The Competitiveness of Nations in a Global Knowledge-Based Economy
Bertrand de Jouvenel
ON THE NATURE OF POLITICAL SCIENCE
American Political Science Review,
55 (4)
Dec., 1961,
773-779.
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Content
I
II
III
IV VI - Conclusions HHC: titles added |
Political activity is dangerous. Arising inevitably out of men’s ability
to influence each other, conferring upon them the benefits of joint endeavour,
an indispensable source of social boons, it is also capable of doing great harm.
Men can be moved to injure others
or to ruin themselves. The very
process of moving implies a risk of debasement for the moved and for the mover.
[1] Even the
fairest vision of a good to be sought offers no moral guarantee, since it may
poison hearts with hatred against those who are deemed an obstacle to its
achievement. [2]
No apology is required for stressing a subjective dread
of political activity: the chemist is not disqualified as a scientist because he
is aware that explosives are dangerous: indeed that chemist is dangerous who
lacks such awareness.
This feeling of danger is widespread in human society
[3] and has ever haunted all but the more superficial
authors. Although, to be sure, few
have, like Hobbes, brought it out into the open, it has hovered in the
background, exerting an invisible but effective influence upon their treatment
of the subject; it may be, to a significant degree, responsible for the strange
and unique texture of political science.
Political Theory
There are no objects to which our attention is so
naturally drawn as to our own fellows. It takes a conscious purpose to watch
birds or ants, but we can not fail to watch other men, with whom we are
inevitably associated, whose behaviour is so important to us that we need to
foresee it, and who are sufficiently like us to facilitate our understanding of
their actions. Being a man, which
involves living with men, therefore involves observing men. And the knowledge of men could be called
the most fairly distributed of all kinds of knowledge since each one of us may
acquire it according to his willingness and capacity.
As politics consists of nothing other than human
behaviour it seems that, over time, the study of it should have made great
progress through accumulation, comparison and systematisation of observations.
If politics is understood
restrictively as the conduct of men in offices of authority and the consequent
march of public affairs, then all those who have over time found themselves in
office have found out something about political behaviour. I hold the view that we should regard as
“political” every systematic effort performed at any place in the social field
to move other men in pursuit of some design cherished by the mover. According to this view, we all have the
required material: anyone of us has acted with others, been moved by others and
has sought to move others.
It is clear of course that mere “facts” can never
compose a knowledge unless they be marshalled, and their marshalling always
calls for a “theory” which seizes upon certain similar appearances, assigns to
them common names and supposes processes which bring them about. The processes we assume constitute a sort
of model in the mind of what occurs in observable reality; a necessary attempt
to reduce phenomenal diversity to intellectual simplicity. Such “theory” has a “representative”
purpose; it guides us in the collection of facts. These in turn call for amendments to our
theory insofar as it can not account for them. We move from initial simplicity to
increasing complexity of our theory until a possibly quite different one is
offered which achieves the representative function with greater elegance and
accuracy.
Theory of this kind progresses over time, accounting for
an ever-increasing store of observations. All this is trite: but it then comes as a
surprise that political science should offer so little of such “theory”: what is
commonly
1. “Tel se croit le maitre des autres qui ne laisse pas
d’être plus esciave qu’eux,” says Rousseau in the first lines of the Social
Contract. He elucidates in
Emile: “Domination itself is servile when beholden to opinion: for you
depend upon the prejudices of those you govern by means of their
prejudices.”
2. It is a sobering exercize to count the expressions of
anger (as against those of good will) which occur in the speeches or writings of
political champions of this or that moral cause.
3. Different voices denounce the encroaching State,
overbearing Lords, an established Church, or tentacular unions, or the dominant
party: yet such voices, however discordant, all express distrust of some form of
established power. In the same
manner, emergent power is deemed frightening by some when an agitator musters a
mob, by others in the case of a rising dictator - though one may turn into the
other. The same feeling
crystallizes on different stems.
773
called “political theory” [4] is an altogether different thing.
