The Study of Politics: A Short Survey of Core Approaches 9781442686960

Citation preview

The Study of Politics

This page intentionally left blank

The Study of Politics a short survey of core approaches

Greg Pyrcz

Copyright © University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2011 Higher Education Division www.utppublishing.com All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without prior written consent of the publisher—or in the case of photocopying, a licence from Access Copyright (Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency), One Yonge Street, Suite 1900, Toronto, Ontario M5E 1E5—is an infringement of the copyright law. library and archives canada cataloguing in publication Pyrcz, Gregory E. The study of politics : a short survey of core approaches / Greg Pyrcz. Includes bibliographical references and index. Also issued in electronic formats.

ISBN 978-1-4426-0143-7 1. Political science—Textbooks. I. Title.

JA71.P97 2011

320.01

C2010-907770-9

We welcome comments and suggestions regarding any aspect of our publications— please feel free to contact us at [email protected] or visit our Internet site at www.utppublishing.com. North America 5201 Dufferin Street Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M3H 5T8 2250 Military Road Tonawanda, New York, USA, 14150

UK, Ireland, and continental Europe NBN International Estover Road, Plymouth, PL6 7PY, UK ORDERS PHONE: 44 (0) 1752 202301 ORDERS FAX: 44 (0) 1752 202333 ORDERS e-mail: [email protected]

orders phone: 1-800-565-9523 orders fax: 1-800-221-9985 orders e-mail: [email protected] The University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its publishing activities of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund. Typesetting by Em Dash Design. Printed in Canada

This work is dedicated to the memory of Manny and Maxine Pyrcz

This page intentionally left blank

contents

Acknowledgments   ix one

Introduction to the Study of Politics   1 The Origins of the Discipline   5 The Language of Politics: Power, Influence, Legitimacy, and Authority   8 Folk Theories of Political Agency   11 Sources of Political Conduct   13 Five Modes of Inquiry   16 The Normative in Political Studies   19 A Taxonomy of Core Approaches   21 Conclusion   24 Further Reading   25

two

Three Traditional Approaches   27 Regime Theory   28 Analytical Political Studies   38 Political Philosophy   48 Conclusion   54 Further Reading   55

three The Science of Political Studies   57 Institutionalism   58 Group Theory   65

Power Theory   72 Structural Functionalism   79 Systems Theory   87 Rational Choice Theory   95 Behaviouralism   103 Sociobiology   110 Conclusion   112 Further Reading   113 four

Interpretive Political Studies   117 Textual Analysis   121 (Political) Cultural Studies   128 Linguistic Structuralism   135 Interpretive Psychoanalysis   138 Conclusion   141 Further Reading   143

five

Critical Political Studies   145 Structuralist Marxism   147 Critical Psychoanalysis: The Frankfurt School and Existentialist Psychology   155 Feminist Analysis   163 Critical Race Theory   169 Postmodernism   174 Critical Ecology   181 Conclusion   185 Further Reading   186

six

A Short Conclusion   189 Intellectual Pluralism   190 Hybrid Approaches   191 Multidisciplinarity and Interdisciplinarity   193 Narrowing the Discipline   195 Other Lines of Response   197 A Little More Pedagogy   198 Index   201

acknowledgments

This text owes a debt of gratitude to those students over the years who have heard it all, in one form or another. I wish especially to acknowledge the attention paid to the text by Chantal Boudreau, Lauren Hanna, Angela Johnston, Gillian Lush, Dakin MacDonald, Brock MacDougal, Anne McGregor, Christina Muehlberger, and Caitlin Regan. I am grateful to three anonymous reviewers who generously read a much rougher draft than they deserved. Thanks to Michael Harrison and Tracey Arndt at the University of Toronto Press, Higher Education, for their remarkable patience and good humour, and to Martin Boyne for his considerable editorial talent. Finally, I wish to thank Heather Pyrcz for providing such an inspiring example of the writing life, and for her editorial support and unwavering encouragement.

This page intentionally left blank

Chapter One

introduction to the study of politics

The Study of Politics provides a short survey of competing core approaches to the study of politics. It represents something of the theoretical force of each, identifying assumptions regarding the nature of human conduct that political analysts bring to their work. It invites a degree of theoretical sophistication in defending these assumptions, providing some initial lines of criticism of core approaches. Its aim is to enable productive discussion among those staking out intellectual ground in the study of politics, and especially those about to begin primary research and writing. Serving a contemporary preference for shorter treatments, the text attends to the features and force of core approaches rather than to their founders or advocates. Some core approaches are stronger, others weaker, than their founders or advocates allow. Those who have been persuaded by the central features of a core approach, or those who find a competing core approach especially troubling, can employ the suggested readings at the end of each chapter as access points for fuller consideration and contestation. Despite its attention to theoretical issues, the text is not an exhaustive philosophy of social science. Indeed, it is addressed principally to those students of politics who lack a background in the philosophy of social science yet who wish to think more critically and philosophically about the underlying assumptions of their work and the nature of political studies. The discussion that follows identifies some of the assumptions about epistemology, ontology, and agency that we take to our work, setting these in relief for critical consideration. That is, (1) it addresses what we can claim, with justification, to know about political phenomena and 1

2

the study of politics

how we can come to know it (as epistemology); (2) it identifies how the features of our humanity and world can be understood as related and how as human beings we are interrelated (as ontology); and (3) it surveys what features of our humanity are said to determine our conduct (as agency assumptions, or as a folk theory of political conduct). These are not easy considerations for those without training in philosophy, but they are used in this text in a general way in order to make them more accessible. Epistemology raises questions and advances theses about what we can really know about our world. For example, can we ever really know the inner motivations of others’ conduct? If not, we would need to build a sort of political studies that either contingently speculated about such matters or that didn’t require such knowledge for its explanatory force. In a related way, we may or may not be able to identify how it is best for human beings to live, i.e., what our essential good is. If we can’t, then we might be wise to shape our study of politics in such a way as to avoid considerations of moral or religious ends. In ontology we are concerned with how it is that our world is inherently organized, if it is indeed organized in any persistent way. One of the more important ontological issues in political studies is whether or not we are fundamentally individuals or whether instead we are social beings. Is our presumed individuality really just a product of a more foundational culture, political economy, or ideology? Or, alternatively, are all social and political relations a product of the exercise of our basic individuality? Ontology also addresses one of the perennial questions of political theory, contested in both the pub and the seminar room: are we primarily products of nature or of nurture? And it investigates the role, if any, of human freedom in our conduct, in what is referred to as the agency/structure debate. Ontology, epistemology, and agency are intertwined in deliberation about our conduct as human beings. In agency assumptions we are concerned to identify the sources of our conduct as human political animals. Is it an outcropping of the power of others or determined by deep structures of political economy or gender? Is our conduct in any respect or to any degree free or autonomous? Does our conduct emanate from our desires or from our capacity for self-construction, determining by reason and imagination what desires we will entertain in our conduct? Identifying one’s work in light of these underlying questions is important

introduction to the study of politics

3

in securing its coherence and force, and provides a powerful perspective to critically engage the work of others. While we may not need a comprehensive understanding of questions of agency, epistemology, or ontology, our work as students of politics suffers from incoherence when it makes contradictory assumptions at this level of analysis. Moreover, the defence of our work requires being conversant in such foundational assumptions and considerations. No particular core approach in the following discussion is favoured, though power and authority are taken as central to, if not definitive of, politics and government. Furthermore, the treatments of core approaches are neither definitive nor complete. Accordingly, they will not fully satisfy those who have already secured what they take to be certain intellectual ground in the discipline. It addresses instead those who have yet to make up their minds, proceeding from courses in political studies that invoked impassioned discussion about underlying theoretical issues. While such contests run the risk of being too theoretical, theatrical, and divisive, a measure of committed, critical engagement with competing approaches remains necessary both for our intellectual development and for methodological progress in political studies. Those who study politics disagree about the definition of the political and other core concepts, about how political phenomena are best studied, and about what sorts of assumptions about human nature should underlie analyses in the human sciences. We disagree about how to name approaches and sub-approaches, both within and across sub-fields of study. And we are often deeply and intensely committed to our preferred approach, in part because it reflects how we understand human agency, and thereby because it reveals something about ourselves. Keeping alert to the sources of such contestation is one of the ways in which the study of politics both requires and develops our capacity for coherent critical thinking. Political studies is a foundational, distinctive, and difficult discipline, one poorly understood in other social sciences and especially by those in the sciences. It has persistently been oriented to its theoretical grounding, even if some of its practitioners hold that theorizing the study of politics is overdone, that we should simply borrow intellectual practices and theories from those disciplines that seem further along in developing a consolidated approach and simply get to work. Some political

4

the study of politics

analysts contend that political studies can and should emulate the natural sciences in general method, yielding at least some law-like, objective, explanatory sentences that permit us to predict political outcomes with a degree of confidence and without much contestation. Others hold that such an ambition is misplaced, that it fails to recognize how extensively human beings are constructed or patterned in ways not found in the natural world, and the degree to which we are self-defined and selfdetermined. Central to our humanity, one might say, is our capacity for symbolic language, our subjectivity and intersubjectivity, our capacities of self-definition and creativity. These later considerations are not easily amenable to the sort of explanations paradigmatic in the sciences, if they are at all. While some explanation and prediction of human conduct is possible, critics of scientific paradigms contend that political studies requires interpretive and critical tools as well as empirical observation, and an intellectual disposition quite different from those employed in the natural sciences. Some researchers and political activists, hungry for the important work of the field, believe that dwelling on the philosophically vexing issues of political agency, epistemology, and ontology is but a smoke screen while political problems and prospects in the real world worsen. Philosophers, on the other side of this criticism, often hold political scientists to be doing something they poorly understand and are poorly prepared to defend, even under force of the gentlest criticism. (In response, students of politics hold philosophers to be blind to the sort of power that is ubiquitous in human relations, including that within the practice of philosophical contemplation.) Postmodernism, one of the latest turns in political studies, concludes more radically still that there is no truth about our humanity, that all approaches to the study of politics and government are simply the products of power. Because the issues that are surveyed in this text are vexing, it has been tempting to set them aside in our work as students of politics. Setting relevant questions aside, however, is never the route to sound scholarly work.

introduction to the study of politics

5

The Origins of the Discipline One way to survey core approaches to political studies is to provide historical reading of the development of the discipline. Such a strategy suggests that we are moving on a steady course from one paradigm of interpretation, analysis, explanation, and evaluation to another, each time moving closer to certain conclusions about how it is best to study politics and government. A historical reading of the discipline would suggest that later approaches, being cognizant of what preceded them, are superior. But there is insufficient reason to suppose this pattern of development in the human sciences. It may well be that current approaches are superior, more comprehensive and advanced, but this needs to be shown, not implied by a historical framing of the discipline. It is instead more impartial and certainly more accurate to construe core approaches as coming in and out of use, albeit in altered form. A case in point is “institutionalism,” thought to have been eclipsed by competing core approaches but currently enjoying a revival as “neo-institutionalism.” Another is the current popularity of rational choice theory, which revisits the logic of Hobbes’s Leviathan and eighteenth- and nineteenthcentury economic theory. Another strategy for situating the discipline is to set its origins either in antiquity or modernity. Both locations are compelling for this purpose. On the one hand, most questions about politics and government were addressed in the work of fifth-century BCE Greek political philosophers, especially in Plato and Aristotle. These early thinkers provided accounts of what we can know about political agents, how our complex features as human beings find their way into political conduct, and how it is, given what we can know about human beings, that politics and government can be arranged to enable the best forms of community and human happiness. As well, they were adroit analysts of political power and authority, both in theory and practice. Situating the origins of political studies in the modernity of the Renaissance and Enlightenment, on the other hand, is to champion the emancipation of human studies from medieval religious life and thought. It endorses the primacy of human reason in the acquisition of knowledge, and it turns our attention fully to the empirical in the human sciences. The modernity of the Renaissance

6

the study of politics

and Enlightenment not only secularized the study of politics and government, but also asserted academic freedom as essential to the production of knowledge in the human sciences. Moreover, the primacy of reason and strict attention to the empirical provided a strong challenge to those who favoured cognitive access to the enchanted world of mysterious spiritual forces in human affairs.1 Positivist empiricism remains the most controversial and most contested proposition in situating political studies in modernity.2 It maintained, rather sensibly at first blush, that we should determine the sorts of things we can actually know before turning to our studies.3 That is, it placed epistemology at the heart of the social sciences and advanced a demanding set of criteria for knowledge: only those sentences that had observable referents in the world could be considered as true or false, or indeed as meaningful. Meaningful and (potentially) true statements must be falsifiable; at least in principle they could be shown to be false. The sentence “the American President is in the White House” could only be meaningful and true if the person referred to could, in principle, be elsewhere. (And indeed the sentence would be true if there were an American President in the White House at the time of the statement.) The sentence “the American President has a damaged soul” is considered neither meaningful nor (even potentially) factual, as there are no empirical referents for the soul, no way that the sentence in principle could be shown to be false, and thus no way for claims that the sentence is true or meaningful to have force. One could, of course, re-define “soul” by reference to some direct or indirect empirical indicators in order to have it meet the epistemological demands of positivist empiricism. That is, we might say that a president has a bad soul when he or she fails to act when more citizens than before fall below the poverty 1 Although it was not as caught up with the strictures of empiricism and positivism, reason was also the central feature of Greek antiquity. Political thought in antiquity can also be seen as one source of modern humanism. 2 It should be noted that not all modern theorists were committed to the more demanding epistemological requirements of positivist empiricism. 3 Two distinguishable views are discussed as one here: positivism, a doctrine that sentences must be in principle falsifiable if they are to be said to be meaningful; and empiricism, a doctrine that requires that all synthetic sentences asserted to be true can be directly or indirectly testable by reference to the objects of our senses. Empiricism in political studies is associated with the view that knowledge about political phenomena must be oriented to proving or disproving causal or co-variant hypotheses.

introduction to the study of politics

7

line, or fails to act to address the plight of other marginalized communities. But doing so would already be governed by the force of the positivist stricture, arguably not really capturing what was meant by the word “soul” in the initial statement. For the positivist empiricist, to say that the President has a damaged soul is simply to express our emotions, as if only to exclaim, “Bad President!” Such claims can be shown neither to be true nor false; they are simply gibberish. Moreover, discerning meaningful sentences, truths or facts about the world requires an effective distance from the analyst’s subjectivity and from his or her values, ideology, religious commitments, and interests. Empiricism holds that claims of (objective) knowledge must not simply advance the beliefs, prejudices, speculations, or subjective perceptions or interests of those who make them. While believing or wishing something to be true may be a necessary requirement of scholarship, mere belief or the will of the scholar is insufficient for establishing truth. Our task, in empiricism, is to test falsifiable claims or hypotheses about the social world, organizing these into theories of causality that inductively generalize from observation or are logically deduced from other empirically proven hypotheses. We are to employ strictly defined concepts, free from everyday meaning, and ensure that our theory’s explanatory and predictive force is refined, tested, and re-tested. Social science is to consist in observation, logical inference, statistically relevant generalizations, and laws of explanatory causality, free from religious assumption, largely free from introspection, from connotation, from the passion and interests of the analyst or the society in which he or she works, and otherwise to be value neutral. We are to emulate the natural sciences, that is, to the extent that we can. The best minds of antiquity wouldn’t have fully endorsed these modern demands upon knowledge. They held the final or inherent purposes of human life both to be knowable and to be central to an adequate account of politics and government, where what is thought true could be tested by the final good that it enables. While antiquity can properly be credited with the subsequent ascent of human reason and forms of humanism in modern scholarship, including the importance of free inquiry, ancient philosophers also held that introspection of our inner lives and interrogation of conventional values were central sources of

8

the study of politics

human knowledge. These sorts of inquiries yielded claims of political knowledge not easily available, if at all, from positivist empirical strictures. The claim “a political leader has a damaged soul” would have been fully intelligible in antiquity. Indeed, it would have been thought to make a most serious claim of knowledge, truth, and insight, one with considerable explanatory force. Those with damaged souls were held predictably to undermine political relations that served the best forms of human life. Some of the core approaches to political studies introduced in this text originate in ancient Greek political studies. The authors of antiquity were alert to the questions of power and authority that continue to animate and distinguish political studies from sister areas of inquiry. Their thinking was methodical, they were attentive observers of political conduct, and they seldom strayed far from observation or from human reason as the measures of things. Accordingly, while it may be intellectually dangerous to leave modern epistemological or ontological commitments too far from our minds, the competition between core approaches in political studies is better understood as broader than the positivist empiricism of modernity may be said to allow. Not only do some current core approaches effectively contest strict positivist empiricism, but adopting the doctrine as the foundation of the discipline begs the question of its adequacy as an epistemological basis for social understanding. Letting antiquity back in as one of the sites of origin of political studies frees us from a too early and unquestioning commitment to disciplinary strictures, while leaving in place the intellectual values of human reason, intellectual freedom, and attention to the empirical. Grounding our work in both intellectual locations allows us to begin our study with the assumption that political studies is about both fact and value, about both observation and critical introspection.

The Language of Politics: Power, Influence, Legitimacy, and Authority Political studies is a distinctive discipline with the study of power and authority at its heart. From Plato through postmodernism, power and authority figure centrally in our attempts to define, interpret, explain, justify, criticize, and generally engage in political inquiry. An interest

introduction to the study of politics

9

in power is obvious to those who consider themselves realists or neorealists in the study of international relations, just as it is to those pluralists and elite theorists seeking to study the impact of groups or the mass media in comparative analysis of civil society. For those employing competing core approaches of interpretation, explanation, and criticism, the concepts of power and authority remain central. Indeed, even those principally concerned with political morality, with principles of political right, need to be alert to the presence and force of power. To advocate a form of conduct that is impossible (because of the persistent presence of power) is at best wasted breath. Although it is undeniable that power analysis has weaknesses,4 preventing it from being widely accepted as a definitive core approach for the discipline, students of politics are typically drawn to the existence and importance of power and to questions of its justified use in human affairs. It is partly this interest that distinguishes the discipline’s field of inquiry. Power and authority are contested concepts. Power is defined here as a relationship in which one’s conduct is altered by the perceived resources of others. Some hold power to consist only in force, threats, and sanctions, while others hold that it is more invidious, pervasive, and ubiquitous in human affairs, attending to the way in which our conduct may be manipulated, often without our knowledge. Notwithstanding such contestation, power, influence, and legitimacy are stipulated here as relational, as dimensions of human relations in which the features or conduct of a political agent alters what would have otherwise been the course of others’ behaviour. If you say “jump or I’ll shoot” and I jump, power is at work. If I jump simply because I think you would wish me to and believe that you might use your resources to harm or hurt me if I don’t, then power is still at work, even if we prefer to refer to it as influence. When I act as I believe you wish me to because you are charismatic, because you occupy a certain standing in society, because I wish to be associated with you, or because of other features or qualities you possess other than the resources necessary to make good your threats and bribes, then legitimacy is at work. The features and qualities of those to whom we defer are accordingly treated as political resources, and they 4 These weaknesses are discussed more fully in Chapter Three.

10

the study of politics

are causal in their effects.5 Influence and legitimacy of the sort noted above can, accordingly, be seen as merely softer forms of power. As for authority, the power, influence or legitimacy of others is morally justified or justifiable, typically by our prior autonomous consent or by principles of political right. For example, authority is thought to be established by adequately constructed democratic elections, by natural law, or by natural human rights, although argument is required to establish such conclusions. This definition of authority provides an umbrella under which to pose a wide range of moral questions in political studies such as the questions of our political obligation, the scope of rights, the justification of punishment, and the demands of distributive justice. Power, influence, and legitimacy are, in this set of stipulated definitions, inversely related to freedom and reasoning. If you give me reasons for acting and I freely accept and act upon them, then power, influence, and legitimacy are absent. This allows us to make sense of some of the authoritative force claimed for the democratic polity. Freely consenting, from reasons rather than from the power of others acting upon us, constitutes one way in which democracy is said to establish authority. Stipulating the meaning of the concepts power, influence, legitimacy, and authority in this way allows us to say that not all power is bad, that authoritatively causing others to act in ways that they wouldn’t otherwise can be acceptable, indeed laudable. And it holds that at least some of our actions are free from the power of others. This rendering of politics is not without greater complexity. It requires that we know something of the intended conduct of the political agent prior to his or her change in behaviour, and it requires that we understand when the reasons provided by others are freely adopted as our own. The complexity of power, the difficulties in determining what our behaviour would otherwise have been, and the challenge of knowing when we are free in this way are partly why power analysis has yet to be adopted as the preferred core approach of the discipline.

5 This account acknowledges that competing distinctions are available. The taxonomy differs from that of Max Weber in that it treats Weberian authority as legitimacy, leaving the concept of authority for those relations that are justified or justifiable.

introduction to the study of politics

11

Folk Theories of Political Agency The core approaches surveyed in this book are identified partly by the agency assumptions that distinguish them. Though two senses of the word “agency” are related, agency assumptions hereafter should not be confused with free agency, our relative autonomy from forces acting upon or through us. While the latter is central to an important debate in political studies, an agency assumption refers to what we take to be the source(s) of our political behaviour. To adopt an agency assumption is to adopt something of a folk theory, a basic and distinctive account of how as human beings our conduct is understood to be caused, orchestrated, induced, or chosen. For example, the folk theory of one version of psychological determinism holds that we are always motivated to act so as to protect and advance what we take to be the means to our continuing survival.6 Folk theories are not foreign to us. Indeed, they often are in play in our everyday conversations and laced into our common sense. Consider the question, “why did I buy that trendy t-shirt?” To such agency questions there are wide-ranging answers with which we appear to have some initial discursive confidence, even if we disagree. It could be posited that I have a deep-seated desire to hide my true insecurities, defending these by drawing attention away from them. Or it might be that I did so to make my boss laugh so that she wouldn’t fire me. It could be that I mimic the values of others with whom I wish to identify myself, having seen them wear t-shirts that resemble the one I purchased. It could be that I am but a cog in a complex process of late-capitalist cultural, material, and psychological globalization, for which t-shirt buying is epiphenomenal. It could be that in considering all the reasons that attend t-shirt buying, I became convinced that there was a principle that I could apply as a reason for buying this one (say that the proceeds of the sale were to go to a cause of which I approved). Or my choice of t-shirt could be a subtle act of my free expressive will, even though I knew my choice would be mistakenly seen as an act of banal conventionality. 6 The concept of a folk psychology is employed in action theory, but the concept employed here shares only a resemblance, referring more generally to forces acting from outside and motivations within us. The view of psychological egoism here is associated with Thomas Hobbes.

12

the study of politics

This is the sort of folk-theoretical/agency discourse we engage in at our favourite café or pub as we try to make sense of the conduct of others, or as we come to have expectations about the conduct of those we know. Folk theories connect our ways of making sense of our day-to-day experience, observation, speculation, introspection, critical thinking, and discursive life. Similarly, competing folk theories also underlie competing core approaches to the study of politics. Our more sophisticated theories of politics are related to what we come to believe to be the sources of action of those we see around us. The judgments we make about how to study politics are not all that far from the sorts of explanatory assessments we employ in daily life as we seek to understand, explain, and evaluate the conduct of ourselves and others. As students of politics we invariably come to our study having adopted some working theories about why, generally, people behave in the way that they do. In developing our skills as political analysts we seek to test the adequacy of these assumptions by contrasting them with competing folk theories, by careful, critical interrogation of our assumptions, and by determining how well competing folk theories of human agency can explain political conduct broadly, both in and between societies. Common working assumptions about our lives as human beings inevitably make their way into our understanding of the political world. As the t-shirt example confirms, however, we may disagree about what makes human beings behave as they do, and it’s hard to see how we can all be right, at least in accounting for any particular action, behaviour or conduct. While one of the approaches to the study of politics, behaviouralism, seeks to sidestep this reliance upon a folk-theoretical account of agency, most approaches either do not or cannot. We remain reliant upon contestable conceptions of agency for the intelligibility and cogency of our work, just as we are reliant upon epistemological and ontological assumptions. As we often profoundly disagree at this level of analysis, we leave the search for a method as an intractable yet vital part of our work as students of politics. The scope and diversity of folk theories of political agency employed in political studies are impressive. Each attends to a feature or features of the agent that are held to be fundamental or otherwise important as sources of his or her political conduct. In no special order, a list of these

introduction to the study of politics

13

features is provided below, each briefly described for use in distinguishing core approaches.

Sources of Political Conduct Divergent folk theories of human conduct either explicitly or implicitly support core approaches and sub-approaches to the study of politics. Each emphasizes or treats as fundamental one of the features of our humanity. These features, stated simply below, are useful in distinguishing and remembering core approaches and especially in identifying and aligning sub-approaches with the core approach they assume. Choosing one feature as central to our conduct is to take an intellectual orientation to the study of politics. Interests can be objective, as in obtaining or realizing those goods or states of affairs that effectively foster our well-being; or subjective, as in those goods or states of affairs that we simply desire, regardless of the objective good they actually do for us. For example, smokers have an objective interest in not smoking yet have a subjective interest in smoking. When we purchase one good rather than another, we are expressing our subjective interests, though it may be that such goods serve our objective interests as well. Interests  

Economic rationality is our capacity to arrange our conduct in such a way as to effectively realize our interests. If I wish to increase my income, for instance, I might upgrade my professional skills. I might vote for or even join a party that I believe would be most effective in achieving such a goal. Moreover, if something is in my interest then more is preferable to less, at least up to a point, and balanced with the pursuit of others of my interests. Economic Rationality  

Reason is our capacity to deliberate logically, critically, and deeply about the inherent features, values, and purposes of human life and about the nature of our world. We can, it is said, discern compelling principles of political right by reasoning, just as we can distinguish Reason  

14

the study of politics

our objective from our subjective interests. Our capacity to reason is one means by which we may decide to take an action, as well as to adjudicate and justify our own and others’ conduct. Sociality is the capacity, and some would say the inherent need, to engage in and orient our conduct to the lives of others. In communitarian ontology, sociality is considered fundamental to our humanity and, accordingly, to our conduct. Sociality  

Values in this context are simply those beliefs, ideological orientations, conceptions of the good, and convictions that we hold as political agents. They may be socially or autonomously acquired. Values  

Self-reference is the capacity of human beings to identify the particular features that we wish to define us. For instance, we can either choose or choose not to identify with our racial, ethnic, and religious communities of family origins, our sub-communities, our class, our nationality, or particular cultures or sub-cultures. Self-reference enables us to identify reflexively with particular norms, ideologies, values, and social goals, and even with preferred, imagined, second-order conceptions of ourselves. Our identity is not fully self-referential, but the capacity to choose in part who we are to be is thought to be distinctively human. Self-reference is one sort of freedom we may possess. Self-Reference  

Language is a conceptual framework that we bring to our observation and understanding of the world, including the social world. If we cannot act without thought and if thought requires language, then a set of concepts linked together in a particular way allows us to act as intentional creatures. Human thought includes our linguistic capacity to draw distinctions, employ symbols, and appreciate metaphor. Language  

Structure is a deep-seated intersubjective feature of our agency, thought to cause us to act as we do. Structure has been seen in a developing tension between the oppositional conditions of our lives, for example in the Marxist conception of class conflict. It has also been Structure  

introduction to the study of politics

15

asserted as a natural pattern of our minds and as an inherent (syntactical) feature of language. Power is discussed in an early section of this chapter. Stated very briefly here, the political power of some causes others to act in ways they otherwise would not. Power  

Psychology consists of the affective dispositions, capacities, and interior processes and conditions of our lives (not all of which we may be conscious). The conduct of human beings may be seen as caused by or shaped by our psychological conditions and processes. There is a wide variety of theories that seek to represent psychological processes, from stimulus-response theory to the subtleties of post-Freudian psychoanalysis. Psychology  

Rule-orientation is our capacity and, some contend, our inclination to follow rules as a way of organizing our conduct, from the simple rules of games to more complex, game-analogous social practices defined by institutions and social norms. Rule-orientation  

Neurobiology refers to the complex bodily processes thought by some to be the source of our conduct, found both in our similarities to and differences from other species, and in the similarities and differences between us as people. Neurobiology  

While all of these features may be in play in our lives, they cannot all be held to be foundational to our conduct, as they can work in opposite directions.7 Consider, for instance those cases where our psychological condition makes it impossible to follow rules. Decisions about which of the features of our human agency is foundational are ontological; decisions regarding how we can have knowledge of these features in the lives of others are epistemological. The list is offered here primarily as a 7 It might be said that limiting human agency to the consideration of one fundamental feature of our humanity is reductionist. However, most core approaches to politics involve some reduction, assuming that some more fundamental features of our humanity are the basis for others. Not to do so is to adopt features of agency that can work in opposite directions.

16

the study of politics

means of remembering the agency assumptions of each competing core approach by identifying and recalling what assumptions they make about the fundamentality of one or more of our human features.

Five Modes of Inquiry Before paying further attention to agency assumptions, it is useful to distinguish five modes of inquiry. These are found, to varying degrees, in all solid academic work, but they serve in particular to delineate intellectual orientations in political studies and in the human sciences more generally. One way of determining how we should proceed in any particular political study is by determining which mode of inquiry gets us closer to the political action or inaction that we seek to understand and contributes most to the development of our discipline more generally. The explanatory mode seeks to establish law-like causal sentences discerned in observed regularities. Such law-like sentences, taken together, allow us to predict and explain human political phenomena just as theories do in the sciences. Explanatory sentences (claims or hypotheses) are proven true or false by collecting often complex sorts of observational data and finding patterns of causality of or co-variance between phenomena stipulated by well-defined concepts. Or they may be discerned and tested in experience. Such patterns are understood to be inherent to the processes of human action, some of which are applicable across comparative contexts and over time. The idea of predictability is a tempting one to privilege in political studies, as it appears to make us more valuable to governments and groups in society; moreover, strict adherence to the scientific model has served the natural sciences well. Still, the possibility of social scientific explanation has been contested in political studies by those who argue that human beings are self-referential, imaginative, symbol-oriented beings in a way that the objects of the natural sciences are not. One of the indicators of explanatory accounts is their reliance upon the scientific concept of causality.8 This text does not hold that human conduct needs to be caused for it to be explained or predicted. Instead, it 8 Some explanatory accounts distinguish between causes and reasons as the sources of conduct.

introduction to the study of politics

17

recognizes the possibility that human conduct may be shown to be causative in a Newtonian way but that other accounts of explanation and prediction are possible. Adopting the language of causality as a stricture is to take too early a stand on ontological, epistemological, and agency questions in political studies. Accordingly, employing alternative vocabulary (verbs such as orchestrates, governs, shapes, affects, determines, defines, co-varies, and interrelates) is useful in avoiding a declaration about political agency simply by word choice, and this text uses a variety of these alternative terms without, it is hoped, insinuating a preference. The interpretive mode of political studies attends to the meaning of our political conduct rather than to its causes. Interpretive studies assert that naturalist explanations of human conduct commit a category mistake, failing to see that human beings are inherently different from the objects of the natural and physical sciences. In interpretation the goal of knowledge is to provide an account of the meaning of human phenomena instead of their antecedent causes. By way of analogy, consider how we come to understand a game with which we are unfamiliar. Primarily, we sort out its rules and the significance of various plays as related to these rules. Once we know what it is possible for players to do within the rules and norms of the game, we know something about why they act as they do. As complex beings, humans engage in many different games or human practices, sometimes simultaneously. Such complexity allows us to account for those cases where players are acting in ways that appear at odds with the rule definition of a particular game or practice. While divergence from the patterns of a game or practice is possible, we often know what people will do just by knowing the explicit and sometimes deeply implicit rules and meanings that constitute the complex practices in which they are involved. In interpretation, then, human beings are presumed to be meaning oriented, not cause driven. Knowing something of what people are seeking to signify by their conduct provides an account of that conduct. Such accounts may be said to have some predictive, explanatory force. At the very least we know what people won’t do, where possible conduct is rejected as unlikely when it would not be coherent with the meaning they are signifying. Though the gulf between causal explanation and interpretation is deep, explanatory accounts rely to a degree upon interpretation, just as interpretivists rely

18

the study of politics

upon observed regularity. As intellectual skills, both are arguably necessary to good work in the human sciences. Indeed, to adopt one over the other as a primary form of analysis presumes an understanding of both modes; this is why politics departments often offer methodological coursework in both modes of analysis. Interpretive approaches are discussed in Chapter Four. Less attention has been paid to the descriptive mode of political analysis. Indeed, purely descriptive work in political science has often been denigrated, treated as being merely journalistic, as providing a sort of unreflective history. There is, however, a lot to be said in political studies for careful description, for simply getting the facts right and complete. Indeed, attending faithfully and closely to events may yet prove to be the most underrated mode of analysis in the human science. An intellectually sophisticated sort of pure description is found in the phenomenological method, which attempts to see the essence of political phenomena from a perspective that is separate from our analytical, ideological, and theoretical assumptions, as well as from our intentionality and subjectivity.9 Work in political studies needs to be logically valid for it to be defensible. The analytical mode in the study of politics emphasizes the importance of logical analysis. Close attention to the adequacy of concepts and distinctions, as well as to the logical coherence of related claims, provides for powerful criticism of our own work and the work of others. Sharply defining concepts can prevent many false starts in political studies, just as analyzing and disciplining the meaning of common political language, re-forging it in stricter operational and other definitional clarity, can be productive. Posing a set of necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for the presence of a phenomenon is one way of providing an explanation that rivals Newtonian-style causal accounts. The analytical mode provides for one of the core approaches to the study of politics and government, considered in Chapter Two. The critical mode is perhaps the most provocative of all five modes of intellectual inquiry. It rests on the epistemological claim that knowledge about politics and government comes only from the 9 Phenomenology as an approach to the study of politics is not discussed in this text, though a reference is provided in the suggested readings at the end of this chapter.

introduction to the study of politics

19

experience of critical engagement within politics, of engagement from the perspective of those who suffer from domination, i.e., the suppressed and repressed. Core critical approaches are more fully explored in Chapter Five. However, it should be plain that the more generic notion of critical thinking—the challenging of assumptions and the interrogation of scholarship—is a requirement of all good intellectual work. Explanatory, interpretive, descriptive, analytical, and critical modes of intellectual work are variously emphasized in the study of politics and government, and serve further to orient our work as students of politics. In subsequent chapters of this text, emphasis upon one or another of these intellectual modes helps differentiate core approaches and sets of core approaches. However, skill in all of the modes of intellectual work remains requisite to political studies.

The Normative in Political Studies One of the more daunting issues in the study of politics is whether it is justified for political analysts to bring their considered principles, political commitments, and shared values to the study of politics. Distinguishing between facts and values—that is, between the empirical and the normative—has become commonplace in political studies. The distinction performs a very useful role in disciplining the field, setting aside from our pursuit of political knowledge the mere expression of our hopes and dreams, our religious convictions, our ideological commitments, and our party preferences. At the same time, too sharp a distinction, especially when employed to set aside normative considerations, may be a mistake. Deep-seated political, social, and cultural practices are often governed by values and norms. Accordingly, it may be impossible to account fully for such values without adopting something of the perspective of those who have them. Knowing, for example, what it is to care deeply about liberty, equality, property or family is necessary to understanding those who hold these values central to their political conduct. Understanding how such values and norms serve in action requires an investigation of the perspective of

20

the study of politics

others and genuine introspective and discursive attention to the force of values in our own lives. The fact/value distinction also raises the question of whether or not we should (attempt to) avoid engagement in the politics of the day. The scientific attitude toward objects of research is clearly at odds with the view that political knowledge requires the experience of acting from the conviction of values. Advocates of non-engagement assert that we must separate ourselves from the political values and convictions we have as citizens lest these come to alter the objectivity of our study; in other words, we need to leave our values and commitments at the door. Advocates of engagement, on the other hand, especially those committed to the interpretive or critical intellectual modes, hold that we cannot hope to get close to the actual phenomena of politics without situating ourselves within political contexts, essentially using our own experience of engaged commitments as one vehicle for discerning what is true for and about others, even if this means that we also need to discipline our work so as not merely to serve our personal interests or those of our political friends. A robust scepticism about the degree of engagement justified in our work remains a persistent requirement of its intellectual integrity. Nevertheless, the deeper questions we need to address in sorting out a preferred approach to the study of politics require that we don’t move to expel the consideration of value in political studies as a starting point. Political studies, like all of the human sciences, is governed by principles and by rules of ethical conduct in research. Some of these are obvious, such as the need to avoid plagiarism or not to misrepresent or invent data to support a particular thesis. Others pay attention to the ethical requirements of research regarding human subjects, an area of conduct governed by professional associations and granting agencies. Most readers will have heard horror stories about subjects of research being treated horrendously. Some general principles to protect against such situations include that research involving human subjects must be consensual, that it not be manipulative or deceptive, and that it not be harmful. Procedures for ensuring that these and other conditions have been respected typically involve consultation with those who are supervising one’s work, or by university and other institutional committees

introduction to the study of politics

21

mandated to govern scholarly conduct. One of the special circumstances of research in political studies is that we often study those in the public realm: members of legislatures or political parties, leaders of pressure groups or NGOs, and the like. Discussions amongst students of politics have considered the extent to which the procedures for other human studies, such as psychology, can be extended to political studies. Political subjects in the public realm, we know, often have a keen ability to avoid being manipulated as a condition of their work, and their willingness to serve in public roles and purposes arguably entails an implied willingness to be open to scrutiny. Accordingly, interviews of such political agents are typically considered to be of lower risk by research ethics committees than are interviews of regular citizens. Still, the wisest short message for those about to begin research with human subjects is not to proceed without ensuring that one’s work has met the standards of the discipline. A degree of caution serves researchers well, even as they are governed by a passion for the truth. Finally, there are those who argue that we have moral obligations to pursue certain sorts of questions before we pursue others—that, for instance, studies in the political economy of poverty are simply more important than reviews of minor rule changes in legislatures. This is the easiest of the questions concerning the normative domain of political studies to address, simply by leaving it to the best, most well-considered judgment of those who choose to study politics, by discussing it with one’s colleagues, and finally by respecting the principle of academic freedom. Regardless of one’s preferred intellectual mode, one’s view on the degree of engagement required in political studies, and one’s preferred core approach, it remains true that first-rate scholars can defend their assumptions, including those about the urgency of their work.

A Taxonomy of Core Approaches A list of the core approaches employed in the rest of this book is found below. In the third column most of the core approaches to the study of politics are listed, the discussion of which comprises the rest of this text. However, in political studies such matters of taxonomy are not

22

the study of politics

without challenge. Not all names given to core approaches are universally employed in the literature, nor is there agreement as to how many core approaches are available to political analysts. For instance, regime theory is not commonly advanced as a core approach, and it is discussed in this text in a sense related to but quite different from the way in which it is employed in some international relations and comparative contexts. Moreover, most of the core approaches introduced here can be related to sub-approaches, requiring that we distinguish between the two. Subapproaches are instances, versions, or applications of one or more of the core approaches identified in the third column. For instance, realism, an approach common in international relations texts, is really a version (or sub-theory) of power theory. So, too, are pluralism and elite theory, both employed in comparative analysis. Constructivism in international organization theory is often construed as a sub-theory of interpretivism and conclusions in political philosophy (such as the asserted existence of natural law and natural human rights). And a post-colonial approach can be grounded in power theory, in structuralism, in critical race theory, in interpretivism, and in postmodernism. Accordingly, to say that one is employing a post-colonial approach is not perfectly helpful to those who seek to understand the core assumptions one is bringing to one’s studies. There are, therefore, a variety of taxonomies of sub-approaches. While it is tempting just to list the names that might be given in such a fourth column, there is little agreement across sub-fields regarding how to name sub-approaches. Furthermore, focusing first upon core approaches allows us much more fully and directly to assess the force and distinctiveness of sub-approaches that rely upon them. After working through the survey of core approaches this text provides, however, readers should be able to situate the sub-approaches of their particular field or sub-field in the discipline.10

10 The core approaches listed in the third column below do not exhaust all that might be claimed as coherent distinctive core approaches to the study of politics. For example, as suggested in our brief discussion of the descriptive mode of analysis, phenomenology might prove to be a contender in this sort of list, but it is excluded here. Its exclusion stems from its philosophical complexity and the fact that it is seldom employed in political studies.

introduction to the study of politics

Assumptions

Modes of analysis

Core approaches

Agency

Descriptive

Regime Theory

Epistemology

Explanatory

Analytical Theory

Ontology

Interpretive

Political Philosophy

Analytical

Institutionalism

Critical

Group Theory

23

Power Theory Structural Functionalism Systems Theory Rational Choice Theory Behaviouralism Socialbiology Textual Analysis (Political) Cultural Studies Linguistic Structuralism Interpretive Psychoanalysis (Structuralist) Marxism Critical Psychoanalysis Feminist Analysis Critical Race Theory Postmodernism Critical Ecology

This list of core approaches represents a fairly wide scope of disagreement about how to proceed in political studies. All competing core approaches are grounded in epistemological and ontological assumptions. Moreover, they hold competing conceptions of which features of our humanity are fundamental to our conduct. Group theory, for example, holds our sociality to be the foundation of our humanity, such that all human motivations and conduct can be traced back to this feature, while rational choice theory holds that we act rationally to advance our individual subjective interests. Whether a degree of integration of core approaches is open to us, as hybrid approaches, is discussed in the final chapter of this book. As we move through the core approaches surveyed in this book, we will seek to attend to those features of agency that each competing core

24

the study of politics

approach favours as foundational. This should allow readers who are about to embark on major research one means of choosing a preferred core approach, by associating competing core approaches with what they hold to be true of the nature of human beings. Doing good work in political studies does not simply require choosing some tools for the job (e.g., logical analysis, survey research, depth interviews, mathematical modelling, content analysis, regression analysis, class analysis, and the like), though having the right tools and knowing how to use them well is undeniably valuable. Rather, it requires us first to be alert to the agency, ontological, and epistemological assumptions of our preferred core approach. This will tell us which tools to bring to our work.

Conclusion This chapter has identified some early theoretical issues and offered some working definitions as reference points for the subsequent discussion. The distinguishing agency, epistemological, and ontological assumptions will be noted as we proceed from one core approach to another, identifying some lines of criticism to which each may be thought to be vulnerable. It is at this level of critical engagement that foundational elements of a discipline are best considered. Readers who are new to this sort of work will find that getting an initial sense of the distinctions between the core approaches is not all that difficult, although identifying them in the work of others can be. Attention will be paid to comparing and contrasting some of the applications that competing core approaches can bring to the study of politics, in order to aid readers in identifying the sort of work they might do if working under the assumptions of the core approach being addressed. Suggesting how readers might proceed under the umbrella of each core approach should also serve as a means of ensuring that they have a reasonable grasp of the core approach they are contemplating. Plenty of intellectual room is left for readers’ critical thinking as they move toward adopting a core approach for their scholarly work in politics, and as they think through the viability of hybrid approaches in the field.

introduction to the study of politics

25

Each chapter concludes with a list of suggested readings that might be consulted for further discussion on the core approaches. These lists are far from comprehensive, instead indicating works that students have found useful as they proceed to deepen their understanding. For the most part, these suggested readings attend to relatively early articulations of core approaches themselves, although some efforts at hybridization are represented as well. The advisability of hybrid approaches to the study of politics is introduced briefly in the final chapter of this survey, along with other intellectual strategies dealing with the diversity of core approaches.

Further Reading More extensive discussion of the issues treated in this chapter is found in Robert Brown’s Explanation and Experience in Social Science (New York: Aldine, 2008), David Paris and James Reynolds’s Logic of Policy Inquiry (New York: Longman, 1983), Alexander Rosenberg’s Philosophy of Social Science (Boulder, CO : Westview, 2008), and Philosophy of the Social Sciences: Philosophical Theory and Scientific Practice, edited by C. Mantzavinos (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). One of the more accessible and useful introductions to the sort of underlying issues addressed in this chapter is Martin Hollis’s The Philosophy of Social Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). Gary King, Robert Keohane, and Sidney Verba’s Designing Social Inquiry (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994) provides a spirited defence of the idea of causality in the human sciences, vigorously defending epistemological principles of empiricist thought, while Charles Taylor provides a compelling interpretive critique of empiricist causality in Philosophical Papers, Vols. 1 and 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). Both Brian Fay’s Social Theory and Political Practice (London: Allen & Unwin, 1975) and David Braybrooke’s Philosophy of Social Science (Englewood Cliffs, NJ : Prentice Hall, 1987) distinguish three sorts of social science and provide for some compelling reading regarding differences and possible lines of integration of the three. A more recent work of Fay’s developing critical theory is recommended in Chapter 6. Colin Hay’s Political Analysis: A Critical

26

the study of politics

Introduction (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002) is also valuable, especially for those working in international politics and government. An instructive guide to the use of case studies can be found in Alexander George and Andrew Bennett’s Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences (Cambridge, MA : MIT , 2005). Finally, a book that deserves the attention of readers wishing to supplement some of the core approaches surveyed in this text is Donald Kurtz’s Political Anthropology: Paradigms and Power (Boulder, CO : Westview, 2001).

