№ 6 - 2003
Boytzova O.Yu.
Normativism in Western Political Thought: the Problem of Definition

On thoroughly analyzing modes of interpreting normativism that exist in Western political thought, the author comes to the conclusion that the “normativism” category is devoid of clear-cut, strictly fixed content and is applied for the characterization of intellectual trends that are very much apart. Although the term “normativism” is one of the most noticeable among notions figuring in Western political science and is actively used when analyzing most different research tendencies, nevertheless a theoretical and methodological approach it is supposed to designate, usually fails to fall within the field of consideration by scholars. As a result, the author states, specificity of the said approach hasn’t by the present time been determined and the question of whether it is possible at all to find out general characteristics proper to this theoretical and methodological trend and whether there exists any invariant “minimum of normativism”, hasn’t got an answer.