Although the idea of a universal theory of politics, both empirical and normative, remains pervasive in the discursive practices of political science and political theory, such a notion can be sustained only in a trivial sense. Since politics is a historical configuration of conventional phenomena, it cannot be assigned an ontological or theoretical status. There can be a theory of politics only in the derivative sense of a general theory of human conventions, and this entails rethinking some of the common claims about similarities and differences between natural and social science. The cognitive issue of a theory of politics must ultimately be understood in the context of the practical problem of the relationship between social science and its subject matter.
