David Easton

A Re-assessment of the Concept of Political Support

It has been said about the United States that it is now suffering ‘a crisis of regime’. Europe, we have been told, is in little better condition: ‘all over Europe the First World War broke up the structure of society which, before 1914, had provided the necessary basis of confidence between government and governed. There no longer exists, except in a few places such as Switzerland, that general acceptance of the conduct of national affairs that adds to the vigor of government and society alike.’1 These are the kinds of practical political problems to which the concept of political support, as found in systems analysis, has been directed.

An Approach to the Analysis of Political Systems

I N an earlier work I have argued for the need to develop general, empirically oriented theory as the most economical way in the long run to understand political life. Here I propose to indicate a point of view that, at the least, might serve as a springboard for discussion of alternative approaches and, at most, as a small step in the direction of a general political theory. I wish to stress that what I have to say is a mere orientation to the problem of theory; outside of economics and perhaps psychology, it would be presumptuous to call very much in social science “theory,” in the strict sense of the term.

The Child'S Acquisition of Regime Norms: Political Efficacy

In its broadest conception, a political system is a means through which the wants of the members of a society are converted into binding decisions. To sustain a conversion process of this sort a society must provide a relatively stable context for political interaction, a set of ground rules for participating in all parts of the political process. We may describe this context variously as a constitutional order, a set of fundamental rules, or customary procedures for settling differences. But however this context is defined, it usually includes three elements: some minimal constraints on the general goals of its members, rules or norms governing behavior, and structures of authority through which the members of the system act in making and implementing political outputs. To these goals, norms and structures we may give the traditional name “political regime” or constitutional order in the broadest, nonlegal sense of the phrase. We may hypothesize that if a political system is to persist, one of its major tasks is to provide for the input of at least a minimal level of support for a regime of some kind. A political system that proved unable to sustain a regime, that is, some relatively ordered and stable way of converting inputs into outputs, could not avoid collapsing. Each time a dispute arose it would have to seek to agree on means for settling differences at the same time as it sought to bring about a settlement of the substance of the issue, a virtually impossible combination of tasks for a society to engage in continuously.

The New Revolution in Political Science

A new revolution is under way in American political science. The last revolution—behavioralism—has scarcely been completed before it has been overtaken by the increasing social and political crises of our time. The weight of these crises is being felt within our discipline in the form of a new conflict in the throes of which we now find ourselves. This new and latest challenge is directed against a developing behavioral orthodoxy. This challenge I shall call the post-behavioral revolution. The initial impulse of this revolution is just being felt. Its battle cries are relevance and action . Its objects of criticism are the disciplines, the professions, and the universities. It is still too young to be described definitively. Yet we cannot treat it as a passing phenomenon, as a kind of accident of history that will somehow fade away and leave us very much as we were before. Rather it appears to be a specific and important episode in the history of our discipline, if not in all of the social sciences. It behooves us to examine this revolution closely for its possible place in the continuing evolution of political science. Does it represent a threat to the discipline, one that will divert us from our long history in the search for reliable understanding of politics? Or is it just one more change that will enhance our capacity to find such knowledge?

The Child's Image of Government

To maintain a social construct as varied, exten sive, and demanding of social resources as government, a broad panoply of forces need to be set in motion to provide the requisite support. The political socialization of new members is one of the most far-reaching and most consequential of these forces. The political system must somehow provide a flow of information about and continuously create deep feelings of loyalty and obedience for its basic forms. One of these is its government or authorities. Government is a primary focus for the generation of politically supportive or disaffective orienta tions. The data here presented suggest that in the United States a supportive image of government is being widely and regularly reproduced for young new members. The average grade school child of the test group appears to experience some rather basic changes in his conception of government— changes which move him toward a cognitive image that con forms to the requirements of a democratic political system. We know as well, from what little evidence there is directly about support for government per se, that adult Americans are also highly supportive of their government. These explora tory data illustrate the growth of the deep roots of this sup portive sentiment.—Ed.

