This article aims to show that the analysis of the history of American Political Science can help us think critically Social Sciences in Brazil. The dominating historyographic version, represented by John Gunnell and others, ignores the ideological and antidemocratic role that behaviorist Political Science assumed during the Cold War, while more critical historical approaches are kept on the margins of the discipline. This situation mirrors the institutional arrangement of Political Science itself, which promotes the isolation of the sub area of political theory from other more "scientific" sub areas.
Political Science history; American Political Science; political theory; Cold War; positivism; behaviorist revolution