Post-behaviouralism

The behavioural approach came under criticism by many political theorists for neglecting theory-building and even political science. Political philosophers such as Strauss argued that the behavioural approach was symptomatic of the crisis in political theory because it neglected normative issues. By the late 1960s, a Caucus for New Political Science developed within the America Political Science Association (APSA), which sought to reverse the identification of political science as a behavioural science. Given the social and political upheavals that were prevalent in America in the 1960s (civil rights movement, Cold War crisis, nuclear threat, feminist movement, impending Vietnam crisis), a new intellectual direction was emerging. The objectives and aims of the Caucus, as stated in their April 1969 manifesto, was to restore political science as a relevant and problem-solving discipline ‘which can serve the poor, oppressed and underdeveloped peoples at home and abroad in their struggles against the established hierarchies, elites and institutional forms of manipulation’.⁵² In 1969, David Easton, in his presidential address to the APSA, called this intellectual orientation the dawn of a ‘post-behavioural revolution’.⁵³

Post-behaviouralism stands for a set of principles and intellectual direction, which includes relevant, purposive and value-laden research, and change- and action-oriented political enquiry, and demands that political scientists be critical intellectuals and guardian of human values instead of being mere methodologists. David Easton who had propounded the intellectual foundation stones of behaviouralism, now set forth seven major traits or features of post-behaviouralism, which he called ‘Credo of Relevance’.⁵⁴