Perestroika: For An Ecumenical Science of Politics

The Perestroika movement is a reaction against scholars who wish to turn the study of politics into what Thomas Kuhn called a “normal science.” They seek to impose a consensus on epistemological and methodological questions in order to hasten scientific progress. This group of scholars comprises mainly rational choice theorists, formal modelers, and those who do exclusively quantitative research. I refer to them as advocates of “hard science.”