Harvey Mansfield

CAREER AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS / STATEMENT OF VIEWS

At the instance of friends in Perestroika I am running for the APSA council. I support, and have supported throughout my career (I am no longer young), the Perestroika cause of methodological diversity in political science. I don't want to destroy mathematical political science, but I do want to challenge its dominance in the profession and in the journals. I think it would be very beneficial to the profession as a whole, and not incidentally to mathematical political science, if the latter had to defend itself against those who disagree with it, against those who believe, and can marshal arguments to show, that political science cannot and ought not to be as formal and exact as is required for mathematical demonstration. I don't object to those who want to compromise this dispute and to practice both kinds of political science; but they too can learn from a challenge to the domination of our mathematical friends.

Another, related reason for my candidacy is to promote greater respect for political philosophy and political theory in our profession. Political theory is the source of the humane and literary side of political science, though political theorists do not in general accept that they are less realistic, or even less empirical, or to go one better, less scientific, than other political scientists.

To tell you about myself, I am a Professor of Government at Harvard. I have written on Edmund Burke and the nature of political parties, on Machiavelli and the invention of indirect government, in defense of a defensible liberalism, and in favor of a constitutional American political science. I have also written on the discovery and development of the theory of executive power, and am a translator of Machiavelli and Tocqueville. I have just completed a book on manliness. Some people, with some reason, call me a conservative. That's not the reason I am running for this office, but I mention it out of honesty as a defect you would have to overlook.