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Behavioralist
Behaviouralism (or behavioralism) is an approach in political science that emerged in the 1930s in the United States. It represented a sharp break from previous approaches in emphasizing an objective, quantified approach to explain and predict political behaviour. It is associated with the rise of the behavioural sciences, modeled after the natural sciences. Behaviouralism claims it can explain political behaviour from an unbiased, neutral point of view. Behaviouralists seek to examine the behaviour, actions, and acts of individuals – rather than the characteristics of institutions such as legislatures, executives, and judiciaries – and groups in different social settings and explain this behavior as it relates to the political system. Origins From 1942 through the 1970s, behaviouralism gained support. It was probably Dwight Waldo who coined the term for the first time in a book called "Political Science in the United States" which was released in 1956. It was David Easton how ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Easton
David Easton (June 24, 1917 – July 19, 2014) was a Canadian-born American political scientist. From 1947 to 1997, he served as a professor of political science at the University of Chicago. At the forefront of both the behavioralist and post-behavioralist revolutions in the discipline of political science during the 1950s and 1970s, Easton provided the discipline's most widely used definition of politics as the authoritative allocation of values for the society. He was renowned for his application of systems theory to the study of political science. Policy analysts have utilized his five-fold scheme for studying the policy-making process: input, conversion, output, feedback and environment. Gunnell argues that since the 1950s the concept of "system" was the most important theoretical concept used by American political scientists. The idea appeared in sociology and other social sciences but it was Easton who specified how it could be best applied to behavioral research on poli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Post-behavioralism
Post-behavioralism (or post-behaviouralism) also known as neo-behavioralism (or neo-behaviouralism) was a reaction against the dominance of behavioralist methods in the study of politics. One of the key figures in post-behaviouralist thinking was David Easton who was originally one of the leading advocates of the "behavioral revolution". Post-behavioralists claimed that despite the alleged value-neutrality of behavioralist research it was biased towards the status quo and social preservation rather than social change. Key tenets *Post-behavioralism challenged the idea that academic research had to be value neutral and argued that values should not be neglected. *Post-behavioralism claimed that behavioralism's bias towards observable and measurable phenomena meant that too much emphasis was being placed on easily studied trivial issues at the expense of more important topics. *Research should be more relevant to society and intellectuals have a positive role to play in society. Cr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Merriam
Charles Edward Merriam Jr. (1874–1953) was an American professor of political science at the University of Chicago, founder of the behavioralism, behavioral approach to political science, a trainer of many graduate students, a prominent intellectual in the Progressivism, Progressive Movement, and an advisor to several US Presidents. Upon his death, ''The New York Times'' called him "one of the outstanding political scientists in the country"."Dr. C.E. Merriam, Noted Educator," ''New York Times,'' January 9, 1953. Early life and education Charles Merriam was born in Hopkinton, Iowa, Hopkinton, Iowa, on November 15, 1874,Manning, ''Historical Dictionary of American Propaganda,'' 2004, p. 182.Bishop and Gilbert, ''Chicago's Accomplishments and Leaders,'' 1932, p. 341.Kloppenberg and Fox, ''A Companion to American Thought,'' 1995, p. 449. to Charles Edward Merriam and Margaret Campbell Kirkwood Merriam. The Merriams traced their lineage to Scottish people, Scottish immigrants who se ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Political Science
Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and power, and the analysis of political activities, political thought, political behavior, and associated constitutions and laws. Modern political science can generally be divided into the three subdisciplines of comparative politics, international relations, and political theory. Other notable subdisciplines are public policy and administration, domestic politics and government, political economy, and political methodology. Furthermore, political science is related to, and draws upon, the fields of economics, law, sociology, history, philosophy, human geography, political anthropology, and psychology. Political science is methodologically diverse and appropriates many methods originating in psychology, social research, and political philosophy. Approaches include positivism, interpretivism, rational choice theory, behaviouralism, structuralism, pos ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Political Philosophy
Political philosophy or political theory is the philosophical study of government, addressing questions about the nature, scope, and legitimacy of public agents and institutions and the relationships between them. Its topics include politics, liberty, justice, property, rights, law, and the enforcement of laws by authority: what they are, if they are needed, what makes a government legitimate, what rights and freedoms it should protect, what form it should take, what the law is, and what duties citizens owe to a legitimate government, if any, and when it may be legitimately overthrown, if ever. Political theory also engages questions of a broader scope, tackling the political nature of phenomena and categories such as identity, culture, sexuality, race, wealth, human-nonhuman relations, ethics, religion, and more. Political science, the scientific study of politics, is generally used in the singular, but in French and Spanish the plural (''sciences politiques'' and '' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Comparative Politics
