Statement of principles of the Project for a New Political Science

The statement of principles for the Project for a New Political Science outlines its philosophical foundations and the goal it pursues.

It is our humble opinion that the current status of political science makes it useless to the benefit of modern civilization. Political science has offered far less to humankind than every single other field of scientific inquiry. It is much more often the case that political science is a source of destruction, misery and death than a source of wise understanding on the governing of our societies. Far from merely being a problem for academics, it concerns each human being equally.

In the latest case of failed political science, the neoconservative view of the world has led to massive domestic intelligence failure in the United States, criminal neglect of domestic duties by the Bush Administration and created a war that killed tens of thousands, will cost the American treasury upwards of one trillion dollars, making the country less safe because of budget diversion from first response security measures.

The entire academic field of political science has led a large part in this folly. Political scientists should have voiced strongly against the magical conclusions on which the Project For A New American Century, whose statement of principles is the basis of the Bush administration’s domestic and foreign policies, was grounded. Between the axioms on which neoconservatives based their judgements and the consequences they believed would result were countless unknowns that made their whole thinking irrelevant.

Despite seemingly magical conclusions acting on a scale far beyond the most basic understanding of any actual field of science, there was neither consulting of political scientists nor objection on their parts. This is largely because political science is still largely incapable of synthesizing a coherent scientific language that can be applied to judge on the validity of a claim. There is no equivalent to the scientific method in political science. In result, political scientists have no credibility in their own field of expertise.

The subject of whether or not political science can truly be a scientific field is an important introduction theme of political science classes. Sadly, it is one that is not pursued further. There is little need for political science if it cannot achieve a consensus on how its science can actually function. I agree with all critics of this simplistic strategy, it is going to be hard. But hardness has not yet stopped us in any other field of science. They are all growing while the science of politics is essentially identical to its beginnings, 25 centuries ago. All the advances to political science are credited to other fields of science, such as information science, electronics and engineering. The field of political science has simply not created one piece of useful knowledge on its own. It is thus our conclusion that political science should entirely reverse its course, dismiss much of its work and focus on developing tools and methods on which a truly scientific understanding of political institutions and dynamics can be understood. Political science must first work on itself, before thinking of applying its understanding on the most complex entity in our known universe: human civilization.

Political scientists have tried to apply shaky understanding with very poor results for several centuries. It is time to recognize that this strategy fails miserably and consistently.

At political science’s core should at least stand the utter rejection of magical claims such as those on which all American policy-making is based in George W Bush’s administration. The neoconservative thinking is on par with Nazism, authoritarian Communism and Rastafarianism in the sense that it is based on causation that need leaps of faith to accept, as there is no evidence whatsoever things will end as planned. Most people simply shrug at the implications and absolve themselves by saying the ends justify the needs, oblivious to the fact that the means always become the ends.

The Project For A New Political Science (PNPS) therefore seeks to gather and present truly scientific tools and methods of judging institutions and policies in a methodical equivalent of the scientific method in natural sciences. Where political science focuses on the ends, this strategy focuses on the means. This means direct observation of all political decision-making, applying the same methods of standardized data gathering used in psychology, sociology and management. Political scientists need to study politicians more than they need to study government’s theoretical description.

PNPS also seeks to focus on the inner details of political institutions, rather than their institutional functions. Political science has forever been plagued by the incapacity to observe its own subject of study. It is as such that one of the most important goals undertaken in this project is to present a case for opening all policy-making institutions to full disclosure, allowing political scientists to study government as it is, rather than as they believe it to be, for the first time.