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The Application of Method in the Construction of Political Science Theory*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2009

M.W. Jackson
M.W. Jackson
Affiliation:
University of Alberta
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Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 5 , Issue 3 , September 1972 , pp. 402 - 417
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Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 1972

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References

1 “Political Behavior,” International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, ed. Sills, D., XII (New York, 1968), 211.Google Scholar

2 “The New Revolution in Political Science,” American Political Science Review, LXIII, no 4 (1969), 1051–61.

3 See, for example, S. Wolin, “Political Theory as a Vocation,” ibid., 1063; Almond, G. and Verba, S., The Civic Culture (Princeton, 1963), 43;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Easton, “Political Science,” International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, XII, 296; Pinner, F., “Notes on Method in Social and Political Research,” Politics and Social Life, ed. Polsby, N., Dentler, R., and Smith, P. (Boston, 1966), 145;Google ScholarDahl, R., “The Behavioral Approach in Political Science,” American Political Science Review, LV, no 3 (1961), 763–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar, reprinted in Politics and Social Life, 19 and 21; B. Berelson, “Behavioral Science,” International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, II, 42; Euben, J., “Political Science and Political Silence,” Power and the Community, ed. Green, P. and Levinson, S. (New York, 1969), 8Google Scholar; and Truman, D., “The Impact on Political Science of the Revolution in the Behavioral Sciences,” Research Frontiers in Politics and Government, ed. Bailey, S.et al. (Washington, 1955), 202–31Google Scholar, reprinted in Readings in the Philosophy of Social Sciences, ed. Brodbeck, M. (New York, 1968), 548Google Scholar; Kim, K.W., “The Limits of Behavioural Explanation in Politics,” Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, XXXI, no 3 (1965), 315–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The debate is carried on outside of North America as well. See, e.g., Lijphart, A., “Political Science and Political Advocacy,” Acta Politica, v, no 2 (1970), 165–71Google Scholar; the articles reviewing the state of political science in six countries in Annuaire suisse de science politique, VIII (1968); and Popper, K., “Reason or Revolution,” Archives européenes de sociologies, II, no 2 (1970), 252–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In a sense the controversy began in Europe with such works as Mannheim, K., Ideology and Utopia, trans. Wirth, Louis and Shils, Edward (New York, 1936)Google Scholar, first published in Berlin in 1929. Further, the behavioural movement has polarized political science more than any other single issue according to the research of Somit, A. and Tannenhaus, J., American Political Science (New York, 1964), 21–4Google Scholar. It must be granted that the behavioural/post-behavioural camps unite diverse scholars whose within group differences may be greater than those between the groups on many issues. The post-behaviouralist camp is particularly diverse because of its recent generation and essentially negative focus, once being united only by a rejection of behaviouralism.

4 For a somewhat similar exercise, see Kalleberg, A., “Concept Formation in Normative and Empirical Studies,” American Political Science Review, LXIII, no 1 (1969), 26–39, andCrossRefGoogle ScholarGunther, M. and Reshaur, K., “Science and Values in Political ‘Science,’” Philosophy of Social Science, I, no 2 (1971), 113–21. Compatible, but not similar because of its teaching orientation as a textbook, isCrossRefGoogle ScholarGregor's, A.J.Metapolitics (New York, 1971)Google Scholar. Some of my own perspective is shown more fully in “Method, Theory and Science in Political Science,” paper read before the Fourth Annual Meeting of Cheiron, the International Society for the History of the Behavioural and Social Sciences, Calgary-Banff, 1972.

5 The role of key influentials in the discipline is provocatively outlined in P. Melanson, “The Political Science Profession, Political Knowledge and Public Theory,” Politics and Society, forthcoming.