The Development of political science : a comparative survey

In recent years the history of political science has become recognised as an important but neglected area of study. The Development of Political Science is the first comprehensive discussion of the subject in a comparative international perspective. Offering a wide-ranging account of the development of the subject and its dissemination across national borders and cultural divides, the book begins with a study of the historiography of the discipline in the United States, a country which has been at the forefront of the field. Widening its discussion to emphasise Western Europe as a focus for comparison, the contributors provide studies of further areas of interest such as China and Africa. This particular approach emphasises the books vision of political science as a growing transnational body of knowledge. In presenting critical analysis of the state of the field, this vigorous study aims to further the development of the discipline in the countries discussed, and to provide a work that is interesting not only to political scientists, but to all those concerned with the development of the social sciences.

Harold Lasswell; Policy Scientist for a Democratic Society

In recent years the social sciences have come under attack from an increasing number of directions. Laymen have been perennially sceptical of their utility. In fact the social sciences have made so little impact on the public that to label oneself a political scientist, sociologist, or anthropologist to all but a small segment of the population is to invite further questions for clarification of meaning. Numerous philosophers, on the other hand, have increasingly ingi5tcd that an enduring system of generalizations, comparable to those that prevail in the physical or biological sciences, will never be discovered and accordingly a science of man can never really exist. What is new in the nature of the attack today is that many who are themselves social scientists and their patrons, the foundations upon whose largesse the social sciences to a considerable degree depend, have begun if not to doubt, at least to question, whether the social sciences can measure up to commonly held expectations. Two questions pressing upon the social sciences have played a significant part in bringing about this self-scrutiny. The first is simple in its formulation but vexing in its solution. Can the social sciences pass beyond the relativism of the Weberian tradition?1 Can they say whether the goals of a democratic society are superior to those of dictatorial communism? To this question the social scientist has of course traditionally replied that the testing of the relative merits of ends lies beyond his competence.2 For him the desire of each man is a datum with which the social scientist must work. And while he has tolerated the notion that perhaps other disciplines, such as philosophy, might be able to suggest a universal system of values,

Divided knowledge : across disciplines, across cultures

The Division, Integration and Transfer of Knowledge - David Easton Political Science in the United States - David Easton Past and Present The Many Faces of American Sociology - Ralph H Turner A Discipline in Search of Identity How (and What) are Historians Doing - Charles Tilly The Role of Theory in the Development of Literary Studies in the United States - J Hillis Miller Contemporary Philosophy in the United States - John R Searle Blurring the Disciplinary Boundaries - Richard D Lambert Area Studies in the United States The Shaping of Business Management Thought - Earl F Cheit A New Framework for Integration - Joel L Fleishman Policy Analysis and Public Management

The Role of the Elementary School in Political Socialization

Formal programs of citizenship training have a long tradition in public schools in the United States. Typically, these programs have attempted to maximize interpersonal skills and moral qualities of the individual student and to improve his co-operation and participation in civic activities of the community. Such efforts at citizenship education have been conducted for the most part at the secondary-school and the college levels (1). Although formal instruction in subjects such as history, civics, and social studies are frequently offered as part of the elementary-school curriculum, these courses are more usually placed in the upper grades. There has been little emphasis on citizenship training during the early school years or on other aspects of the process of political socialization. From the beginning of the childs school career, however, the school teaches and reinforces attitudes toward law, government, and citizenship in a number of informal ways. Pledging allegiance to the flag, singing the national anthem, celebrating the birth of Washington and Lincoln, and observing Veterans Day are some of the most frequent occasions for teaching the young child respect for law and a feeling of national loyalty and pride. By such informal

Systems Analysis in Politics and its Critics

An age may often be defined by the great new ideas that sift into all the varied crevices of thought of a given civilization. Regardless of where these ideas may have their start, whether in the natural or the social sciences or in the humanistic disciplines, it is testimony to their compelling strength that as these ideas are exposed to ever widening areas of knowledge, the older ways of thinking give way to the new. Yet as these new ideas leave their original grounds and move into strange fields seldom do they retain their pristine meaning. Each succeeding host discipline kneads and molds them to its own special purposes. But once again the power of the new ideas may be such that regardless of these shifts in meaning, some part of the original sense is retained. This part succeeds in transforming the way men think about their traditional problems and gives birth to whole generations of new ones. Newtonian mechanics and Darwinian evolution were two such universal solvents of traditional ways of thinking about nature, both physical and social.