The Analysis of Political Behaviour

Harold D. Lasswell

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781136229824
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

This is Volume III of eighteen in collection on Political Sociology. Originally published in 1948, this is an empirical approach to the analysis of political behaviour. The present volume contains a selection of Prof. Lasswell's articles and papers on politics— the science and the art of management —written from the point of view of a man deeply[1]intent on making Democracy a working institution. It covers international political experiments and experiences of person-to-person relationships, morals, religion and quasi-religious movements; techniques of public opinion are scrutinized as well as the workings of the mind and the subconscious.

THE ANALYSIS OF POLITICAL BEHAVIOUR

I

HOW TO INTEGRATE SCIENCE, MORALS AND POLITICS

CHAPTER I

THE DEVELOPING SCIENCE OF DEMOCRACY^*

The developing science of democracy is an arsenal of implements for the achievement of democratic ideals. We know enough to know that democracies do not know how to live; they perish through ignorance—ignorance of how to sustain the will to live and of how to discover the means of life. Without knowledge, democracy will surely fall. With knowledge, democracy may succeed.

The significant advances of our time have not been in the discovery of new definitions of moral values or even in the skilful derivation of old definitions from more universal propositions. Our inheritance of brief definitions has been adequate. The advances of our time have been in the technique of relating them to reality.

In the process science has clarified morals. This, indeed, is the distinctive contribution of science to morality. Science can ascertain the means appropriate to the completion of moral impulse—means at once consistent with general definitions of morality and compatible with the fulfilment of moral purpose. The traditional sentences that define and justify morals, in common with all such sentences, use words of ambiguous reference. Each sentence is itself part of reality but refers to a larger reality. Standing alone, however, such a sentence is cryptic and fragmentary. The function of science is to complete it.

General sentences must be made part of a special language composed of postulates, definitions, and operational rules. The rules must specify how the key terms are to be used by observers who may take up various standpoints for the observation of reality. For artistic and propaganda purposes we may tolerate dangling sentences of ambiguous reference. But as students of politics we are seriously concerned with connecting them with the realities of Cabinet meetings. Congressional inquiries, trade association conventions, and general staff conferences; hence it is necessary to participate in a long process of disciplined clarification.

Consider any one-sentence definition of the value that distinguishes democratic societies from other forms of human association. We may affirm that the democratic value is regard for the dignity of man. Hence society is democratic when it puts this value into practice; it is then a commonwealth of mutual deference. Just what do these words mean? How can the observer of political events decide when to use the term “democratic” in a sense consistent with the definition?

Are we to determine the truth about a given community by limiting our attention to the government or by examining the structure of business corporations, ecclesiastical organizations, and fraternal orders as well? Are we to instruct observers to rely upon the clauses of written constitutions or upon official election returns? Are we to instruct them to look beyond the official figures to determine to what extent those who vote feel themselves free of intimidation? Must they go beyond these questions to explore deeper attitudes, such as the degree to which the members of the community have a lively sense of genuine participation in the determination of democracy? Without such accompanying specifications, no definition of democracy that purports to relate to reality can be other than word-mongering.

The friends of democracy who have turned to science have been acutely dissatisfied with the ambiguity of inherited political, social, and philosophical literature. To speak of the movement toward science as a revolt against philosophy is to fall into error. It was not impatience with democratic morals that led to the de-emphasizing of general definitions; it was discontent with the chronic incompleteness of formulation in the traditional literature. The turning to the specific is more properly understood as a stampede to complete philosophy, to reconsider every generality for the purpose of relating it to observable reality.

The mood of impatience was directed as much against speculative science as against philosophy, whenever speculative science was cultivated far beyond the limits of available data. This attitude is exemplified in what Wesley Mitchell wrote about his student impressions of philosophy and economic theory : “Give me premises and I could spin speculations by the yard. Also I knew my ‘deductions’ were futile … [Veblen] could do no more than make certain conclusions plausible—like the rest."¹

Mitchell, and his American fellow-exponents of the scientific study of society, lived near the end of a long epoch of cultural optimism, in which democratic values had moved triumphantly toward universal acceptance. Democratic doctrine was affirmed by both the rulers of society and the most powerful exponents of revolutionary change. The Marxists did not reject democracy; on the contrary, they declared that the only path to democracy was the overthrow of capitalism. They acknowledged the historical connection between free enterprise and free society; but they denied that the capitalistic method of organizing the productive forces was any longer widening the area of human freedom. On the contrary, the Marxists suggested that the inexorable march of monopoly spelled the doom of freedom until the inevitable triumph of the revolutionary proletariat.

There were two replies to the Marxist indictment—to ignore the facts or to restudy them. In America the “individualistic” attitude was to deny the facts, to affirm the substantial identity between democratic values and the existing state of affairs. To liberals, and particularly to middle-western liberals, certain facts were all too conspicuous. By assembling them, they hoped to bring reality into closer conformity with doctrine. In intellectual circles hope of reform, not certainty of revolution, was the dominant view of the future.² In such a setting democratic values were not in question.

THE ENLARGING FOCUS OF ATTENTION

The urge for relevance has enormously enlarged the permissible focus of attention among professional students of government in America. Most of those who completed their graduate work during the ’nineties were equipped to study political doctrine, public law, and comparative government (with special reference to Great Britain and the United States). During subsequent decades the leading members of the profession steadily enlarged the scope of their studies to include political parties, pressure groups, and administrative agencies. As they moved from the letter of the law to the significant features of the total context of socio-personal relations, they dealt with progressively more subtle themes connected with public opinion and political leadership, and they enlarged the geographical range of their minds to include the whole panorama of world events.

