BEHAVIORALISM

in
POLITICAL
SCIENCE
BEHAVIORALISM
in
POLITICAL
SCIENCE

Heinz Eulau
editor

1 3 Routledge
Taylor & Francis Group
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First published 1969 by Transaction Publishers

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L ibrary o f C ongress C atalog Num ber: 2010038247

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Behavioralism in political science / Heinz Eulau, editor.

p. cm.
Originally published: N ew York : Atherton Press. 1969.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4128-1852-0 (alk. paper)
1. Behaviorism (Political science) 2. Political science. I. Eulau,
Heinz, 1915-2004.

JA74.5.B435 2011
320.01--dc22
2010038247

ISB N 13: 978-1-4128-1852-0 (pbk)

BEH AV IO RA LIS M IN
POLITICAL SCIENCE
 Contents

Preface ix
Tradition and Innovation: On the Tension
between Ancient and Modern Ways in
the Study of Politics 1
HEINZ EULAU

1 : The Condition of American Political Science 22

DAVID EASTON

2 : The Impact on Political Science of the Revolution

in the Behavioral Sciences 38
DAVID B. TRUMAN

3 : The Behavioral Approach in Political Science:

Epitaph for a M onument to a Successful Protest 68
ROBERT A. DAHL

4 : What Is Political Philosophy?

The Problem of Political Philosophy 93
LEO STRAUSS
5 : Politics and Pseudopolitics: A Critical Evaluation
of Some Behavioral Literature 109
CHRISTIAN BAY

6 : “Behavioristic” Tendencies in American

Political Science 141
PETER H. MERKL

Index 153
 Preface

This volume is one in a continuing series of

attempts to communicate to the student a feeling for what
behavioralism in the study of politics is all about— in this
case by presenting the polemical context in which the be­
havioral persuasion originated, grew, and matured.
In a first little book, published some years ago,1 I tried to
set forth, in a simple manner unencumbered by references to
empirical research, what I thought the behavioral approaches
in political science were. Curiously, what I had thought was
the book’s virtue was promptly criticized as its vice by my
good friend and fellow traveler in the political behavior
movement, Robert E. Lane. It seemed to Lane that “the
only way to advance the argument over the fruitfulness of
one way of looking at the field, compared to another, is to
come to grips with what others have said about it.” And
second, Lane had “always thought that one of the virtues
of the behavioral approach is the intimate relation between
 x : Preface
theory and data; each helps the other. This is a theoretical
book, but there are no references to the studies which in­
form it, or which illuminate and illustrate the points made.
Eulau has chosen to argue his case without showing what
the behavioral approach can do.”2
Lane was both right and wrong. He was wrong in that, as
I still insist, a forced march through the labyrinth of schol­
arly research, overburdened with charts, tables, and sta­
tistics, is not conducive to communication with the student.
He was right in that a book of empirical readings— which I
had planned to prepare, and finally did bring out3— is use­
ful; but, as I pointed out then, and would point out again
here, it is best to leave it up to the instructor to choose from
the relevant empirical material what he might consider con­
ducive to learning.
Lane’s review also raised a point that, in fact, informs the
rationale behind this, the present volume. Feeling a simple
explication would be more effective in my own communica­
tion with the student, I did not choose, in that first volume,
to advance the argument for behavioralism in politics by
“coming to grips with what others have said about it.” But
I have, however indirectly, done so here by inviting the stu­
dent to make that confrontation.
Here the student will meet articulate exponents of several
points of view, each a thoughtful, thought-provoking theorist
responsible in some part for the way we now think of the
political life. Professors Easton, Truman, Dahl, Strauss, Bay,
and Merkl— all have my thanks for giving me permission to
use their essays in this volume.
 PREFACE : Xi

NOTES

1. The Behavioral Persuasion in Politics (N ew York: Random

House, 1963).
2. American Political Science Review, 58 (March 1964), 105.
3. Political Behavior in America: N ew Directions (New York:
Random House, 1966).
 Tradition and Innovation:
On the Tension between
Ancient and Modern Ways
in the Study o f Politics
HEINZ EULAU

Changes in the thought-ways of science are usu­

ally accompanied by lively intellectual conflicts between
opposing or divergent points of view. Indeed, the clash of
ideas is probably a major ingredient of whatever it is that
stimulates the life of the mind in whatever manifestation of
human culture. Although for some self-appointed custodians
of the Truth such conflicts are often a source of despair, it
is in the crucible of arguments and counter-arguments, of
proofs and disproofs, that changes in the arts and sciences
take place.
In the last thirty years or so, but more intensively in the
years since the Second World War, the study of politics has
been rocked by disagreements over its scope, theories, and
methods. Although these disagreements were no more and
perhaps somewhat less frequent than in most sciences, natu­
ral or behavioral, they were at times conspicuously bitter
and tendentious. It may be that the subject m atter of political

1
2 : Tradition and Innovation

science— politics and all that is involved in politics— has a

kind of halo effect: because the stakes of politics make men
fight and sometimes die for what they claim as their due, po­
litical scientists seem to confuse academic with political
stakes, behaving as if the victories and defeats on the battle­
ground of the intellect resemble those on the battleground of
political life.
But we can also look at the controversies of the last few
years in a different light. Perhaps they indicate that political
scientists take their work seriously and expect it to have
serious consequences for the course of events in the real
world of politics. In this perspective, the debates suggest
that political scientists have a profound sense of personal
responsibility for the effects of their discoveries on the shape
and quality of public affairs. It may be that this sense of
responsibility is greater than the impact of political science
on the real world of politics warrants. But it is there, and its
being there might well be taken into account if one seeks to
understand the dedication and commitment of the scholarly
warriors.
On close inspection one would find that the controversies
in political science cover a wide range of topics. But, for bet­
ter or for worse, they have tended to be harnessed together
under a single label— “behaviorism” or “behavioralism.” As a
result of this reduction of many controversies to the single
issue, the identification of “sides” has not always been easy.
And, in fact, no such identification has ever been successful.
Nevertheless, by the late sixties, it has become reasonably
clear that most of the controversies, whatever their immedi­
ate topics, have involved what one may call, as in so many
other fields of cultural endeavor, “the battle of the ancients
versus the moderns.” The real issue, it turns out, is the issue
of tradition and innovation in scientific development.
Again, this is not to say that the “traditionalists” have been
united, opposing the new tendencies for the sake of tradi­
tion, or that the “innovators” have been united, promoting
 HEINZ EULAU : 3

