Stormakterna. Rudolf Kjellén och vetenskapligheten

Abstract

The Great Powers. Rudolf Kjellén and scientificity

Stormakterna (“The great powers”) appeared with three editions (1905, 1911–13, 1920), allowing a real-time adjusting approach. Frustrated with traditional political science, with its constitutional, historical studies, Kjellén wanted to remake the study of politics into a proper, modern social science. Inspired by teaching duties in geography and statistics he examines the great powers with methodological approaches of quantitative measurements to establish great power competitive competence, but he dismisses subjective “statesmen”. He compares these solid units in order to generalize about them, using also mock natural science techniques, such as experiments, implicitly also falsification. In the end, in the 1920 edition, history creeps back in, in several dimensions. His encompassing, nation by nation study, contains a number of intriguing and readable, though speculative observations.