Democracy and today's political science

Having sketched the institutions of a radical democracy, I will now pit sophisticated liberal (represented by modified Weberian) arguments against radical social theories. Before I proceed with the main argument of this chapter, this shift needs two brief sections to establish a setting. The first emphasizes the resistance to democratic theory in todays Weberian-inspired political science and the importance of a critique. The second indicates basic issues dividing Weberian and radical social and moral theory.

Political passion and an almost cosmic perspective mark Weber's Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism and his essays on science and politics as vocations. Many of his successors have foresworn Weber's vision and passion; yet Weber's theories and methodological views survive. In fact, in Anglo-American political science, Weberian conceptions of legitimation, modernization, bureaucracy, parliamentary party competition as democracy, moral relativism, and value neutrality have become dominant alternatives to radical views. Weber defended neither democracy nor individuality for their own sakes. Instead, he originated the operationalist argument, elaborated by Schumpeter, Lipset, Downs, Schlesinger, and others, that democracy exists wherever two or more parties compete for leadership. On that empiricist view, the meaning of a term is reduced to whatever measures it; we cannot have a (radical) democratic theory but only a description of current “democratic” practices.