Kuhnian and Lakatosian's Political Order: Flexible or Hard?

Kuhn's paradigm and Lakatos's scientific research program, as two competing methodological traditions, created new perspectives on the history of science and knowledge/truth. This article tries to bridge the methodology of these two historians of science to theoretical politics, and raises the following questions: What political order does Kuhn and Lakatos's methodology imply? Is this political order hard (rigid) or soft (flexible)? How do these political orders change? This article tries to answer these questions based on the principle of compatibility (compatibility of results with basic principles). This article shows that the Kuhnian and Lakatosian's political order are both based on competition and conflict; But once established, they create a hard to semi-rigid order, the former accepting pluralism and change (reform) only within the framework of the hegemonic paradigm, and the latter merely on marginal issues that are not dangerous to the hard core of power. Nevertheless, the revolution in Kuhnian's political order is a little easier than Lakatosian's. Kuhn's relativistic methodology accepts that there is no superior substantive order; Thus, in a critical situation, that is, the loss of efficiency and the consensus of the elites, we can move towards a new order. But Lakatosian's historiographical methodology creates a more conservative order; Because he emphasizes that the hard core of the political order must be given the opportunity to reveal all its potential in the context of history, and it can only give way to a new political order if it does not produce empirical and theoretical content. In general, these orders are anti-dissident.