Political Science For Dummies. Marcus A. Stadelmann
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global
Unlike traditionalism, behavioralism studies the whole world. The Eurocentric view of the past disappears and more studies focus on the newly created Third World. After World War II ended, the large colonial empires of the British and French collapsed, and suddenly new countries were created mostly in Africa and Asia. This allowed for the political scientist to move away from purely studying Europe. Decolonization has created more and more exciting options to study, and behavioralism takes advantage of this.
Turning the social sciences into a real science
For centuries, the social sciences, of which political science is a part of, felt inferior to the natural sciences because they weren’t considered real or hard sciences, in the same boat as physics or chemistry, because they didn’t have any grand theories. Grand theories, which are universal in nature, are the backbone of the natural sciences. Unless you have grand theories, you’re not a real science. Physical laws, for example, transcend time and hold true everywhere. Now that is a real science.
Political science especially didn’t have any of these grand theories. So during the behavioralist period, it set out to get a few. Systems theory, an example being the Theory of Hegemonic Stability, which I discuss in Chapter 8, and culture theories, such as the Civic Culture Theory, which I cover in Chapter 3, come close to grand theory in political science. Using grand theories and being truly objective in research can qualify the discipline as a natural or real science.
Moving Leftward with Post-Behavioralism
Unlike both traditionalism and behavioralism, the school of post-behavioralism has a specific birth date. It was created by David Easton, one of the great political scientists of our time (see Chapter 19). He coined the term in his address to the American Political Science Association in 1969.
He argued that the school of behavioralism was necessary in the 1950s and had done a lot of good for the discipline. However, by trying to become a natural science, political science had forgotten what it was all about. Political scientists are supposed to deal with current problems the world is facing and help people in the process. Instead, according to Easton, behavioralists ignored the current world and its problems, instead focusing only on trying to make political science become a real science. In the process, they created grand theories that were so abstract and complex that they couldn’t be applied to the real world. Easton urged a compromise. He argued that political science should keep a part of behavioralism but ignore other parts of it. Thus the term post-behavioralism. I explain the parts of behavioralism that were kept and what were discarded in the following sections.
Agreeing with behavioralism
Post-behavioralism did not initiate a complete break from behavioralism. Instead, it kept quite a few of behavioralism’s core ideas. These include:
Explaining and studying human behavior: Post-bevioralists believe that political scientists should study human behavior and not just institutions and constitutions as traditionalists did. In addition, the emphasis on examination instead of description needed to be kept, because you could solve only current problems and help people by trying to analyze, explain, and find solutions.
Using empirical theory: The use of empirical theory needed to be maintained. Obviously, it wasn’t good enough to just assume and bring your own biases into your research if you wanted to solve current problems. The researcher had to use mathematics, especially statistics, to conduct testable research. Only empirical theory could guarantee explanations to deal with modern-day problems.
Having a global perspective: Political scientists needed to maintain their emphasis on the newly developing countries in Asia and Africa. Eurocentrism had to be rejected because, by the late 1960s, most nations weren’t in Europe or the Americas but were located in Africa and Asia. Therefore, the study of nation-states had to be moved into the developing world.
Differing from behavioralism
While accepting many of behavioralism’s ideas and concepts, post-behavioralism had some big differences. First, there was major disagreement over whether political science and the rest of the social sciences should try to become a real science like the natural sciences. The question was why political science should be like chemistry if it meant giving up doing real-world research that could actually help people. Also, many political scientists flat out rejected the idea that a social scientist could actually conduct objective or value-neutral research. Most post-behavioralists rejected the notion of positivism (see the section “Being truly objective,” earlier in this chapter), instead adhering to a school of thought referred to as historicism.
Post-behavioralists also believe that all thought is bound by the time period you grow up in. Someone growing up in the 1850s perceives research differently from someone conducting research in the 21st century. Therefore, true objective knowledge is impossible. People are subjective, formed by the environment they grew up in, even if they claim to be objective in nature.
Post-behavioralists also argue that objectivity doesn’t exist and that not just all social scientists are subjective but everybody is. Society needs to accept this.
Post-behavioralists don’t believe that grand theory can be discovered in the social sciences, including political science, and don’t support even attempting to create it. For them, grand theory is so abstract that it can’t be used to explain current problems and therefore there’s no use for it. They argue that the political scientist should forget about turning political science into a real science and should also forget calling for pure objectivity in research because it doesn’t exist.
Finally, post-behavioralists advised for more third-world studies and fewer studies of the advanced world. They were especially concerned with the emphasis behavioralism placed on democracies. Many behavioralist theories worked best in established democracies and weren’t adaptable to other forms of government.
Post-behavioralists became fully third-world oriented and will often travel to third-world countries to immerse themselves in local cultures to better understand the local cultures and their politics.
Comparing Political Science Theories
In this book, the term theory is used on many occasions. What is a theory? Are theories important to the field of political science? The answer is a clear yes. Without theories, the discipline of political science is quite useless. Theories are an integral part of the study of political science, especially some of its subfields such as international relations and comparative politics.
A theory is defined as a general explanation of behavior or events. It can be applied across