Political Theory: Overview, Relationships, and Contemporary Themes
1 Relationship with Political Science
Political theory is an interdisciplinary endeavor centered in the humanities end of political science; it normative focus is on theorizing, critiquing, and diagnosing norms, practices, and organization of political action in the past and present, in our own places and elsewhere.
Core concerns shared by political theorists across differences:
Demands of justice and how to fulfill them
The presuppositions and promise of democracy
The divide between secular and religious ways of life
The nature and identity of public goods
Commitment to humanistic study of politics (even with disagreement over what that means)
Skepticism toward the hegemony sometimes sought by more self-consciously “scientific” colleagues
Tendency in recent years (notably in the USA) toward formal and quantitative study of politics; some argue that political theory should be formal theory modeling political phenomena with patterns and causal explanations akin to the natural sciences.
Such formal approaches have been challenged by qualitative and interpretative approaches (e.g., the Perestroika movement; Monroe 2005).
Political theory sits between distanced universals of normative philosophy and the empirical world of politics; located in three interrelated spaces:
In relation to academic disciplines of political science, history, and philosophy;
Between the world of politics and the abstract ruminative register of theory;
Between canonical political theory and newer resources (feminist and critical theory, discourse analysis, film and film theory, popular and political culture, mass media studies, neuro-science, environmental studies, behavioral science, economics) on which theorists increasingly draw.
Political theorists engage with empirical work in politics, economics, sociology, and law to inform reflections; productive associations exist between political scientists and political theorists.
The connection to law is strongest in constitutional law and its normative foundations (e.g., Sunstein 1993; Tully 1995; 2002).
Normative core: most of political theory has an irreducibly normative component, regardless of approach (systematic or diagnostic; textual or cultural; analytic, critical, genealogical, or deconstructive; ideal or piecemeal; socialist, liberal, or conservative).
The field welcomes a wide range of approaches; there is a core canon often described as “Plato to NATO,” though the canon is unstable with rediscoveries (Sophocles, Thucydides, Spinoza, Wollstonecraft) and additions of newer icons (Arendt, Rawls, Foucault, Habermas).
The subject matter extends beyond the canon to novels, film, and other cultural artifacts, and to developments in other social sciences and natural science.
Political theory is an unapologetically mongrel sub-discipline with no dominant methodology; theorists describe themselves by formative influences (e.g., “I’m a Deleuzean,” “Rawlsian,” “Habermasian,” “Arendtian”) more often by others than by self-description.
In contrast to neighboring disciplines (e.g., international relations theory with a stable triad of Realism, Liberalism, Constructivism), political theory lacks a fixed triad or core set of schools; this can produce a perceived lack of core identity but is seen by many as a strength that mirrors the political world’s own diversity.
Debates about identity include whether to recenter political theory on timeless texts and universal questions or to restore a historical focus; most practitioners, however, affirm a vocation grounded in plurality and ongoing engagement with politics.
The field’s relationship to the discipline of political science has not always been smooth; the “soft” or multiple “rivals” to a strict science model have included journalism, historical narrative, case studies, and political theory itself; tensions intensified during the behavioral revolution and the rise of rational choice theory, which sometimes rejected “belles lettres, criticism, and philosophic speculation.”
Political theorists counter that science and objectivity are themselves normatively loaded; they argue that much of so-called political science relies on norms and criteria that differentiate more from less rigorous work in political theory; and much political theory remains deeply engaged with empirical politics.
Cohabitation: a term used (e.g., in French context) to describe the relationship between political theory and political science; emphasizes cooperation, toleration, and common enterprise despite differences.
1.1 Relationship with Political Science
The last two decades of the twentieth century saw liberal, critical, and post-structuralist theorists rethinking the breakdown of unitary nation-state identities; moved toward pluralistic, diverse, or agonistic conceptions of identity; this shift influenced self-perception within the field and reinforced interdisciplinarity as a virtue.
The relationship to political science has not always been harmonious: political scientists pursued “new science” narratives while theorists defended normative rigor and challenged claims of objectivity; early behavioral revolutions and rational choice movements sought to purge theorists from the field, while theorists argued that science itself carries normative commitments and that empirical rigor can coexist with normative analysis.
The field’s stance toward empirical work remains robust; theorists stress that many political theorists engage with empirical politics and that the boundary between theory and empirical analysis is porous and productive.
The term “cohabitation” captures a constructive but ongoing tension and collaboration between political theory and political science.
1.2 Relationship with History
History as reference is contentious: debates over whether theory is bound by historical context or can adjudicate timeless principles.
Quentin Skinner (historical contextualism) argued for caution in reducing intellectual historians to moralists; he distinguished critical historical analysis from moralizing; critics argued this approach can detach theory from actionable judgment.
