Behavioralism

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Behavioralism (not to be confused with the learning theory, behaviorism) is an approach in political science which seeks to provide an objective, quantified approach to explaining and predicting political behavior. It is associated with the rise of the behavioral sciences, modeled after the natural sciences.

Prior to the "Behavioralist revolution", political science being a science at all was being disputed. Critics saw the study of politics as being primarily qualitative and normative, and claimed that it lacked a scientific method necessary to be deemed a science. Behavioralists would use strict methodology and empirical research to validate their study as a social science.

Behavioralism is perhaps best defined by the man who is infamous for first distinguishing it from behaviorism - David Easton:

"Behavioralism was not a clearly defined movement for those who were thought to be behavioralists. It was more clearly definable by those who were opposed to it, because they were describing it in terms of the things within the newer trends that they found objectionable. So some would define behavioralism as an attempt to apply the methods of natural sciences to human behavior. Others would define it as an excessive emphasis upon quantification. Others as individualistic reductionism. From the inside, the practitioners were of different minds as what it was that constituted behavioralism. [...] And few of us were in agreement."^[1]

A journal in this field is Political Behavior, described this way by its publisher, Springer:

"Political Behavior publishes original research in the general fields of political behavior, institutions, processes, and policies. Approaches include economic (preference structuring, bargaining), psychological (attitude formation and change, motivations, perceptions), sociological (roles, group, class), or political (decision making, coalitions, influence). Articles focus on the political behavior (conventional or unconventional) of the individual person or small group (microanalysis), or of large organizations that participate in the political process such as parties, interest groups, political action committees, governmental agencies, and mass media (macroanalysis). As an interdisciplinary journal, Political Behavior integrates various approaches across different levels of theoretical abstraction and empirical domain (contextual analysis)." ^[2]

Subsequently, much of the behavioralist approach has been challenged by the emergence of postpositivism in political (particularly International Relations) theory.

[edit] References

(1991) in Michael A. Baer, Malcolm E. Jewell, Lee Sigelman (eds): Political science in America : oral histories of a discipline. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 0-8131-0805-5.

Hanson, Jon D.; Douglas A. Kysar (June 1999). "Taking Behavioralism Seriously: The Problem of Market Manipulation" (pdf). New York University Law Review 74 (630): 75-83. ISSN 0028-7881.