Contemporary and comparative government and politics(modern approaches)

 

Discuss the modern approaches of comparative government and politics:-

When we say that a particular theory is a result of comparative government and politics, then we mean that theory is a result to a comparative study of different political system and there working. According to Wikipedia, it is a field in political science characterized either by the use of the comparative method or other empirical methods to explore politics within countries. This includes the questioning or analysing the working of political institutions, political behaviours, conflicts, and the causes and consequences of economic development of different nation and under different types of governments. The term modern approach is simply used to determine the time of the emergence of a particular theory. The comparative study is supplemented or supported by some methodological approach; modern approach is one of such method of defining the time and idea.

Normative methods generally refers to the traditional methods of inquiry to the phenomena of politics and are not merely concerned with ‘what is’ but ‘what ought to be’ issues in politics. It means that, it does not anymore focuses on the theoretical explanation but in predicting the upcoming circumstances in a political environment on the basis of a statistical or analytical study. Its focus is on the analysis of an institution as a basic unit of study. However with the advent of industrialisation and behavioural revolution in the field of political science, emphasis shifted from ‘what ought to’ to ‘what is’ which we know as political realism in present day. Today political scientists are emphasising more on the analytics that is based on how we people behave in matters related to the state and government. It means the policies and laws made by the government and their response in the citizens of the nation who are directly or indirectly affected by them.

It is said that necessity is the mother of invention. In the same way a new movement was ushered in by a group of political scientists in America who were not satisfied with the traditional approach to study and analysis of the government and the state as they felt that many tremendous exploration has been occurred in other social sciences like sociology, psychology, philosophy and etc. which when applied to political issues could render new insights. Let’s understand this with an example, when we take an event like cold war, we find that it was not fought by any armaments included rather it was a psychological warfare. If there was no advent in psychology, there could have been a world war on every such tense political event and bureaucratic decisions would lack efficiency. The modern era is believed to be an era of data, because modern scientist’s work is to collect every data of how the people are behaving or ought to behave. This helps them to predict the response of citizens in political matters in future. The quantitative or statistical method, the systems approach or simulation approach in political science base their enquiry on scientific data and as such are known as modern or empirical method. The previous contradiction on the political study to be a scientific study or not has ended. The statistical and analytical nature of it proved politics to be a scientific study.

BEHAVIOURAL APPROACH

Industrialization brought the Modern era of political science with it, although the very beginning of this era was and will remain the darkest time for politics. When every nation was at the surge of disputes, a new political theory was emerging to revolutionise the whole world. It was named Behaviouralism. Traditional theory and philosophers criticised politics as a science. There were many arguments that were in contradiction of political study to be called science. But with behaviouralism came a new technique of analysing the political environment and prediction of a political action. As the emergence of behaviouralism in 1930s in the United States, the political thinkers started to believe in the importance of data and statistical study in politics. It was criticised in the beginning because it represented a sharp break from previous approaches in emphasizing an objective, quantified approach to explain and predict political behaviour. It is associated with the rise of behavioural sciences which was accompanied with the natural sciences like philosophy, psychology and etc. it claims to explain political behaviour from an unbiased, neutral point of view. It was 1940 to 1970s when this theory gained its support from all over the world. As we know that David Easton was the first thinker who started to use this technique in the study of political systems. The biggest example is the presidential elections of United States of America, where these statistical studies are proved to be efficient. The very origin of this theory is believed to be the work of a professor of University of Chicago, Charles Merriam who in the 1920s and 1930s, who emphasized on the importance of examining the political behaviour of an individual or a group rather than considering how they abide by legal or formal rules.

The main characteristics of behavioural approach are as follows:

(1). It rejects the political institution as a basic unit of research and focuses on the research and identification of the behaviour of individuals in political situations as the basic unit of analysis.

(2). Defines the construction of systematic, empirical theory as the goal of political sciences. This requires a lot of data like, beneficiaries of certain policy, total number of everything which affected the politics of the nation to be brought together.

(3). Identifies social sciences as behavioral sciences, which makes it more predictable and emphasizes the unity of political science with the other social sciences. This point proves that modern approach brought political science into a pure state of social science.

(4). Advocates the utilization and development of more precise techniques of observing, classifying and measuring data and urges the use of statistical or quantitative formulation wherever possible. The analytic behavior of modern politics made it possible for scientists to prove all theorists that politics is a scientific study and hence, it is not wrong to call it political science.