Richard Ashcraft advocated recognizing the fundamentally historical character of political theory and argued that acknowledging ideology is part of embracing politics; he critiqued Straussian attempts to extract universally valid standards outside history.
Sheldon Wolin’s notion of “the political” contrasts with instrumental politics (e.g., Lasswell’s “Who gets what, when, and how?”); Wolin emphasizes politics oriented toward the public good and public happiness rather than narrow interests.
The political in Wolin, Arendt, and Rancière is a conceptual category that resists both statism and pure privatization of politics; it implies disruption of ordinary patterns of governance.
1.3 Relationship with Philosophy
John Rawls represents a major, arguably unhistorical influence on political theory in recent decades, aligning with analytic philosophy; his A Theory of Justice (1971) offered a normative, systematic inquiry into justice under conditions of liberty and equality, using tools like the veil of ignorance and hypothetical social contract to adjudicate political questions.
Dworkin’s clamshell auction (1981) is a famous thought experiment used to argue for equality of resources and to inform welfare-state design within a liberal framework; it helped reintroduce a more formal, philosophical approach to questions of justice and equality.
Following Rawls, many theorists used similar hypothetical devices to examine the relationship between equality and choice, raising ongoing debates about how abstract reasoning maps onto concrete political arrangements.
The more analytic camp (political philosophers) has been challenged by others (e.g., communitarians, post-structuralists, feminists) who argue that liberal abstraction overlooks body, difference, and context; in response, Rawls refined his own approach (Political Liberalism, 1993) to account for the reasonableness of diverse comprehensive doctrines; Law of Peoples (1999) extends some liberal arguments to other well-ordered societies and emphasizes decency and basic human rights across cultural contexts.
The analytic liberal tradition has thus evolved to incorporate concerns about difference, gender, culture, and non-liberal societies, signaling a move toward more inclusive but still normative philosophical frameworks.
1.4 Relationship with “Real World” Politics
The positioning of political theory vis-à-vis political science, history, and philosophy can be seen as reflecting what the political is; theory’s reach extends toward utopian possibilities but is tempered by sober, realizable constraints.
Utopianism is a notable strand, celebrated as blue-sky science for thinking beyond current limits; Aristotle’s historical call for thinking beyond present confines remains a benchmark until today.
Yet some argue theory should engage with possible, practical policy and political prospects; criticisms assert that theory can be disconnected from immediate political life.
Critics like John Gunnell (1986) and Jeffrey Isaac (1995) argued that theory risked estranging itself from contemporary politics, though a surge of empirical work in the 1990s linked theory to contemporary events (e.g., European identity formation, international human rights, migration, terrorism, and natural disasters) and ethical-political questions (e.g., bare life, disciplinary power, state of exception, hospitality, sovereignty).
Political theorists respond by arguing that theory both interprets and informs political life; they draw on events (ecological crisis, security policies, technology, migration, global inequality) to test and revise normative theories.
1.5 Institutional Landscape
Politically theoretical work is located across several disciplines: political science, philosophy, law, history, sociology, economics; various disciplinary associations and journals accordingly publish political theory.
Journals: Polity, Political Studies (in political science); American Journal of Political Science, British Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics (also publish theory); Ethics, Philosophy & Public Affairs (philosophy); some law journals; sociology journals; others publish related interdisciplinary work (feminism, law, international relations, cultural studies).
Political Theory (established 1972) is a foundational journal; prior to it, Philosophy, Politics and Society (1956) and NOMOS yearbooks (1958) served as major outlets; a proliferation of political theory journals has occurred recently (History of Political Thought, Journal of Political Philosophy, The Good Society, Politics, Philosophy and Economics, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, European Journal of Political Theory, Contemporary Political Theory, Constellations, Theory and Event, and the Review of Politics).
Book publishing remains central to the field (major English-language presses; Oxford Political Theory series is notable).
Institutions and communities: Foundations of Political Theory (APSA) conferences and receptions; study associations like the Conference for the Study of Political Thought International and the Association for Political Theory (NA); in the UK, annual Oxford Political Theory conference; in Europe, the European Consortium for Political Research offers workshops and forums for theory.
The field is heavily oriented toward book publication rather than article-only output; book-length works remain central to scholarly impact and prestige.
2 Contemporary Themes and Developments
Political theory is self-critical and historically aware of its disciplinary boundaries and interdisciplinarity; debates over identity and boundary maintenance continue.
The field’s vitality is evident in a flourishing set of topics and methods, but there is concern about liberal dominance in the Anglo-American world; liberalism has become the dominant framework, though many theorists challenge or complicate liberal assumptions.
The field has historic roots in a wide set of classical and modern theorists; the 1960s–1980s saw a robust array of contributions that challenge or extend liberalism through Marxist, feminist, critical, and post-structuralist perspectives.
