Frankfurt Meets Chicago: Collaborations between the Institute for Social Research and Harold Lasswell, 1933-1941

The Frankfurt School is rightly remembered for Critical Theory and for its condemnations of "scientism." Nonetheless, during its American exile, the Frankfurt School developed a remarkably constructive relationship with leading advocates for the scientific study of politics, particularly Harold Lasswell. That relationship offers an intriguing new perspective on the history of political science. First, it helps explain why the Frankfurt School retained John Dewey as its chief representative of scientism. Second, it reveals that, despite conventional narratives concerning the incompatibility of empirical political science and normative political theory, Lasswell and the Frankfurt School found important areas of conceptual overlap, particularly with respect to the politics of culture.