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Political Science and the Uses of Functional Analysis*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

A. James Gregor
A. James Gregor*
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
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Extract

Political science, as an empirical enterprise, shares with the other behavioral or social sciences at least one characteristic feature: partial formalization. For a science to most reliably discharge its two principal functions, explanation and prediction, statements embodying acquired knowledge must be systematically organized in subsumptive or deductive relations. Minimally, a set of such systematically related propositions, which include among them some lawlike generalizations, and which can be assigned specific truth value via empirical tests, is spoken of as a theory. A theory, in a substantially formalized system, includes as constituents (1) an uninterpreted or formal calculus which provides for syntactical invariance in the system, (2) a set of semantic rules of interpretation which assign some determinate empirical meanings to the formal calculus thereby relating it to an evidential or empirical base, and (3) a model for the uninterpreted calculus, in terms of more or less familiar conceptual or visualizable materials, which illustrates the relationships between variables in structural form, an alternative interpretation of the same calculus of which the theory itself is an interpretation.

The virtues of standard formalization need hardly be specified. For our purposes here it is sufficient to indicate that formalization seeks to satisfy the minimal requirements of any serious knowledge enterprise: to provide for syntactical and semantic invariance without which reliable knowledge is simply not conceivable. The language shift, exemplified in any cognitive effort, from ordinary to specialized language style is the consequence of attempting to reduce the vagueness, ambiguity and tense obscurity that afflicts common speech.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 62 , Issue 2 , June 1968 , pp. 425 - 439
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1968

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Footnotes

*

A much revised version of a communication given before the Symposium on Methodology in the Social Sciences held at the University of Rome, March, 1966.

References

1 For the purposes of discussion social or behavioral science is understood as that knowledge enterprise whose subject matter includes that of psychology as well as that dealing with all adaptively behaving or purposively behaving systems or entities. It is primarily on these grounds that the contention is frequently bruited that explanation in the social sciences is characteristically “teleological” while explanation in the natural sciences is “causal.” The distinction, while cognitively useful, is not, as will be argued, substantive.

2 Cf. Braithwaite, R. B., Scientific Explanation: A Study of the Function of Theory, Probability and Law in Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1955), p. 22 Google Scholar; Rudner, R. S., Philosophy of Social Science (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1966), p. 10.Google Scholar

3 Nagel, E., The Structure of Science: Problems in the Logic of Scientific Explanation (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1961), p. 90.Google Scholar This is an obvious simplification; cf. Suppes, P., “What is a Scientific Theory,” in Morgenbesser, S., Philosophy of Science Today (New York: Basic Books, 1967), pp. 55–67.Google Scholar

4 Cf. Zetterberg, H. L., On Theory and Verification in Sociology (3rd ed., Totowa, N. J.: Bedminster Press, 1965), pp. 157–174.Google Scholar

5 I have alluded to some of these shortcomings of classical Marxist social theory in Gregor, A. J., A Survey of Marxism: Problems in Philosophy and the Theory of History (New York: Random House, 1965), pp. 261–281.Google Scholar

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7 Partially formalized sciences feature partially formalized theories which are understood, minimally, to exhibit at least one purportedly deductive connection among their constituent propositions or which determine explicitly the use of at least one of their indigenous concepts.

8 Cf. Young, O. R., Systems of Political Science (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1968), chaps. 2 and 3Google Scholar; Wiseman, H. V., Political Systems: Some Sociological Approaches (New York: Praeger, 1966)Google Scholar; Mitchell, W. C., Sociological Analysis and Politics: The Theories of Talcott Parsons (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1967).Google Scholar

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10 The most express criticism of functionalism in this regard is that of Mills, C. W., The Sociological Imagination (New York: Grove Press, 1961), pp. 25–49.Google Scholar Mills is not generally characterized as “objective,” but his criticisms about the language shift exemplified in Parsonian functionalism are generally well-taken. More urbane criticism of this sort is to be found in Black, M., “Some Questions about Parsons' Theories,” in Black, M. (ed.), The Social Theories of Talcott Parsons (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1961), pp. 279 f.Google Scholar

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16 Cf. Radcliffe-Brown, op. cit., p. 180.

17 Cf. Redfield, R., Tepoztian; A Mexican Village (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1930)Google Scholar; Redfield, R. and A. Rojas, Villa, Chan Kom: A Mayan Village (Carnegie Institution, Publication No. 448, Washington, D. C., 1934)Google Scholar; see also Martindale, D., The Nature and Types of Sociological Theory (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1960), p. 92.Google Scholar

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19 For recent discussions see Seeliger, R., “Analogien und Modelle in der Physik,” Studium Generale (1948), I, 125–137 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Models and Analogues in Biology: Symposia of the Society for Experimental Biology, No. 14 (New York: Academic, 1960); Nagel, , The Structure of Science, pp. 107–117 Google Scholar; Hempel, op. cit., pp. 433–447.

