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What Is Political Theory

Political theory and political philosophy are interrelated concepts that are often used interchangeably, though they have distinct meanings. Political theory aims to describe, explain, and evaluate political events and institutions using concepts and principles. It involves selecting and organizing information about the political world for purposes of explanation. Political philosophy is less explanatory and instead focuses on assumptions, beliefs, questions of truth and values. It distinguishes ontological questions about the nature of reality, epistemological questions about the authority of political theories, and normative questions involving collective decision making. Today, political theory/philosophy is seen as a more comprehensive discipline that incorporates different concepts and ideologies, rather than being defined by any single agenda.

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229 views2 pages

What Is Political Theory

Political theory and political philosophy are interrelated concepts that are often used interchangeably, though they have distinct meanings. Political theory aims to describe, explain, and evaluate political events and institutions using concepts and principles. It involves selecting and organizing information about the political world for purposes of explanation. Political philosophy is less explanatory and instead focuses on assumptions, beliefs, questions of truth and values. It distinguishes ontological questions about the nature of reality, epistemological questions about the authority of political theories, and normative questions involving collective decision making. Today, political theory/philosophy is seen as a more comprehensive discipline that incorporates different concepts and ideologies, rather than being defined by any single agenda.

Uploaded by

Shriya Ojha
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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What is political theory/ philosophy? By Mark E.

Warren

Political theory and political philosophy has always been considered as same discipline even
though they are different yet inter-related concepts. There has been a practice to give wrong
terms to political theory/ philosophy that create vagueness about its scope and functions. It is
often regarded as normative theory, which is dialectic to separate it from empirical theory,
which is more concerned about observations and facts. When the concern is not just
normative political theory/philosophy is characterized as speculative theory, which is more
about novel ideas. This quest to separate it from empirical theory creates more confusion than
clarity. Today we have developed a better understanding about it and how it relate to
empirical research because of behaviouralist agenda which sought the criteria that
explanatory meaning entirely depends on observations. What we observe now is far more
authentic than mere explanations. Hence, political theory/philosophy can be now called
meaning- constitutive i.e. they have the power to establish or give organisational existence to
something. So we can say, in the last couple of years, political theory/philosophy has changed
a lot from being mostly considered history. Now it is more comprehensive.

Political thought is necessary because studying comprehensive and different schools of


thought is best way of developing awareness about our assumptions, beliefs and values.

Political theory

According to Princeton University, “Political theory is study of concepts and principles that
people use to describe, explain and evaluate political events and institutions.” Term ‘political
theory’ should be kept for those dimensions of scheme which deal with selection and
organization of information about political world for the purpose of explanation. It is now
accepted main belief of philosophy of social science that explanatory meanings of terms are
interdependent within a body of theory. Explanation requires that we distinguish empirical
from theoretical questions, which is to an extent correct but it also requires us to see the
relations between both dimensions of meaning as some believe that theoretical problems can
come beneath the ambit of their empirical referents.

First step in recognizing the relative autonomy of theory is to see to that even tough when we
hear the word political theory we imagine it as a map of political world, we rarely use
theories as representative. Whenever we address a political problem we try to study only one
aspect of it and limit our research not taking into considerations the other factors which also
affect it. Till the time we don’t study theories as object of study we will not be able to defend
constitutive meaning and normative implication.

The second role of political theory is to deal with conceptual coherence of empirically
interpretative scheme that enter into political actions through understanding and uses of
political dialogue.

Political philosophy

Political philosophy is not immediately explanatory. It involves questions of assumptions and


beliefs of orientation and questions of truth, values and wrongs. Political philosophy is not
just bound to normative issues. There are three distinctions questions :-

1) Ontological questions- Ontology is a science that investigates the nature and


fundamental properties of reality. But these investigations are not considered now as
we know that that we do not have access to reality. But this term is used to make
general assumption about reality. All empirical research assumes some human
condition like language, consciousness, scarcity etc. to investigate.
2) Epistemological questions- Epistemological questions deal with authority of theories
with the world and society they are supposed to explain. There is always some
presupposition and humanistic component of methodology. According to some
positivists humanistic methodology are not scientific in nature because interpretations
can never be fully verified by referring to observations. This is the reason why
positivist deny it recognition in political world.
3) Normative questions- These question occurs when we are able to distinguish
explanatory judgements from normative judgements. Although normative judgements
are in a logical manner different from explanatory concerns they are also closely
related by the strange way that political science is defined as a discipline. There is a
common notion of calling something political if it is concerned with collective
decision making where the question what ought to be is always present.

Conclusion

Political theory/ philosophy is in a better position today because it in no longer seen from the
perspective of a particular agenda rather it is seen as a mixture of different concept and
ideologies which make it more comprehensive and rational. This will also help solving the
confusion created by terminological distinctions and will make this discipline more coherent.

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