How Political Science Uses History

Please join CRISPI in welcoming Andrew Hindmoor (University of Sheffield) for a seminar on How Political Science Uses History.

In 1991 Dennis Kavanagh, at that point still based in Nottingham, wrote a piece in Political Studies called ‘Why Political Science Needs History’. I’ve returned to his analysis recently whilst preparing a chapter on the relationship between politics and history for a new edition of Adrian Leftwich’s classic text What is Politics? In this seminar I’d like to reflect on Kavanagh’s piece and outline and discuss my ideas for that chapter. There is a whole lot of history in the academic study of politics but this history tends to be: (1) (much) more modern; (2) (relatedly) less dependent upon archives; (3) often more politically engaged; and (4) more heavily theory-driven. In trying to tease-out some of the ways in which historians and political scientists use history, I dwell upon the way in which Graham Allison draws upon history in Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap? And R.G. Collingwood’s blistering broadsides against Thucydides in his The Idea of History.