Disenchanted Realists: Political Science and the American Crisis, 1884-1984

Disenchanted Realists explores the intertwined fate of American political science and nineteenth and twentieth century liberal reforms. Beginning with the pre-history of political science in the 1880s, Seidelman and Harpham trace the development of political science in the Progressive period, the 1920s, the New Deal, the Cold War, the tumultuous sixties, and the crisis-ridden presidencies of Carter and Reagan.

Disenchanted Realists discusses the assumptions, hopes, and understandings of prominent liberal reformers―Woodrow Wilson, Lester Frank Ward, Charles Truman, V.O. Key, Jr., Theodore Lowi, and Walter Dean Burnham. Within this framework, the authors contend that political science in America has been closely allied with a continuing attack and ever-present disenchantment with the forms and philosophy of State organizations and mass politics.