Table Of ContentLiberalism and the Emergence
of American Political Science
Liberalism and the
Emergence of American
Political Science
A Transatlantic Tale
RobERT Adcock
3
3
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of
Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research,
scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide.
Oxford New York
Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi
Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi
New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto
With offices in
Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece
Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore
South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam
Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press
in the UK and certain other countries.
Published in the United States of America by
Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016
© Oxford University Press 2014
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior
permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law,
by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization.
Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the
Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above.
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Adcock, Robert.
Liberalism and the emergence of American political science: a transatlantic tale / Robert Adcock.
pages cm
Summary: “This book situates the origins of American political science in relation to the transatlantic
history of liberalism. In a corrective to earlier accounts, it argues that, as political science took shape in
the nineteenth century American academy, it did more than express a pre-existing American liberalism,
rather adapting multiple contemporary European liberal arguments to speak to particular challenges
of mass democratic politics and large-scale industry as they developed in America.”— Provided by
publisher.
ISBN 978–0–19–933362–2 (hardback)
1. Liberalism—United States—History—19th century. 2. Political science—United States—
History—19th century. 3. Political culture—United States—History—19th century. I. Title.
JC574.2.U6A42 2014
320.510973'09034—dc23
2013034095
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
For Alison
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: American Political Science and Liberalism in
Transatlantic Perspective
1
PART I n From europe to AmeriCA
1. The “Political” in Political Science: The Liberal Debate
ChAPTer
about Democracy
15
2. Th e “Science” in Political Science: The historicist
ChAPTer
Debate about Method
42
3. Democratized Classical Liberalism in the Antebellum
ChAPTer
American College: The Émigré Political Science of
Francis Lieber
67
PART II n Wide politiCAl sCienCe And liberAlism
in the Gilded AGe
4. P olitical Science and Political economy in the Age
ChAPTer
of Academic reform: Andrew D. White and William
Graham Sumner
105
5. h istorical and Political Science at the Johns hopkins
ChAPTer
University: historicist Science, Liberalism, and the
Founding of National Associations
135
viii Contents
PART III n lAte-Century liberAlisms And the neW
politiCAl sCienCe
6. D isenchanted Classical Liberalism as a Political
ChAPTer
Vision: William Graham Sumner and
A. Lawrence Lowell
173
7. P rogressive Liberalism as a Political Vision: Woodrow
ChAPTer
Wilson’s Political Science
204
8. Th e Transatlantic Study of Modern Political
ChAPTer
Systems: The New Political Science of James Bryce,
A. Lawrence Lowell, and Frank Goodnow
235
Conclusion: The Americanization of Political Science and the
Americanization of “Liberalism”
268
Bibliography 283
Index 297
ACkno WledGments
This book is the culmination of almost a decade and a half of intellectual explora-
tion and writing in the history of political science. As I look back, three critical
junctures in the path that led here call for special acknowledgment. First, I would
like to thank John Gunnell and James Farr, whose scholarship first inspired me
as a graduate student to take up the history of political science as a research spe-
cialty. Second, I thank Mark Bevir, whose incisive observation that the disserta-
tion I had started on the history of comparison in political science was, in its own
way, also a history of liberalism has shaped this book even more than it did that
dissertation. Third, I thank Mark Vail for encouraging me, as I pondered my way
from dissertation to a first book, to give more attention to political economy so as
to better elucidate political science’s relation to varieties of liberalism.
There are many others—and more I fear than I will remember here—to thank.
My attentiveness to comparison is one of many debts to David Collier, while
Shannon Stimson modeled for me just how much political theorists might learn
from J. S. Mill’s Principles of Political Economy. Also from my time at UC Berkeley,
I thank Daniel Geary and Andrew Jewett, who as fellow graduate students in a
different department first encouraged me to think that a political scientist might
write about his field’s past in a way historians could appreciate. More generally
I thank the multiple additional historians—including Martin Jay, Dorothy Ross,
James Kloppenberg, Angus Burgin, Trygve Throntveit, and Mark Solovey—
whose discussions with me have repeatedly reaffirmed my interdisciplinary
aspirations.
I am grateful to multiple audiences and individuals for feedback on ideas
and iterations of parts of this book as it made its way from proposal to manu-
script. I thank my colleagues in junior faculty workshops in George Washington
University’s political science department, my political theory colleagues in the
department and beyond, the faculty and students who made giving a Dunbar
lecture in Tulane’s University political science department such a pleasure, the
Research in American and Comparative Politics Workshop at Boston University,
ix