the new trends for the sake of innovation. In fact, as the con­
troversies have unfolded and hitherto unspoken premises are
clarified in the course of debate, it has not been uncommon
to find common ground between some of the ancients and
some of the moderns.
Intellectual battle lines, then, are not clear. Nevertheless,
three issues seem critical: First, there has been disagreement
over the nature of the knowledge of political things— is a
science of politics possible, or is the study of politics a mat­
ter of philosophy? Second, and closely related to the first
issue, there has been controversy over the place of values in
the study of politics— a controversy that makes for a great
deal of confusion. And third, there has been disagreement
over the basic units of analysis in the study of politics—
should the political scientist study individual and collective
behavior, or should he limit himself to the study of institu­
tions apd large-scale processes? There are other contro­
versies, and there are differing points of view and points of
departure within the newer study of political behavior and
political sociology. But, in general, the m ain issues have been
the nature of political knowledge, the place of values, and
the choice of units of analysis.
It is the purpose of this collection of essays to bring to­
gether at least some of the writings that, in the recent past,
have sought to come to grips with these issues. Yet, strangely
enough, in searching for relevant and worthwhile selections,
I was astounded by the paucity of appropriate materials.
There were some that might have been included but were
not because they were expository of the behavioral persua­
sion rather than argumentative.1 And there were others that
might have been chosen b ut were not because they were,
at the other extreme, so disengaged that the debaters, rather
than talking to each other, only succeeded in talking past
each other.2
But even if one takes these and other writings into ac­
count, it seems that many of the controversies over behav-
4 : T radition and Innovation

ioralism in political science have been subterranean— fought

out at professional conferences or within university depart­
ments rather than in the printed communication media. Just
why this has been the case is difficult to say, and I can speak
with reasonable confidence only about the attitude of those
on the behavioral side. I remember a conversation with the
late Morton Grodzins in the early fifties after a particularly
frustrating round-table session at an annual meeting of the
American Political Science Association. It was his position
that we should minimize fruitless debates with our antago­
nists and, instead, get on with the empirical research— for
much work was to be done— and not let ourselves be de­
railed by futile controversy. The burden of proof, he felt,
was on us to produce the kind of work that, sooner or later,
would find acceptance on its merits. Of course, complete
disengagement was impossible, and from time to time it
would be necessary to speak out. But the position that
Grodzins took is of interest because it reveals why leading
practitioners of the new political science sought to avoid
being drawn into an endless Methodenstreit. Perhaps most
suggestive in this respect was their reception of an ill-tem­
pered attack on their work by a number of political philos­
ophers of the school of Leo Strauss.3 They remained silent
while the counterattack was mounted by two political theo­
rists who could hardly be suspected of being mouthpieces of
the behavioral movement.4 But Grodzins’ position also be­
spoke the enormous optimism that he and others brought to
the empirical research enterprise. The spirit of these years
was to get on with the work, confident in the belief that the
innovative tendencies would surely prevail.
In part, the silence of the behavior-oriented, empirical
researchers was filled by David Easton in a book that after
a lukewarm reception has come to have considerable impact
on the direction of political science.5 Easton thoroughly cas­
tigated the discipline for its theoretical antiquarianism, its
methodological backwardness, its failure to march at the
 HEINZ EULAU : 5

frontiers of inquiry alongside the behavioral sciences. Eas­

ton’s view of the state of the discipline was widely shared by
the generation for which he spoke. Not that all of us agreed
with his pessimism, his tendency to reify concepts, his de­
mand for autonomous theory, his quest for global rather
than limited models, or his position on the relationship be­
tween political science and public policy. But his general
critique of the discipline fell on willing ears, and once he
had spoken there was little else to be said.
If Easton spoke for the theorists who found the established
political science wanting, so David Truman spoke for those
more empirically oriented researchers who had been so
greatly influenced by Charles E. Merriam and his colleagues
at the University of Chicago during the twenties and thirties.
Unlike the disaffected theorists, this group was somewhat
closer to the ongoing political process and had, perhaps, a
somewhat firmer grasp of political reality. As Trum an made
clear in a widely appreciated essay on the changing focus
of political science, to pose the issue of ancient and modern
ways of doing things in terms of “institutional” versus “be­
havioral” analysis was neither necessary nor desirable.® And
subsequent developments have confirmed Trum an’s diag­
nosis: The issue of behavioralism versus institutionalism has
largely disappeared.
Both institutionalists and behavioralists have discovered
their common commitment to the empirical investigation of
political phenomena, and have discovered that just as an
institution is not something independent of behavior, so be­
havior is not something independent of an institutional set­
ting. Neglect of institutional or situational context, just as
neglect of social behavior, was likely to distort the scientific
perception of political reality. Political behaviorists have
come to realize that in attempting to explain the varieties of
political behavior, institutions provide their own methodo­
logical advantages.
It may be useful to illustrate the convergence of institu­
6 : Tradition and Innovation

tional and behavioral analysis by referring to two pieces of

research published, within the short span of two years, in
1960 and 1962. In their remarkable The American Voter
(1960) the individual voter was the unit of analysis for Angus
Campbell and his associates, but they utilized the data gath­
ered at the level of the individual to develop a suggestive
theory of elections as institutionalized events at the system
level of analysis.7 On the other hand, in The Legislative Sys­
tem (1962), John C. Wahlke and his colleagues began with
the institutional setting of the legislature as the given, ex­
plored the variety of attitudes and roles, norms and re­
lationships of individual legislators, and concluded with a
description of the institution as a system of highly patterned
behavior.8 If one contrasts either work with earlier studies,
behavioralist or “traditional,” of voting behavior or of legis­
lative bodies, the convergence in scientific outlook is marked
indeed.
A similar convergence of what were at one time considered
ancient and modern ways of political inquiry occurred in
the controversy over synchronic versus diachronic analysis.
On the one hand, charges were not uncommon that historical
studies of political events or of institutional or policy devel­
opments were of purely antiquarian interest and failed to
take account of contemporary theoretical and methodological
advances— in short, that they failed to contribute to the
growth of a science of politics. On the other hand, studies
of political behavior, and especially those dependent on the
survey as the instrument of data collection, were criticized
for lack of historical depth and long-range significance.
Once more two works of the sixties may serve to illustrate
how this particular controversy has been buried. In his Who
Governs? (1962), Robert A. Dahl was primarily interested
in discovering the distribution of influence in an American
city at the time of inquiry.9 But he provided a rich historical
background by tracing the circulation of the city’s elite
through time and combining it with case analyses of several
 HEINZ EULAU 7

policy-making arenas and a cross-sectional study of resource

distribution among the population. And in The Rulers and
the Ruled (1964), Robert E. Agger and his associates com­
bined a comparative, cross-sectional analysis of power rela­
tionships in four communities with an ingenious technique
for coping with the problem of comparing the developmental
stages of political change.10 By providing a high degree of
historical depth to their analysis without being “historical,”
these authors demonstrated that there is no necessary con­
flict between behavioral and historical methods.
Only eight years had passed after Easton’s 1953 com­
plaint about the “malaise” of political science when Robert
Dahl could write an “epitaph for a monument to a successful
protest.”11 Taking a long look at what had happened in
political science and how it had happened, Dahl was pleased.
What he said, in effect, was that the old political science was
dead. It would be idle to speculate whether the behavioral
mood, as Dahl called it, had conquered political science, or
whether it had been coopted by political science. The conse­
quence, as Dahl saw it, was the same. But perhaps more
symbolic of the changed state of affairs was the fact that
Dahl’s epitaph was not disputed. It seems to me that it
should have been, for even today it strikes me as unduly
optimistic. If scientific development in the social sciences
were as linear and cumulative as it is in the natural and physi­
cal sciences, Dahl’s optimism would be appropriate. But, I
fear, though cumulation is certainly a desirable goal of a
science of politics, it is not in fact characteristic of the social
sciences. As I said on another occasion:

