We Have a Firm Foundation 51in the twentieth century. The third view was largely a continuation of an earlier
Idealist theme, by other means, namely Marxist history. History was seen to have
teleological significance (in this case a materialist teleology), which linked the whole
historical enterprise. The history of political theory was thus significant as part of an
underlying historical pattern of human emancipation. Work, such as C. B. Macpher-
son’sThe Political Theory of Possessive Individualism(1962), exemplified this mode of
argumentation.
By the later 1970s, however, the second wave developed. This was primarily con-
cerned with historical method, in terms of a focus on authorial intentions and a
rigorous contextualism. The effect of this movement was to heighten sensitivity to
the methods through which we study texts and contexts. This was the positive con-
tribution of the second wave. However, some scholars have also seen this as the
‘real transformation’ of the history of political theory during the twentieth century,
although transformation fromwhatremains inchoate. As mentioned earlier, if one
examines the substantive work of this second wave it is not really so different from the
preoccupations of earlier histories. As one scholar has remarked on this movement,
‘new histories of political thought can be viewed, not as radical departures from, but
as defences of the last bastions of the traditional approaches to the study of the history
of political thought against the encroachment of social science upon the sphere of
historical understanding’ (Boucher 1985: 258).
Empirical Political Theory
The gist of empirical political theory is concerned with making generalizations about
political phenomena and constructing testable hypotheses from which predictions
can be made. It embodies three linked claims: the first is the more general one, that
politics is about informal day to day activity, mundane decision-making, power and
the allocations of resources. The corollary of this is that politics, at root, is neither
overtly institutional nor theoretical. The second claim is that such activity can be
explained in a manner which has parallels with the explanatory nature of the natural
sciences. Third, such explanatory social scientific accounts can not only take over
many, if not all, of the functions or roles previously performed by classical, historical,
and institutional political theory. It could test the claims of such earlier theories either
by falsifying or corroborating them. It could also offer valid recommendations, on
the basis of established corroborated empirical evidence, as to where policy might
proceed in future. In other words, empirical theory takes over (on a firmer ground)
the role of institutional and political design. This even supersedes normativism. At its
peak of confidence, empirical political theory imagined that it could literallybecome
the whole of political theory. Empirical theory is therefore thetelosof political theory
itself. Although many recognized this at the time as a ‘pipe dream’, it is nonetheless
important to realize the strength of this contention for its votaries.
This section will first briefly indicate the relation of empirical theory with the
previous accounts of theory. Second, given that empirical theory developed under