Political Science

Sound Bite

Political institutions and behavior are the main topics of the twelve essays selected for this volume.They cover a range of approaches to the study of the science of politics, and taken as a whole they give a sound introduction to the field and to the multiplicity of interpretations that are current.

About the Book

If at one time we thought that the movement to science would yield unification of the discipline, it is now apparent that there are many roads to science. Still it is important for us to consider yet again what the appropriate goals are for our scientific enterprise. What works in theory building; induction and deduction; prediction and control; the search for useful principles to guide us ' examining these questions, we can build a better science.Political science has come so far as a discipline that different schools and scholars have different interpretations of science in the study of politics, and that diversity is important to maintain. Advances made in the study of political institutions and behavior are described in twelve essays from the 1983 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association . Addressing they do not employ any single approach to the study of the science of politics. Taken as a whole, they illustrate the multiplicity of interpretations that are presently given to the common enterprise.

Introduction

When political science began to be "scientific," this generally meant that political scientists were becoming concerned with objective description and generalization. Induction was the dominant mode of theory building, with the goal of explanation being paramount. But we have come far enough along in our scientific endeavor that some would now demand more for the science of political science.An increasingly common view of science is the deductive approach to theory, as emphasized by Gerald Kramer in chapter 2 of this book. For Kramer, science is theory building. He speaks of prediction and control as "useful byproducts," but the "central object" to him is understanding, by which he means explanation in terms of a simpler set of principles. He finds the formal theory endeavors closest to this approach. While admitting that too much of the early formal work was devoted to impossibility theorems, he is heartened by the current trend toward positive models of processes. The lack of empirical testing is described as in large part due to poor measurement in empirical work, with insufficient attention to error in data and overuse of inadequate measuring instruments.Finally, he expresses his concern that we need less complexity in our theory combined with less simplicity in our measurement. By contrast, others would consider successful prediction to be the ultimate goal of our scientific inquiry. Duncan MacRae makes this case in chapter 3.Certainly such prediction must be based on theory, but his test of success is prediction. His enjoyable idiom for this test is our inability to predict the next election when asked by friends from the natural sciences at cocktail parties. In part this is like looking at the most recent voting behavior articles and asking "Where's the politics?" After all, what could there be to the study of voting if we can't predict the results of elections? But it is also useful in forcing us to remember the questions of consequences and uses of our work. MacRae is arguing that discovery is not enough in political science, that we must be concerned with the use of our results. Because of the importance of that "practical action," political science to MacRae is more than just a science.A further criterion for science in political science that goes beyond the debate between Kramer and MacRae is a capability for incorporating notions of political change. If our models are to be truly explanatory, they must be capable of explaining change as well as constancy and must be able to cope with change in the system. After all, change is inherent in politics, so a theory of politics should not be time bound. Ideally a theory of institutions would include a theory of institutional change while a theory of political behavior would incorporate behavioral change. Our first cut at theory development can be static, but as scientific observations accumulate, it becomes more important to be able to understand the over-time changes in those observations. Unfortunately, a science of political change can be even more challenging to construct than is a science of politics.The existence of this multiplicity of criteria for science aptly points to a dilemma in our current development of science in political science. The pioneers in the scientific treatment of politics expected that the scientific revolution would lead to unity in the understanding of political science. That has not been achieved even if our means of data collection and analysis have become more scientific. In part, this is because we do not agree on what "theory" is. Thus there is still a debate between the "empirical theory," which has become common in some areas of the discipline, and the "normal theory " which Kramer supports, to which we might add the "predictive theory" that MacRae desires and the "dynamic theory" advocated in the preceding paragraph. True believers may see value in only one of these approaches, but many political scientists recognize the contribution of each and do not wish to choose a single road toward science. The dialogue as to the proper criteria for science and the proper role for theory in science is continued in the assessments of the state of science in the study of political institutions and behavior in the later chapters of this book, with different authors advancing the different approaches discussed in this section.THE SCIENCE OF POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS The second section of this book examines the familiar topic of political institutions, but often from new perspectives. At times it has seemed more difficult to establish science in the institutional realm than in the behavioral realm, as if there were a discontinuity between science and the study of institutions. These essays show that there has been real progress in developing the science of institutions, even if the enterprise is not completed.The reexamination of the role of institutions is illustrated in chapter 4 by Kenneth Shepsle, who views institutions as providing an element of equilibrium into a political system where individual preferences might not otherwise lead to equilibria. Shepsle's chapter directly challenges the claim of discontinuity between science and the study of institutions. At one level, he examines the role of institutions in the policy process. Institutions are intermediary between voters and policy, and he focuses attention on that role. At another level, Shepsle considers science in the legislative area, showing how a formal model perspective can be useful in the study of legislative institutions. He is not content with an overly simplistic model of a legislature, but instead tries to incorporate the institutional characteristics that make legislatures special.� Legislatures are also Lawrence Dodd's topic in chapter 5. Dodd suggests a broadbased theory of legislative change which relates change in the legislature to change in the public. The vastness of the area of legislative politics is such that Dodd's essay just covers one of many possible topics; it does not review science in the study of legislative committees, science in the study of voting in legislatures, or science in the study of political representation. The development of science is probably further along in each of these areas, whereas the topic of change (whether in the legislative or other arenas) has proved to be more difficult for scientific study. Dodd finds an absence of theory on legislative change, and so he builds one.His approach is not mathematical, but it is based on an understanding of the goals of political actors within an institutional setting. The work is exciting in terms of building a theory where one did not previously exist. Dodd does a nice job of integrating diverse strands of insights in the literature....

Table content

CONTENTS Part I. The Science of Political Science 1. Introduction: The Science of Politics and Political Change (Herbert F. Weisberg) 2. Political Science as Science (Gerald H. Kramer) 3. The Science of Politics and Its Limits (Duncan MacRae, Jr., University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) Part II. The Science of Political Institutions 4. Institutional Equilibrium and Equilibrium Institutions (Kenneth H. Shepsle, Washington University, St. Louis) 5. The Cycles of Legislative Change: Building a Dynamic Theory (Lawrence C. Dodd, Indiana University) 6. Presidential and Executive Studies: The One, The Few, and the Many (Bert A. Rockman, University of Pittsburgh) 7. The Social Science of Judicial Politics (James L. Gibson, University of Houston--University Park) 8. The Positive Theory of Hierarchies (Gary J. Miller, Michigan State University, and Terry M. Moe, Stanford University) Part III. The Science of Political Behavior 9. Structural Estimation with Limited Variables (Charles H. Franklin, Washington University, St. Louis, and John E. Jackson, University of Michigan) 10. The Dynamics of Public Opinion (Richard G. Niemi, University of Rochester) 11. Choice, Context and Consequence: Beaten and Unbeaten Paths Toward a Science of Electoral Behavior (Paul Allen Beck, Florida State University) 12. Model Choice in Political Science: The Case of Voting Behavior Research, 1946-1975 (Herbert F. Weisberg) Author Index