Demarcating normative political theory from political science – and why it matters methodologically (or cheering for a hybrid empirical–normative methodology in political theory)

Scholars debating the methodology of political theory present arguments regarding the function of political science within/for normative political theory. We suggest a demarcation principle separating the core of normative political theory from political science. The suggested demarcation principle is: for a study to count as normative political theory it must include a core evaluative step, assessing the desirability (or lack thereof) of some political, social, legal or economic state of affairs. We present three views of the relations between normative political theory and empirical political science: ‘pure normative’, ‘hybrid normative–empirical’ and ‘pure empirical’. We explore the methodological implications of the demarcation principle vis-a-vis the noted categories. The main one is that the methodology of normative political theory will most likely be dualistic, hybrid normative–empirical. This implies that political theory methodology must include both evaluative and empirical parts and techniques, to avoid a crucial failure in substantiating core aspects of political theory research.