Power and Society

A Framework for Political Inquiry

Harold D. Lasswell

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351497435
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Categoría: Política

In Power and Society, Harold D. Lasswell collaborates with a brilliant young philosopher, Abraham Kaplan, to formulate basic theoretical concepts and hypotheses of political science, providing a framework for further inquiry into the political process. This is a classic book of political theory written by two of the most influential social scientists of the twentieth century.The authors find their subject matter in interpersonal relations, not abstract institutions or organizations, and their analysis of power is related to human values. They argue that revolution is a part of the political process, and ideology has a role in political affairs. The importance of class, both as social fact and social symbol, is reflected in their detailed analysis, and emphasis on merit rather than rank, skill rather than status, as keystones of democratic rule.The authors note that power is only one of the values and instruments manifested in interpersonal relations; it cannot be understood in abstraction from other values. Lasswell and Kaplan call for the replacement of "power politics, " both in theory and in practice, by a conception in which attention is focused on the human consequences of power as the major concern of both political thought and political action. The basic discussions of core concepts in political science make Power and Society of continuing importance to scholars, government officials, and politicians.

Part One

The subject matter of political science is constituted by the conduct of persons with various perspectives of action, and organized into groups of varying complexity.PERSONS

I

Persons

This chapter introduces the fundamental units of the political process—acts performed by individuals who are not merely biological entities but persons who have an individual “ego” and a social “self.”

§1.1 Response, Environment, and Predisposition

UNDEFINED.¹ Actor, Act

THE CHOICE of these terms as a starting point results from the conception of political science as a branch of the study of human behavior. Central throughout are persons and their acts, not “governments” and “states.” Terms like “state,” “government,” “law,” “power”—all the traditional vocabulary of political science—-are words of ambiguous reference until it is clear how they are to be used in describing what people say and do.² Of course, human behavior includes “subjectivity” as well as physical motions. “Thinking,” “feeling,” “willing” and the like are open to direct observation by the self, and may be inferred in others on the basis of words and gestures.

That we begin with the concepts of an act and a single person acting is not to be taken as minimizing the importance of groups rather than individuals in the political process. The significance of this starting point is purely logical: the group act is construed as a pattern of individual acts. An act is always that of a single person, and when we speak of “group acts” a pattern formed by individual acts is to be understood. With this qualification, the terms “act” and “actor” are to be taken in the broadest possible sense as comprising all deeds and doers.³

DEFINITION.⁴ The environment of an act consists of the events other than the act itself within which the act is included. A situation is a pattern of actors-in-an-environment.

The line between act and environment, and between environment and encompassing universe, is determined by the specific problem under consideration. Marking the ballot is part of the act of voting if we are concerned with the fraudulent tabulation of returns; the weather may be specified as part of the environment if we are concerned with the problem of nonvoting. Both might perhaps be disregarded if we are concerned with the effect on an election of various campaign practices. Act and environment are as limited or inclusive as is required by the initial data and hypotheses. In particular, the environment may include other actors and the kind of events known as symbols.

Environment being defined in relation to specified acts, the concept of a situation involves reference to acts completed or about to be undertaken. A situation is thus a state of affairs characterized as to (1) a number of actors, a set of whose acts, in their initial or terminal phases, are comprised in the state of affairs; and (2) the environment of the acts in question. The same state of affairs may therefore constitute different situations, according to the observational standpoint from which actors, acts, and environment are selected.

DF. A response ⁵ is an act, act-phase, or pattern of acts characterized in relation to its covariants (factors that explain or may explain its occurrence). The predisposition is the nonenvironmental determinant of response.

Inquiry into the conditions of occurrence of politically significant acts can proceed in two directions: we can look for possible determining factors in the environment of the acts or in the traits of the actors. There is little doubt that arrogant behavior by a despotic ruler may account, in part, for an act of assassination. The ruler is plainly a part of the assassin’s environment. But more than environmental factors are often necessary to provide an adequate explanation of politics: there have been despotic rulers who have not been assassinated. It may be necessary to inquire also into the personality or other characteristics of the rebellious person or group, Previous experiences, including exposure to certain types of symbols, may have created in the group predispositions favorable to assassination of the despot. Both types of factors—environing and predispositional— determine response.