Chapter Two

three traditional approaches

We begin our survey with three core approaches from antiquity. Regime theory attends to the character of a person or polity, where character is understood as consisting of core values and an interrelated psychological disposition. By interpreting the deep-seated orientation of a person or polity, we can predict and explain their likely political conduct. Analytical political studies consists of the development of concepts and the application of effective distinctions and logical criteria to political conduct and public policy. Claiming a degree of explanatory force, analytical political studies contributes to all competing core approaches through developing effective concepts and clarifying the nature, scope, and justification of each. Political philosophy seeks to understand our essential natures and goals as human beings, identifying principles and standards of right conduct in political life. It relates deeper features of our humanity to our political conduct in order to explain and evaluate it. Typically, these three core approaches to the study of politics are given little attention in surveys of this sort, but they remain compelling ways of making sense of the political world. Work in both analytical and normative political philosophy is found in most departments of political studies, where political philosophy courses also introduce students to regime theory as part of its treatment of antiquity. Indeed, the demand for analytical clarity and an interest in ethical standards of political conduct are back in vogue in the contemporary study of politics and government and in public discourse. Regime theory, analytical political studies, and political philosophy allow us, as they did for the thinkers of antiquity, a critical edge for identifying and understanding the integrities of contemporary 27

28

the study of politics

polities and conduct within them. The brief accounts offered below convey something of what these approaches bring to political studies, where questions of power (as related to freedom) and authority are taken to be central. These approaches represent the earliest types of political studies and are more cogent today than they are sometimes portrayed to be.

Regime Theory Statement of Approach

Regime theory is introduced here as an early precursor to the use of political psychology in the study of political culture. It is grounded in the folk-theoretical assumption that each of us pursues a particular value or quality of life: some pursue power, others wealth, others freedom and equality. We are governed, that is, by one of a limited number of coordinating conceptions of human happiness and personal integrity. The regime approach maintains that our personal character is established by a core value determined and/or reinforced by our psychological disposition or predisposition.11 A political regime is defined by reference to the core values and psychological orientation of those who flourish within it. Understanding what sort of dominant character defines and orients an individual, group, or polity helps us predict and explain their conduct in most, if not all, contexts. Regime theory is not, as it is sometimes construed, the study of who is in power, though it can explain why those in power have so succeeded. Moreover, regime change involves much more than simply replacing one group of leaders with another. Instead, such change is more like the personal transformation that sometimes follows some life crisis. Regime change in a polity requires the fundamental transformation of core values and psychological orientations of significant numbers of its citizens. Accordingly, regime change is thought to be rare. People defined by regemic features different from those of their polity experience profound frustration, which can lead to various forms of 11 Regemic personal qualities may be seen as given to us by nature, that is, at birth. However, deep-seated forms of personality may also be seen to be acquired by nurture, for instance in the family, church, or educational institutions. When forged deeply by nurture they are thought to be effectively equivalent to nature in determining regemic conduct.

three traditional approaches

29

disengagement, political resistance, or other conduct that alters the regemic definition of the polity.12 Accordingly, regime theory represents both political continuity and change. Regime theory was first advanced in Plato’s Republic, where a theory of political culture is identified that is arguably the first political science. Plato asserts that human beings are composed of a limited number of agency (primarily character) orientations, or forms of the soul. He claims that the state is an individual writ large, that there is coherence between the soul of the person and the sort of regime in which he or she flourishes. For Plato there are a limited number of types of human souls, each governed by a particular end (telos) and a limited number of corresponding forms of the polity, distinguished by the central good the polity pursues. For Plato, there are five types of human being: those who are internally governed by a desire for excellence (aristocrats), those by honour (timocrats), those by the desire for material wealth (oligarchs), those governed by the desire for freedom, equality, and self-government (democrats), and those with a desire for domination (tyrants). Correspondingly, there are five sorts of polity. Oligarchy, for instance, is found in a polity orchestrated for the pursuit of wealth, where social and political arrangements serve the achievement of wealth and where the wealthy accordingly flourish. As a radical conservative, Plato held the democratic form in surprisingly less esteem than we do today, favouring instead aristocracy, defined by the pursuit of excellence, as the best regime. However, regime theory need not adopt Plato’s definitions of available regime types or his account of the relative praiseworthiness of any particular regime. Regime theory explains the action of individual actors, as each operates from a particular personality and conception of the good life. It provides templates by reference to which we might predict the likely conduct of other individuals and polities. It relies upon close description, effective analytical differentiation of types, interpretation, and empirical confirmation by way of case studies. It asserts that the conduct of both individuals and political communities flows from its regemic quality. An 12 Such conduct typically uses means such as the mass media, political education, and leadership to alter the regemic features of the polity by altering the orientation of other citizens.

30

the study of politics

example of the core approach of regime analysis may be found in the literature on the authoritarian personality. An authoritarian personality, distinguished from the democratic personality, is held to consist in a deeply grounded psychological disposition toward control and order. Stemming from the desire to explain the rise of German fascism and the horrors of the Holocaust, political psychologists indentified a personality type that they asserted to be prone to authoritarianism. The seminal work in this project was Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel Levinson, Nevitt Sanford, and Theodor Adorno’s The Authoritarian Personality (New York: Harper, 1950),13 which sought to explain the rise of fascism in the predominance of authoritarian personalities in the political cultures in which fascism was established.14 Though such psychological accounts sought to be causal, regime theory is predictive even when it does not assume a causal account of the antecedent source of regemic form. If authoritarianism is a personality type, we can predict the likely conduct of those who possess it and anticipate the conduct of a polity in which such personality orientations are dominant. The authoritarian personality project developed, it is worth noting, what is now a controversial test, the F-scale,15 thought to identify a disposition toward authoritarianism. Theoretical Assumptions

The agency assumptions of regime theory were largely identified in the previous section. Human beings act from their fundamental character, as this is set by their deeply held values in the form of their personality. The configurations of our psychologically grounded core values may be discerned in each of us as a motivational template. We act, in significant measure, from the pattern of our particular core character or personality just as a polity acts to achieve and nourish the ends associated with its 13 The first three authors were writing from the University of California, Berkeley, while Adorno was teaching at UCLA . Adorno, who is enjoying something of a justifiable revival in contemporary political psychology, was part of a group of critical political theorists referred to as the Frankfurt School. Their critical psychoanalytic approach to political studies is introduced in Chapter Five. 14 Eric Erickson’s Childhood and Society (New York: Norton, 1963) found the origins of authoritarianism in Freudian analyses of the family in comparative political culture. 15 This test used a series of questions that were thought indirectly to indicate a tendency toward authoritarianism in human subjects. To assess this test in its final form, and to see why some critics thought it controversial, see .

three traditional approaches

31

regemic definition. Where our personal regime is supported by our polity, we flourish; where not, we suffer. Where we suffer, we may resist, seeking a change to a regime more in keeping with our own, or we disengage in a variety of ways. As long as we can identify the presence of a regemic form and as long as regemic character remains somewhat stable over time (or identifiable in a process of change), we can anticipate how people will act. Epistemologically, regime theory claims that we can come to know the interior character of political actors by discerning their core defining values and interrelated psychological orientation as revealed by the coherence of their conduct. Here one finds a considerable role for the interpretive mode of analysis, reading the regemic features in the conduct of individuals and political communities. The person who values honour or wealth does so more or less across the scope of his or her conduct, and we can use indicators of this persistence to discern their regemic character. Polities can be understood regemically by analyzing what sort of character prospers within them and by attending to the consistency of the polity’s conduct in internal and international affairs. If the democratic personality is thought to consist in a taste for personal liberty, an affective openness to the lives of others, and a deep-seated sense of our inherent equality as human beings, then we would be able to distinguish those who are governed by the regemic principles of democracy from those who are not. Equally, we would be able to identify among self-proclaimed democracies those that are authentically regemic democracies and those that are not. The epistemological test of truth in regime theory is coherence and confirmation, the latter where we confirm that anticipated conduct does indeed emanate from characterized subjects as predicted. We know we have effectively typed a character or regime when most conduct fits a motivational pattern, a regemic template, a core character, or, as it was for Plato, a form of the soul. The central ontological assumptions of regime theory are that human beings fundamentally consist in the core values and attendant features of their personality, that polities are similarly composed, and that there is a strong relationship between the two. As noted above, regime theory may hold to nature as strictly governing our lives or may allow a role for deep-seated nurture. If the latter, it is assumed that such nurture is formative of a character that is not easily changed, if at all.

32

the study of politics

Criticism

Four lines of criticism of regime theory seem promising, though it is likely that there are more.16 One might say, first, that its account of continuity and change is inadequate. There is a wide range of conduct by people and polities that represents significant change but that would fall well short of regemic transformation. It might be said that measures that restrict the pursuit of wealth are significant changes to a polity, even if oligarchy remains the dominant regemic feature of a society. Similarly, measures in non-democratic polities that enhance the recognition of liberty and address some inequality are undeniably significant, even if they don’t constitute a full transformation to the democratic regime. Accordingly, significant events in politics can transpire that express neither continuity of the regime nor regime change. Regime theory seems to have difficulty addressing such phenomena, though it can be seen to be central to politics and government. Change in politics, one might say, is typically incremental, not transformative. By over-emphasizing core values and deeply set personality, regime theory may be criticized for missing the subtlety of personal and community development. A second and related line of criticism would attack the notion that persons or polities are strictly composed by reference to one core value or a persistent personality orientation. We are not such simple creatures, and even where we might find some folks so tightly wound, this would be an exception, a sort of abnormality, identifiable by reference to the diversity of people in any regime. We are, one might say, multi-dimensional, pluralist creatures. Or one may claim that the sort of values and psychological features that determine our conduct change in response to changes in the context of that conduct. In both lines of criticism, regime theory may be criticized for operating at too great a level of abstraction, with too reductionist a reading of human development, one that understates the complexity of personality and political culture. 16 An easy line of criticism of a core approach is simply to say that it doesn’t have what one takes to be the more compelling features of a competing approach. One may say that regime theory insufficiently attends to social class or gender and accordingly conclude that it should be set aside. This sort of criticism is valuable, especially in distinguishing between core approaches, but it can shift critical attention to the preferred approach too quickly and summarily, leaving significant insights of the approach under discussion inadequately understood and addressed.

three traditional approaches

33

A third line of criticism is also related, namely, that if there are templates of human beings, there are a lot more than a few of them. The diversity of humanity is much wider than regime theory seems to require for its explanatory force. If the configuration of humanity is as infinite in variety as we might reasonably hold it to be, then identifying core templates would render the account much less useful. Simply keeping track of such diversity would seem daunting. When so much diversity in humanity is found, moreover, using templates would not deliver the sort of general laws of human conduct that regime theory seems to need to be compelling as an explanatory or predictive core approach to the study of politics.17 All three of these lines of criticism are reminiscent of lines of criticism of Plato’s theory of human nature and politics, both from leading theorists and from undergraduate students struggling with his doctrine for the first time. Furthermore, they were part of the reason that work on the authoritarian personality was eclipsed by competing accounts, namely, that most human beings operate with a complex psychology and that the authoritarian personality was too reductive. At best it was a psychopathology of the very few, not a plausible feature of explaining a political culture. One might further criticize regime theory directly on epistemological grounds. Regime theory rests on features of a political agent that are not directly discernable. Accordingly, asserting them can be said to be little more than sophisticated speculation, not really social science. Moreover, one might assert that developing a set of definitive features of a regime and reading these into the conduct of individuals and groups runs the risk of allowing the researcher to employ his or her normative commitments in defining features of individuals and societies. Getting regime analysis wrong is possible, and to do so is arguably to do a serious disservice to those individuals and polities who we misread. Nevertheless, regime theory can resist the various lines of criticism levelled at it. The idea that we act from something like a core character continues to have appeal. We continue to find in our friends’ personal 17 I have introduced regime theory to early undergraduates by reference to its role in Star Trek: The Next Generation, where knowing whether one is a Klingon or Ferengi gives one knowledge about what to expect in terms of conduct. But in a universe in which there a million species, where each member shares only some species features, we may not be as comfortable in employing regemic principles to explain or predict behaviour.

34

the study of politics

lives something of their character as a predictable source of their conduct, and we use this common sense especially as we seek to understand and predict the likely conduct of political leaders. Plato, regardless of his antiquity, knew a tyrant when he saw one—just as we think we know an authoritarian when we meet one and an authoritarian regime when we suffer within it. Applications

In employing regime theory, one can rely upon definitions of types or forms already present in the political studies literature or one can generate a taxonomy of one’s own. The latter is often less compelling, however, as it has limited historical or comparative value. Such regime theory adventures are considered high risk in political studies, but they can, if thoughtfully done, provide real insight. The continuing currency of regime theory indicates that early political studies might have had more going for it as a core approach to the study of politics than one might have thought, despite the criticism described above. Regime theory offers an approach to human political conduct that renders a degree of explanation and predication, resting on some long-standing folk theory about what we are like as human beings. A regemic approach could be applied in political history, attending, for instance, to the core regemic political culture of Russian society to see whether it has changed since the pre-revolutionary 1890s. The application of a regemic definition to the Russian example could reveal an explanatory basis for the possibility of the development of liberal-styled democracy. Such analysis might find that political culture is sufficiently established in regemic character to make such development likely to succeed.18 It could reveal a continuity of regemic character over this time, or it could identify genuine transformation in the polity and identify the nature of such transformation. Or one could work on American society to examine whether it can be said to have had a stable form of democracy over time. One might seek to test the hypothesis that America has been persistently a democratic polity, an inherently Protestant polity, 18 In all such work, studies in regime theory need solid research design and must proceed with a degree of specificity, even as they address broad questions.

three traditional approaches

35

one grounded in the Reformation and the religious orientation of its founders, an oligarchy, or a timocracy, where militarism stands as the dominant feature.19 Indeed, one might pose many interesting comparative questions that employ the regemic core approach. What are the regemic natures and the scope of character types of those who occupy positions of power in different societies? To what extent are regemic features contagious across political borders? To what extent does each polity encourage and realize political participation, what is the character of such participation, and to what form of regime does it cohere? Such investigations would need empirical and interpretive foundation, finding revealing indicators within the conduct of citizenries, in private life, in civil society, and in institutional life. They could be focused on case studies that, taken together, might identify the persistence of regemic values or examples of regemic transformation. Those familiar with the founding societies/fragment theory of Louis Hartz will see in it elements of regime theory, where the regemic nature of a new society consists in the character of the regemic fragment of the society from which it came. Hartz was one of the leading American political scientists of his generation. His The Liberal Tradition in America (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1955 [rpt. Mariner, 1991]) Hartz was awarded the coveted Woodrow Wilson prize in 1956 as an indication of this high regard. In The Founding of New Societies (New York: Harcourt University Press, 1964), Hartz argues that the fundamental values that motivate political conduct are carried from colonizing societies to the formation of new societies, where newly “congealed” political cultures reflect particular fragments of political culture from the colonizing polity. In his work, ingrained ideological values and orientations constitute the regemic terms of a congealed political culture. He argues that the United States and Canada represent different regemic fragments, which explain the differences in their political cultures and have affected their development over time. He maintains that the US enjoyed a founding around liberal values and dispositions, while Canada was more a 19 Robert Dahl’s assertion is that America is a mixed regime, of aristocratic, oligarchic, and democratic regemic features. Dahl employs the concept of “polity,” following Aristotle, to account for this particular mix. See Robert A. Dahl, A Preface to Democratic Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956).

36

the study of politics

complex of liberal and conservative ones. As a response to Hartz, Gad Horowitz’s “Conservatism, Liberalism and Socialism in Canada: An Interpretation” (Canadian Journal of Political Science / Revue canadienne de science politique, June, 1978, vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 383–399) was seminal in the development of political studies in Canada. Horowitz argues that the combination of liberal and conservative regemic orientations in Canada, lodged at the point of congealment in the colonization of Canada, explains the rise of red Toryism and democratic socialism, both of which inherited political orientations from their regemic precursors. The absence, Hartzians claim, of a Tory regemic orientation in the founding of American society explains the absence of the development of socialist regemic orientations, such as those found in the greater development and maintenance of the Canadian welfare state, for instance. Though feminism is discussed as part of critical theory later in this text (see Chapter Five), a feminist approach to the study of politics may also be regemic. One can pose patriarchy as a form of the person and regime against which one would contrast a variety of non-patriarchal regimes. One would construct justified indicators for the presence or degree of regime change from or to patriarchy within a particular polity or sub-polity and apply these to political conduct generally or to a series of confirming case studies. If a patriarchal regime is found to persist, it would allow us to explain and predict public policy over time. Regemic change from patriarchal character might accordingly be seen to demand a more ambitious transformative agenda than one might initially have supposed. Another application of regime theory might be found in globalization studies, especially those that hold that globalization undermines the achievement of human excellence, cultural identity, or the realization of genuine democracy. The phenomenon of globalization may be characterized as grounded in the predominance of people with commercialized consumerist personality.20 Media studies of a regemic sort may be useful here. We might find indications that the mass media in Western democracies positively and paradigmatically portray citizens as consumers of value. Accordingly, one would be able to predict the conduct of people 20 Such people might be found to be governed by the desire to consume as much as possible and to reduce all values to commodities. Corporatist polities may be defined regemically, thus, by the pursuit of consumerist commodification.

three traditional approaches

37

and polities, including those who have competing regemic definitions, those who would resist an increasingly globalized polity or those who would become increasingly disengaged with social, economic, and political life. Benjamin Barber’s Jihad vs. McWorld may be read as a regemic treatment of globalization.21 Barber distinguishes between two regemic forces operating in the contemporary world: those of the consumerist orientation of globalization, and those that are tribal in their reaction to the forces of globalization, often governed by deep-seated religious integrity and ethnic culture. Seeing both dangerously at work in the contemporary society, he calls for processes of development that would generate more in the way of the democratic personality and the democratic values of smaller civic republican polities. In a related way, regime theory offers a number of exercises in explaining international cooperation and conflict. Are international conflict and cooperation explained by the regime definitions of leadership, by shared or conflicting orientations of citizenries, or by common and divergent goals, aspirations, and psychological dispositions? The regime approach might be found useful in understanding Western efforts to liberalize authoritarian regimes from the outside, as in the invasion of Iraq or the war in Afghanistan. Here it can explain the resiliency of resistance to such imposed change. Regime change will not simply produce new winners and losers; rather, what it means to win or lose hangs in the balance, along with which sorts of lives will flourish and which will wane. This could be seen as explaining the dogged force of resistance. The regime approach employs diverse methodological tools: questionnaires, interviews, media content analysis, the tracing of historical events (in their presentation of regemic features), and reflection on one’s political conduct within a polity. The purpose in employing these is to identify regemic forms in the political culture, in the lives of successful citizens, and in the values of the political community. The primary work of those who employ regime theory is to find, through the definition, observation, and interpretation of conduct and political culture, the basic characters of a polity, identifying which prosper and which flounder or fail. It explains and predicts such successes and failures by relying on 21 Barber’s work is cited in the Further Reading section at the end of this chapter.

38

the study of politics

coherence tests, making sense of political conduct by finding the regemic integrities and continuities within them.

Analytical Political Studies Statement of Approach

Analytical political studies shares with regime theory its origins in antiquity, its formalism, and the fact that it is not always introduced in books of this sort. We have noted that all work in political studies needs to be analytically sound, and we have already seen the force of analytical concepts and distinctions in regime theory, a core approach that requires and heavily depends on definitions of and distinctions between regemic forms. All accounts of politics and government are improved by analytically solid concepts and distinctions. In this way, analytical political studies provides a useful service to competing core approaches. However, it goes beyond this, contributing to our knowledge of politics and government without making the sort of agency assumptions upon which competing core approaches are typically dependent. By drawing effective concepts and distinctions, we can see features of phenomena that we would otherwise miss. Doing so can have explanatory force by itself, where identifying the necessary and sufficient conditions for a phenomenon to be present can provide further explanation for its presence or absence—without having to offer any causal account of why such conditions are predictive. Simply by breaking governments and politics into parts we can better understand what governments and other political agents are doing, and assess how well they are doing it. The analytical approach is initially associated with the rigours of syllogistic, analytical logic, but dialectical reasoning is also employed in political analysis. Likely less common in readers’ backgrounds, dialectical reasoning warrants some brief commentary here. It operates in Platonic thought and re-appears in the nineteenth century in the work of G.W.F. Hegel, who in turn spawned lines of European thought in the twentieth century. A form of dialectics is also inherent to structuralist Marxism, discussed in Chapter Five. There are important differences in the dialectics of all three philosophers: Hegel’s dialectical reasoning is different

three traditional approaches

39

from Plato’s, as Hegel asserts that the truth is historically emergent, not transcendent; and both are different from Marx, who renders dialectical relations as inherent to the material conditions of our lives and of nature, discernable only by way of dialectical reasoning. However, despite these differences they can be unified by the central idea that knowledge proceeds from an initial, partially true claim being considered by reference to its negation, that is, by identifying a contradictory counter-claim. This contradictory or counter-claim also carries partial truth. Transcending the contradiction between two claims generates a claim that captures the truth of both, leaving behind what is false. This conclusion is then tested by further negation, contradiction, or counter-claim. This sort of thinking is most readily seen in the way Hegel’s thought is sometimes characterized, where for every thesis there is an antithesis, and for both a synthesis, one that constitutes a new thesis, which in turn generates a new antithesis. This counter-propositional way of thinking allows one to move from conjecture and counter-conjecture to a more complete and truthful understanding of the phenomenon or question one is interested in understanding. In Hegel’s dialectics the process of history involves sets of beliefs transcending one another, as each is effectively contested (by negation) because of its inherent insufficiency or partiality. Hegel sees dialectics as complex, as much a web of co-definitional tension as a line of continuity.22 An early example of the form of dialectical reasoning is found in Plato’s critique of conventional claims of justice. Plato opposes the conventional claim that justice consists of paying to others what one owes (associated with commercial justice) by asserting that it is unjust to return a weapon to a newly turned madman because one had promised to do so upon demand. That is, it is both just and unjust to render what one owes. Rather than providing a proviso to the first principle, dialectical reasoning integrates some of the truth of both contradictory claims. For Plato, an adequate definition of justice requires that each person do 22 Dialectics has been associated with the idea of binary distinctions, important later in our discussion of structuralism and forms of post-structuralism. A binary relation may be found in the claim “either a or b.” In dialectical reasoning the binary is represented in the claim “a and ~a [not a].” In the first, a conclusion is either a or b; in dialectics, a conclusion is a new, more complete version of a.

40

the study of politics

that for which he or she is best suited; injustice is over-reaching one’s natural capacities. While this example is normative, the logic can be said to apply to processes of our understanding of the social world more fully. Dialectics, in the idealist versions offered by Plato and Hegel, provides a form of critical thinking by which we gain new understanding of a subject through the resolution of contradiction and oppositional insufficiency of knowledge claims. In dialectics we essentially think ourselves through to a deeper understanding of the truth of our lives by persistently interrogating the truth and the completeness of claims. We might see an example of dialectical tension in instances of international conflict, where opposing actors define themselves in terms of each other, and where the conflict between them is transformational for both. A tension between two co-defined oppositional forces is resolved by the victory of one, wherein the victor is changed and where such victory invites subsequent forms of opposition. Or it is found in a resolution between both that leaves behind features of the initial oppositional identification. Such dialectical tension is sometimes said to be the best way of identifying relations in the Middle East in the early twenty-first century or Western efforts to combat international terrorism. Doing so allows us to see features of the conflict that we would otherwise miss, for example how each side of a conflict is defined by the other. That is, the application of a logical form, here dialectical, reveals an understanding of an objective phenomenon that otherwise would be unavailable. Indeed, if the examples of international conflict are considered, the application of a logical form can identify the scope of possible outcome, again without making any causal claim. Such outcomes are dialectically entailed. In North America, however, we are more used to employing analytical logic. Tests of validity in the analytical approach to political studies apply the argument forms surveyed in most introductory logic textbooks. Syllogistic and other deductive forms of analysis establish a range of possible ways of relating claims within an argument, distinguishing those that are intellectually acceptable from those that are not. In syllogistic thought and in other logical forms, conclusions in an argument are assessed as sound or not by determining whether the form of argument from which they are deduced is intellectually and mathematically valid. Where the premises of an argument are true and the form of deduction

three traditional approaches

41

valid, one can conclude that the conclusion of the argument is true. The goal in political studies is to show whether arguments within theories and as supports for policy preferences are valid, whether sentences can rightly be deduced from premises known to be true, and whether analogies and generalizations across cases are secure. Rules of inductive logic (governing statistical generalization) allow us to determine what the likelihood is of a claim being true by virtue of generalizations of past observation. In both deductive and inductive modes, the clarity of concepts referring to empirical phenomena and the adoption of non-fallacious forms of reasoning are a basis for conclusions about the world as we conceive and observe it. An example of the value of analytical political analysis as a core approach may be found in human rights theory. For its intelligibility and usefulness human rights theory requires resolving the apparent logical tension between competing human rights. It is not uncommon to find that social and economic rights conflict with (some ways of stipulating) political rights. Typically, resolutions of such conflicts are achieved through an improved taxonomy of rights and a logically coherent ranking procedure. But for this, human rights theorists need an account of the nature and scope, as well as indicators of the presence and absence, of human rights, just as they need a prior and logically coherent account of what it is for something to count as a human right. In short, they need an analytical account of rights. Similarly, the process of judicial review and the study of the law more generally are also dependent upon the analytical approach, drawing distinctions and finding logical coherence between individual cases, general law, and constitutional and interpretive principles. Analytical tools may also be applied directly to political phenomena. A typical example is the assessment of the adequacy of public policy in meeting its goals. Policy analysts clarify and stipulate definitions, dismissing statements of policy goals that are contradictory or relatively meaningless, identifying the sorts of indicators that would determine the relative success or failure of particular policies. Suppose one were involved in designing a policy to address poverty in the global North. One would need, at the very least, a useful definition of poverty, indicators that together would most accurately represent poverty, and an identification of criteria that would indicate success in its amelioration. One

42

the study of politics

would need to discern whether proposed policy or sub-policy goals were logically consistent with one another and whether one could identify (as logical possibilities) policy directions and indicators that were superior to those chosen. Over time, a body of well-constructed and well-assessed case studies might even have some predictive force. For instance, if fifty years of seeking to redress income gaps via tax measures and social-welfare spending were shown not to meet the goal of poverty amelioration in a given economy, continuing to proceed with this policy would be to ignore what we should have come to know. We would in fact know this without any appeal to the causes that might otherwise be offered to explain the phenomenon. Analytical approaches are most epistemologically rich when they draw distinctions between phenomena or features of political conduct. Such analytical applications can be more or less elaborate and they can focus on government, as typically policy studies do, or on civil society. More elaborate analytical frameworks share with the less elaborate an equal dependence upon drawing and stipulating distinctions as they seek to “organize” features of the world. Such distinction drawing, as suggested, can have a degree of predictive force without relying upon much if anything in the way of agency assumptions. For a more concrete example, consider the theory of parties advanced by Maurice Duverger, a French political analyst whose way of categorizing parties is widely used in comparative politics.23 Duverger employs a series of stipulated concepts—treating, for instance, party membership as consisting of either cadre or mass membership. Cadre parties have a limited membership (compared to their share of the vote) that is primarily active during elections, and they do not provide a significant role for members in setting party platforms. Mass parties have a large membership (again compared to their share of the vote), and members are active in shaping the policy direction of the party. Finding that in a four-party system, mass parties tend over time either to lose their mass qualities or to disappear from effective electoral competition allows one to predict the likely future of a new mass party in such a context. Duverger’s concepts thus become, with some description of party characteristics over time and across cases, 23 Duverger’s work is cited in the Further Reading section at the end of this chapter.

three traditional approaches

43

predictive without holding any agency assumptions. Our knowledge stems simply from generating a useful distinction between two concepts. A similarly explanatory force from an analytical framework may be found in the study of pressure groups. Paul Pross, a Canadian political analyst, distinguishes between different sorts of pressure groups, proceeding to identify the relative success of different groups over time and predicting future outcomes on this basis. Duverger and Pross can be also be construed as having an agency-based explanatory theory, but the force of their conclusions does not require one. Such analysis requires only the postulating of distinctions, discernable indicators, technical concepts, and description to show the presence or absence of, and changes in, the defined phenomena. One of the more interesting turns in contemporary American analytical work is that toward deliberative democracy. Theorists such as Josh Cohen have sought to provide an account of democracy that features the value of citizen engagement in public policy issues. While this work is meant primarily to advocate one or another account of political authority and the value of properly constructed democracy, along the way we can observe distinctions that allow us to identify features of democratic politics that we might not otherwise have noticed. For instance, most deliberative accounts assert that discussion in deliberative democracy can either be autonomous or not, and that a deliberative democracy logically requires that our contributions to democratic discourse consist of views that are not just what others who have power over us wish us to express. While basic, this distinction allows us to identify an issue in democracy that we might otherwise ignore—namely, the degree to which the mass media, for instance, may be said to alter the autonomous expression of our insight when we are involved in democratic politics. Indeed, when manipulation of popular expression is discerned, this may serve as an explanatory outcome of political choice that would have been different had different conditions governed the process of citizen participation. Such accounts provide normatively useful insight, but they also go some way to explaining why outcomes are what they are.

44

the study of politics

Theoretical Assumptions

The analytic study of politics proceeds without a folk theory of human agency. Regardless, it produces some knowledge outcomes that have practical value in the formation and assessment of public policy, and in making sense of the political world. It can even provide for some predictive force. Still, the analytical approach at its most explanatory addresses only descriptive regularities of features of phenomena defined by a conceptual framework. It is silent about what, if anything, is at work to make these regularities so. The concepts employed in such analysis can be the creation of the analyst, they can be borrowed from other core approaches or from other analysts, or they can be drawn from ordinary discourse. To the extent that the analytical approach is empirical, it requires only description, finding as present or absent in phenomena the features that a conceptual framework stipulates. As long as the analyst can cite concepts that distinguish or stipulate features of a phenomenon, can trace these distinctions in the presence or absence of the features to which stipulated concepts refer, and discern patterns of regularity, then he or she has some grounds for explanation and prediction. The assumptions that analytical political studies makes presume, assert, discern, or apply a logical differentiation and ordering of the features of political phenomena and relate these over time and across other instances of the phenomenon. They assert that at least some of the features of and relationships between the political aspects of the world are logical or conceptual rather than causal, allowing us to make sense of the world without appealing to causal theories. Criticism

One line of criticism of analytical political studies asserts that its attempt to side-step questions of agency renders it insufficient for a full-blown understanding of politics. This criticism is most forcefully advanced by those who have adopted a competing account that is explanatory, one that makes agency assumptions. Returning to the example of policy analysts observing the persistence of poverty despite the presence of the welfare state, a Marxist might contend that fifty years of such analytical assessment attending to the presence of both is, at best, wasted effort. We should understand instead that late capitalism has its own historic,

three traditional approaches

45

materialist forces that govern the accumulation of wealth, and that these forces render such welfare policies incapable of succeeding. Working on the development of analytical models, moreover, draws research resources and the attention of political studies away from the achievement of deeper understanding and from the development of a more compelling and cogent discipline. This sort of criticism, however, can be question begging, forcing the question of adequacy back to the preferred approach. The criticism holds, that is, only if the perspective from which it is lodged is itself justifiable. A second line of criticism challenges the assumption that the phenomena to which analytical differentiation and other conceptual renderings are applied are consistent over time and across presumed comparative cases. Analytical case studies are most valuable when they have something of the predictive value noted above. But to obtain such predictive force is to suppose that the objects of analysis, the features of phenomena to which one’s concepts refer, are persistent over time and across contexts. In the poverty example, allowing one to conclude that poverty cannot effectively be addressed by such measures presumes that the features of poverty and the welfare state were consistently captured by the concepts one employed to define and distinguish them. If the quality or features of either change, the regularity upon which one might make any such claim is undermined, and any policy response that might otherwise flow from it is lost. This concern might also relate to Duverger’s account, if treated solely as an analytical model. If one finds that the features of success-oriented parties appear together with cadre organizational qualities of parties over time, one can predict that they will coexist. But if the qualities of success orientation in parties are different from one time period to another, or across party politics in otherwise similar situations, the most one would have is a rich descriptive rendering of features with no predictive value. Here, more elaborate models that identify a fuller and more sharply delineated range of conceptually distinguished features might be useful. But the problem remains that analytical approaches seeking predictive force rely on an assumption of continuity in phenomena. Related to this criticism of the analytical approach is the concern that the choice of concepts to make sense across comparative cases may

46

the study of politics

not be applicable to diverse communities. A cadre party, for example, is a common feature of traditional liberal democratic polities, but it can be foreign to other societies, even those that employ party politics, owing to cultural, historical, or other features of the polity. The use of concepts and distinctions from one cultural or historical setting in order to make sense of another may be criticized as a form of domination, seeking to render the other intelligible only by virtue of one’s preferred conceptual base. This sort of criticism raises a related concern with the possibly misleading effects of the analytical approach’s use of more technical language, a language not drawn from the linguistic practices of the contexts in which it is employed. One of the decisions political researchers make is how deeply they wish to lodge their work in agency assumptions. Deeper theories have the promise of more powerful conjectures about future conduct, leading or contributing to full-blown explanatory theories. Those more restrained in agency assumptions, such as those who strictly employ only analytical approaches, run fewer risks of getting things profoundly wrong or of relying on claims of inherent but difficult-to-establish causal sentences. But they pay the price that the knowledge they garner loses its force as time and circumstances change. Of course, if one’s ambition is more moderate still (where, that is, political analysis provides merely for the logical and statistical integrity of the work of others, free from making predictive claims of one’s own), the analytical approach serves the discipline well indeed. This role is similar to the role reserved for the analytical approach in issues of ethics or political philosophy. Those who work strictly in the analytical tradition in philosophy surrender claims of knowledge about what the good life is, but they contribute significantly in requiring that all such claims of others are lodged in logically valid arguments and in the precise use of words. In this way analytical philosophers and political analysts discipline what we can justifiably say about the world. Analytical theorists may be said to play three roles in political studies departments: clarifying concepts and distinctions for those employing competing core approaches; generating and assessing the quality of arguments and principles of political ethics and authority; and offering predictions about political conduct by stipulating concepts, finding

three traditional approaches

47

analogical consistency, and applying analytical frameworks. Knowledge about politics and government can be attained through the rigorous employment of logical thought; whether or not this work is sufficient for the definition of political studies is less certain. That the analytical approach provides a means of addressing the public policy through which our lives are built is a compelling contribution. Analytical political studies may provide a degree of credibility in political studies, seemingly quiet on the questions of agency but with some modest predictive force. Whether this is enough for the discipline or whether some sort of hybrid approach tying analytical work to the agency assumptions of another core approach is preferable and justifiable is for readers to determine as they choose a core approach to their work. Applications

Examples of the analytical approach in political studies have been noted in the discussion above. In comparing and contrasting the nations of North America, one valuable application would be simply to assess the performance of public policy by reference to its identified goals. The work of determining and assessing best practices in health or educational reform is a common example of analytical work in public administration studies. Such work might further assess the degree to which, say, various policies in Canada, the United States, or Mexico are logically consistent with other policies of these three polities. Legal analysis of legislation and its application is also analytical, as we have said, employing legal reasoning to determine legal outcomes. If political studies is construed primarily as the study of how constitutions and law govern public life, the analytical approach has much to recommend it. Analytical legal studies fruitfully compare across jurisdictions and with respect to constitutional commonalities and differences, revealing different analytical models of policy. Assuming that such legal frameworks are consistent over time, such analysis allows a degree of prediction, just as one can predict judicial outcomes, to a degree, by understanding how decisions are entailed or otherwise logically flow from precedence.24 24 Legal and constitutional work is also interpretive in identifying legislative intent. But such work remains primarily analytical, identifying logical coherence across cases and applying analytical frameworks to discern similarities and differences.

48

the study of politics

Political Philosophy Statement of Approach

Political philosophy involves discursive and textual engagement as well as critical introspection. Its goal is to determine the features of our humanity as they relate to our political and ethical conduct, and accordingly to determine justifiable principles of authority and justice in political life. The close reading of texts, personal introspection, and discursive contestation and dialogue—all of these shed light on questions of agency, especially through an understanding of the lives of political actors. The best way to understand political philosophy is to engage in some, either by closely and critically reading the work of others or by exploring central ethical issues in politics by way of discussion and writing. Usually these two modes of doing political philosophy co-occur, where reading good work closely engages and develops the philosophical skills of the reader. Political philosophy relies upon interpretation, though it is not strictly speaking an interpretive core approach to the study of politics. Political philosophy seeks to determine truths about how it is best to live in society, while interpretivism (discussed in Chapter Four) investigates what people mean when they act, what they believe, and how texts represent the culture in which they function. Political philosophy applies sophisticated forms of reasoning in order to determine the relative standing of competing principles—if not always to show what principles of conduct may be grounded in the truth about human beings, then at least to show which ones are not. It relies upon analytical and dialectical forms of reasoning, though it is more philosophically ambitious than the analytical approach discussed above, employing concepts and distinctions but also offering substantive theses about our humanity and related issues in political life. Theoretical Assumptions

A folk theory of political philosophy is that human beings have an inherent concern with, interest in, and capacity to act on standards of conduct. It assumes that as human beings we have a basic curiosity about our nature and a desire to achieve quality in our lives and in our societies, to the extent that these are realized or constrained by politics and

three traditional approaches

49

government. It assumes, then, that human beings are inclined to live as well as we can, though we are often confused about what the best sort of conduct is and are not always quick to identify correctly the obstacles in the way of such conduct. Political philosophy is thought to be central to the realization of the best sort of lives in polities, as it allows us to choose forms or types of life that we can defend as right or valuable. Ontologically, political philosophy assumes that there is, if not a best life for human beings, then at least better and worse lives. Such comparisons are deduced from understanding the features inherent to our humanity and by paying critical attention to competing principles for political conduct. While such principles are related to political culture, they are not thought to be reducible to it. Political philosophy assumes, therefore, that there are discernible truths about human beings that allow us to assess values and the political cultures that are governed by them. Political philosophy is not strictly given to explaining how we come to live as we do as citizens in polities, though it can provide rich accounts of our follies as human beings. Instead, it is concerned with showing how we ought to and could live better. It often assumes a common humanity across history, where the texts of antiquity and modernity both provide insight for the contemporary reader. Epistemologically, political philosophy asserts that we have access to the truth about how best to live in political community, that principles of political right and human conduct are realized through self-referential, critical engagement with the lives and minds of others, especially those who have sought systematically and deeply to discern them, by introspection, discursive and textual engagement, and critical reasoning. That is, political philosophy asserts that the application of effective modes of thought reveals human truths, just as scientific methodology reveals truths about the material world and other living beings. That there is truth about values renders political philosophy at odds with ethical, cultural or personal relativism, all of which are enjoying some contemporary currency in political studies. It is important to note that the epistemological claims of political philosophy are lodged against the empiricism and positivism of the Enlightenment, where the presumption of knowledge about the essential nature of our humanity and about the good life is held at best to be a

50

the study of politics

sophistic form of speculation. Political philosophy challenges the positivist empiricism of the Enlightenment, asserting that there is truth to be known about our inherent humanity.25 Similar sorts of claims are advanced in aesthetics, where music, art, and poetry are sometimes thought to be open to comprehensive assessment: there is better and worse art and music, and this is an inherent feature of the work itself, not merely a matter of what is popularized in a particular setting. Such an aesthetic holds that truth and beauty in art relate to the deepest features and goals of our humanity. In political studies, the question of whether or not truth about our inherent natures is available to us remains as controversial as are standards of beauty, good and bad music, dance, or visual art. Before moving to criticism, it might be worth contrasting political philosophy as a core approach with regime theory and analytical political studies, as all three are close cousins with intellectual roots in antiquity. Regime theory makes a strong agency assumption, grounded in a set of ontological arguments regarding forms of human personality, and it is open to employing a variety of epistemological strategies (of observation, dialectical and analytical interrogation, and interpretation). It asserts that of the various features of a political agent it is the essential features of his or her psychology of value or character (identified by reference to the end(s) or core value(s) that each pursues) that governs his or her conduct. It asserts that there is a close coherence between one’s enddefined features and the corresponding end-defined features of the polity in which one either enjoys success or suffers the frustration of one’s character. This relationship is sometimes expanded by ancillary causal connectors, the most plausible of which attends to processes of broadly construed political education in regemic formation and transformation, rendering such education a central feature of political studies. For its part, analytical political studies asserts that it is the reasoning skills of the analyst that can constitute a core approach to political studies. 25 It is important to see here that positivist empiricism was only one doctrine of the Enlightenment, and that there are ways of doing political philosophy that are indeed inspired by the Enlightenment’s challenge of religious doctrine. In fact, political philosophy is, in some accounts, seen to be close to strands of intellectual humanism during the Reformation and Enlightenment. And it may be said that intellectual humanism is grounded in antiquity, providing continuity and tradition over time, even as political philosophers throughout history have often disagreed.

three traditional approaches

51

Conceptual construction and analytical or dialectical reasoning allow us to make sense of political phenomena without resorting to claims about why things are the way they are and without making value judgments. Analytical studies provides grounds for dismissing claims that are not logically consistent with one another or with the descriptive evidence of the world. (Dialectical reasoning allows us to exploit the tension of partial truths in claims and counter-claims and in contradictions, to render truer claims about the world.) The analytical approach to political studies need not make any assumption about the interior life of the human subject or advance any claims about final ends or inherent values of our humanity, except the capacity of the human mind to think systematically. While close to both these two core approaches, political philosophy maintains that there is indeed knowledge available about the interior nature of, and accordingly the best lives for, human beings, particularly as these relate to politics and government. With respect to regime theory, political philosophy asserts there are demonstrably better and worse regimes. Specifically with respect to human rights, for example, some political philosophers conclude that there are natural rights and natural law, political principles governing right conduct, which are deducible from our essential features as human beings. They assert that one can go considerably further than simply clarifying the language of rights.26 For philosophers, it is not simply that human rights are valued by some societies, but instead that human rights are part of the inherent truth of our humanity. One of the often overlooked values of political philosophy is the value it has for assessing competing core approaches. Political-philosophical investigations of our humanity attend to our agency and ontology as one means of addressing the persistent questions of authority, justice, and freedom. As the philosophers say, ought implies can, so advocating principles of political right and ethical conduct presumes something of a justifiable view of our capacities as human beings. The considerations of agency and ontology that political philosophy requires allow us better to identify and assess the agency assumptions of competing approaches 26 Political philosophy challenges those who hold that rights exist only to the extent that they are legally or constitutionally recognized. Political philosophers claim that adopting a position of legal positivism makes it impossible to see that that human beings living in polities have rights even if they are not recognized by law.