In the theory of astronomy there is
no place for Ptolemaeus, in the theory of chemistry no place for Paracelsus: not
so in political theory. The theory
of any science is an integrated whole from which past theories have been
discarded. Political theory is a
collection of individual theories which stand side by side, each one more or
less impervious to the impact of new observations and to the advent of new
theories. This can be the case only
because political theories are normative (i.e., are doctrines), and are
not meant to perform the representative function which the word “theory” evokes
in the case of factual sciences.
Why is political science rich in normative theories,
deficient in “representative” theory? Only a fool would opine that the masters
of the past were incapable of establishing the latter: they must have been
unwilling. And why? The reason may lie in the sense of danger
which I noted at the beginning.
Political Patterns
Libido sciendi is a noble passion: it is inherently incapable of
debasing the man it possesses, and the delights it affords do not wait upon the
possession of the object pursued but attend its very pursuit. This libido is indispensable to
the making of a scientist, [5] and it seems also sufficient. Yet if one studies the personalities of
the great scientists, one finds that their libido was habitually
associated with one or both of the motives expressed in Bacon’s timeless
sentence: “for the glory of God and the relief of man’s
estate.”
The word “understanding” denotes the grasping of a
pattern which underlies the waywardness of phenomena: the scientist finds beauty
in such a pattern and loves it the more the higher its aesthetic quality. The word “discovery” signifies the
unveiling of what was both present and hidden. Such terms reveal that ancient inquirers
into “the secrets of Nature” (another telling expression) assumed the existence
of an “order”: and what better warrant for it than the belief in Creation? If everything that is comes from the
divine, planning of a Supreme Intelligence – “Dieu est géomètre” - then the
design which stands at the source guarantees that far lesser intelligences,
partaking of the same Reason, can grasp some parts of the
design.
Such was the language of scientists in the Deist age of
the 17th and
18th centuries, who felt that the displaying of some lineaments of
the universal order was a new publication of God’s wisdom. Few scientists would today speak in this
manner: [6] they now
state that their patterns are “made up” and disclaim that they “make out” the
“true” structure of things. Deep
down, however, they hardly doubt that their “made up” patterns are in some way
representative of a true structure. Nor do they hesitate to choose between
two equally “serviceable” models that which is the more beautiful; and, though
careful to explain that this is a mere preference, in fact they act no
differently from their predecessors who would have said that the more elegant
model was the truer, as the worthier of God’s sapience; indeed every day
scientists resort to metaphysical convictions such as the Malebranche-Maupertuis
principle of least action.
Turning to the second member of Bacon’s sentence, it is
true that scientists have ever taken pride in the practical results afforded to
their fellows by their findings. Just as there has been a high tide of the
first Baconian theme (Newton), more recently there has been a high tide of the
second, arising from the very advance of technology. Science and technology have not always
been wedded. For a long time
practical advances were achieved more often by practical men [7] than by scientists whose minds moved
on a different plane. But the
social impact of technology affected science which rapidly became what it is
today, the great source of material innovations. [8] Even when scientists are furthest from any specific
concern for practical applications, they can not be unaware that the high esteem
in which they are presently held is derived from the general opinion that the
increase of knowledge promises an increase of power: [9] so much so that the sciences which
hold out no promise of practical applications are put on a starvation
diet.
4. Discussed in Arnold Brecht, Political Theory
(
5. Cf. Michael
Polanyi, Science, Faith and Society (
6. Nor was this language so natural to a more theological
age: it sits specially well with Deism.
7. Cf. Singer, Holmyard and Hall, A History of Technology
(Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1954 et seq.).
8. Science now “changes the world”: not so in Chinese
civilization. Cf. Needham,
Science and Civilisation in
9. Hobbes’ view: “The end of knowledge is power ... the
scope of all speculation is the performing of some action, or thing to be done.”
Opening of De
Corpore.
774
The sole purpose of the foregoing rough notes for an
argument is to stress that two powerful motives in general reinforce the zeal of
the scientist for systematization of observable facts: these same motives,
however, assume negative values for the student of political phenomena. He has no occasion to delight in the
discovery of a seemly pattern, and every reason to distrust practical
applications of his findings.
