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Politique et science politique*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 November 2009
Abstract
The political use of political science
Political scientists claim for science and for themselves, as scholars, a maximum of independence in their dealings with government and Parliament. At the same time, science finds itself so inextricably bound up with the actual political process that it has become an “establishment” as strong and formidable as religion was in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Liberal political scientists put themselves into a contradictory position when they demand for themselves, in the pursuit of their task as scholars, a political status which would protect them from the scrutiny of the elected representatives of the people, a condition which, they would refuse to grant to any other social group, and yet simultaneously in their teaching and writing set themselves up as the ardent defenders of representative and responsible democracy. What must one sacrifice, science or democratic responsibility? Is it necessary to aim at excluding science from the democratic process, at the risk of seeing our society regress towards a pre-industrial age, or should one regard representative and responsible democracy as relevant to questions of minor importance while significant issues which concern the present and future of society are to be dealt with by other political methods?
- Type
- Articles
- Information
- Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 8 , Issue 3 , September 1975 , pp. 367 - 380
- Copyright
- Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 1975
References
* Conférence du président de l'Association canadienne de science politique/Canadian Political Science Association, Edmonton, 4 juin 1975 (version française)
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