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Harold D. Lasswell's Political World: Weak Tea for Hard Times

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Richard M. Merelman
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Extract

I first encountered the work of Harold Lasswell in the late 1950s, when I was a barely awake undergraduate at a university whose reputation for mediocrity was richly deserved. I opened Politics: Who Gets What, When, How to the first paragraph: ‘The study of politics is the study of influence and the influential. The science of politics states conditions; the philosophy of politics justifies preferences. This book, restricted to political analysis, declares no preferences. It states conditions.’ I had never heard of Lasswell, for my political science courses limited themselves to subjects like Congressional seniority and Cabinet responsibility in Britain. One course discussed the law of piracy, a subject I had trouble linking to international politics in the 1950s. Some enterprising instructors occasionally discussed the balance of power, and one even assigned David Truman. But Lasswell was terra incognita to me, as he no doubt was to most undergraduates in those years.

Type
Review Article
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 11 , Issue 4 , October 1981 , pp. 471 - 497
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1981

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References

1 Lasswell, Harold, Politics: Who Gets What, When, How (Cleveland, Ohio: Meridian, 1958: first published, 1936), p. 7.Google Scholar (Henceforth described as Politics: Who Gets What.)

2 Brodbeck, Arthur J., ‘Scientific Heroism from a Standpoint within Social Psychology’ in Rogow, Arnold, ed., Politics, Personality, and Social Science in the Twentieth Century: Essays in Honor of Harold D. Lasswell (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969), pp. 225–61, at p. 233.Google Scholar

3 See the bibliography arranged chronologically in Marvick, Dwaine, ed., Harold D. Lasswell on Political Sociology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977).Google Scholar

4 In particular, I intend largely to ignore Lasswell, Harold D. and Kaplan, Abraham, Power and Society (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1950)Google Scholar, and Rogow, Arnold A. and Lasswell, Harold D., Power, Corruption and Rectitude (Engelwood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1963).Google Scholar Although the former is a fascinating presentation of an analytic system and the latter a useful examination of a general proposition about power, neither contributes markedly to the line of Lasswell's analysis I pursue in this paper.

5 Lasswell, Harold D., Psychopathology and Politics (New York: Viking, 1960: first published, 1930). (Henceforth described as Psychopathology.)Google Scholar

6 Seeley, John, The Americanization of the Unconscious (New York: International Universities Press, 1957).Google Scholar

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9 Power and Personality, pp. 40–1.Google Scholar

10 Power and Personality, Chap. 4.

11 Power and Personality, Chap. 4 and p. 62.Google Scholar

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14 At this point Lasswell's analysis resembles the ‘end of ideology’ school of American democratic thought of the 1950s.

15 Psychopathology, Chap. 4.

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18 Lasswell, Harold D., ‘Democratic Character’, in Political Writings of Harold D. Lasswell (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1951).Google Scholar See for an explanation Greenstein, Fred I., ‘Harold D. Lasswell's Concept of Democratic Character’, in Greenstein, Fred I. and Lerner, Michael, eds., A Source Book for the Study of Personality and Politics (Chicago: Markham, 1971), pp. 527–38.Google Scholar

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32 An instructive case is that of interpreting the Rorschach test. For reviews, see Buros, Oscar, ed. Personality: Tests and Review (Highland Park, N.J.: Gryphon, 1970), pp. 894–910.Google Scholar

33 Lasswell, Harold D., The Signature of Power; Buildings, Communication, and Policy (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1979).Google Scholar (Henceforth described as The Signature of Power.)

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36 Note the resemblance of this argument to Durkheim, Emile, Professional Ethics and Civic Morals (London: Routledge and Regan Paul, 1957).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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44 Lasswell, Harold D., World Politics and Personal Insecurity (New York: Free Press, 1965: first published 1935), pp. 76–7 ff.Google Scholar (Henceforth described as World Politics and Personal Insecurity.)

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55 See, for example, Skidmore, Felicity and Plotnick, Robert, Progress Against Poverty: A Review of the 1964–74 Decade (New York: Academic Press, 1975).Google Scholar

56 World Politics and Personal Insecurity, pp. 29–30.Google Scholar For comparison, see Edelman, Murray, The Symbolic Uses of Politics (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1964).Google Scholar

57 For an example, see Wright, James D., The Dissent of the Government (New York: Academic Press, 1976).Google Scholar

58 Thus, for example, people have trouble relating government action to the causes of inflation or in blaming government for inflation. See Peretz, Paul, ‘The Political Economy of Inflation’ (unpublished dissertation. University of Chicago, 1978).Google Scholar

59 Lasswell, Harold D., ‘Style in Political Communication’Google Scholar, in Marvick, , Harold D. