The Process of Politics

Economic Method and Political Theorizing. The objection of the plain man to political science so-called is that after making the bravest of promises, it has hitherto consistently failed to fulfil them; in the colloquial phrase, ‘it has not delivered the goods.’ ¹ But the endeavour to put Politics as a theoretical study upon a sounder basis may not be desperate. In this attempt to reduce Politics to the compass and system of that science which it has long pretended to be, no subject is likely to prove more instructive for comparative study than that of Economics. By following the methods by which Economics has been built up by Adam Smith and his successors in this last century out of common-sense business experience into a body of knowledge vindicating for itself the title of a science, a clue may be furnished for the reduction of Politics to a similar regularity. The decrying of Adam Smith and of the classical economists, now in vogue, may be a healthy symptom in the history of economic thought. It may, however, prove misleading in the development of political science. Just, indeed, as the business man prefers common sense to economic science, finding it easier to arrive at a decision as it were by a trained ‘sense of smell’ than by applying theory, so this regularity of political method is likely to appeal rather to the student who desires to see some plan in the social hurly-burly, than to the practical politician who reflects how many of his successes have been due to no assignable reason. We are, however, here concerned, not with a political technology, but with the study of those permanent political forms which limit and shape the policies of the hour.