We Have a Firm Foundation 29sociology, and politics. The distinctions did exist, butonlyto a very limited degree.
In many ways,Staatslehreitself was at the confluence of a series of forms of study: the
history and nature of the moral sciences, the development of history, the historical
and comparative study of law and institutions, and the history of philosophy. It
was therefore an opportune ‘linking concept’. Political theory, at this point, was
conceptually linked with a number of other perspectives, which we would now tend
to keep separate.
It is hardly surprising, in this context, that this form of study has import-
ant historical, legal, and philosophical dimensions. The state, as an organizing or
framework-making concept, is ideal for such synoptic or inclusive studies. In fact,
when the first academic studies of the state arose in the mid-nineteenth century—
carrying through well into the twentieth century—they were commonly composed
by historians, legal, and constitutional theorists as well as philosophers. In the early
twentieth century many early sociologists, such as L. T. Hobhouse, Max Weber, Leon
Duguit, Émile Durkheim, R. M. MacIver, and Ferdinand Tönnies, also carried on this
broad tradition of writing about the state as the central concept.
One major problem with the state focus, though, is the open quality of both the
concepts of the ‘state’ and ‘institutions’. Thus, in terms of the concept state, minimally,
on a juridical level, one can say that it is a unique form of public power, which is
idiosyncratically distinct from other renditions of political power. However, on an
institutional level, this public power can mean the actual or fictive sovereign body,
or persons; the legal or constitutional structure of rules; the legal personality of the
ruler(s), offices, or institutions. It can also denote the government, an element within
a government, such as the executive, judiciary, or legislature, or a compound of these.
In addition, it can imply the collective or popular will of all the people (qua general
will). It can also indicate something even more embracing, like the ‘entire hierarchy
of institutions by which life is determined, from the family to the trade, and from
the trade to the Church and University’ (see Bosanquet 1899: 150). The list could go
on here. If one reviews the history of the state, there has been an enormously wide
range of theories and practices, each with their own unique interpretation. Such state
theories usually embody long complex and overlapping traditions of analysis (see
Dyson 1979 or Vincent 1987).^7
Where does this focus on institutionalism and the state derive from? In the early-
to mid-nineteenth century, psychology, economics, anthropology, sociology, and
political science simply did not exist as independent disciplines in universities. Despite
their recognition, to some degree, as traditions of thought, they were not researched
or taught independently as autonomous subjects. It was not until the 1860s and
1870s that they began to take on institutional form. In the United States, economics
was the first to form a professional organization, in 1885, followed by psychology in
1892, and sociology 1905. Political Science formed its own professional association in
North America—the American Political Science Association—in 1903 (see Dorothy
Ross in Farr and Seidelman (eds.) 1993: 83). Political studies developed gradually
in the United States during the 1870s and 1880s and was firmly established by the
early 1900s. In Germany and France, the state idea had already taken a firm shape