Abstract

BLANCO-RIVERO, José Javier. From the Theory of Forms of Government to the Evolution of Power: Scientific Language and Complexity in Political Science. Pap.polit. [online]. 2017, vol.22, n.2, pp.395-425. ISSN 0122-4409.  https://doi.org/10.11144/javeriana.papo22-2.tfge.

This text has as the objective of formulating an epistemological critique of political science, questioning the ontology underlying its conceptual framework. These conceptual settings bear some epistemological obstacles that are mostly evident in political regimes’ typologies. With the aim to formulate a correction, I resort to the theory of power evolution based on Niklas Luhmann’s political sociology. In the epistemological and historical analysis of political science I employ a methodology of the Foucaultian archeology of knowledge and the Cambridge School of intellectual history, as well as some elements of formal logics underlying systems theory; while in its purposive part the article bears upon a socio-systemic vision of socio-cultural evolution. It is concluded that this ontological burden can be left behind by shifting to a complexity paradigm which develops a new and non-ontological language. This could be achieved by reframing crucial problems, with relation to power as a means to communicate and the functional differentiation of a political system. A salient contribution of the text is the category of cyclical configurations of power, which intends to describe with higher fidelity the set of problems that has been usually object of political regimes theory.

Keywords : political science; power; evolution; success means; ontologism; complexity.

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