Past Fellows at the Institute of International Studies

Reinhard Bendix Memorial Research Fellow, 2001-2002

Robert Adcock, Political Science: History, Comparison, and the Study of Politics: European Émigrés and the Transformation of American Social Science. This project explores American post-World War II debates about the place of historically oriented approaches within the study of politics, focusing on the impact of German-speaking scholars who migrated to the United States in the wake of the rise of the Nazis. It traces the migration of several distinctive European strands of thought, showing how émigré scholars brought to the U.S. provocative positions on the merits and problems of historical study that had emerged in the intellectual and political turmoil of inter-war Germany and Austria. The project tells the story of the reception of these strands of thought, explores their subsequent evolution in the U.S. context, and argues for their impact on the landmark work of historical social scientists such as Reinhard Bendix and Barrington Moore. In explicating this material, the study explores various alternative responses to enduring issues concerning the historical study of politics, issues such as: (1) how to combine the search for theoretical generalization with careful attention to the particularity of historical cases; and, (2) how to understand the connection (or lack thereof) between historical scholarship, normative evaluation, and the practical politics of maintaining, reforming, or revolutionizing social institutions.