The emergence of contemporary political science as a rigorously analytical and empirically based discipline is most commonly dated back to its remaking in the United States after World War II. This article highlights and explores the role of various components of rhetorical strategies deployed in the articulation and presentation of this new political science. In addition reshaping the terminological apparatus with which the ‘revolutionaries’ presented their own endeavours and those of their ‘traditionalist’ predecessors, the case for reforming the discipline was further boosted by the formulation of fantasies of interdisciplinarity as a shortcut to an unprecedented empowering of social knowledge, as well as by utterances of ambitions of the future social role of this new type of science – all three as discursive strategies in their own right.
Archive sources
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Kimpton, Lawrence (1953), author unknown, “Report on the Behavioral Sciences at the University of Chicago”, Collection: Office of President Kimpton, Box 38, Folder 1, Special Collections Research Center Library of University of Chicago.
Kimpton, Lawrence (date unknown), author unknown, “The Status and Promise of Behavioral Sciences”, author and date unknown, Collection: Office of President Kimpton, Box 38, Folder 1, Special Collections Research Center Library of University of Chicago.
Lasswell, Harold (1949) “A memorandum. how can the American Political Science Association act to encourage significant research?”. November 30, 1949. Charles Merriam Papers, Box 65, Folder 1, Special Collections Research Center Library of University of Chicago.
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