Austin Ranney

“The Divine Science”: Political Engineering in American Culture *

The American politys designers proceeded from what John Adams called “the divine science of politics”—an approach very close to that of modern empirical political science. It was rooted in their conviction that truth is best discovered by the systematic investigation of experience; they investigated experience with methods primitive by modern standards but advanced for the eighteenth century; they applied their findings to the design of political institutions; and they regarded all institutions as experimental, to be revised when experience indicates. This faith in political and social engineering has remained ever since a major element in American political culture. It has recently been shaken by Vietnam, Watergate, and other systemic failures; but it is still far preferable to alternative faiths, especially if we today can cool our rhetoric, moderate our expectations, and recapture the pragmatic, experimental mood of those who created “the divine science.”

Working within the System: Academic Recess and College Student Participation in the 1970 Elections

The disturbances touched off on American college campuses in May 1970 by the military incursion into Cambodia and intensified by the National Guard’s killing of four white students at Kent State and the police killing of two black students at Jackson State were in several respects the culmination of seven years of mounting student protest against &dquo;the system.&dquo; There were more student demonstrations and strikes on more campuses than ever before, and more colleges altered