The history o f political science as an independent field o f

inquiry can be written as a history o f successive em ancipations
from earlier lim itations and false starts. Y et, these successive
emancipations have been additive rather than cum ulative: the
old survives with the new, and the old acquires new defenders
as the new relies on old apostles. It is im possible to say, there­
fore, that anything has been disproven as long as conventional
8 : Tradition and Innovation

tests of proof— the requisites o f scientific status in any field

o f knowledge— are not commonly accepted by political scien­
tists, or, in fact, are rejected by som e as altogether irrelevant
in political inquiry.12

To put this somewhat differently, it seems to me that the

social sciences are characterized by an immanent tension
between tradition and innovation, between the ancient and
the modern. In the social sciences traditional ways of doing
things have a power to survive that is quite unlike the situa­
tion in the natural sciences. This is not to say that this need
be the case. I am saying that it is the case, whether we like
it or not. I expect, therefore, that the traditional ways of
legal-institutional, historical, rational-speculative analysis that
have come down to us from the Greeks and Romans will
continue to be practiced by scholarly students of politics.
To argue that the work of those who cherish these approaches
is inferior strikes me as inappropriate. Because what they
are doing is different from what the behavioral scientists are
doing does not mean that one or the other approach is supe­
rior. But it does mean, I think, that there will be continued
tension in the academic study of politics between ancient
and modern ways of thought.
My own interpretation of what has happened in political
science differs from Dahl’s, then, in that I see the behav­
ioral movement more as a successful renaissance than as a
successful revolution. It is in the nature of a renaissance to
look both forward and backward, to seek out what seems
worthwhile in the past in order to shape a more viable future.
The behavioral persuasion has come to be recognized as an
integral part of the established political science rather than
as a new establishment. It has come to be recognized not
because its models and methods are somehow “right” and
other approaches “wrong” but because it has produced ex­
cellent work at the frontiers of the study of politics. It would
be folly to claim that only behavioral scientists can do good
work on politics. There are behavioral studies of politics,
 HEINZ EULAU 9

perhaps more than one might wish for, that are bad, just as
there are traditional or conventional studies that are good
by their own standards of excellence. It would be hybris
to believe that the behavioral-scientific movement will drive
the more traditional ways of studying politics out of the
temple of political science. Intellectual obsolescence is al­
ways around the corner, and the behavioral persuasion in
the study of politics is not immune.
Lest I be accused of a sweet reasonableness that is neither
my temperament nor my goal, let me turn to Leo Strauss’
critique of the new political science. For this critique repre­
sents, better than any other, the “ancient” ways of seeing
political phenomena. His essay on “W hat Is Political Philos­
ophy?” is remarkable because it joins clearly the issues of
knowledge and values in the study of politics.13 Strauss at­
tacked behavioralism— as he interpreted it— as a form of
positivism that seeks a “value-free” political science. There
is no need for me to summarize Strauss’ arguments, for no
one speaks as well for his point of view as Strauss himself.
But because behavioralists have all too often given short
shrift to the Straussian argument, let me say that his point
of view should be given more attention; for precisely because
he is partially correct in his diagnosis of the issues, what is
objectionable in his argument deserves scrutiny.
That opinion should be replaced by knowledge, that
philosophy is not in possession but in quest of truth, that
political philosophy “is the attempt truly to know both the
nature of political things and the right, or the good, politi­
cal order,” that political philosophy ought to be distinguished
from political thought, theory, and theology as well as from
political science— all of these propositions make sense. And
no one has, I think, more discerningly articulated the differ­
ence between the general conception of political science and
his own view of what political philosophy is all about. “To
understand the meaning” of what “useful work” is done by
political scientists, Strauss asks us to remember that “politi­
10 : Tradition and Innovation

cal philosophy is the attempt to understand the nature of

political things.” In a paragraph that appears in the book
version of his essay but was not included in the earlier jour­
nal version, he writes:

Before one can even think o f attempting to understand the

nature o f political things, one must know political things: one
must possess political knowledge. A t least every sane adult
possesses political knowledge to som e degree. Everyone knows
something about taxes, police, law, jails, war, peace, armistice.
Everyone knows that the aim o f war is victory, that war
demands the supreme sacrifice and m any other deprivations,
that bravery deserves praise and cowardice deserves blam e.14

Now, if I understand Strauss correctly, and I have hon­

estly tried to do so, the method of political philosophy that
he advocates is this: first, to assume the truth of common-
sense knowledge as set forth in the paragraph just quoted;
second, to lay bare through intuitive thought processes the
“assumptions which concern not merely the given political
situation, but political life or human life as such” ; and
third, to subject these assumptions to “critical and coherent
analysis.”
But, Strauss argues, political philosophy is in a state of
decay. The culprit is a perverted kind of positivism which,
toward the end of the last century,

reached its final form by realizing or decreeing that there is a

fundamental difference between facts and values, and that only
factual statements are within the com petence o f science: scien­
tific social science is incompetent to pronounce value judg­
ments, and must avoid value judgments altogether.15

From this point onward Strauss’ argument becomes a series

of non sequiturs: first, “moral obtuseness is the necessary
condition for scientific analysis”; second, “the more serious
we are as social scientists, the more completely we develop
within ourselves a state of indifference to any goal, or of
aimlessness and drifting, a state which may be called nihil­
 HEINZ EULAU : 11

ism”; and third, according to the social scientist’s principles,

“truth is not a value which it is necessary to choose: one may
reject it as well as choose it.”
I find these statements interesting because they seem to
reveal a very low level of tolerance for ambiguity. “Ethical
neutrality” is, for some social scientists, a desirable intel­
lectual stance precisely because of the impossibility of
logically deriving values from facts, and not because social
scientists are insensitive to values and goals. Strauss, insen­
sitive to facts, does not see it that way. “Ethical neutrality,”
he argues, is “an alibi for thoughtlessness and vulgarity.”
And, therefore, “social science positivism fosters not so much
nihilism as conformism and philistinism.” 18
Most reasonable men would agree, I think, that a line of
argument that alternately accuses the social scientist of nihil­
ism as well as of conformism and philistinism does not sound
very convincing; Strauss has, in fact, failed to convince many
outside his personal circle of disciples, and he has certainly
failed to stem the tide of behavioralism in political science.
He has failed because his method of arriving at the truth
does not recognize empirical reality and does not permit
intersubjective validation of that reality. Part of this reality
is the fact that social scientists as they live and work are
neither contemptuous of values nor disinterested in public
policies. Gabriel A. Almond once put it succinctly in an
earlier debate when he stated that because “science cannot
create values,” it does not follow that scientists cannot inves­
tigate values if they wish to do so, that they cannot concern
themselves with the consequences of alternate policy choices,
or that they cannot become active participants in the game
(or struggle, as some prefer to call it) of politics.17
Unlike Strauss, most social scientists are sensitive to the
possibility that commitment to a value position may create
moral problems that cannot easily be solved. If I understand
the position of most contemporary behavioral scientists cor­
rectly, there is general agreement on the following three
 12 : Tradition and Innovation

