We will examine the various
scholarly definitions of political behavior, how political behavior originated
in the discipline of political science, as well as the main thrusts that it
has.
The article exposes you to
intellectual developments since the behavioral revolution till present. Note
that the terms political behavior, behaviorism, behavioral approach and
behavioral revolution may be interchangeably used in this article.
Table of Content
After going through this post,
you should be able to:
(a) Define political behavior
from various perspectives
(b) Historicize the
development of political behavior in the discipline of political science
(c) Know the main thrusts
of political behavior
Definitions of Political Behavior
According to Eldersveld and
Katz in 1961, political behavior or behavioral approach to the study of
politics “identifies the behavior of individuals or group of individuals as the
primary unit of analysis”. It “seeks to examine the behavior, actions and acts
of individuals, rather than characteristics of institutions such as
legislature, executive and judiciary”. Traditionally, the study of politics was
legalistic, normative and based on institutions, and this certainly made it
challenging for the discipline to fully explain and understand the behavior of
people within their political environments.
It was the need to overcome
this shortcoming and achieve a better understanding of politics that gave birth
to the “behavioral revolution”. This was a banner under which sociologists,
survey researchers and other empiricists gathered in the 1950s to distinguish
themselves from those who studied constitutions, philosophy, or history, and
prominent scholars who championed the revolution are Robert Dahl (1961), and
David Easton (1961).
The main aim of political
behavior is to “explain behavior with an unbiased, neutral point of view, using
methods such as sampling, scaling statistical analysis and interviewing among
others. The most practical way to do it is to focus on individuals and groups
who are the actors in politics.
However, subsequent
scholarly definitions of political behavior seem to have expanded beyond the
issue of method and approach. The current state of political behavior, as some
scholars now claim, is typically concerned with individual behavior in the
society. One of such scholars is Richard Rose who, in her 2007 work claims that
political behavior is the study of the behavior of political actors such as
voters, lobbyists, and politicians.
Thus, currently, discourses
in political behavior are devoted to provide a sound understanding of the
relationship between the political actions of citizens and the political
process in a democracy, and this is why the subject now covers issues such as
political attitudes, extra electoral forms political participation such a protest,
resistance, social movement, apathy, and extremism, as well as consequences for
political representation and political systems.
From
whichever angle it is defined, what you need to really grasp is that political behavior
studies the behavior of individuals and groups towards politics and political
institutions in their environment, and it attempts to use scientific methods to
study them.
The Study of Politics before Behavioral Revolution
Before
the era of political behavior, specifically up to the period of 1900, the study
of politics was dominated by two main methodological approaches:
The Normative -
Philosophical Approach
The Descriptive
-Institutional Approach
In
what follows we explain these two approaches in details.
(a) The
Normative - Philosophical Approach
This was based on
reflections on and interrogations of early philosophers towards political
events and values across the globe. Socio political events such as justice,
polity, legitimacy state, and power and wealth distributions were the main
subjects of interrogation and investigation because early philosophers regarded
them as most essential to the understanding of politics and the peaceful co-
existence of people and nations.
Most questions the philosophers
asked revolved around what justice is, how it is achieved and what importance
it should be accorded it in human polity; what action or practice is
legitimate, what the ideal role of the state is, and how power, wealth and
other values are equitably distributed in the society to guarantee
egalitarianism. Philosophers who engaged in these questioning include Plato,
Aristotle, St Augustine, St Thomas Aquinas, Niccolo Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes,
John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
(b)
The Descriptive - Institutional
Approach
This approach basically
described structures and institutions of politics and government. It originally
focused on the discussion of the evolution and operation of legislatures,
executives and judiciaries which are respectively the institutions for making,
carrying out and interpreting the law. This later came to include
bureaucracies, political parties, pressure groups, interest groups,
constitutions, and other frameworks that are constantly interacted with in
politics. Unlike the foregoing approach, the Descriptive -Institutional
Approach is more interested in facts than values, seeking to provide fact based
information on structures and institutions such as constitution and its forms,
parliament and its parliamentary supremacy, law making procedures, supremacy of
the law, elections and other means of choosing and changing representatives.