Comparative politics is a field in political science characterized either by the use of the ''comparative method'' or other empirical methods to explore politics both within and between countries. Substantively, this can include questions relating to political institutions, political behavior, conflict, and the causes and consequences of economic development. When applied to specific fields of study, comparative politics may be referred to by other names, such as comparative government (the comparative study of forms of government). Definition Comparative politics is the systematic study and comparison of the diverse political systems in the world. It is comparative in searching to explain why different political systems have similarities or differences and how developmental changes came to be between them. It is systematic in that it looks for trends, patterns, and regularities among these political systems. The research field takes into account political systems throughout the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Postpositivism
Postpositivism or postempiricism is a metatheoretical stance that critiques and amends positivism and has impacted theories and practices across philosophy, social sciences, and various models of scientific inquiry. While positivists emphasize independence between the researcher and the researched person (or object), postpositivists argue that theories, hypotheses, background knowledge and values of the researcher can influence what is observed. Postpositivists pursue objectivity by recognizing the possible effects of biases. While positivists emphasize quantitative methods, postpositivists consider both quantitative and qualitative methods to be valid approaches. Philosophy Epistemology Postpositivists believe that human knowledge is based not on a priori assessments from an objective individual, but rather upon human ''conjectures''. As human knowledge is thus unavoidably conjectural, the assertion of these conjectures are ''warranted'', or more specifically, justified by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Behaviorism
Behaviorism is a systematic approach to understanding the behavior of humans and animals. It assumes that behavior is either a reflex evoked by the pairing of certain antecedent stimuli in the environment, or a consequence of that individual's history, including especially reinforcement and punishment contingencies, together with the individual's current motivational state and controlling stimuli. Although behaviorists generally accept the important role of heredity in determining behavior, they focus primarily on environmental events. Behaviorism emerged in the early 1900s as a reaction to depth psychology and other traditional forms of psychology, which often had difficulty making predictions that could be tested experimentally, but derived from earlier research in the late nineteenth century, such as when Edward Thorndike pioneered the law of effect, a procedure that involved the use of consequences to strengthen or weaken behavior. With a 1924 publication, John ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Behavioral Economics
Behavioral economics studies the effects of psychological, cognitive, emotional, cultural and social factors on the decisions of individuals or institutions, such as how those decisions vary from those implied by classical economic theory. Behavioral economics is primarily concerned with the bounds of rationality of economic agents. Behavioral models typically integrate insights from psychology, neuroscience and microeconomic theory. The study of behavioral economics includes how market decisions are made and the mechanisms that drive public opinion. The concepts used in behavioral economics today can be traced back to 18th-century economists, such as Adam Smith, who deliberated how the economic behavior of individuals could be influenced by their desires. The status of behavioral economics as a subfield of economics is a fairly recent development; the breakthroughs that laid the foundation for it were published through the last three decades of the 20th century. Beha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bernard Crick
Sir Bernard Rowland Crick (16 December 1929 – 19 December 2008) was a British political theorist and democratic socialist whose views can be summarised as "politics is ethics done in public". He sought to arrive at a "politics of action", as opposed to a "politics of thought" or of ideology, and he held that He was a leading critic of behaviouralism. Career Crick was born in England, the son of Harry Edgar and Florence Clara Crick, and educated at Whitgift School.''Who's Who 2007'', London : A. & C. Black, 2007 : 519 He read Economics at University College London, obtaining a first, before transferring to the London School of Economics for doctoral study. While working on his Ph.D.—published in 1958 as ''The American Science of Politics—''he was a Teaching Fellow at Harvard, 1952–1954; Assistant Professor, McGill, 1954–1955; Visiting Fellow, Berkeley, 1955–1956). Returning to Great Britain in 1956, he obtained his Ph.D at the LSE and was appointed to an Assistant a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Naive Empiricism
Naivety (also spelled naïvety), naiveness, or naïveté is the state of being naive. It refers to an apparent or actual lack of experience and sophistication, often describing a neglect of pragmatism in favor of moral idealism. A ''naïve'' may be called a ''naïf''. Etymology In its early use, the word ''naïve'' meant "natural or innocent", and did not connote ineptitude. As a French adjective, it is spelled ''naïve'', for feminine nouns, and ''naïf'', for masculine nouns. As a French noun, it is spelled ''naïveté''. It is sometimes spelled "naïve" with a diaeresis, but as an unitalicized English word, "naive" is now the more usual spelling. "naïf" often represents the French masculine, but has a secondary meaning as an artistic style. “Naïve” is pronounced as two syllables, in the French manner, and with the stress on the second one. Culture The naïf appears as a cultural type in two main forms. On the one hand, there is 'the satirical naïf, such as Candide' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Christian Bay
Christian Bay (1921 – May 8, 1990) was a Canadian political theorist and the chairman of the political science department at the University of Alberta in Canada. He formed the ideological basis for the Caucus for a New Political Science of the APSA and an important critique of Behavioral Politics. He is associated with Normative Political Science and the New institutionalism approach of politics. Bay was born in Oslo and received his Ph.D. at the University of Oslo in 1959, with his book ''The Structure of Freedom'' serving as his doctoral dissertation. This work was a psychological study of the quest for freedom and later that year earned him the Woodrow Wilson Foundation's 1959 book award. Bay went on to teach in the United States at Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley before becoming chairman of the political science department at the University of Alberta in Edmonton in 1966. He joined the University of Toronto The University of Toronto ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