Political Practice
While the student of nature can rejoice in the
fundamental harmony he discovers beneath disorderly appearances, such aesthetic
enjoyment is denied to the student of politics. Never was there any such thoroughgoing
apologetic of universal order as that of Leibniz: and never was a sharper blow
dealt it than Voltaire’s Candide. Trust this prince of
controversialists to seek the weak point of the system he attacks: and where
does he find it? Voltaire carries
the discussion away from the harmonies of nature to the distempers of human
affairs.[10] There is
nothing here to evoke a reverend appreciation of the course of things, there is
no pattern to be found (“a tale told by an idiot . . . signifying nothing”).
And whenever our mind can rest in
the recognition and acknowledgment of “sufficient reason,” this is but an uneasy
repose: what is explained is not justified. Causa efficiens is neither
justa causa nor visibly at the service of a plausible
causa
finalis.
We are inevitably more exacting when investigating human
affairs than in the case of natural phenomena. Regarding the latter we may be content to
find an order, whatever it may be; in human society however we are not content
to find some pattern, we want it to fit our idea of
justice.
The Deist Apologetic of Universal Order has exerted upon
the social sciences a most powerful influence, displayed to the full in
economics: each man’s striving for his own advantage results in a social
optimum. This has been taken as
axiomatic, and whatever went wrong was attributed to “artificial” obstacles.
Restraints upon trade and
competition were first named; much later, “property” itself came to be
questioned as an artificial restraint. [11]
However questionable the philosophic foundations of
economic science [12] they had one great empirical virtue:
economists could accept unquestioningly the motives of economic actors, since a
good outcome was expected from the vigour of desires. Economists may take exception to my
statement, but I feel that the “ethical neutrality” which has served them well
has been made possible by a teleological optimism. [13] It is thanks to this promise of a good outcome that
intellectual doctors could move to the business of understanding economic
activity and away from a centuries-old attitude of upbraiding
acquisitiveness.
Such a descent from a moral pulpit has occurred only
quite recently in political science, [14] arousing ardent controversy.
[15] There are strong intellectual reasons to applaud this
descent and call it belated; there are strong prudential reasons to deplore it
and call it treason. Light can be
cast on the matter only if we reject the fiction that the scientist can and
should be soulless. It is not
because the economist is an ethical eunuch that he can envisage phenomena with
ethical indifference. Rather it is
because he expects a desirable ethical outcome regardless of the ethical concern
and enlightenment of the actors; his short-term or atomistic ethical
indifference is warranted by his long-range or overall optimism. The proof thereof lies in the revival of
moral passion regarding economic behavior in the most
schol
10. This choice of ground is the more remarkable in that
Voltaire, who originally subscribed to Leibnizian optimism, was shaken out of
it, so the scholars tell us, by a natural event, the disaster of
11. This theme appears in John Stuart Mill and in our day
has been fully developed by Maurice Allais.
12. These have been less discussed than one would wish. See, however, W. Stark, The Ideal
Foundations of Economic Thought (London, 1943); G. Myrdal, The
Political Element in the Development of Economic Theory (English ed.,
London, 1953); Lindely M. Frazer, Economic Thought and Language (London,
1947); and J. A. Schumpeter, History of Economic Analysis (London, 1954); but above all, Vilfredo
Pareto, Manuel d’Economie Politique (Paris, 1909).
13. Openly stated by Adam Smith, and underlying Pareto’s
great work.
14. This is most clearly recounted in Robert A. Dahl, “The
Behavioral Approach in Political Science,” in this issue of this REVIEW, above, pp.
763-772.
15. The most authoritative attack is that of Leo Strauss:
“What Is Political Philosophy?” Journal of Politics (Aug. 1957); see also
Irving Kristol, “The Profanation of Politics” in The Logic of Personal
Knowledge, Essays presented to Michael Polanyi
(
775
arly economists as soon as they find reason or occasion
to question the assumption of overall maximization. Now in politics such an assumption seems
untenable.
