Learning Objectives
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
- Recall what behavioralism is
- Explain the impacts behavioralism has on current students and scholars
The second wave in political science, which started in earnest after World War II, is the behavioral wave. Behavioral political science, or behavioralism, is the study of political behavior and emphasizes the use of surveys and statistics. As opposed to the institutional wave, which focused on the nature, structure, processes, and outcomes of institutions, the behavioral wave is centered on individuals, groups, and the general public and demanded the use of the scientific method.
The godfather of behavioral political science was Charles Merriam, a professor at the University of Chicago from 1900 to 1940 (“Guide to the Charles E. Merriam Papers 1893-1957” n.d.; Dahl 1961). During his four-decade career, Professor Merriam established a political science program which trained a generation of behavioral political scientists, such as V.O. Key and Gabriel Almond. In doing so, these graduate students left the University of Chicago for positions at colleges and universities around the country, thereby helping spread this new wave in political science known as the “Chicago School”.
Heaney and Hanesen (2006, 595), in describing the Chicago School, write: “The building of the Chicago School reveals that the evolution of political science is about more than the advent of ideas. It is also about how ideas are taken up by scholars on a faculty, taught to students in a curriculum, and supported in their development by an infrastructure for inquiry. The efforts of Charles Merriam gave a vision of a new science of politics a material life at the University of Chicago.” With this in mind, it’s helpful to acknowledge that we, as students of the discipline and budding political scientists, have a role to play when it comes to shaping the norms, conventions, and trends in the field. In this case, Professor Merriam had a vision for what political science ought to be.
How does the Chicago School affect students, like you, today? There are at least three ways that the Chicago School influences the study of political science today. First, when you’re reading journal articles or books, you’ll typically find the inclusion of data and statistical analyses. Data and statistical analyses represent, in some fashion, the idea of rigorous science. Before the behavioral wave, most research of politics focused on first-hand accounts, written constitutions and laws, and the nature of government and its relationship to the people. However, after the behavioral wave, researcher politics began to explore political actors and phenomenon in more detailed ways.
For example, institutional political scientists would have been interested in how government should operate. Behavioral political scientists would have been interested in how the government is operating. Now there’s a slight distinction that I want to bring to your attention between these two sentences. It’s the use of the word “should” versus the word “is”. When you ask what “should be”, as explained in a later section, you bring in your assumptions, your values, and your prescriptions for the way government should work. But, when you ask, “what is”, you’re still making assumptions, but you are expected to leave your values and your prescriptions out of your analysis. This is one way the Chicago school influences us today because it pushes us to leave our personal biases at the door.
The second way the Chicago School influences political science today is that students at the undergraduate and graduate level are expected to have some quantitative analysis training. For example, for those who are declared political science majors, you’re aware that there is likely a statistics requirement to earn your degree. You may be asking “why do I have to take statistics in order to get a degree in political science?” Well, in some ways, you can thank the Chicago School for this because they drove the use of statistics and political analysis and they argued that it was an essential component of how to do the science of politics. Another way of putting this is, if you were a student of politics at the turn of the 20th century, you would have studied the classics like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, reading constitutions and laws and congressional testimonies and reports, and elaborating on how democracy should work. But, at the turn of the 21st century, statistics and mathematical models are standard tools that all students are expected to be acquainted with.
Finally, the third way the Chicago School shapes political science today is that there is an underlying concern that political science cannot simply be and end unto itself. Political science should inform the behaviors of individuals, groups, elected and appointed officials, and governments and countries here at home and around the world. In other words, the Chicago School didn’t overtake the discipline to the point where we no longer value questions of what should be. While this may have never been the intention of Charles Merriam and his students, the effect for some time was to push away from the normative view of what should be. But with any good change in the discipline, there will always be pushback from those who feel that there is a single way to conduct the work within the discipline.
