Πού βαδίζει η πολιτική επιστήμη;

Abstract

Despite a widespread misconception, political science emerged in Europe only after World War II. The main goal of the young scientists seeking to include it in national academic curricula (among whom Giovanni Sartori played a leading role) was the development of a specialized methodology and language. A combination of methodological and cognitive distortions, however, has undermined the new discipline’s dynamics and prospects. Anti-institutional behaviourism, premature and excessive quantification, and underestimation of the practical mission of science have led to gaps, blunders, and pathologies which, often, have elicited medicine that has been worse than the disease. Nowadays’ logical and methodological atrophy hinder a recovery, but must not definitively prevent it. Sartori finishes the article with yet another appeal: Think before counting; and, also, use logic in thinking.