Chaos and Political Science: How Floods and Butterflies Have Proved to Be Relevant to Move Tables Closer

Abstract

Political Studies have traditionally struggled to acquire the status and reputation of a scientific discipline. Any historical overall review of the upsurge of Political Science show persisting debates on the predictive capacity of the study of politics or even on the possibility to elaborate law-based explanations of political phenomena. In this vein Behaviouralism and Rational choice, which along the XX century undoubtedly became the two most important schools of research in Political Science, have strongly contributed to the normalization of the discipline, but also have incorporated, as a side-effect, a set of principles related to the Newtonian paradigm into Political Science. This contribution argues that these assumptions require now further developments, and proposes the analytical framework provided by Chaos Theory as a plausible way to re-conceptualize the ontological and epistemological foundations of Political Science. In so doing, it is defended that the school of research of Historical Institutionalism proportionates a rich conceptual framework in political analyses that perfectly fits the general assumptions of Chaos Theory. So much so, it is assumed that concepts intrinsically associated to this analytical approach such as path-dependency, increasing returns or critical junctures could arguably find their equivalents in the ideas of sensibility to initial conditions, irreversability of nonlinear trajectories and breaking points. Finally, it is defended that the history of the European Union integration provides unbeatable examples of how social and political processes can perfectly be narrated by means of the conceptual framework of Chaos Theory, and some particular episodes are discussed in a tentative way to open the door to richer and more specific empirical studies.