aspects of the value problem. First, on the question of

whether values can and should be studied by the methods
of science, the answer is an unequivocal “yes,” just as the
answer is “yes” to the question of whether behavioral science
can assess the consequences of alternate policy choices. Sec­
ond, on the question of whether a “value-free” social science
is possible, the answer is “no,” though the exclusion of value
considerations in the form of biases that distort scientific
inquiry is desirable. And third, on the question of whether
behavioral science can arrive at judgments of what is “good”
and what is “bad,” the answer is that it cannot— that such
judgments are, indeed, the task of ethics as a separate enter­
prise.
This leaves a fourth question— the question of the be­
havioral scientist’s own involvement in the issues of the day.
Here behavioral scientists disagree, and their disagreement,
stemming from the nature of science itself, is profound. For
there is nothing in the logic of science that compels the sci­
entist to commit himself to one of several conflicting public
purposes— or to withhold his commitment. Commitment is
as defensible as its opposite. Of course, noncommitment as
well as commitment is a moral position, and the scientist
who fails to commit himself on public issues is, in the end,
as responsible for his noncommitment as the involved sci­
entist is for his involvement. In this respect, then, the scien­
tist must come to terms with his own moral conscience.
Neither science nor philosophy can legislate his course of
action.
But all of what I have said about the place of values in
behavioral science and the role of the behavioral scientist
is predicated on one fundamental assumption which all sci­
entists who are true to science must make. The assumption
is that science can function only in an environment, that
permits freedom of inquiry and freedom of speech. For
where the condition of freedom does not exist, scientific in­
vestigation, as we commonly think of it, cannot function
 HEINZ EULAU : 13

according to its own canons of method and procedure. Only

if the scientist is a free man can he perform his work, and
only if he is a free man can he make the moral choice of
participating in or abstaining from political life. I would
argue, therefore, that in this respect, at least, science itself
dictates a moral choice. Hence the scientist must be forever
vigilant lest the freedoms necessary for his scientific work
be infringed upon. In this connection, then, the m odern sci­
entist, whether natural or behavioral, carries on his shoul­
ders the burden of an ancient problem.
There is no better example of the tension between ancient
aspirations and modern limitations than Christian Bay’s essay
on “Politics and Pseudopolitics.”18 If the Straussians dis­
cover in Plato and Aristotle the right answers, which need
only be applied to contemporary issues, Bay discovers in
Plato and Aristotle the right question— “above all, what is
politics /or?” A political science that does not ask this ques­
tion is what Bay calls “pseudopolitics.” So far, so good. But
Bay also rejects as pseudopolitics the answer that politics
is concerned “with promoting private or private interest-
group advantage.” Politics, once more, becomes a definitional
game, an approach that does not really solve anything. His
attack on pseudopolitics simply implies Bay’s own prefer­
ence for a definition of the political as “all activity aimed at
improving or protecting conditions for the satisfaction of
human needs and demands in a given society or community,
according to some universalistic scheme of priorities, implicit
or explicit.”
There are two things to be said about this definition of
politics by arbitrary restriction. In the first place, much po­
litical activity throughout history has been directed toward
the achievements of goals that were eminently evil. To neglect
this kind of politics would deprive the study of politics of
some of its most perplexing problems.
But second, Bay’s quest for some “universalistic scheme”
for ordering choices among conflicting needs and demands
14 : Tradition and Innovation

is truly ancient. The task of behavioral science presumably

is to discover these needs and translate them into an action­
able agenda for the improvement of social conditions. I have
no objection to anyone’s pursuing such a program of research
and reform. But the implicit notion that “right” courses of
action can be derived from behavioral inquiry into human
needs and then be employed to determine worthwhile topics
for behavioral research is circular. I suspect that any pro­
posed “universalistic scheme” for ordering needs and values
would be nothing less than a modern version of the “closed
society.” The spell of Plato seems to be pervasive indeed.
Bay’s conception of politics illustrates well the tension be­
tween tradition and innovation in political science, even if,
as is here the case, or perhaps because it is the case, the re­
search program that is advocated would lie at the frontiers
of behavioral inquiry.
It would be aesthetically satisfying if one could point to
some over-all convergence in the conceptions of a behavioral
science of politics that would transcend the variety of dif­
ferent points of view. Yet, this seems to be a hopeless task.
Indeed, I believe that to search for a comprehensive schema
5s to chase a phantom. I doubt that a science of politics will
be advanced by arguing, on purely theoretical grounds, for
“central organizing concepts” such as system, power, com­
munication, or decision making. And I doubt that it is pos­
sible to combine these partial approaches in some grand
synthesis. A science is advanced by its tangible research
discoveries and not by conceptual frameworks, models, or
theories alone. These things, along with methods and tech­
niques, are the tools of scientific inquiry. Whether they are
scientifically viable can be determined only in the crucible
of empirical research.
This is not to say that empirical research at the level of
individual behavior should proceed without theoretical di­
rections that are relevant to the macro concerns of political
science. On the contrary, only if behavioral research at the
 HEINZ EULAU 15