The postulate that economic activity is not to be feared
and that the more of it the better is allegorized in Dupont de Nemours’ picture
of a giant in chains, with the caption: “Otez-lui ses chaines et le laissez
aller.” [16] But in those countries where political freedom has been
most prized and practiced, see what attention has been devoted to the
formalization of political activity, and to imbuing political actors with a
public philosophy. [17] We may hold the view that economic activities tend to
combine harmoniously: we can not hold it in the case of political activities.
Indeed Hobbes devised a model
displaying the chaotic outcome of political activities running wild. Rousseau subscribed to the Hobbesian
picture in his very refutation, since he found it necessary to base his opposite
picture upon the supposition of a tiny, closed and static
society.
Political Education
The barbarians are coming, big men with a cruel
laughter, who use the conquered as playthings, dishonoured and tossed about.
Our knees shake at the very thought
of them. Our bishop, however, goes
out in state and, bearing the Cross, he stands in the path of the fierce
captain. Our town then shall be
spared. The strange chief with the
awesome mane shall indeed become our sovereign; but, guided by the man of God,
he shall be a just master, and his son will, at an early age, learn from the
bishop the finest examples of wise kingship.
The bishop, in my apologue, is political philosophy: its
function is to civilize power, to impress the brute, improve its manners, and
harness it to salutary tasks. In
dealing with our wild chieftain the bishop will often say bluntly: “You can not
do this.” That is not a factual
statement; the very motive for the utterance is that the power-bearer can in
fact do this thing. What lies in
the bishop’s mind, behind the simple statement, is far more complex: “He wants
to do this and has the means thereof; I can not convince him - nor am I certain
– that from this bad action some harm shall come to him that he can recognize as
a harm. He must be prevented from
doing this, the moral prohibition therefore has to be made in his imagination a
hard, concrete obstacle. Hence:
‘You can not. ...’ ” This manner of
speech is required for preceptive efficiency.
Similarly, when teaching the ruler’s turbulent child,
the bishop accumulates examples of princely virtue: “That”, says he, “is what is
done.” He means, of course: “… what
is to be done.” Not all that has
been done by past rulers is relevant to his purpose but only those praiseworthy
attitudes and actions which can contribute to the forming of a noble image,
which, being firmly implanted in the youth, will exert its pull upon the conduct
of the grown man. Deplorable
instances are adduced only if they can be joined with a tale of ensuing
disaster. Not until the love of
virtue has been firmly established shall the pupil be faced with the hard
saying: “... there be just rulers to whom it happeneth according to the work of
the wicked; again there be wicked rulers, to whom it happeneth according to the
work of the righteous.” [18] It is the test of virtue that this bleak truth be
accepted by the mind, yet serenely spurned by the soul.
The political learning which I sought to describe by
means of an apologue turns upon two sentences: “You can not … “ (ideal of law)
and “This is what is done” (right example). Such lessons are designed to edify:
strange indeed that this word should have fallen into disrepute, since it means
“to build up”; and surely it is important to build up the virtue of the men who
rule, whether it be one, few, or many.
And here we come to the difficulty attending a factual
science of politics: by its very nature it pulls down what the preceptive
science has endeavoured to build up. Where the preceptive science stressed
“You can not,” factual science is bound to observe that “You can”; and what the
preceptive science indicated as “What is done” is denied by the findings of
factual science: actual doings are very different. A factual science in this realm is
therefore dangerous medicine for weak moral constitutions.
Imagination, properly cultivated and addressed, imparts
a magic prestige, the loss of which may be a public disaster. [19] Madame de
16. I allude to the frontispiece of Dupont de Nemours’
pamphlet of 1788: Réponse aux Observations de la Chambre de Commerce de
Normandie.
17. It takes an observer foreign to
18. Ecclesiastes, 8,
14.
