On Theory and Practice

Abstract

My chair at Sheffield was called “Political Theory and Institutions”. I often wonder whether the men who named it thought that they were creating two jobs or one. What was meant to be the force of that “and”? I suspect that they thought, not very precisely, that there were indeed two positions, but that they wished, as a good English compromise, to keep them close together, at least to stop them getting too far apart. They probably did not wish for a “mere theorist” or for a menu too theoretical however scholarly, therefore “and Institutions” which would seem something practical, not simply descriptive.