20 Cf. Rex, J., Key Problems of Sociological Theory (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963), pp. 61–77.Google Scholar

21 Cf. Rumney, J., Herbert Spencer's Sociology (New York: Atherton, 1966), chap. 2.Google Scholar

22 Johnson, C., Revolutionary Change (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1966), p. 49.Google Scholar

23 This is of course not true of the best organicists. One need only refer to theorists as sophisticated as Gini, Corrado, Organismo e società (Rome: Ilardi, 1960)Google Scholar, to be disabused of the conviction that organicists are all simple-minded. Cf. Marotta, M., Organicismo e neo organicismo (Milan: Giuffrè, 1959).Google Scholar

24 Cf. Pareto, V., I sistemi socialisti (Turin: UTET, 1951), pp. 285f.Google Scholar

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26 Easton, op. cit., p. 25.

27 Kaplan, M. A., “Systems Theory,” in Charlesworth, J. C. (ed.), Contemporary Political Analysis (New York: Free Press, 1967), p. 154.Google Scholar

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31 Easton, , “An Approach …,” op. cit., p. 137.Google Scholar

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35 Berghe, P. van den, South Africa, A Study in Conflict (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1965).Google Scholar

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37 Cf. Bottomore, T. B., Sociology: A Guide to Problems and Literature (London: Unwin, 1962), pp. 39f.Google Scholar

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40 For an explication of the meanings of “function” as employed by functionalists, cf. Nagel, , Structure of Science, pp. 522–525.Google Scholar

41 Young, op. cit., p. 28; Kaplan, , “Systems Theory,” op. cit., pp. 150–155.Google Scholar

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43 Cf. Hempel, op. cit., pp. 297–330; Rudner, op. cit., pp. 107–111; Brown, R., Explanation in Social Science (Chicago: Aldine, 1963), p. 110.Google Scholar This is generally recognized by political scientists. Cf. Runciman, W. G., Social Science and Political Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), p. 113 Google Scholar; Dyke, V. Van, Political Science: A Philosophical Analysis (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1960), pp. 32f.Google Scholar

44 Spiro, H. J., “An Evaluation of Systems Theory,” in Charlesworth, , op. cit., p. 173.Google Scholar

45 Cf. Peters, R. S., The Concept of Motivation (New York: Humanities Press, 1958), pp. 19f.Google Scholar

46 Rudner, op. cit., p. 108.

47 Brown, op. cit., p. 110.

48 Eastern, D., “Categories for the Systems Analysis of Politics,” in Easton, D. (ed.) Varieties of Political Theory (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1966), p. 154.Google Scholar

49 Jarvie, I. C., “Limits to Functionalism and Alternatives to it in Anthropology,” in Martindale, , Functionalism in the Social Sciences, op. cit. pp. 18f.Google Scholar

50 W. Flanigan and E. Fogelman, “Functionalism in Political Science,” Ibid., p. 125

51 Ackerman, C. and Parsons, T., “The Concept of ‘Social System’ as a Theoretic Device,” in DiRenzo, , op. cit., pp. 25–29.Google Scholar

52 Ibid., p. 39f.

53 Parsons, T., The Social System (New York: Free Press, 1964), p. 3.Google Scholar

54 Parsons refers to his systematizations on the one hand as “analytically descriptive” and yet elsewhere talks vaguely of “one of the primary tests” his “theoretical scheme” must meet as “usefulness in prediction.” Parsons, T., “An Approach to Psychological Theory in Terms of the Theory of Action,” in Koch, S. (ed.), Psychology: A Study of a Science (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1959), pp. 699, 694.Google Scholar This confusion between analytic conceptual schemata and theoretical linguistic entities seems to afflict functionalists and systems theorists generally. Easton speaks of the “new theories” of contemporary political science as “analytic, not substantive” and yet in the same sentence characterizes them as “explanatory”: Easton, , Framework, op. cit., p. 22.Google Scholar

55 Parsons, T., et al., Toward a General Theory of Action (New York: Harper and Row, 1951), p. 3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

56 Parsons, , “An Approach …,” op. cit., p. 645.Google Scholar

57 Parsons, , et. al., Toward a General Theory of Action, op. cit., p. 3.Google Scholar

58 Parsons, , The Social System, op. cit., p. 28.Google Scholar

59 Cf. Offer, D. and Sabshin, M., Normality (New York: Basic Books, 1966), p. 19 Google Scholar and passim.

60 Parsons, T., “The Superego and the Theory of Social Systems,” in Parsons, T., Bales, R. and Shils, E., Working Papers in the Theory of Action (New York: Free Press, 1963). p. 16.Google Scholar

61 Mandler, G. and Kessen, W., The Language of Psychology (New York: Wiley, 1959), pp. 242f.Google Scholar

62 “… Parsons' principles are close to the level of proverbial wisdom. Now it is characteristic of proverbs, and one reason for their use as a substitute for precise thought, that they embody ambiguities making them indefinitely adaptable to almost any circumstances”: Black, , “Some Questions …,” op. cit., p. 280.Google Scholar

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