52

the study of politics

to the study of politics. Most political philosophy assumes that knowledge about ontology and human agency is available to us through deep processes of introspection and discursive and textual engagement. To the extent that this is right, the conclusions to which such inquiry directs us in matters of justification also shed light on the adequacy of the assumptions about our humanity when we seek to explain our conduct. Criticism

One line of criticism of political philosophy is that it fails to do what competing approaches can, and especially that it fails to provide empirical, falsifiable explanations of causes in the real world of politics. Another is that it is intellectually arrogant, that it fails to realize the limits of human knowledge. Another still is that the history of political thought is irrecoverably androcentric and rooted in Western belief systems. In addition, Marxists claim that political philosophy is mere ideology serving the dominant economic class in particular historical epochs, while postmodernists believe that “knowledge” of how it is best to live is simply the outcome of power and that there are no ethical guidelines or insights that can be said to be true, nor even any truer than others. The most persistent criticism remains the positivist one—that while we may be able to identify the values and principles believed by others, we have no way of knowing which is better. Such criticism holds that the final ends and principles of human conduct are not knowable, and that seeking such knowledge is a speculative and dangerous exercise of hubris. This conclusion is buttressed by the fact that political philosophers profoundly disagree about central issues of political value. Still, it is not at all uncommon to find that positivist critics of political philosophy have trouble justifying why they pursue the values that they do in their own lives. One can partly test the integrity of the claim that beliefs about right conduct are arbitrary, causally produced, or the work of power by challenging the motivational integrity of the lives of those who make such assertions. If there are no knowable values, why do they pursue what they do in life? The values that guide us in life are seldom experienced as arbitrary or even as contingent upon causal forces acting in and through us. We typically hold a more sophisticated and laudable account of our own agency, one that we believe is not reduced to the sorts of causes governing animals

three traditional approaches

53

and the rest of the natural world. What, one may ask, motivates political conduct if not the belief that some states of affairs are indeed better than others and the ancillary belief that we do, at least to a degree, determine or alter our conduct by reference to them? We are not intellectually indifferent, that is, to the ends that we pursue, even those that are simply the achievement of pleasure. Even to pursue seemingly simple pleasures in life requires that we hold some ends to be superior to others. It seems to us to matter how we live and to be recognized as having the capacity to make judgments on the basis of reason and knowledge. All that political philosophy needs to get off the ground as a core approach is to postulate that some values are in fact better than others, that it matters what sort of principles we choose to respect in our lives, and that this is a matter of knowledge, not mere speculation. The belief that there are at least some forms of conduct that are inherently reprehensible (for instance, cruelty), or that democracy is preferable to tyranny, requires an assumption that knowledge about inherent human value is indeed available to us, that our preferences are neither arbitrary nor merely caused. Applications

The work of political philosophy is undeniably ideational; it is about intellectually discerning values and principles rather than studying material states of affairs. Its application to politics and government is primarily found in political argument and to a degree in public policy, and it is primarily reform oriented. Where democracy was determined, for instance, to align with the best values of human life, then the role of the political philosopher was educative, to account for how and why this is thought to be so, providing strong arguments for those who favoured democracy against those who opposed it. Such work—grounded in asserted knowledge, not mere belief about our capacities as human beings—can provide compelling justification for democratic politics. Political philosophy also allows us to identify what is most lacking in democratic polities. Such work relates to that of the regime theorist and the analytical theorist, but it rests in the confidence that democratic features are not just one of a stipulated list, but instead are inherent to our humanity. If it is determined that a democracy (or indeed any regime)

54

the study of politics

is not conducive to human flourishing, that it fails to align with the best insights as to how one ought to live, political philosophy provides strong arguments for disengagement, resistance, or reform. In international affairs, political philosophy can justify the intervention of some polities in the conduct of others by applying principles of political right such as those that ground human rights or democratic values. Political philosophy can also provide compelling arguments for non-intervention, arguing that such interventions run against the autonomy and collective self-government inherent to our humanity. It also provides theories of just war, where justice is not simply a matter of signed covenants or prior political practice. Indeed, some constructionists and international humanists hold that international intervention, or non-intervention, requires exactly the sort of intellectual confidence that political philosophy is said to provide. Without it, all international conduct is merely the right of the stronger or the advancement of our narrowly defined interests. Beyond this is the work that political philosophers do in re-addressing the perennial questions of political principle, relating these to the contemporary presentation of issues of the day—in questions of politics and law, in political, governmental, and media ethics, in institutional and constitutional reform, and in public education. While a nation of philosophers may not be any more ideal than a nation of lawyers, the intellectual life of a nation is in part carried and represented by the work done by those who possess political-philosophical skills and interest. Contemporary political philosophy is a rich discursive interrogation of political value that weaves back and forth across the history of political and philosophical thought, bringing insight to bear upon understanding and evaluating the significance of contemporary political conduct.

Conclusion In addressing issues in political argument, political philosophers closely resemble regime theorists, and they employ many of the devices of the analytical approach. Their orientation to political life is, however, more ambitious. They hold, as we have seen, that genuine knowledge about the

three traditional approaches

55

ends of human life and principles of political right is possible. Sorting out the principles of humanity that underlie the best constitutions, institutions, and political practices is arguably necessary for the thoughtful study of politics and for the development of public policy, institutions, and civil society. It is for this reason that room is made in most political studies departments for this sort of work.

Further Reading Regime theory is introduced in Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Politics, even though both go well beyond merely characterizing regimes. A version of regime theory is found in Max Weber, in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New York: Scribner, 1958). A more recent example of regime theory is found in Benjamin Barber’s popular Jihad vs. McWorld: Terrorism’s Challenge to Democracy (New York: Times Books, 1995). A regemic pattern is also part of the analysis of John Ralston Saul, a popular Canadian intellectual, who defines corporatism as a managerial-consumerist ethos, in The Unconscious Civilization (West Concord, ON: Anansi, 2006). A similar sort of regemic differentiation in the study of the mass media is found in Neil Postman’s work, especially in Amusing Ourselves to Death (New York: Penguin, 1986). A further example of regemic analysis is found in C.B. Macpherson’s work, for instance in his The Life and Times of Liberal Democracy (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1978). Most work in political studies is partly analytical, as it develops concepts and relates concepts to theory. Examples of the power of analysis as a core approach can be found in Max Weber’s theory of ideal types. See Rolf E. Roger’s Max Weber’s Ideal Type Theory (New York: Philosophic Library, 1969). Work that offers explanations by drawing effective analytical distinctions may be found in Maurice Duverger’s Party Politics and Pressure Groups (New York: Crowell, 1972), in Paul Pross’s Group Politics and Public Policy (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1986), and in Leslie Pal’s Public Policy Analysis: An Introduction (Scarborough, ON : Nelson, 1992). It can also be found in much of the work in contemporary democratic theory. While James Bohman and William Regh’s (eds.), Deliberative Democracy: Essays on Reason and Politics (Cambridge, MA :

56

the study of politics

MIT Press, 1977) is not exclusively analytical in its intellectual orienta-

tion, it displays something of the force of analytical work as it justifies and criticizes conceptions of democratic deliberative and liberal politics. It reveals features and qualities of liberal democracy that have arguably been neglected in political studies. Legal reasoning in an analytical approach is introduced by Edward Levi in An Introduction to Legal Reasoning (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962). See also Legal Reasoning and Legal Theory by Neil MacCormick (New York: Clarendon Series, Oxford University Press, 1994). A reliable introduction to political philosophy is found in David Miller’s Political Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). One would do well seeing the impact of political philosophy via the work of John Rawls, one of the leading political philosophers of the twentieth century. See Rawls’s A Theory of Justice: Revised Edition (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1999). Rawls advances a compelling account of autonomy, reciprocity, and fairness as conditions of economic justice in Kantian liberal theory. Rawls’s work on justice has had considerable impact upon legal and public policy communities, generating a remarkable secondary literature that probes some of the essential features of our humanity as bases for understanding the significance of public policy. Anglo-American conservative political philosophers such as Alasdair MacIntyre have provided compelling arguments to justify a return to standards of personal integrity thought lost in modernity, in doing so identifying some of the processes at work in what is seen as the malaise of contemporary life. See After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, Third Edition (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press. 2007). Martha Nussbaum, employing a close and critical reading of the works of antiquity, has generated a wide following in American intellectual life. Her work has recently been extended to address thinking in internationalism and development, and is being applied to issues in jurisprudence. For the political philosophy through which her interpretations of contemporary politics and government are rendered, see The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). In Europe, the work of Jürgen Habermas has advanced a conception of human discursive life that has altered the way in which democratic politics are understood and evaluated.

Chapter Three

the science of political studies

This chapter surveys core approaches to political studies that emulate the natural sciences. Advocates seek to discover law-like explanations of political conduct by adopting some of the empiricist commitment introduced in Chapter One.27 Because the regularity in human conduct that they seek to discover is not bound by cultural, geographic, or historical specificity, by contingency, or by human subjectivity and free will, these approaches are thought to make a genuine comparative political studies possible. They promise, moreover, to garner the sort of respect that governments and others pay to predicative disciplines. The approaches canvassed here are distinguished from each other and from other approaches in this text by the sort of causality they suppose in political conduct, by the assumptions they make about the source(s) of such causality, and by their ontological assumptions about the nature of society. Epistemologically they are reliant upon experimentation and re-confirmation with the sort of rigour and objectivity associated with the scientific method. In this they adopt a correspondence theory of truth, i.e., that sentences are true or false by virtue of their correspondence to empirical features of the world. Theory in such approaches is constructed from, and its development governed by, observation, established by induction and deduction from empirical findings. Those who employ such theories generally favour the case-study approach to the discipline as a means of testing hypotheses and developing theory. 27 Not all of these core approaches are positivist; some seek to identify relationships that are implicit and thus not easily rendered falsifiable.

57

58

the study of politics

Institutionalism Statement of Approach

Institutionalism and group theory were competitors in British and American universities at the turn of the twentieth century. Institutionalism was central to mainstream British political studies, and group theory was the first contribution of American political studies. Both core approaches are found today in a hybrid form: institutionalism with rational choice theory (as neo-institutionalism), and group theory with power analysis (as political pluralism). But they are treated here in more isolated form. Institutionalism was developed as much by historical practice as by theoretical speculation. It sees constitutions and law as the main substance of politics and government and as the proper object of political analysis. Institutionalists generally contend that political studies should focus upon government (rather than society), where government is understood to be essentially constituted by a set of rules, and rules governed by overarching constitutions, written and unwritten. The core of institutionalism, not surprisingly, is the attention it pays to rules, rules governing rules, constitutions, principles governing constitutions, and persistent patterns in all of these over time. Rules in this context include specific requirements and prohibitions, with or without attendant sanctions, as well as governmental norms. Together, once cemented as expectations for conduct, they are thought to possess path-dependence. That is, they set a pattern of conduct that itself is causal of subsequent conduct. Institutionalism holds that history matters, that how rules are arranged in one historical period shapes how they persist into subsequent periods, and that the rules governing institutions and organizations have a causal force both at the time of their generation and over time. Theoretical Assumptions

The core agency assumption in institutionalism is that human beings are inherently rule governed. We construct rules to manage and coordinate our relationships and we follow rules, as these are broadly defined

the science of political studies

59

above, by natural orientation.28 By identifying and assessing differences between the rules of different polities, or simply by tracking the relative stability and development of rules within a polity (or other organizational settings), institutionalism allows a degree of predictability. This predictability stems from a presumption of historical continuity in legal and political practices that are informed by explicit and implicit rules of conduct. Understanding the rules of a polity is like understanding the rules of a game: both allow one to predict what will happen, or at least to predict what is likely not to happen. Ontologically, institutionalism assumes that rule-related conduct is fundamental to our lives, that the rules that govern our conduct are formal and informal, explicit and implicit. Rules include the norms that constitute practices, such as those that govern promise keeping. Institutionalists in political studies maintain that politics is defined predominantly as the relationship between government and citizens, where this relationship is constituted by law. However, the strength of institutionalism in political studies relies upon the notion that rules are the source of conduct beyond our relationship to government. If it is to have explanatory force, it needs to assert that all human conduct is rule governed. Accordingly, other human practices, such as civic associations, family life, and friendships are all understood to be defined and governed by rules and norm-defined practices, where norms are reducible to the language of rules. The epistemology of institutionalism holds that we can understand people’s conduct by recognizing those norms and rules that govern their behaviour, and that normally such rules are easily discerned. While not always simple, discerning the rules orchestrating human conduct is not as challenging as are the processes of some competing core approaches. Identifying implicit rules can be difficult, but we can read implicit rules and norms from the regularity of behaviour, not unlike the sort of attention we pay to implicit rules in observing games. Consider what typically happens when we encounter a game of pick-up basketball, where new players recognize and align their conduct to a particular iteration of 28 Even in disobeying we are orienting ourselves to competing conceptions of rules; we define our disobedience in terms of rules.

60

the study of politics

the rules of the game. The rules of such games may be variously reconstructed without altering the core game being played, and part of what the new player sorts out are the particular reconstructions of the rules and norms in force in this specific instance. While it is possible for individuals to disobey or disregard rules, it is much more common to find rule continuity in such cases, even where there is quiet disagreement about how the game might be better conducted. Institutionalists emphasize the stability of rules, even when there appear to be advantages or forces in play to incite disobedience, nonobservance, or non-compliance. Instances of actual disobedience and non-compliance can be explained in significant measure by reference to competing rule-defined practices. Disobedience or non-compliance (to law or to social norms) is occasionally justified, that is, by asserting that the rule being disobeyed is not in keeping with the constitution or principles that govern the polity more deeply—that in disobeying one law, we are in fact obeying another, higher order that we hold to be more important. By not observing the laws of our nation, we may be obeying the rules of our sub-community, or international rules, such as those cases in which the defence of human rights is thought to justify disobedience. Even if not all non-observance and disobedience can be explained in these ways, this does not defeat institutionalism’s account of what political agents are doing when they act. As long as we can assume that political agents generally observe rules, this may be enough to give our institutional studies the explanatory and predictive force we wish. Criticism

One criticism of institutionalism is that it does not provide an adequate account of political change. Constitutions, laws, and conventions undeniably change over time, even in the most stable polities. And sometimes they change abruptly and profoundly. As institutionalism holds that we are governed by a natural proclivity to observe rules, one might then ask what explains changes in law, in norms, and in constitutional development. Institutionalists allow that change can come from conditions outside the polity, especially where different systems of rules between polities exist, but it is difficult to see how it emanates from within society

the science of political studies

61

without adopting a competing agency assumption, for instance that economic interests or economic power also governs our conduct. Institutionalism can treat competing causal forces as much rarer and less persistent in effect than the tendency to obey rules, or they can simply stipulate against such counter-forces, narrowing the scope of rule-based conduct. This response has the appeal of limiting the scope of political studies. However, some forms of change can be accommodated as some change emanates from conflicts within and between the rules governing a practice or from the interaction between practices. A powerful example of this sort of defence is the way in which electoral systems shape the norms of party competition and the rules and norms of legislative behaviour. A further example is found in judicial review, where constitutional competition between conflicting rights or legislative mandates come to be interpreted in a particular way by rule-governed authorities. Such rule alteration may be driven by constitutional requirements, by foundational principles, from precedence in legal reasoning or simply from the need to find an accommodation between competing rules. Finding a matrix or taxonomy of competing rights, a requirement of an adequate rights conception, often entails changes to rules, just as decisions that determine what a constitution actually entails with respect to apparent conflicts alter law and eventually the practice of citizenship. This sort of change in constitutionally defined polities, especially those with rights or principles in play, goes some way to explain how it is that the rules come to be changed and how our conduct is altered accordingly. Inherent conflicts within a system of explicit and implicit rules may explain enough of the examples of change to account for rule development. And it is plain that some rules simply atrophy over time. Moreover, the presence of proximate practices can lead to the adoption of new rules; one might find, for instance, that the rules of a proximate constitutional polity are taken up by political agents simply because they appear to be better than their own. The adoption or integration of such rules still can be explained by our rule-orientation as human beings. A related criticism is that institutionalism tends to take too narrow a focus in political studies, orienting the discipline too much upon government and especially law and legislative processes, closing off other sources and locations of political life. Institutionalism may be said to

62

the study of politics

set aside too much of what politics is, adopting by its relative narrowness an inherently conservative scope of attention. Still, when defined as broadly as above, institutionalism allows certain rule-defined applications in civil society, in the economy, and even in political culture. Or one might choose to treat the narrow focus of institutionalism as a virtue rather than a fault. Defining the political too broadly, it might be said, draws attention away from rules and rule-governed behaviour to a host of other sources, extending the discipline beyond its capacity to achieve a thorough body of knowledge. Adopting too wide a scope for the discipline is over-reaching, one might say, perhaps as an explanation for the current contested nature of the discipline. Moreover, the facts that rule-defined practice seems relatively persistent over time, that institutional change is modest, and that rules are empirically identifiable provide a strong degree of predictability for political studies. It may not be unreasonable, accordingly, to narrow the scope of political studies to consider only what we might confidently say about how rules govern organizations and associations. A third line of criticism of institutionalism might be found in the simple fact that rule-governed practices typically rely upon sanctions. If law requires sanctions to cause citizens to obey, this may seriously undermine the claim that we have a natural proclivity to obey rules as a feature of our humanity. One way around this kind of challenge might be to distinguish two sorts of citizens: those who are well governed by the rules of the practice in which they find themselves (in stable polities this is the majority), and those who are non-observers or who disobey. Sanctions are reserved, one might say, for disobeyers, who quickly become a minority once rule-defined practices are secured. For the majority, sanctions simply reinforce the proclivity that most of us have by nature; they simply remind us of the rules, just as a referee or fellow player might remind one of a rule when in the heat of play in a game of pick-up basketball. Or one might say that the willingness of some to support sanctions upon those who are disobedient itself stems from our rule-orientation, that sanctions are a way in which those of us who are rule governed extend the majesty of the law. Furthermore, it might be asserted that sanctions are really required only when there are two systems of rules in play. Sanctions are the means that establish one

the science of political studies

63

rule-defined practice, one game or sort of game rather than another, a phenomenon most commonly found during times of legal or constitutional crisis. Finally, one might point to the fact that rules commonly persist in inducing rule-defined conduct, even when power is exercised. Sometimes we do what the rules require even when power is employed to cause us not to obey. Still, if sanctions are required in any significant way, then the working force in political conduct is power, not the natural proclivity to observe the rules that align our conduct with that of others. Traditional institutionalism must resist this reduction to power if it is to maintain its intellectual integrity. The institutional approach remains vulnerable to criticism even if it remains true that human beings generally obey rules. The account seems to cry out for an underlying account of such agency. Accordingly, perhaps more than competing theories, institutionalism appears to invite hybrid forms, grafting some other account of agency to rule-orientation. Neo-institutionalism offers such an account, tying institutionalism to the agency assumption of rational choice theory, a core approach discussed later in this chapter. Neo-institutionalism appears to address a number of the difficulties that have been noted above by rebuilding the core of institutionalism on the folk psychology of rational choice theory. It supplements the ontological claim that we are essentially orientated to rules with the claim that we are individual actors who pursue our interests. Our rule-governance is treated accordingly as an efficient means to satisfy our individual wants and desires. This move to a hybrid version, however, appears to steal much of the force of the primary concern of instuitionalism. Rational choice theory replaces the asserted natural inclination we have to obey rules with the assumption that all human conduct is governed by our capacity to fulfill our desires effectively and that following rules is but one important means of doing so. Rational choice theory provides neo-institutionalism with an account of why we are rule governed. It provides an account of disobedience, where non-compliance is determined to harm one’s rationally assessed interests; and it provides an account of political change, where rules are rewritten in order to satisfy the subjective interests of affected citizens. However, there are occasions when the asserted proclivity to obey rules appears at odds with the rationality of realizing one’s individual

64

the study of politics

preferences. Resolving such agency tensions on the side of rational choice theory appears simply as capitulation for serious-minded institutionalism; resolving them on the side of institutionalism, to the effect that rules can limit the pursuit of our self-interest, is to undermine the coherence of rational choice theory. Moving to neo-institutionalism is perhaps to surrender too much, undermining the initial insight that human beings have a natural orientation to coordinate their lives together. Other than challenging institutionalism’s core contention, that human beings have the capacity and proclivity to be governed by rules rather than by other motivational sources, the most effective criticism of the approach remains that it is too narrow, that it doesn’t adequately recognize the impact of society upon government, that it is inattentive especially to the force of power and the political resources that enable it. The main tenet of institutionalism remains cogent, however: there is plenty of evidence that political conduct is coordinated by a complex system of rule-defined practices. Institutionalism is intellectually modest and empirical, and it allows a degree of predictability. Whether this is enough for grounding a science of politics remains an open debate. Applications

Regardless of the debate at the level of agency and ontology, it remains true that what we can accomplish, as public servants, elected officials, parties or groups, or as individual citizens, is circumscribed by the often complex and intricate sets of rules that govern our conduct. Knowing what these rules are and how they differ in different polities remains a compelling basis for comparative studies, for predicting why some things happen in one nation or another (or in international relations, where rules have an arguably emergent role in the development of the international order). We know that when rendering judicial interpretations within the nation-state, supreme courts are effectively constrained against advancing their own conceptions of the good, both by legal precedent and by constitutional documents often written centuries before. We know a fair bit about the comparative abilities of representatives in the American and Canadian legislative branches of government to advance proposals for new legislation, as such success is governed by the explicit rules and norms of legislative process. We know how divisions of

the science of political studies

65

legislative power effectively shape the development of sub-states. Indeed, one of the more compelling laws of political life is the claim that political parties within Westminster-styled parliamentary systems are effectively governed by norms that determine the roles of government and opposition, that parties are shaped by the institutional features of legislatures rather than by innovation, power, or the pursuit of interests. The American committee structure, the double majority, and the number of votes required to override presidential vetoes are arguably the sources of the less partisan brokerage politics present in legislative practice, at least as these are compared to more adversarial legislative practices such as those found in Canada. Indeed, it is easily argued that the particular strengths and weaknesses of legislative systems are grounded in the initial sets of constitutional rules that were employed to found them, and that these have proven to have considerable resilience to the presence of power, changes in political culture, efficiency in the pursuit of rational ends, class struggle, and the like. Some of the more telling sorts of institutional studies have attended to the way in which the Equal Rights Amendment was frustrated by American constitutional amending formulae, while the similar development of liberal gender rights in Canada was achieved comparatively easily. The development of Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Amendments to the American Constitution serve as examples of the ways in which institutional features of governments align our lives.

Group Theory Statement of Approach

Group theory provides a sociology of politics that asserts that it is not rules that govern our conduct but rather our underlying natural sociality, operating both within and between groups. It extends political analysis well beyond the focus on government and the rule-defined conduct of institutionalism, arguing that politics and government are shaped by more fundamental features of human association. It adopts methodological pluralism (that society is foundationally composed of groups) and often endorses ethical pluralism, a normative theory that holds that

66

the study of politics

our lives are best realized in autonomous heterogeneous communities, by diverse human association. Group theory attends to the dynamics of pressure groups, political parties, and a wide assortment of other groups in society. It favours a socio-centric rather than a state-centric model of politics and government—one of the ways that it is most directly at odds with institutionalism. The causal force behind our political conduct, in group theory, is found in the organizational dynamics to which we are oriented by the sociopolitical nature of our humanity. These qualities and features of our social natures go well beyond rules, though some rulegoverned conduct is not inconsistent with the approach. If we understand the patterns of relations in and between groups, what groups seek and how they organize, we will, according to group theory, be getting close to the sources of politics and public policy. Accordingly, as students of politics, we should pay attention to groups in civil society well before we attend to the operation of governments that respond to them.29 Group theory contends that certain features are found in virtually all groups and that these shape both the conduct of persons acting within them and interaction with other groups. It asserts that there are also differences and similarities in how people relate to one another within different groups and how they seek to realize their common goals. The theory asserts that identifying common and differentiating associative features allows us to explain and predict outcomes for groups and for their role in achieving the public policy they favour. Groups are formed by and act from shared characteristics, values, and interests. However, groups are not simply reducible to the individual interests of their members. While group theory may admit that groups enable the satisfaction of individual interests, it is the prior natural proclivity to sociability that governs our most basic attachment to community with others. Indeed, in group theory it is at least partly one’s associative life that is the basis for determining one’s interests. Something akin to the idea of group dynamics is central to group theory. For instance, it is common for group theorists to proceed with law-like confidence from the assumption that all groups engender 29 Group theory allows that the state itself consists of (sometimes competing) groups.

the science of political studies

67

patterns of leadership. While processes of leadership selection and practices of leadership might vary, and while leadership is variously displayed, it is held to be a feature discernible in virtually all groups. Finding patterns of group coordination, cooperation, and contestation allows us both to understand what groups are doing and to predict what we might expect from them. Governments mediate the features, values, and goals of the groups that effectively engage them. Theoretical Assumptions

The central agency assumption of group theory is that our conduct is governed by the ways in which we are engaged in associative life. We act to articulate, enhance, and defend the integrity of those groups in which our identity as individual people is established. All groups in which we have shared values and interests are sources of our political conduct, from the family to international associations. To a greater extent than institutionalism, group theory adopts communitarian ontology: it assumes that our associative life has features not reducible to the individual features of its members. One might say that groups have a reality of their own, and that accordingly the proper object of analysis is the group, not just those individuals who are its members. Evidence supporting the ontological fundamentality of group association to individuals and their interests may be found in the fact that individuals often adhere to the life of groups after such groups have failed to achieve their interests or when group life is harming their sense of individuality. In group theory some of our interests are construed as the products, not the causes, of our associative life. Consider the shared commitments of some religious groups, where individual interests are at most latent and where the pursuit of such interests is construed by members to be at odds with the core integrity of religious association. Or consider the solidarity of some labour unions, where a commitment to the success of the association can mean sacrificing something of one’s individual interests. In both, while individual interest and preferences are conceivable, some group conduct can only be explained as governed by the priority of group interests and solidarity. Epistemologically, the diverse features of groups are found largely by close observation and comparison. Part of the predictive force of group theory stems from finding commonalities and difference in the processes

68

the study of politics

of group interaction, especially as groups seek to achieve their socially defined goals in public policy, even if not all of the goals of groups are public in this way. An example of predictive propositions in group theory, suggested above, is that groups produce leadership, which nurtures, advances, and protects the standing of the group in society. On the basis of finding such tendencies across groups we are able to assess the likelihood that groups will persist over time—dependent, for instance, on their success in providing stable leadership that sufficiently serves the common, group-defined interests. As leadership is both common and diverse across groups (within nations, between nations, and in international organizations), such commonalities and differences provide for comparative studies that eventually lead to generalizations and distinctions with predictive force. Pluralist group theory in comparative politics distinguishes societies by the diversity of groups, by the particular patterns of group conduct, by their access to public policy decisions, and by interaction and crossmembership of members and elites. Group theory studies the variety, intensity, and path dependence of group activity as these alter the shape and direction of policy over time. In pluralist readings of group theory, groups compete for access to government and for the attention and support of citizens. The extent of this plurality and the level of equality in access to the state are primary indicators of the success of the democratic polity. Assessing both the relative access of groups to the decision-making core of government and the internal democracy of groups is important in justifying an American-styled polity. Although group theory can be traced back to the work of Otto von Gierke (1841–1921), the analyst most credited with the development of group theory was an early American political scientist, Arthur F. Bentley. Bentley, who received a doctorate from Johns Hopkins in 1895, wrote widely over a long academic career on issues of both epistemology, where he defended a form of philosophical pragmatism oriented to empirical observation, and political studies. In his influential The Process of Government (Piscataway, NJ : Transaction Publishers, 1908/1995), he views the interaction within and between groups as the foundation of American political life. Bentley’s orientation to the centrality of shared interests in the life of groups was also influential in the development of

the science of political studies

69

political pluralism, an empirical account of democratic politics in complex society. Political pluralism leaves group theory an account seemingly friendly to rational choice theory, just as institutionalism does. However, while common interests are identified as central to group life in group theory, the features of associations do not reduce—or at least not completely—to the independently determined individual interests of their members. Criticism

Advocates of methodological individualism counter group theory with the assertion that a desire for association is just one of the many features individuals have, that all the features and interests of groups can be reduced to what individuals bring to them. A group, as the adage goes, is merely the sum of its individual members. This debate between an organic communitarian reading of our humanity and an individualist one has been ongoing since antiquity. Attending to whether or not our individual features or interests are prior to our associative life, or whether associative life, at least in part, generates our interests allows one to begin to position oneself within this debate. For advocates of group theory, there is sufficient evidence that individual members work within groups at the cost of their individual interests in order to defend the fundamentality of association. The simplest examples of our group identity trumping our individual one are those where members personally sacrifice to perpetuate and defend groups in which they are invested. And, it should be said, the existence of the family as an early context for selfidentification seems to support group theory’s associative assumptions. A similar line of criticism holds that group behaviour is really just an example of power. From such a perspective, power theory (see below) explains relations between individuals within groups at least as well as the assertion that we are inherently group-oriented. The theoretical proximity of group theory to pluralist democracy reveals a common attention to the role of political power in both. Power theory might explain our desire to form and perpetuate groups as the most effective way of gathering political power. However, the fact that some groups appear not to be interested in exercising power upon others, and the fact that some groups persist even when they have been unsuccessful in exercising

70

the study of politics

their common political resources, would seem to militate against conflating power theory and group theory, even if a bit of both is found in the empirical sub-approach of political pluralism. Despite the contestation between them that occurred in the early part of the twentieth century, group theory and institutionalism are both communitarian in ontology. However, while group theory acknowledges that the rule-governed conduct of institutionalism is commonly found in and across diverse groups, it maintains that rules are simply one of the many coordinating features of a group’s integrity, one of a variety of tools available for groups to enable their common conduct over time. It is the desire to find cohesion and effective interaction within groups that rules enable and preserve, and such rules can easily be changed when they fail to perform the coordinating role of the groups that they serve. Groups are logically and ontologically prior to the rules they enact to govern themselves, and rules are orchestrated by the needs and other features of associative life. Group theory’s strongest line of defence against criticism remains the claim that we are inherently social beings, that our sociality and associative lives are fundamental to our individuality. And, it should be added, the normative implication of group theory is that societies need well-nourished associative groups to flourish. For pluralists, this goal is best met in the diversity of rich associative life of liberal democracies such as the United States. Applications

While leadership has been one of the common features of group theory’s attention, there are a variety of other commonalities and differences found in group conduct. This includes the historical origins of groups, how they identify what is common to their group, how groups change and alter the initial sense of shared interest of members over time and across context, how long association continues (and what features of the group support the group’s relative longevity), how differences between groups are mediated, the degree to which a group requires loyalty (and alternatively the degree to which multiplicity of values in group membership is tolerated), the ways in which new members of a group are socialized (i.e., come to share the same conception of the group as do members of longer standing), the degree to which democratic processes

the science of political studies

71

affect group decision making, how groups engage the population generally in enhancing membership, how they engage other groups, and the degree to which a group provides a variety of occasions for the satisfaction of personal associative needs. Such assessments as these allow us, simply by tracking commonalities and differences across cases and over time, to predict the stability of a group, the way it will be attached to particular goals, and its likelihood of success in affecting public policy. Such concerns are often the substance of studies of pressure groups, political movements, and political parties. Other applications of group theory typically involve the close study of actual groups within civil society, attending to the common and differentiating qualities and configurations of groups within a polity over time. While pressure-group studies are the mainstay of group theory, group research strategies address political parties and movements, as well as sub-groups within the state. Research focuses on the particular associative features of such groups, on leadership and other patterns of interpersonal relationships within them (especially those involving decision making), on the financial basis for group activities, on the presence and development of group culture, and on the ideological coherence and reinforcement as well as the identity that groups provide for their members. Such studies track how groups are configured within policy processes, attending especially to elites within and between groups in public policy communities. They also attend to which features of groups relate to their comparative longevity. Continuing work in case studies of this sort adds to our understanding of civil society and accordingly allows us to relate civil society both to public policy and to the state. The comparative case-study approach of group theory arguably reveals something of the inner coherence of human association, allowing us to generalize with respect to groups over time. The commonalities and differences between groups provide for a degree of predictability in politics and government, allowing us to account for how some persist, some atrophy, and some re-form. It explains and predicts how politics gets played out in the way it does in a particular configuration of social groups. It accounts for government or the state as shaped in and by groups, as some groups act upon and others act from within the state. That is, comparing and contrasting groups to

72

the study of politics

one another is a basis for comparative politics. Group theory also allows one to treat the international landscape, attending to non-governmental associations such as Amnesty International and to governmental organizations such as the United Nations.

Power Theory Statement of Approach

In this section we turn to a core approach that grounds political explanation and prediction in knowledge of the impact of the possession or exercise of power, extending the discussion of power found in Chapter One. The basic claims of power theory are straightforward: that a great deal of human conduct is governed by relations of power, and that power is the appropriate explanatory object of the study of politics. Power theorists hold that power may be a means to our individual ends, including the goal of defending our autonomy, or that it may be exercised or possessed in ways that frustrate the realization of such ends. In power theory, the use of power is not assumed to be effective or rational; indeed, instances of the irrational use of power are arguably among the most important sorts of power to study. Nor does power theory need an account of the ends to which it is employed (or which it frustrates) for it to be explanatory. It is relatively unimportant to know why people pursue, possess, exercise, or suffer power; it is enough simply to know that they do. Accordingly, the fact that there are discernible regularities in the means and effects of power is thought sufficient for a science of politics. Power theory, when understood as addressing only force and the threat of sanctions, adopts a relatively modest agency assumption, namely, that human beings are affected by the exercised resources of others. Power claims, in this narrow view of power, are falsifiable, as it is possible to show that without the exercise of resources people act differently. Power theory of this narrow sort is thus largely observational: we need only track the exercise of force and the threat of sanctions as these are present in political conduct, seeking to establish some general conclusions about what sorts of political resources are effective in what

the science of political studies

73

sorts of contexts over time, and in comparative contexts. Where such effects take on regularity and a degree of measurability, it may be possible to assert law-like sentences that rival those in the sciences. In the narrow view, power isn’t ubiquitous, even though it is more prevalent in human affairs than one might initially suppose. Government may be construed as a location of the authoritative use of power. Political studies, accordingly, is the study of how human beings use force and the threat of sanctions to alter others’ conduct, and what if anything makes such use of power justified. Whether an account of power construed this narrowly is adequate as an approach to the study of politics remains a central issue in the power approach. There are forms of political power, for example, that are not simply the employment of force or threats. Stephen Lukes, in Power: A Radical Analysis (2nd ed.; Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), surveys these as he champions a much wider account of power as a core approach to political studies. Lukes effectively articulates the limits of the narrow view, drawing on the work of other power theorists. However, attempting to broaden the scope of power analysis, while maintaining its claim to being empirical, has proven to be challenging. To put the point simply, to say that A has power over B , in the absence of force or threats, requires that we know what B would have done otherwise, without the political resources apparently possessed by A . We need, that is, to make a controlling agency assumption to identify implicit power relations at work in our conduct. Finding such an agency assumption has remained the major obstacle to power theory. Even the narrow view of power is faced with something of this sort of difficulty, as in instances of threats of sanction, where we need to explain why different degrees of sanction are required to alter the conduct of different people. Theoretical Assumptions

The account of power theory offered in this chapter assumes the broader definition of power indicated above. It allows that power relations may not be discernible directly through observation and may involve political resources beyond those associated with force and threats of sanction. It adopts the definition of power offered in Chapter One, where “A has power over B if and only if B acts or refrains from acting in a way that he

74

the study of politics

or she otherwise would not have, by virtue of some action or characteristic of A .” This definition allows a much wider scope of power-related conduct, meeting more effectively the common use of the word and the experience most of us report as instances of power. Such broader power theory, as noted above, requires the positing of counter-factuals or conditionals. Before I can say that it was A ’s features or conduct that caused B to act as she or he would not have otherwise, I have to know or stipulate some plausible assumption of what B would have done otherwise. Typically, this means that I have to make an assumption of the inner motivational workings of the agency of B . To provide this conditional assumption, one might adopt an agency assumption from a competing core approach. For instance, we might assume that people always act on their rational desires, and where we know something of what B ’s preferences and record of prior conduct have been, we know when power changes their anticipated conduct. Or one might assert that it was the relative lack of inner psychological resources in B that enabled the power of A to alter B ’s conduct. Power theory of this broader view still holds that power is causal, that it explains and predicts when reasonably assumed agency chains are interrupted or undermined. But it adopts more complex agency and ontology assumptions, and a more demanding epistemology then arguably required of the narrow view. Power, in the wider account, is thus indentified conditionally upon some agency account or stipulated assumption of what B would have done otherwise, and it may require us to interpret or stipulate what particular qualities of our agency are engaged by the presence of power, that, as above, it was the inner psychological conditions of B that enabled A ’s features or conduct to alter B ’s conduct. Lukes has attempted to identify two conditions of our agency against which power can be discerned. In the first edition of Power: A Radical View, he argues that in the absence of power we can be assumed to act on our objective interests. Where we do not act on these interests, we can assume that power is present, and part of an explanation of our conduct is discerning the particular form of power and which resources of the powerful or the powerless are at work. In the second edition of his book, he substitutes freedom as the condition whose absence indicates the presence of power. The first strategy transfers some of the epistemological challenge of discerning

the science of political studies

75

power to the task of determining what our objective interests are. The second, although more in keeping with what we mean when we say we are suffering from others’ power, supplants the problem of our objective interests with the difficult problem of finding a definition of freedom, one that isn’t just the absence of power. Political resources in the broader view are more plentiful and diverse than those of the narrow view, where they are just the more brutish means of exercising force and effective threats of sanction. Power resources in the broader view include those that enable misrepresentation and manipulation of choice, knowledge of the psychological makeup of others, and even the possession of charisma. The wider account, accordingly, assumes power relationships to be more extensive in human affairs than does the narrower view. In both, however, some instances of power are thought to be more consequential than others and are given greater significance in social, political, and cultural contexts. And, it needs to be said, some exercise or possession of power in both the narrow and wider versions is justifiable (for instance, the sort of power that lessens the likelihood of cruelty). In agency terms, then, power theorists hold that political conduct is the product of complex resources acting upon and through us, altering what we would have done otherwise. The ontology of the power approach holds that human relations are in significant measure power-rich and that politics is a central feature of our social relations. It assumes that power is relational, i.e., that it happens between people. It assumes that power involves features of both the powerful and powerless. Epistemologically, discerning power requires positing motivational assumptions to account for what people would have done otherwise—an account of human motivation in the absence of power. Discerning the presence of power in the broader account requires us to attend to the features of the powerless as well as simply to the resources of the powerful. And it requires identifying relational qualities not directly observable to the senses, as power operates implicitly in relationships between people. A science of politics grounded in the study of power requires us to identify the scope and ubiquity of power, determining when it is at work and when not, providing a catalogue of political resources, providing generalizations across comparative cases that would be useful to

76

the study of politics

those who favour and those who would oppose the presence of power in human relations. Criticism

As with other core approaches, power theory may be criticized from the perspective of competing core approaches, especially those that are close to it in appearance. But one need not revert to this strategy to see the weakness of power theory, despite its appeal. The wider power approach, as has been suggested, comes at the price of a much more complex ontology and epistemology than the narrower version. However, the narrow version seems to miss a lot of what we take to be important to power, namely, that it is often at work even when there are no empirically verifiable indicators of force, threat, or bribes. Indeed, as is argued compellingly by Bob Goodin, in Manipulatory Politics (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1980), the worst sort of power is of the subtle sort, present even when those affected by it are unaware of its force in their lives. Power theory requires that in assessing the presence and degree of power we know something certain about people’s motivations. Such motivations, interior to the person, are not as open to empirical measurement as are the presence of explicit political resources. The need for a conditional or counter-factual (as an assumption about what a person would have done otherwise) or the assumption of other agency assumptions opens a clear line of criticism. If we merely stipulate a counter-factual, our conclusions about power studies are inherently speculative. Stipulations of this sort prove that power could be at work, but they don’t always prove that it is. There are discernible regularities in the relationships between political agents for which the presence of power seems to provide the most compelling account. While perhaps not the basis of iron-clad laws, power analyses can be predictive of political conduct, just as power is undeniably at work in our day-to-day relations with others. If political studies is the study of power, then closing the book on power theory seems wrong-headed. Power analysis must involve more than simply counting resources for applying sanctions, if we are to capture the many instances where we experience power. Still, with complexities noted, power theory seems to reflect our common sense that identifying the political resources employed in a particular polity remains central to

the science of political studies

77

understanding how things get done. Perhaps the best strategy remains the one offered by Lukes: to stipulate conditions, such as objective interests or freedom, as the working assumption of what we would have done otherwise, were it not for the power relationships in which we found ourselves. But as Lukes is clearly aware, such stipulations beg the question of whether we have objective interests upon which we would otherwise act. And they leave unsecured what it means to be free. Applications

Applications of power theory are not difficult to generate. One begins by identifying the particular event one wishes to explain. One then stipulates what would have been likely conduct in the absence of power, providing some independent, prima facie evidence or plausible argument for the stipulation. One might, that is, simply stipulate what it would be reasonable to assume that the B in the relational event would have been otherwise likely to do. When B is found not to act in the way presumed, one has generated a hypothesis that power is at work. Such analysis then moves to find the political resources at work in the outcome. Power hypotheses might partly be advanced by identifying features or other conduct associated with the event that might serve to explain it as a case of power. Suppose one finds that a town council regularly takes the direction suggested by the consensus of discussions at prior public meetings. Research might begin with predicting in a future case that they would do the same. Where council acts otherwise, one would need to identify much more closely the features of the relationships in which councillors are found, the sorts of inner resources they have to draw upon in making a decision, as well as the presence of others with political resources at their disposal as they relate to council. That is, one would first identify that power was at work, and then provide a close descriptive survey of the terrain of the decision that it caused. Adopting a case-study approach might, over time, find generalizable patterns in the sorts of features discerned. Indeed, studies of this sort are common in political analysis, especially in the literature on community political power.30 30 Such work by highly regarded political analysts Robert Dahl, Peter Bacharach, and Morton Baratz is summarized in Lukes’s Power, cited above.

78

the study of politics

The greater power of elites and the fact that political resources are not equally shared are thought to be commonplace in most political communities. Most political cultural studies provide a context from which one might offer confident conjectures that citizens would have acted otherwise, were it not for the conduct or other features of the powerful and the condition of the powerless. In addition, studies of the conditions of the underclass or of marginalized communities inherently imply conditions of unequal power thought to effectively explain why public policy is seemingly incapable of meeting their needs, even when a desire to do so is professed. Arguably the most compelling examples of the broader account of power are studies of the mass media that have attended to the ways in which manipulative power is at work in generating or undermining legitimacy. To undertake such studies, one would need to survey resources that are possibly implicit in audience/producer and journalist/corporate management relations. From the most obvious examples of the manipulation of psychological states, to the way an agenda was set by the use of subtly manipulative language, one would need to identify which of a long list of possible means of implicit and explicit relational power could be reasonably assumed to be present in relationships. When one works from such a list of possible ways in which power might be working, and where one can track such assumptions over time and across case studies, greater degrees of confidence in broadly construed power theory might be achieved. The complexity of such work remains daunting, but well-designed media and policy case studies of this sort are both valuable and common. Those who study international politics are well versed in the realist language of power theory. Our ability to predict the conduct of others in this arena is taken confidently as an identification of the exercise of political resources, from guns to dollars. Typically, such studies in international relations have adopted a narrower reading of power, as force and the threat of sanctions. With the broader definition we may find that subtler forms of relational power resources are at work as well, for instance in the language of war, in the manipulation of leaders’ psychological states, or in agenda setting or the framing of international issues by the mass media.

the science of political studies

79

Power theory asserts that implicit features govern our interrelationships as human beings, inducing, constraining, or manipulating our conduct. However, it requires the assertion of a counter-factual or a competing agency assumption for its explanatory force. It remains stuck on the problem of what, in the absence of power, a human subject would have done otherwise. It might well remain promising as a core approach to the study of politics and government, even though it also remains intellectually daunting; indeed, it might well be the complexity of the world that makes power theory so daunting, not the weakness of the approach.

Structural Functionalism Statement of Approach

The development of political studies has often been dependent upon work done in sister disciplines. Group theory owes much to anthropology, rational choice theory to economics. Perhaps the greatest contribution of sociology to the understanding of politics is found in structural functionalism, even though its central idea can be traced back to the political theory of antiquity.31 The core idea of structural functionalism is ontological: society is organic, a whole composed of a set of parts and processes more like those in biology than in Newtonian physics. The easiest metaphor for characterizing structural functionalism is the interdependence of the organs of the human body, where each constitutes part of the processes necessary to continued living. Organs of the body are inherently interdependent. Each performs a distinctive, differentiated role in the stability, vitality, and continuity of the body, but they cannot 31 The sort of interdependent functionalism of this approach may be found in Plato’s Republic, where a “city of needs” (a naturally stable polity) consists of each citizen performing but one function, the one to which he or she is inclined to excel, thereby contributing to the best satisfaction of needs for all. The contemporary authors of structural functionalism also have a debt to the work of Max Weber and Emile Durkheim. Something of the functional interdependence of parts of society can also be found in Marx, though his account of the nature of this interdependence differs sharply from that of structural functionalists. A number of those who have criticized structural functionalism have done so from a Marxian perspective, attending to the inherent conflict to be found within society rather than its cooperative interdependence and stability. See Ralph Darendorf ’s Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society (Stanford, CA : Stanford University Press, 1959) for a critical account of a Marxist conception of conflict.

