Wilson's Failure: Roots of Contention about the Meaning of a Science of Politics

Woodrow Wilson sought to establish a new kind of statesmanship for the American regime and a new science of politics. He intended the latter to support the former, so that the practicing politician and the studious academic would not talk past one another. His efforts to redirect the discipline away from a natural science orthodoxy and subdisciplinary fragmentation were largely ignored during his time because he failed to resolve the core disciplinary tension between political science and political power. Efforts similar to Wilson's have resurfaced periodically as a result, generating an ongoing contentiousness about the character of the discipline. We predict that the struggle over such fundamental matters will continue unabated, for that struggle is rooted in the very object of our studies.