micro level is cast in some theoretical frame of reference

that relates it to large-scale processes or situations can it
claim to be contributing to the solution of politically signifi­
cant problems. There have been works of this order,* yet,
despite the renaissance in the study of politics in the last
decade or so, the output of creative empirical work remains
disappointing, and this is particularly true of those subfields
of the discipline that deal with comparative or international
politics. It is all the more important to realize, therefore, that
what will make the study of politics “scientific” is not theory
but adherence to the canons of scientific method in collecting
evidence and moving from there to inference. Not the theory
as such, but the theory’s derivative and empirically tested
hypotheses explain those uniformities, regularities, and rela­
tionships that a science of politics assumes to exist.
Although the goal of scientific work is nothing less than
the achievement of universal validity for its propositions, I
doubt that a theory of “politics as such” is, at least for the
present and immediate future, a feasible research strategy.
Put differently, I believe that theorizing carried out in the
context of empirical research is more useful in the current
state of the social sciences. The difference in style of theo­
rizing between “pure” theorists in search of universal prop­
ositions and “contextual” theorists ready to settle for partial
explanations is, I think, once more symptomatic of the
tension between the ancient and the modern modes of
thought. My point is not that one group follows ancient and
the other modern ways; but rather that the ancient quest for
* One might cite The Civic Culture by Gabriel A. Almond and
Sidney Verba; The Rulers and the Ruled by Robert E. Agger and his
associates; Public Opinion and American Democracy by V. O. Key;
Who Governs? by Robert A. Dahl; Political Ideology by Robert E.
Lane; The American Voter by Angus Campbell and his team; The
Legislative System by John C. Wahlke and colleagues; American
Business and Public Policy by Raymond A. Bauer and collaborators;
Political Parties: A Behavioral Analysis by Samuel J. Eldersveld;
The Power of the Purse by Richard F. Fenno, Jr.; The American
System by the late Morton Grodzins; or Negroes and the N ew South­
ern Politics by Donald R. Matthews and James W. Prothro.
Tradition and Innovation: On the Tension between Ancient and
Modern Ways in the Study of Politics
See, for instance, Austin Ranney , ed., Essays on the Behavioral Study of Politics
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1962).
See, for instance, James C. Charlesworth , ed., The Limits of Behavioralism in
Political Science (Philadelphia: American Academy of Political and Social Science,
1962); and James C. Charles-worth , ed., A Design for Political Science: Scope,
Objectives, and Methods (Philadelphia: American Academy of Political and Social
Science, 1966).
Herbert J. Storing , ed., Essays on the Scientific Study of Politics (New York: Holt,
Rinehart & Winston, 1962).
John H. Schaar and Sheldon S. Wolin , “Essays on the Scientific Study of Politics: A
Critique,” American Political Science Review, 57 (March 1963), 125–150.
David Easton , The Political System: An Inquiry into the State of Political
Science(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1953). A selection from this book is reprinted
below, chapter 1.
David B. Truman , “The Impact on Political Science of the Revolution in the
Behavioral Sciences,” in Research Frontiers in Politics and Government
(Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1955), pp. 202–231. Reprinted below,
chapter 2.
Angus Campbell , Philip E. Converse , Warren E. Miller , and Donald E. Stokes , The
American Voter (New York: John Wiley, 1960).
John C. Wahlke , Heinz Eulau , William Buchanan , and LeRoy C. Ferguson , The
Legislative System: Explorations in Legislative Behavior (New York: John Wiley,
1962).
Robert A. Dahl , Who Governs? Democracy and Power in an American City (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1961).
Robert E. Agger , Daniel Goldrich , and Bert E. Swanson , The Rulers and the Ruled:
Political Power and Impotence in American Communities (New York: John Wiley,
1964).
Robert A. Dahl , “The Behavioral Approach in Political Science: Epitaph for a
Monument to a Successful Protest,” American Political Science Review, 55
(December 1961), 763–772. Reprinted below, chapter 3.
Heinz Eulau , “Political Science,” in Bert F. Hoselitz , ed., A Reader’s Guide to the
Social Sciences (New York: The Free Press, 1959), p. 94.
Leo Strauss , “What Is Political Philosophy?”, Journal of Politics, 19 (August 1957),
343–368. Part I of this essay, “The Problem of Political Philosophy,” is reprinted
below, chapter 4.
Leo Strauss , What Is Political Philosophy? (New York: The Free Press, 1959), p. 14.
Ibid., p. 18.
Ibid., p. 20.
Gabriel A. Almond , “Politics, Science, and Ethics,” American Political Science
Review, 40 (1946), 283–293.
Christian Bay , “Politics and Pseudopolitics: A Critical Evaluation of Some Behavioral
Literature,” American Political Science Review, 59 (March 1965), 39–51. Reprinted
below, chapter 5.
See, for instance, James M. Buchanan and Gordon Tullock , The Calculus of
Consent (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1962).
Peter M. Blau , Exchange and Power in Social Life(New York: John Wiley and Sons,
1964); Gerhard Lenski , Power and Privilege: A Theory of Social Stratification (New
York: McGraw-Hill, 1965).
Peter Merkl , “Behavioristische Tendenzen in der amerikanischen Politischen
Wissenschaft, Politische Vierteljahresschrift, 6 (March 1965), 58–86. Chapter 6 is a
translated adaption of this article.

The Condition of American Political Science

A. Haddow ,Political Science in American Colleges and Universities (New York:
Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1939).
W. Anderson , “Political Science Enters the Twentieth Century,” in A. Haddow , op.
cit., chap. 14.
Ibid.
Report of the Committee for the Advancement of Teaching, American Political
Science Association, Goals for Political Science (New York: Sloane, 1951), p. xiv.
“Physiology and Politics,”presidential address to sixth annual meeting of American
Political Science Association in American Political Science Review, 4 (1910), 1–16.
L. B. Sims , “Social Scientists in the Federal Services,” Public Policy (1940),
280–296.
F. A. Ogg , Research in the Humanistic and Social Sciences (New York: Appleton-
Century-Crofts, 1928), p. 17.
V. O. Key , Politics, Parties, and Pressure Groups (New York: Crowell T. Y., 1945),
pp. 4–5.
Cf. R. Redfield , “The Art of Social Science,” American Journal of Sociology, 54
(1948), 181–190.
That we do know something, however, is the conclusion of R. W. Gerard , “The
Biological Basis of Imagination,” Scientific Monthly, 62 (1946), 477–500.
This has been a recurring complaint, reflected in a comment by W. W. Willoughby at
the beginning of the century. “In these days …,” he wrote, “it is a reproach to any
science that its essential terms should not have precise meanings; yet this is
precisely the condition in which political science finds itself….” “The Value of Political
Philosophy,” Political Science Quarterly, 15 (1900), 86.
See a recent preliminary attempt at clarifying this concept in H. Simon , D. Smithburg
, and V. Thompson , Public Administration (New York: Knopf, 1950), p. 513.
H. Simon , Administrative Behavior (New York: The Free Press, 1957), chap. 2.
For suggestions along other lines see UNESCO, Contemporary Political Science
(Paris: UNESCO, 1950), articles on American political science; American Political
Science Association, Committee on Instruction, The Teaching of Government (New
York: Macmillan, 1916); C. E. Merriam et al., “Report of Committee on Political
Research,” American Political Science Review, 17 (1923), 274–312; T. H. Reed ,
“Report of Committee on Policy of the American Political Science Association,”
American Political Science Review, 24 (1930), supplement; C. E. Merriam , New
Aspects of Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1925); P. Appleby ,
“Political Science: The Next Twenty-five Years,” American Political Science Review,
44 (1950), 924–932; P. Herring , “Political Science in the Next Decade,” American
Political Science Review, 39 (1945), 757–766.
Cf.H. D. Lasswell , “Psychology and Political Science in the U.S.A.,” in UNESCO,
Contemporary Political Science, op. cit., pp. 526–37.
See Report of the Committee for the Advancement of Teaching, A.P.S.A., op. cit.,
pp. 266 ff. where the Committee recommends that “One of the ways to improve the
effectiveness of budding political scientists is to provide a good course on the scope
and methods of political science as an introduction to all graduate work.”
J. P. Harris et al., “The Relations of Political Scientists with Public Officials,”
American Political Science Review, 35 (1941), 333–43.
Compare a related criticism by Ratzenhofer, over half a century ago, quoted in A. W.
Small , General Sociology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1905), p. 319.
Here Ratzenhofer accuses politics of being a pseudo-science, a conclusion with
which the penetrating American sociologist A. W. Small undoubtedly agreed,
because it “displayed decided reluctance to use the probe relentlessly in research
within political conditions.”