80

the study of politics

fully perform their necessary functions unless other organs are performing theirs as well. The interdependence of organs provides a basic structure serving the natural processes of the living being. This metaphor represents an organic reading of society, including the polity. In the body politic, when a core function fails, either the body dies or some other compensatory process is developed. Where parts of the body serve no functional value, they atrophy. Inherent to this metaphor is a teleology: that the purpose of the human body is to sustain a human life and to reproduce health. This is best achieved when each part is performing its distinctive yet interdependent role. Similarly, we know that each part is performing well in a body politic when the polity is stable. Structural functionalism connects broader social functions to the processes performed within us as individuals, as our needs are met and as our psychologies develop. Interior processes and motivations are related organically to social processes, both oriented to the good functioning of other processes and the polity in general. The undisputed champion of structural functionalism in the twentieth century was sociologist Talcott Parsons, whose work has had a continuing effect on our thinking regarding social processes. Parsons, who taught at Harvard, published the seminal The Social System (Glencoe, IL : Free Press, 1951). His work is remembered by most sociology students for its “AGIL ” statement of social processes: he identified the four central social processes as adaption to external systems; the definition and orientation of the social system to primary goals; the integration of personality, cultural, and social sub-systems; and latency as the inherent orientation of society to continuity. Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba, both political scientists, contributed to the development of the approach by focusing on the integrative role of civic political culture in democracies, in The Civic Culture Revisited (Newbury Park, CA : Sage, 1989). Structural functionalism has existed in a variety of versions, motivated primarily by the challenge of maintaining its core insight while meeting criticism. However, the theory appears to allow more in the way of an account of society, including social change, than early advocates and critics asserted.

the science of political studies

81

The metaphor of the organic body is useful in contrasting structural functionalism from the methodological individualism of some competing core approaches. In structural functionalism, like group theory, we are assumed to be inherently social creatures, our individuality secondary to our social definition. It is the roles that we play, or the functions that we fulfill in society, that constitute our fundamental reality as human beings. The social and political health of a polity is achieved when each of a number of differentiated yet interdependent processes are in play. So, for instance, pluralist democratic politics are said to persist over time because political parties (or similar groups) are able to coordinate and integrate ideological, religious, racial, ethnic, class, or generational divisions within them. Potentially destructive conflict within diverse societies is prevented by the successful performance of leadership, parties, pressure groups, and the media, in concert with the legislature and processes of the state apparatus. These processes at the system level are supported by motivational forces operating within our individual lives, where our individual well-being consists partly in successfully performing socially valuable roles. When one of the processes of a particular society fails to mediate and manage the coordination of processes, or when an unresolved tension within a polity can lead to its political decline or collapse, other processes fill in or take over, performing the roles of mediation or coordination that the body politic requires for continuity. Dysfunction in party politics will be ameliorated by pressure groups, by intergovernmental or governmental representative roles, by the state, or by reformation of political parties and party competition. When, for instance, persistent minority governments in a majoritarian system threaten to upset parliamentary processes, a process is triggered—be it patterns of effective coalition, reformation of the party system, or party competition—to restore parties’ functional value to the overall stability of the polity. The presence of relative degrees of stability and instability, and the way in which instability is addressed within polities, provide a basis for comparative political studies, for analysis identifying commonality and diversity across polities. It is not threatening to the structural functionalist approach that roles and performances in the polity associated with continuity are differently realized across a variety of political contexts.

82

the study of politics

Indeed, structural functionalism allows for a rich sort of comparative and contrastive analysis of the quality, location, and diversity of the performance of organically necessary roles for the continuity of polities. Finding patterns in the successful achievement of continuity provides models to employ in the construction and reform of polities that appear to be dysfunctional or sub-optimal in political process. In the standard account of structural functionalism, polities identify and functionally differentiate primary goals, regulate inherent processes, provide for the persistent nourishment of patterns of stability over time, adapt to contingencies introduced from outside, and renew the motivational force of cultural, ideological, and psychological patterns necessary for the overall performance of society and polity. Anticipating arrangements and performances that are most conducive to stability might be said to attach a conservative normative bias to structural functionalism, favouring stability over other values such as greater justice or liberty. Moreover, structural functionalism, notwithstanding its acknowledgment that different societies perform similar functions differently, has been associated with the assertion that democracy is the best form of polity. Democracy, it may be said, is ideal in the way in which elements of civil society mediate and coordinate state–citizen relations, provide for flexible functionality and political and social evolution, and connect the flourishing of diverse, self-motivated individuals, each with psychological needs, to the stability, nimbleness, regeneration, and resiliency of the polity. Theoretical Assumptions

In explaining social processes, structural functionalism provides an account of human agency, one that operates at a high degree of generality. The folk theory of structural functionalism is that human beings act so as to fulfill the functional demands of a sociopolitical system, thereby securing our own continuation as individuals. We do so, moreover, whether we intend to or not, or whether or not we understand ourselves in this way. Ontologically, functions such as power can operate implicitly in social, political, and economic relations. We act in role definition, patterns of differentiation, conflict, consensus, and integration. Even where our conduct is dysfunctional to the stability of society, it is effectively

the science of political studies

83

altered or finessed by processes of social interaction, adaptation, and reintegration; alternatively, such dysfunction introduces processes of realignment such that the functional well-being of the polity might be restored. Such processes rely upon political and other forms of culture, where the psychology of the person is shaped by the ongoing and changing requirements of society, and where society responds to the psychological and material needs of its members. Ontologically, then, structural functionalism asserts that the human species consists in an inherent sub-organic interdependence not unlike that assumed of other species. Because it is more like biological explanation in the sciences than it is like Newtonian physics, structural functionalism is intellectually close to green or eco-theory, a core approach discussed in Chapter Five. Structural functionalist ontology asserts a historical continuity, that both within and between societies the basic orientation of human beings is to maintain viability and continuity over time. Even revolution, seemingly the most compelling instance of inherent instability, can be said to have a historical line, to be oriented to the invention or reconstitution of functional roles necessary to subsequent continuity. Finally, structural functionalists hold to the view that a function is as empirically real as a cup of coffee, even though we can’t see the former directly. Epistemologically, functionalism assumes that we can identify processes that are latent or implicit in social, economic, and political relations. In this way functionalists are like those power theorists who adopt a broader reading of political power. The test of the presence of these inherent functional dependencies is found in studying the way in which a society is destabilized by weakness in one or another function, or the way in which societies regenerate core functions when they are threatened. Accordingly, comparative politics and especially case studies become the means of identifying underlying, and in some respects implicit, functional relations of our humanity. Structural functionalism holds continuing promise for providing for a law-like account of human political societies. In such grand theory, the minor differences between individuals are set aside as discerning the social processes in which we all play a part can be seen to have consider-

84

the study of politics

able explanatory and predictive force, both at the individual level and at the level of political society. Criticism

Functionalists who have used the theory in order to justify hierarchical social and economic stratification have been criticized for building in an implicit justification for the class divisions of Western democracies that is blind to its deeper dysfunctionality, rendering it a core approach too apologetic for capitalist economic relations. The approach also appears to be unable to provide an adequate explanatory account of the diversity and complexity of individual action as it accounts for the broader operation of society and polity. In a related way, structural functionalism can also be said to be too normative. Role differentiation and integration of processes, central to structural functionalist accounts, do not respect the diversity, complexity, dignity, and freedom of human lives. Functionalism’s normative orientation to the status quo, in its reliance upon the concept of stability, is said to implicitly build an unjustifiable conservative bias into the approach, regardless of the polity under study. Neo-functionalism responds to this critique of its normative conservativism by allowing for political change, for instance, where conflict that shakes the equilibrium of a society prefigures functional adaptation via resolution of conflict. Dysfunction engenders new patterns of politics, one might say, which re-secure the inherent stability of society, albeit in a reformed state. Where a party system breaks down, or is overthrown, another is built or emerges to replace it, as the sorts of functions performed by parties are necessary to any polity. Dysfunction can even lead to transformational political change as societies and polities meet crises. Structural functionalism seems comfortable with identifying two sorts of inherent sociopolitical processes: those of conflict, division, and dysfunction, and those of cooperative interdependency, integration, and reintegration. When it seeks to account for transformative change, however, structural functionalism can still be said to struggle most. If the central claim of a theory is that a polity is inherently functional, then it can’t easily assert dysfunctional elements or relations as part of processes that secure stability. As structural functionalism includes function and dysfunction, stability and instability, as inherent to the well-being of an

the science of political studies

85

individual or a polity, so as to meet the challenge of political change, it opens itself to the charge of contradiction. In trying to account for too much, a core approach may be said to undermine some of its explanatory power. Structural functionalism is vulnerable to other challenges as well. A number of its central terms (for instance, the concepts of function, structure, and integration) are arguably not falsifiable. Such key causal factors are not directly observable; they are assumed in the theory. Show me a function, one might say, and I’ll show you an ego, false consciousness, the ideal form of the good, or the gods’ intentions for us. But a response is available here as well. If structural functionalism can predict at least in most case studies, then it is reasonable to assume that its key causal model is secured. The test of the theory becomes its ability to predict outcomes over time, not unlike theories in science. Structural functionalism can, for instance, predict changes in dysfunctional party politics. If it is proven right in such predictions, it has a powerful line of defence. Still, there is a danger of circularity in this response, namely, that cases prove the theory only by initially assuming the substance of the theory, in the case at hand, the condition of dysfunction. Moreover, there is always the possibility that there are still deeper forces at work than those that structural functionalism asserts as it confirms its predictions. Structural functionalism may also be criticized for being reductive, treating all of our features as reducible to deeper processes of social integration and continuity. Moreover, eco-theorists hold that despite the similarity of functionalism’s ontology to the organic eco-centred interdependence of the natural world, the former mistakenly privileges the human species. Nevertheless, as with all other competing core approaches, such concerns may not be sufficient to justify dismissing the approach. Each core approach to political studies relies upon some agency, epistemological, and ontological assumptions. The challenge is whether the right foundational features for agency have been identified. And, as with other such approaches to the study of politics, the explanatory force of structural functionalism rests in case studies and especially in its ability to predict the development of society and the polity over time. The track record of structural functionalism in explaining and predicting outcomes in social and political process is not without its defenders.

86

the study of politics

Applications

Applications employing structural functionalism may be found across the various locations of political life, though typically it is employed by students for comparative case studies of parties, party systems, groups, processes of development, political culture, and the effects of the mass media. Employing structural functionalism, as has been suggested, may be hoped reliably to explain or predict a configuration of political parties in a national case study of the party system. One would need, in such work, to attend to forms of differentiation and integration within the party system, indicating whether the party system is functional in processes of representation in a particular society. Or one might attend to whether an electoral system is effective or ineffective in serving the process of party competition. One might collect comparative or historical cases to shed greater light on the development reasonably anticipated in such cases. Where one was able to discern that a change to the party system would provide functionally in ways the existing system did not, one would have a basis for predicting such a change. This sort of study could then be traced by other researchers over time, for confirmation or clarification, and for its contribution to a general theory of how party systems operated functionally in similar or diverse societies. Using explanations of functional alignment and realignment in the history of other polities, assuming a similarity of cases, one might also have a basis for the sort of predictions that are thought common in the sciences. One need only reflect on discussions by analysts regarding the future of the party systems of Britain, the United States, or Canada to see how much functionalist assumptions are implicit to our understanding of politics. In understanding the development of comparative political culture, there is much work to be done on the role of the mass media, the family, church, and schools as locations for functional performance useful to the stability and functional development of polities. Structural functionalism remains a promising means to such understanding—that is, if we can conclude that it is intellectually adequate, that it is not merely an apology for the reproduction of conditions of injustice, and that it is not too oriented to the stability of the status quo.

the science of political studies

87

Systems Theory Statement of Approach

Systems theory has commonly been run together with other approaches.32 Strictly speaking, however, the underlying and distinctive assumption of systems theory in political studies is that political decisions are primarily an outcome of the flow of information in processes of communication. A metaphor for the processes of communication essential to systems theory is computer processing treated as mechanisms that efficiently process information. In a polity, the information in play is typically the preferences citizens have for public policies as these relate to their expressed features. A second metaphor for systems theory in the study of political societies is mass communication, where information is transported either poorly or well through vehicles orientated to carry it. In the systems approach one studies how information about the qualities and features of society is exchanged and represented, and how informational processes operate in a polity. It seeks to explain political outcomes, roughly speaking, by reference to the amount and quality of information that passes along the lines of political communication and representation, by processes of miscommunication and misrepresentation, communication overload, “noise,” and other features of effective and ineffective transmission. The central idea is that political decisions are made on the basis of what agents know about the world and about one another, and that the sorts of decisions made in a polity can be usefully analyzed and explained by identifying how informational and communicative content finds its way into law and other forms of organization. Indeed, while it need not be so ambitious as to explain all political outcomes, systems theory can go some distance toward explaining many of them: it does so by referring to the sorts of information that political actors have or don’t have when they choose to act, by examining their policy and other political preferences and how intensely they are expressed compared 32 One might well argue that the desire to find a unified approach to empirical political studies, in much of the twentieth century, was too quick to disregard important differences between core approaches. David Easton was amongst those seemingly most eager to integrate political studies in this way, arguing, for example, that systems theory, behaviouralism, and even European structuralism were essentially coherent. See An Analysis of Political Structure (New York: Routledge, 1990).

88

the study of politics

with those of others, and by investigating what impediments there are for political expression and the extent of the capacity of civil society and state mechanisms for processing it. Theoretical Assumptions

Systems theory need make no agency assumptions other than to assert that people act from decisions determined by the information they have available to them. Systems theory explains political outcomes by the effective communicative content between people, assuming that in politics we express our preferences as information useful for decision makers. We are, to one another, and to government, best understood as mutually valuable sources of information. Human beings act on the basis of data provided to us by informationally rich experience, by human communication, and by our capacity to process both effectively. Suppose that I wish to spend the evening being entertained, assuming that I have heard that being entertained is one way of spending an evening. My deliberation in determining how to proceed involves receiving, identifying, remembering, integrating, and otherwise processing information about the entertainment available to me. The decision to attend a baseball game rather than a chamber group concert, for instance, may be traced back to the nature and quality of information I have received about both. In a rough sort of way, it is the information I have received from a variety of sources that determines my decision and the conduct that flows from it. Where my decision produces an outcome not in keeping with the information I have received and processed, I remember this outcome as a problem of informational reliability or processing. If someone misleads me about which team is in town or if I make a decision when I am overtired, these two facts will be offset in subsequent decisions. The standard way of representing political decision making in systems theory is to construct an input/output flow diagram, operating through the “processor” of the decision maker or decision-making body. The typical schema simply distinguishes inputs and outputs in a decision-making model. Inputs are treated as the effective causes of the output. In politics and government, citizens’ characteristics and interests are relayed to governments, which process them into public policies. These policies are subsequently at play in further informational flows to

the science of political studies

89

government, mimicking the sort of feedback loop in stimulus-response behavioural psychology. The information communicated in the cybernetics of systems theory is not reduced, however, to the sort of desires that operate in this simple psychological account. Information is instead treated as both simple and complex, self-regarding and other-regarding, well considered and superficial. The systems theory approach enjoys a relatively simple folk theory, even as it allows for a fairly complex process of communication. Human beings are essentially communicative beings; even our apparent nonlinguistic conduct may be rendered in informational terms, and our decisions and actions are causally related to the information upon which they are based. Systems theory offers a decision-making model into which any sort of intention, goal, decision, or conduct can be placed, thereby avoiding having to decide what the motivational causes of our expression are. Decisions and conduct are produced by the relative weight, intensity, quality, and other informational features and qualities attended to by the decision maker. When information is blocked, when there is too much “static,” when a decision maker has more information available than one can process, or when we are unable to consider some sorts of information, decisions are accordingly altered. Ontologically, the systems approach holds that decision makers are in a sense blank slates waiting to be written upon by the information that they are given to process. To the extent that we receive or process information differently, our different conduct can be explained. The epistemology of systems theory is also comparatively straightforward: we can, with close empirical description, track information acting upon and through decision makers. Systems theory can also be construed so as to advance normative claims. For instance, it is maintained that the best decisions are made when information and informational processing are as complete and unfettered as humanly possible, given the processing capacity of decision makers. Good governance takes place, accordingly, when the state is open to the greatest scope of undistorted inputs, without inducing demand overload, and when the processing of these inputs is valueneutral and efficient (in the sense of there being no state biases, process blockages, or interference with citizens’ expression). In this way, systems theory, like group theory, some power theory, and rational choice theory,

90

the study of politics

can be aligned with political pluralism as a view of the diverse and open processes of organizing, articulating, and integrating information relevant to public policy. It can—although it need not—share the normative force of pluralism, namely, that the informational quality of communication between citizen and state makes democracy more authoritative. Systems theory was understandably a basis for some confidence in the 1960s that we were moving toward an objective political science. The theory finessed the traditional distinction between agency and structure, seeing individuals as both the authors and processors of information. It welcomed the rapid development of computer technology and economic modelling and the seemingly burgeoning scope and diversity of the mass media in and for politics. Systems theory seemed poised to replace the language of desire, needs, power, and the like with the more agencyneutral concepts of communication. It seemed possible to abstract, from competing agency accounts, a common medium of analysis. The promise was that this would allow us to explain and predict conduct without reliance upon more controversial agency or ontological assumptions. Groups, parties, movements, and the state were simply mechanisms responding to the communication of information from society, processing it by finding points of integration, mediation, and compromise. Criticism

Despite its promise, systems theory invites a range of criticism, one of which is that it misreads our humanity. Human beings are creatures, one might say, with feelings and with psychological and cognitive make-ups that aren’t ontologically comparable to the lives of computers, even very clever ones. In defending against humanist critiques of this sort, the system theorist maintains that what we take to be emotional states, aesthetic capacities, and complex psychologies may all be true, but that we can still treat these simply as features of the complexity of human beings as processors of information. That is, the simplicity of the input/output model is meant only to simplify what might well be very complex processes. The fact that we don’t understand the desires, emotions, psychological conditions, or class consciousness of those who communicate within civil society and the state may not be a barrier to some very important findings about why government acts in the way it does.

the science of political studies

91

This line of defence has not proven fully convincing, however. It might well be said that to understand something is to understand how it works, not simply that it does work in seemingly predictable ways. Part of the mandate of the discipline of political studies is to explain how decisions are processed, not simply that they are in some black box of the human mind or the state. Treating government, the state, or the human mind as a location for the processing of political information, without assessing closely what processes underlie it (how and how well it integrates, mediates, and initiates information, what biases it introduces, etc.), is to miss what is often most important in understanding public decision making. System theory counters such concern with a claim that what is most important to understand about (especially democratic) government is its ability to render politics and government commensurable with the information provided to it by citizens. The concept of information flow in communication theory appears to have this virtue. By closely tracking the inputs and outputs of decision makers we can, it might be said, effectively discern over a number of cases where biases or other deficiencies are present. What is important is that information is processed and conduct emanates from such processing. How the processor handles complex communication may eventually be determined, but it remains unimportant to explaining and predicting our behaviour. As long as there is a pattern from input to output to new input, we don’t really need to understand how the “black box” of our human minds or indeed of government’s decision processing works. In systems theory the primary role of political studies is not to understand deeper sources of agency, but to identify where persistent biases or ineffectiveness of informational processing by the state is present.33 Such attention to information flows allows us to identify phenomena such as informational winnowing, where political conduct can be traced back to the narrow quality of information on the basis of which earlier decisions were taken. A related line of criticism is that the state has its own autonomous agenda that it brings to the policy process. If the state is a source of policy directions that reflect its own informational agenda, or if it mediates and manipulates informational demands upon it to secure its own 33 Communication is intensified in systems theory by pressure groups, the mass media, and other forms of leadership in civil society.

92

the study of politics

informational biases, then studying informational flow could be systematically misleading. Unless we know whether the decision maker is inherently neutral to information passing through it, we can’t easily determine that outcomes are causally related to inputs. This line of criticism is met by treating the initiative of state actors simply as adding one source of information flow, so that the state’s role may accordingly be accommodated in the approach. This sort of response has led to the idea, in systems theory, of “throughputs,” i.e., forms of information that are added by governments, parties, and other actors in the processing of information. The degree of state agenda is determined partly as the difference between the full scope of inputs and their presence in policy outcomes. That information travels in time provides another difficulty for systems theory. Recall the earlier example of deciding what to do one evening for entertainment. If information about the availability of a ball game is dated (e.g., by the time I hear about it the tickets are sold out), the information with which I make my decision is useless. While it is easy to account for such time-sensitive information in individual decision making, it may be more troublesome in government. That is, the approach appears to require an assumption of a significant degree of informational continuity over time or a remarkably agile and efficient decision-making capacity. To assume constancy over time, however, is to adopt a further and controversial ontological assumption and to ignore the fact that things change. One might add here a wide range of criticisms about how systems theory appears blind to the possibility of implicit forms of power, structure, and the like. But let’s consider instead the criticism that language is not used merely for articulating information. To use language is also to confer meaning in broader, subtler, and more complex ways than systems theory appears to be able to allow. Consider the way in which subtle humour, irony, or paradox is expressed in human communication. Systems theory seems to require a common measure of informational expression, a common language, where expression is easily commensurable and basic, as it is in computer programming. If linguistic expression is more layered, if it employs irony, sub-text, intentionally false indicators, and so on, then before governments and systems theorists can read the information of a citizenry they must have sophisticated

the science of political studies

93

means of interpreting the meaning of expressions. Systems theory seems to favour taking the expression of information more simply. It assumes that when citizens say they want more of x , what they mean is that they want more of x , when sometimes saying one wants more can indicate exactly the opposite, as ironic protest. Systems theory seems better able to account for the transmission of simplified information in political contexts; it is not a theory of what people mean. To become the latter it would need to focus attention quite differently on features of language and agency that give rise to meaning, and in so doing would need to adopt agency assumptions much more interpretive and critical than the ones it favours.34 Despite these sorts of criticism, many North American graduate theses in the latter part of the twentieth century relied on a version of the systems model. Such models identify, for instance, when political parties and other groups are successful in articulating their interests and policy ideas as informational representations, explaining policy outcomes as a response to these successes, lodging both in an account of democratic government. Typically, such theses are quiet on why such information was expressed. One of the features of spirited thesis committees is the attempt to tease the defender of such a thesis to identify what sources of information are not accounted for in the case study at hand. Systems theory works from a thinner set of agency and ontology assumptions than other core approaches. What matters in the approach is carefully tracking the information upon which decisions are made, and from which our actions can be seen to emanate. Once we know the informational bases for a decision we can explain it: we can indeed give a causal-like account as to why decision x was made rather than decision y . Moreover, to the extent that we can predict changes to the informational basis upon which such decisions are made, we may be able to predict outcomes, not unlike the way in which meteorological prediction is increasingly becoming more precise. As we become more sophisticated in understanding how the human brain processes information, 34 At the risk of referring to the television series Star Trek: TNG for a second time, the fact that one of its characters, Data, is incapable of emotion, aesthetic appreciation, or humour may be said to speak to the limitations of systems theory as failing to understand the subtlety of our humanity.

94

the study of politics

and how governments alter their informational matrices, perhaps we will become less constrained by the apparent limits of system theory—the manipulation of information, implicit agendas, irony, and layered meaning notwithstanding. Applications

Systems theory is best employed in identifying and assessing the informational basis upon which public policy is made. Comparative public policy, over time or between different liberal democratic nations, can be strengthened by paying attention to different degrees of informational success. Different public policy responses to poverty, for instance, may be seen to accrue from informational deficiencies, i.e., problems getting the reality of poverty effectively communicated to the state. One of the more promising approaches to the study of the mass media is to treat it as part of a complex system of informational transformation and mediation, wherein such a misrepresentation of poverty might figure. Systems theory, with limited agency assumptions, can produce revealing comparative media case studies. They can, for instance, identify the degree to which media firms alter the information passing through them and the degree to which our expression as citizens flows from the prior processing of information by the mass media. Pressure groups may be seen as vehicles for amplifying the informational reality of citizens’ lives, and political parties as vehicles for organizing and coordinating this information, representing it to the state in the processes of public policy. Studies of both may be enabled by a systems theory paradigm. Furthermore, comparisons between pressure-group and party systems in similar societies may also be revealing, as they either effectively or ineffectively relate the expression of citizens’ lives to the state. In international relations, insufficiency of information and ineffective communication processing can compellingly be cited as the source of international decision making, and systems theory has enjoyed a considerable standing in the literature as an approach to international conflict and cooperation.

the science of political studies

95

Rational Choice Theory Statement of Approach

Sometimes referred to as formal theory, sometimes as game theory, and sometimes as the analytical approach, rational choice theory employs sophisticated mathematical formulae to assess the relative prospects of actions within a maze of probabilities and variabilities. It explains and recommends human conduct upon the generalized findings of such calculations. Those readers who hold to the view that mathematics is the science to which all science will eventually be reduced, that the cosmos is fundamentally a complex of mathematical relationships, will be quick to see the promise of rational choice theory as the basis of a unified social science. Other readers will be thankful that the depth and complexity of mathematical detail in rational choice theory will be avoided in this survey of the approach. Regardless, rational choice theory is undeniably on the ascendency in mainstream political studies, seeking to provide an empirical theory that is held to be able to integrate competing core approaches discussed throughout this chapter: group theory, pluralist power theory, systems theory, structural functionalism, and behaviouralism. If structural functionalism and group theory in political studies owe a debt to sociology, and systems theory owes a similar debt to communication theory and cybernetics, then rational choice owes its debt to modern market economics. The core idea in mainstream economics is that market economies are products of a series of decisions taken by individuals assumed to be sufficiently free to choose across a wide scope of possible courses of conduct and to act efficiently to advance their subjective interests. Individuals are understood to have a set of preferences, goals or values that they wish to satisfy or achieve in acting or refraining from acting. One’s preferences, the common currency of rational choice theory, are subjectively identified by each agent by assessing the relative appeal of two or more goods. Once our preferences are identified, our conduct flows from determining how the greatest number of them can be satisfied in a complex social setting. Rational choice theory assesses the best means available for the satisfaction of our preferences and predicts that human action emanates from a strategic calculation of this

96

the study of politics

sort. Of course, such calculations are made in a context in which others are also seeking to realize their preferences. In liberal economic theory, one of the ways of determining the relative strength of preferences for goods across a population is to allow the price of a good to determine its relative value in a free market. While some goods in politics are not commodities, the willingness of people to pursue their values in electoral politics is treated as operating in an equivalent process, seeing democracy as a political free marketplace. The most famous articulation of this account in political studies is found in Anthony Downs’s An Economic Theory of Democracy (Boston: Addison Wesley, 1997), first published in 1957. Downs, who had a Ph.D. in economics from Stanford, worked at the Brookings Institute and for both the Department of Housing and the White House. His Economic Theory is especially effective in identifying the basic account of rational choice theory’s treatment of democratic politics and government, without the more elaborate treatments, i.e., of those who have subsequently sought to develop the approach. In liberal democracy we act by voting, by supporting groups and parties, and in other ways to cause the election of governments whose policies seem to us most likely to satisfy our preferences or to provide the conditions for their subsequent satisfaction. Sometimes this involves indirect strategies, for instance in strategic voting where we choose to vote for a party that offers the second-best set of policies in respect to our preferences, so as to prevent the election of a party whose policies would more completely fail to satisfy our preferences. Such strategies require that we have some (reliable) knowledge of the likelihood of the conduct of others, though our knowledge is never perfect. Individual actors exercise their ability to predict likely outcomes, based in prior experience and in the knowledge of others’ past conduct, and pursue their ranked preferences accordingly. Such calculations can become complex. Market economies and liberal democratic politics provide locations and mechanisms for achieving the maximum degree of preference satisfaction in a particular choice situation, given our limitations in strategic rationality and our degree of knowledge. Political decision making like this explains and predicts outcomes in particular choice contexts or more generally. It also allows normatively for the production of the public interest, conceived as

the science of political studies

97

those policies that enable the efficient satisfaction of the greatest degree of ranked preferences across a population.35 Rational choice theory aims to supplant all competitors in achieving a unified social science. It is especially appealing to those who seek to have a theory with strong predictive force. It appeals also to those who hold that the conduct of each of us and the relations between us are inherently strategic, that we act on what we desire, and that we succeed in maximizing the satisfaction of our desires when we choose conduct based on knowledge—given reasonable assumptions about the likely conduct of others. Such deliberations may be represented mathematically, and it may be that when we act we are employing mathematical functions as our mode of rationality, whether we wish to understand ourselves and our conduct in this way or not. Theoretical Assumptions

Rational choice theory adopts relatively modest and seemingly noncontentious folk psychological assumptions, namely, that all individuals act from their desire for happiness and that we are able to seek the satisfaction of our desires with regard to such happiness in an effective (i.e., rational) way. These agency assumptions seek to be normatively neutral, as we are understood to pursue what we believe will satisfy our desires and preferences, whether these are considered by others to be noble or banal. Bentham asserted, in Principles of Morals and Legislation, that “Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do.”36 Ontologically, rational choice sets our desire for happiness, as we conceive it, as the fundamental source of our conduct. In doing so, it also asserts a methodological individualism: our desires and preferences are our own, even though we may share and pursue these with others. Our agency is strictly located as a causal force acting from within us. It is ontologically neutral as to whether our desire or related preferences 35 Rational choice theory is closely aligned with the nineteenth-century doctrine of utilitarianism. 36 Jeremy Bentham, in Principles of Morals and Legislation, collected in The Utilitarians (Garden City, NY : Anchor, 1973), p. 37.

98

the study of politics

stem from nature or nurture, whether they are autonomously acquired or provided by interaction with others. It is not the source of desires that interests rational choice theory; it is instead how our existing desires determine our conduct. Epistemologically, the approach seeks to deduce our preferences from the evidence of past conduct or from the expression of our preferences. Just as it makes sense to say that when I purchase an item I have expressed a desire for that item, when I vote for party A rather than party B I have expressed a preference for the party that I believe will best act to satisfy my preferences. Though imperfect, our ability to assess the likelihood of outcomes, partly by our experience of similar choice situations, allows us to align our political conduct to our preferences. In rational choice theory, the analyst identifies what the ranked preferences of relevant agents are, identifies the preferences of others in a particular choice setting, assesses the knowledge available to each actor, identifies the probabilities of others taking one from a range of possible actions within this setting, notes the degree to which the complexity of variables alters the decision context, and concludes what the rational course of action would be. Assuming that each of us has reasonable information about such matters (of the sort attended to by political analysts), the course of our conduct can be predicted and then explained. Failures to act in this way are suggestive of defects in our rationality or our insufficient information, but anomalies of a limited sort are irrelevant to statistically generalized patterns of conduct within a population. Criticism

One criticism of rational choice is that it may, like structural functionalism, be too enveloping. Suppose, based on knowledge of my preferences, you predict that I will purchase chamber concert tickets rather than baseball game tickets. Now suppose that I act otherwise. One way of explaining this outcome, assuming that everything else fits the decision context (knowledge, price, and the like), would be to conclude that I in fact prefer baseball to chamber music. That is, rational choice can account for cases of poor prediction by simply changing an explanatory assumption. This appears to give the approach no clear condition of falsifiability. Any case that might be postulated to challenge the theory is enveloped back

the science of political studies

99

into the theory by redefinition. Alternatively, such apparently falsifying examples might be explained as stemming from insufficient information or from irrationality. This “fix,” however, implies that you could never really predict my conduct from what you take to be my capacity to act on sufficient information, because you would never know when I was acting rationally or when I had sufficient information. You would require, that is, a fuller account of the interiority of my agency in any particular decision context than simply that I act to satisfy my preferences. It is not clear where such knowledge in rational choice is to come from, without significantly changing the core approach. Rational choice theory may also be said to unjustifiably discount informational problems. The standard example of such problems is revealed in the so-called prisoner’s dilemma, where the capacity of agents to maximize the satisfaction of their preference turns on knowing that they can trust one another. Such knowledge about the trustworthiness of others may in principle be unavailable to rational actors. There is a rich literature on such puzzles, and while some of this has claimed to have met the sort of difficulties encountered in the prisoner’s dilemma, even in complex multi-person games, there is far from widespread agreement that this is so. The problem is epistemological: we can never really be sure of others’ likely conduct or of what others are really thinking. In rational choice theory, as in politics, lying, feigned conduct, and the subtle manipulation of others’ preferences introduce problems of knowledge that are far from simply informational. Rational choice is also claimed to construe human rationality too narrowly or instrumentally, in the sense that it gains its apparent explanatory appeal by rendering too thin a conception of our humanity. Those cases where predictions are mistaken may be due to deeper features of our agency and humanity being ignored by the theory’s instrumentality. Individuals don’t always relate to others strategically, and one might say that love, loyalty, and freedom may not be ontologically reducible to the strategic preference satisfaction of players in a strategic game. Rational choice theory might be able to explain the conduct of revolutionaries by saying that they just have different preferences from the rest of us, that their willingness to die for their cause, though much more intense, is not ontologically different than

100

the study of politics

my desire to watch baseball games. But such an account seems to miss important parts of their lives and characters. Indeed, most of us simply do not think of ourselves as bundles of preferences, where our lives are about the satisfaction of the greatest number of desires possible. In fact, critics on both the left and the right assert that construing ourselves in this way is too ideological and that it adopts a consumerist conception of the self, one that is useful in justifying capitalist economic relations but that is not the basis for deeper laws of human political conduct. Moreover, rational choice’s methodological individualism (where all analysis is reduced to the basic units of the preferences and actions of agents) may be said to misrepresent our inherent sociality, where our values and conduct are often embedded in our natures. While rational choice may answer some of this sort of agency and ontological criticism by claiming deeper human motivations in the language of preference, the debate remains about how well this captures the truth of our lives. Rational choice has something of the prescriptive force of utilitarianism, providing an account of how individuals in society ought to act to maximize their well-being, as they themselves conceive it. While there may well prove to be better and worse preferences for individuals, preference satisfaction is left to individuals themselves to determine, not for any objectivist theory of value. Critics argue that such an account of value fails to note that morality includes principled standards of conduct that are not reducible to subjective preferences. Moreover, they maintain that rational choice doesn’t represent what we are doing when we act normatively. Human rights and social and economic justice advocates argue that a certain course of conduct may be right even when it is undeniably sub-optimal in satisfying one’s preferences, and they assert that we know this as we act. Rational choice theory can, and does in some treatments, simply jettison its claim to be able to account for normativity. To do so, however, surrenders something of its initial appeal: that an explanatory theory of politics can also account for the morality of our conduct. That rational choice theory is currently enjoying ascendency in political studies is undeniable. This is not surprising, as it is a promising theory tied to a strong, simple folk theory. The theory takes us as we are, identifies how we may best satisfy our desire for happiness, refrains

the science of political studies

101

from judging our values, and appears to have a degree of predictability where our preferences have been shown to be stable over time. While it seems to have some trouble accounting for our moral sense, as political analysts we should be happy to leave questions of moral theory to others. Rational choice theory allows us to explain and predict a wide range of political outcomes and to explain the construction of rational public policy from the preferences that we seek to satisfy in our political conduct. As in other core theories, one test of the force of a theory is that it can produce predictions for outcomes that are empirically verifiable. Indeed, it is in the predictive record that rational choice acquires a condition of falsifiability, when predictions can, in principle, be shown to be wrong. As economists’ success in adopting a similar predictive approach appears to be increasing, greater work with rational choice in politics and government political studies continues to appear promising. This may be enough for those of us who study politics, even if rational choice theory leaves some underlying issues of agency, ontology, epistemology, and normativity unresolved. Applications

Rational choice is especially useful to liberal democratic governments, as it provides a way of establishing public policy on the basis of the preferences of those affected, treating individual citizens as sovereign in the determination of the terms of their well-being. Moreover, careful attention to policy options in rational choice modelling can lead to optimizing policy decisions. Between elections, rational choice analysts account for the political behaviour of parties, pressure groups, and the government and opposition of the day. These objects are understood as articulating and aggregating preferences, providing campaigns and platforms that are the means of the rational preference activity of citizens. Such analysis can compare and contrast interest articulation, aggregation, and public choice in different polities. In such comparisons the analyst is normatively neutral, attending only to what citizens say they want, focusing on the intensity of individual and group preference articulation, especially when such articulation involves sacrificing other preference satisfactions. These sorts of comparative studies help explain differences in political processes and public policy. We can account for international conduct as

102

the study of politics

the efficient pursuit of the preferences of competing and cooperative states and political economies. Indeed, we can even employ rational choice in the analysis of political culture, looking at how similarities of preferences are distributed across a population, how their protection and reproduction comes to be a preference itself, and how the reinforcement of particular clusters of values might be in the interest of those who espouse them. The mass media, in such analysis, can be seen to provide the information that citizens employ to make decisions, with citizens in turn determining the values in news coverage and information that they prefer. Rational choice theory remains especially attractive for use in voting and public policy studies in liberal democracies. If we wish to understand why a particular policy has been adopted or a particular election won by the leadership of a political party, common sense would have us start with a list of what both the party and the electorate at large wanted. We move from this simple statement to increasingly elaborate preference rankings and strategies for their achievement. We then look at the information available to citizens in forming their preferences, the costs to them of accessing this information (in the way of lost opportunities to pursue the satisfaction of other goods), and the degree and quality of information they had about the likely actions of others. Public opinionpoll studies are invaluable in identifying preferences across a population, providing citizens, parties, and both the government and opposition with information that they can use in articulating preference and constructing public policy. Rational choice allows for both prediction and explanation, and for both comparative and international studies. It seems to account for much of what group theorists, some (power-oriented) pluralists, structural functionalists, and systems theorists consider important, albeit with different assumptions and in a different conceptual framework. Whether it can overcome reservations about its agency, ontological, and epistemological assumptions will likely turn, in the years ahead, upon the degree to which it can accurately predict political outcomes.

the science of political studies

103

Behaviouralism Statement of Approach

Behaviouralism seeks to avoid the difficult issues of agency. It does so in part by arguing that a folk psychology is unnecessary for political studies, even though it suggests that effective behaviouralist work can eventually lead to a complete understanding of such issues. Behaviouralism needs to be distinguished from a theory with which it shares something of its name: the psychological theory of behaviourism. The latter argues that our desires, especially for physical pleasure and security, stem from basic drives that we share with most animals; we are compelled to act by the stimulating presence of possible objects of desire and aversion within our sensory field, or from memory thereof, in a pattern of stimulus and response. That we are so governed by drives is understood to be natural to us as living beings. Determining how and why we act is simply a matter of identifying the stimuli that we sense, remembering how such stimulation has been previously processed in satisfying our basic drives, and then explaining our conduct accordingly. Behaviourism simply collects sufficient data of stimulus/response to account for the scope of human conduct in particular configurations of desire in a field of objects. Given that our basic drives are simple and constant, and that we are presumed to have memories that allow us to calibrate our future conduct, a theory that explains why we do what we do appears relatively straightforward. Behaviouralism needs none of this, though it shares the idea that we can explain actions by attending to observable behaviour. Indeed, steadfastly avoiding behaviourist assumptions has considerably strengthened the behaviouralist approach. Behaviouralism, more than other core approaches, relies upon the predicative and explanatory force of inductive logic and upon sophisticated statistical applications derived from this logic. It holds that if one wishes to predict or explain the presence of any phenomenon, one first identifies it conceptually, consistently, and reasonably strictly, treating it as a dependent variable. Then one tests for the presence of a variety of independent variables, to determine whether there is a statistically significant variance between the presence of the independent and dependent variables. Where there is co-variance, and where one finds it over time

104

the study of politics

and across cases, the presence of the independent variable both predicts and, to a degree, explains the presence of the dependent variable. Over time, with data collected on consistently defined concepts, and with conceptual and sophisticated statistical means of controlling for intervening variables, a full-blown theory of political conduct, derived primarily from observation, is thought to be available. Suppose that we find that changes in voter preferences positively correlate to a shift in GDP in case studies over time and across nations. Or suppose that we find in a significant number of cases that those who have incomes under $40,000 vote to a significant degree for male rather than female electoral candidates. With such knowledge we would have the ability to predict how potential candidates might do in a particular riding and also to explain outcomes in such contexts, assuming that no other intervening features were present. In both cases we would have explanatory force, even without having adopted any account of the inner agency of the people involved. Such findings would place us well on our way to a political science. Theoretical Assumptions

Posited correlations in behaviouralism are falsifiable. Where variables are defined independently, that is, it is always possible that the presence of x leads to ~y rather than y . Indeed, it is not even necessary to rely on what may be thought to be obvious independent variables from ordinary language in political studies. If it was discovered that every time people were asked whether they preferred the word “stife” to the word “isfet,” and the favouring of “stife” correlated positively to a vote for a party on the left six months after the preference was declared, then we could employ a study of “stife” indicators as predictive. The concept “stife” need not have any ordinary language use in political life for it to be predictive of political outcomes. Now, saying that a vote for the left was caused by citizens’ preference for stife/isfet would be an odd explanation. But if such correlations were reproduced in subsequent studies, the oddity of the independent variable would be irrelevant. Moreover, there would be no need to rely on the idea of causality for the theory to be predictive, as an explanation would consist primarily in the assertion of the pattern of co-variance over time and across contexts. While we would have difficulty claiming with a straight face that “stife” favouritism leads to left

the science of political studies

105

voting, we would have been freed from the concern that we were using concepts that carried implicit political or ideological assumptions. In this way, a more technical conceptual vocabulary for the study of politics is preferred to reliance upon concepts already political or associated with folk psychological explanation. Suppose that you wished to study the effect of social class upon attitudes toward foreign policy. As class questions are typically reactive—many respondents do not wish to identify themselves with being a member of an underclass or working class—you might develop a concept (say “e-quotient” as a measurable indicator of one’s economic situation) and then create a number of questionnaire and non-reactive indicators of, and thresholds on, an e-quotient indicator. Such technical language has the virtue of not begging the question, predetermining outcomes by employing agency- or theory-rich concepts, and it lowers the risk of reactivity affecting the outcome. Nevertheless, most behaviouralist studies of politics rely on a more common-sense list of possible political variables, seeking to find, for instance, correlations among gender, income level, religious affiliation, regional locality, and party preferences or policy choices. As far as ontology, epistemology, and agency are concerned, behaviouralism is a neutral theory, even if its statistical applications can be complex. It relies upon Enlightenment values of observation and falsification, is quiet on the nature of agency, and assumes only the ontological coherence of inductive logic and related statistical relationships. As a bonus, it can move comfortably from individualistic to communitarian assumptions, as variables can be stipulated and observed for both. As with rational choice theory, it is little wonder that behaviouralism was once seen as having the potential to achieve the confidence associated with the sciences and that it continues to enjoy a committed following in political studies. Criticism

While behaviouralism need not be causal, it often adopts a quasi-causal form in the practice of those who employ it. Causal claims are indeed a tempting form for the approach to take, treating co-variance as if it were causal in order to enhance the explanatory quality of the theory, situating it in the model of Newtonian physics. One problem with asserted

106

the study of politics

causality in variable analysis, however, is that it treats human conduct by reference to increasingly eclipsed accounts of science: the science we are seeking to emulate has been replaced by superior accounts that have moved well beyond the Newtonian physics upon which we are seeking to model behaviouralism. We are not billiard balls, and our conduct doesn’t follow even complex renderings of the pattern “billiard ball A hits billiard ball B with angle X and velocity Y , causing billiard ball B to enter pocket 3.” This sentence simply could not apply to human beings, who are ontologically more complex than the physical laws of nature that billiard balls appear to allow. Our action stems neither from physical patterns of inanimate nature nor even from the instinctual drives and patterns of the animal world. We have capacities for symbolic language, critical thought, self-determined identity (and self-misrepresentation), spontaneity, and irony. These features of our humanity render sentences of causality, at least when applied to human conduct, a sort of category mistake. Accordingly, it can be thought that finding correlations as evidence of causality misses something important in our agency. To say, for instance, that our income level causes our party preference, if this is shown to be a regular correlation, misses something important in the nature of our humanity, even where it is persistently predictive. The correspondence, one might say, is not so straightforwardly linear, nor simple. Another way of posing the same reservation, in Humean fashion, is to note the possibility that there may be an unknown force C in fact causing the correlation of A and B . In this sort of scepticism, if C is the causal agent for both A and B , then the claim that A causes B is mistaken. There are, in principle, endless C s, some of which may not be directly observable, that might be seen to cause A s and B s to appear together, even serially. While this general line of criticism appears to effectively challenge any causal claims for behaviouralist analysis, patterns of covariance may well be sufficient in its stead. As long as we can confidently predict that wherever there is an A , there is a B , this is all that behaviouralism may need in order to develop a fully predictive social science. Behaviouralism need not assume any causal ontology in order to discern the pattern of politics and government. Setting such issues aside might mean that behaviouralism doesn’t have the sort of epistemology that would allow it to identify underlying forces and forms of agency, but this

the science of political studies

107

is not necessarily surprising for a theory that relies on a strong orientation to the observable. Critics of behaviouralism also assert that the political variables often employed in behaviouralist analysis are not sufficiently distinct. If we are to find that wherever there is an A , there is also a B , even without an assumed causality, it is important that A and B are not dependent upon one another for their meaning. Some critics of behaviouralism assert that all phenomena in politics consist of elements that are inherently connected and co-definitional. To state this concern a bit more simply, if party preference already includes something of the notion of ideological commitment, as the former to a degree implies the latter, finding correlations between aspects of the two may be more definitional than empirical. It is because of the inherent interdependence of language that some attempts to find co-variant links can seem too obvious, and too wasteful of research dollars. Finding, after expensive research, that those with religious commitments tend to vote for a party that values and partly defines itself by reference to such religious identifies can be said to be not much of a discovery. Indeed, co-variance can come close to being tautological, not far from the claim that all bachelors are unmarried men. Still, it remains possible to avoid this sort of concern as well, by effective research design and by critical attention to its possibility in variable definition. It is because of the problem of conceptual distinctiveness that some behaviouralists, as suggested above, have moved toward a much more technical language, freer from ordinary meaning. However, part of the appeal of behaviouralism is that it can make sense of politics in ordinary language. What people wish to know is whether religious preference is or is not related to party preference. The desire for “research import” leads behaviouralists to rely upon concepts that are at least connected to ordinary language. The price they pay for this relevance is found in the sorts of challenges indicated above. A final line of criticism of behaviouralism is the extent to which it relies upon the subjective expression of citizens. A standard example of this problem is found in the reactivity of public opinion polls. Respondents may not give answers that are accurate, possibly seeking to hide their real views, possibly to please the people doing the interviews, possibly to think better of themselves than they know they have reason

108

the study of politics

to, possibly to line up with how they believe others would likely respond, or possibly even to appear more rebellious than they are. Indeed, it is possible that respondents may not know what their real answer to a question is; that is, in displaying their conduct to those who might wish to study them, respondents may have inner motivational reasons to misrepresent themselves. With no access to a theory of our inner lives as human beings, behaviouralists need to rely either upon statistical design mechanisms that minimize reactivity, or upon non-reactive tests. In the former case, they may have subtle questions that indicate where previous answers were not representative of the respondents’ actual views, or they may develop over time a set of questions that together enhance their confidence that they are capturing the phenomenon they wish. In nonreactive measurement, behaviouralists must find patterns in the actual conduct of agents, without having to rely on their verbal responses to questions in interviews. To find out whether a local by-law prohibiting smoking in public altered the political preferences of citizens, one would simply isolate the passage of such a by-law and correlate it with changes in voting behaviour at the next election. While this is a simple example, it is meant to show that we can employ non-reactive indicators in identifying the presence of a variable. In such a study, one would have to control for the possibility that voting wasn’t altered by other features of the polity in question, relying on comparative case studies and other devices.37 Behaviouralism thus faces a number of challenges. It can easily trade on a conception of agency borrowed from behaviourism, or from other core approaches to the study of politics, strengthening the claims it makes with the added agency assumption. It does so, however, at the cost of lessening its appeal as a core approach free from folk theory. Behaviouralism requires extensive and expensive case studies, where concepts must be exactly re-employed across time and culture. It risks proving the obvious when it employs ordinary language concepts that are, from some critical perspectives, inherently connected, either logically or by way of 37 Such non-reactive measurements can be seen to have unwelcome implications in research ethics, since such measurements might involve studying human subjects indirectly without their consent, but these concerns can be defended against by the choice of indicators. In the case at hand, few would find the search for correlations between public policy and subsequent voting behaviour controversial in this way.

the science of political studies

109

the inherent interconnectedness of language. It needs to assume that our political conduct is somewhat consistently motivated over time and culture if it wishes to build a body of comparative findings. And it needs to find a way of separating its concepts and studies from the subjectivity of its practitioners and the subjects it studies. Still, its commitment to a political science that isn’t reliant upon speculative assumptions about our agency and that could become a basis for law-like conclusions about political behaviour remains appealing. Indeed, given the degree to which behaviouralist studies persist in electoral studies, party behaviour, and the like, students of politics who have no ability to assess such work within the assumptions of the work itself are thought to be at a professional disadvantage. And many departments of political studies, regardless of whether they are committed to the promise of a unified scientific approach to the study of politics, sensibly require work in developing the skills associated with such analysis. There are literally reams of studies that have sought to collect and analyze data of the co-variability of our characteristics as political agents, including those testing the predictive force of some of the features of agency that underlie competing accounts. Whether the agency thinness of behaviouralism will be seen to be its chief strength or its essential weakness as an approach to the study of politics and society remains with readers to critically assess, as they consider the value of competing core approaches that are more agency and ontologically oriented and epistemologically complex. As with rational choice theory, the question of whether behaviouralism can produce a single unified theory of social science that can satisfy its critics remains unanswered. And also like rational choice theory, the test for behaviouralism is likely to be its success in predicting empirically relevant outcomes, when such outcomes are not simply inherent to the interdependence of political concepts and phenomena. Applications

One of the most attractive features of behaviouralism is the scope of studies still available to the political analyst. Most political phenomena are open to variable analysis, and there is a wealth of previous studies whose findings can continue to serve as comparisons for new data collection. While behaviouralism tends to be oriented toward the measurement of

110

the study of politics

individuals’ behaviour across a population, some of the broader facts of political life can be used as variables for such data. For example, publicopinion studies or political cultural studies can be correlated to changes in public policy and in the nature and scope of the media, to changes in political economy, and to many more features of the polity. The sort of behaviouralism with which we are most familiar remains electoral studies. The continuation of such studies, as well as of political cultural studies of attitudes, is arguably central to the further development of the discipline. The continuing alignment of behaviouralist studies of this sort is a basis for generating hybrid core approaches in political studies, especially with respect to systems theory and rational choice theory.

