Note on theory

Meaning and nature of theory in politics

In everyday speech a theory is a guess. In political enquiry it is more demanding: a set of connected propositions organised around an explanatory idea and dealing with one class of political phenomena. Unlike loose political thought, which is time-bound and gathers the views of a whole community, a theory cannot take on every phenomenon at once and must concentrate on a class or type of issue. Sabine's well-known account says that political theory contains the factual, the causal and the valuational. Hecker calls it a dispassionate, disinterested body of philosophical and scientific knowledge whose understanding of the world outlasts the time and place of its writing.

Three features follow. A theory describes and explains (it is the scientific side), evaluates and prescribes (the philosophical side), and tries to hold both together; a political theorist has the dual role of scientist and philosopher. A theory is open to revision, because the meaning of an event is always open to new interpretations from new viewpoints. And it is critical, for it gives an account of politics that rises above the opinions of ordinary people. Theories are often grouped by approach, as historical, normative or empirical.

Kinds and uses

Theories in politics are commonly sorted by approach: historical (theory as a response to historical situations), normative (theory as reasoning about values and ends) and empirical (theory as generalisation from observed behaviour). Their uses are explanation (why a state is stable or an election is won), evaluation (whether a policy is just), and orientation (what a society should aim at). A familiar illustration is the theory of the social contract, which explains why political authority exists and also supplies a standard by which a government can be judged; another is the theory of the separation of powers, which both describes institutions and recommends a design for limiting power. Theory differs from mere opinion because it is general, systematic and open to criticism, and from ideology because it aims to examine and not simply to defend a system of power.