CHAPTER 1: Introduction; Vivien Lowndes, David Marsh and Gerry Stoker
What is politics? What is it that political scientists study?
• Ontology: what’s there to know about?
• Two broad approaches to defining the political
o 1. Arena definition
▪ politics occurs within certain limited ‘arenas’, initially involving a focus upon
parliament, the executive, the public service, pol parties, interest groups, later
expanded to include the judiciary, army, and policy
o 2. Process definition
▪ Much looser than the arena def
▪ Idea that power is inscribed in all social processes
▪ associated with feminism, constructivism, poststructuralism and Marxism
o rel btwn both, best seen as duality, interactive and iterative, rather than dualism
• politics
o feminists, emphasis on idea that the ‘personal is political’
o Marxists: reflection of struggle btwn social classes in society
o Constructivists: process conducted in range arenas, main struggles around pol identity
o Poststructuralist: not contained within single structure of dominations, power is
diffused throughout soc inst and processes
• Process def: critised by arena def bc of ‘conceptual stretching’ or the ‘boundary problem’
o Danger of seeing everything as political
• Goodin and Klingemann
o Politics = ‘the constrained use of social power’
o Pol process is about collective choice, without simple resort to force or violence
What is a scientific approach to politics?
• Minimalist approach to science: pol science is science: it offers ordered knowledge based
on systemic enquiry
• Ontology
o the essence of being – i.e. what is the object that is being studied
o what we can know about the world
• Epistemology
o how do we know what is to be known – i.e. what kind of evidence do we need?
o how we can know it
• Positivism
o empirical observation is key!
,• Realist = foundationalist
• Constructivist = anti foundationalist
• Foundationalist
o = all truth claims can be judged objectively true of false
• Anti- foundationalist
o = argument that there are never neutral grounds for asserting what is true in any
time/space
• Realism
o real world exists independently of our knowledge of it and can be discovered as such if
we use the right methods in the right way
• Constructivism
o world is socially constructed and can be interpreted in diff ways
o crucial: idea of double hermeneutic
• idea of double hermeneutic
o there are 2 levels of ‘understanding’
▪ the world is interpreted by the actors (one hermeneutic level)
▪ and their interpretation is interpreted by the observer (second hermeneutic level)
o for researchers: aim explore own interpretation of interpretations made by actors
about their behavior
• Behavioural and rational choice approaches: positivist position (p10)
• Psychologists lean towards positivism
• Feminism: many constructivist position, some positivists
• Poststructuralists see epistemology as prior to ontology
• Marxists: critical realist position
The discipline of political science: a celebration of diversity?
• Some constructivists imply that philosophical ignorance and naivety about human
behavior are associated w the ambitions of positivists
• 3 factors to support the case for a plurality of approaches
o 1. There is evidence of epistemological gain through the richness of approaches
o 2. Although there is a danger of too much plurality, such a point has not yet been
reached.
o 3. Relevance of pol science to the wider world
• Key challenge: to argue in favour of diversity, combined with dialogue
PART I: THEORY AND APPROACHES
,CHAPTER 2: Behavouralism; David Sanders
• Question: Why do people behave in way they do?
• Difference btwn behaviourialists from other social scientists
o They insist that
▪ observable behavior (individual level of social aggregate) should be focus of analysis
▪ any explanation of that behavior should be susceptible to empirical testing
• Behaviouralists have investigated wide range of substantive problems
The rise of the behavioural movement and its core characteristics
• Behavioural movement assumed an important position in soc sciences in 1950s and 60s
o Philosophical origins were in writings of Auguste Comte in 19th century and in logical
positivism of ‘Vienna Circle’ in 1920s
• Positivism
o popularized in GB by Alfred Ayer, in Germany by Carl Hempel
o analytical statements made about physical or social world fall into 1 of 3 categories
▪ 1. Such statements could be useful tautologies, purely definitional statements that
assigned a specific meaning to a particular phenomenon or concept
▪ 2. Statement could be empirical, they could be tested against observation in order to
see if they were true or false
▪ 3. Statements that fall into neither of 1st 2 categories are devoid of analytic meaning
o meaningful analysis could proceed only on basis of useful tautologies and empirical
statements
• not correct to assume that behaviouralism accepted all philosophical precepts positivism
o positivism was subjected to philosophical criticism
o behaviouralism view of nature of empirical theory and of explanation: strongly
influenced by positivist tradition
• Definition empirical theory and explanation: p.22
• Positivists/behaviouralists: 3 main ways in which explanatory theories can be evaluated
o 1. Good theory must be internally consistent
o 2. Good theory relating to specific class of phenomena should be consistent w other
theories that seek to explain related phenoma
o 3. Genuinely explanatory theories must be capable of generating empirical predictions
that can be tested against observation
• Emphasis on empirical observation/testing produces 2 characteristic features of
behavioural approach to social enquiry
o 1. commitment to systematic use of all relevant empirical evidence rather than a
limited set of illustrative supporting examples
, ▪ what matters is not whether evidence is qualitative/quantitative, but
1) that it is used to evaluate theoretical propositions
2) that it is employed systematically rather than illustratively
o 2. Scientific theories and/or explanations must be capable of being falsified
▪ shows commitment Karl Popper’s revision of traditional positivism
• Karl Popper’s revision of traditional positivism in which he
o 1) substituted the principle of falsifiability for that of verification
o 2) identified the falsifiability criterion as line of demarcation btwn ‘scientific’ and
‘pseudo-scientific’ enquiry
• Status statement depends on whether its constituent terms are independently defined
• Problem interpretation is common in soc sciences
• Statement can be interpreted in 2 completely different ways
o 1. In purely tautological terms
o 2. regard statement as an empirical one
• Karl Popper
o theories are ‘scientific’ only if they generate empirical that are capable of being falsified
• Behaviouralists, twin notions that theories should
o 1. seek to explain something
o 2. be capable, in principle, of being tested against the world of observation
o For them, non- falsifiable theories are not really theories at all
• Lakatos argued most theories in physical/soc sciences contain non-falsifiable set of ‘core’
propositions
• Behaviouralists insist: genuinely explanatory theory must engender falsifiable
propositions form ‘If A, then B; if not A, then not B’ and must specify causal antecedents
that are defined independently of phenomenon that is supposedly being explained
Criticisms of the behavioural approach
Objections to the positivist claim that statements which are neither definitions (useful
tautologies) nor empirical are meaningless
• Behaviouralism has philosophical roots in positivism → weaknesses inherent in
positivism: also be inherent in behaviouralism → Most important weakness
o large class of statements positivism labels meaningless in fact contain many ideas that
can add very significantly to our understanding of soc behavior and human condition
The tendency towards mindless empiricism