Sociobiology Statement of Approach

One would be remiss in such a survey of core approaches not to address the sociobiological approach to the study of politics—biopolitics— even though biologically based approaches might render many of the approaches rooted in the humanities and social sciences superfluous. Rapid progress in understanding the operations of the human brain and the human DNA structure have led to some rather provocative conclusions about biology and politics, namely, that our political lives are simply an extension of the ways in which our individual neurobiological and chemical features operate. These have been tied to conceptions of the processes of human evolutionary adaptation. The central idea is that, as with other species, inherent traits in humanity, either those that are shared broadly or those that distinguish individuals from one another, are predictive of conduct. An asserted inherent tendency to gather and defend what we take to be our own, distinguishing ourselves in this way from others, might be thought to explain both human community and conflict. As we move from such asserted evolutionary traits to the neurology of the human brain—if we find, for example, that political violence is effectively caused by particular, natural, pre-disposing features of our neuropsychology—a complete account of political conduct may not be far behind.

the science of political studies

111

Theoretical Assumptions

The core agency assumption of sociobiological accounts is that behaviour is determined by the particular ways in which the brain and body work in different contexts. We have, that is, natural proclivities to certain ways of thinking, feeling, and acting. Some of these biologically and neurologically established proclivities are common across humanity; others are distinguished individually. It is these features of our humanity that explain our conduct in political life. One ontological claim of sociobiological accounts of politics is that there is little significant difference between the brain, as a neurological and biochemical set of processes, and the human mind, as the location of the intellect and the seat of human conduct. In sociobiology, the human brain may be placed on a continuum of species all inherently of the same order, though human processes may be more complex than found in other species. The epistemological basis for the approach rests upon evolutionary theory and upon the science of the human body, from physical processes, to DNA sequencing, to the material features of the human brain. The proper methods for political inquiry are accordingly already found in the sciences: in laboratories, not in books or on the streets. What is needed is a unified science that includes human behaviour along with the behaviour of other species. Recent path-breaking sociobiological research is thought to eclipse the contestation between other approaches surveyed in this text. Criticism

A sociobiological approach has animated debate in political thinking for a very long time. One line of criticism challenges the degree to which studies in sociobiological determination are claiming a degree of sophistication that they, in fact, do not have; such criticism claims that it is still unclear whether we will find evolutionary or neurobiological causes for political psychology or for other features of our agency. A second line of criticism challenges the degree to which sociobiology conflates the human brain with the human mind, asserting that the brain does not or cannot capture the fundamental differences in the sophistication of our capacities as human beings. Reducing the human mind to the human brain is, one might say, to make a profound category mistake. A third and related sort of challenge asserts that the sociobiological approach cannot account for

112

the study of politics

the phenomenon of human freedom, i.e., that we seem to experience our lives in a way that is different than what it is reasonable to assume to be true of other species. The employment of biochemical and neurological solutions to existential problems does not appear to answer the questions that our lives together pose. Moreover, some critics assert that biology itself offers an inherently ideological approach to the study of nature, claiming that accounts offered in biology are invaded by human purposes, their categories rife with human contestation. Applications

While a strict form of biological determinism in political studies has not yet been extensively developed, neither is it absent in the agency assumptions that some bring to their work, especially in some realist approaches to political conflict. As we have seen, psychological behaviourism, the theory of stimulus and response, can be seen to be friendly to bio-neurological accounts of political conduct. Contemporary studies of the human brain continue apace, seeking to account for our agency as physio-neurological-chemical phenomena. Further work in political studies from this perspective might involve bringing continuing development in the science of the human brain to our understanding of where politics comes from and how we might govern better in light of such developing scientific studies. Still, most contemporary students of politics are leery of such a rendering of political agency, typically on the grounds that the human mind is more complex than studies of the human brain typically allow. For those seeking to consider this approach further, additional materials can be found in the Further Reading section.

Conclusion There are a number of compelling ways of proceeding toward a social science for the study of politics and government. It might be fair to say that each faces criticism and that none has yet convincingly met all its critics or captured and integrated the insights of competing core approaches. A degree of empirical rigour is inescapable in searching for sources that

the science of political studies

113

are fully explanatory of our political conduct. By working on the competing views canvassed in this chapter, we might yet unify the study of our political lives. In the meantime, we are faced not only with competing approaches to the empirical study of politics, but also with challenges to the wisdom of seeking only empiricist answers. Such challenges are partly lodged by interpretive studies, to which we now turn.

Further Reading A solid introduction to institutionalism, one that moves from traditional accounts to the hybrid binding to rational choice theory that neoinstitutionalism adopts, may be found in B. Guy Peters, Institutional Theory in Political Science: The “New Institutionalism” (New York: Continuum, 2005). Also recommended is The Oxford Handbook of Political Institutions, edited by R.A.W. Rhodes, Sarah Bindar, and Bert A. Rockman (New York: Oxford, 2008), though most of this work takes up hybrid versions of institutionalism. For a short, clear discussion of institutionalism, see Bo Rothstein’s “Political Institutions: An Overview,” in Robert Goodin and Hans-Dieter Klingemann’s A New Handbook of Political Science (New York: Oxford, 1996), pp. 133–66. Also recommended in that volume is Garvin Drewry’s “Political Institutions: Legal Perspectives.” The most thorough contemporary treatment of institutionalism, including new hybrid approaches, is found in Rhodes, Bindar, and Rockman’s The Oxford Handbook of Political Institutions (see above). Group theory may be best explored in Arthur Bentley’s The Process of Government: A Study of Social Pressures (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2008 [now available from Nabu Press, 2010]) and David Truman’s The Governmental Process: Political Interests and Public Opinion (New York: Knopf, 1951). See also Earl Latham’s Group Basis of Politics (New York: Octagon Press, 1952/1965) or Sidney Verba’s Small Groups and Political Behavior: A Study of Leadership (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972). Some of the most compelling work in group theory is written by Jane Mansbridge. See her Beyond Adversary Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983). For power theory, Stephen Lukes’s seminal work Power, A Radical View, 2nd ed. (New York: Palgrave,

114

the study of politics

2004) remains the best next step, though a compelling read of manipulatory forms of power, especially useful for those interested in using power theory in studies of the mass media, is found in Robert Goodin’s Manipulatory Politics (New Haven, CT : Yale University Press, 1980). See also C. Wright Mills’s The Power Elite (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956/2000). For examples of finding hybrid potential for power theory, see Lukes’s edited collection Power: A Radical View (New York: NYU Press, 1986). For structural functionalism, the best next-step reading would be found in George Ritzer’s Sociological Theory, 4th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1992). A clear and concise treatment is found in Theodore Lowi’s “Toward Functionalism in Political Science: The Case of Innovation in Party Systems,” in the American Political Science Review 57.3 (September 1963): 570–83. The chapter on structural functionalism in Donald Kurtz’s Political Anthropology: Power and Paradigms (Boulder, CO : Westview, 2001) provides a more recent treatment. For rational choice theory, the best book to begin with remains Anthony Down’s An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Addison Wesley, 1997). As a solid next step, see Mervin Hinich and Michael Munger’s Analytical Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997). See also Steven Brams’s Paradoxes in Politics: An Introduction to the Nonobvious in Political Science (New York: Free Press, 2007). For a rendering of group theory and rational choice theory, see Mancour Olsen’s The Logic of Collective Action: Public Good and the Theory of Groups (Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 1965). For a more straightforward application in political contexts, see Tom Flanagan’s Game Theory and Canadian Politics (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998). Flanagan is an intellectual advisor to the conservative movement in Canada. A well-tested though long book in rational choice theory is Dennis Mueller’s Public Choice, 3rd ed. (Cambridge: New York, 2003). For an early statement on systems theory in international politics, see Karl Deutsch’s The Nerves of Government (New York: Free Press, 1966). Though David Easton’s later work became more theoretically expansive, see his A Systems Analysis of Political Life (New York: John Wiley, 1965). For a more comparative setting of the systems approach, see Lucien Pye’s Communication and Political Development (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963). For those interested in pursuing behaviouralist studies, see Richard L.

the science of political studies

115

Cole’s Introduction to Political Inquiry (New York: Macmillan, 1980), Phillip Pollock III ’s The Essentials of Political Analysis (Washington, DC : CQ Press, 2008), or Gary King, Robert Keohane, and Sidney Verba, Designing Social Inquiry (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994). Those who wish to trace the recent lineage of sociobiological approaches might begin with Thomas Thorson’s Bio-Politics (New York: Holt-Rinehart, 1970). The evolutionary argument is critically canvassed in Karl Degler’s In Search of Human Nature: The Decline and Revival of Darwinism in American Social Thought (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).

This page intentionally left blank

Chapter Four

interpretive political studies

By the middle of the twentieth century, the study of politics was divided between Anglo-American approaches that endorsed empiricist ambitions and European (continental) approaches that were interpretive and critical. The philosophical roots of continental social studies may be found in the philosophical anthropology of Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the eighteenth century, the dialectical historicism of Hegel (discussed in Chapter Two) and the critical analysis of economy of Marx (see Chapter Five) in the nineteenth century, and a linguistic turn in philosophy, sometimes associated with Ludwig Wittgenstein, near the beginning of the twentieth. The conception of language employed in this latter turn is of the sort found in the discipline of linguistics. It includes conceptual frameworks, the subtlety and complexity of signs and symbols, the layers of meaning and literary devices within a linguistic practice, as well as semantics and syntax. Rousseau can be seen to have laid the groundwork for this linguistic turn in both interpretive and critical social studies. He held that while our capacity for language was natural and while some linguistic practices are closer than others to our authenticity as human beings, the linguistic practices we adopt become constitutive of our agency, and we act from within a linguistic practice. This asserted fundamentality of language to conduct is at the core of interpretivism.38 38 Rousseau argued further that the language we have historically adopted has effectively imprisoned us in social, economic, and political conditions at odds with our human potential. That is, while he held language to determine our ways of life, he also held that there is human potential below language, a potential that language can either frustrate or enable. This argument served the development of critical theory, distinguishing it from contemporary interpretivism, which argues that language is at the very bottom of our humanity.

117

118

the study of politics

Interpretive social science searches for the meaning of texts, events, and human conduct in general, rather than for the sorts of causes sought in the study of science. Humans, one might say, are inherently meaning makers. Language is the means by which human beings make meaning, and, in a sense, the way in which we make our world(s).39 Accordingly, making sense of the language by which we define ourselves and make our world meaningful is the best means of understanding ourselves, our societies, and our humanity. For interpretivism, a way of life is primarily a linguistic practice. Accordingly, knowing fully the significance expressed in a way of life, or in the events or human conduct within it, is the basis of explanation in interpretive studies. The interpretivist study of politics is for this reason focused on political culture, borrowing heavily from the methodological tools of literary criticism as well as those of philosophical and cultural anthropology. The key agency assumption of interpretivism is that human beings are inherently motivated to express and to define our identity. The ontological assumptions hold that human conduct is distinctively the expression of meaning and that the foundational feature of our humanity is our capacity for complex language. Meaning is made by reference to the linguistic cultures to which we have access. As humans we are inherently reflexive: we define ourselves by choosing and aligning our personal significance with the meanings in our own culture, or in other cultures to which we have access. Such reflexivity is the source of our individual identity. Epistemologically, interpretivism holds that we can explain human conduct by close interpretive attention to how human beings realize identity from the cultural and linguistic portraits available in society and from history. To understand human conduct is to understand the culture of meaning by reference to which people define themselves and their world. Knowing what the range of available meanings and linguistic practices are for a society or for particular language users provides something 39 The most provocative version of this theory is the radically idealist one that contends that effectively there is no natural world. A milder version is that we have access to a natural objective world only by way of language, such that the world is only what we agree to say it is, that the objective world is inherently caught up with human intentions and meaning. The attempt to see the natural world free of our intentions and language is partly what is meant by the eidetic reduction in phenomenological analysis.

interpretive political studies

119

of a basis for prediction. To the extent that a linguistic practice is coherent, and assuming a degree of consistency in the identity of individual persons, we can at least narrow the sorts of conduct that we might expect of a human subject. We do so partly by understanding what the possible range of coherent meanings is for such conduct in the subject’s society, and partly by knowing something of how the subject has come to identify the integrity of his or her life within this menu of meaning. Though not perfectly identical, this epistemological process is similar to how we can come to rule out certain sorts of conduct for the characters we find in literature, namely, that some actions would simply not be available to them, given the linguistic culture in which they are set or by seeing that the consistency of identity of a character would render certain courses of action incomprehensible. Language is inherently tied to our consciousness, in the sense that we cannot think without it. Accordingly, language is tied to our voluntary action, which presumes a degree of deliberation. To understand how our conduct is governed by the language through which we think about and understand ourselves, and act in the world—especially in exercising our capacity for symbolic representation or for irony and paradox—is to recognize how human beings are ontologically distinct from other parts of nature. Interpretivism, like group theory and institutionalism, is communitarian (rather than methodologically individualist), construing our lived realities to be essentially social and interpersonal. We are social creatures first; our society provides the language(s) from which our individuality is composed. Therefore, although we may experience the world as individuals, the language we use to express our individuality is socially given. Because individual conduct has meaning, only in the context of (a culture of) linguistic practices, society is more fundamental to our humanity than the fact that we are housed in individual bodies or possess individualized wills. Even when our conduct is experienced as creative or spontaneous, the meaning it expresses is significant only against a background of linguistic-cultural patterns. In a similar way, the improvisation of jazz musicians may be said to both proceed from and react against forms of expression given within a musical culture. Interpretive social studies are closely related to interpretive work in literature or film studies. As suggested above, to understand a character’s

120

the study of politics

conduct in a novel or film, we relate it to the broader meaning of the text, its cultural and historical setting, the narrative pattern in which the character’s conduct transpires, the words used to express the identity of the character, and so on. In advancing accounts (as explanations of why the character acts as he or she does), we rely upon standards of coherence and consistency, typically offering citations of passages of the text as evidence. If a character’s conduct has political meaning, we attend to how his or her conduct relates to standards of authority and to the way in which power is construed within the text and in the broader politico-cultural context. We might attend to the extant discourse on authority within the society and time in which the narrative is lodged. Such thinking about the meaning of a character’s or a group’s conduct in a piece of literature, then, is indicative of the sort of work done in interpretive political studies, where we treat people and events as if they were textual.40 Interpretive political studies enjoys a much closer relationship to literary studies in the humanities than to empiricist science. In interpretive political studies, we read the world of political events as if we were reading novels, musical scores, or even the meaning of a painting. Human conduct is understood to be set in a text or in a complex of texts (via intertextual, subtextual, and otherwise layered or relational meaning). When I vote for a political party, I am understood to be choosing from a given range of ways of understanding and valuing myself in my community (or communities) of significance, seeing some features as more important than others, identifying myself with them and re-affirming this identity by voting. To explain the vote, then, is to give a coherent, complete, and critically assessed account of the meaning it expresses for a political actor within a particular society at a particular time. And to explain an electoral outcome is to identify what it means generally for those who produce it, providing a reading of the meaning of the vote. To read a vote is similar in this way to reading a text, where the meaning of the vote relates to the narrative and political cultural setting preceding it.

40 This is partly why a course in politics and literature is often found on political studies curricula, suggestive of one of the lines of inter-/multidisciplinarity currently popular in scholarly communities.

interpretive political studies

121

The linguistic turn in political studies places explanation and prediction within a different ontological, agency, and epistemological order than found in the paradigms of the Enlightenment. It assumes communitarian ontology; the folk-psychological account of agency it adopts holds that our conduct stems from what we value and how we express meaning and identity in and about the world; and epistemologically it relies on coherence rather than correspondence, testing the truth of claims by reference to the degree to which they are coherent with the meanings provided in societies and in the broader expression of our lives. Interpretive studies requires us to get closer to the subjects of our study, close enough to begin to see the world from their perspective, from within their linguistic culture, rather than the distance required in science to render them free from our interest in them. We turn below to distinguishing various interpretive approaches in political studies. Each should be seen, initially at least, in terms of the general agency, ontological, and epistemological features of interpretivism that have been introduced here. While they are certainly distinguishable, interpretive core approaches are more alike than were the competing approaches in the science of political studies surveyed in the previous chapter, allowing us to speak with some confidence of an interpretivist school.

Textual Analysis Statement of Approach

As we have seen, the central claims of interpretivism are that human beings live within communities of shared language and that human conduct is fundamentally the expression of meaning. Textual analysis in political studies focuses on interpreting texts (narrative, expository, musical, and other artistic forms) taken to be significant for and representative of a political culture. The meaning of a text is taken as a representation of meaning within society, where representation is understood as standing in for something, and, in the sense of artistic representation, where sounds, pictures, signs, and symbols direct us to and reveal meaning. Literature and music speak from, of, and to a culture, and to some degree a political culture; in part we compose our identities by reference

122

the study of politics

to such signifiers.41 The meaning found in texts is rendered in the complexities of expression, in semantics, in literary form (such as tragedy), and in layers of meaning, including subtextual and intertextual references, ambiguity, metaphor, and irony. Analysis of text involves identifying context and setting, the form of the narrative, development (typically of conflict), a variety of coherences, the revealed intentions of its characters or actors, the intentional and cognitive paradigms of the characters and the author, the work’s symbolic configuration, its inter- and subtextual meanings, the inner psychological dispositions of its characters, the ontological assumptions of both the author and the text, the text’s underlying teleology (its inherent goals and values as these are advanced by the author and may affect the reader), and a host of other considerations. Interpretive devices include reading the code of the message, i.e., how symbolic and other forms of meaning are hidden beneath the surface of the text. Other interpretive devices employed as a way of entering a text, set aside when the meaning of the text is revealed, include applying a political theory or readings of similar texts or contemporary events to the meaning of a text. Others simply work from an initial thesis about a text that is subsequently supported or refuted. The techniques of textual analysis are complex and varied. Textual analysis reveals the assumptions, beliefs, values, affective orientations, goals, and conceptual frameworks of the culture that a text represents. To understand fictitious characters in this way is to gain indirect access to the lives that fictional characters represent, by way of the meaning that both share. It provides a basis for anticipating the conduct of the people and culture represented, teaching us what to expect in the conduct of characters within a culture as if they were characters in a narrative text. Novels, films, and television shows speak from and to a political culture even when they are not principally intended to do so. They carry and shape parts of the meaning of a culture, even when they are opposing or supplanting it. Moreover, the text of a culture open in this way is not limited to the narrative form. Consider the way in which language and musical features in a popular song promote or criticize a way of understanding our relationships to one another. Attention to the non-narrative 41 The relationship between the cultures of human meaning and the texts that represent them may be construed as dialectical.

interpretive political studies

123

or non-expository expressive products of political culture also provides access to how individuals and groups signify identity. While rock and roll may not have transformed the political world, it was part of the representative interactions by which a generation came to think of itself differently as people and as citizens, especially regarding questions of power, authority, equality, freedom, and the force of existing norms. So too, arguably, was the jazz and folk music before it and the hip-hop after it. Theoretical Assumptions

Some of the agency, ontological, and epistemological assumptions of textual analysis were introduced briefly in the general introduction to this chapter. As human beings we are understood to be acting through the linguistic practices with which we make sense of ourselves, others, and the world more broadly. Human political conduct is understood as stemming from a desire to render our identity and make our lives (including our political lives) meaningful. In satisfying the desire to make our lives meaningful, we rely upon culture, past and present, from our own society or from others. We find ways of expressing the meaning of our lives and relating to one another by reference to shared texts, shared language, and shared stories. Textual analysis holds meaning in the literature, arts, and various forms of political expression. It holds, as the rock music reference suggests, that patterns of authority are found laced into how we use language in the common texts of political culture, especially in mass culture. Accordingly, we have access to a political understanding of ourselves and others in literary, expository, and discursive works, as well as in the song, dance, and visual arts of both elite and popular culture. The epistemological assumptions of textual analysis contrast sharply, as we have seen, with those in the positivist empiricist intellectual tradition. Unlike the correspondence theory of truth in empirical positivist studies, where sentences are held to be true by virtue of their correspondence to the objects and forces of the empirical world, textual analysis adheres to a coherence theory of truth. Sentences in interpretation are true if they are fully coherent and consistent with the rest of a text and, to an extent, with the other texts within the culture to which they implicitly or explicitly refer. To get a further sense of coherence theory at work in textual analysis, recall discussions that you have had regarding novels or

124

the study of politics

films. In such discussion, it is occasionally asserted that a particular conduct is not in keeping with what the text has established as the character of, say, its protagonist. “She simply wouldn’t have done that,” you might say, “given everything we know of her and the context of her life and past conduct as revealed by the narrative.” Or recall novels where the conclusion of a narrative is simply not plausible, given the deeper assumptions about the world in which the author has situated the text—where, for instance, characters realize deeply set community values in a strongly individualistic narrative. Some claims about sentences in texts don’t ring true; they simply could not be true if the rest of the text was assumed to be. In a basic sense, coherence criteria are about coherence in the use of language. It is tempting to suggest that sentences in interpretation do not ring true if they are analytically flawed or do not follow valid logical rules. But interpretivists bring a wider reading to coherence, including the literary or rhetorical force of a metaphor, and the significance of irony in the meaningful use of language. Textual analysis has considerable folk theory currency. It relates well to how we ordinarily understand the social world that we occupy with others, when we attempt to make sense of their conduct. We rely significantly upon the meaning found in language, culture, and society. To act effectively in a social context we rely on the coherent identity of others, their patterns of self-reference and self-understanding, the history of their interpersonal behaviour, the cultural reference points they use to make their lives meaningful. We read them, that is, as if they were found in the words of a play, novel, or our favourite sitcom. Human conduct is a product of human thought, human thought requires language, human beings seek meaning, and they are more or less coherent and consistent beings over time in the way they think, speak, and act in the world—this all means that the difference between a character in a novel or play and an actual political agent is not as ontologically stark as might be thought. Reading the texts of a political culture is a promising means to understanding it. Criticism

One criticism levelled against textual interpretivists is that they are caught up, by the terms of their approach, in cultural or historical relativism. The charge is that one has complete access to the full meaning of

interpretive political studies

125

only one’s own cultural texts, that there is no way of completely entering the texts of different cultures or times, or even a diversity of sub-cultures within one’s own culture, without misrepresenting something important. Comparative political studies, accordingly, becomes impossible. How can we ever really understand the works of Shakespeare or Jane Austen without living within the culture of meanings that their works engage? How can we understand Hobbes, for instance, without understanding the historical and cultural context in which he wrote? How can we really understand jazz, folk, rock, or hip-hop across generational divides? All accounts that seek to explain such context to us are themselves caught up in the same epistemological problem, namely, that such explanations can come only from within the web of meaning that we are seeking to understand. As the discipline of history is itself a linguistic practice, to read Hobbes in the present through the history of the period is merely to superimpose a current linguistic (and related cultural) practice upon another, without independent standards of reference as means of objective translation between the two. Interpretivists argue that there are human meanings that transcend the diversity of our linguistic practices, cultures, and time, by reference to which we may translate meanings in comparison and contrast. However, it is not clear whether or not textual analysis itself is an epistemologically effective means to discover such inherent commonality across diversity. Interpretivists offer a close but critical reading of the text, one that is calibrated to avoid the overdeterminism of the meaning of the text by the linguistic culture of the reader. But whether this is sufficient remains an open question. Textual analysis can also be said to suffer from too great a degree of subjectivity, where analysts bring something of their self-understanding, life experience, and commitments to a reading of the text. The subjectivity of textual analysis is mitigated to an extent by self- and discursive-scholarly interrogation, alerting us to those occasions when our asserted interpretive insights are simply the biases we bring to a text. Interpretivism also relies upon the confirmation of readings of a text by other scholars. Just as in the traditional account of natural science, where the asserted truth of a finding is dependent upon its confirmation in separate studies over time, in interpretivism discussion between analysts about the meanings and cogency of a particular reading of a text

126

the study of politics

allows for mistaken or incomplete accounts to be replaced by superior ones. Inter-subject confirmation typically requires the citation of textual evidence for particular lines of interpretive coherence, just as one requires evidence in scholarly scientific work. Indeed, interpersonal criticism and confirmation of readings of such artforms as literature, film, and music are regularly found in most good pub and café discourse, as we seek to negotiate the meaning of a text. Similarly, interpretive social science requires discursive intersubjectivity and collegial criticism to achieve scholarly excellence. Interpretations must meet the standard of comprehensive coherence, textual evidence, inter-subject confirmation, and interrogative critical introspection. And these remain, in scholarly practice, persistently open to challenge by others seeking to make independent sense of a text in question. Textual analysis is also open to the sort of criticism lodged against other core approaches, namely, that it applies a circular theory to phenomena, which in the case of interpretation involves a circular system of meaning. The meaning of one claim about a text turns upon its coherence with the assumption of other meanings, which turns upon the first. A reading of a text, like rationalization of our behaviour, may accordingly be coherent while missing the truth of the text or the human world it represents. Any attempt to replant texts in more empirical accounts of agency arguably entails replanting them in nothing more than another system of applied significance. However, interpretivism holds that the circularity of discerned meaning in texts reflects the inter-referential coherence of our lives as human beings and that of the society from and to which a text speaks. The challenge is simply to find the right pattern of coherent meaning. We live in webs of meaning, and our texts are, not surprisingly, web-like. Discerning the meaning of a text from within it remains a viable foundation for understanding the meaning of political culture. Trying to find a causal, independant, linear, and analytically sharp perspective below or outside a text to discern its meaning is simply the application of another web of language, another story about the text.

interpretive political studies

127

Applications

Standard applications of interpretivism are found in readings of popular culture. A common interpretivist project engages the texts of popular culture, in popular film, television, popular music, seeking to identify what political meanings and values are revealed in these texts and how these resonate within the broader political culture. One might compare and contrast the politically significant features of elite and popular texts between national or other political communities. How do the popular narratives, say of the United States, Canada, and Mexico, differ? Alternatively, one could read journalistic accounts of electoral competition in these countries. Even the reading of great literature, music, art, and dance—of one’s time, across comparative contexts, and over time— offers a rich sort of textual project in political studies, where such works are typically deeply engrained expressions of what their authors think is true of their own or other ways of life. On the basis of discerning significant commonalities and differences in these ways, one might be able to identify deeper issues of meaning in the authority and power relations within and across borders. The most common objects of textual interpretivism in political studies, beyond literature studies, have been studies of the mass media, where the message is revealed in language, symbol, and code, and where the mass media are taken as the location for making and negotiating meaning. Studying the expository and narrative work by journalists is also a productive and promising use of the textual approach, especially for those early in their research careers with modest research budgets. Here, looking for implicit meanings and forms in expositional and narrative treatments of events, looking at how things are said, looking for what is not said, and looking for the degree to which journalistic work resonates with different interest groups are a few of the foci of such analysis. One sort of interpretive analysis employed in political studies is content analysis. Here a representative selection of text provided by the mass media or from public events is assessed using both quantitative and qualitative measures of determining significance. One might, for instance, count how often in a text one finds the first-person singular pronoun, or we/they dichotomies, or the word “power,” each revealing an implicit message carried by a text. Qualitatively, one might be able to identify the

128

the study of politics

significance, say, of the persistent use of the metaphor of the family in the public addresses of a political party. Content textual analysis often attends to the use of rhetoric, codes, symbols, and other indicators of implicit meaning within a text. Though it is a form of analysis favoured by those more empirically inclined, it remains interpretive as it describes and seeks to explain the meaning of a political culture or event by reference to the ways in which language is used. Many readers will have had occasion to employ literature as a means of understanding politics, culture, and society in English or comparative literature courses in undergraduate programs. As it borrows its methodology from literary criticism and comparative literary analysis, textual analysis in political studies opens an obvious avenue for multi- or interdisciplinary studies. The promise of textual analysis as a means of discerning political meaning also supports offering “politics and literature,” “politics and popular culture,” and similar courses in the political studies curriculum.

(Political) Cultural Studies Statement of Approach

At the heart of the interpretivist approach to political studies is the notion that cultures and events within them can be treated essentially as if they were narrative or discursive (or indeed musical or artistic) texts. Though more complex than reading a text, reading a culture is in principle similar. In a close reading of text, one has to be attentive to the meanings of the text, identifying underlying values, remaining open to possible divergent accounts, and resolving interpretive issues by critical discussion with others, all the while employing coherence as a key standard of truth. Reading a culture or events within a culture, especially other than one’s own, also requires an open-minded and attentive engagement with the complexity and sometimes inherent diversity of meanings within it. Those who travel extensively may find themselves surprised by the conduct of those whom they meet because their assumptions about the world are different from their own. Reading a culture or event requires situating oneself in another’s context, sensibilities,

interpretive political studies

129

and linguistic practices, and testing one’s reading both with members of the subject culture and with those who have paid scholarly attention to it. Political events are asserted in cultural analysis to be inherently similar to literary texts or other representations of our humanity. We have some access to political understanding through a close reading of real-world texts, and we can compare and contrast these across different communities of significance. Moreover, the cultural analysis of political events might even enable something of the underlying truth of politics to be discerned (beyond the claim that humans are meaning makers who do so by constructing categories of power, authority, equality, difference, and freedom). To the extent that there are truths about politics that are inherent to human societies, these will be discerned from findings across comparative political cultural studies, just as we can find common features of our humanity in comparative literature. Treating political events as if they were narrative, expository, or artistic events also provides a sort of predictive force. We are able to predict, from the day-to-day narrative of politics, what it would be coherent and consistent to expect a person to do or say, just as if he or she were a character in a novel. As we saw above, politics and government can be said to have a narrative framework just as novels or plays do. More provocatively, one might say that all politics is theatre. However, there is a wider conception of political cultural studies that is indebted more to anthropology than to literary theory. Cultural anthropology is the study of other cultures, including political culture. It employs a wide variety of methodological approaches to situate the work of analysts within the meaning configurations of societies, looking for regularities of expression, the subtlety of language, how events signify, what expressive identities are found, and what values operate in the political, social, and economic dimensions by which people constitute their public lives. Ideally, such studies allow analysts to account for comparative political cultures without merely imposing the interpretive meanings of their own linguistic and normative community upon other cultures. The most significant researcher to employ an interpretive core approach to cultural studies is Clifford Geertz. When he was not working in the field, Geertz, whose Ph.D. was from Harvard, spent much of his career at Princeton. From the remarkable list of his published works, his

130

the study of politics

The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1977) won the 1974 Sorokin Award of the American Sociological Association. Central for those who wish to employ interpretive cultural studies is his “From the Native’s Point of View” collected in Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology (New York: Basic Books, 1983) and elsewhere. While Geertz is not simply oriented to the construction of political culture, some of his work on ideology and culture is clearly important to political studies. More important still are his discussions of method in the interpretive study of society. Those who plan to do fieldwork, even from a competing core approach, would be wise to consult Geertz’s work before proceeding. Amongst other virtues are the ways in which Geertz integrates a respect for the inherent construction of reality with the possibility of knowledge about cultures that stands outside of such constructions. In doing so, he creates some intellectual space between the force of the linguistic turn in cultural studies and the more radical account of the construction of reality found in postmodern theory, considered as one of the critical core approaches of the next chapter. His account also provides a means of resisting the criticism that cultural studies is inherently relativist, a critique that is taken up below. Theoretical Assumptions

The ontological assumptions of political-cultural interpretivism are similar to those of textual analysis.42 The underlying assumption is that human beings are inherently meaning makers fully constituted by the language through which we live our social lives, and that all conduct is traceable to the meaning that language expresses. However, the epistemology is different. In (political) cultural studies we have more or less direct access to the subjects of our attention, to probe the meaning of their conduct through discussion with and close attention to them. The study of those who give meaning to a (political) culture requires finding a tricky relative distance from the subjects one is seeking to understand. One needs, in interpretivist political cultural studies, to be close enough 42 These are very well discussed in Charles Taylor’s two-volume work, cited in the Further Reading section at the end of this chapter. Taylor’s work draws thoughtfully from Geertz’s and from the continental philosophy of the twentieth century. His interpretivist orientation has found him a voice on questions of nationalism in Quebec and the significance of multicultural expression.

interpretive political studies

131

to those subjects in order to see and value the world as they see and value it. One needs to be sufficiently aloof, however, to discern possible meanings from outside the matrix of meaning in which subjects appear to be acting, and especially so if one hopes to translate meanings from one political culture to another.43 Comparative studies of political culture often rely, at least initially, upon language and other meaning indicators that operate across divergent polities. To do so well requires employing comparative references without allowing these to overdetermine the meanings in the political context that one is studying. In some international relations studies, constructivists argue that because political cultures are effectively composed by individuals and groups and are accordingly malleable, change and progress in human affairs may be achieved by reconstructing the narratives of cultures in a way conducive to a common language of peace, security, and justice. The more usual orientation of interpretive studies is not to change the world but merely to understand it. The difficulty in sorting out a posture between sufficient identification with the subjects of one’s analysis and sufficient objective distance animates discussion within, and criticism of, the interpretivist approach to political studies, particularly in the area of cultural analysis. Criticism

To see the world from the eyes of others requires one to take on something of their identities and linguistic practice. The more deeply we know about others in a comparative culture, the more we come to adopt at least some of their cultural features and representations. With greater proximity, however, the task of translating meaning across culture becomes more challenging, as one loses something of the resonance of meaning of one’s original or home culture. One might say that translation between cultures or sub-cultures is not fully possible where there is no common language between them that one can employ. All one has to work with are two (or more) cultures. This is a persistent epistemological problem for this core approach.

43 Geertz’s work is valuable in describing these thresholds and the intellectual orientations associated with them.

132

the study of politics

Moreover, our cross-cultural engagement, especially over time, can alter other cultures. In empirical political studies it is thought inappropriate for analysts to be participants in political affairs, given the political commitments that can attend such participation. In interpretive political cultural studies, however, engaged participation is thought to be crucial to acquiring the meanings to which one is seeking access. This arguably places too much epistemological expectation upon the interpretivist. While self-interrogation and interpersonal, collegial engagement in political cultural studies is valuable, just as it is in textual analysis, getting things right without altering the lives of others may be impossible. Interpretivist political studies can be said to be too open to a sort of cultural domination, simply by bringing values and meanings to a culture that was previously free of them. On the other hand, political cultural interpretivism has also been criticized as endorsing relativism. Because it asserts that meaningful conduct is always situated in cultural meanings stored in the language that expresses them, it is tempted to conclude there are no better and worse ways of being in the world, just different ways. We have no perspective from and by reference to which we can justifiably say that some human communities of meaning are preferable to others for fully realized human lives. This relativist conclusion is at odds with what some say are our deepest intuitions about the nature of our humanity. That interpretivist cultural studies drives us to accept a postulate that we have reason to believe to be untrue or insufficient stands as a powerful critique of the approach. From what has been said of interpretive analysis in this chapter, the conclusions one draws from close and deep reading of events as texts and contexts have little prescriptive force. They allow us to say with justification what should be done only from within the cultural, normative, linguistic coherence of the political culture that they address. Another, related critique of interpretivism comes from critical studies, discussed in the next chapter. Marx famously asserted that “philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it” (in Theses on Feuerbach [New York: Mondial, 1845/2009]). Critical theorists assert that interpretive studies largely serve to justify the status quo. They stop well short of what political studies might and should achieve—transformative development in the lives of all human

interpretive political studies

133

beings. Such development, they assert, is realized by transcending structures of exploitation protected by political culture, so to recover our deeper and truer humanity. Interpretivists miss this deeper project of political emancipation because they treat the language and culture they are seeking to understand as relative. Regardless of this ongoing debate, interpretive analysis provides a compelling account for those who wish to bring the humanities to the heart of political studies. It does justice to our common-sense notions that we are inherently different from other species and that we are principally reflexive meaning makers, whether this fact proves to be to our benefit or eventual destruction. Its folk theory is one we commonly use in understanding our own lives and those with whom we associate, even those with whom we are at odds. Even its epistemological claims are closer to how we understand ourselves and others than the idea that we are living organisms or Newtonian billiard balls. Very good work can be done in political studies from an interpretivist approach and from close analysis of what texts, political cultures, events, and histories mean. However, at the same time, interpretive political studies trades away some of the ambition of competing core approaches to political studies, whether these be to find the forces that act beneath language and meaning, or identifying when it would be wise to intervene in others’ webs of meaning. Whether interpretivism can answer these concerns and ambitions remains far from clear. Part of the answer may lie in the ways in which some interpretivists have sought to relate their work to more objective features of language and a seemingly more objective language for interpretation. One version of such a possibility, linguistic structuralism, is surveyed in the next section. Applications

If we were to seek to understand a change in the leadership of a political party, employing cultural interpretivism, we might focus upon what those responsible for the change in leadership are signifying in the process. We would need to determine how a particular change resonates for others within the party and polity: how, for instance, it changes the way they understand the party in question, and how, if it all, their own sense of identity is renewed or altered by acceptance of the leadership change. It would involve seeing how other political agents, for instance

134

the study of politics

the membership and leadership of the party, come to renew or alter the terms of their attachment to the party in light of the change, and so on. Such analysis might employ qualitative methodology, such as in-depth interviews, an interpretive reading of past events or an examination of the language employed by leadership, membership, and the press, and found in the discussion of ordinary citizens. Or it might involve more quantitative means, for example developing a questionnaire to assess how the people understand the meaning of the event, including collecting text for content analysis. Explaining a leadership change might involve speaking about the results of such inquiry as if one were describing a novel, film, or other text using a narrative framework. One would need to account for the cultural assumptions made by those who give significance to the event. One would need to consider what their conduct signifies in light of their accounts of the leadership change, drawing closer to those who are rendering meaning, while putting in relief accounts that the actors provide that are incoherent with what is known of them and their signifying conduct more generally. Indeed, one might partly treat the text of the event by referring to signifiers of which the agents themselves were unaware, but which might be revealed in the language that they use. Analyses of large-scale events would involve more complex and extensive analyses of meaning, reading shared political culture more broadly in the texts that surround the event, and reading political culture, at least in some contexts, more pluralistically. One of the challenges of such work would be to identify representative subjects for one’s study. Who represents and reveals the meanings of an event for a community or sub-community? As in controversies in the study of history, one would need access to both those who occupy elite positions in society and those who don’t. Like textual analysis, political (cultural) studies can explain and predict events by identifying the meanings they assume and express. In cultural studies one has the advantage of speaking with those who animate a story or other forms of expressions. Though political cultural analysis is more complex than most literary analysis, both allow us to say with some confidence what is unlikely to happen, if not always precisely what will.

interpretive political studies

135

Linguistic Structuralism Statement of Approach

The central claim of linguistic structuralism, as it relates to the interpretive turn in political studies, is that language has common features across its wide diversity in linguistic and cultural practices.44 The central idea is that while semantics and some syntax vary across languages, other syntax and forms of expression are universal. The common syntactical and formal narrative or expository properties—for instance, the subject/predicate quality of language, or the forms of a story—are held to be discernible in all languages.45 These allow us to adopt something of an objective standard of interpretation and cross-cultural translation. Structural linguistics allows that though meaning is profoundly varied across linguistic practices and ways of life, some features of our humanity are common, and these are found in the forms of our communication. Such commonalities between cultures allow for comparative textual and political cultural analysis, even as one continues to hold that all human conduct is grounded in language and that linguistic practices, like ways of life, are diverse. To the extent that we are inherently and foundationally language users, essential structure shapes the ways in which all human beings understand the world, despite our remarkable diversity in linguistic and cultural practices. Perhaps the easiest example of linguistic structure to understand is the notion of binary relationships.46 A binary relationship has the form either “A or B ” or either “A or not A ”. It is asserted that all languages rely on the binary logic of difference or negation. Structuralists maintain that these are inherent to the processes of language, indeed inherent to our capacity to develop language beyond the simplest forms. Readers might wish to think about how they teach very young children a new concept by distinguishing things to which the concept refers from those that 44 A different version of structuralism is advanced as part of the critical theory of Marxism in the next chapter. 45 A structuralist reading of the form of narrative is found in the work of Northrop Frye. An accessible treatment of structuralist and other forms of literary criticism is found in Terry Eagleton, cited at the end of this chapter. 46 Many, but not all, of the core forms of language in linguistic structuralism can be understood as dialectical, as discussed in Chapter Two.

