Differences between Normative and Empirical Political Theory are as follows :
While several approaches to political science have been advocated from time to time, and many of them have often co-existed simultaneously, they might be broadly divided into two categories – the empirical-analytical or the scientific-behavioral approach on one side and the legal-historical or the normative-philosophical approach on the other, and each of these two approaches has been mainly demarcated from the other by the emphasis it lays on facts as against values or on values as against facts.
Two opposing positions are taken up in this respect by those who have been described by Robert Dahl as Empirical Theorists and Trans-empirical Theorists. The empirical theorists believe that an empirical science of politics based on facts alone is possible, whereas the others, the trans-empirical theorists, are of the opinion that the study of politics neither can nor should be purely scientific. The controversy mainly revolves a round two major issues:
i) Can political analysis be neutral?
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ii) Should political analysis be neutral?
Regarding the first, the empirical theorists are certain that it is possible to isolate and to test the empirical aspect of our beliefs about politics without the necessity of going into the value-laden question of whether the empirical propositions are true or false. A ‘correct’ decision on what is empirically true is not the same as a ‘correct’ decision on what ought to be. Whether values are derived from God’s will, or natural laws, or are purely subjective in nature, as the existentialists believe.
Facts are there for all to see and can be subjected to empirical tests, whereas values cannot be tested this way. Whether the stability of popular governments in general or in a particular country is in any way dependent on literacy, multi-party systems, proportional representation, a two-party system, whether it can best function under single-member constituencies, are questions which can be tested empirically, irrespective of the fact whether they are concerning the right or the wrong political systems.
The trans-empiricists, on the other hand, believe that whatever be the situation in the natural sciences, facts and values are so closely inter-twined with each other that, in the study of politics, one cannot separate them except in the most trivial instances. Whatever one might pretend, they would say, one is making value judgments all the time.
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Any comprehensive theory about politics, they argue, must inevitably contain evaluations not merely of the empirical validity of the factual statements in the theory, but also of the moral quality of the political events, processes or systems described in the theory. It is, therefore, an illusion to think, according to the trans-empiricists, that there can be a completely objective theory of politics.