30 The Nature of Political Theoryin academic terms during the early nineteenth century and it was to these traditions,
particularly the German, that early American scholars of politics commonly turned
for intellectual sustenance. In Britain, however, it was only in the early- to mid-
twentieth century that discipline began to develop.^8 The period of dominance of the
‘state perspective’ was approximately between 1870 and 1920. This did not mean that
the state idea disappeared, rather, it lost its dominant place within the discipline.
However, as James Farr comments, in North America, well into the New Deal era,
‘political scientists cast their work on government, parties, and policies in terms of
the state’ (Farr in Farr and Seidelman (eds.) 1993: 64).
Some commentators have seen the interests in political science, qua the state,
stretching back to eighteenth century enlightenment debates concerning the consti-
tution and republicanism (see James Farr in Farr and Seidelman (eds.) 1993: 66ff.).
However, in North America, the first academic figure to actually introduce political
studies to universities was Francis Lieber, a German exile, whose first politics courses
were wholly premised onStaatslehreprinciples. Lieber was appointed to a Chair of
History and Political Science in Columbia in 1857. In 1880, the autonomous School
of Political Science was founded in Columbia University under John Burgess, again,
another committedStaatslehreexponent. Subsequently, in the United States, between
1880 and the early 1900s, many of the early influential teachers and writers on polit-
ical science sought postgraduate training in German universities, and developed even
broader interests in the historical development of institutions, as part of a compre-
hensive science of humanity (Geisteswissenshaft). In fact, virtually all the key figures
in American political science up to the 1920s, such as John Burgess, W. A. Dunning,
W. W. Willoughby, Charles Merriam, Woodrow Wilson, and T. D. Woolsey held to the
major facets of theStaatslehreapproach. However, it is also important to grasp that to
adhere to the state as a way of speaking about politics does not imply anything about
the substantive theoretical content. The state concept was open both ideologically
and empirically.
In Britain, the situation was slightly different. For some scholars, Britain qua the
state, was even an ‘aberrant case’ (see Dyson 1979, ch. 7). From the 1870s, the influence
of German thought was overwhelmingly present in many philosophers, theolo-
gians, historians, and historians of law and political institutions. However, it was
still a mixed reception. Some, such as the dominant school of British philosophers
between 1870 and 1920, the British Idealists (e.g. T. H. Green, Bernard Bosanquet,
Henry Jones, Edward Caird, and David G. Ritchie), were open and receptive to
the German ideas, although not without very severe reservations on certain philo-
sophical issues (see Vincent and Plant 1984; Boucher and Vincent 2001). Equally,
historians of law and institutions, such as F. W. Maitland, William Stubbs, and Henry
Maine, also responded with great interest to German scholarship in law and history.
Others, such as Henry Sidgwick, James Bryce, and A. V. Dicey were more uneasy and
sceptical—although the significance of the ‘state’ and the importance of the ‘historical
comparative method’ for studying it, were usually not in contention. There was also
awareness that British intellectual tradition, and particularly the state tradition, were
dissimilar to continental Europe. Thus, the structure of Parliamentary government,