Most government concentrators come to their department expecting to immerse themselves in the history of Congress, the courts and the constitution.

But, warns this month's New Republic, technophobes beware: today's political science students may find themselves learning more about statistics than the Federalist Papers.

Harvard's Government Department, a longtime powerhouse of thought on American politics and international relations, is embroiled in academic controversy as a new approach to the social sciences threatens to split it into two opposing camps.

Rational Rationale

In a cover article titled "Revenge of the Nerds," the New Republic describes the rise of a school of thought in political science known as 'rational choice' that contrasts sharply with much of the department's traditional work and is, for some, antithetical to the highest ideas in the study of government.

"The trouble with rational choice," the New Republic writes, "is that it is dominating the profession and displacing...other methodologies."

Rational choice, which grew out of the study of economics in the 1970s, works under the assumption that people only act in ways that benefit them. Rational choice scholars collect large pools of data and attempt to write mathematical models that will predict how government works.

Those outside the movement, in contrast, tend to look at history, culture, education and other more specific circumstances to understand why political events unfold the way they do. The result has been contentious.