DO NEIGHBORS MAKE GOOD FENCES? Political Theory and the Territorial Imperative

LAILTHOUGH I HAVE NOT yet succumbed to the neo-Aristotelian belief that all truth lies in the Midway, I do share with my colleagues in the Chicago Economics Department a certain faith in the virtues of comparative advantage. In wondering what aspect of the Editor's invitation to take up, therefore, I tried to see if there was any question on which I could plausibly claim that peculiarities of experience or situation gave me a perspective that might be useful. The only problem that came to mind in this context was one that has interested me for some time, for reasons that I shall explain. The problem is as follows: What is, and what ought to be, the relation between the kind of theoretical work on politics that gets done by people in political science departments and the kind of thing that people in philosophy departments do when they turn their attention to politics? As the title of my contribution suggests, these people are neighbors, defined by the areas that they cultivate; yet they maintain pretty high fences between them. I want in this essay to say something about the way in which the plots are differentiated and to argue for the intellectual advantages of (to use another expression popular on the South Side) freer trade. I shall then say something about the forces that keep the barriers between them in place and, finally, ask what are the prospects for achieving a lowering of them. The most important factor in raising the question in my mind has been my connection with two journals, Political Theory and Ethics. From the inception of Political Theory until late in 1978, I was, under one label or another, responsible for reading and advising on a number of the manuscripts submitted to it in the "analytic" (as against "historical") area; and since early in 1979, I have been responsible (together with the associate editors) for deciding what is to be accepted for publication in Ethics. Since Political T7heory attracts contributions