Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The early vision of American political science, which was imported from Germany and called Staatswissenschaft, imagined an integrated political science unified by a concept of the state. During the 1880s and 1890s, the field’s original foundation in idealist philosophy (Hegel) was supplanted by the idea that the evolution of the state could best be explained by its relation to “economic changes” (Roscher). This intellectual shift ignited a decades long debate in political science over “the method of economic interpretation.” Importantly, these debates produced a supra-disciplinary vision of political science as a science of the state that occurs at the intersection of politics, history, and economics.