The American Political Science Association held its annual meeting this year in Toronto–it’s first time outside the US. Russell Arben Fox has a clever (if now slightly stale) post over at Front Porch Republic assessing the show. It hits some nice points, but then misses the big one I think. Key quote:
Political scientists–and in particular the political theorists with whom I spend most of my time, and the theoretical debates I’m most interested in following–are hardly the most expert and reliable barometers of the directions in which our shared (or at least observed) political culture may happen to be evolving at any one time. Still, it somewhat surprised me, to find that in all sorts of ways, it seemed to me that everyone was talking about, or at least opening the door to, the limits of, or the problems with, sovereignty, and centralized power, and the state.
Thus:
Still, for whatever it’s worth, if political scientists are any kind of canary in a coal mine, I can’t help but wonder if the lurking issue that may suddenly emerge to shape political thinking in the near future might simply be a sense that, well, enough is enough: that politics–state politics, national politics, to say nothing of international politics–claim too much, and try to do and to mean, too much.
Anyone see the slip there? The examples cited (especially James C Scott’s just-arrived The Art of Not Being Governed) are all well taken, but they don’t indicate disinterest in politics as such. They indicate disinterest in the politics of the nation-state. That’s a pretty revolutionary idea, on any terms–and far more so than Fox lets on. If we’re seeing political science beyond the state, and if poli-sci is the canary in the coal mine he makes it out to be, than there’s quite a ride on the horizon–and not one likely to breed the disinterest he sees coming.