CONTENDING CONCEPTIONS OF SCIENCE AND POLITICS 47approach blurred important issues pertaining to the character of political regimes and the signifi-
cant dimensions of regime change (Groth 1970; Rothman 1971).
If functionalist analyses tended to mask political change at one level, at another level they
tended to impose an inordinate uniformity upon the scope of political development. Within the
functionalist literature, the pattern of development characteristic of a few Western liberal democ-
racies such as the United States and Great Britain was taken as paradigmatic of all political devel-
opment. Succumbing to a form of “inputism,” political scientists proclaimed that certain modes
of economic development rendered certain political developments inevitable. The dissemination
of capitalist markets would produce strains upon traditional societies, resulting in increasing de-
mands for political participation, which would eventually culminate in the achievement of liberal
democracy. Despite the clear ideological content of this projection and despite critics’ cogent
repudiation of the scientific pretensions of functionalism, this model of development has been
repeatedly hailed by political scientists as a matter of indisputable, empirical fact. What is impor-
tant to note here is not merely that political scientists operating within this tradition have mistaken
the political choices of particular communities for the universal political destiny of the species or
that their beliefs about the value neutrality of their scientific endeavor have blinded them to the
hegemonic aspects of their projections, but also that political scientists have used their leverage as
“experts” to advise developing nations to adopt strategies that produce the world prophesied by
political science.
Although modernization theory suffered some setbacks in the 1970s and 1980s as a number of
“modernizing” democracies in Latin America and Africa were overthrown by military dictator-
ships, modernization theory was reinvigorated in the 1990s under the rubric of “democratiza-
tion.” Once again political scientists are linking capitalist markets with competitive elections as
the key to “democratic consolidation.” Like earlier proponents of modernization, consultants
currently offering advice on democratic consolidation assume that modern methods of capitalist
production and exchange will generate modernist belief systems, including commitments to rep-
resentative democracy. They suggest that participation in a competitive market economy will
promote norms of instrumental rationality, universalism, and egalitarianism, which foster mobil-
ity and individual achievement while negating hierarchies rooted in ascriptive status. The rise of
individualism will in turn foster demands for increasing political participation and the emergence
of multiparty electoral contests.
The assumptions of modernization and democratization theories (i.e., the process is linear,
cumulative, expansive, diffuse, and fundamentally occupied with the tradition/modernity di-
chotomy) offer little insight into the simultaneous emergence of various forms of ethnic national-
ism and fundamentalism during the 1990s. Nor do they square well with the possibility that
human freedom is compatible with more than one version of modernity. Nevertheless, they do
represent yet another instance of the politics of knowledge. Armed with the assumptions of this
model of economic and political development, some political scientists are again reshaping the
world in their own image.
METHODOLOGY AND THE CONSTITUTION OF POLITICAL LIFE
Under the guise of “value-free empirical inquiry,” contemporary political scientists have used
scientifically accredited “facts” to supplant political choice. Under the rubric of realism, they
have recommended action to enhance the stability of regimes by minimizing “dysfunctional”
and “destabilizing” forces such as citizen participation. Under the precept of scientific predic-
tion, they have promoted capitalist market relations as the substance of an inevitable political