The Impact on Political Science of the Revolution in the

Behavioral Sciences
See the source note to this chapter.
Stuart Rice , ed., Methods in Social Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1931).
Robert M. Woodbury , “Statistics: Statistical Practice,” Encyclopaedia of the Social
Sciences, vol. 14.
Herbert Hyman , Interviewing in Social Research (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1954).
Cf. C. R. Rogers , Counseling and Psychotherapy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1942)
and Robert K. Merton , The Focused Interview (New York: The Free Press, 1955).
Cf. Edward A. Shils , “Authoritarianism: Right and Left,” in Richard Christie and Marie
Jahoda , eds., Studies in the Scope Method of “The Authoritarian Personality” (New
York: The Free Press, 1954), pp. 24–49 and David B. Truman , “Political Behavior
and International Politics,” World Politics, 3 (July 1951), 545–554.
See Samuel A. Stouffer and others, “Measurement and Prediction,” Studies in Social
Psychology in World War II, 4 (1950)and M. W. Riley , J. W. Riley , and J. Toby ,
Scale Analysis (1955).
See J. L. Moreno , Who Shall Survive? (1934) and Helen H. Jennings , Leadership
and Isolation (New York: David McKay, 1943). See generally Marie Jahoda , Morton
Deutsch , and Cook Stuart W. , Research Methods in Social Relations (New York:
Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1951); see also Homans G. C. , The Human Group (New
York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1950) and Dorwin Cartwright and Alvin Zander , eds.,
Group Dynamics: Research and Theory (New York: Harper & Row, 1953).
The best review of this technique is Bernard Berelson, Content Analysis in
Communications Research (New York: The Free Press, 1952).
Note that the impressive psychological evidence regarding the consequences of
segregation which was accepted by the U.S. Supreme Court (Brown v. Topeka, 347
U.S. 497, 1954) referred primarily and most directly to its effects upon individuals.
See Kenneth B. Clark , “Desegregation: An Appraisal of the Evidence,” Journal of
Social Issues, 9:4 (1953).
For example, see Cartwright and Zander , op. cit., Homans, op. cit., and Harold S.
Guetzkow , ed., Groups, Leadership, and Men (Pittsburgh: Carnegie Press, 1951;
New York: Russell & Russell [reprint]).
W. F. Whyte , “Small Groups and Large Organizations,” in J. H. Rohrer and M. Sherif
, eds., Social Psychology at the Crossroads (New York: Harper & Row, 1951), p.
297.
C. M. Arensberg , “Behavior and Organization: Industrial Studies,” in Rohrer and
Sherif , op. cit., p. 324.
Report of the Faculty Committee of the University of Michigan and Report of the
Visiting Committee, Survey of the Behavioral Sciences (1954), p. 160. Italics added.
Angus Campbell , Gerald Gurin , and Warren E. Miller , The Voter Decides (New
York: Harper & Row, 1954), chapts. 7 and 11.
Roy Macridis and others, “Research in Comparative Politics,” American Political
Science Review, 47 (September 1953), 641–675.
Gabriel A. Almond , The American People and Foreign Policy (New York: Praeger,
1950).
Karl W. Deutsch , Nationalism and Social Communication (Cambridge: MIT Press,
1953).
Richard C. Snyder , H. W. Bruck , and Burton Sapin , Foreign Policy Decision-
Making (New York: The Free Press, 1962).
Robert A. Dahl and Charles E. Lindblom , Politics, Economics and Welfare (New
York: Harper & Row, 1953).
Talcott Parsons and Edward A. Shils , eds., Toward a General Theory of Action
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1951), p. 29.
Cf. Richard C. Sheldon , “Some Observations on Theory in the Social Sciences,” in
Parsons and Shils,op. cit., p. 40.
Daniel Katz and R. L. Schanck , Social Psychology (New York: John Wiley, 1938), p.
394.
Robert R. Sears , “Social Behavior and Personality Development,” in Parsons and
Shils, op. cit., p. 466.
“Narrowing the Gap Between Field Studies and Laboratory Experiments in Social
Psychology,” Social Science Research Council Items, 8 (December 1954), 38.

The Behavioral Approach in Political Science: Epitaph for a

Monument to a Successful Protest
David Easton , The Political System (New York: Alfred A. Knopf , 1953), p. 203.
Kent’s earlier book, The Great Game of Politics (1924), made no pretence of being
systematic and continued to be widely read by students of American politics, but
within a few years Political Behavior fell into an obscurity from which it has never
recovered.
Cf. Bernard Crick , The American Science of Politics, Its Origins and Conditions
(London, 1959).
“Progress in Political Research,” American Political Science Review, 20 (February
1926), 7, quoted in David B. Truman , “The Implications of Political Behavior
Research,”Social Science Review Council Items, 5 (December 1951), 37. Emphasis
added.
See Catlin’s Science and Method of Politics (1927). Another early example of the
behavioral approach was Stuart Rice, Quantitative Methods in Politics (1928). Rice
had received his Ph.D. at Columbia University.
Cf. Bernard Crick , op. cit., pp. 21–31. notes that “The Fifth Volume of the Johns
Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science published a long study,
edited by Andrew D. White , ’European Schools of History and Politics’ (December
1887). It reprinted his Johns Hopkins address on ‘Education in Political Science’
together with reports on ‘what we can learn from’ each major European country.” Fn.
1, p. 27.
Herbert Emmerich , Charles S. Hyneman , and V. O. Key, Jr.
Alexander Heard ,“Research on Political Behavior: Report of a Conference,” Social
Science Research Council Items, 3 (December 1949), 41–44.
Social Science Research Council Items, 4 (June 1950), 20. (Italics added.)
“To precisely what kind of research does the concept of political behavior refer? It is
clear that this term indicates that the research worker wishes to look at participants in
the political system as individuals who have the emotions, prejudices, and
predispositions of human beings as we know them in our daily lives…. Behavioral
research … has therefore sought to elevate the actual human being to the center of
attention. Its premise is that the traditionalists have been reifying institutions, virtually
looking at them as entities apart from their component individuals…. Research
workers often use the terms … to indicate that they are studying the political process
by looking at the relation of it to the motivations, personalities, or feelings of the
participants as individual human beings.” David Easton , The Political System
(1953), pp. 201–205.
As we shall see, Van Dyke distinguishes the term “behavioral approach” from
“political behavior.”
“What Is Political Behavior?,” PROD (July 1958).
Ibid., p. 159.
Social Science Research Council Items, 5 (December 1951), 37–39. (Italics added.)
Paul F. Lazarsfeld , Bernard Berelson , and Hazel Gaudet , The People’s Choice
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1944).
Angus Campbell , Philip Converse , Donald Stokes , and Warren Miller , The
American Voter (New York: John Wiley, 1960), a study extended and refined by the
same authors in “Stability and Change in 1960: A Reinstating Election,” American
Political Science Review 55 (1961), 269–280.
A finding, incidentally, that may have to be revised in turn. A recent reanalysis of the
data of the voting studies, completed after this paper was prepared, has turned up
new evidence for the active, interested independent voter. William Flanigan ,
Partisanship and Campaign Participation (Ph.D. dissertation; Yale University Library,
1961).
Cf. Janowitz , ed., Community Political Systems (New York: The Free Press, 1961);
Edward Banfield , Political Influence (New York: The Free Press, 1961); and the
English study by Birch and his colleagues at the University of Manchester, Small
Town Politics (1959).
E.g., in his Nationalism and Social Communication (1953). See also his recent article
with the economist Alexander Eckstein, “National Industrialization and the Declining
Share of the International Economic Sector, 1890–1959,” World Politics (January
1961), pp. 267–299; and his “Social Mobilization and Political Development,”
American Political Science Review, 55 (September 1961), 493–514.
For an interesting example of an application of the behavioral mood to comparative
politics, see Stein Rokkan and Henry Valen , “Parties, Elections and Political
Behavior in the Northern Countries: a Review of Recent Research,” Politische
Forschung (1960). Probably the most ambitious attempt to apply survey methods to
comparative politics is represented by a study of political socialization and political
values in five nations, conducted by Gabriel A. Almond ; see Almond and Verba ,
The Civic Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963).
In 1942, in The New Belief in the Common Man (Boston: Beacon Press), C. J.
Friedrich challenged the prevailing generalizations about the need for consensus
(chapt. 5).However, his challenge seems to have met with little response until 1960,
when Prothro and Grigg reported the results of an empirical study of consensus on
“democratic” propositions in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Tallahassee, Florida. See
their “Fundamental Principles of Democracy,” Journal of Politics, 22 (May 1960),
276–294.
The historians and the elections were: Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. , on the election of
1824, Samuel E. Morison and Henry S. Commager on the election of 1860, Alan
Nevins on the election of 1884, and William Diamond on the election of 1896. See
his “Research Problems in American Political Historiography,” in Komarovsky , ed.,
Common Frontiers of the Social Sciences (New York: The Free Press, 1957).
“The Emergence of the One-Party South—the Election of 1860” in Political Man
(New York: Doubleday, 1960).
Lee Benson , Turner and Beard, American Historical Writing Re-Considered (New
York: The Free Press, 1960).

