How Political Science Can Enrich Other Disciplines

It’s a great honor being here today. And I appreciate the chance to speak at this very distinguished lecture series in honor of Johann Skytte. I understand that when Johann Skytte donated the world’s first professorship in political science, he originally named it the professorship of Eloquence and Government. Well, the government part flourished, but you’ll see today that the perhaps the eloquence part did not do quite as well. It’s a wonderful coincidence that almost thirty years ago the first translation of my book on the Evolution of Cooperation was the Swedish edition. And just this month, an Arabic edition is being published, and I hope that my own modest efforts in recent years to promote peace in the Middle East has had something to do with the new availability of my book in Arabic. But today, I don’t plan to talk about international politics. Instead, I’d like to talk about the discipline of Political Science itself. I’ll do so in terms of some things Political Science has gained from other disciplines and especially what it has to offer to other disciplines. To illustrate my themes, I’ll use my own experience with research on the evolution of cooperation. In the interests of full disclosure, some pieces of what I’ll be talking about today I have already published. But I think is was Paul Samuelson who said that there is only one absolute ethical principle in academics, and that is that you can’t publish the same paper more than three times. By that standard, I’m quite safe.