COMMENTARY
History of the Caucus for
a New Political Science
The
Caucus for a New Political Science is the oldest organized grouping of
progressive political scientists in the
Shortly
after the Caucus began its work, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy
were assassinated, the war in Vietnam reached new heights of savagery and
resistance, the Columbia strike capped a year of intense political activity on
college campuses, an alliance of French workers and students brought the Fifth
Republic to its knees, and urban riots struck at the heart of American
complacency. Anyone who cared to look at
How
did the American Political Science Association (APSA) respond? With its habitual silence. Not a single panel at 1968's
annual meeting addressed the pressing issues which were galvanizing millions of
people around the world. No political discussions breathed life into the
sterile proceedings. The very profession which should have been interested
in-if not overjoyed with-heightened political debate and renewed public action
had nothing to say.
It
was soon clear that more was at stake than intellectual arrogance and scholarly
isolation. Epistemological critiques became politically charged, for the
mainstream assertion that "the political process" should be studied
without assumptions was intimately linked to the view that too much politics
was potentially destabilizing. Born in the effort to develop
"objective" and quantifiable measures of political phenomena, behavioralists' desires to avoid value judgments about
their objects of study culminated in Nelson Polsby's
famous distinction between those who study power and those who criticize it.
The conventional that masquerades as the objective,
which in turn masquerades as the scientific with elaborate methodologies, could
not mask a partisan defense of the status quo. As the problems selected for
study became increasingly narrow, trivial and insignificant, behavioralism's tendency to rob politics of any
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Caucus for a New Political Science
real importance was soon subject to intense pressure. By describing a lifeless political process of compromise, accommodation and normalization, official political science had embraced and defended the technocratic elitism that was coming under democratic attack-an attack which the profession did not anticipate, could not explain, and everywhere attempted to neutralize.
Several years before the happy illusions of responsive elites, broad consensus, and structural openness were shattered, the Caucus was trying to get political scientists to actually talk about the substance of politics rather than merely concentrate on process. For us, one of the most important functions of theory is to develop generalizeable and critical insights into what is going on in the real world-past and present. Believing that "organic" intellectuals tied to social movements can play significant roles in society, we summed up our early critiques in Apolitical Politics, a book we published. We also decided to constitute ourselves as a caucus within APSA so we could offer a sustained challenge to its unexamined centrism, a decision that helped many scholars develop their professional expertise while remaining true to their principles. We fought for and won the ability to mount our own panels in rooms provided by the Association, thereby breaking the official monopoly over political discussion. We repeatedly proposed an amendment to the APSA constitution which would have committed the Association to encourage discussion of contentious political issues by the membership. We ran Christian Bay and Peter Bachrach for APSA President on explicit platforms of political engagement, actively supported the election of several candidates to the Council, supported unionization efforts among faculty and graduate students, called for the APSA to provide childcare at annual meetings, suggested a progressive dues structure, demanded an active fight against political repression and censorship in the academy, supported local efforts to throw CIA recruiters off college campuses, and sought to eliminate all military-funded research from academia. From the very beginning of our existence, we pressed for the transformation of the American Political Science Review, convinced then-as we are now-that its refusal to serve as an organ of broad political discussion illustrates the role of official political science as an ideological shield for established power. Graduate students, many of whom had been attracted to the profession because they were actually interested in politics, played a pivotal role in these early efforts.
Feminists,
environmentalists, and scholars attracted to other tendencies found themselves as unable to shake official claims as we had
been, and the Caucus actively supported Kay Klotzburger's
early efforts to organize a Women's Caucus. All subsequent organized and
unofficial sections of APSA, from Foundations of Political Theory to Religion
and Politics, originated in the wake of the Caucus's fight to change the way
official political science was organized. Indeed, our struggle helped prepare
the way for the pathbreaking innovations of later
scholars. We led the successful drive to move the annual meeting from Chicago
after Illinois refused to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, introduced antiwar
resolutions at many business meetings, contested the APSA leadership by running
progressive candidates for office, supported Bertell Ollman in his 1978 fight
against redbaiting at the University of Maryland,
demanded that APSR, the
official journal of APSA, print real articles about real issues, and presented
panels which offered alternatives to the Associations increasingly stale
orthodoxy-including a plenary session with Selective Service
Director Louis Hershey! When Ollman challenged APSA's leadership to debate us, a famous series of panels pitted Caucus members such as Peter Bachrach, Sheldon Wolin, Stephen Bronner, John Ehrenberg, Ira Katznelson, Mark Kesselman, Ralph Miliband, Bertell Ollman, Michael Parenti, and Frances Fox Piven against mainstream political scientists like Nelson Polsby, Robert Dahl, Sidney Verba, Seymour Martin Lipset, and Aaron Wildavsky. The enormous turnouts at these panels reflected a widespread desire to talk politics and debate the foundations of the discipline.
