The Nature of Political Theory

36 The Nature of Political Theory

The continuing cognitive shift of many political scientists away from institutions
towards behaviour or informal politics, also partly accounts for this unease with com-
parative politics. Thus, many would now contend that interests in institutionalism
and even comparative politics (qua comparative institutions), have now faded beyond
redemption. Underpinning this latter judgement is the view that institutional-based
study is virtually useless for understanding politics. It is the informal political beha-
viour, in such things as policy networks, policy communities, and political parties,
which provide far greater insights into political processes.
However, the latter judgement is still somewhat premature, since many of the
themes of the olderStaatslehre, and thus institutional study, have been partly, if unwit-
tingly, revived in the recent manifestation of ‘the new institutionalism’ during the
1980s. Further, some normative theory, in the 1990s, tried to revive the empirical and
institutional dimension in terms of the heavy emphasis on ‘institutional design’ (see
Goodin (ed.) 1998). The differences between the more ‘traditional institutionalism’
and the ‘new institutionalism’ arise largely from the fact that the new institutionalism
derived primarilyfroma critical reaction to empirical political science, particularly
neo-pluralism. The new institutionalism also bears the marks of a long exposure to
positivism and the need to appear ‘empirically rigorous’. The basic gist of the new
institutionalism is that political study, as opposed to being ‘society-centred’, should
now be ‘state-centred’. Certain writers have thus spoken of ‘bringing the state back
into political science’, which they think had been abandoned within pluralism and
neo-pluralism (see Krasner 1978; Nordlinger 1981; Evans et al. 1985). State officials
and processes are taken seriously as partly autonomous from societal preferences and
interests. The state must therefore be examined at the macropolitical level. It is the
organization of political life, which makes the key difference. Political scientists, for
example, March and Olson, see this as equivalent to a ‘paradigm change’ in political
study (March and Olsen 1984; Olsen 1991). Hardly surprisingly, the ‘informalist’ and
‘neo-pluralist’ critics of this view have suggested, among other things, that this new
paradigm has becometoostate-centric and that, contrary to the new institutionalists,
the state always acts in some societal interest (see Jordan 1990). In the latter critics,
we therefore see the time-honoured reassertion of the value of informal empirical
studies, in an almost direct replay of earlier debates in the 1920s and 1950s.
In sum, for institutional theory, political theory comprises the systematic study of
the concept of the state. This is clearly thefirstand initially most important type of
politicaltheorizingtodevelopinthenineteenthandearlytwentiethcentury. Certainly,
if we are discussing the first attempts at setting up the teaching and scholarship
in universities, then it is this area which is most significant. This conception of
theory, as well as being state-centric, also blends empirical, historical, legal, and
philosophical themes. This conception was largely abandoned by the 1920s and 1930s,
although, as suggested, elements of state theory mutated into other components of
political studies, such as comparative politics, public administration, and policy
studies. Despite early and mid-twentieth century criticism of institutionalism, the
state idea has been partly resurrected in the ‘new institutionalism’, although usually
anointed with a little empirical oil. In addition, interests in state theory have also