136

the study of politics

are close but not identical.47 As we are commonly reminded on Sesame Street, “one of these things is not like the others.” This sort of teaching works because it is grounded in the ontology of language, in the structural architecture of all languages, and in the very structure of human minds. Viewing such structural features to be common across cultures through common properties of language allows for some comparative analysis in political studies. For instance, it allows us to compare how polities in an international conflict setting identify friends and enemies, even where there may be vast differences between political cultures and even in what friends and enemies signify in such contexts. A linguistic structuralist study of international discourse would accordingly have at least one feature to hold in common—such as the binary opposition friend/enemy—as it seeks to identify differences in the meaning in play as nations interact. Structure is asserted also to be found in all linguistic practices that have subject/predicate relationships, providing diverse languages further common architecture. The central idea of linguistic structuralism is that all cultures have some basic linguistic features in common, thus making these a basis for analysis and introducing a degree of common human foundation into interpretive studies. Our diverse identities as humans provides structuralist interpretivism grounding in the empirical realm and in the natural world, in the inherent structure of the human mind, even as it assumes that our action remains the expression of meaning and identity. Theoretical Assumptions

Most of the theoretical assumptions about interpretive structuralism have been noted in the discussion above. The agency assumption remains the same as in textual and political cultural interpretivism: human beings are essentially meaning makers. Ontologically, however, linguistic structuralism holds that there are features of language that are inherent to language and operate under the diversity of linguistic practices. Structuralist interpretivism, like all language-centred ontology, is methodologically communitarian. Language, like ways of life, is shared in a community, where most of language is built diversely, but where some common 47 In a more dialectical form, one explains a concept by distinguishing it from its opposite, as in door/not-door.

interpretive political studies

137

features operate below diversity. Structural linguistics adds to textual and political cultural interpretivism, that is, the claim that language is layered, with common forms underlying the diverse languages and cultures through which we make our lives meaningful. Human conduct emanates from the desire to make meaning, but such meaning making is shaped by a limited number of inherent features of the human mind. Epistemologically, our conduct can be understood by close attention to how we make meaning in language and culture, and especially by attention to forms that are consistent across linguistic practices. Criticism

One criticism of structuralist interpretivism is that if there are inherent structures of language that are caused by the operation of the human mind, then we should move directly to the study of the structure of the human mind rather than attend to the diverse ways in which we express our lives in cultures. While cultural meaning may be important, it is epiphenomenal, not foundational to human conduct. It is not our desire to make meaning with language that makes us what we are and accounts for how we act as we do, but rather the features of our minds that give rise to language. However, this line of criticism seems unlikely to account for the degree of diversity in linguistic practices, in texts of various sorts, and in political culture. It is enough, one might say, to find that most linguistic practices are structured, to strengthen the comparative force of interpretive studies, without asserting that it is the inherent commonalities that are the complete sources of our conduct. A second line of criticism, offered by many who identify themselves as post-structuralists, holds that the structural features asserted to underlie linguistic practices are merely conventions, often debilitating ones. As this criticism is more directly aimed at Marxist structuralism by other critical theorists, attention is paid to it in Chapter Five. For now it might critically be said that subject/predicate sentence structure, for instance, or the form of the novel, or even the apparent linearity of time, are not natural structures in the human mind, but are instead the products of cultural agreement—at the very least things could be otherwise for human communities of meaning.

138

the study of politics

Applications

Generally speaking, the linguistic structuralist brings common linguistic, narrative, discursive, and artistic form to bear in establishing comparability and translation across the diversity of expression in the interpretive study of political culture. Employing structuralist interpretivism in practice involves seeing how, both across and within the nations, we define who is in and who is out. That is, we employ binary distinctions of inclusion, exclusion, and division in comparing polities, indicating how this basic structure plays out in providing meaningful choice to citizens. The attention paid in comparative politics to “government and opposition” is one such example of this sort of structural organization of meaning and identity in different political cultures. Indeed, it could be said that all politics is a product of the binary structure of the human mind. It has been suggested that international relations studies attends to finding commonalities and differences in the ways in which people define friend and foe in complex configurations. General applications of these sorts hold the basic linguistic structures constant in accounting for political situations, providing something of a means of translating across political cultures. Textual analysis of the mass media could also be structuralist in this way, attending to the implicit structures of representation, the way in which issues are framed according to common structural patterns.

Interpretive Psychoanalysis Statement of Approach

Interpretive psychoanalysis operates in this chapter as an example of interpretive devices. In its fuller articulation, psychoanalysis holds that the human psyche is causal, that the condition of our psyche determines our conduct. “Interpretation” in fully fledged psychoanalysis is the process of discerning what these causal forces are. Interpretive psychoanalysis, however, stops well short of asserting a causal account of

interpretive political studies

139

how subconscious processes of the psyche determine human conduct.48 Instead, it simply borrows the categories of psychological analysis as a means of engaging with the meaning of a text.49 For interpretive studies, psychoanalysis provides a language in which a cluster of features can serve as markers of meanings within a text or political culture. To say that a person is authoritarian, for example, can be simply to assert that he or she displays a number of characteristics. Once we share a definition of the authoritarian personality we can identify political actors without assuming or endorsing any causal account of their conduct. We employ the concept in order to begin to speak meaningfully about what is being signified in a text or event. By speaking about whether political actors are displaying such a cluster of features, we gain access to the meaning of the text or event that is not found on its surface. This kind of interpretive device is common in studies in political philosophy or in studies that use political philosophies to discuss the meaning of the text. For example, we often use a version of Machiavelli’s political taxonomy to explain a contemporary person’s conduct, even though we may well find, in such applications, that the person’s conduct is not Machiavellian. The concept was simply a useful starting point. In such analysis, that is, we use one text as a device to make sense of another. Theoretical Assumptions

Interpretive psychoanalysis need add no agency or ontological assumptions to the interpretations that it serves, providing only categories to employ in entering the texts of political culture. While it is suggestive of a deeper ontology of causality, we need not make causal or ontological assumptions in order to use the taxonomy of the psychoanalytic tradition 48 This fuller account is covered as a form of critical studies in the next chapter. Arguably, some versions of the psychoanalytic school could be represented in regime theory and in the more scientific ambitions of political studies in Chapter Three. Freud and others in the psychoanalytic tradition assert that the conduct and meaning of a personality and identity are caused by deep-seated, natural processes, where neuroses stem from crises in the natural development of our psychologies. 49 We can use other theoretical paradigms as a language of analysis and devices for entering the meaning of texts and events. For instance, one can employ a Hobbesian or Kantian paradigm without adopting the ontology or folk theory of either, employing them strictly as devices. The inclusion of psychoanalytic taxonomy in this section is intended merely as an example of using theory, stripped of its ontology and agency assumptions, as methods of investigating texts or cultures.

140

the study of politics

effectively. It may be, that is, that some features of our linguistic and cultural practices are found in the meaning of our conduct because our conduct stems from natural psychoanalytic processes. Like the analytical studies discussed in Chapter Two, interpretive psychoanalysis and other similar applications of taxonomy to texts and events are only epistemological in force. They merely reveal features of meaning not apparent on the surface of an event or text. Criticism

If psychological categories help us identify the meaning(s) of texts and political cultures, then one might say that they do so because they are not just interpretive devices. It is rather because our language, and the way we make meaning in society and politics, is indeed governed by psychological processes. If psychoanalytic categories are powerful as interpretive devices, they are so because they are causally correct, because the meaning we make is a product of deeper processes in our humanity. This, critics might say, renders interpretivism inherently insufficient. As with structural linguistics, the addition of deeper agency or ontological features as a means of interpreting the meaning of texts and events can come to overdetermine or supplant the basic insight of interpretivism. However, advocates of interpretivist psychoanalysis can counter that the diversity of texts and especially of ways of life belies the presence of such causality. Moreover, they might argue that the application of psychoanalytic categories, except as devices to begin our access into the deeper complexities of meaning in a text or event can render the expression of others an object of our domination. Those who have personally experienced a psychoanalytic accounting of their lives by others know something about such overdetermination, both how unwelcome it can be and how wrong. Interpretive psychoanalysis thus employs some of the categories of psychoanalysis without accepting a full causal account. Applications

Interpretive psychoanalysis can be productive in media studies or leadership studies, providing a way of talking about clusters of characteristics as revealed in the texts we seek to understand. For instance, one might find indicators under the conceptual umbrellas of deference,

interpretive political studies

141

authoritarian or democratic personality, narcissism, gender and sexual repression, or psychological crises. We might well ascribe these clusters of meaning to political culture, to the practices of legislators and political leaders, or to political parties and groups. We might attend to how popular television represents psychological characteristics, leading us to an understanding of what people consume in media representations as they choose their linguistic and cultural communities and personal identities from the values and definitions provided by their culture and history. One might explore, for example, whether narcissism, as a cluster of indicators, is found in the texts and events of some political sub-cultures more than in others. Such ways of reading texts and events could be compared across polities, and they might be useful in identifying converging and divergent representations in the story of globalism. The trick remains finding a rich conceptual way of engaging with a text or event without overdetermining its meaning through the methodological tools one uses to approach it.

Conclusion In this chapter we have focused on the view that what we can know about people is the meaning they express within linguistic communities of significance. Human beings are inherently complex language users and they are essentially meaning oriented. To understand what people are signifying in contexts of shared and contrastive language is to know a lot about them. Indeed, it is to know quite enough, one might say, for a discipline of political studies, especially where politics is thought primarily related to identity. Moreover, given standards of coherence, consistency, and completeness, knowing the meaning of political agents’ conduct allows us to make falsifiable predictions about their conduct. This claim about predictions is especially provocative: those who employ the empiricist approaches discussed in Chapter Three consider interpretivism to be more akin to religious speculation about human beings in medieval thought than to an adequate accounting of political behaviour. They see interpretivism as dangerous in its relativity and inherent subjectivity. Interpretation, empiricism allows, has a role to play in political studies,

142

the study of politics

but it is well short of a definitive one. Meaning, norms, and rules need to be grounded in facts about the empirical world. Language, while not inconsequential, is simply a way of getting other things done. Language and identity, from the empiricist orientation, remains still only a part, indeed a secondary part, of our political lives as humans. Interpretivists dull the empiricist line of attack with the counter that all of the greatest theories of human agency in the empirical approach to political studies are formed in and require language, and that all social science in the empirical vein is simply the application of one or another paradigm of vocabulary, one constructed by agreement within a social scientific community. Moreover, they claim that the requirements of coherence and completeness, and the fact that languages are “sedimented”50 means that interpretation need not be as radically subjective nor as relativistic as critics might initially presume. The interpretivist undeniably remains vulnerable to letting the metaphysicians of medieval life back into the human sciences, after they had been largely shut out by the Enlightenment. The key to distinguishing interpretive from empiricist orientation in sub-approaches is to find implicit in the former the assumption that language and meaning are constitutive of our humanity—that while we live in material bodies, what we do stems primarily from what we think; and what we think, as human beings, we think via complex linguistic practices. The force of interpretivism, especially in its attention to political culture, stands as a critique of the ambitions of those who hold science as the standard of knowledge in political studies, one free of human purposes. In seeking to make its approach more sophisticated, interpretivism employs taxonomies as interpretive devices and can admit a limited set of structuralist features of language. Interpretivists offer one compelling empirical claim, namely, that complex language is a natural capacity of human beings. We are meaning makers, and meaning is made by signs and symbols, by syntax and semantics, by underlying coherence, and by paradox and irony. Indeed, interpretivism may well be moving toward a more empirical account of language as it finds greater commonality across linguistic practices and cultures. 50 Merleau-Ponty uses the concept of sedimentation in his analysis of language, to capture the idea that languages have some constant and established meaning, form, and force. See, for instance, his Prose of the World (Evanston, IL : Northwestern University Press, 1972).

interpretive political studies

143

For those who define power and authority as the core of politics, interpretivism holds that both elements require that political agents know what others mean. Political power requires not just the political resources of the powerful, but also recognition by those over whom they are understood to hold sway. The patterns of such recognition are inherently language based and culturally determined. Language is necessary for an understanding of power and authority, but is it sufficient? This question, at least in part, serves as a starting point for critical political studies, to which we now turn. As we shall see, most critical core approaches argue against interpretivism, while one, postmodernism, radicalizes it.

Further Reading Those looking for more extensive discussion of interpretivism would profit most from reading Charles Taylor’s Philosophical Papers, Vols. 1 and 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). Those interested in political cultural analysis from an interpretive approach should read the work of Clifford Geertz, especially The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1977). Peter Winch’s The Idea of a Social Science and Its Relation to Philosophy (New York: Routledge, 1958/1994) is rightly considered seminal as an expression of the force of the linguistic turn in social studies. Those interested in the variety of approaches to reading literary texts might consult Terry Eagleton’s Literary Theory, 3rd ed. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008). Those interested in the study of linguistic practice as a means of understanding the construction of meaning and identity might investigate ethnomethodology, starting with Harold Garfinkel’s Studies in Ethnomethodology (Englewood Cliffs, NJ : Prentice-Hall, 1967/2010). The impact of interpretive assumptions in social constructivism is found in Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann’s The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (New York: Basic Books, 1977), a demanding read that seeks to finesse the subjectivist and objectivist features of linguistic practices. See also Richard Harvey Brown, Society as Text: Essays on Rhetoric, Reason, and Reality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), arguably an easier read. Those who find linguistic structuralism intriguing

144

the study of politics

should read Claude Lévi-Strauss’s Structural Anthropology (New York: Basic Books, 1974), though some will find this rather heavy. Those interested in the connection between interpretivism and contemporary political sociology would profit from reading something of the literature on symbolic interactionism; the standard work arguably is Herbert Blumer’s Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method (Englewood Cliffs, NJ : Prentice-Hall, 1969). See also Joel Charon, Symbolic Interaction: An Introduction, an Interpretation, an Integration (Englewood Cliffs, NJ : Prentice-Hall, 1985/1995), and Norman Denzin, Symbolic Interactionism and Cultural Studies: The Politics of Interpretation (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1992/2007), though it strongly leans to the critical core approaches introduced in Chapter Five of this text. Anthony Cohen’s The Symbolic Construction of Community (New York: Tavistock, 1985) will also be useful for those interested in interpretive cultural studies.

Chapter Five

critical political studies

Marx’s famous call, that the point of theory is to change the world, is a useful indicator of the critical turn 51 in political studies. It indicates not only a role for political analysts, a call to political action, but also a rejection of interpretivism and empiricism. This chapter addresses six core approaches in critical political studies. All maintain that critically alert experience and oppositional engagement are the proper epistemological basis for the human sciences, and all assert that discerning the objective, developmental conditions of our humanity provides knowledge that enables us to explain and predict human conduct. Core approaches in critical studies share with interpretivism a commitment to engaged study. But they require the analyst to situate himself or herself within the context of the underlying forces at work in the determination of agency, coming to understanding by challenging both systems of power and structure, and conventional wisdom. Critical studies (with the exception of postmodernism) share with empiricism the assertions that there are concrete, natural qualities inherent to human agency (that is, more fundamental than language) and that human action is as analytically objective as are the goals of science. However, critical theory treats most empiricist accounts of social science as ideology and claims that they do not adopt a critical enough posture to the deeper processes of society. Critical theory, then, takes objectivism from empiricism and engagement from interpretivism, while pushing off from both. Tying critical studies together is the epistemological assertion that political understanding stems from the experience of critically engaging 51 See the citation from Theses on Feuerbach on page 132, above.

145

146

the study of politics

concrete relations of everyday life. For Marxism, knowledge stems from praxis and from the experience of resistance. Access to the deepest knowledge about society is garnered only from the perspective of the repressed, oppressed, and otherwise dominated underclass, through resistance to the conditions of their lives. Core approaches in critical studies make different assumptions about the source of our conduct, adopting competing folk theories of human agency, but all hold to the view that inherent to our everyday lives are processes of the denial of the natural, potential, and emergent features of our humanity. Some, like Marxism, find repression in the way in which structures of the division of labour in society exploit our humanity over time. Others find that our conduct is a manifestation of how our natural psychological development is malformed in and by repressive social and cultural relations. Others still hold that human agency is shaped by cultural domination, by the power of others and structures acting through us, controlling the cultural practices and institutions by which we form our identities. Drawing from these and other approaches, feminist critical studies holds society (both historically and currently) to be patriarchal, constructed by and through the domination of women in androcentric institutions and practices. To understand the truth of society for critical studies is to experience it from the perspective of the dominated—which means in feminism from the experience of women in power relations and in stratified social structures. A similar approach is found in critical race studies, where race is understood as a social construct of domination. And there are a variety of sub-approaches and adaptations of core approaches that share the basic features of these critical approaches. Critical theories identify objective human qualities such as our real interests as human beings, our authentic natural selves under conditions of non-repression, or our common humanity as a standard against which processes of domination can be identified.52 The normative principles 52 In postmodernism, however, such controlling conditions are absent. Postmodern critical studies, as we see further in this chapter, is an extension and radicalization of the interpretivist approach, where human life is composed of language and culture. It adds to interpretivism’s subjectivist orientation the additional claim that all texts are products of the prior exercise and institutionalization of power. It is included in this chapter, however, as its epistemology is critical, orienting analysis toward identifying power in the construction of all institutions and conventions.

critical political studies

147

of critical approaches are those, accordingly, of becoming ourselves, of realizing through resistance a release from historical and other forms of domination. According to critical theorists, we ought always to act in such a way as to become what we inherently and deeply are; and, as best we can, we ought to enable others to achieve their inherent humanity as well. The normative orientation of critical studies is analogous to the prescriptions provided by physicians: critical theory supports the realization of conditions by which we may come to understand the world properly and provides a restorative and/or transformational path along which we may orient our subsequent conduct. Only when we position ourselves as agents of change can we begin to see the human world as it actually is, from the perspective of our objective humanity, and from the perspective of our true interests, natural development, material and psychological well-being, and natural freedom as human beings. From a critical perspective, the value-neutral political studies of empiricism and the relativity of interpretivism across cultures are held to fall well short of this task.53

Structuralist Marxism Statement of Approach

Marxism had a profound influence on the study of politics in the twentieth century, both as the basis for critical studies and in contestation with competing accounts. Indeed, most of the approaches in Chapters Three and Four were, at least initially, thrown off their pace by scholarly Marxist criticism. Despite the collapse of most of those regimes in the world that once understood themselves to be Marxist, the critical theory of Marxism is making something of a comeback in political studies. Early students of political science are usually provided some background in Marx, through reference to revolutionary programs in a variety of countries, Lenin’s theory of international imperialism, the 53 The fact that interpretivism merely interprets the world is seen as preventing the deepest understanding of the human condition by failing to adopt a sufficiently critical epistemological edge, even though critical theory favours interpretivism’s treatment of human society as profoundly complex, multi-layered, dialectical, and intertextual.

148

the study of politics

theory of underdevelopment, or critiques of globalization.54 We will consider Marxist theory more generally and generically here, as a competing core approach to the study of politics. Karl Marx’s theory was a critical response to Hegel’s historical, dialectical idealism. Marx sought to ground the development of historic structures not in the necessity of emergent consciousness, as Hegel did, but rather in the concrete, emergent means and relations of production, especially the division of labour in the production of surplus value.55 The Marxist approach to the human sciences has developed over time, especially in the treatment it provides of processes of economically related social, cultural, and politcal development. Most important for political analysis are developments in the Marxist theory of the state. The state is situated in the concrete, inherently conflicting conditions of capitalist development and is seen to be managing or coordinating processes of economic growth and legitimating the exploitation of the lives of human beings. Legitimacy functions, for example, are found in the development of the welfare state. The state serves to protect capitalist relations during periods of economic crisis, by intervention in the economy, by expansion of legitimacy functions, and by force. Later Marxist theory emphasized diversity in class structure as well as the basic structure of capital and labour and attended to processes of consumption in late capitalism, and to the commodification of nature and human life, as an account of capitalism’s longevity. The normative force of Marxist theory stems from a version of humanism, partly by way of sharp criticism of what it takes to be the (oppressive) ideological force of religion. Central to its normative force is Marx’s theory of alienation, which claims that human beings in extractive relationships are alienated from their work, from those who lay 54 Lenin’s most important intellectual work is often claimed to be the insight that capitalism operates internationally, through an international class structure, where those who are structurally involved in the extraction of surplus value can move from nation to nation and state to state to orchestrate such processes. This sort of internationalization of Marxist structuralism is also found in the work of underdevelopment theorists cited below and at the end of the chapter. 55 Because of its attention to material conditions, the Marxist approach is more closely aligned with the empiricism of the Enlightenment than with interpretive studies (even though it shares the idea of structuralist relationships with interpretive structuralism). It also shares a sort of functionalism with structural functionalism.

critical political studies

149

claim to surplus value from the exploitation of their work, from other workers (as they compete both for jobs in times of scarcity and for a share of economic value more generally), and from the inherent potential of their humanity. The theory of alienation also plays a role in the potential of revolutionary action to throw over systems of exploitation, sometimes providing for the conditions of revolt, and sometimes frustrating these conditions by undermining class solidarity. The theory of alienation identifies a state of being human, potential in our prehistory, fully realized only after the final contradictions in economic development have been resolved. One major point of contestation within contemporary Marxist theory concerns whether the processes of economic life are products of deep structures of strict necessity within history—causative structures that are barely open, if at all, to voluntary human agency—or whether such agents as the state, political leadership, and party competition can alter economic processes in a significant or even limited way. Strict structuralist Marxists argue that such agency isn’t provided for in any significant way in the processes of society, viewing such phenomena as inherently governed by the force of the class structure. Only revolution or foundational crises, they contend, can be an effective force of change. Other class-conflict approaches ground agency in the impact of elites exercising power within societies, thereby allowing significant diversity between capitalist societies and, accordingly, greater opportunity for action. Two issues animate contemporary debate within Marxist theory: the centrality of alienation and other normative issues to the approach; and questions regarding the degree of autonomy of the state in capitalist societies, i.e., its capacity to act somewhat independently from (and upon) society and the economy. Such points of contestation may usefully be understood as providing distinctive sub-approaches. Theoretical Assumptions

Despite its complexity, Marxist analysis is established on two fundamental ideas. The first is the ontological assertion that social relations, including political culture, are essentially formed by inherent dialectical tensions in the structures of development through time. For Marxists,

150

the study of politics

every society has a class structure that serves the extraction and exploitation of human value from human work.56 The extraction and concentration of surplus value from human effort enables the development of the material and cultural world. Such development reconfigures the extraction of value from human labour through history. Political ideas and conduct not grounded in the essential class structure of society are ideology, serving the continuing exploitation of human value and frustrating the movement toward a form of life beyond extractive and commodified human relations. Democratic theory and practice, for instance, are seen as merely legitimating extractive socioeconomic processes, as those who are exploited are led to believe (falsely) that they have control over the condition of their lives. Political parties and pressure groups, in the Marxist approach, are understood to enable the organization, management, and legitimation of processes of human value extraction. Universities serve as locations both for the production of technologically advanced means of production and for the integration of the class who own and control the processes of the economy, where critical thinking opposed to the class configuration of society is kept at a relatively safe distance from those within the political economy. Marxist political analysis, then, consists in situating the objects of our academic interest within the particular class structure and relations of the inherently extractive processes within and between societies. In doing so, it attends to the ways in which political culture and competing approaches to the study of politics serve to rationalize these processes. The second core feature of Marxist analysis, as has been said, is its epistemological assertion that knowledge about political and socioeconomic processes emanates from praxis, i.e., from engaging the class system, the state’s enabling roles within it, and the production of culture 56 Marxism is treated here as a structuralist core approach, as distinguished from an account of power. There are two sorts of political economy as sub-approaches of political studies. A “political economy of the right” employs rational choice theory as its form, and a “political economy of the left” employs class analysis as its form. Of the latter there are two types: Marxist structuralism and class conflict studies. The tension between them is captured in the famous Miliband-Poulantzas debate, where Ralph Miliband leans toward a power account and Nicos Poulantzas to a structuralist account. See the New Left Review I.82 (November-December 1973) for the initial battle on these lines. I would treat Milibandian views as a version of power theory in the taxonomy of this text, though both share a similar reading of the underlying condition of human potential that capitalism and prior economic extraction undermine.

critical political studies

151

and ideology from the critical perspective of the underclass, those whose work and lives are exploited. Adequate social science accordingly takes the side of the objective interests of the working class in capitalism or in previous historical epochs, in thorough-going opposition and resistance to the processes of misrepresentation in which they are lodged. Such critical engagement, it is asserted, reveals the concrete structures and patterns of domination that perpetuate the extractive socioeconomic system. Marxist analysis holds that simply postulating the logic of the means and modes of production from the critical perspective of historic underclass is revelatory. To see the world from the perspective of the exploitation of the underclass is to understand how politics actually works, and to begin to predict with confidence future political conduct by tracking the developmental processes and historical logic that the theory identifies. The folk-theoretical agency assumption of Marxist analysis is that human beings are motivated either by their very basic needs to work in exploitative relations or in order to pursue commodities, the achievement of which also requires continuing work exploiting their essential human potential and true human interests. Criticism

Marxist theory, like all critical theory, is provocative. Not surprisingly, it invites and incites counter-arguments. One critique commonly offered is that Marxist societies have failed miserably, both economically and normatively, thus proving the inadequacy of the approach. Or, in a more sophisticated tone, it is asserted that history has not evolved as Marxist theory has predicted, from capitalist crisis to revolution, to the transcendence of capitalist relations, to socialism, and then to the ideal state of the end of history characterized by our recovery from human alienation, achieving fully our inherent humanity. Accordingly this is said to prove that the theory is mistaken. These critiques are not without force, and indeed all strongly causal theories run the risk of claims of insufficiency when their predictions fail or appear to be failing. But these lines of criticism can be deepened in a way that does more justice to the core approach. Arguably the adequate test of Marxism, as a core approach to

152

the study of politics

understanding state and society, is not its provision of a utopian picture of the end of history. One might more fruitfully address the theory at the level of its agency, ontology, and epistemology. The cogency of Marxist theory rests on the folk philosophy account of human beings as fundamentally engaged in satisfying their very basic material needs, a view not vastly different from the agency assumptions of rational choice theory and Hobbesian realism. This inherent human motivation renders our consciousness a product of the relationships necessary for the satisfaction of these basic needs. Throughout history, this motivation has been exploited to maximize the production of the surplus value effectively stolen by the dominant economic class through the accumulation of wealth. Our agency is thus turned against us, inducing us to act within extractive processes against our objective interests, denying the full realization of our human potential as a species and as societies. Extractive relations turn our consciousness against us, producing forms of political culture that are further self-defeating and induce us not to resist the conditions of our lives. Moreover, in late capitalism, mass culture coaxes the underclass to take what meagre gains they have obtained through statelegitimizing functions, spending these on commodities that primarily rationalize the underlying conditions of work, providing an effective consumer base for the further production of commodities. We essentially spend our way back to work, and to the acceptance of the conditions of such work, on goods that are not inherently associated with the realization of our potential as human beings. This false consciousness at the heart of our historical development is essential to Marxist theory, and if it is mistaken, the theory falls. In other words, Marxism asserts the problem of false consciousness as a key feature of its account of political economy. But such a claim is not empirically provable; instead, it can be said to be simply assumed in order to render the approach fully coherent. Marxist theory is also open to the challenge of proving the existence of implicit structures in socioeconomic relations and between the economy and political culture and the state. In Marxism, our reality as human beings resides in the fundamental economic structures that determine our conduct. In this way the structuralism of Marxism is similar to the functionalism of structural functionalism, although the nature of Marxist

critical political studies

153

structures is their oppositional, inherently conflicting qualities. What is real is real between classes, and class relations are inherently conflictive, a matter of inescapable struggle in the realization of our human potential. Critiques of Marxist theory can deny the existence of a dimension of reality that resides underneath our consciousness, conduct, and experience; inherent structures are not directly observable. Marxism can accordingly be criticized as too abstract, too reliant upon categories that are not easily discerned. It relies too heavily upon its predictive force as a test of adequacy. What those who resist the dominant class find is repression or a degree of accommodation; the rest of theory remains speculative, critics charge. Marxist theory rests heavily, as we have said, on its epistemological argument: that social reality may only fully be seen from critical engagement and resistance, a form of social inquiry startlingly at odds with the general posture one is encouraged to take in the social sciences. Indeed, as suggested above, one may find it difficult to prove the existence of structures directly from observation, even if one does find conflict. Still, this is not altogether unlike the paradigm of contemporary physics; that is, not all the interior features and relations of sub-atomic particles are directly observable, yet they are seen to be objective facts. In a similar way, Marxists can claim that a critique of the implicitness of the inherent structures of capitalism is not as strong as it appears, and that it shows the weakness of empiricism rather than questioning the truth of Marxism. Again, much relies on the theory’s ability to explain and predict. Marxism arguably provides a compelling reading of history, where the means and relations of production develop dialectically over time, sometimes by revolution. But its ability to predict the persistence and end of capitalist production seems far less certain. Finally, Marxism is challenged by those who hold that our conduct as human beings is much freer than the asserted structures of Marxism allow. The debate between structure and agency is one that animates considerations of political studies generally, as noted in Chapter One. But within and against Marxism, it provides a persistent source of controversy and theoretical tension. This tension is found in the Marxist idea that a genuine praxis is possible, that the call to arms of the historical underclass, or indeed of those who merely wish to understand state

154

the study of politics

and society, is meaningful. But such resistance appears to be a matter of choice, not of deeper structures determining our conduct. This doesn’t close down Marxism as a core approach, since resistance, even where it is ideologically experienced as the exercise of freedom, can also be seen, by Marxists, as caused by structure, where structural causation is deterministic, not a matter of free choice. Applications

For contemporary Marxism the processes of advanced capitalism are global in form; the class structure of international capitalism transcends borders even as it also configures differently in comparative polities. Differences in the politics and governments of particular states are due in part to the different stages of capitalist development in which they occur, as well as to the way in which each particular stage of development relates to global structures. Although not as commonly employed as it once was, the comparative underdevelopment sub-approach still offers opportunities for valuable case studies of political economies of the global South. The work of Andre Gunder Frank is indicative of the sort of comparative work done by Marxist researchers in the 1960s and 1970s, especially his account of underdevelopment in Latin America. Though he moved away from his initial reading of the nature of the world system, Frank’s early accounts of underdevelopment provide an indication of how Marxist theory found its way into development case studies. Some of Frank’s work is found in Theory and Methodology of World Development: The Writings of Andre Gunder Frank (New York: Palgrave, 2010). Applications of Marxist analysis in both the global North and South adopt an oppositional intellectual posture to the dominant class in its international configuration and the role of the state in these particular nations. Such research involves the use of case studies that seek to find confirmation of the processes of international capitalism in the development of national and regional economies, as well as in their crises. Close class analysis identifies the state and structure of economic exploitation and attends to the instruments of political culture, and often brute force, in legitimating and defending such relations. The state is critically tracked in its role in the perpetuation of the system of economic

critical political studies

155

exploitation, from the use of force to quell rebellion, to the development of the welfare state. Among other similar objects of analysis, Marxist case studies of the global North examine the role of the state in moderating and steering economic life, including the management of economic crisis and the changing role of the mass media, religion, and political culture in reshaping the way in which the underclass relates to the conditions of their lives. Case studies of both the global North and South, in Marxist analysis, attend to the way in which international governing bodies, the formal bodies of global capitalism, coordinate world economic patterns and manage international crises.

Critical Psychoanalysis: The Frankfurt School and Existentialist Psychology Statement of Approach

Psychological categories have appeared previously in our survey of core approaches to the study of politics: (1) in providing qualities of character in regime theory; (2) in brief reference to behaviourism, the theory of stimulus/response; (3) as part of interpretive psychoanalysis; and (4) as suggested by the Marxist theory of alienation. In this section we consider a full-blown psychoanalytic core approach to political studies, treating it as a causal theory grounded in the epistemological assumptions of critical theory. Psychoanalysis came in and out of favour in the twentieth century, in both clinical use and political studies (among other disciplines). Even during ebbs it interestingly addressed what is at work in the conduct of all those who act in political ways. Its modern origins are found in the work of Sigmund Freud, although one can find Freud’s precursors going back to antiquity, as well as subsequent versions of postFreudianism that have responded successfully to some of the strongest arguments against Freud. Grounding a discussion of the critical theory of psychoanalysis in Freud remains problematic, however. His case studies and some of the important features of his account of psychological phenomena have come under effective feminist criticism, rendering it more androcentric than an adequate political analysis would allow. Accordingly, in our

156

the study of politics

discussion of psychoanalytic approaches to the study of politics, we draw from later Freudianism and from two versions of post-Freudianism: the Frankfurt School, which combines a post-Freudian reading of human psychology with the critical materialist orientation of Marxist theory; and existential psychology, which focuses on the social construction of human neuroses, treating these as impediments to freedom and selfdetermination. Despite the diversity found in sub-approaches, new versions, and applications, the psychoanalytic turn in critical theory employs Freudian categories and accepts many of the processes that Freud maintained determined our psychological condition and our conduct. Those who employ critical psychoanalytic approaches maintain that human beings are in significant ways governed by subconscious processes, accessible only via the interrogative and introspective work of psychoanalysis. Though little attention is paid to psychoanalytic approaches in introductory psychology courses in North America, versions of psychoanalytic theory abound in Europe and inform political studies in both continents. Theoretical Assumptions

The psychoanalytic turn in political studies rests on the ontological claim that complex inner patterns and processes of human personality operate below our awareness of them, i.e., in our subconscious. It postulates a framework for the subconscious processes of the inner life of human beings that orients our conduct to pleasure (eros) and to our mortality (thanatos). While sexual desire figures prominently in the inner processes that Freud’s framework identified (most provocatively in the notion of infant sexuality), this has been transposed in post-Freudian analysis to include other features and processes in the construction and orchestration of desire. While childhood has been featured by most psychoanalysis as the location for the acquisition and development of our most important psychological qualities, and of much of our psychological orientation to politics, post-Freudian approaches have also been alert to the ways in which our psychological condition is produced and reinforced, and our psychological health undermined, by popular culture and in relations and institutions of often subtle repression. The core process of human psychological development, however, remains

critical political studies

157

one in which eros and thanatos (lodged for Freud in the analytical category of the id) are processed in the ego, and where the intervening force of sociality and culture (represented in Freudian category of the superego) seek to “civilize” us. The theory discerns two forms of development within the psyche: one that subverts the natural processes of transcending our infantile and childhood desires, producing layers of repression that make us unable to achieve healthy adult personalities; and another that employs the interaction of the ego and superego to moderate and sublimate desire, making us capable of flourishing in human relations as autonomous beings. The concept of psychological repression is pivotal to critical psychoanalytic accounts, especially to those concerned with political implications. The sort of repression that is endemic to psychopathology is employed by human subjects to hide in themselves unresolved crisis in their psychosocial and sexual development, a process in which others (including culture more broadly) are complicit. Such repression is effectively hidden from the people who suffer it, played out in a variety of conduct and feelings, from forms of self-defence to patterns of self-destruction, to rage. In post-Freudian and especially in existentialist psychoanalysis, others play a greater role in processes of repression than in strict Freudianism. In existential psychology, for instance, social institutions are understood to drive a wedge between how one is given to understand oneself in the world and one’s actual experience. In psychoanalytic theory we deny the fact of our insufficient psychological development. Indeed, we defend ourselves against its realization, driving the source of our neuroses deeper and less accessible to us, preventing us from the exploration of such deep-seated forces by a variety of personal displays and diversions. Most provocatively, in existentialist and many post-Freudian accounts, most of us suffer in this way—albeit to varying degrees—not just those whom we brand as mentally ill. The psychoanalytic approach relies upon a notion of psychological wellness, illustrated by those who have effectively navigated the psychological terrain of human maturation, who are free from neuroses and psychopathologies, and whose experience of themselves and of the world is free from defensive, repressive layers of falsification, self-denial, and self-defeat. A condition of psychological wellness, therefore, provides the

158

the study of politics

standard by which neuroses are identified. It serves, as freedom does in power theory and objective interests do in Marxist theory, as the epistemological anchor from which to identify, explain, and predict conduct. Because a degree of pathology is held to be widespread in (especially commercialized) human societies, the perspective accordingly provides a basis for explaining politics and government, especially the deadening, self-defeating qualities of the political culture in which we are currently thought to live. On the psychoanalytic account, in both its Frankfurtian and existentialist versions, political conduct is the outcome of psychological states and processes. To provide an initial example of the sort of claim available from this core approach, one might characterize international terrorism, and a state’s response to it, as the outcome of the rage underlying the personality construction of those who are its principals. Some psychoanalytic political analysis focuses upon the force of pathology in political leadership and on the ways in which political culture is generated to produce and sustain the conditions for such pathology, providing defence mechanisms for denying the psychological repression conditioning human agency. In recent studies of leadership in the West in the latter part of the twentieth century, for instance, political leaders and the generation of which they are a successful part are seen to suffer from the pathology of narcissism. To understand the narcissistic personality, and the terms of its development, is to be able to predict what leaders will do, and what qualities of society and culture will be reinforced. Such work treats leaders’ lives as case studies, seeking to discover in their conduct, their language, and their way of treating challenges, indicators of deeper psychological characteristics, especially pathological tendencies that might help us explain why they acted as they did and predict how they might act in the future. Other analysis attends to the ways in which childhood is shaped in particular societies and the impact of such deep shaping upon emergent political culture, where emphasis is placed on the role of social institutions in the early formation of our psychologies.57 The family, church, 57 One of the most interesting treatments of such processes is found in the existential psychological approach of R.D. Laing. His most provocative and accessible treatment is The Politics of the Family (New York: Pantheon, 1971). A post-Freudian account of the origins of politics in the family is Erik Erikson’s Childhood and Society (New York: Norton, 1950/1998).

critical political studies

159

school, and mass media programming are seen to be particularly important in the formation of children’s personalities and thus predictive of their later conduct as adults. Such applications are attentive to the role of political culture, political practice, and especially patterns of domination and authority as sources of the self, all of which have causal force in the lives of political agents. They offer a critique of the cultural features that we consume or participate in, as these provide ways of rationalizing our experience in order to defy and protect against deeper self-understanding. They also attend to the ways in which culture, and especially political culture, intensifies psychological crisis. Contemporary criticism of popular culture, both by conservatives and by those on the left, is informed by accounts of how the mass media shape and distort our psyches, nurturing our neuroses. The psychoanalytic approach to the study of politics supports normative projects, providing arguments for the reconstruction of cultural institutions (such as democratic institutions, school pedagogy, the church, and the family) with an eye to enhancing their therapeutic, restorative potential. If there is such a thing as an authoritarian personality in those suffering from insufficient processes of human psychological development, for instance, we might create conditions for its avoidance or amelioration in public schools. Indeed, as psychological maturation is associated with democratic citizenship, we might nurture democratic psychological development through public means, including welldesigned political participation. This simplified account of the psychoanalytic approach in political studies should be sufficient to identify its ontology, epistemology, and underlying folk theory. The approach is epistemologically critical, as it adopts the perspective of those suffering the psychological force of social and political institutions and practices as its vantage point, employing a condition of freedom in psychological health as a standard against which our psychological features can be identified. In epistemological terms, it holds that only by critical engagement of the subtle processes of psychological repression can we come to know our actual condition as human beings within particular cultures. The ontological claim of psychoanalysis is that our conduct is governed by subconscious processes mediated by social interaction, where some of the most conventional of our practices

160

the study of politics

in society, from the family to the vote, serve as vehicles that frustrate our psychological maturation. The approach provides a causal (ontological) account of the force of pathology in political and social conduct, postulating that psychological states, within individuals and broadly shared in society—these caused by processes of psychological development or maldevelopment—explain at least some of our political conduct. And it rests upon the agency claim that we act from and through the complex features of our psychologies, including our neuroses, driven either by processes of maturation or by degrees of psychopathology. Psychoanalysis shares a resemblance to Marxist theory, as both posit the potential of our humanity as the standard against which to explain our conduct. In the Frankfurt School, the critical force of psychoanalysis is joined with processes held in Marxism to serve the exploitation of human beings—especially in their alienation from their work, from the other members of their society, and from the potential of their humanity. The Frankfurt School was constituted by a number of the leading critical thinkers of the twentieth century. It included Herbert Marcuse, Theodore Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Jürgen Habermas, though Habermas has moved away from the centrality of psychological processes in his more recent work. Their work animated much of the discourse regarding the significance of the student movement of the late 1960s, and it has remained current and compelling in political studies. The Frankfurtian integration of Marxist and psychoanalytic schools focuses both on the ways in which culture (in late-capitalist, capitalist, and indeed prior economic forms) serves the exploitation and the undoing of our human potential and on how some of the processes of capitalism are buried deep in our psyches. But critical psychoanalysis remains distinct as a core approach from Marxism: it doesn’t require the assertion of a basic contradiction in the economic development of history for its explanatory force. The folk-theoretical assumptions of psychoanalysis attend instead to a basic tension between the underlying drives of our inner psychologies and the fact that we live, as human beings, in social relations. Such conditions are true of our humanity throughout time, being present in antiquity, in the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, and in very similar ways today. The folk theory of psychoanalysis thus asserts the realization of our personalities as individual human beings, and the

critical political studies

161

frustration of such realization by a variety of neuroses and pathologies, as the foundational source of our conduct—not class structure, even though class structure and the processes of late capitalism are found to be obstacles to our psychological emancipation. Criticism

Given their ontological and epistemological proximity, it shouldn’t be surprising to find that lines of criticism against the psychoanalytic approach are similar to those taken against Marxism. The structures and the idea of false consciousness (that we are unable to see our objective interests) are objects of derision by those empiricists critical of Marxism. In a similar way, the existence of the id, ego, and superego and of psychological repression is asserted to be impossible to falsify. Both approaches can be construed as being too theoretically determined. Similarly, critics assert that the two theories explain too much, that any evidence of contrary facts is simply integrated within the remarkably inclusive capacity of each theory. So, for example, if one presents oneself as psychologically well in therapy, such presentations don’t simply disprove the presence of one’s neuroses. Such presentations are treated instead as a defence against the discovery of deeper and unconscious neuroses. Similarly, in Marxist analysis, the vote by a member of the working class for a bourgeois political party is treated not as an indicator of freedom nor the self-aware pursuit of interest, but as an example of false consciousness, as not being able to see and act upon one’s objective interests as a human being. Both core approaches might be thought, therefore, to suffer from being ontologically closed and theoretically overdetermined. Of course many of the approaches surveyed in this text face something of this sort of criticism: at some level of their theory they are too broad and too enveloping of counter-claims. Theories meant to explain human behaviour seem inescapably broadly cast, as the existence of countering instances threatens the integrity and therefore the force of the theory. The very point of political studies, moreover, is to provide theories and approaches that explain all political phenomena. In grand theories such as Marxism and much of the psychoanalytic approach, the ability to account for apparent counter-examples is part of what gives the theory its force, even though it may fall short of the tests of positivist

162

the study of politics

empiricism. Still, Marxist and psychoanalytic core approaches in critical theory seem especially ambitious in their theoretical scope. Work in the psychoanalytic approach is open to another line of criticism, explaining in part why it tends to come in and out of vogue for use in political studies. As was suggested earlier, psychoanalytic theories carry a considerable and arguably too strong a normative force. Characterizations of the pathologies of others may be thought to be merely a nasty way of attacking people, stigmatizing them in a destructive form of name calling. To dismiss a culture as pathologically authoritarian is to make a very strong statement indeed. So, too, are critiques of leaders who are asserted to operate from deep-seated psychopathologies of which they are unaware, such that what they argue they are doing is dismissed as irrelevant, as defence mechanisms against seeing the truth of the crises of their inner lives. In this way psychoanalytic approaches to the study of politics can be construed as being too powerful in their normative force. A counter to such concerns begins with the assertion that those who fail to see how the psychoanalytic qualities of our inner lives and our culture form our political ambition, difficult as this might be to secure from a social scientific standpoint, also fail to attend to one of the most important features of political life, especially where politics involves having others do what they might not otherwise do, and where it involves deferring to those who assert authority. Applications

Two sorts of applications are illustrative of the sort of work that can be done from the psychoanalytic approach. Both were suggested earlier in this section. The first would focus upon political leadership, seeking to discern the sorts of psychological qualities possessed by those who control and exercise political resources in society, or the sorts of psychological patterns in which they are bound up.58 It seeks to explain their interest and approach to political life by psychological autobiography, allowing us to bring a greater understanding of why they act (or acted) as they do, associating such findings with their political success, their preference for ideological or policy perspectives, and especially the turning 58 Here, too, the work of Erik Erikson is a good guide. See his Young Man Luther: A Study in Psychoanalysis and History (New York: Norton, 1958).

critical political studies

163

points in their leadership. This sort of work requires a reasonably solid background, and it is high risk because in getting such analysis wrong one can cause harm. Other studies might attend to broad psychological features prevalent in political cultures, seeking to connect these to processes within the family, within other institutions of society, and especially in the consumption of forms of imagination portrayed in the mass media. Comparative political analysis of the critical psychoanalytic sort is possible, as the approach claims some common categories of explanation, even if indicators of the inner processes of psychological formation may be expressed differently in different political cultures. Critical psychoanalysis is arguably underemployed in political studies, notwithstanding its high stakes, given that political culture and leadership are identified as central locations of politics and authority.