6 A Framework for Political Analysis (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1965), 8 and 17. Cf. his “The New Revolution in Political Science,” 1051, Systems Analysis of Political Life (New York, 1965), 477–8, and “The Current Meaning of Behavioralism,” Contemporary Political Analysis, ed. Charlesworth, J. (New York, 1967), 11, 19, and 26.Google Scholar

7 For instance, de Grazia, A., Political Behavior (2nd ed., New York, 1962), 7, 41, 55, 336, and 346Google Scholar; Lasswell, H., Power and Personality (New York, 1948), 121 and 203Google Scholar; Isaak, A., Scope and Method of Political Science (Homewood, Ill., 1969), 57, n1Google Scholar; Deutsch, K., “Recent Trends in Research Methods in Political Science,” A Design for Political Science, ed. Charlesworth, J. (Philadelphia, 1966), 157–8Google Scholar; and Murphy, J., Political Theory (Homewood, 1968), 241–2.Google Scholar

8 (New York, 1963), 9. Cf. “An empirical discipline is built by the slow, modest, piecemeal cumulation of relevant theories and data” (ibid., 114), and his “The Behavioral Movement in Political Science,” Social Research, XXXV, no 1 (1968), 28; “Tradition and Innovation,” Behavioralism in Political Science, ed. Eulau, (New York, 1969), 15Google Scholar. See also Truman, , “Disillusion and Regeneration,” American Political Science Review, LIX (1965), 872Google Scholar; and Stanford, L., “Beyond the Mumbo Jumbo,” Journal of Canadian Studies, IV, no 3 (1969), 55.Google Scholar

9 On this point widely divergent sources agree. See, e.g., Carnap, R., Philosophical Foundations of Physics, ed. Gardner, M. (New York, 1966), 229Google Scholar, and Bluhm, W., “Metaphysics, Ethics and Political Science,” Review of Politics, XXXI, no 1 (1969), 66–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 On deduction, see Copi, I., Introduction to Logic (3rd ed., London, 1968), 20–1Google Scholar, and Salmon, W., The Foundations of Scientific Inference (Pittsburgh, 1966), 8–10.Google Scholar

11 Copi, Introduction to Logic, 346–8; Smart, J.J., Between Science and Philosophy (New York, 1968), 179–80Google Scholar; Salmon, The Foundations of Scientific Inference, 129–31; Stove, D., “Hume, Probability and Induction,” Philosophical Review, LXXIV, no 1 (1965), 160–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar, re-printed in Hume, ed. Chappel, V.C. (Garden City, NY, 1966), 202.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 Salmon, , Logic (Englewood Cliffs, 1963), 55Google Scholar, and The Foundations of Scientific Inference, 18–20; Copi, Introduction to Logic, 327–8.

13 Greene, T.H. asserts that the inductive theory-building approach is favoured by a considerable majority of contemporary political scientists; see his “Values and the Methodology of Political Science,” this Journal, III, no 2 (1970), 281.Google Scholar

14 McClosky, H., “Survey Research in Political Science,” Survey Research in the Social Sciences, ed. Glock, G.Y. (New York, 1967), 62–143Google Scholar, reprinted in McClosky, , Political Inquiry (New York, 1969), 8–9.Google Scholar

15 See, e.g., Frohock, F., Political Inquiry (Homewood, 1967), 110.Google Scholar

16 Political Science (New York, 1964), 10. Essentially similar statements of varying detail may be found in Brecht, A., Political Theory (Princeton, 1959), 29–113CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sjoberg, G. and Nett, R., A Methodology for Social Research (New York, 1968), 23–8Google Scholar; Dreyer, E. and Rosenbaum, W., “The Study of Public Opinion and Electoral Behavior,” Political Opinion and Electoral Behavior, ed. Dreyer, and Rosenbaum, (Belmont, Calif., 1966), 4–5Google Scholar; and Ulmer, S., “Scientific Method and the Judicial Process,” American Behavioral Scientist, VII, no 4 (1963), 21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 McCoy, C. and Playford, J., “Introduction,” A political Politics, ed. McCoy, and Playford, (New York, 1967), 9–10.Google Scholar

18 For example, Bay, C., “Politics and Pseudopolitics,” American Political Science Review, LIX, no 1 (1965), 39–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “Needs, Wants, and Political Legitimacy,” this Journal, I, no 3 (1968), 241–60.

