The Role of Theory in Historical Political Researches: Calls for Rethinking the Role of Theory in Political Science

What is the role or roles of theory in historical political researches? This article tries to answer this question. While behaviorists and postmodernist, each in their own ways, define narrowly the role of theory in historical political research or reduce its role to some aspects, this article by using analytical method, specifies that political theory in historical research has at least five main roles. Accordingly, the article makes clear that theories can play some roles such as a guide for selecting the facts of the research, as a purpose of the research, as a toolkit of the research, as a disputed subject of the research and finally as a casual articulation of the research. Unlike other approaches, firstly, the article emphasizes that the role of the theory in historical political research is diverse and plural ones. Secondly, minimal or reductive vision of the role of theory in political research should be abandoned in favor of the vision that suggests theories have multiple and diverse roles. This means that historical political researches invite political science authors to redefine the role of theory in political researches far more extensive than before.