2.1 Liberalism and its Critics
Liberalism: individuals are motivated by self-interest; markets and exchange realize material interests; politics resolves distribution; rights protect individuals; constitutional frameworks balance power; obligations accompany rights.
Spectrum within liberalism: Rawls (egalitarian fairness) vs Nozick (strong libertarian emphasis); tensions between equality and liberty; Rawls vs Arendt, Wolin, Rancière, and others on the political as more than private individual rights.
Liberalism’s struggle with Marxism: Marxism critiques liberalism’s individualism and emphasizes class conflict, historical materialism, and the centrality of social structures; the decline of academic Marxism in the English-speaking world after the end of the Cold War, though its influence persists in new forms.
The emergence and persistence of analytic liberalism: Rawls and Cohen among others; critiques from communitarians, feminists, and post-structuralists; recognition of non-liberal cultures and forms of life in political theory (Law of Peoples, decency rather than universal models).
The end of the universalist liberal project? Debates about multiculturalism, nonliberal societies, and global justice highlight the limits of liberal theories to adjudicate all forms of political life.
2.2 Liberal Egalitarianism
Central question: equality of what? (Sen, 1980s–1990s): different answers include welfare, resources, capabilities, and opportunities for welfare; debates about whether to privilege efficiency or equality; the shift away from strictly formal equality to substantive elements of life chances.
The rise of basic income or basic endowments as a policy idea to enable participation in liberal society (van Parijs 1995; Ackerman & Alstott 1999).
The integration of equality with responsibility and desert, with liberal egalitarianism converging with some socialist concerns about social structure and opportunity.
The critique that much egalitarian literature emphasizes individual variation and personal entitlement, risking neglect of broad structural inequalities (Anderson 1999; Fraser 1997).
The ongoing literature on redistribution vs recognition; social movements and political theory continue to debate where emphasis should lie.
2.3 Communitarianism
Liberal–communitarian debate (Sandel 1982) emphasized that individuals are socially embedded and acquire identity through community; liberalism’s focus on abstract rights neglects communal obligations.
Communitarian critique: communities shape individuals; obligations extend beyond mere rights; dependency on social networks matters for autonomy.
Responses to communitarian critique argued that liberalism and community are not mutually exclusive; the debate shifted toward questions about how holistic conceptions of community relate to rights and freedoms (Taylor 1989; Walzer 1990; Galston 1991).
The mainstream view: liberalism’s portrayal of the individual as atomistic or purely rights-centered is an oversimplification; liberal theories historically incorporate social embeddedness and communal ties more than critics acknowledge.
2.4 Feminism
Feminist critiques in the 1980s challenged liberalism’s abstraction from gender and power relations; concerns about impartial justice ignoring embodied difference and gendered social arrangements.
Critiques of impartialist justice and the call for contextual ethics that recognize responsibilities and social location (Gilligan 1982; Young 1990; Pateman 1988; Okin 1989).
Concerns about gendered language in justice and rights and the risk of reproducing masculine norms; feminists pushed for relational autonomy and recognition of gendered power dynamics (Okin 1989; Zerilli 2006).
Over time, liberalism accommodated some feminist critiques; some feminist writers argue for radical political programs of difference, while others show convergence with liberal frameworks (Nussbaum 1999 arguing that liberal individualism can be compatible with relational autonomy within a liberal framework).
Overall trend: feminism remained a critical force—though over time, liberal and feminist theorists have found points of convergence and mutual adjustment rather than a strict dichotomy.
2.5 Democracy and Critical Theory
Liberalism’s legitimacy questioned in citizenship and democracy debates; republicanism offered a different emphasis on active citizenship and public virtue.
Deliberative democracy emerged in the early 1990s as a challenge to conventional liberal models that viewed politics as private preference aggregation; it emphasized public reflection and discourse as central to democratic legitimacy (Cohen 1989; Dryzek 1990).
By the late 1990s, many institutions once criticized by deliberative democrats became venues for deliberation (courts, legislatures); Rawls and Bohman represent shifts toward a more institutionalized form of deliberative democracy, though some critics view this as a further absorption of critical alternatives into liberal mainstream frameworks.
Habermas’s critical theory evolved from a critique of instrumental rationality toward constitutional rights and the public sphere; in the 1990s Habermas reframed his theory to stress rights and discourse as the basis for open political deliberation in public institutions.
2.6 Green Political Theory
Emerged in the 1970s with ecologically oriented alternatives to liberal capitalism; early emphasis on left-libertarian and eco-anarchist tendencies (Bookchin 1982), with some more Hobbesian or authoritarian voices (Ophuls 1977).
