While the classical and traditional political studies focused on universal principles and ideals, and legal–institutional arrangements, a new stream of studies in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, focused more on the processes—both formal and informal, which influence and condition the working of political institutions and decision-making in the political arena. An important development was the stress on the behavioural aspects of political studies. The emphasis on individual and group actors, informal processes, and factual and observational techniques gave birth to the behavioural approach. An important contribution was also the growth of the inter-disciplinary approach in which the disciplines of psychology and sociology were used for political analysis. The following studies, which rely on experimental, empirical and scientific methods, constitute the contemporary approach.
Arthur F. Bentley’s The Process of Government, which discusses informal processes and not descriptive formalism or formal political institutions; his study largely provides the basis for understanding the actual dynamics of groups in politics—pressure groups, political parties, public opinion and elections. Borrowing also from the field of sociology, Bentley’s group approach to politics stresses the ‘functional basis of government’, i.e., politics is understood in terms of group conflict, with the government playing a balancing act.
Graham Wallas’s Human Nature in Politics, in which he emphasizes the informal processes affecting political institutions and decision-making; he borrows from the field of psychology and shows that human beings are not always rational or guided by self-interest in their activities. He holds, ‘that to understand the political process one must examine how people actually behave in political situations, not merely speculate on how they should behave or would behave.6 According to Wallas, neither the deductive method adopted by Hobbes and Bentham, in which human beings are seen to be self-interested or moved by pain and pleasure, respectively, nor that of the political economist, in which human beings are held to be rational, can be the basis for understanding political processes.
David Truman’s The Governmental Process: Political Interests and Public Opinion, in which he furthers the thesis of group politics and explains political processes in terms of the interests and conflicts of various groups.7 Robert Dahl’s theory of polyarchy is an extension of this argument.
Charles Merriam’s New Aspects of Politics and Political Power, Harold Lasswell’s Politics: Who Gets What, When and How, A. Kaplan’s Power and Society: A Framework for Political Enquiry, all of which dwell on the elite theory argument that politics is actually the interaction and negotiation amongst a variety of political elites.
The second stage of the development of political studies can be illustrated through the following works.
David Easton’s The Political System, in which the systems approach is emphasized, i.e., how inputs in the form of pressures and demands are received by the political system from society, how they are considered and processed for decision-making (authoritative allocation of resources) and how outputs (decisions) are rendered. Easton defines the political system as ‘that system of interactions in any society through which binding or authoritative allocations are made’.8
A particular variant of the general systems theory is the structural–functional theory that seeks to investigate which political structures perform what basic functions. Gabriel A. Almond and J. S. Coleman’s The Politics of Developing Areas and Gabriel A. Almond and G. Bingham Powell Jr’s Comparative Politics: A Developmental Approach develop and explain the structural–functional theory. While the behavioural approach is useful for the analysis of national governmental processes, the systems and structural–functional approaches help in comparative political analysis. A more inclusive approach is adopted by Gabriel A. Almond, G. Bingham Powell, Jr, Kaare Strom and Russell J. Dalton in Comparative Politics Today.9
Karl Deutsch’s The Nerves of Government, Models of Political Communication and Control propounds the communication theory; the influence of science and economics is evident in the emphasis on channels, loads, load-capacity, flows, lag, etc. which set limits on any organization.
Anthony Downs’s An Economic Theory of Democracy and J. M. Buchanan and G. Tullock’s The Calculus of Consent treat political processes as processes of exchange. These works draw upon the economic postulate of the self-interested and rational individual to put forth the new political economy approach that seeks to apply economic models to the study of politics. Anthony Downs, Mancur Olson and William Niskanen have applied the new political economy approach to the study of party competition, electoral and voting exchange, interest group behaviour and policy influence on bureaucrats. Two specific applications of the theory have been in the form of the rational or public choice theory that understands political issues in terms of rational, self-interested individual behaviour and the game theory understood in terms of the famous prisoner’s dilemma.
Richard C. Snyder, H. W. Bruck and Burton Sapin’s Decision-Making as An Approach to The Study of International Politics introduced decision-making as an analytical tool based on process analysis and capable of dealing with dynamic situations of time and change.
Leave a Reply