The structure of political theories

Abstract

In this thesis I shall discuss some aspects of political theories, mainly relating to the status of their foundations and conclusions and to the sorts of moves made from one to the other. The first section will contain an outline of some recent discussions of the nature and status of political theories. There will be criticism of some particular parts of these arguments, but it will be in the main expository, though singling out some aspects for special stress. All those writers I discuss deny the existence of any deductive link between foundations and theory, and between theory and practical programmes (actual laws, policies, etc.). That they are correct seems unquestionable - but I want to raise the question as to why this is so as I think the resulting discussion bears closely on finding out what relations do obtain. This is what I shall discuss in the second section. Nearly all the articles I discuss were written before the publication of works on ethics like Nowell-Smith's, Hare's and Hampshire's and suffer in consequence. However the main criticism I shall make is of their attempts at any kind of a constructive account of political theories; they either deny - as Weldon does - the existence of any logical links, or else fail (as I think McDonald does) to give an at all satisfactory account of what these relations could be. In the latter part of Section II and in Section III I shall try to criticise sons of the features of the relations in question, using the earlier more negative discussion as comparison and background.