Not enough has changed in the past three decades, and our origins continue to inform our current work. The Caucus still provides important mentoring and networking to many graduate students and young professors who might otherwise drown in a profession which remains "above" real politics. We have offered hundreds of opportunities to present research at Caucus panels and have provided refuge from the often hostile and indifferent atmosphere of the annual meetings. We seek to anchor our panels in socially relevant issues, remaining critical of the endless fashion shows that pass themselves off as theory. We all work in a conservative discipline and live in a rapidly changing world, and the Caucus has a wide variety of resources with which to resist conservative hegemony and penetrate the arcane metaphysics that has helped depoliticize intellectuals.
New Political Science: A Journal of Politics and Culture, our official and peer-re viewed journal, began as a broadsheet in the late 1970s and has evolved into a quarterly publication at the cutting edge of political analysis. Many of the thematic issues of the journal (on topics like multiculturalism, cyberspace, the Black Panther Party and Latino social movements) have become books. NPS continues to serve as a forum for discussion, a place to exchange information, and an opportunity for publication which is deliberately friendly to young scholars. Illustrating that political commitment and high-level scholarship are perfectly compatible, the pages of the journal are filled with articles which demonstrate, as if demonstration was needed, that the study of politics is itself a political act. Nor has its work gone unnoticed. PS, which provides a. refreshing contrast to the APSR, was the Association's direct response to the Caucus's critiques of official political science's determination to avoid matters of substan tive content and of the APSA's closed structure.
Besides our panels, we
present a plenary address at every annual meeting to stimulate discussions of
contemporary issues. Our plenaries have included
Frances Fox Piven on the future of American
democracy, Joel Rogers on the party system, Saskia Sassen on the role of the state in the international
system, Leo Panitch on the legacy of Ralph Miliband, Michael Parenti on the
importance of class power and Immanuel Wallerstein on
the condition of the social sciences. These addresses offer additional
illustrations of how engagement and scholarship can be brought together. The
Insurgent scholars used to upbraid our profession for its
lack of "relevance." But there are alternatives, and the Caucus is
organized around the position that the study of politics requires a commitment
to transcendent principles and a devotion to justice and equality. Based on a
common desire to restore a measure
of integrity to the study of politics, we provide a home to a wide range of progressive viewpoints. Through our panels, newsletters, journal, friendships, mentoring, and mutual assistance, we have helped a wide range of young scholars learn how to inform their professional work with their political standards. In a discipline which refuses to look at what it means to live and work in the most unequal industrialized country on the planet, our work is as necessary as ever.
For
more information about the Caucus, visit our website at www.apsanet.org/~new (changed from original article which
listed the earlier www.urbsoc.org/nps. Your $5.00 membership fee not only
brings you into a community of like-minded scholars, but you will receive our
newsletter and discounts on New Political Science. Join
today.
Frances
Fox Piven: "The Caucus breathes
life into the meetings of the American Political Science Association. Caucus
discussions show that the study of politics does indeed have something to do
with the real world of politics. They make APSA meetings interesting and
important. They also make them fun!"
Manfred
B. Steger: "After a few years of teaching at the university
level, I can honestly say that the Caucus for a New Political Science has been
instrumental in helping me establish my professional career. It provided me
with a wonderful network of friends who commented on my scholarly work and
helped me improve my teaching performance. Most importantly, the Caucus
represents a great source of encouragement for anybody committed to furthering
the theory and practice of progressive politics."
Susan Craig: "What
a relief to find the Caucus for a New Political Science. As a graduate student,
I have benefited tremendously from my membership in the Caucus. Here, I have
found a community of progressive academics who have encouraged my participation
on panels, provided critical feedback on my research, and provided the overall
guidance necessary for my development as a committed scholar. It's been a
haven."
Sally
Bermanzohn: "For people newly
entering the profession, New Political Science is great. It provides a forum
for the discussion of progressive politics and a nation-wide network of
activist political scientists. I speak from personal experience. New
Political Science published my first article, and I presented a paper on an
NPS panel. This led to more publishers, giving me a jump start for my
career."
Bertell Ollman:
The American humorist, T. Bone Slim, said: "Whenever
one sees an injustice, the only polite form of response is-attack." For
over thirty years, the Caucus has done this where we work and however we can.
Can any political scientist who recognizes the widespread social injustices in
our society and their extension into our profession afford to stand aloof from
our struggle?