So important are environmental circumstances in political behavior that it is hopeless to attempt the construction of an adequate science of politics on the basis of alleged permanent factors in “human nature.” It is true that men have social, affectionate impulses; it is also true that they all display aggressive-destructive tendencies. But it does not follow that we can explain solely on this basis the enormous variations in political conduct found from area to area, time to time, and class to class.

At the other extreme, it is hopeless to compress all into the environment. Even the strong emphasis on environment characteristic of Marxist analysis has, quite wisely, not prevented recognition—“in principle”—of nonenvironmental determinants of behavior. Trotsky writes: We do not at all pretend to deny tKe significance of the personal in the mechanics of the historical process, nor the significance of the personal in the accidental. We only demand that a historic personality, with all its peculiarities, should not be taken as a bare list of psychological traits, but as a living reality grown out of definite social conditions and reacting upon them.⁶

It is evident that factors figuring as predisposing or environing in one inquiry may have a reverse significance in another. The despotic ruler who is comprised in the environment when acts of assassination are being investigated becomes an actor whose predispositions are relevant if the inquiry is a study of factors affecting despotism. But it is a consequence of the definitions that variations in response where either environment or predisposition is constant is a function of variation in the other. In convenient abbreviations, R is by definition a function of E and P.⁷

§1.2 Externalization and Integration

DF. An externalized response is one by which the actor brings about changes in the environment; an internalized response, one in which such changes are minimal.

Since it is clear that no one who participates in an interpersonal situation is ever wholly without effect upon it, externalization and internalization must be taken as directions on a continuous scale. The man who assassinates another has an obvious impact on his environment; at the other extreme is the spectator who joins thousands of others in performing a routine affirmation of loyalty. Expression of hostility to the head of a state exemplifies the intermediate ranges: it is an externalized response if the symbols occur in a harangue to a mob; internalized, if they occur only in a diary.

DF. Facilitation is support among acts; conflict, interference ; compatibility is the relationship of acts neither integrated nor in conflict.

Acts are facilitated when each aids the progress to completion of the others, and in conflict when completion is interfered with.⁸ These are not the only possible alternatives; we call acts “compatible” when, though not in conflict with one another, none supports the others. Acts of political parties are in conflict in campaigning for rival candidates; the acts are facilitative in efforts to “get out the vote” or in coalition; and compatible in the selection of party officials. Similar relations may obtain among the acts of a single individual. Of course, which relations hold between acts depends on the environment as well as on the acts themselves: conflicts may be created or resolved by changes in the environment as well as in patterns of action.⁹

DF. The intensity of an actor in a situation is his stress toward action in that situation. The tension level is the intensity of all the actors.

The level of intensity is the strength of the tendency toward completion of acts projected or already initiated. The higher the intensity, the larger is the share of the actor’s energies involved in the action and the greater the stress toward carrying the acts into the phase of expression. Hence we measure intensity by the persistence with which the act is continued regardless of interference. The specific indices may be physical energy expended or economic cost or in terms of any value the sacrifice of which is entailed by carrying the act to completion.

Intensity is defined for an actor; the intensity of a situation is to be determined by some measure of the intensities of the actors in the situation. For political situations, intensity has been defined by C. J. Friedrich (1937,15) as “the absolute amount of both consent and constraint.” As indices for the former he suggests voluntary donations, relative infrequency and lightness of punishments, public manifestations of great enthusiasm, willing sacrifice of life by the governed; and as indices of constraint, frequency of killings, suicides, large-scale confiscations and corporal punishments. These indices may be construed as measures of stress toward action, involving as they do completion of acts against interference or in spite of cost. In effect, therefore, his definition and that given here roughly coincide.

DF. A family of alternatives is a set of acts expected to have the same initial and final phase. An actor exhibits rigidity in relation to the family in the degree to which he is differentially predisposed toward the alternatives; otherwise, flexibility.