As according to David Easton, the intellectual foundations of behaviouralism could be summed up as regularities, verification, technique, quantification, values, systematization, pure science and integration. But like all theory this was not accepted as a whole set of remedy, there were theorists who criticized the behaviouralist theory. Their views on this theory were as follows:

(1). IGNORING THE SUBJECT MATTER- The comparative study was not possible without the technique and methods, this dependence of politics on a method and technique which tends to ignore the subject matter. As it does not study the basic institution rather, it studies the data and analytics.

(2). GENERALIZATION OF THE IDEA- The theorists who advocated the modern approach were wrong when they said that every human-being behave in a similar manner in the same situation.

(3). ACCURACY- It is difficult to study human behavior and to get a definite result, also because there is difference in the behaviors of every person. It changes with time and space.

(4). UNQUANTIFIABLE NATURE (data) - Most of the political phenomena are unquantifiable. Therefore it is always difficult to use scientific method in the study of political science.

(5). NEUTRALITY- The researcher could not be believed to be value natural all the time. He or she could have their own beliefs and orientation, which could put all the data at jeopardy, hence making irrelevant assumptions.

I believe that behaviouralism should not be considered as a contrary idea to traditional ones. It is more of a protest against and an extension and enrichment of traditional stance in political science. The goal of behaviouralism has been set as understanding, describing, analyzing and if possible predicting political phenomena.

POST-BEHAVIOURAL APPROACH

David Easton coined the term Post-Behaviouralism in his Presidential Address at the 65th Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association in 1969. In fact Easton was one of the key figures of behavioral revolution. Post-behavioralism claimed that despite the fact that behaviouralism claimed to be value free there was tendency in it towards social preservation and status-quo rather than social change. Therefore the new movement led stress on action and relevance. Three key tenets of the post behavioral movement were:

-         It questioned on the non-value free nature of behaviouralist theory, it advocated that the research should be value free in nature, but without neglecting it completely. Due to the complicated nature of social sciences, unlike natural sciences, generalization could not be made because the study of human nature in social context requires accuracy.

-         The behaviouralist stressed too much on the observable and measurable phenomena. Means, they put more work on easily studied issues rather, to more important topics. Easton believed that behaviouralist movement looked more like mathematics and less political science; it had lost its touch with reality and contemporary world.

-         In that place, post behaviouralism stressed that research should have relevance to the society and that intellectuals have a positive role to play. The post behaviouralist believes that the scientific tools in political science could be believed to benefit only when it is able to solve the various problems confronting society. It criticized behaviouralism for ignoring the realities of society while laying too much emphasis on techniques.

It needs to be stressed that post- behavoiralism was a continuation of the behavioral movement as it recognized the contributions of behaviouralism in the realm of political science. By making use of different techniques and methods post-behaviouralism try to overcome the drawbacks of behaviouralism and make the study of political science more relevant to the society.

STRUCTURAL-FUNCTIONAL APPROACH

Structural-functional approach or functionalism is a framework for building theory that sees society as a complex system that works together or we say that each part of society has its functions specified to promote solidarity and stability. This approach looks at both social structure as well as social functions. A common analogy, popularized by Herbert Spencer, presents these parts of society as “organs” that work toward the proper functioning of the “body” as a whole. For Talcott Parsons,” structural-functionalism” came to describe a particular stage in the methodological development of social science, rather than a specific school of thought. The theory asserts that each of these structures has a particular function that supports the establishment of an orderly, stable system of governance within which individuals and other societal structures fulfill roles of their own. Typical political structures include: legislative bodies, courts, bureaucratic organizations, executive bodies, and political parties. (Powell, Dalton, Strom, pg 35).

It became known to all by 1960s when it became clear that ways of studying U.S. and European politics were not useful in studying newly independent countries, and that a new approach was needed. Almond claimed that certain political functions existed in all political systems. On the input side he listed these functions as: political socialization, political interest articulation, political interest aggregation, and political communication. The output functions included rulemaking, rule implementation, and rule adjudication. Thus they believed that the study of functioning is now based on the difference of working of different states. It is a system which is mainly based on input of ideas, conversation or discussion, output or outcome of the idea and a feedback. It considers a society as a whole system which helps each other for betterment.