The Green tradition came to include “post-exuberant” ecologies engaging with liberalism; some theorists (Bennett & Chaloupka 1993) align with Thoreau and Foucault; Plumwood (2002) critiques dualisms and anthropocentrism in liberal thought.
2.7 Post-structuralism
Often read as critical rather than constructive, but many post-structuralists seek to supplement liberalism or give it a conscience.
Distance from grand narratives is tempered by work that reimagines rather than rejects meta-narratives; some post-structuralists engage with social contract traditions (Hobbes) in new ways.
Post-structuralists argue against ends or guarantees (e.g., faith or progress) that have supported political achievements or abuses; they scrutinize the claims of universal ends and emphasize the historical and contextual character of political argument.
Enduring questions concern ends/guarantees that can enable political culpability if invoked as external justifications (e.g., religion or nature as grounding for moral authority).
3 Political Theory and the Global Turn
Liberalism has absorbed many competing traditions, but this is not a triumphalist liberalism (e.g., Fukuyama’s End of History) and raises concerns about Western centrism.
A classic illustration is Rawls’s shift from A Theory of Justice (1971) to Political Liberalism (1993) and The Law of Peoples (1999): Rawls reconceives justice as reasonable for diverse liberal and non-liberal societies, acknowledging that universal standards are insufficient or inappropriate across cultures.
Post-foundationalism and multiculturalism: liberalism acknowledges historical and cultural contingency; foundationalist grounds for universal justice have been questioned (Rorty 1989; Rawls 1993; Habermas 1996).
The rise of global and transnational concerns has spurred interest in non-Western political thought and the limits of Western liberalism; debates over cultural difference and universal human rights have intensified.
Multiculturalism and group rights: Kymlicka (1995) advocates group rights for threatened cultural communities to secure individual autonomy; this stance has attracted criticisms from Okin, Barry, and others who question the balance between group rights and individual rights.
The global turn also raises questions about religion, secularism, and the normative arguments embedded within different religious traditions; debates about bio-genetics, public/private boundaries, and the politics of global inequality are foregrounded.
Overall trajectory: liberalism’s adaptability and globalization of thought co-exist with growing interest in alternative traditions and global, cross-cultural normative questions; the field increasingly contemplates denationalization and global dimensions of political theory.
4 Political Theory and Political Science: Current Trajectories
Interdisciplinary connections remain central to political theory; it operates alongside comparative politics, international relations, public policy, and domestic political analysis.
International relations theory intersects with political theory through three grand positions: realism, constructivism, and liberalism; liberalism in IR overlaps with but is not identical to liberal political theory; realism traces to Hobbes’s state-of-nature concepts; constructivism aligns with Habermasian critical theory in some formulations.
Normative theory is flourishing in IR and other subfields; postmodernists, Rawlsian liberals, feminists, and critical theorists contribute to contemporary international theory (and to policy). The field provides important normative resources to analyze global justice and international institutions.
Comparative politics intersects with political theory on topics like social movements, state-building, democratization, race and diaspora, multiculturalism, and liberal-democratic norms; theory helps interpret the state’s role and legitimacy in different political contexts.
Methodology remains a site of tension and exchange: political theorists often mediate between the philosophy of social science and empirical methods; interpretation and normative critique inform methodological choices.
Public policy as applied end of political science benefits from political theory’s normative frameworks; theorists contribute to policy evaluation and design, clarifying normative criteria for evaluating actual or potential policies (e.g., taxation, health expenditure, disability policy).
Rational choice theory has become a dominant subfield in public policy and political science; in practice, it is viewed by many as limited for explaining complex political life, yet game theory and related approaches remain valuable for clarifying strategic aspects of political behavior and informing normative debates.
There is growing concern about the empirical arm of political science lacking a moral compass; some scholars (e.g., Rothstein 2005) argue for reconnecting normative political philosophy with empirical analysis to safeguard politics from technocratic cynicism.
The field’s current trajectory is characterized by two opposing trends:
Tightening the boundaries of disciplines to raise status and pursue depth and rigor within established domains.
Embracing cross-disciplinary and interdisciplinary cross-pollination to enrich theory with insights from feminist theory, critical theory, film theory, media studies, behavioral sciences, and economics.
Most likely, the second trend—interdisciplinary borrowing and cross-fertilization—will dominate, fostering a more plural and globally attuned political theory that engages with real-world political life and its diverse practices.
The global turn, multicultural debates, and new technologies are likely to continue reshaping political theory; scholars anticipate increased attention to issues of gender, race, and cosmopolitan justice, as well as new questions about religion, bioethics, and the politics of the human.
The field remains a mongrel of traditions, approaches, and styles; the future likely involves ongoing dialogue between disciplinary boundaries and meaningful cross-pollination, with a continued emphasis on normative critique, empirical relevance, and public engagement.