The same contrast has been made in comparative politics between
rational choice institutionalists who merely “focus research agendas
on puzzles internally generated by their overarching theory” and
historical institutionalists who have the foresight and courage to
address “big questions and real-world puzzles.”^82 Rational choice
scholars know this accusation very well and usually reply that “what
most impedes the development of knowledge in comparative politics”
is precisely “our selection of big, inadequately defined outcomes to
explain.”^83 They prefer “generating testable hypotheses from models
that may have high predictive power.”^84 “Given these fundamental
disagreements,” concludes Atul Kohli wisely, “the best one can hope
for is an agreement to disagree.”^85
A left–right cleavage thus traverses political science, dividing the
discipline in fairly predictable ways over topics, methods, and con-
cepts. Rarely do political scientists admit explicitly that their differ-
ences are a question of left and right. Gabriel Almond evoked this
possibility in his discussion of the “separate tables” used by political
scientists at their gatherings, but he mainly emphasized the eclectic
majority that preferred to unite in the vast “cafeteria of the center.”^86
When he delivered his presidential address to the American Political
Science Association in 1992, Theodore Lowi faulted his colleagues “of
left, right, and center” precisely for “their failure to maintain a clear
and critical consciousness of political consciousness,” that is to say for
refusing to confront and take into account their obvious ideological
divisions.^87 For Lowi, “totally aside from whatever merits it may have
as a method and however true its truth may be,” the rational choice
approach became hegemonic “for political reasons,” and most of its
“luminaries...came from, serve in, or are substantially associated
(^82) Paul Pierson and Theda Skocpol, “Historical Institutionalism in Contemporary
Political Science,” in Katznelson and Milner (eds.),Political Science: The State
83 of the Discipline, pp. 696 and 716.
Barbara Geddes, quoted in Margaret Levi, “The State of the Study of the
State,” in Katznelson and Milner (eds.),Political Science: The State of the
84 Discipline, p. 52.
85 Levi, “The State of the Study of the State,” p. 52.
Kohli, “State, Society, and Development,” p. 116.
(^86) Almond,A Discipline Divided, pp. 13–24.
(^87) Theodore Lowi, “The State in Political Science: How We Become What We
Study,” in Farr and Seidelman (eds.),Discipline and History, p. 394.
The core currency of political exchange 221