On the Relationship Between History and Political Science

Over the last couple of decades, political scientists in the field of comparative politics have regained interest in studying the past to better understand the present. Among PhD students, the numbers of those who seek to study Historical Political Economy (HPE) is steadily increasing. It is ironic then that in recent decades, the disciplines of history and political science have grown increasingly apart in terms of method and the desire to generalize. I ask here how historians and political scientists can interact with each other in the spirit of a genuine two-way conversation. I ask also how we should teach our graduate students to study history.