19. This seems to be the main lesson which Necker has drawn
from the great events he was so well placed to witness. It impregnates the two main works he
wrote in his years of retreat: Du Pouvoir Exécutif dans les Grands Etats,
2 vols. [(1792, no place of publication); and De la Revolution
Francaise, 4 vols. (1797). Strangely enough, in view of the very
important political role their author played, these works enjoy a very limited
reputation. But a preoccupation
which imbues the whole work of Necker is sharply brought into view in these two
vivid paragraphs written by his famous daughter, which are here quoted.] HHC:
[bracketed]
displayed on p. 777 of original.
776
Staël helps us here with two
pictures:
The Constituent Assembly ever believed, erroneously,
that there was some magic in its decrees, and that all would stop in every way
at the line it traced. But its
pronouncements can be compared to the ribbon which had been drawn through the
garden of the Tuileries to keep the people at some distance from the palace;
while opinion remained favourable to those who had drawn the ribbon, no one
dreamed of trespassing; but as soon as the people wanted no more of this
barrier, it became meaningless. [20
***
The grenadiers marched into the hall where the
representatives were assembled, and hustled them forward by simply advancing in
solid formation from one end of the room to the other. The representatives found themselves
pressed against the wall and had to flee through the window into the gardens of
Indeed, the law is a mere ribbon, but traditional
political science has been at great pains to make it seem an impenetrable wall;
indeed, the body of representatives is incapable of standing its ground against
a battalion, but traditional political science has been at great pains to so
raise its prestige that battalions may never challenge it but ever obey it.
The danger of the factual approach
is that it should deflate these salutary prestiges.
The dangers of the factual approach are not yet fully
manifest because studies of this kind have mostly been addressed to “weak”
political behavior, such as voting. I speak of weak political behavior since
it is precisely a finding of such studies that voters do not care very much.
Strong political behaviors are
those inspired by strong passions, [22] and into
which men throw themselves whole-heartedly. The picture of politics which is apt to
emerge from the factual analysis of strong political behaviors may be
nefariously suggestive.
Political Technology
However little the scientist thinks of practical
applications, whenever it comes to his mind it is with a favourable connotation:
the gain in efficiency to be expected from the increase in knowledge is a good
thing. No such optimism is allowed
in the case of the “technology” which may be derived from increased factual
understanding of politics: political efficiency may be a bad thing. Knowing how men are won over and induced
to lend their energies is a knowledge that can be used for good or evil. Indeed, it is more apt to be used for
evil. A good man is humble and
therefore advances his views with some diffidence; he respects his fellows and
therefore is not apt to be an aggressive salesman. The presumptuous, overbearing man is most
prone to exploit the technology of moving men for his
purpose.
This thought is very disquieting. And it might suffice to turn the scholar
away from a search for knowledge which may be ill-used, if the technology of
polities waited upon his discoveries. But such is not the case: the technology
has been mightily developed outside political science during the last
half-century, and developed by the very men to whom the prudent scientist would
like to deny it. Naturally enough
those who are least sensitive to the aesthetic and ethical appeal of traditional
theory have broken away from its restraints and guidance; while those with finer
feelings are victims of processes which they can not grasp. In such a situation all the harm which a
factual science of politics can do is already loose, and it can come as a useful
warning.
Conclusions
It has been suggested here that recognition of the
dangers inherent in political activity may have held up the progress of
scientific inquiry in politics; but however important this factor, it can hardly
serve as a full explanation. A
useful complement is suggested by a comparison with medical science, a
comparison
20. Baronne de Staël: Considerations sur les Principaux
Evénements de la Revolution Francaise, 3 vols.
(
21. Op. cit., II,
240-41.
22. E.g.,
Militantism in its moderate and extreme forms (conspiracy and terrorism).
778
current since the days of Plato.
[23]
What is the purpose of medicine? The health of the body. What therefore is the knowledge required
in a doctor? The knowledge of
health. This seems a reasonable
approach to medicine: it leads first to the primacy of hygiene,
[24] but second,
to envisaging any disease as a derangement of a natural harmony.
[25] Hence for instance Themison’s classification of
diseases: they arise from an undue constriction (strictum) or from an
undue relaxation (laxum) or from a combination of both
(mixtum). [26]
In a case of strictum, antispasmodic, sedative
medication is indicated; in a case of laxum, tonic, roborative remedies.
