Behaviouralism in political analysis has represented different things to different people—a methodological or technical orientation; a search for stable units of political analysis in the form of individuals, groups, processes, functions, structures, political culture, communication, decision-making, etc.; a movement or revolution in political analysis.
David Easton has laid down eight assumptions and objectives of behaviouralism, which he terms as its ‘intellectual foundation stones’.
Regularity
Regularity refers to the frequency, periodicity or uniform interval of occurrence of an activity or phenomenon. In the natural sciences, observable phenomena are available for empirical testing due to their occurrence at regular intervals. As such, a causal relationship between an event or activity and its cause (cause–effect relationship) can be established. Behaviouralists believe that there are discernible uniformities in political behaviour as human beings do behave in a similar manner when the circumstances are similar. Voting behaviour could be taken as a plausible example, meaning that there can be regularity in the voting pattern of a group of voters. The upshot of this argument based on the regularity assumption is that political behaviour due to discernible or observable uniformity can also be expressed in a generalized manner. As such, construction of theories is possible, which can explain and help in predicting political phenomena. For behaviouralists, political study and political analysis must seek regularity in political behaviour, such as voting pattern and pressure tactics, and locate variables associated with them, such as social affiliation, economic status, resource allocation through public policy, etc.
Verification
Verification stands for checking the validity or veracity of a statement, proposition or theory. Behaviouralists believe that generalizations arrived at by observing regularity in political behaviour must be testable. This means that political propositions must be subjected to empirical test/s with reference to the relevant political behaviour. Therefore, all that political science or political analysis should aspire for is to concern itself with observable phenomenon. For example, if there is a proposition that says that voters in the high-income group tend to vote for conservative parties, this must be valid when tested with reference to the voting behaviour of high-income voters.
Techniques
For observing, recording and analysing political behaviour, and generating valid, reliable and comparable data, rigorous techniques are required. For the purpose of acquiring valid and reliable data, behaviouralists focus on the methods of questionnaires, structured interviews, content analysis, statistical sampling techniques, close-ended surveys, and so on. Sophisticated research tools such as simulation, causal modelling, multivariate analysis, scalogram analysis, paired comparison, etc. are used for the analysis and interpretation of data.
Quantification
In scientific enquiry, quantification is considered to be a very important step towards making data measurable. To say that out of an electorate of 1 million a large number voted for party X, is not the same thing as saying that out of 1 million 60 per cent or 60,000 voted for party X. To quantify is to precisely determine the number or the amount or the degree of something. For behaviouralists, quantification and measurement are important for eliminating the factor of qualitative and personal intervention in recording, interpreting and analysing data. Any error or unreliability in data so quantified can be corrected with the help of verification.
Values
Prescriptive and ethical evaluation has been associated with theory-building in traditional political inquiries. Behaviouralists, on the other hand, try to make a clear distinction between ethical evaluation and empirical explanation. They advocate value-neutrality in political enquiry. While the deductive and prescriptive mode of traditional political enquiry is based on the search for ethical and universal values, behaviouralists look for empirical explanations based on observable behaviour. The whole debate between behaviouralists and traditionalists has revolved round the fact–value dichotomy. Behaviouralism is not concerned with value judgment and focuses only on factual propositions. Behaviouralists advocate that political enquiry to be objective should be value-free and value-neutral. For example, principles like liberty, equality or justice are normative values whose truth and falsity cannot be established empirically. In short, behaviouralists advocate value-neutral, factual, explanatory–descriptive political enquiry, as against traditional political enquiry that is normative, value-laden and prescriptive.
Systematization
Behaviouralists seek to bring the rigour of empirical and scientific techniques to research in political science. But research should not be an end in itself; it should be linked to theory. Behaviouralists seek to relate research and theory, because, ‘research, untutored by theory, may prove trivial and theory unsupported by data, futile’.30 In traditional political enquiry, theory tends to be become speculative and normative. Behaviouralists, unlike traditionalists who emphasize the value theory, give importance to the causal theory. A value theory, for example, Plato’s proposition that only a person who personifies the Idea of Good can be a philosopher king, is based on the deductive method, on normative and prescriptive principles; a causal theory, on the other hand, seeks a functional relationship between variables. For example, the social and economic background of a group of voters and their voting preferences are all variables that are linked to each other. For behaviouralists, only causal theory is important.
Behaviouralists talk of a hierarchy of theories. Low-level theory explains relationships at a simple level and attempts singular generalizations. Middle-range theory represents synthetic or narrow-gauge theory. General theory represents systematic or overarching theory. Though behaviouralists aim to discover general laws of political behaviour and formulate overarching theories as their final goal, they start with low-level or middle-range theories.
Pure science
The pure science approach of behaviouralists means that the understanding and explanation of political behaviour are important for utilizing theoretical knowledge to solve urgent political problems. The emphasis is on pure research even if it cannot be applied to specific and minimum social problems. In short, it is research for research’s sake. Their quest is ‘to observe, analyse and organize facts with supreme and cold aloofness’. Excessive concern with facts or hyper-factualism has, however, been criticized as leading to crude empiricism, i.e., collecting data for data’s sake.
Integration
Behaviouralists argue that the study of cultural, economic, psychological and social phenomena, the inter-disciplinary approach, is important to understand political behaviour in its proper context. The search for unity and integration of the social sciences has prompted the search for ‘stable units of analysis’ that can be used across the disciplines. General systems, actions, functions and decisions have been proposed as units of analysis that are equally relevant for analysis in different disciplines.
One of the important examples of the inter-disciplinary approach is the field of political sociology that studies how the political and the social interact with and affect each other. Rajni Kothari’s study of the interaction between politics and caste in India and his famous statement that ‘the alleged casteism in politics is thus no more and no less than politicization of caste’31 can be treated as a study within the inter-disciplinary/political sociology approach. Besides Kothari, the studies of Paul Brass, Ramashray Roy and others on the interaction between caste and politics in India, especially from the point of view of ‘factionalism’, follow this approach.
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