The expanding focus of scholarly attention is aptly exemplified in the publications of Charles E. Merriam, who began his career with History of the Theory of Sovereignty Since Rousseau (New York, 1900)—a conventional study of political doctrine. Subsequent books contributed to the discovery of the larger environment; there were studies of parties, public opinion, administration, leadership, world politics (the last being the “Civic Training Series”). Meanwhile, other colleagues were following similar lines of development. Charles A. Beard began with a study in English institutional history, The Office of Justice of the Peace (New York, 1904), and went ahead to explore the total economic and cultural setting of American institutions. He studied administrative processes not only in the United States but in Yugoslavia and Tokyo and in recent years dealt with national policy in the light of world movements.

NEW PROCEDURES OF OBSERVATION

The expanding focus of attention brought with it the use of new procedures for the observation of reality. By tradition students of government were chiefly collectors, making use of records of events they did not directly see. They depended upon historical documents and court reports. In the new search for the total relevant context, they relied in greater degree on more direct methods of observation, like the interview or direct participation. Vigorous personalities, like James Bryce and A. Lawrence Lowell, had always kept alive the more active elements of the tradition that made such men as De Tocqueville possible. There has, of course, always been a struggle within the breast of the scholar between to “wait and read” and to “go and see”. When the scholar has a lecture-room the temptation is to narrow his orbit between the library and the podium, resisting the centrifugal lure of the great beyond. In recent times the quest of reality has somewhat neutralized the centripetal forces of desk and rostrum, so that procedures of observation have been more widely utilized.

The repertory of procedures has itself expanded to meet new demands. Random personal contact has been supplemented by the use of carefully prepared questionnaires or polls given to representative groups. Time has been devoted to the preparation of forms for entering and tabulating the primary data of observation. In this connection the methods of the social anthropologist have been particularly stimulating; the observer of non-literate societies has learned to discipline his casual impressions by candid records.³

COLLECTIVE FACT-GATHERING

Significantly enough, fact-gathering operations have become more collective as they became more abundant. Many of the facts contributed to political science have been observed by professors who had the aid of students or research assistants. This is the provenience of most of the material collected under the auspices of the Social Science Research Committee of the University of Chicago, or the Institute of Human Relations at Yale. But special research bureaux, often unconnected with universities, have contributed extensively to recent science. These agencies are more free than teaching departments to adopt strict standards with regard to research personnel and to develop a corps of helots to perform routine operations. Teaching departments are more tolerant of “time out” for courses and seminars, less careful of deadlines and somewhat more impatient with the deserving “mediocrity” than the more professionalized bureau of investigation. Conspicuous among the private bureaux are the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Brookings Institution. However, the government itself is playing a more prominent rôle in reporting on reality, notably through such executive agencies as the National Resources Planning Board and such congressional channels as the Temporary National Economic Committee.

It is significant that when Charles E. Merriam surveyed the state of political research at the end of World War I he emphasized the under-equipment of the college professors of government, who were supposed to contribute to their subject but who were often driven to thresh over old straw through sheer lack of facilities for harvesting new facts.⁴ The idea of a permanent corps of research assistants comparable with the laboratory-technicians of the physical scientist was all too new. Handicapped by lack of funds for travel and for advanced study, each successive crop of students was thrown back upon its parochial frame of reference, destitute of opportunity to explore the larger world about which they were nominally qualified to speak. Hence the heavy stress by the fact-gatherers upon the need of ample funds for large-scale training programmes and upon the advantages of continuous collaboration in the prosecution of research. Hence, too, the institutional form of the Social Science Research Council, the university social science research council, and the National Resources Planning Board of the federal government.

NEW IDEAS OF THE SCOPE OF POLITICS

Sweeping changes in the focus of scholarly effort do not fail to bring about a revision of basic concepts, especially with regard to the scope of political science itself. Many American students had identified their field of investigation with government, but they had failed to distinguish between the meaning of government as a local institution and government as a function of society. As a function of society, government is the making of important decisions. What is locally called government often has very little to do with this function. We know that what is called government in a mill town may have but a modicum of influence on important decisions; they may be made by the board of directors of the mill. If the function of government is the subject of research, the mill directors are the ones to be investigated, not the shadow-men locally called government officials.

As the scope of scholarly attention widened, more students of government became conscious of the difference between government as a social function and government as a locally named institution. They reached out after definitions of political science that would clarify their new feeling for relevance.⁵

It would be idle to assert that a conceptual or a terminological consensus has developed concerning the scope of political science. In terms congenial to the present writer, the function of government is power. (For the moment we will speak of the function of government or politics interchangeably.) Power means the making of important decisions, and the importance of decisions is measured by their effect on the distribution of values. Values are such objects of desire as deference, safety, income. The power of individuals and groups is measured by the degree of their participation in the making of important decisions.

The definition of government and politics varies according to the nature and variety of values taken into consideration. For certain purposes it is convenient to circumscribe the scope of political science to the study of power. For more comprehensive comparisons the scope may be enlarged to include the study of other forms of deference, such as respect and insight. For certain broad problems of comparative politics it is expedient to conceive of the scope of political science as embracing the distribution of safety and income as well as deference. At this point the subject-matter of political science approaches that of the social sciences as a whole and merges with it. The most inclusive definition of political science thus speaks of it as the study of influence and the influential.⁶

The enlarged view of the scope of political science just referred to is not confined to the limits of the United States. On the contrary, parallel processes of generalization have gone forward throughout Western European social science. Never officially recognized as a separate university discipline in Europe, none the less the “sociology of politics” has been culti...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Editorial Note
• Acknowledgments
• I. How to Integrate Science, Morals and Politics
• II. How to Analyse Politics
• III. How to Observe and Record Politics
• Index of Names
• Index of Subjects