19 “Legitimacy in the Modern State,” Green and Levinson, Power and the Community, 322, n32; see also Levinson, “On ‘Teaching’ Political ‘Science,’” ibid., 59–84.

20 A rightly prominent example of this position is Schutz, A., “Concept and Theory Formation in the Social Sciences,” Journal of Philosophy, LI, no 9 (1954), 257–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar. More recently an effective presentation has been made by Jung, H.Y., “A Phenomenological Critique of the Behavioral Persuasion in Politics,” paper read at the Sixty-seventh Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago, 1971.Google Scholar

21 The Study of Man (London, 1958), 12; cf. his Personal Knowledge (rev. ed., New York, 1962). On making implicit knowledge explicit, see Meehl, P., “When Shall We Use Our Heads Instead of the Formula,” Journal of Counseling Psychology, IV, no 4 (1957), 268–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and his Clinical vs. Statistical Prediction (Minneapolis, 1954). Cf. Gregor, Metapolitics, 252–8.

22 “The Limits of Behavioralism,” Charlesworth, Contemporary Political Analysis, 57.

23 Ibid., 56.

24 “Political Theory as a Vocation,” 1070. Critiques of behaviouralism similiar to Wolin's include Spitz, D., “Politics and the Critical Imagination,” Review of Politics, XXXII, no 4 (1970), 419–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jacobson, N., “The Unity of Political Theory,” Approaches to the Study of Politics, ed. Young, R. (Evanston, Ill., 1958), 115–24Google Scholar; and Hampden-Turner, C., Radical Man (Cambridge, 1970), 1–12Google Scholar; Grant, G., Technology and Empire (Toronto, 1969), 113–33.Google Scholar

25 “Paradigms and Political Theories,” Politics and Experience, ed. King, P. and Parekh, C. (Cambridge, 1968), 125.Google Scholar

26 Ibid., 1077.

27 Ibid., 1976, and Wolin, Communication to the Editor, American Political Science Review, LXIV, no 2 (1970), 592 (he mistakenly cites p. 1077 in this letter).

28 Wolin, “Paradigms and Political Theories,” 138. The reference is to Kuhn, T., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (2nd ed., Chicago, 1970).Google Scholar

29 “The Nature of Science,” Science, CXXXVIII, no 3546 (1962), 1253. Furthermore, Kuhn's perspective is not, as J. Steintrager assumes, a contradictory of positivism in science or epistemology. Steintrager, , “Prediction and Control versus the Narcissus Trance of Political Science,” Polity, III, no 3 (1971), 317–19Google Scholar. Thus Kuhn, but not Steintrager, can and does say “energy is conserved; nature behaves that way.” Kuhn is quoted by Boyer, C., “Commentary on the Papers of T. Kuhn and I. Cohen,” Critical Problems in the History of Science, ed. Clagett, M. (Madison, 1959), 385Google Scholar. If Kuhn did see the world as totally contingent on paradigms rather than vice versa, then paradigm competition would be solely a process of attrition for no tests would be possible without trans-paradigm observables. While such observables are far from unproblematic, Kuhn acknowledges them in referring to anomalies which cannot be explained under a prevailing paradigm. See, e.g., Kuhn, Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 6, 33, 52, 56, 62, 65, 74, 81, 86, and passim. “These irrepresible anomalies are intersubjective and unproblematic observations recognized by practitioners ‘within’ the paradigm – they persist no matter how strong the ‘allegiance' to the paradigm … An alternate paradigm … is advanced because it is conceived as offering solutions to the problems unresolved by the prevailing paradigm.” Gregor, Metapolitics, 31. This Kuhn knows and points out in the “Postscript” to the second edition of his book. See pp. 182, 192, 197, and 201.

