ABSTRACT
What we need are studies that go beyond non-historical analyses of knowledge utilization, without becoming grand overviews of the joint evolution of social science and the state… Historical and comparative studies of three to six advanced industrial liberal democracies could trace out the ways in which governments and their activities have profoundly affected the emergence and social organization of social science activities and disciplinary configurations, as well as their intellectual orientations. Then, in turn, particular areas of welfare-state policy-making could be probed in depth to reveal how variously organized and oriented social sciences have influenced the overall shape and content of governmental interventions. (Peter Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer and Theda Skocpol 1985:359)
The relationship between the state and political science2 has been considered an important topic of analysis, in one form or another, since earliest times. For example, in the Republic Plato proposed that states be governed by philosopher kings, the political scientists of his day. Auguste Comte introduced the notion of social engineering based on sociological findings in his Politique Positive. Max Weber discussed the appropriate ‘political’ roles of social scientists and intellectuals in his ‘Politics as a Vocation’. More recently, a number of well-known social scientists have written essays on this topic ranging from personal reflections (Aron 1965), to a series of empirical case studies (Lipset 1969), to a macro analysis of the ‘politicization’ of the discipline (Lowi 1973).
