Political Theory as Profession and as Subfield?

In: Political research quarterly: PRQ ; official journal of the Western Political Science Association and other associations, Band 63, Heft 3, S. 655-673

Abstract

How does the enterprise of political theory create and sustain the borders that account for its appearance as a distinguishable profession? In this article, the author considers and criticizes a recent effort to defend political theory's right to exist in the form of one of several subfields constitutive of the academic discipline of professional political science in the United States. The author closes by suggesting that theorists might be better positioned to think critically about politics, and the politics of liberalism more particularly, if this self-representation were to be unsettled and possibly jettisoned altogether.