Christine Sypnowich at Aeon:
It is often remarked that, for most of the 20th century, political theory languished in the shadow of scientistic views that had dominated philosophy as a whole. Logical positivism insisted on the strict delineation of conceptual from empirical enquiry, matters of fact from matters of value, themes that lingered in the succeeding school of ordinary language philosophy. Murdoch blamed the dominance of a sterile logical analysis for contributing to the lack of vision and creativity in progressive thought. Whereas moral philosophy, as Murdoch put it, ‘survived by the skin of its teeth’, turning itself into a meta-discipline concerned with understanding concepts, political philosophy ‘almost perished’. The intrinsically controversial nature of prescriptions about justice, equality and liberty was replaced with an analysis of how words were used; gone was the ancient Greeks’ idea of political philosophy as reasoned enquiry into how we ought to live in common.
The diminished role of political philosophy as a normative exercise doubtless reflected not just an empiricist outlook in philosophy but also a smug acceptance of the empirically given, that is, the ascription of an automatic legitimacy to the liberal institutions of capitalist democracies in the postwar period.
more here.