Government Department Scrutinized for Faculty Rift

Most government concentrators come to their department expecting to immerse themselves in the history of Congress, the courts and the constitution.

But, warns this month's New Republic, technophobes beware: today's political science students may find themselves learning more about statistics than the Federalist Papers.

Harvard's Government Department, a longtime powerhouse of thought on American politics and international relations, is embroiled in academic controversy as a new approach to the social sciences threatens to split it into two opposing camps.

Rational Rationale

In a cover article titled "Revenge of the Nerds," the New Republic describes the rise of a school of thought in political science known as 'rational choice' that contrasts sharply with much of the department's traditional work and is, for some, antithetical to the highest ideas in the study of government.

"The trouble with rational choice," the New Republic writes, "is that it is dominating the profession and displacing...other methodologies."

Rational choice, which grew out of the study of economics in the 1970s, works under the assumption that people only act in ways that benefit them. Rational choice scholars collect large pools of data and attempt to write mathematical models that will predict how government works.

Those outside the movement, in contrast, tend to look at history, culture, education and other more specific circumstances to understand why political events unfold the way they do. The result has been contentious.

"It has become a sort of big divide," says Stanley Hoffmann, who has taught at Harvard for 45 years and--like many who favor the historical or institutional approach--may soon retire.

"Rational choice leaves out what makes politics interesting: passions," Hoffmann says.

But rational choice proponent Kenneth Shepsle, who recently ended his term as chair of Harvard's department, says his methodology is attacked simply because it is straightforward in stating its assumptions about human motivation so strongly.

"Others put much less of a premium on putting their premises on the table in a clear fashion," Shepsle says. "It's hard to punch a marshmallow."

Traditionalists admit that rational choice has a place in political science, noting that it has worked well in some predictions about how American government works.

Rational choice, for example, showed that those who would be affected by government regulations would be the only parties likely to try to influence the legislation. And so, counter-intuitively, such regulations often help rather than hinder the industries they are intended to control.

Successes notwithstanding, many of the names that made the Harvard department famous, as well as outside observers, decry rational choice.

The New Republic cites, for example, the method's famous inability to account for why any modern Americans would actually bother to vote, since logic would tell them their vote has no impact and doesn't benefit them.

And critics argue not only against the technique itself, but also against its practitioners, whom they characterize as "imperialists" and, they say, whose interest in undergraduates is often as low as student interest in their highly quantitative subject matter.

"It's dispassionate, and many students enjoy politics for its passion," Shepsle concedes. "You have to be capable of suspending your passion. That may make it more boring, but that's life."

Divide and Conquer

A scientific approach to political science is certainly nothing new. In the 1950s, for example, 'behaviorism,' which used quantitative methods to look at voting patterns, swept through political science departments across America.

But critics of rational choice say that the movement's forerunners had a very different modus operandi.

Whereas the behavioralists managed to blend into the rest of the department fairly well, rational choicers are accused of a cultishness in which they have come to exert undue control over Harvard's--among others'--Government Department.

"They do tend to evaluate all other political scholars on whether or not they are rational choice theorists," says former Harvard government professor James Q. Wilson. "They have not learned to be humble."

Recent tenure controversies, in the government department in particular, have underscored the difficulty scholars encounter in trying to navigate Harvard's tenure system, facing ad hoc committees that many on the Faculty characterize as whimsical.

Without a solid majority supporting a tenure candidate, insiders say, ad hoc approval is unlikely and rational choice academics, who comprise roughly a quarter of the senior ranks of Harvard's government department, constitute a formidable voting block in promotion decisions.

As a result, they have been able to have a significant impact on the department, particularly with Shepsle at the department's helm for the past three years.

"He had an agenda--he might deny that but he did," Hoffman says. "Some of us felt a bit run over."

'Big Tent'

But Shepsle says the department is a "big tent" and can accommodate all styles of scholarship. What is more, he continues, the department stands to benefit by incorporating as much of the cutting edge of the discipline as possible in its faculty and curriculum.

The importance of expanding the ranks of rational choice academics was put even more directly by Eaton Professor of Government Robert H. Bates, who wrote a controversial article two years ago on the need to blend quantitative research with traditional "area studies," that examine the history and culture of a particular place.

"Not only will our students need to possess area skills, such as languages; they will also need training in...formal theory, statistics and the mathematics to do both," Bates wrote, adding, "Departments will have to rethink their approach to evaluating junior personnel."

The resulting explosion of rational choice research has left political science journals looking increasingly like calculus textbooks, a trend that infuriates traditionalists. But rational choice scholars argue that the rigor of their methodology is precisely what makes it valuable to departments like Harvard's.

For the last 50 years, political science has been the easiest major at every college in America, Shepsle says. Rational choice is changing that.

"My Core course [Social Analysis 46, "Thinking About Politics: A Rational Choice Approach"]is probably more rigorous than some course in the Government department that doesn't require the technical mastery that my course requires," Shepsle says.

Yet in spite of the factions' struggle for control over the department, relations between government faculty remain cordial, insiders say, and the conflict has not become personal.

With a new chair of the department in place, who is described as sensitive and fair, the department looks to be able to avoid fracturing from the debates over how best to understand human politics.

Both sides, Hoffmann says, realize that they will need to coexist peacefully.

Still, the renowned professor adds, if he were coming up for tenure today in Harvard's government department, the rational choice contingent would make sure that he wouldn't get it.