Before the era of political
behavior, these two approaches dominated the study of politics. Socio political
values were studied based on individual’s subjectivity and perspectives, and
then institutions of politics were described from historical antecedents and
values emanating from philosophers’ thoughts. In these two approaches however
stands a gap: the individual or group that is the operators of political
institutions and interpreters of political values are amiss! What about them?
How do we understand the output of institutions and values without first
understanding the people who man them, their values, attitudes, orientations,
socializations and other things? All these determine, to a great extent, what
they do in their political environments. The point at which political
scientists began to ask these questions was the outset of the behavioral
approach.
Remi
Anifowose summarized the issues that provoked these questions as “low level of
generalization or finding, untenable assumptions and premises that influenced and
sometimes distorted findings, mere value laden findings and assumptions,
emphasis on the study of institutions to exclude political process, neglect of
the findings of other social science disciplines, as well as accumulation of
irrelevant facts”.
Read On: What
is Political Participation? - Definition, Forms & Examples in Nigeria
The Behavioral Revolution
The beginning of the behavioral
revolution in political science may be traced to the publication in 1908 of Human Nature in Politics by Graham
Wallas, and The Process of Government by
Arthur Bentley. As earlier pointed out, the behavioral revolution in politics
came as oppositional response to the normative –philosophical and descriptive-
institutional orientations that were used for the study of politics in earlier
periods.
Proponents of the
behavioral revolution not only emphasized facts over values, as stated above,
they also argued that it is the behavior of individuals in political
institutions, rather than the institutions themselves, that is the essence of
politics. They proposed the use of rigorous scientific and empirical methods in
political research, in a bid to make the discipline of political science as
advanced and as generalizing as conventional sciences such as Chemistry and
Physics.
Behaviouralists also called
for greater integration of political science with other social sciences such as
Psychology, Sociology and economics.
Using psychological and
sociological approaches to analyze the role of individuals and groups in day to
day political conduct in the state, Wallas and Bentley in their respective
books earlier mentioned focused on the behavioral and informal processes of
political activities, rather than philosophical postulations, armchair
theorizing, structures and institutions of government. This is a radical
departure from the past.
By
the 1920s, the behavioral revolution had got to its peak through the efforts of
two major intellectual giants: Charles Merriam and his student, Harold Lasswell
who both introduced to the study of politics, such new and scientifically
systematic concepts as power and political elites.
The
revolution progressed enormously, up to the period from 1925 up to the end of
the Second World War (1937-45). It witnessed a tremendous revival and dominated
the study of politics throughout the fifties. This was made possible through
the relentless intellectual efforts of key behaviouralists such as David
Easton, Robert Dahl, Karl Deutsch, Gabriel Almond, David Truman and others who
later came to dominate the discipline.
By
the late sixties however, some behaviouralists began to agitate for the
revision of the behavioral approach to accommodate new developments in
political phenomenon. Spearheaded by David Easton, this revisionist movement is
known as post-behavioral movement and, will be discussed in another unit of
this material.
Conclusion on Definitions, Origin and Main Thrusts of Political Behavior
In
conclusion we have discussed the
definitions of political behavior, the state of the discipline of political
science before it, and the emergence of the behavioral revolution. We revealed
that there were two major traditional approaches to the study of politics,
namely the Normative - Philosophical and Descriptive - Institutional
approaches. The study of political behavior arose from the behavioral
revolution in political science which developed in opposition to those older
Normative-Philosophical and Descriptive-Institutional approaches.
While
the Normative - Philosophical Approach emphasized the discussion of universal
political values, the Descriptive - Institutional Approach focused on the
evolution and operation of important governmental institutions.
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