Feminist Analysis Statement of Approach

No survey of core approaches to the study of politics would be complete if it excluded the significant contributions and critical force of feminist theory and scholarship. Like Marxist and post-Freudian critical theory, feminism may be distinguished in a number of sub-approaches and descriptions, from liberal feminist normative claims for equal inclusion in politics and political studies, to critiques of the inherently male-centric orientation of competing approaches, to a distinctive epistemological claim about how one can understand the nature of politics. It is this epistemological orientation of feminist theory that is our central concern here, though if feminist epistemology is right, then normative and other conclusions follow. Moreover, while it may be that feminist theory has borrowed from both Marxist and post-Freudian psychoanalytic approaches (notwithstanding its effective criticism of Freud and Marxist leadership), feminist epistemology might actually entail the undoing of much of the work of Marxist and psychoanalytic theory or, at the very least, might mean some serious reconsideration of those approaches.

164

the study of politics

Feminist scholarship is undeniably compelling, addressing features of politics and government that were previously either not known or treated as insignificant in political studies. It has provided very powerful critiques of work from the perspective of competing accounts. For interpretive studies it has raised serious concern with underlying assumptions about the appropriation and misrepresentation of experience, insight, and voice; and it has provided ways of re-reading texts whose meaning was long thought to have been settled. Against empiricist social science it asserts that the exclusion of women has rendered many approaches inherently andocentric. It has brought a bright light to the ways in which institutions and processes have excluded the recognition and participation of the lives of women, discerning a form of apologetics that simply cannot hold. And it has profoundly altered what we can say with confidence to be the egalitarian features of democracy. It is important to note that, to the extent that a feminist approach identifies gendering as a construction in society, it also speaks to other forms of gender marginalization. It is useful also to see that feminism epistemology relates to other critical theoretical perspectives, for instance to critical race theory, to which we soon turn. Theoretical Assumptions

In critical feminist theory, structural processes of domination are seen to have rendered the experiences (and the lives) of women profoundly different from those of men.59 Gendering involves a process where limited and socially insignificant natural differences between people are abstracted from the completeness and essential equality of human agency and subsequently treated as if they were full representations of the self, in a process referred to as reification. This process is then lodged in culture in a way that forgets such misrepresentation, where our prospects for human emancipation and the recognition of our inherent equality are 59 The account of feminism offered here is in keeping with critical theory more generally. Liberal feminism is better understood as a perspective within power theory, where opportunities for women are systematically limited by men employing political resources. And essentialist feminism, where men and women are said to be foundationally different by nature, can be seen as versions of sociobiological or eco-theoretic accounts. Such accounts focus on the concept of natural and repressed difference in the ontology of gender. For the account of feminism as a core approach here, I am indebted to the work of Alison Jaggar, cited in the Further Reading section below.

critical political studies

165

accordingly undermined. Critical feminist theory thus attends to how misrepresentation of our differences, through the construction of gender, involves patterns of domination. To be a woman in a male-centric society as a consequence of such gendered constructions of dominance, however, is to have access to a distinctive epistemological vantage point that reveals a foundational truth about society and about our humanity in its history. Just as in Marxist theory, where to understand the reality of the world is to experience domination and repression from the position of the underclass, in feminism, to understand the truth about the world is to see it from the vantage point of the experience of women. It is this access to the realities of gendering that establishes feminist theory as a core critical approach in political studies. Generally, in critical theory, the truth about politics and government is best seen from the margins, from the perspective of those who suffer structure, domination, and cultural overdetermination, and especially from the experience of those who resist it. From the first instances of the gendered construction of the family, societal gendering has arguably been central to the lives of women. Beyond this, women have been profoundly marginalized in the institutions and practices of polities and by political culture over time. In feminist theory, the construction of gender is foundational to our social and political reality and our history as human beings, and it serves as a significant source of our political conduct. Constructed gender is achieved by sociological and psychological processes, in and by families, church, and school, among others, and it is reinforced broadly in mass and elite culture, especially by the organization of sentiment and representations of gender in the mass media. In other words, the mass media teach us, mistakenly, how we ought to think and feel in gendered lives. In critical feminism the processes of gendering are seen as being grounded in the structure of patriarchy and its domination of human identity. In these ways and others, critical feminism shares a theoretical resemblance to both Marxism and psychoanalysis even though feminism holds both to be male-centric, despite their critical force. For feminist critical theorists, political studies has hitherto consisted, in significant measure, of ignoring, misrepresenting, or appropriating the lives of women, and accordingly misconstruing the truth

166

the study of politics

about society and polity. One of the ways in which such misrepresentation has worked is in the distinction, posited in political studies and in liberal democracies, between the spheres of public and private life. To the extent that women have been associated with the private sphere of the household and political studies has been oriented to the public sphere of civil society and the state, the reality of the lives of women and the epistemological significance of their exclusion have been rendered invisible within the discipline.60 The feminist approach in political studies brings the critical perspective provided by the experience of women to the re-working of all studies in politics, from how political philosophy has construed political authority and principles of political right, to how the study of political parties emphasizes the inherent competition of politics and thereby fails to see the full potential of democratic life, to how other theories surveyed in this text build male-centric values into the core approaches that they bring to the discipline. Feminist theory lays claim to being a causal theory when it shows how the treatment of women’s lives emanates from male-centric constructs and understandings of the world. These implicit assumptions orchestrate political culture, political practice, and political institutions— indeed, sometimes through the very language we employ in political discourse. Critical feminism, like Marxism and critical psychoanalysis, is also normative in implication, identifying the possibility of forms of social life freer and closer to our inherent humanity. As a core approach, it draws attention to the experience of marginalized women that other approaches have ignored in building a body of knowledge about politics and government, bringing to light topics and processes largely ignored in political studies. It argues strongly for the full inclusion of women in

60 To return momentarily to the concerns of Chapter One, this is partly why politics was defined by reference to power (rather than to government) and why a wide definition of power was stipulated—namely, to avoid winnowing out the lives of women by setting the scope of the discipline with too narrow a conception of power. The force of feminism can be seen through power theory, though it is treated here more structurally. Feminist theory can be employed in interpretive studies, illustrating the meaning of texts by the adoption of feminist taxonomy as interpretive devices. It can alter empiricist social science, for instance, in setting gender-centric variables in behavioural analysis. But its core is critical, where the truth of structures of domination is found by resistance.

critical political studies

167

political studies departments, as the inclusion of marginalized others is central to the intellectual integrity of political studies.61 The ontology of feminism asserts that constructs of gender are deeply set in human lives. In agency terms it asserts that our conduct is significantly governed by gendered identities, products of the sort of repression that attends processes of class construction and psychological development. We act from our identity as gendered selves. Epistemologically it asserts, with other critical theories, that the access we have to truth of the force of constructed gender (as repressed by way of domination) is provided by resistance to gender constructs, whether these be in the family, church, school, the media, government, or departments of political studies. Criticism

As with criticism of Marxist theory, criticism of feminist political theory is sometimes glib, relying upon a degree of misrepresentation of its central claims.62 Regardless, the adequacy of an approach remains firmly rooted in the assumptions it adopts about agency, epistemology, and ontology. One way of considering the relative force of feminist theory as a core approach to the study of politics is to consider whether the experience of women can be represented by men friendly to the theory. Ordinarily the claims of such representation employ the objective interests of women as an epistemological standard. If such a perspective of women can be so represented, then it would seem that adopting other approaches to the study of politics may well be sufficient as long as the interests of women are not sidelined, conceptually or otherwise. Feminist theory, however, denies such a conclusion, contending that representation in this way is epistemologically problematic. The objective interests of those who are the victims of domination, they contend, can be identified and understood only from the perspective of the dominated. The construction of gender may be so complete as to doom any attempt to bridge the epistemological divide between gendered lives. We can only know the depth of gendering from the experience of those whose selves are so dominated. 61 Essentialist feminism, the view that women and men are profoundly different by nature, also provides a strong argument for the equal inclusion of women in political studies. 62 Such misrepresentation can be seen as a well-established psychological defence mechanism.

168

the study of politics

The representation of women by men, employing objective interests or other standards, therefore appears both epistemologically inadequate and politically dangerous. It might be that the truth about gender can be discerned from all gendered selves, but it is more reliable to trust the experience of those whose gender is partly constituted by domination. Those critical of the feminist approach hold these sorts of claims to be too strong, arguing that experience and knowledge about the world is not as caught up with domination as the epistemology of feminism argues it to be. Such critics claim it is possible to know what it is to experience domination, even of a subtle sort, without being the object of it. A related way of assessing the relative force of feminist theory is to see whether its core insights could be achieved by employing other approaches, especially those offered by other critical theory, simply by drawing the focus of these approaches persistently to the question of gender. But this strategy for determining the relative force of feminist theory also runs the risk of begging the question epistemologically. How would we know when our knowledge of gender was adequate? How would we know whether greater attention to the lives of women in competing critical theory was sufficient to account for their experiences? Feminist theory, in countering such strategies, returns to its epistemological grounding, claiming that the constructed lives of women and men are deeply divided. Applications

Feminist research is generally of three types: ongoing and thorough critiques of the gendered assumptions in political studies; collecting the experiences (especially of political action and resistance) and recovering the writings of women, treating these as a basis of deeper knowledge about the political world; and re-identifying the prospects for political society, without the gendered assumptions that have plagued us in the past. To do feminist research is to direct one’s attention to the political from the experience of women’s lives. The objects of analysis are less important than the epistemological perspective adopted. Feminist studies are, in comparative and international fields, the study of women in their relationship to the power, authority, and processes of marginalization and domination, especially in the state, and in international politics and organizations. Case-study comparisons between societies allow for

critical political studies

169

commonalities and differences to be effectively grounded in the experience of women who are engaged in recovering their natural condition of freedom and advancing their objective interests as they understand them. In international theory, attention is especially paid to how patterns of international politics and government are constructed from male-centric conceptions of the world. And, in both international and comparative studies, focus is placed upon women’s efforts to redress the condition of their lives in patriarchal socio-political formations.

Critical Race Theory Statement of Approach

Critical race theory shares a close epistemological similarity to feminist theory.63 In critical race theory the misrepresentation, reification, marginalization, and domination of race are asserted to be central to society, economy, and polity. Race in critical race theory is treated as constructed, in forms of explicit or implicit racism. Accordingly, attention is paid to the experience of race from the perspective of those dominated in and by it, and especially to resistance. Such attention is held to be central to comprehensive and credible political studies. Critical race scholarship may be articulated in the language of either power or structure, though structural features of racial construction are more typical in critical race approaches. Racist constructs are deeply embedded in how we see ourselves and others; they are not simply products of particular people exercising power over others. While racist constructs are attached to some natural differences, it is the way in which differences are incorporated into systems of domination that is the object of analysis from the critical race theory perspective. The construct of race is understood, in critical race theory, to be at work in identity formation and reaffirmation and is played out in continuing subtleties of domination in the social, economic, and political reproduction of advantage. Race, then, is a socially produced, identity-rich construct in human relations experienced as domination in the form of racism. Critical race 63 Critical race theory also has connections to postmodernism, discussed in the next section, as well as to Marxist and psychoanalytic theory.

170

the study of politics

theory shares something of the core idea of humanism, where physical qualities are treated as superficial. Even strong humanism, however, arguably belies, falsifies, and otherwise rationalizes the experience of race, of living within a body of difference within a system of domination. Still, in focusing on the construction of race, critical race theory holds the ontological view that beneath racist structures and power human beings are inherently the same. As with many of the other approaches surveyed in this book, the distinguishing claim of critical race theory remains epistemological. For critical race theorists, the truth about politics is only fully discernible through resistance to the power and structures that constitute racial relations and that produce, reproduce, and sustain racist identity domination. One of the practices in critical race theory, closely associated with its epistemological focus, is remembering and telling personal stories, seeking the truth of racism in narrative form from the lived experience of those whose lives have been constructed and dominated by it. Such storytelling, speaking the truth about the experiences of racial domination, not only is restoratively valuable, as a way of working through the domination of race, but also provides knowledge about how racism operates in the lives of human beings. Attention to the expressed experience of the dominated, in narrative and interview research, employing some of the techniques of interpretive analysis, provides compelling insight. Such narrative techniques, moreover, reveal something of the diversity of the lives of those dominated by racism. Theoretical Assumptions

Critical race theory adopts clear agency and ontological assumptions, and it provides a strong normative edge. On the matter of agency, the contention of critical race theory is that all those who are part of the structures or deeply set patterns that racism produces and protects act, in significant measure, from racialized assumptions and motivations. We all live, in racist societies, through the (typically binary) construction of racialized identities. While not all action is racially motivated, much more is than may initially be thought, and such action is central to patterns of politics and government. Ontologically, the underlying equality between human beings rejects the idea that the binary dichotomies

critical political studies

171

upon which racism trades are natural. Normatively, it provides a strong critique of other approaches to the study of politics, to the extent that they ignore the fundamentality of racial domination, and may be held to reproduce it. And it plainly calls for social transformation and for the deconstruction of racist constructs that deny human beings their freedom and integrity. Epistemologically, critical race theory holds that the racist forms of domination from which we act may be hidden from us. Our racism, in interpersonal relations and broadly in public policy, is found in critical interrogative engagement of how we view “the other.” Even in seemingly humanist ideology (for example, in human rights theory), in processes of representation within political and cultural arenas, and in the systems of education upon which individuals build their lives, powerful (and often latent) racist assumptions can be exposed. Critical race theory also provides for a critical social studies based on ethnicity, where ethnicity is understood to be constructed in patterns of domination, where to be a member of an ethic minority can mean suffering the domination and marginalization of one’s identity. Here again, claims of inherent equality compete with claims of ethnic integrity and diversity. In some theories of identity it is held that possessing an identity drawn from the particular practices and values of an ethnic or even a religious community is necessary for the flourishing of human lives. Indeed, to the extent that language provides a basis for the meaning and coherence of one’s life, the denial of one’s language may accordingly be a measure of the degree of domination within a polity. Plainly, racial, ethnic, religious, and linguistic communities provide sources for the realization of human lives. But research in difference studies needs to respect both difference and our human commonality if it is to contribute to understanding and freeing ourselves from processes and structures of domination. Focusing attention on the processes by which ethnic definitions are played out in patterns of domination provides insight into the force of such constructs within and across national boundaries. It may be that the recognition of ethnic diversity can be more of a prison than a source of meaning, coherence, and autonomy.64 64 This sort of concern is taken up by Katherine Fierlbeck in “Multiculturalism and the Right to Recognition” in Carmichael, Pocklington, and Pyrcz’s Democracy, Rights and Well-Being in Canada, 2nd ed. (Toronto: Holt, 2000).

172

the study of politics

In critical race theory and other identity domination theory, the student of politics relies upon the critical epistemological posture of those who suffer it in order to see the force of identity domination and marginalization. In political studies this includes attending to the critical work of political analysts from communities of identity domination, without appropriation of their experience and insight. Criticism

Criticism of critical race theory is not as commonly found as criticism of competing approaches to the study of politics. This may stem from an unwillingness to say what one thinks to be true, in order not to be seen as racist. Some lines of criticism, however, do exist. As found in criticism of other approaches, one criticism of critical race theory is that the reality of racism and ethnic overdetermination is better accounted for by competing core approaches. Those friendly to Marxist theory maintain that racism and other forms of identity repression stem from the deeper processes of capital accumulation in history; for instance, the racism of slavery is a product of the process of extracting surplus value from exploited human labour. Accordingly, those who otherwise support the force of critical race theory can fail to understand the experience of racism separately from the general processes that their theory provides. Critical race theorists, with feminists, argue that while class exploitation is important, it doesn’t capture the distinctive foundational qualities of gender, race, and ethnic domination. A second line of criticism may be advanced against a number of the approaches in critical theory, namely, that in highlighting the experience of the dominated as the basis for knowledge, we fail to account for the diversity of such experience. While the narrative expression of those who have suffered racism allows for some diversity, the tendency of critical race theory is to generalize across such diversity. It is claimed that the theory overstates the binary constructions of race, setting aside something of the diversity and multiplicity in the lives of those dominated by it. The expressed experience of the peoples of the African diaspora, for instance, is varied in a way that some advocates of critical race theory might not wish to fully acknowledge. Whose experience among many is to count as revealing the reality of racism in the diaspora? What is to

critical political studies

173

be made of the testimony of those, thought to be victims of domination, who expressly deny the force of racism in their lives? Critical race theory, in response to such questions, can rely on humanist values of freedom and equality or common objective interests as standards by which the experience of victims of racism can be assessed. It can assert that the denial of racism in the expressed experience of its victims indicates the degree to which the domination of racism has overtaken even experience. That is, racism is so deeply buried in its objects that even they don’t fully experience its force at a conscious level, in a way similar to how, in Marxism, some suffer false consciousness—that is, they don’t experience the inherent reality of their class in a system of exploitation. However, critical race theorists may also respond that racial construction is not uniform across peoples, that it operates in diverse ways in diverse societies, and that domination is not binary but has many faces and degrees of impact. The test of the scope of diversity is praxis, i.e., using resistance to patterns of power and authority as the best way of identifying the truth of our lives. Still, the binaries that operate in the construction of race, gender, and ethnicity are not easily released without critical theory losing something of its explanatory force. Developing an account that integrates both the binary racist force of “the other” and diversity in the experience of racist domination remains a continuing goal of critical race theory. Applications

As with feminism, critical race theory is found in a wide range of applications, from studies in law and politics, to elite and popular culture (focusing on the mass media’s construction of race), to political economy. Some studies effectively redo work already done but from the perspective of communities marginalized within the racist polity being studied. So, for instance, one might seek to explain the nature of party politics from the perspective of those dominated by racist power and structure. Such studies of racial domination are open to comparative analysis as they seek to identify common vehicles for domination, suppression, and repression. Moreover, the we/they dichotomies of racist domination provide case-study opportunities for critical insight into international politics and organization. The perspective of the critical race theory analyst, however, remains more important than the particular objects of

174

the study of politics

analysis. Indeed, virtually all existing literature in political studies could be reworked or resituated by employing the critical orientation of racism and colonialism as the often underlying dynamic of politics and government. Critical race theory effectively re-orients political studies, to the perspective of the dominated, recognizing the construction of race.

Postmodernism Statement of Approach

Postmodernism is at least as controversial as any of the critical core approaches to the study of politics surveyed above. Indeed, it is arguably more so as it denies the assumption upon which other critical approaches rely. It asserts that there is neither language nor conditions inherent to our humanity that can be said to be true. Such conditions and standards as those taken in other critical theory to serve as guides to what our humanity would be like without the force of debilitating causes acting upon and through us are, for postmodernism, simply products of prior domination. Postmodernists hold that because of the ubiquity of domination, our only human condition is the capacity to exercise our will creatively. Postmodernism seeks to bring the force of critical theory to bear on understanding human lives and institutions—without making what it holds to be the mistaken assumption that there are principles or substantial conditions other than power and domination in human institutions and conventions, including language. Moreover, postmodernism holds that the world as we know it is in the process of decentring, fractioning, and splintering as people come to realize that the institutions and other constructions of our humanity are simply contingent arrangements, and that there is no standard of truth. When the truths of others are effectively challenged one finds only radical freedom: the power to invent a life for oneself. Postmodernism is included in this chapter on critical theory because its epistemological orientation is to unseat accounts of the human world from the perspective of those who challenge them. Postmodernism could have been included earlier as a radical theory of power, claiming that all there is in the world is power and domination and that there is no

critical political studies

175

knowledge in the world that is not part of a system produced by the power of some. Or it could be treated as the most radical of the interpretivist orientations, arguing that human beings live by language and that all forms of language are systems of power. However, postmodernism was generated as a response to structuralist critical-theoretic accounts of our humanity, and it may be best viewed as radicalizing the sorts of critical theories we have already discussed, taking out from under them the assertion that some inherent human conditions or standards of knowledge allow us to distinguish truth from ideology. One way of speaking in postmodernism is to say that it problematizes and interrogates all claims to truth about humanity and human arrangements in order to reveal the domination that underlies them. Marxists, critical feminists, and critical race theorists hold that there are inherent features of our humanity that can be used to identify the nature and degree of domination in the lives of women and in the constructs of racism. Postmodernists, by contrast, deny that any such inherent features of our humanity exist and assert that no knowledge claims about our humanity are true, especially normative ones. Postmodernism is currently popular, arguably because it advocates the most radical approach to political studies. At stake in the debate between postmodernism and all other core approaches surveyed in this book is not only the question of what the truths about political life are, nor even the more modest question of which sentences about political life may be confidently taken to be true, but instead whether or not any knowledge about humanity is available to us. Postmodernism argues that the search for a truth in human affairs that is independent of power is fundamentally misguided. Instead, the role of political studies is to deconstruct conventions and practices, to reveal their sources as constructions based in power rather than truth, thereby creating space for creative forms of life to emerge. In this it shares a strong family resemblance to anarchism. This approach is less startling to many recent students of political studies than to those who teach political studies. Many contemporary students of politics see their world coming apart and they are already inclined to believe that “truth” is culturally, historically, or individually bound. They often come to the study of politics, and especially the study

176

the study of politics

of value, as relativists. While postmodernism is a subtler account of the world than that offered by ethical, historical, and individual relativism, its proximity to such views provides something of an account of its currency in contemporary intellectual life and, ironically, something of its weakness as a core approach. Theoretical Assumptions

Postmodernist analysis stems from the linguistic turn, sharing its theory that we live within meaningful stories or texts, but it radicalizes its insights, relying in part upon twentieth-century existentialism. It asserts that the stories that we employ to govern our lives in related norms, institutions, and linguistic practices are really products of (prior) sedimented power and domination. Institutions and political, social, and cultural practices are real, but their reality is the product of those who have willed them into existence and those who have been captured by them. Postmodernism asserts that human beings live as if we were in prisons, limiting our freedom not from consent, and certainly not from knowledge, but simply from the power of institutions, and the subjective interests they serve. Postmodernist analysis is typically conducted as a deconstruction of apparent realities, as a rediscovery of the political source of norms, practices, and institutions, revealing behind them the covert and implicit limitations of human freedom upon which they are built. Moreover, postmodernism asserts that the current stories of our lives, found in signs and other forms of representation, operate in a cultural malaise that has no inherent value and no fundamental meaning; linguistic signs, icons, norms, and other gestures are, in late capitalism, empty representations or simulacra.65 The signs and symbols—the meanings by which our lives are organized and through which they are currently lived—have only artificial value even though they may appear to us as real. From pastiche to the insignia on our currently favoured clothing, we signify ourselves and our society by representations that are not 65 Signs, stated very simply, are representations of things to which a language refers. I have sought to simplify theoretical linguistics, though readers may well wish to take up both semiotics and structural linguistics as important to the ways in which language composes human conduct. Postmodernism is partly composed of those taking up how language works, as a means to seeing power at its heart.

critical political studies

177

connected to any inherent reality or value. Even when we become alert to the fact that the symbols, signs, representations, and references that we once believed to have meaning are increasingly empty, we continue to be dependent upon them for a sense of identity and a psychological home. The world in postmodernist eyes is accordingly in a process of disintegration, where neither the stories we seek to tell ourselves in a global vocabulary (whether this be in the language of global consumerism or human rights discourse) nor those to which we seek to return are really available to us. Both are disintegrating beyond use. Part of the work of postmodernist analysis is to track the movement of this disintegration. With no underlying reality and truth to fall back upon, with no centre that might hold together a meaningful life, human beings are left facing the future anchorless, radically free to compose new lives or, as is promised by some, finally free to play. Political studies in this condition is more like what postmodernists assert poetry to be than it is like the pursuit of truth found in competing core approaches. Our radically creative play emanates from selves no longer bound by the discipline of monotheism or by the demand for internal integrity in a singular self, but instead from a diversity of selves or aspects of the self, unbound by cognitive architecture. This fracturing of the self, society, and traditional borders provides space not just for personal freedom, but for the creation of new forms of human life. Postmodernism, as should be plain, rests on radical epistemology and ontology. The core ontological idea across the diversity of its advocates is the rejection of the existence of any truth or standards in which social relations may be explained or evaluated that are not already themselves constructed and reinforced by institutional and cultural power. All previous attempts to construct a science of politics or a universal human ethics as if they were inherent human truths and virtues were simply the imposition of cultural products by the will of others. The postmodernist rejection of standards of knowledge includes the denial of the inherent reality of structures, inherent ethical qualities, divinity, and scientific standards of knowledge. The essential ontological assertion is that no reality or truth exists against which we may explain or assess conduct or meaning. Tied to this ontology is the folk-theoretical claim that human beings are motivated falsely through intellectual, normative,

178

the study of politics

and institutional prisons. To relate this all the way back to Plato, we see only unstable shadows yet are motivated to act by them. Such shadows present themselves as normative and intellectual truth, but they are simply representations by which others control us. To the extent that we act in reference to such shadows, we act by the total (implicit) domination of our imagination by the constructions of others. Only resistance and the interrogation of convention can lead one from such prisons. What one discovers is not truth but instead freedom. Epistemologically, one comes to see the inherent domination of conventional knowledge only through a radical, thoroughgoing scepticism, interrogating any claims to truth or value and rendering them unstable. Postmodernism is persistently oriented toward challenging the truth or value assertions of others, especially those whose intellectual roots are in modernity, the Enlightenment, humanism, naturalist theories or structuralism. It constitutes a large part of the post-structuralist turn in social and political theory in the latter part of the twentieth century, reliant upon yet eventually dismissive of interpretivist, Hegelian, Marxist, psychoanalytic, feminist, and critical race theory as these have been described in this book. It shares, as stated above, an intellectual coherence with some aspects of power theory, though in power theory the presence of power is defined in reference to other presumed or determined conditions of human agency, for instance objective interests or a positive condition of freedom. For postmodernism, human freedom is seen simply as a vacuum in which no power exists, a state of existential nothingness into which we playfully will our lives. This radicalization of power theory renders postmodernism without conditions of falsifiability; however, such tests of the force of a theory are dismissed by postmodernist analysis simply as another system of power. These are some of the provocative terms of postmodernism, whose project is to free human beings, to “problematize” what we take as true and meaningful in the conduct of our personal and public lives within society and polity, to challenge the confidence of all competing accounts, in so doing creating space for intellectual innovation. The provocative nature of the postmodern project has arguably been given too much attention in this discussion, though it is important to see something of why it draws such heated contestation, some of which is noted below.

critical political studies

179

Criticism

Perhaps the strongest critique of postmodernism concerns the status of its central categories, especially power and freedom, and the status of assertions that postmodernists make with them. The reader will recall that the presence of power, in the power theory discussed in Chapter Three, is thought to require the stipulation of a condition in which power is absent or ineffective. To say that A has power over B requires that we have some way of distinguishing between acting from the impact of power and acting otherwise. We need this for the claim that B is suffering from the power of A to have much bite. Since we cannot, it appears, always rely upon what B states as the reasons or causes for his or her action, for the degree of his or her actual freedom or even for what he or she “would have done otherwise,” we cannot use testimonial evidence to support power claims. Accordingly, in power theory the presence of power has been taken to be the inverse of either acting on one’s objective interests or acting freely, where free conduct is asserted to be an independently identifiable condition of our humanity. It is important, in trying to develop power as a concept for both power theory and postmodernism, not to rely on tautologies, where freedom is defined inversely by power and power defined inversely by freedom. Postmodern theory seems to suffer from this problem, being unable to claim any condition outside of power as a way of rendering a power claim that isn’t tautological. Power for postmodernists is the absence of freedom, and freedom the absence of power. Such tautology makes it difficult to see how postmodernism can make any claim about the world, for instance that social practices and institutions are products of power. The fact that all bachelors are unmarried men tells us something about the linguistic equivalence of the two concepts, but it tells us nothing about either bachelors or unmarried men. The central assertion of postmodernism is that all bodies of knowledge, conventions, principles, and all claims of truth are mere expressions of power. There appears to be no condition available to them by which we might take this sort of claim itself to be a truth about the world. Postmodernism requires at least one definition or one condition that stands logically independent of power that can be used to say that its central assertion is true. To assert that there is one such truth is to deny that all claims of truth are simply the exercise of power. Without

180

the study of politics

establishing one truth (a condition of freedom other than the absence of power), postmodernism may be viewed simply as a language game. Postmodernists, in asserting that claims of knowledge are products of power, are forced to admit that such assertions are also just the expression of power of those making them. In this way, postmodern critical theory may be said to be too strong a theory and the force of its criticism self-defeating. Like the approach itself, lines of criticism of postmodernism are provocative, indicating perhaps why postmodern theory and competing approaches remain lines of battle in some political studies departments. What we are left with, after the dust has settled a bit, is the critical force of postmodernism, one that effectively leaves some of our most deeply held beliefs and seemingly most secure institutions open to the charge that they are products of power, and not, as we might have thought, products of knowledge. It is an approach that helps us understand the increasing banality and emptiness of mass culture—where there are no secure standards of value, where everything is seemingly rendered of equal value, and where the commercialization of culture has no effective lines of resistance. It provides a compelling picture of the splintering of a world without any epistemological confidence. And it provides a compelling way of understanding the new politics of identity, in which increasing degrees of deeply fracturing conflict are undeniably responses to the imposition of power. Applications

Postmodernist analysts are typically involved in deconstruction, producing a genealogy of the history of the particular conventions, norms, and institutions in the social, political, economic spheres of our lives, things that we have been led to believe are either natural or constructed upon knowledge. Whether exploring the norms we associate with mental illness or studying the role of schools in the forging of particular sorts of citizens, the work of postmodernist analysis traces initial construction, reproduction, and reification, revealing the degree to which the origins of institutions, conventions, and practices may be found in the exercise of power. The work of postmodernism is to expose the degree to which what we take to be true simply is not. A related type of research

critical political studies

181

for postmodernist analysis is cultural criticism: taking up, convention by convention, fad by fad, the commodities of culture, to expose the degree to which our world is made up simply of surface, to reveal that our insistence otherwise is simply a comfortable and lazy crutch, the reliance upon which continues to perpetuate our imprisonment as human beings. Together this work might be seen as an endless edgy Socratic method, of which the purpose is to find a sort of freedom, rather than the truth as Socrates understood his calling. Another type of postmodernist project is the work of exposing, in our current world, the artificiality that serves as the glue of globalization and other cultural, economic and political edifices, tracing the particular ways in which this glue cannot hold, except through the imposition of brute force or other forms of domination. The dawn of the twenty-first century, exactly a century after the death of Nietzsche (1844–1900), arguably the “father” of postmodernism, saw a core set of values becoming fractured. The work of the postmodernist is to track the disintegration of these values and to invent their future course.

Critical Ecology Statement of Approach

In Chapter Three we introduced sociobiological accounts of human agency as one core approach to the study of politics. There, political life was treated as the extension of features of our physiology, neurology, biochemistry, evolution, and natural psychology as a particular species. In this section we attend, albeit also briefly, to a biological theory that is critical, though its roots are also connected to the natural sciences. Critical ecology shares something of the structural-functionalist assertion of the interdependency of processes of human conduct, though it is arguably less anthropocentric in its identification of processes. It shares with most of the core approaches in critical theory a resistance to traditional ontology and conventional understandings. The central orientation of eco-centric approaches to the study of politics, from the resistance movements of green radicalism to the work of academics in environmental studies, is to identify human conduct as situated

182

the study of politics

with complex relations to other species and the physical world, as part of the inter- and co-dependent processes of the living earth. Unlike the Aristotelian claim that human beings are the centre of the cosmos, ecotheoretical approaches hold us more accurately to be merely part of a complex natural world. To fail to see our humanity within these broader processes of natural coherence—to insist on seeing us, that is, as enjoying superiority and holding dominion over nature—is profoundly to misunderstand our situation. Those who employ this sort of critical theory seek to recentre our understanding of humanity and human political conduct within the broader environmental context. Our conduct, including our own development as a species, is understood and evaluated in light of its impact upon this shift in ontological standing and perspective. As with other forms of critical theory, we come to understand the truth of the condition of our humanity from the perspective of the objects of our domination, and we test the truth of such domination by intellectual resistance to the conventions sustaining patterns of the natural world’s degradation. One way of seeing the force of critical eco-theory upon the study of human political conduct may be to revisit rational choice theory, where individuals are taken to be caused to act, employing their economic rationality, so as to effectively satisfy their short- and longer-term desires. On the rational choice model, it is rational (as it is in utilitarian moral theory) to discount the value of goods in the future, as these are less likely to be achieved, not the least because we may be dead before we achieve them. This account of our conduct can seem facile and profoundly short-sighted when resituated within the context of the viability and sustainability of the ecosystems in which our lives are lodged. Rational choice theory may, that is, partly explain our conduct and allow us a degree of prediction, but for eco-theorists it appears to misunderstand and misrepresent the significance of our short-term conduct. It is difficult for rational choice theory to assign values to the well-being of non-human species, except as their lives have value for us. However, this sort of valuing is widely variable, just as support for ecological public policy comes into and out of vogue, turning on the changing preferences we have for the well-being of the natural world. For the rational choice theorist who has no special affection for nature, it remains irrational to

critical political studies

183

support ecological programs that will not have any appreciable effect until much later, well after one has the means to appreciate one’s accomplishment. For eco-theorists, acting in the way that rational choice prescribes is simply not rational. Critical ecology theory asserts that rational choice theory, and most other self-regarding, methodologically individualist accounts operate from far too thin a conception of rationality and a misplaced epistemology, incorrigibly caught up with what is called species fetishism—a blind preoccupation with the supposed supremacy of the human species. It is, one might say, not to see the forest because of the trees. This inability to understand nature, our membership in and deep connections to it, calls out for a reworking of the ontology that underlies most Western thought. Theoretical Assumptions

A central claim of eco-theoretical approaches is ontological, displacing human beings as the centre of the cosmos and accordingly seeking to undermine or displace those theories and competing core approaches to the understanding of society and politics that rest upon anthropocentric assumptions. Eco-theory adopts methodological organicism, wherein the community in which we make our lives is the whole earth. The central epistemological claim is that to understand human conduct one must view it in the broader interdependent confluence of many other species, as we reside on a planet that is delicate and vulnerable, with limited resources. The folk-theoretical agency account of critical ecology is that the human species has come to misunderstand itself, and accordingly we are driven by the ideology and hubris of a mistaken reading of our condition. We have become, in self-understanding and in our conduct in the world, governed by a false sense of what the real world really is and how it actually works. One way of seeing the truth of this asserted condition of our misconduct is to return to nature, in epistemological experiments to recover our natural sensibility. Another is to observe closely, without normative, ideological, or intellectual prejudice, the objective condition of the earth in the twenty-first century. A third is to take up the perspective of those species and natural processes that have been damaged by our deeply ingrained misunderstanding of reality, resisting the human forces of their degradation and destruction. The test of the degree to

184

the study of politics

which we have our world wrong is to resist those who have, especially since the Industrial Revolution, exploited the natural world, consuming its value in seemingly endless commodities. Criticism

Lines of criticism of an eco-centred approach to the study of politics reject its central claim, re-asserting the fundamental distinctiveness of humanity to at least the study of politics. A number of anthropocentric theories can provide a reasonable basis for seeing the force of human conduct upon nature, without the decentring of our humanity that especially deep-green resistance to conventional views of nature and humanity requires. Those within the psychoanalytic and Frankfurtian traditions offer accounts of broadly shared neuroses that explain our desire to conquer nature, neuroses that if worked through would lead to greater attention to the well-being of the living earth without surrendering the inherent epistemological standing of human beings. That is, such accounts explain processes of domination without assuming the epistemological position of nature. A similar sort of criticism may be advanced from the perspective of those who identify ecological crises as the product of capitalism, treating crises as the tipping point for the transcendence of capitalist socialist relations. In these, and in other examples, the fact that competing theories can account for the facts that critical ecology identifies serves as an implicit critique of its most radical eco-focused ontology. One might simply charge, then, that radical forms of eco-theory are mistaken in their naturalist ontology, that they suffer from theoretical overdetermination, and that human beings remain inherently and irreducibly an ontologically distinct order of beings. The boldest version of such criticism is that critical ecology is ideology and politics posing as science; while human conduct is broadly related to nature, the demand for radical recentring is an act of faith, not a requirement of knowledge. As with other contests set up in this text, the discussion above falls short of either sustaining or dismissing the approach it addresses. And, as with postmodernist theory, even if the criticism of the theory is compelling, the critical approach introduces considerations into the discipline that are inescapably powerful, causing us to rethink how we have

critical political studies

185

proceeded over past millennia, and especially how we have understood ourselves in the process. That the planet appears to be in the throes of changes in natural conditions that will alter the international order, affecting polities in ways yet unseen, may be the trump card that those urging a shift to the critical eco-centric paradigm of humanity have been right to play. Such conclusions have powerful normative force, calling us fundamentally to alter how we treat nature, in individual conduct, as societies, and in public policy. Applications

Analysis from the perspective of this core approach proceeds by treating all human conduct in the context of its effect upon the sustainability, conservation, and natural development of other species, and the limits imposed by the finite nature of our planet. Analysts may attend to this project theoretically, by seeking to undo competing approaches, illustrating the degree to which they have misunderstood the real grounding of our conduct as human beings. They may study the impact of our Western capitalist orientations, in particular case studies of natural degradation. Or they may shift attention to providing forms of conduct, public policy, and the like that are much more in keeping with the insight that we are foundationally part of a natural system that is currently in peril. The test of the adequacy of our understanding of political conduct and our formation of public policy is, in this sort of critical ecological work, the degree to which it enjoins the more fundamental nature of our planet, and our organic, interdependent place within it as human beings.

Conclusion Critical theory argues that political knowledge comes from a political practice of resistance from the perspective of lives that are dominated by convention, institution, structure, or power. In all of the approaches surveyed in this chapter, but especially in Marxist, feminist, and critical race theory, the epistemological claim of praxis is a powerful yet arguably controversial basis upon which to build a discipline of political studies. Praxis provides a persistently critical sense of the way in which patterns

186

the study of politics

of our political, social, and personal lives act against the realization of our essential interests, freedom, and humanity. The role of the student of politics is not simply to see patterns of domination for what they are, but also to realize that finding oneself on the normative side of the dominated, the powerless, as a condition of epistemological adequacy is the only means to the truth. To fail to engage the world in order to change it is to show that one doesn’t really understand it. Some of the lines of criticism that may be set against critical theory have been broached as a way of inducing readers to find other lines of criticism, and as a basis for becoming more thoughtful students of politics when defending our deepest convictions. Critical theory is provocative and disconcerting, but it is far from unimportant, even for those who decide to proceed in other ways. Furthermore, it undeniably renders some political studies weaker and leaves our discipline even more unsettled and essentially contested than it was at the start of the twentieth century. Critical theory insists that the truth of our political conduct is only fully to be known by engagement and by resistance, a thesis that Socrates and others since have supported with their lives. Political studies in its critical mode, when the student of politics is fully engaged, can be a high-stakes pursuit. Its epistemological assertion, however, that we must see the political world from the perspective of the powerless if we are fully to understand it, remains a compelling one.

Further Reading As with other chapters, finding works useful for further consideration of the core approaches we have surveyed is somewhat problematic, both because there is considerable contemporary disagreement among the advocates of various core approaches and because many of their writings are caught up more in these contests than in revealing the core features of the approach more generally. Accordingly, for further reading in line with this chapter, one might do well to begin with the following. For critical theory in general one might consult Raymond Guess’s The Idea of a Critical Theory: Habermas and the Frankfurt School (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). A very solid collection in critical

critical political studies

187

theory is found in Eric Bronner and Douglas Kellner’s Critical Theory and Society: A Reader (New York: Routledge, 1989). For Freud one might consult Josh Cohen’s How to Read Freud (New York: Granta, 2005) and for post-Freudian analysis a very compelling read is found in Stephen Frosh’s Identity Crisis, Modernity, Psychoanalysis and the Self (New York: Routledge, 1991). To see something of the force of critical psychoanalysis, see Max Horkheimer’s Critical Theory: Selected Essays (New York: Herder and Herder, 1977). The form of feminist critical theory surveyed in this text is advanced in Alison Jaggar’s Feminist Politics and Human Nature (Totowa, NJ : Rowman and Allanhead, 1983). While many studies have followed this work, some in criticism, others more aligned with French feminism and the nature of difference, Jaggar’s remains, to my mind, the clearest statement of feminism as a critical ontology and epistemology. A survey of critical race theory is found in Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings that Formed the Movement (New York: New Press, 1996), edited by Kimberle Crenshaw et al., with a foreword by Cornell West. Another thoughtful treatment of racism in political studies is found in Lise Noel, in Intolerance: A General Survey, trans. A. Bennet (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1994). For postmodernist analysis, one is rewarded by Colin Hay’s Political Analysis: Contemporary Controversies (London: Palgrave, 2002), which addresses a variety of issues raised in this chapter, while providing an accessible version of postmodern theory, along with a critique of Steven Lukes’s account of power and objective interests. Richard Rorty’s Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989) provides a thoughtful rendering of some of the theoretical force of postmodern thinking, while Barry Smart’s Postmodernity (New York: Routledge, 1993) provides an accessible discussion of postmodernism in political studies. Also worth attention in this context is Brain Fay’s Philosophy of Social Science: A Multicultural Approach (Cambridge: Wiley-Blackwell, 1996). For those wishing to investigate Marxism, the best advice might still be to begin by reading some Marx, starting with his Critique of Political Economy, available online in various locations on the Internet. For those who view this as daunting, David McLellan’s Marx (Toronto: Harper Collins, 1986) provides a reliable introduction. McLellan’s Marxism after Marx, 4th ed. (London: Palgrave, 2007) provides a solid discussion of

188

the study of politics

post-structuralist readings of Marx. While some of the reference points of this analysis are antiquated, the basic form and thrust of the analysis remain the same. The discussion of critical ecology above is all too brief, so to engage the theory in less generalized terms, identifying some of the controversies that animate the various issues it addresses, see T. Forsyth’s Critical Political Ecology: The Politics of Environmental Science (New York: Routledge, 2003).

Chapter Six

a short conclusion

This survey of core approaches illustrates the diversity of intellectual orientations currently in play in political studies, a discipline where even the choice of names (political science or political studies) is contested. To address competing core approaches critically is to address differences between them in their intellectual foundations. Those about to begin major research in political studies ignore such considerations at their intellectual peril. It should not be surprising to find that we disagree about the determination of our conduct as human political beings; we disagree about similar issues in our everyday discourse as well, as we seek to make sense of our own and others’ conduct. The personal stakes in such engagement, and in our choice of approach to the study of politics, are higher than they might first appear to be. It is tempting to say that political studies isn’t really one discipline, even if its practitioners are intellectually disciplined and housed in politics departments at universities. The attention paid in this brief survey to the antiquity of political studies, where some of the greatest ancient minds have sought to make sense of our political world, suggests that in treating competing approaches seriously we remain in good company. And it should be plain, especially from the force of feminist and critical race theory, that our decisions about core approaches raise serious questions about how departments of political studies and programs in the arts and social sciences might be best composed. Our diversity as a discipline and the complexity of human beings to which it is addressed has been thought of in this text as a virtue of the human sciences. The problem remains, however, that we simply can’t all be right. Although disagreement may appear intractable, getting things right can have tremendous 189

190

the study of politics

import for the future of our planet. Whether we like it or not, politics and government shape lives. One doesn’t need to study comparative science policy to see that how we proceed to address the questions of the sciences is in significant measure determined by how we construct our polities, from issues of funding to the prohibition of controversial forays by the sciences, to the way in which science is presented in the pedagogy of our young. There is, accordingly, no reason to be apologetic about our work as students of politics, despite the intellectual differences that divide us and that leave the pursuit of knowledge deeply contested. One of the ways in which the scope of diversity might be addressed in political studies is found in intellectual pluralism. We might simply say that we who study politics have common objects of interest, but that we disagree about how to understand, explain, and predict political conduct. Each of us, one might say, has some of the truth about politics and government to offer. Intellectual pluralism appears to offer one way out of the problem of deep contestation in the discipline. Our intellectual differences in political studies remain considerable, however, stemming as they do from what it means to be a human being. While we need not be overly defensive of our diversity, it seems sensible, to the extent that we are able, to thoughtfully lessen the scope of our differences. A second strategy for the future of the discipline is, accordingly, to attempt to bind the strengths of two or more different approaches together in the development of hybrid approaches. A third strategy for the discipline would suggest that we become more intellectually modest, narrowing the scope of what we take to be politics and government. In the words that remain, I wish briefly to discuss these and other options for the future of the discipline(s) of political studies.