30 Experience and Prediction (Chicago, 1938), 6 ff. This distinction is not analogous to Kuhn's synthetic distinction between normal and abnormal science in his Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 5 and passim. Admirers of Kuhn might profitably consult the appropriate essays in Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, ed. Lakatos, I. and Musgrave, A. (Cambridge, 1970)CrossRefGoogle Scholar which volume is given over to consideration of his thoughts, and Humphreys, W., Anomalies and Scientific Theories (San Francisco, 1968), 61–156.Google Scholar

31 Experience and Prediction, 6.

32 Ibid., 7.

33 Ibid., 6.

34 Reichenbach, , The Rise of Scientific Philosophy (Los Angeles and Berkeley, 1966), 231.Google Scholar

35 Patterns of Discovery (Cambridge, 1965), 36. Cf. his Perception and Discovery, ed. Humphreys, W. (San Francisco, 1969), 59–198, esp. 171–85.Google Scholar

36 The Philosophy of Science (Cambridge, 1961), 34.

37 Patterns of Discovery, 6 and 9. Thus it is that observation is never entirely unproblematic, contrary to, for example, Greene's claim that subjectivity is controlled “as we elaborate hypotheses that refer to observable phenomena.” “Values and the Methodology of Political Science,” 294.

38 Hanson, Patterns of Discovery, 15. See, e.g., Ellen, and Wood, Neal, “Canada and the American Science of Politics,” Close the 49th Parallel Etc, ed. Lumsden, I. (Toronto, 1970), 182.Google Scholar

39 Toulmin, The Philosophy of Science, 54.

40 Ibid., 66.

41 Carnap, Philosophical Foundations of Physics, 248.

42 See, e.g., McCorquodale, K. and Meehl, P., “On the Distinction between Hypothetical Constructs and Intervening Variables,” Psychological Review, LV, no 2 (1948), 95–107CrossRefGoogle Scholar; or Sartori, G., “Concept Misformation in Comparative Politics,” American Political Science Review, LXIV, no 4 (1970), 1033–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

43 Hempel, C., Aspects of Scientific Explanation and Other Essays (New York, 1965), 177.Google Scholar

44 Carnap, Philosophical Foundations of Physics, 227.

45 Hempel, Aspects of Scientific Explanation, 178.

46 Ibid., 180.

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48 Philosophical Foundations of Physics, 230.

49 Treatise on Human Nature, I (London, 1817), vi and xii.

50 Stove, “Hume, Probability and Induction,” 188.

51 Smart, Between Science and Philosophy, 177–8; cf. Salmon Foundations of Scientific Inference, 4–11.

52 Conjectures and Refutations (London, 1963), vii.

53 Ibid., 46.

54 Ibid.

55 Kaplan, A., The Conduct of Inquiry (San Francisco, 1964), 377.Google Scholar

56 Foresight and Understanding (London, 1961), 60.

57 Popper, The Poverty of Historicism, 135.

58 Carnap, Philosophical Foundations of Physics, 231.

59 Salmon, Foundations of Scientific Inference, 18.

60 Greene, noting the paucity of advocates for deductive theory-building in political science, exceptions being Riker and Downs, contends that “many political scientists have rejected deductive processes and have clung to a mistaken (or poorly defined) confidence in induction because of their false association of deduction with only tautological reasoning and criteria of logical consistency.” “Values and the Methodology of Political Science,” 281 and 283. If he is right then it is worth noting that the hypothetico-deductive approach to theory-building just set out in the text allows amply for empirical import. The relevant works of Riker, and Downs, are, respectively, The Theory of Political Coalitions (New Haven, 1962), and An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York, 1957). Neither of these works measures up adequately on the picture of hypothetico-deductive theory-building here set out precisely because they do not provide for the required tests.Google Scholar