This is very attractive, so much so
that economic policies of our own day are “Themisonian”: if there are
inflationary areas in the economy, relieve the pressure of demand by the
sedatives of deflation (including if necessary saignare, the removal of
excess buying power); and if there is laxity in the market, administer
stimulants.
However reasonable it seems to take the satisfactory
state of affairs as the axial concept, it has not paid off well in medicine: the
concept of health led neither to a close study of diseases attuned to their
specificity, nor to a far-reaching physiology. [27] It is amazing that the emphasis laid upon the proper
functioning of the body should have sparked so little curiosity about this very
functioning. Physiology can hardly
be said to have started before
When resorting to analogy, one should always stop to
note contrasts between the systems compared. There is a most striking contrast between
the object studied by medical science, the body of man, and the object of
political science, the body politic. In the former case, only the integrated
whole has value in our eyes, while the component cells are expendable: not so in
the case of the body politic, where the whole is justified by its components,
real persons. But the contrast goes
further. Human bodies are built on
the same model; not so political bodies. The health of the human body is therefore
a clearer and more distinct notion than a state of health in a body politic.
The anatomy of the human body is a
datum, while political anatomy changes. Therefore, if anatomy is already
inadequate knowledge in the former case, [29] how much more inadequate it must be
in the latter.
The “healthy body politic” is an attractive starting
point but one that leads to little progress of knowledge. If the body politic wherein we find
ourselves is accepted as presently healthy [30] we are inadequately provoked to look into the minute
day-to-day processes which keep it so. If we regard it as presently distempered,
we are apt to go back to some past moment of “health” with a strong chance of
substituting our fancy for the true past, and only a slight chance of
understanding what has changed, where, how and why. Even worse is
23. The two sciences are of equal antiquity. Hippocrates was
born in 460 B.C., between Socrates (469) and Plato (427).
24. “For the worshippers of Hygeia, health is the natural
order of things, a positive attribute to which men are entitled if they govern
their lives wisely. According to
them, the most important function of medicine is to discover and teach the
natural laws which will ensure a man a healthy mind in a healthy body.” René
Dubos, Mirage of Health (
25. Galen said that the duty of the doctor is to conserve the
natural condition, to reestablish it when perturbed, and to restore what is
lacking as far as feasible. From F.
J. V. Broussais, Histoire des Doctrines Médicales et des Systèmes de
Nosologie, 4 vols. (
26. Ibid., I, 107
ff.
27. Dubos stresses that the broad point of view of
orthobiosis leads to “the danger of substituting meaningless generalities and
weak philosophy for the concreteness of exact knowledge.” Op. cit. ,p.137.
28. The word “microbe,” now a popular term abandoned by
scientists, was introduced by them as late as 1878.
29. Claude Bernard wrote: “Descriptive anatomy is to
physiology what geography is to history, and as it is not enough to know a
country’s topography for the understanding of its history, it is not enough to
know the anatomy of organs for the understanding of their functions. An old surgeon, Mery, compared anatomists
to those messengers who are to be found in great cities, and who know the layout
of the streets, and the numbering of buildings but do not know what goes on
inside. Indeed, in tissues, in
organs, vital physicochemical phenomena occur which mere anatomy can not
reveal.” Lecons sur les
Phénomènes de la Vie Commune aux Animaux et aux Végétaux, 2 vols.
(
30. This complacency is a most uncommon attitude.
778
our picking upon some body politic distant in time and
using it as our model of health. This leads, for instance, to the
ludicrous mistake of the French Jacobins who wanted to build a
The notion of a healthy political body leads to
pseudo-restorations of which the Germanic “
31. Again, when one takes Athens as a model, one forgets that
in its age of extreme democracy (which did not exclude slavery) the notion that
“aliens” could not become part of the body politic was so fundamentally embedded
that Pericles himself was the author of a law which struck from the registers a
large fraction of the citizenry who could not prove that they were descended
from both an Athenian father and an Athenian mother.
32. Though why the
33. For instance, the transposition of the
779