The new political science puts a premium on observations which can be made with the utmost frequency, and therefore by people of the meanest capacities. Democracy is then the tacit presupposition of the data it does not have to become a theme it can easily be forgotten: the wood is forgotten for the trees the laws of human behavior are in fact laws of the behavior of human beings more or less molded by democracy man is tacitly identified with democratic man. The new political science looks for laws of human behavior to be discovered by means of data supplied through certain techniques of research which are believed to guarantee the maximum of objectivity it therefore puts a premium on the study of things which occur frequently now in democratic societies: neither those in their graves nor those behind the Curtains can respond to questionnaires or interviews. We call this characteristic of the new political science its democratism. That version of liberal democracy is not discussed openly and impartially, with full consideration of all relevant pros and cons. The alleged value-free analysis of political phenomena is controlled by an unavowed commitment built into the new political science to that version of liberal democracy. There is, then, more than a mysterious pre-established harmony between the new political science and a certain version of liberal democracy. Reprinted in Liberalism Ancient and Modern. Storing, Holt Rinehart and Winston, 1962. "An Epilogue," Essays on the Scientific Study of Politics, ed.
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