61 Ayer, A.J., “Conversations with Philosophers: A.J. Ayer Discusses with Bryan Magee the Direction Taken by His Philosophical Thought since the Publication in 1936 of His Language, Truth and Logic,” Listener, LXXXIV, no 2179 (1970), 908.Google Scholar

62 Neither is inductive enumeration entirely unsound philosophically nor is hypothetico-deduction entirely sound. Salmon has studied the strengths and weaknesses of each in detail in his works. See, e.g., his Foundations of Scientific Inference, 108–32; “Verifiability and Logic,” Mind, Matter and Method, ed. Feyerabend, P. and Maxwell, G. (Minneapolis, 1970), 354–76Google Scholar; and “Bayes's Theorem and the History of Science,” Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science: Vol. V, Historical and Philosophical Perspectives on Science, ed. Stuewer, R. (Minneapolis, 1970), 68–86Google Scholar. Cf. Hanson, Patterns of Discovery, 85–90. To this point all that is claimed is that there is a variety of philosophy of science positions, all of which collectively reject the central and near role granted to inductive enumeration and its methods by both behaviouralists and post-behaviouralists. On the proper uses of inductive enumeration political scientists may usefully consult Gregor, A.J., “Theory, Metatheory, and Comparative Politics,” Comparative Politics, III, no 4 (1971), 578.Google Scholar

63 “Political Theory as a Vocation,” 1062.

64 Discussed in detail in my “Towards a Science of Politics,” paper read at the Forty-third Annual Meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association, St John's, 1971, pp. 77–83.

65 “Behavior Patterns of Scientists,” American Scholar, XXXVIII, no 2 (1969), 199.

66 “Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids,” Nature, CLXXI, no 4356 (1953), 737–8, and Watson, J., The Double Helix (New York, 1968).Google Scholar

67 “Behavior Patterns of Scientists,” 199.

68 Foresight and Understanding, 13; cf. Jacobson “The Unity of Political Theory,” 115.

69 I. de Sola Pool, “Some Facts about Values,” P.S., III, no 2 (1970), 102–3.

70 “A Review Essay of Essays in the Scientific Study of Politics, H.J. Storing, ed.,” American Political Science Review, LVII, no 1 (1963), 125.

71 “Political Theory as a Vocation,” 1064.

72 Rockman, B., “A ‘Behavioral’ Critique of the Critique of Behavioralism,” paper read at the Sixty-fifth Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, New York, 1969, P.8.Google Scholar

73 “Remarks on Concept Formation,” Philosophy of Science, XXXVIII, no 4 (1971), 570, 600, and 601.

74 See, e.g., Hayek, F.A., The Counter Revolution of Science (New York, 1955), 14Google Scholar, and Brazeau, J., “The Social Scientist's View,” Science Forum, II (1969), 13.Google Scholar

75 Rockman, “A ‘Behavioral’ Critique of the Critique of Behavioralism,” 25; cf. Bookman, J.T., “The Disjunction of Political Science and Political Philosophy,” American Journal of Economics and Sociology, XXIX, no 1 (1970), 17–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Margolis, M., “The New Language of Political Science,” Polity, III, no 3 (1971), 420Google Scholar. For a refutation of Rockman, see Surkin, M., “Sense and Non-Sense in Politics,” P.S., II, no 4 (1969), 574Google Scholar. The failure of behaviouralism thus is not that it is abstract in its methodological strictures, as Cooper holds, for example, but that it errs in its strictures. See Cooper, B., “Behavioralism Pluralism Criticism,” a paper read at the Forty-second Annual Meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association, Winnipeg, 1970, p. 27Google Scholar. The defect of behaviouralism is too little not too much science; its science remains only an ideal not an accomplishment, as Gilsdorf, R. and Engelmann, F. put it. See their “Recent Behavioural Political Science in Canada,” paper read at the Thirty-eighth Annual Meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association, Sherbrooke, 1966, p. 4.Google Scholar