a literally “irresistible force.” Even the powerful cannot just dictate—they have to persuade as well (Majone 1989). The essence of politics lies in strategic maneuvering (Riker 1986). Politics is a matter of pursuing your purposes as best you can, in the context of other purposeful agents doing the same, and with whom, through whom, or around whom you must work to accomplish your goals.

Power is constrained not only by countervailing power and social structures. Power is also constrained by purpose (Reus-Smit 1999)—not just by the powerholder’s actual purposes, but also (and in certain respects more importantly) by what those purposes should be. A central plank of the mission statement of political science lies in the elucidation of proper purposes, of worthy goals, and of rightful ways of pursuing them….

…Political philosophers have sometimes felt marginalized by the scientific turn of the discipline (Storing 1962; Wolin 1969; Dryzek, Honig, and Phillips, this volume). But that is just one more—albeit perhaps the most central—of the false dichotomies I shall be bemoaning in this chapter. Far from being peripheral to the main mission of political science, normative concerns are absolutely central to it….

…What is the point of finding out how things are, without wondering how they could and should be (Moore 1970; Geertz 1977)? Those are different questions, to be pursued in different ways perhaps by different people and certainly using different tool kits. Nonetheless, they are both clearly components of one and the same larger enterprise (Reus-Smit and Snidal, this volume). The mission of political science requires it to combine both.