We Have a Firm Foundation 59Science was viewed as a social instrument. Thus, normative and historical theory in
this context, were literally superfluous.
Consequently, David Easton and a number of North American political scientists
were clear that political theory had, in future, to be much more empirically rigorous
in order to even survive academically. Easton, in his famous article, ‘The Decline of
Political Theory’, saw the majority of classical normative political theorists as simply
academicparasites, feedingonpastideasandretailingantiquarianuselessinformation
about past values. Herbert Simon, at the same time, bewailed that ‘there will be
no progress in political philosophy if we continue to think and write in the loose,
literary, metaphysical style...The standard of rigour that is tolerated in political
theory would not receive a passing grade in an elementary course in logic’ (Simon
1952: 494–6). Political theory needed to mutate into empirical political theory. This is
the complete reversal of Ernest Barker’s lament, in his 1928 inaugural lecture, where
political sciencebecomesnormative and institutional theory. In Easton’s vision, a
purified normative and historical political theorybecomesempirical political theory.
As William C. Mitchell signalled optimistically in 1969, political theory in future ‘will
become increasingly logical, deductive, and mathematical. In terms of its content we
will make increasing use of economic theory, game theory, decision theory, welfare
economics, and public finance’ (Mitchell in Lipset (ed.) 1968: 129).^45
Oddly, Mitchell’s comment is not too distant from the conclusions of Brian
Barry’s 1990s essay, ‘The Strange Death of Political Philosophy’, where he identi-
fies, anachronistically, the hopeful lines of future political theory as studies of voting
behaviour, game theory, welfare economics, and value analysis (Barry 1991). How-
ever, in Barry’s case, this is more of a general alliance with economic analysis. The
oddity is that this latter judgement is written by a normatively inclined political theor-
ist who worked through part of the earlier behavioural phase. In Barry’s case, though,
it is more of a reaction to the impoverished nature of Oxford analytical political
theory, in the 1960s period, and the woeful shortcomings (as he perceived it) of the
history of political theory as an approach. However, Barry’s odd assessment of future
developments in theory is neither the kind of suggestion that gets the pulse racing,
nor does it actually represent what really took place in the last two decades of the
twentieth century.
Since the 1970s, and the so-called ‘post-behavioural revolution’, there has been
more circumspection about the ‘scientific’ position. Most empirical theorists in this
period became more hesitant. In fact, Easton, the doyenne of the earlier behavioural
persuasion, recategorized himself as ‘post-behavioural’ (see Easton 1953, 2nd edition
1971, Epilogue, Part A). For Easton, the reasons for this post-behavioural develop-
ment lie within the criticisms of the counter culture movements of the late 1960s,
the utter inability of the behavioural movement to deal with the complex normative
issues arising out of the Vietnam war and the detailed civil rights debates, all of which
gripped the minds of most students studying politics.^46 Behavioural political science
had no way of addressing the deep social, moral, and legal debates concerning gender,
war, race, rights, and social justice that dominated the late 1960s and 1970s moral and
political arguments. Political science seemed to be completely mute on such issues.