Speaking generally, a specified goal may be reached in a variety of ways from a given starting point. The coup d’etat is a course of action belonging to the family of alternatives leading from a given political situation to the establishment of a new government. Another alternative is agitation and propaganda work among the masses. Leaders who are contemptuous of the masses may adhere rigidly to the path of conspiracy, while others are more flexible in their choice of political tactics.

Conflicts are by no means always between whole families of alternatives, but often occur only between particular courses of action. Conflicts of the former kind may be called primary and the latter secondary. Clearly, secondary conflicts may be resolved by selection of other courses of action in the same family. The likelihood of integration in these cases is thus a direct function of the flexibility of the actors. In situations of high intensity, rigidity may lead to complete breakdown of the patterns of action.

DF. Catharsis is a reduction of intensity with a minimum of change in the factors determining intensity.

Some political movements die away without affecting political life in any abiding fashion. Neither the environment nor the basic political orientation of those who participate in the movement is permanently modified. Catharisis has taken place: a weakening of the stress toward action without completion of the act, or completion only of an act failing to alter significant factors. The former case is exemplified by the mob reduced to passivity by appeals to loyalty or exposure to symbols of authority.¹⁰ In the latter case, though the action is externalized, it fails to affect the features of the environment evoking the intense response. Catharsis of this kind is a “substitutive response,” often carried out by ceremonialization or aggression against a scapegoat.

PROPOSITION.¹¹ The probability of catharsis varies directly with the extent of conflict and inversely with the intensity of the situation.

Catharsis is the more probable the more it is facilitated by interference with the acts projected, and the less the intensity of those acts in the situation. A protest movement is most likely to subside without reaching its goal when there is (1) maximum interference with that goal, as indicated by imprisonment of leaders, calling out of troops, renewed emphasis on symbols of loyalty; and (2) minimal initial intensity, shown by failure to attend demonstrations or make contributions, limited use of the protest symbols, high turnover in membership. (In situations of initially high intensity, interference may have the effect of heightening intensity still further rather than facilitating catharsis.) Those against whom the protest movement is directed further facilitate catharsis by providing channels for substitutive response: bread and circuses, face-saving symbols of acquiescence, alternative targets. Guided catharsis is a major means of political control.

§1.3 Symbols, Identification, and Personality

UNDEFINED. Symbol, Statement

A symbol is whatever has meaning or significance in any sense. Though the most important kinds of symbols are linguistic, not all are such. In politics in particular nonlinguistic symbols play a considerable role (flags, insignia, monuments).¹² A statement is a complete unit of significance: an assertion, command, question, and so on. Functionally, the statement is primary and the individual symbol derivative: we classify statements by their functions, symbols by the kinds of statements in which they characteristically occur. (The word “symbol” will be used in some contexts for both single symbols and whole statements, and even for sets of statements.)

Subjective factors entering into political phenomena, whether or not they are fully expressed in symbols, are most easily studied by an examination of symbol outputs. Hence the techniques of symbol analysis can serve as instruments of inquiry into the varying relations between the “material” and “ideal” elements in any situation.¹³

DF. An operation is the nonsymbol event in an act.

An act is usually characterized in terms of its significance (for the actor, or from the standpoint of some other observer) : it is “voting,” “saluting,” “bribing.” For some purposes it is convenient to describe the act apart from such significance. We may characterize voting by the operations of dropping a ball into an urn, or bribing by a transfer of documents. The act in its significance we call a “practice” (§2.3) rather than “operation.”

DF. An ego is an actor using symbols.

The analysis of “intelligent” or “conscious” behavior in terms of symbols has been especially emphasized by George Herbert Mead (Mind, Self and Society, University of Chicago Press, 1934). The self is constituted in the process of using significant symbols to react to its own acts from the standpoint of those with whom it interacts—in the process, that is, of “taking the role of the generalized other.” “Ego” is thus not to be understood in the psychonalytic sen...