Intellectual Pluralism As suggested above, one way of proceeding to the future of the discipline of political studies is simply to accept the deep diversity of approaches as an indication of the complexity of the subjects that political studies seeks to understand. To achieve such intellectual pluralism is to ensure that the profession is well represented, in departments, in learned associations,

a short conclusion

191

in the press, and in government, by those working from each of the core approaches. The guiding principles of such pluralism would be tolerance of irresolvable difference, openness to the insight of others, and provision of sufficient sources for research and teaching for all to be productively engaged. Particularly in the construction of departments of political studies, such a strategy is appealing and most departments around the world have opted for an intellectual pluralism of this sort. Such a strategy enables the resolution of our differences to mature and develop, possibly toward a time when a common approach to political studies can be legitimately established. In the meantime, as long as our intellectual pluralism keeps agency, epistemological, and ontological issues clearly in view, we may be able to maintain a conversation between approaches that is productive and even, as they say, synergistic. A second articulation of intellectual pluralism suggests that we engage fully the approach that is most in keeping with the folk theory that we adopt in everyday life, but rather than offering pleasant conversation and tolerance of others, we steadfastly and vigorously defend our intellectual orientation in disciplinary contestation. Such contestation sharpens the articulation of competing theories, while giving cause for greater attention to the weaknesses of one’s own. This sort of contestation runs the risk, however, of re-drawing battle lines in the discipline that can be seen to be dysfunctional. More troubling, there is a risk that it will not be the best core approach standing at the end of such battles, but rather simply the most vigorously or charmingly defended. Regardless, shouldn’t we take our intellectual differences with others seriously? Defending our best insights vigorously can provide the intellectual vitality that, given what is at stake in politics and government, it seems reasonable to expect.

Hybrid Approaches Another way of addressing the deep diversity of core approaches in political studies suggested in this text is to find productive complementarities between them. Indeed, much of the work of contemporary students of politics employs something of this strategy. By generating hybrid

192

the study of politics

approaches, binding the strengths of one approach with those of another, we may well move toward the goal of a unified political studies. We have seen this strategy attempted in neo-institutionalism, which binds rational choice assumptions and methodology to those of traditional institutionalism, seeking to finesse the tension between them at the level of agency and ontology. Power theory appears to share a degree of complementarity when grafted to the insights of group theory, rational choice theory, and systems theory, treating power as the means of processes of interest identification and articulation. Indeed, the work of political pluralists such as Robert Dahl and others has gone some way toward establishing complementarities in this way. Feminist critical theory finds much to employ from the insights of class theory in Marxism, as does the psychoanalytic approach of the Frankfurt School. There may yet be a way of integrating all three critical theory core approaches without leaving issues of ontology unaddressed. Postmodernism both employs a conception of power and relies on the force of the linguistic insights of interpretivism. It may for these reasons find a partnership with critical race theory, at least in some versions of the latter. Such hybridization of core approaches offers a long list of intellectually plausible hybrid theories, arguably producing more combinations of approaches than core approaches. A hybrid theory is only an advantage to our studies, however, if it doesn’t hide deeper issues of discord. The theories that we employ in political studies, if nothing else, need to be internally and intellectually coherent. It is hard to see building a discipline on two core approaches that make competing assertions about human agency as progress in human understanding, even if it seems to work in a particular set of case studies. To say the least, to have a deeper level of incoherence or diversity in an attempted hybrid exposed in a thesis defence is a rich source of seemingly deserved embarrassment. Often the force of differences in deeper agency, ontological, and epistemological assumptions isn’t immediately obvious. Rational choice theory, as suggested, seems able to make sense of much of the conduct that group theory seeks to explain, namely, that the shared values of a group can be rendered as the cumulative individual values of the members of the group. However, an individual may act contrary to his or her own interest in deference to the well-being of the group, even when his or her individual interests

a short conclusion

193

would better be achieved by quitting membership. Treating the sacrifice of one’s own interests to the welfare of a group can be integrated in rational choice theory by treating such sacrifice as satisfying just another preference. But this is to stretch the approach in ways that are more than a little troubling. Such stretching damages the force and integrity of one of the two hybrid theories. The folk theory of group theory and that of rational choice theory are important to the explanatory ability of both, but they can work in opposite directions. A distinction between selfregarding and other-regarding conduct (and accordingly the possibility of altruism) is important to understanding the life of groups in group theory; rational choice theory conflates this distinction. A theory that can easily account for all potential differences in approach within an ever-stretching paradigm, moreover, can seem suspicious to the critical mind. All theories of human conduct are paradigmatic; they seek to cover a lot of terrain, and their advocates seek to be, in principle, able to account for all instances of the phenomena in which we have an interest in the study of politics. But when a core approach is stretched too far it risks losing something of its explanatory bite. It seems wise to be sure that our hybrids don’t simply consume the approach to which they are grafted or surrender the force of their own agency, epistemological, or ontological perspective. Still, for those students of politics interested in advancing the discipline, work on finding forms of hybridization that could flourish without conflating important differences is an open, exciting field in political theory and methodology. At the very least, being able critically to assess attempts at hybridization, often implicit in one’s own work, and that of others, remains a sure route to scholarly development.

Multidisciplinarity and Interdisciplinarity The way in which we have proceeded to survey core approaches in this text—namely, by addressing these with an eye on the folk theoretical, epistemological, and ontological assumptions they make—opens an interesting window on the possibilities for multi- and interdisciplinarity work. As most readers will know, granting agencies and universities

194

the study of politics

have recently been keen to enable the dismantling of disciplinary walls, for greater scholarly efficiency, to stimulate innovation where competing and complementary voices work together on projects drawing on a wider base of insight, and arguably to encourage social studies to become more like the sciences in their team approach to knowledge. This move toward inter- and multidisciplinarity has been vigorously resisted in the work of many in the social sciences. Setting aside those who believe that interdisciplinarity is the equivalent of not having discipline, in either sense of the word, it remains true that most disciplines in the human sciences are just as intellectually diverse, often along the very same lines, as political studies. One way of moving toward such multi- and interdisciplinarity that maintains something of the idea of an intellectual discipline is for scholars to work with those from other disciplines with whom they share the theoretical commitments of their preferred core approach. It might make sense, accordingly, to reinvent our universities in departments of institutional studies, structural functional analysis, behaviouralist studies, critical psychoanalysis, Marxist studies, feminist studies, critical race studies, and the like, each composed of those whose primary foci are diverse, but where they share a core approach. Some universities, learned bodies, and research communities have moved in this direction, partly in the spirit of inter- and multidisciplinarity programs of study and research. This possible future for social science has supporters and detractors, with more arguments than are represented here. However, it might be said that such interand multidisciplinarity simply displaces disagreement at the subjectdefined department level and into larger-scaled arenas. Moreover, it might be that such interdisciplinary silos of knowledge would simply replace the current disciplinary ones, shifting chairs without any real intellectual progress. So the jury remains out on inter- and multidisciplinarity in the human sciences. Students new to the study of politics will need to establish their own sense of how to arrange the intellectual differences to which the human sciences seem prone by the very nature and complexity of the human subject.

a short conclusion

195

Narrowing the Discipline Yet another way around the deep-seated differences in core approaches in political studies might be to constrain the scope of the discipline. Two ways of doing so are briefly recounted here. The first is that political studies might retrench to those core approaches that seem open to the strict imposition of the falsifiability criterion of empiricism and the theory of meaning of positivism—stricter, even, than the rather casual way in which the criteria were employed in some of the discussion above. Where central claims of a core approach cannot in principle be shown to be false by employing observable indicators and strictly referential sentences, one might say, the core approach should simply be dismissed. This might well send structural functionalism back to sociology, political philosophy back to philosophy, political cultural interpretivism back to anthropology, and even rational choice theory back to economics. It would require the sharp pruning of critical theories and would entail treating interpretation very narrowly and simply, with analytical work, as secondary tools of empirical studies. We might get around the problems of defining power and constructing variables less tied to the inner features of agency. This sort of strategy might leave us with an agency- and value-free behaviouralism as the grounding for a leaner political science. Such winnowing might set aside problems with the concept of causality, while developing ever more sophisticated forms of the mathematically sound, complex treatment of variables. It might be said that the behaviouralist revolution in social sciences was never really given a chance to show what it can do. What we need is simply strategic agreement on the tests of meaning and evidence, already available from the sciences, common agreement on how to define variables, strict attention to potential areas of co-variance, and the well-coordinated building of genuinely comparative case-study data. Such a case for narrowing could be made by advocates of other core approaches, and as a discipline we would need to choose the one that seemed most promising. If, after working within such a paradigm, we found that we were not able to produce the sort of knowledge we thought we could, only then would it make sense to try another paradigm. The problem, one might say, is that as a discipline we have been working from too many such paradigms of inquiry to give any

196

the study of politics

a fair chance at success, of providing the sort of explanations and predictions that would be valuable to governments and citizens. While narrowing the discipline in this way would have some appeal and adherents, it faces some obvious problems. Most of these have been broached in earlier discussion. One overarching problem remains that many who work in the discipline are not convinced that even sophisticated co-variant analysis, rational choice theory, or Marxist theory picks up the inherent complexity and richness of human political action. Another problem is that such a strategy has political implications. To move to structural functionalism, rational choice theory, or systems theory is, for some, simply to accept the status quo in political societies, thus effectively undermining the capacity of social science to allow for profound social change or human progress. To accept one of the critical theories would support political goals on the other side of the ideological spectrum of contemporary politics. Similar sorts of reservations could be powerfully advanced by any other strategy of winnowing political studies by strategic agreement to employ only one or two core approaches. The core approaches exist because they identify our political conduct insightfully and because the adoption of one or another is the adoption of a politics, not simply a sort of political analysis. It is tempting to privilege widely defined power theory in redefining political studies, given that politics is persuasively said to be about power and authority. Over time, power theory may well integrate across some of the diversity we have encountered, where some of the inner workings of agency are treated by stipulation. But it remains true that knowledge about political conduct requires knowledge about what we are in all of our complexity as human beings. Even a widely drawn power theory might well prove to be too reductive. And until we have a definition of freedom as the absence of power that is not tautological and is uncontested, power theory will be insufficiently intellectually secure. Despite the definitional connections among politics, government, power, and authority, power theory is not at all free from very strong lines of criticism.

a short conclusion

197

Other Lines of Response Other responses to intellectual diversity in the study of politics are available. We could shift attention away from the fundamental differences between core approaches, asserting that issues of agency, epistemology, and ontology are too abstract, theoretical, and counter-productive. We could simply set aside questions about the intellectual assumptions of our work. Given the complexity and depth of difference between core approaches, this strategy has some appeal. More than a few undergraduate papers have proceeded with little awareness of the claims, at the level of agency, epistemology, logic, and ontology, which were at work in what they were advancing. Ignoring underlying assumptions, however, runs the considerable risk of advancing contradictory claims within any explanation, or of relying upon conflicting assumptions in offering predictions, and in the end, of not really making sense. It remains an inescapable and compelling requirement of work in the human sciences that we can defend our work against criticism. A head-in-the-sand strategy may well be worse than doing nothing at all. One might treat competing core accounts, their foundational differences intact, simply as tools. One core approach might be chosen for a particular study, in the belief that its adoption would be particularly useful for the objects that one wishes to address, another core approach for another study. This strategy is more demanding in one way and less so in another: it is more demanding as it would require that we be proficient with the whole range of competing core approaches before choosing the best sort of explanatory tool for the project at hand; it would be less demanding as the results of such work could be defended as merely contingent upon the assumed truth of the core approach it employed. Senior courses in the study of politics are devoted to inducing us to become more conversant in the features of competing core approaches, in the belief that choosing an approach, even if for only one project, requires that we have some knowledge of the nature and scope of competing approaches. But these courses don’t relieve the student of the task of determining what assumptions of agency, ontology, and epistemology make their work compelling. Treating intellectual diversity simply as a diversity of tools may not adequately respect the foundational issues

198

the study of politics

that underlie competing approaches. As students of politics we should be able to articulate what it would be to do a study from competing core approaches. This is partly what critical thinking in political studies means. Moreover, good scholarship demands that we ought not to commit to a core approach for our work until we understand what the choice entails and can defend our choice on more than strategic grounds. We should be able to say why we think a core approach is justifiable beyond citing reasons of convenience. For some, this book will have been too short a survey of vexing issues in political studies. It does not do full justice to any of the approaches its surveys, by way of either extended explication or of thoroughgoing or original criticism. But it attempts to treat each approach with a similar degree of justice (or injustice), partly as a means of giving readers something of an introduction to the sorts of foundational assumptions that each competing core approach makes in contributing to political studies. Seeking to induce the appropriate degree of intellectual anxiety, it encourages students to prepare to meet the criticism often found in the adjudication of theses, and eventually at the meetings of learned societies. It seeks to exhort students to identify the assumptions made in their own work and to anticipate lines of criticism from those who make different methodological and theoretical assumptions about human political agency. While it attempts not to privilege any particular core approach, those whose deepest commitments are thought to be insufficiently explicated or overly criticized may disagree. Readers are left to find something of the intellectual fun of debate between core approaches in political studies, where our passion for the truth about politics and government is well nurtured by respect for our differences regarding the nature of human beings.

A Little More Pedagogy It seems sensible to end a book that has pedagogical ambitions with a bit more pedagogy. Those who have worked through this text might wish to check their understanding of the material it addresses in three ways:

a short conclusion

199

(1) The framework of this book has left the complex and unresolved issues of sub-approaches largely unaddressed. Those who say they are using a sub-approach of political economy could be doing Marxist analysis, power theory, or rational choice theory. Those who say that they are using a post-colonial approach could be doing so from a Marxist, critical race, feminist, or interpretivist approach. It is also true that in our discipline we don’t often articulate the core approach as the foundational terms of our work. One exercise, accordingly, is to pick up a few of the books important in your field or sub-field of studies, seeking to say what the core or hybrid approach is at work in the analysis. This won’t always be easy, but it should be possible where the studies in question are coherent. In a similar vein, you might review work that you have previously written to see what sort of agency, ontological, and epistemological assumptions you have made in it. Alternatively, you might take what are given as the sub-approaches in comparative, international politics, or public policy courses to see how they might be arranged under the taxonomy offered in this text. (2) A second sort of exercise is to attempt to create a hybrid that you believe collects the best insights across competing core approaches, and identify cases or aspects of case studies where the hybrid approach would lead to different conclusions. Is there a way around or through such conflicts that would leave the force of core approaches one has grafted intact? (3) Before engaging in a research project, identify and defend the core approach you intend to employ, even if by way of a sub-approach. (Such decisions are strengthened by critical discourse with your colleagues.) If you have yet to identify a particular thesis or hypothesis for a research project, identify and defend which core approach you believe has been most successful in your area of study. So, for instance, if you are interested in political parties in the global South, which core approach, in your considered view, has been most compelling in generating knowledge in that area? What justifies such a conclusion?

This page intentionally left blank

index academic freedom, 6 Adorno, Theodor, 160 The Authoritarian Personality, 30 aesthetics, 50 agency, 1, 3–4, 15, 51–52, 158 folk theories of, 11–12 structural functionalism’s account of, 82 agency/structure debate, 2 agency assumptions, 2, 11, 16, 23–24, 38, 46, 51 analytical political studies, 42–44, 47 behaviouralism, 106, 108–9, 195 critical psychoanalysis, 160 critical race theory, 170 feminist analysis, 167 group theory, 67 human beings are inherently rulegoverned, 58 institutionalism, 58 interpretivism, 118 linguistic structuralism, 136 Marxist analysis, 151–52 power theory, 72–76 rational choice theory, 97 regime theory, 50 sociobiology, 112 systems theory, 93 agency issues, 191–93, 197 “AGIL ” statement of social processes, 80 alienation, 148–49, 151, 155, 160 Almond, Gabriel, The Civic Culture Revisited, 80 American political studies group theory in, 58

American society, 36 regemic approach to, 34 American-style polity, 68. See also United States An Analysis of Political Structure (Easton), 87n32 analytical legal studies prediction in, 47 analytical logic, 40 analytical mode of inquiry, 18 analytical political studies, 27, 38–43, 50–51 applications, 47 assumption of continuity in phenomena, 45 criticism, 44–47 description, 44 origins in antiquity, 38 predictive force, 42–45 technical language, 46 theoretical assumptions, 44 anarchism, 175 Anglo-American approaches to the study of politics, 117 anthropology, 79, 129, 195 antiquity, 5, 7–8, 27, 38, 50 Aristotelian claim that human beings are the centre of the cosmos, 182 Aristotle, 5 authoritarian personality, 30, 141 The Authoritarian Personality (Adorno), 30 authority, 3, 8–9, 28, 51, 123, 159 definition, 10 autonomy, 2 autonomy of the state in capitalist societies, 149

201

202

index

Barber, Benjamin, Jihad vs. McWorld, 37 behaviouralism, 106, 195 agency, 108–9, 195 applications, 109–10 criticism, 105–9 distinguished from behaviourism, 103 Enlightenment values of observation and falsification, 105 explanatory force, 103–4 falsifiability, 104–5 law-like conclusions, 109 neutral theory, 105 orientation to the observable, 103, 107 predictive force, 103, 106 statistical applications, 103–4, 108 theoretical assumptions, 104–5 behaviourism, 103, 108, 155 Bentham, Jeremy, Principles of Morals and Legislation, 97 Bentley, Arthur F., The Process of Government, 68 binary opposition, 136 binary relationships, 170, 173 in linguistic structure, 135 biological determinism, 112 biology, 79, 112 biopolitics, 110 British political studies institutionalism in, 58 brokerage politics, 65 brute force. See force and the threat of sanctions cadre parties, 42, 45–46 Canada, 47, 127 adversarial legislative practices, 65 Charter of Rights and Freedoms, 65 colonization of, 36 founded on liberal and conservative values, 36 party system, 86 political culture, 35 Canadian welfare state, 36 capitalism, 151, 160 global capitalism, 155 international capitalism, 154 late capitalism, 148, 152, 176 causal theories, 155, 160, 166

causality, 57, 104, 106, 140 law-like causal sentences, 16 Newtonian-style causal accounts, 17–18 scientific concept of, 16 structural causation, 154 theories of, 7 childhood, 156, 158 church, 86, 158–59, 165 citizen engagement in public policy issues, 43 The Civic Culture Revisited (Almond), 80 civil society capacity, 88 Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society (Darendorf), 79n31 class divisions of Western society, 84 class questions (in questionnaires), 105 class relations, 153 class solidarity, 149 class structure, 148, 154, 161 class system, 150–51 class theory in Marxism, 14, 192 coalition, 81 coherence, 31, 120–22, 125–26, 129, 141–42 coherence criteria, 124 coherence theory of truth, 123, 128 cohesion, 70 colonialism, 174 colonization of Canada, 36 colonizing societies, 35 commodification of nature and human life, 148 common sense, 34, 76, 102, 105, 133 commonality and diversity across politics, 81 communication, 90 communication theory, 91 communitarian ontology, 67, 70, 105, 119, 121, 136 communitarian reading of humanity, 69 community political power, 77–79 comparative analysis in political studies, 136, 163, 173 comparative case studies, 86, 94 comparative case-study data, 195 comparative media case studies, 94 comparative political cultural studies, 129, 135 comparative political culture, 86

index

comparative political studies, 57, 64, 68, 81, 102 comparative politics, 72, 83 comparative public policy, 94 comparative textual and political cultural analysis, 135 completeness, 141–42 complexity of human beings, 189 computer programming, 92 computer technology, 90 congealed political cultures, 35 “Conservatism, Liberalism and Socialism in Canada” (Horowitz), 36 consistency, 120, 129 consistency in the identity of individual persons, 119 constructivism, 22 consumerist conception of the self, 100 consumerist orientation of globalization, 36–37 consumption in late capitalism, 148 content analysis, 127–28. See also textual analysis continuity, 81–83 correspondence theory of truth, 57 counter-claims, 39, 51, 161 counter-factual, need for, 74, 76, 79 co-variance, 103–7, 195–96 critical ecology, 182 applications, 185 criticism, 184–85 methodological organicism, 183 resistance to traditional ontology, 181 theoretical assumptions, 183 critical feminists. See feminist analysis critical mode of inquiry, 18–19 critical psychoanalysis, 155, 166, 184 ambitious in scope, 162 applications, 162–63 criticism, 161–62 theoretical assumptions, 156–61 critical race theory, 22, 146, 169, 175, 189, 192 applications, 173–74 criticism, 172–73 theoretical assumptions, 170–72 critical theorists, 132 critical theory, 36, 145

203

critical thinking, 3, 19 critical turn in political studies, 145 cultural anthropology, 129 cultural criticism, 181 cultural domination, 132 cultural or historical relativism, 124 cultural studies. See (political) cultural studies culture, 123, 150, 157, 160 commercialization, 180 commonalities between cultures, 135 mass culture, 123, 152, 180 popular culture, 156 text of, 122, 127 Dahl, Robert, 192 Darendorf, Ralph, Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society, 79n31 deconstruction, 180 democracy, 36–37, 53, 90 authority established by, 10 deliberative, 43 favoured by structural functionalism, 82 feminist criticism and, 164 internal democracy of groups, 68 liberal democracy, 70, 96, 101 Marxist view of, 150 Plato’s view of, 29 pluralist democracy, 69, 81 as political free marketplace, 96 regemic principles of, 31 democratic citizenship, 159 democratic personality, 31, 141 democratic processes in group decisionmaking, 70 democratic socialism, 36 democrats, 29 departments of political studies, 167, 191 descriptive mode of political analysis, 18 desire, 156–57 dialectical reasoning, 38–40, 51, 148, 153 dialectical tensions, 40, 149 disobedience, 60, 63 diversity of humanity, 33, 84, 99, 172 division of labour, 148 DNA structure, 110–11 domination, 167–76, 182 patterns of, 159, 165, 186

204

index

double majority, 65 Downs, Anthony, An Economic Theory of Democracy, 96 Durkheim, Emile, 79n31 Duverger, Maurice, 42–45 dysfunction, 84 dysfunctional party politics, 85 Eagleton, Terry, 135n45 Easton, David, An Analysis of Political Structure, 87n32 economic modeling, 90 economic rationality, 13 economic theory (18th- and 19thcentury), 5 An Economic Theory of Democracy (Downs), 96 economics, 79, 195 liberal economic theory, 96 eco-theory, 83, 85. See also critical ecology education, 171 ego, 157, 161 electoral studies, 109–10 electoral systems, 61, 86 elite theory, 22 elites exercising power, 78, 149 elites within and between groups, 71 empirical, attention to, 6, 8 empiricism, 5, 6n3, 7, 49–50, 117, 195 empiricist social science feminist criticism and, 164 engagement, 20–21, 24, 145, 186 Enlightenment, 5–6, 49–50, 105 epistemological assumptions, 23–24 analytical political studies, 42 critical ecology, 183 critical psychoanalysis, 159 critical race theory, 170–71 critical theory, 155, 186 feminist analysis, 167–68 group theory, 67 interpretivism, 118 postmodernism, 177–78 rational choice theory, 98 sociobiology, 111 structural functionalism, 83 structural Marxism, 150, 152–53 systems theory, 89

textual analysis, 123 epistemological claims of (political) cultural studies, 130–31, 133 of political philosophy, 49 epistemological criticism of regime theory, 33 epistemological divide between gendered lives, 167 epistemological issues, 191, 193, 197 epistemological orientation of feminist theory, 163, 168 of postmodernism, 174 epistemological significance of women’s exclusion, 166 epistemology, 1–4, 6, 15, 59, 75, 106 Equal Rights Amendment, 65 equality, 31, 123, 170–71, 173 Erikson, Erik, Young Man Luther, 162n58 eros, 156–57 essential good, 2. See also good life ethical conduct in research, 20–21 ethical pluralism, 65 ethical requirements of research regarding human subjects, 20–21 ethical standards of political conduct, 27 ethics, 46 ethnic diversity, 171 ethnicity, 171 European (continental) approaches to the study of politics, 117 evolutionary theory, 111 existential psychoanalysis, 157–58 existential psychology, 156 existentialism, 176 explanatory mode of inquiry, 16 exploitation of human beings, 160 fact/value distinction, 19–20 false consciousness, 152, 161, 173 falsifiability, 6–7, 105, 161 behaviouralism, 104 postmodernism, 178 power claims, 72 rational choice theory, 98, 1001 falsifiability criterion, 195 family, 86, 158–60, 163 early context for self-identification, 69 gendered construction of, 165

index

fascism, 30 feminist analysis, 163, 175, 189, 192 applications, 168–69 causality and, 166 criticism, 167–68 theoretical assumptions, 164–67 feminist approach to politics, 36 feminist critical studies, 146 feminist criticism of Freud, 155, 163 folk philosophy, 152 folk psychology of rational choice theory, 63, 97, 100 folk theories, 34, 108, 159, 177, 191 of critical ecology, 183 of group theory, 193 of human agency, 121, 146, 151, 183 of Marxist analysis, 151 of political agency, 11–13 of political conduct, 2, 13 of political philosophy, 48 of psychoanalysis, 160 of structural functionalism, 82 of systems theory, 89 force and the threat of sanctions, 72, 75, 154–55 The Founding of New Societies (Hartz), 35 founding societies/fragment theory, 35 Frank, Andre Gunder, Theory and Methodology of World Development, 154 Frankfurt School, 30n13, 156, 158, 160, 184, 192 Frankfurtian integration of Marxist and psychoanalytic schools, 160 free actions, 10 free inquiry, 7 free market, 96 freedom, 2, 51, 77, 99, 123, 154, 173 academic freedom, 6, 21 covert and implicit limitations on, 176 desire for, 28–29 impediments to, 156 intellectual freedom, 8 natural condition of, 147, 169 postmodern view of, 177–78, 181 in psychological health, 159 radical, 174 sociobiology and, 112

205

freedom as the absence of power, 74–75, 158, 179–80, 196 Frenkel-Brunswick, Else, 30 Freud, Sigmund, 155–57 Freudianism, 156 Frye, Northrop, 135n45 F-scale, 30 Geertz, Clifford, 129 “From the Native’s Point of View,” 130 The Interpretation of Cultures, 130 gender, 65, 164–65, 167–68 German fascism, 30 Gierke, Otto van, 68 global capitalism, 155 global North, 41, 154–55 global South, 154–55 globalization, 181 consumerist orientation of, 36–37 critiques of, 148 globalization studies regemic treatment of, 36–37 goals (primary), 80 good governance, 89 good life, 29. See also essential good Goodin, Bob, Manipulatory Politics, 76 group behaviour as example of power, 69 group culture, 71 group dynamics, 66 group theory, 23, 65, 192–93 in American political studies, 58 applications, 70–72 associative assumptions, 69 communitarian in ontology, 70 criticism, 69–70 debt to anthropology, 79 human beings are inherently social, 70 methodological pluralism, 65 normative implications, 70 predictive force, 67–68, 71 socio-centric model of politics and government, 66 theoretical assumptions, 67–69 theoretical proximity to pluralist democracy, 69 Habermas, Jürgen, 160 happiness, 28, 97, 100

206

index

Hartz, Louis, 36 The Founding of New Societies, 35 The Liberal Tradition in America, 35 Hegel, G.W.F., 38–40, 117, 148 Hobbes, Thomas, 11n6 Leviathan, 5 Hobbesian realism, 152 Holocaust, 30 Horkheimer, Max, 160 Horowitz, Gad, “Conservatism, Liberalism and Socialism in Canada,” 36 human agency. See agency human beings, 24, 34, 106, 123, 125 complexity of, 189 diversity of. See diversity of humanity essentially meaning makers, 130, 136 inherently complex language users, 118, 135, 141–42 inherently motivated to express and define identity, 118 inherently social creatures, 70, 81, 119 meaning oriented, 141 ontologically distinct from other parts of nature, 119 part of complex natural world, 181–82 postmodern view of, 177 rule orientation, 15, 58, 61 human brain, 110 human conduct product of human thought, 124 human evolutionary adaptation, 110 human flourishing, 54 human freedom. See freedom human knowledge, sources of, 8 human maturation, 157, 159–60 human nature assumptions about, 1, 3 diversity of, 33, 84, 99, 177 human potential, 160 human reason. See reason human rights, 51 human rights advocates objections to rational choice theory, 100 human rights theory, 41 human truths, 49 humanism, 7, 148, 170 humanist critiques of system theory, 90 humanist values of freedom and equality, 173

humanities, 133 hybrid approaches, 58, 63, 190–93, 199 id, 157, 161 identity, 118–21 politics of, 180 identity domination and marginalization, 172 identity formation, 169 identity that groups provide, 71 ideological coherence and reinforcement, 71 ideology, 145, 150–51, 184 individuality, 2, 29, 63, 95–96, 100–101, 119, 160. See also methodological individualism structural functionalism and, 80–82 influence, 9–10 information flow in communication theory, 91 informational biases, 91–92 institutionalism, 5, 69, 192 analysis of constitutions and laws, 58 applications, 64–65 attention to rules, 58–60 in British political studies, 58 communitarian in ontology, 70 criticism, 60–62 epistemology of, 59 narrow focus, 61–62, 64 ontological assumptions, 59 political change and, 60–61 predictability, 59, 64 presumption of historical continuity, 59 theoretical assumptions, 58–60 intellectual freedom, 8 intellectual pluralism, 190–91 interests as sources of political conduct, 13 international affairs, 54 international capitalism, 154 international governing bodies, 155 international imperialism, 147 international politics, 78 international relations studies, 94, 102, 131, 138 international terrorism, 40, 158 international theory, 169 The Interpretation of Cultures (Geertz), 130

index

interpretive cultural studies, 129–30 interpretive mode of inquiry, 117 interpretive mode of political studies, 17 interpretive political cultural studies, 132 interpretive psychoanalysis, 138, 155 applications, 140 criticism, 140 theoretical assumptions, 139–40 interpretive social science, 118 interpretive social studies related to interpretive work in literature or film studies, 119 interpretivism, 22, 125, 192 communitarian, 119 feminist scholarship and, 164 predictability, 141 taxonomies as interpretive devices, 142 interpretivist study of politics focus on political culture, 118 methodological tools, 118 relationship to literary studies, 120 introspection, 7 irony and paradox, 119, 124, 142 Jaggar, Alison, 164n59 Jihad vs. McWorld (Barber), 37 judicial review, 41, 61 justice, 51, 82 Laing, R.D., The Politics of the Family, 158 language, 14–15, 92–93, 107, 124, 142, 166, 171 commonality across linguistic practices and cultures, 11, 135–36, 142 constitutive of humanity, 142 fundamentality to conduct, 117 means by which human beings make meaning, 118 necessary for understanding of power and authority, 143 power and domination through, 174–75 “sedimented” languages, 142 shared in a community, 136 tied to voluntary action, 119 language games, 180 language of politics, 8–10 late capitalism, 148, 152, 176 leaders’ lives as case studies, 158

207

leadership, 81, 134, 149 critiques of leaders, 162 group theory on, 67–68 pathology in, 158 regime definitions of, 37 leadership change, 134 leadership studies, 140 legitimacy, 9–10, 78, 148 Lenin’s theory of international imperialism, 147 Leviathan (Hobbes), 5 Levinson, Daniel, 30 liberal democracy, 70, 96, 102 liberal economic theory, 96 The Liberal Tradition in America (Hartz), 35 liberty, 82 linguistic practices, 123 agency and, 117 linguistic structuralism, 133 all cultures have some basic linguistic features in common, 135–36, 142 applications, 138 criticism, 137 theoretical assumptions, 136–37 linguistic turn, 117, 121, 130, 176 literary criticism, 118. See also textual analysis logical analysis, 18 love, 99 loyalty, 99 Lukes, Stephen, 77 Power, 73–74 male-centric values, 166. See also patriarchy manipulation of popular expression, 43 manipulative power, 78 Manipulatory Politics (Goodin), 76 Marcuse, Herbert, 160 marginalization, 165, 169, 172 Marx, Karl, 79n31, 117, 132, 145, 148 Marxism, 137, 146, 161, 166, 175, 192 failure of Marxist societies, 151 Marxist theory, 148, 158, 165, 172, 196. See also structuralist Marxism ambitious in scope, 162 of class conflict, 14, 192

208

index

comeback in political studies, 147 dialectical reasoning in, 38–39 of the state, 148 mass communication, 87 mass culture, 123, 152, 180 mass media, 86, 90, 102, 155, 159, 163 construction of race, 173 framing of international issues, 78 gender and, 165 studies of, 78, 94, 127 textual analysis of, 138 in Western democracy, 36, 43 mass parties, 42 meaning, 118, 124, 135, 142 theory of, 195 meaning of a text, 121 meaningful statements, 6–7 media, 81. See also mass media media, nature and scope of, 110 media and policy case studies, 78 media studies, 36, 140 metaphor, 124 metaphor of the family, 128 metaphor of the organic body, 79–81 methodological individualism, 69, 81, 97, 100 methodological pluralism, 65 Mexico, 47, 127 Middle East, 40 militarism, 35 misrepresentation, 165–67, 169 modernity, 5–6, 8 modes of inquiry, 16–19 morality, 100 mortality (thanatos), 156 multidisciplinarity or interdisciplinarity, 128, 193–94 narcissism, 158 narrative techniques, 170 natural law, 51 natural rights, 51 natural sciences, 4, 7, 16, 57 nature/nurture debate, 2, 31, 98 neo-functionalism, 84 neo-institutionalism, 5, 58, 63–64, 192 neurobiology, 15 neuropsychology, 110

neuroses, 157–61, 184 Newtonian physics, 79, 105–6 Newtonian-style causal accounts, 17–18 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 181 non-governmental associations, 72 the normative in political studies, 19–21 normative orientation of critical studies, 147 objective interests power and, 74–75, 77 (objective) knowledge, 7 objectivism, 145 observation, 57, 105 ontological assumptions, 23–24, 57 critical ecology, 183–84 critical psychoanalysis, 156, 159 critical race theory, 170 interpretivist study of politics, 118 linguistic structuralism, 136 political philosophy, 49 political-cultural interpretivism, 130 postmodernism, 177 rational choice theory, 97 regime theory, 31 structural functionalism, 79, 83 structural Marxism, 149, 152 systems theory, 89, 93 textual analysis, 122 ontological issues, 191–93, 197 ontology, 1–4, 15, 51 ontology of feminism, 167 ontology of language, 136 ontology of the power approach, 75 opinion studies, 110 paradox and irony, 119, 124, 142 Parsons, Talcott, The Social System, 80 party politics, 81, 173. See also political parties party systems, 81, 84, 86 path-dependence, 58, 68 pathology, 158, 160–61 patriarchy, 36, 146, 165, 169 personal liberty, 31 personal regime/polity fit, 28, 31 personality, 30 phenomenological method, 18 philosophers, 4

index

philosophical and cultural anthropology, 118 philosophy, 46, 195 philosophy of social science, 1 physics, 153 Plato, 5, 8, 31, 34, 178 Republic, 29, 79n31 Platonic thought, 38–40 pleasure (eros), 156–57. See also eros; happiness pluralism, 22, 58, 69–70, 90 pluralist democracy, 69, 81 pluralist group theory in comparative politics, 68 political agency folk theories of, 11–12 political change, 60–61, 63, 84 political conduct motivation, 53 outcome of psychological states, 158 sources of, 13–15 political cultural interpretivism, 195 (political) cultural studies, 110, 128 applications, 133–34 criticism, 130–33 folk theory of, 133 indebted to anthropology, 129 predictive force, 129, 134 relative distance from subjects, 130–31 theoretical assumptions, 130–31 translation between cultures, 131 political culture, 30, 34, 150, 152, 155, 158–59 comparative, 86 instruments of, 154 marginalization of women, 165 rational choice and, 102 political decision making systems theory on, 87–88, 90 political events treated as narrative, expository, or artistic events, 129 political leadership. See leadership political morality, 9–10, 13, 49, 51, 54 political movements, 71 political parties, 66, 71, 81, 86, 94, 101, 141. See also party politics Marxist view of, 150 party behaviour, 109

209

party competition, 81, 149 theory of, 142 Westminster-styled, 65 political philosophy, 22, 27, 46, 48, 195 applications, 53–54 assumptions, 52 challenges the positivist empiricism of the Enlightenment, 49–50 criticism, 52–53 epistemological claims of, 49 in international affairs, 54 Marxist criticism, 52 ontological assumption of a common humanity across history, 49 on regime theory, 51 theoretical assumptions, 48–50 theories of just war, 54 political pluralism, 58, 69–70, 90 political practice, 159 political resources, 9, 75–76, 78 political studies the normative in, 19–21 comparison to natural sciences, 4 critical turn in, 145 diversity as a discipline, 189–90 hybrid approaches, 58, 63, 190–93, 199 narrowing the discipline, 195–96 origins of the discipline, 5–8 principles and rules of ethical conduct in research, 20 psychoanalytic turn in, 156 theoretical grounding, 3 political studies departments, 191 women in, 167 politics is theatre, 129 politics of identity, 180 The Politics of the Family (Laing), 158 popular culture, 156 popular television, 141 positivism, 6n3, 7, 49, 195 positivist empiricism, 6–8, 50, 161–62 epistemological demands of, 6 post-colonial approach, 22 post-Freudianism, 155–57 postmodernism, 4, 8, 22, 130, 174–75, 192 applications, 180–81 connected to power theory, 178 criticism, 179–80

210

index

theoretical assumptions, 176–78 viewed as a language game, 180 world is in process of disintegration, 177 post-structural criticism of linguistic structuralism, 137 post-structuralist turn in social and political theory, 178 poverty and the welfare state, 44–45 power, 10, 28, 82, 120, 123, 149, 179 causal nature, 74 central to politics and government, 3 community political power, 77–79 definition, 9, 73 elites, 78, 149 Greek philosophers on, 5, 8 group behaviour as example of, 69 justifiable exercise of, 75 manipulative, 78 postmodernism’s view of, 4 relational nature, 75 sedimented power and domination, 176 as source of political conduct, 15 Power (Lukes), 73–74 power analysis, 9, 58 authority established by, 10 predictive of political conduct, 76 power claims falsifiability, 72 power theory, 22, 69, 158, 179, 192, 196 agency and ontology assumptions, 74 applications, 77–79 criticism, 76–77 epistemology, 74 group theory and, 70 law-like sentences, 73 narrow assumptions, 72–73, 75, 78 realist language of, 78 requires assertion of a counter-factual for its explanatory force, 79 theoretical assumptions, 73–75 praxis, 146, 150, 153, 173, 185 pressure groups, 43, 66, 71, 81, 94, 101 Marxist view of, 150 Principles of Morals and Legislation (Bentham), 97 principles of political right, 9–10, 13, 49, 51, 54

principles of right conduct, 27, 100. See also ethics prisoner’s dilemma, 99 The Process of Government (Bentley), 68 Pross, Paul, 43 psychoanalysis, 155 psychoanalytic turn in political studies, 156 psychological maturation, 159–60 psychological repression, 156, 159, 161 psychological theory of behaviourism, 103 psychological wellness, 157 psychology, 15, 21 psychology of value or character, 50 psychopathology, 160 public/private life distinction, 166 public interest, 96 public opinion polls, 107 public opinion-poll studies, 102 public policy changes in, 110 rational choice theory’s usefulness to, 101 qualitative methodology, 134 race, construction of, 170 racism, 169, 171 radical freedom, 174 rational choice theory, 5, 23, 58, 64, 69, 95–96, 109–10, 152, 192–93, 195–96 account of disobedience, 63 analysis of political culture, 102 applications, 101–2 attempting unified social science, 97 critical ecology’s view of, 182–83 criticism, 98–101 debt to economics, 79, 95 discounts informational problems, 99 explanatory force, 102 falsifiability, 98, 101 folk psychology of, 63 methodological individualism, 97, 100 misrepresents inherent sociality, 100 political change and, 63 predictive force, 97, 101–2 preference satisfaction left to individuals, 100 prescriptive force, 100

index

theoretical assumptions, 97–98 trouble accounting for moral sense, 100–101 use in voting and public policy studies in liberal democracies, 102 reactivity, 105, 107–8 realism, 22 realist language of power theory, 78 reason, 5–8, 13 red Toryism, 36 reflexivity as source of individual identity, 118 Reformation, 35 regime change, 28, 32 regime theory, 22, 27–29, 155 agency assumptions, 50 applications, 34–37 criticism, 32–34 definitions of leadership, 37 epistemological strategies, 50 epistemological test of truth in, 31 in explaining international cooperation and conflict, 37 interpretive mode of analysis in, 31 methodological tools of, 37 ontological assumptions of, 31, 50 political philosophy on, 51 predictive, 30 theoretical assumptions, 30–31 reification, 164, 169 relativism, 124, 132, 176 religion, 148, 155 representation, 121, 171, 176 misrepresentation, 165–67, 169 of women by men, 167–68 repression (psychological), 156–57, 159, 161 Republic (Plato), 29, 79n31 research regarding human subjects, 108n37 ethical requirements of, 20–21 resistance, 146, 169, 173, 186 resistance and the interrogation of convention, 178 revolution, 83, 149, 151, 153 role of the state. See state Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 117 rules, causal force, 58

211

sanctions, 62–63, 72–73, 75, 78 Sanford, Nevitt, 30 schools, 86, 159, 165 science of the human body, 111 science of the human brain, 112 scientific method, 57 self-determination, 156 self-reference, 14, 49 self-regarding and other-regarding distinction, 193 sexual desire, 156 signs and other forms of representation, 117, 121, 142, 176–77. See also symbols social and economic justice advocates objections to rational choice theory, 100 social beings, 2 social change, 80, 171 social institutions, 157 role in formation of our psychologies, 158 The Social System (Parsons), 80 social transformation. See social change sociality, 14, 23, 65–66, 70, 100, 157 sociobiology, 110 applications, 112 conflates human brain with the human mind, 111–12 criticism, 111–12 theoretical assumptions, 111 sociology, 79, 95, 195 Socrates, 186 Socratic method, 181 solidarity of labour unions, 67 sources of political conduct, 2, 13–15 species fetishism, 183 stability, 82 state, 149 autonomy of, 149 enabling role within class structure, 150 Marxist theory of, 148 protection of capitalist relations, 148 role of the state, 154–55 state agenda, degree of, 91–92 state and society, 153–54 statistical applications, 103–4 statistical generalizations, 41 status quo, 196

212

index

strategic voting, 96 structural functionalism, 195–96 applications, 86 assumption that human beings are inherently social creatures, 81 charge of contradiction, 85 connects broader social functions to individuals, 80 conservative bias, 82, 84 criticism, 84–85 debt to sociology, 79 democracy is best form of polity, 82 difficulty accounting for transformative change, 84 explanatory force, 84 ontological assumptions, 83 predictive force, 84–85 similarity to eco-theory, 83 and social change, 80 society is organic, 79 support for capitalist economic relations, 84 theoretical assumptions, 82–83 too normative, 84 structuralism, 22 structuralist Marxism, 38, 147–48. See also Marxist theory applications, 154–55 criticism, 151–54 predictive force, 153 seen as too abstract, 153 theoretical assumptions, 149–51 structure, 14 structure/agency debate, 153 student movement (late 1960s), 160 subconscious, 156, 159 subjectivity, 7 superego, 157, 161 supreme courts, 64 surplus value, 148–50, 152 syllogistic, analytical logic, 38, 40 symbols, 14, 16, 117, 121–22, 127–29, 142. See also signs and other forms of representation systems theory, 87, 93, 110, 192, 196 ability to account for transmission of simplified (not complex) information, 93

applications, 94 criticism, 90–94 debt to communication theory and cybernetics, 95 decision-making model, 89 folk theory of, 89 input/output flow diagram representing political decision making, 88, 90 predictive force, 93 theoretical assumptions, 87–90 value-neutral, 89 tautologies, 107 freedom and power, 74–75, 179, 196 taxonomy of core approaches, 21–24 Taylor, Charles, 130n42 technical language, 46, 105, 107 teleology, 80 text of a culture, 122, 127 textual analysis, 121 applications, 127–28 coherence theory of truth, 123 criticism, 124–26 folk theory currency, 124 foundation for understanding the meaning of political culture, 126 interpretive devices, 122 of the mass media, 138 reveals assumptions, beliefs, values of the culture, 122 subjectivity, 125 theoretical assumptions, 123–24 thanatos, 157 theories of identity, 171 Theory and Methodology of World Development (Frank), 154 truth as culturally, historically, or individually bound, 175 tyranny, 29, 53 underdevelopment theory of, 148, 154 United States, 47, 70, 127 founded around liberal values, 35 political culture, 35 universities, 150

index

interest in multi- or interdisciplinary studies, 193–94 utilitarianism, 100 values, 14, 19–20, 27–28, 30, 52–53 male-centric, 166 psychologically grounded, 30 truths about, 49 value-neutral, 7, 89 vote, 120, 160

Weber, Max, 79n31 welfare state, 148, 155 will, 174 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 117 working class, 151 Young Man Luther (Erikson), 162n58

213