The study of politics has been embroiled in an epistemological dispute over the role of values in political inquiry. Although aspects of the dispute date as far back as the turn of the century, the specific origins of the modern debate stem from the adoption of behavioral science methodology. The social unrest that characterized the second half of the decade provoked a protest movement within the social sciences that indicted behavioral methodology for “social irrelevance.” The behavioral project rests on several fundamental epistemological assumptions of positivism. Social actors are held to encounter, through their social-psychological perceptions and experiences, an extant social life-world that is independent of their beliefs, attitudes, and values. To a growing number of political and social theorists, this conception of rationality places severe limitations on the development of the social sciences. Post-behavioral science is advanced in the face of major challenges to behavioralism by phenomenological social scientists and political philosophers.