Politics and Pseudopolitics: A Critical Evaluation of Some

Behavioral Literature
Alfred Cobban , “The Decline of Political Theory,” Political Science Quarterly, 48
(1953), 335.
Heinz Eulau , The Behavioral Persuasion in Politics (New York: Random House,
1963), pp. 133–137.
Robert Dahl , Modern Political Analysis (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1963),
p. 6.
“Priorities” here refers to norms for guiding the choice among conflicting needs and
demands. Political ideals and visions of the good life enter in here, and would do so
even if our knowledge of needs and of human nature were as extensive as our
knowledge of demands and of social determinants of “public opinion.”
Karl Mannheim employs a similar dichotomy of terms, though with different concepts,
in his Man and Society in an Age of Reconstruction (New York: Harcourt, Brace &
World, 1954), pp. 51–60.
Gabriel A. Almond , The American People and Foreign Policy (New York: Praeger,
1950), p. 4.
The term is from Leo Strauss. See his “Epilogue” in Herbert J. Storing , ed., Essays
on the Scientific Study of Politics (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1962), p. 326.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1961.
Bernard R. Berelson , Paul F. Lazarsfeld and William N. McPhee , Voting: A Study of
Opinion Formation in a Presidential Campaign (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1954).
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956, p. 1.
This is not to deny that the Straussian position is more authoritarian and far less
respectful of the right to radical dissent, as is to be expected when a corner on
objective truth is being claimed. Cf. especially Leo Strauss, What Is Political
Philosophy, and Other Studies (New York: The Free Press, 1959); and his
“Epilogue” in Herbert J. Storing , ed., op. cit. See also Walter Berns , “The Behavioral
Sciences and the Study of Political Things: The Case of Christian Bay’s The
Structure of Freedom,” American Political Science Review, 55 (1961), 550–559.
Seymour Martin Lipset , Political Man: The Social Base of Politics (New
York:Doubleday, 1960),esp. pp. 403 and 415.
An interesting attempt to evaluate the 1952 Presidential election in terms of five
criteria of democratic consent (as opposed to nonrational responses to manipulated
processes) is reported in Morris Janowitz and Dwaine Marvick , Competitive
Pressure and Democratic Consent (Ann Arbor: Bureau of Government, University of
Michigan, 1956). The five criteria are chosen somewhat haphazardly, but they are
carefully and ingeniously operationalized and brought to bear on available data. The
study shows what could just as well be done, in years to come, within a more
carefully and systematically stated framework of political objectives and norms.
Though perhaps paradoxical, the statement is not self-contradictory. A democracy
that guarantees many liberties to people of most persuasions, and in theory to
everybody, may well be considered a liberal democracy. Freedom of speech and
related freedoms have a strong appeal to most intellectuals, many of whom may
become staunch conservatives because they believe in preserving their liberal
democracy. Some, indeed, will become fixated on the need for defense of the social
order to the point of ignoring the plight of poverty-stricken fellow-citizens whose
formal liberty may seem worthless to themselves.
Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1962.
James M. Buchanan , “An Individualistic Theory of Political Process.”Paper prepared
for delivery at the 1963 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science
Association, New York City.
Some of the milestones in this literature are Gabriel A. Almond , “Comparative
Political Systems,” Journal of Politics, 18 (1956), 391–409; Almond and James S.
Coleman , eds., The Politics of the Developing Areas (Princeton: Princeton
University Press,1960); Almond and Sidney Verba , The Civic Culture (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1963).
For contrast, consider this statement on the ways of other behavioralists: “The focus
of the political behaviorist, however, does not seem to be a result of the state of
political theory. Elections have been intensively studied because they lend
themselves to the methodology of empirical research into politics.” Morris Janowitz ,
Deil Wright , and William Delany , Public Administration and the
Public—Perspectives Toward Government in a Metropolitan Community (Ann Arbor:
Bureau of Government, University of Michigan, 1958), p. 2.
Cf. Almond and Verba , op. cit., and Lucian W. Pye , Politics, Personality, and Nation
Building: Burma’s Search for Identity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962).
Concepts of modernization or development are discussed by James S. Coleman in
Almond and Coleman , eds., op. cit., pp. 532–536; by Lucian W. Pye , ed., in
Communication and Political Development (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1963), pp. 14–20; and by Joseph La Palombara , ed., in Bureaucracy and Political
Development (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963),chapts. 1 and 2.
Political Man, op. cit., p. 115 and chapt. 4.
Fidel Castro’s wide following in Latin America can be plausibly explained in these
terms.
Op. cit., p. 505 and chapt. 15.
Ibid., pp. 440–441 and 478–479.
See especially Robert E. Ward and Dankwart A. Rustow , The Political
Modernization of Japan and Turkey (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964).
However, we should not assume without inquiry that all pseudopolitical behavior is
dysfunctional for all high-priority human wants and needs; not, of course, that all
varieties of political behavior are to be preferred to pseudopolitical self-seeking or
neurotic striving.
Joseph Tussman also stresses the danger of destroying the integrity of political
communication when the modern bargaining approach to politics enters the “forum
or tribunal” that a democratic electorate ought to constitute, according to classical
theories of democracy. “We teach men to compete and bargain. Are we to be
surprised, then, at the corruption of the tribunal into its marketplace parody?”
Obligation and the Body Politic (New York: Oxford University Press, 1960), p. 109
and pp. 104–121.
Abraham H. Maslow , “A Theory of Human Motivation,” Psychological Review, 50
(1943), 394 and 370–396. See also his Motivation and Personality (New York:
Harper &Row, 1954).
Human Nature in Politics (New York: John Wiley, 1963), p.28. Davies does not refer
to La Palombara.
Cf. his introduction to Almond and Coleman, eds., op. cit.
The Structure of Freedom (Stanford: Stanford University Press,1958; New York:
Atheneum, 1965).
The term “normative research” may be puzzling to some, who think of research
exclusively as systematically re(peated) search for empirical data, in the real world or
in contrived experimental worlds. And “research” has been one of the empirical
social scientist’s proud banners in his uphill fight against the sometime supremacy of
armchair speculators. In our time a less parochial use of “research” is called for, as a
way of recognizing the close interplay between the empirical, normative and logical
aspects of inquiry that, as the present paper argues, is necessary for the further
development of our knowledge of political as of other human behavior.
Arne Naess , “A Systematization of Gandhian Ethics of Conflict Resolution,” Journal
of Conflict Resolution, 2 (1958), 140–155;and Johan Galtung and Arne Naess,
Gandhis politiske etikk(Oslo: Tanum, 1955).
Michael Harrington , The Other America: Poverty in the United States (New York:
Macmillan, 1962; Baltimore: Penguin Books,1963).
Cf. my “A Social Theory of Intellectual Development,” in Nevitt Sanford, ed., The
American College (New York: John Wiley,1961), pp. 972–1005, esp. 978 and
1000–1005.
W. H. Ferry and 25 associates have recently issued a statement that received front-
page attention in The New York Times and other newspapers. Under the title “The
Triple Revolution: An Appraisal of the Major U.S. Crises and Proposals for Action”
(Washington: Maurer, Fleischer, Zon and Associates, 1964), and referring to the
revolutions in cybernetics, in weaponry, and in human rights, but particularly to the
first of the three, Ferry et al. argue that there “is an urgent need for a fundamental
change in the mechanisms employed to insure consumer rights” (p. 9), now that the
problem of production has been solved and the problem of full employment has
become impossible to solve with our present system. “We urge, therefore, that
society, through its appropriate legal and governmental institutions, undertake an
unqualified commitment to provide every individual and every family with an
adequate income as a matter of right. This undertaking we consider to be essential
to the emerging economic, social, and political order in this country” (p. 16).

