hello, welcome back. This is Dr. S. Thianlalmuan Ngaihte,
Assistant Professor of Political Science. 
This is a continuation of our
discussions on behavioralism. The target
audience of this class are primarily
undergraduate students taking political
science as one of the subject. Today, I
want to start the class with the portion that we left out in the last class, that
is, on Charles E. Merriam, after which we
will discuss about the significance and
achievements of behavioralism. Charles E. Merriam was a Professor of political
science. He was a critic and defender of
democracy. He was regarded as the
intellectual godfather of the behavioral
political science. He is the founder of a
Chicago School, which made substantial
contributions to the behavioral movement.
Charles E. Merriam propagated the
interdisciplinary and scientific
character of political science. In his article, "The present state of the
study of politics", published in 1921 and
his book, NEW ASPECTS OF POLITICS,
published in 1925, he criticised political
science for its lack of scientific
rigor. He argued for a reconstruction of
methods in political analysis, advocated
the greater use of statistics in the aid of empirical observation and measurement,
and postulated that -intelligent
social control- a concept reminiscent
of the old Comtean positivism, might emerge from the converging interest of
politics, medicine, psychiatry, and
psychology.
Merriam deprecated the work of historian
for ignoring the influences of psychology, economics and
sociology. He favored that political
scientists should make full use of
advances in social sciences in order to
develop interdisciplinary and scientific
character in political science. He advocated scientific endeavour by using
quantitative technique already developed
in the field of psychology and sociology.
An important empirical work of Merriam,
which he published with Harold F
Gosnell's, titled NON-VOTING, CAUSES AND METHODS OF CONTROL, which was published in
1921
uses sampling methods and SURVEY data
and is illustrative of the type of
research that came to dominate political
science after Second World War. In 1925, he exhorted
political scientists to look at political
behavior as one of essential objects of
inquiry. Being an ardent champion of democracy, he consistently sought to put
science into the service of
democratic principles.
Now, coming to the significance and  achievements of behaviorism. We know that behaviouralism
has its own limitations and has
encountered a number of serious
criticisms. Even then, its contribution in
building and transforming the subject
matter of particle science has been
remarkable and undeniable. It greatly
transformed the subject of political science -its nature, scope,  methods and
and techniques and approaches. Behaviouralism 
shift the focus in the analysis of politics from
the formalism and normative orientations
of the legalistic and philosophy
schools to political
behavior. Under the influence of Behavioralism,
reliability has become the primary
focus of social and political science
research, in contrast to higher degree of
generality.
Also, primacy was given to issues
and questions that could be answered
reliably. Under the influence of behaviouralism, the focus of research has
become micro-level oriented, rather
than macro-level generalization. And also
behavior of individuals or group of
individuals become the primary unit and
focus of research, rather than the
structure, institutions, ideologies or
events of political phenomena. The real
behavior of actual actors in the political
system become the main focus of study. Behaviouralism, in fact, came to be
accepted as an approach even wider than
the study of political behavior,
yet, political behavior was its main
focus. The point is, the political behavior
of persons came to be studied, analyzed
and understood by taking into account
psychological, sociological, economical,
environmental, and other influences on the
behavior of man. 
Comprehending of all the diverse processes
and factors that directly or indirectly
influences the behavior of man in and
within the political system calls for
understanding and analyzing the political
socializations, the political ideologies, political culture,
the participation, commitment,
political communication, leadership,
decision-making, even political violence. This in fact is inter or cross-disciplinary
approach, which is one of the defining
markers of
behaviouralism. It's inter-disciplinary nature has helped and enabled political scientists to
understand the basic urges, needs and
demands of of individuals in a better way.
The achievements of behaviouralism can also
be seen in the way it influences the
traditionalists. Though the traditionalists reiterated its faith in the classical
tradition of political science, they
also accepts that the behavioralists has
made political science more self-conscious, self-critical, opened it up to vital
interdisciplinary influences, and considerably refined its research techniques
and methodologies.  Traditionalist even
recast their subject matter, methodology
and conclusions. They use interview and
questionnaire techniques, content
analysis and other statistical devices
while studying human phenomenon. They
were also not averse to using attitude
measurement, scaling techniques, sampling
methods. Topics or subjects which
were earlier considered as traditional
domains or areas have been transformed
to behavioural orientations. Also attitudes,
perceptions, values, motivations which
were considered as -speculative thinking
alone- have come out of traditional fields. The post behavioralists too accepts
the achievements of the behavioral era,  the only thing is that they seek to push
political science farther and towards new
horizon. Apart from the points noted
already, two major achievements in
political science can be witnessed as a
result of behavioral revolution. The first one is theoretical in nature, that is, theory making,
or theory-building.
The other one is technical in nature.
That is research methodology or
technique of research. Please note that the
technical revolution and achievements
got far ahead of the theoretical one.
Remarkable achievements were made in the
development and refinement of the tools
and techniques of research, especially
the fields of content-analysis, case
studies, interviewing and observations
and statistics. Coming to content-analysis,
content analysis entails a systematic reading of a body of texts, images, and
symbolic matter. It is a research tool
used to determine the presence of certain
words or concepts within texts or sets
of texts. Researchers quantify and analyze
the presence, meanings and relationships of
such words and concepts, then make
inferences about the messages within the
text, the writer(s), the audience, and even
the culture and time of which these are a part.
The method of content-analysis was not
new to the political scientists of the
19th and early 20th century. However, it was with the arrival of
behavioral revelation that the methods,
technique and ways of doing content-
analysis become more scientific, more
standardized, more systematic and refined.
The first systematic content-analysis in political science was made
by Harold D. Lasswell, in his book
titled, PROPAGANDA TECHNIQUE IN WORLD WAR
1,  published in 1927. This work was a dispassionate description and analysis of
the massive propaganda campaigns
conducted by all the major belligerents
in WW 1. With regards
to interviewing and observation, even though
political scientists were using in the
pre-behavioural era, the methods could be hardly
distinguished from those used by journalists. The greatest refinement came in the
fields of sampling survey, which became a
basic instrument of social research in
its own right. Sampling survey achieves or enables construction of explanatory
theory like population samples, especially in the field of prospective
voters which was designed and
administered with great skills. Another
method came out in the 1930s, known as quota sample of the 1930s
and again to be followed by the
probability sampling in the 1940s.
In the field of interview, increasing sophistication in the designing of
survey questionnaires and technique, and
in the substantive aspects has been
witnessed. It draws from the disciplines
of counseling and psychotherapy. The
merit of open-ended questions as
compared with the fixed alternative
or "pool-type" questions and of the focused or  in-depth interview have
been elaborated and developed with it investigators range of choice among
interviewing tools has markedly widened. The use of panel technique, that is,
successive interviews of a populations of
sample known as panel, made possible the
study of attitudes and behavior through
successive changes. And, in the field of
statistics, there have been remarkable
changes. From uni-variate to bi-variate
to multi-variate procedures and analysis  enables social scientists to
tests entire paradigm in one full sweep. 
   With this, we have come to the
end of the class. We know that behaviouralism has greatly transformed the subject
matter of political science. Even then,
we know that it has its own limitations
and this led to the emergence of
POST-BEHAVIOURALISM, which will be the
topic for our discussion in the next
class. I'll see you, will meet you in the next class again.
Till then, have a good time...
