The Delimitation and Mensurability of Political Phenomena

Extract

Political science is not a sociological science of everything, a psychological study of all human behavior in all aspects, an anthropological inquiry into miscellaneous human customs, or a philosophy of history. Still less is it a study only of the state, which is a form of social organization resulting from one species of political action, or a study only of governments and the stage properties of law and administration.

Politics is concerned with a field of human behavior characterized by the recurrence of specific behavior patterns. These peculiarly political patterns, however, must not be treated simply as a series of incidents in mere temporal juxtaposition. Human history must be studied as natural history and physical phenomena have been studied, that is to say, with a view to the detection of a recurrence in these patterns, and, hence, of a process in accordance with which, in given total situations, given detailed behavior patterns recur. These patterns are “lines of conduct” of an individual or group character, pursued in relation to other individuals or groups, as a matter of human method in dealing with such situations, which situations arise partly from the nature of the non-human environment, partly from the historical combination of human factors. The resultant specific action or behavior recurs with the recurrence of the stimuli of the approximately recurrent situation; for example, a certain general situation known as “the outbreak of hostilities” has certain specific consequences in changes of individual conduct toward members of a given nation, and the need of putting through a domestic policy against opposition brings into play the ever similar methods of party organization.