The Behavioral Approach in Political Science: Epitaph for a Monument to a Successful Protest

Perhaps the most striking characteristic of the “behavioral approach” in political science is the ambiguity of the term itself, and of its synonym “political behavior.” The behavioral approach, in fact, is rather like the Loch Ness monster: one can say with considerable confidence what it is not, but it is difficult to say what it is. Judging from newspaper reports that appear from time to time, particularly just before the summer tourist season, I judge that the monster of Loch Ness is not Moby Dick, nor my daughter's goldfish that disappeared down the drain some ten years ago, nor even a misplaced American eight heading for the Henley Regatta. In the same spirit, I judge that the behavioral approach is not that of the speculative philosopher, the historian, the legalist, or the moralist. What, then, is it? Indeed, does it actually exist? Although I do not profess to know of the full history of the behavioral approach, a little investigation reveals that confusing and even contradictory interpretations have marked its appearance from the beginning. The first sightings in the roily waters of political science of the phenomenon variously called political behavioral approach, or behavioral(ist) research, evidently occurred in the 1920s. The term “political behavior,” it seems, was used by American political scientists from the First World War onward. The honor of first adopting the term as a book title seems to belong, however, not to a political scientist but to the American journalist Prank Kent, who published a book in 1928 entitled Political Behavior, The Heretofore Unwritten Laws, Customs, and Principles of Politics as Practised in the United States. To Kent, the study of political behavior meant the cynical “realism” of the tough-minded newspaperman who reports the way things “really” happen and not the way they're supposed to happen. This meaning, I may say, is often implied even today. However, Herbert Tingsten rescued the term for political science in 1937 by publishing his path-breaking Political Behavior: Studies in Election Statistic. Despite the fact that Tingsten was a Swede, and his work dealt with European elections, the term became increasingly identified with American political science.