“Behavioristic” Tendencies in American Political Science

Robert A. Dahl , “The Behavioral Approach in Political Science: Epitaph for a
Monument to a Successful Protest,” American Political Science Review, 55
(December 1961), 763–772.
Ibid., pp. 763–766; and David Easton , “The Current Meaning of ‘Behavioralism’ in
Political Science,” in J. C. Charlesworth , ed., The Limits of Behavioralism in Political
Science (Philadelphia: American Academy of Political and Social Science, 1962), pp.
1–25.
Heinz Eulau , “Segments of Political Science Most Susceptible to Behavioristic
Treatment,” in Charlesworth, ed., op. cit., pp. 30–31. See also Harold D. Lasswell
and Abraham Kaplan , Power and Society: A Framework for Political Inquiry (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1950).
See Dahl, op. cit., p. 763; and Heinz Eulau , The Behavioral Persuasion in Politics
(New York: Random House, 1963), p. 7.
Robert A. Dahl , A Preface to Democratic Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1956).
Eulau , Behavioral Persuasion, p. 4.
Ibid., pp. 4–11, and sources cited there.
Evron M. Kirkpatrick , “The Impact of the Behavioral Approach on Traditional Political
Science,” in Austin Ranney, ed., Essays on the Behavioral Study of Politics (Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 1962), p. 12.
Eulau , Behavioral Persuasion, p. 16. See also Muzafer Sherif and Bertram L. Koslin
, The “Institutional” vs. “Behavioral’’ Controversy in Social Science with Special
Reference to Political Science (Norman, Oklahoma: Institute of Group Relations,
1960).
At least as far back as Graham Wallas’ important Human Nature in Politics (1908),
and to Charles E. Merriam , New Aspects of Politics (1925).
See Charles E. Osgood’s introduction to behavioristic psychology —the “missing link
between biology and the social sciences”—in “Behavior Theory and the Social
Sciences,” in Roland Young, ed., Approaches to the Study of Politics (Evanston:
Northwestern University Press, 1958), pp. 217–244.
See David B. Truman , “The Impact on Political Science pf the Revolution in the
Behavioral Sciences,” in Research Frontiers in Politics and Government
(Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1955), pp. 202–231; and David Easton ,
“Traditional and Behavioral Research in American Political Science,” Administrative
Quarterly, 2 (1957), 110–115.
See David Easton , A Framework for Political Analysis (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.:
Prentice-Hall, 1965).
Heinz Eulau et al., “The Role of the Representative: Some Empirical Observations
on the Theory of Edmund Burke,” American Political Science Review, 53 (September
1959), 742–756.
On this point, see also Heinz Eulau , Class and Party in the Eisenhower Years (New
York: The Free Press, 1962);
and Dwaine Marvick , ed., Political Decision-Makers: Recruitment and Performance
(New York: The Free Press, 1961).
See Eulau , Behavioral Persuasion, chapts. 2 and 3. Also worth noting is the breadth
of the concept of political behavior covered by selected readings in S. Sidney Ulmer
,Introductory Readings in Political Behavior (Chicago: Rand McNally and
Company,1961).
See especially Russell Kirk , “Segments of Political Science not Amenable to
Behavioristic Treatment,” in Charlesworth, ed., op. cit., pp. 49–67.
Francis G. Wilson , “The Behaviorist’s Persuasion,” Modern Age, 3 (1959), 316. This
typical formulation not only denies science but also has a curiously relativistic ring.
On this point, see Mulford Q. Sibley , “The Limitations of Behavioralism,” in
Charlesworth, ed.,op. cit., pp. 68–93.
This absence of a sound foundation in the philosophy of science is often the weakest
aspect of the new research methods. But now, see Abraham Kaplan, The Conduct of
Inquiry: Methodology for Behavioral Science (San Francisco: Chandler Publishing
Company, 1964);
and Karl W. Deutsch , The Nerves of Government: Models of Political
Communication and Control (New York: The Free Press, 1963), chapt. 1.