A Metatheoretical Analysis of the Relationship between Explanatory-Normative Dimension in Political Theory

In a general reading of political theory, including different views on politics and the political, simultaneously exists two sides of knowledge including explanatory and normative. The problem is that, what is the relationship between explanatory and normative elements, how it is established and whether they can be separated? Explanatory and normative dimensions in political theories are inextricably linked, as this entanglement, makes the boundaries between political theory and political ideology ambiguous and leads to conflict over the universality, objectivity and rationality in political theory.
Metatheoretical analysis in its reflective method, focuses on these issues in political theory. One of the major issues in contemporary political theory is that how we can get to a reconciliation between the traditional goal of politics as a normative goal concerning the necessary establishment of utopia and also modern and postmodern goal of politics as a explanatory and analytic goal that seeks to represent objective reality or subjective and linguistic constructs. From Traditional metatheoretical approach to politics in name of political philosophy to modern and post-modern metatheoretical approaches to politics oriented in experimental political theory and also hermeneutic, phenomenological, structuralist, poststructuralist and pragmatists political theory, The tangle of the explanatory and normative dimensions, has important role in the debates over the theoretical and practical validity of political theory.This article seeks to provide a metatheoretical analysis of issues related to the tangle of the explanatory and normative dimension in political theory and its ontological and epistemological results.