Political Philosophy and Empirical Political Science: From Foes to Friends?

Relationships between political science and philosophy in general and political philosophy in particular have had their ups and downs.¹ This paper relates to political science and political philosophy as two different disciplines studying the same object: politics. They are two disciplines because they use quite different methods and approaches to the study of politics. This might look odd to people who are used to seeing departments of politics employing political philosophers. However, the fact that this is so should not be taken for granted and should not be interpreted as if there are no disciplinary differences at stake. While I shall argue that this marriage is to be welcomed, we should also acknowledge that for many years normative political philosophy and empirical political science have been foes. Put simply, the two disciplines ignored each other. As Paul Hirst (2002) put it, political philosophy did normative discourse, ignoring institutions, whereas empirical political science studied institutions as if norms did not matter.

Thus the question raised in this article is simple: can and should political philosophy - often considered a 'pure' and 'detached' intellectual activity - cooperate with empirical political science? My answer is not only that it can, but also that it should . Should all political philosophers do so? Perhaps not. But those who choose to celebrate their 'purity' should be aware of the price they pay: they are not relevant to every day life and to real-life politics. Moreover, they might be responsible for creating a distorted notion of politics among their readers and students. Does this imply that when political philosophers do engage with empirical studies of politics they give up anything but their 'purity', their accuracy, for instance? Not at all. Perhaps on the contrary. Methodologically speaking, it is argued, cooperation between political science and political philosophy is the right way forward. However, I should emphasise that as a member of the community of those studying politics I refer here to the benefits of those doing normative studies. I do not analyse in this paper the benefits for empirical political science from cooperating with philosophy.²

In contrast to the above described practice, we can think of three models for the linkage between the two disciplines:

Political philosophy constitutes political science:...