How David Easton’s Three Levels of Political Science Resolves Disciplinary Disputes Going Back to George Catlin and William Elliott
Authors: William J. Kelleher, Ph.D
DOI: 10.87349/ahuri/170111
Page No: 254-264
Abstract
John Gunnell is a historian of the political science profession. He is acutely aware of the issues now troubling the profession, and he has written much about the history of these disagreements. These issues include the place of political theory in political science, the role of political philosophy in the profession, and the relation of political science to political practice. In his essay, “Political Science on the Cusp: Recovering a Discipline’s Past,”1 he shows how these issues have their origin in the early 20th Century. He explains that two writers in particular, George Catlin and William Elliott, embody the debates more richly than any of their contemporaries. While they published their key books in the mid-1920s, the same issues emerged with salience again in the 50s and 60s, and remain in contention almost 100 years later. In the present essay I will summarize what Gunnell tells us about how the Catlin/Elliott debate addressed the issues I have mentioned. Then I will go beyond Gunnell, and suggest ways by which some of these issues can be resolved. Fortunately, Gunnell’s clarifications of the problems have facilitated the finding of solutions for them.
