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Political Realism as Anti-scholastic Practice: Methodological Lessons from Muckraking Journalism

What does the trend of “realism” in political theory portend, if anything, for how social and political scientists do their work? We can best see where realism’s rubber hits the road by re-examining the methodological comparison between political science and political journalism, according to which the academic field has long harbored assumptions of its own superiority. When the comparison between these two approaches to knowledge about politics is explicitly made, political science is typically justified by reference to distinctive (and higher) purposes and methods. Here, we reconsider conventional assumptions by reconstructing the journalistic practices and methodological reflections of two early figures in the American muckraking tradition, Lincoln Steffens and R. S. Baker. While their purposes were similar to those upheld by advocates of a publicly engaged political science, their methods, somewhat more surprisingly, are also applicable to the academic profession. Several anti-scholastic lessons on method—relevant to qualitative, quantitative, and interpretive approaches alike—emerge from the muckrakers’ example. The realist movement in political theory is congruent with the proposition that political science’s superiority complex is less easily defended and more obstructive to good research practice than even the most civically engaged researchers commonly assume.