Historical Concepts in Political Science: The Case of "Revolution"

Historical concepts are repeatedly used for description and explanation in political science, despite their attempted prohibition by the received view of general theory. Historical concepts are of two kinds. They are either those concepts with histories of their own in the sense that their meanings change with political changes, or they are those concepts that delimit a specific historical period. Revolution is a concept of the former kind largely because it is an essentially contested concept between revolutionary actors as much as it is a theorists' concept. Only a conceptual history can capture its full meaning. Recent attempts to fashion an ahistorical concept of revolution fail, so it is argued here. Moreover, we should expect future conceptual changes, not only in revolution but in most of our key political concepts; and such future conceptual change is unpredictable in principle. Given these various methodological considerations, we should abandon the received image of political science as an immature version of physics. Rather, political science is an essentially historical science.