Resurgence of political theory. (UPSC CSE Mains 2019 - Political Science and International Relations, Paper 1).
- The resurgence of Political Theoryrefers to the revival of the normative or value-based (Philosophical) political theory in political science.
- In the middle of the twentieth century, many thinkers (David Easton, Alfred Cobban) have written about the decline of political theory. Again many concluded (Lasslett, Dahl) as a political theory is dead. It would not be right to come to the conclusion that political theory has become unimportant or has declined.
- Isaiah Berlin says that political theory is neither dead nor in the state of decline. Berlin challenges that there can never be any one kind of society and if even such a society exist the society’s goals would always carry different and incomplete meanings to different persons in different situations. Thus he says that there cannot be an age without political philosophy. Berlin argued that as long as rational curiosity existed political theory would not die nor disappear. George H. Sabine also opined that “if political theory is systematic, disciplined investigation of political problems, then it is difficult to say that political theory was dead in 1950s and 1960s.” According to him, political theory was alive in the works of Arendt, Oakeshott, Leo Strauss, John Rawls, Robert Nozick, Herbert Marcuse and Eric Vogelin, etc.
The following new themes have surfaced during the resurgence of political theory:-
- Communitarians: Theorists such as Michael Walzer, Michael Sandel, Alistair Maclntyre and Charles Taylor belong to this school. They reject the liberal conception of individuated self and hold that self is part of social relations in which he/she is embedded.
- Post-Modernism: It got genesis in the writings of Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Jean-Francois Lyotard. These scholars attacked the universalistic foundations of political theory and stress on decentered, fragmented nature of human experience. Identity and culture are the prominent aspects on which postmodernists have emphasized.
- Multiculturalism: Scholars like Will Kymlicka, I.M. Young and Bhikhu Parekh have laid stress on the attribute of culture as context of experience and human well-being. They blame the contemporary political theory of being culture biased and neglecting the concerns of different cultural groups. As such they have favoured-a regime of group differentiated right to address discrimination meted out to cultural identities as well as the ambit of democracy. Will Kymlicka’s “Multicultural Citizenship” and Bhiku Parekh’s “Rethinking Multiculturalism” are important works on multiculturalism.
- Feminism: The theorists of this school have attacked the alleged neutrality of public sphere. Instead, they locate structures of power that symbolize power of men over women. It neglects the aspect of gender and results in subjugation of women.
- Environmentalism: The theorists of this school have attacked the notion of progress that has led to depletion of flora and fauna over the years. Instead they place ecological components at the centre of political theory and emphasize its importance over other animate objects.
Thus, in brief, it can be argued that in 1950s and 1960s, factors such as historicism, hyper-factualism, moral relativism and ideological reductionism led to the decline of political theory. However, in 1970s onwards, works of scholars like Machel Oakeshott, Robert Nozick, Eric Vogelin, Hannah Arendt, John Rawls, F.W. Hayek, Isaiah Berlin, Bhiku Parekh and Karl Popper revived the political theory.
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