chapter 46
...................................................................................................................................................EXILE AND
RE-ENTRY:
POLITICAL THEORY
YESTERDAY AND
TOMORROW
...................................................................................................................................................arlene w. saxonhouse
1 Yesterday
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In the landmark bookA Preface to Democratic Theorypublished in 1956 ,
Robert Dahl takes the ‘‘normative’’ out of theory and replaces it with ‘‘em-
pirical.’’ Carefully parsing Madison’sFederalist Paper# 10 , Dahl turns that
* The field of political theory is so vast and the current expansion draws on such a wide range of
disciplines outside political science that any comprehensive account is impossible. The following is an
effort to think about the form of political theory that attends in some fashion to ‘‘texts’’ as the resource
from which to build. There is a multitude of other ways of approaching the topic of political theory
that I do not address below. One of the issues the world of ‘‘political theory tomorrow’’ will need to
confront is that of the ‘‘separate tables’’ that Gabriel Almond applied to the political science profession
at large ( 1988 ). One question (among many) I do not address below is whether that conversation
between the different orientations will ever begin again.