When it first seemed 3 a long time in the past, Raymond Seidelman’s provocative examine of the heritage of political technology either attracted loads of realization and generated bright controversy. the place earlier reviews of the background of political technological know-how had targeting the evolution of the medical learn of politics, Seidelman positioned his specialize in the tenuous courting among the clinical learn of politics and the true international of yank democracy. reading paired units of political technology luminaries over a century, he unearths recurrent hopes “science of politics” could be a “science for politics,” and recurrent frustrations that neither elites nor democratic publics reply to the findings of political technological know-how or defer to its claims of medical authority. examining the explanations for political science’s restricted impression on democratic reform, Seidelman increases the chance that the innovative desires of yankee political technology, emerging and falling over the process a century, could eventually be exhausted.

For this re-creation, Bruce Miroff and Stephen Skowronek have written a foreword that relates the genesis of the booklet and the profession of the past due Ray Seidelman, whereas James Farr, a distinctive student of political technology heritage, has contributed an in depth afterword. even if readers concur with or dispute Seidelman’s conclusions concerning the functional importance of political technology, they are going to be challenged by way of the scope and gear of Disenchanted Realists. The e-book invitations a brand new iteration of political scientists to check the frustrating improvement of the self-discipline they perform and to mirror at the public meanings of what they do of their personal careers.

Raymond Seidelman (1951–2007) was once Professor of Political technological know-how at Sarah Lawrence collage and the coeditor (with Bruce Miroff and Todd Swanstrom) of Debating Democracy, 7th version: A Reader in American Politics.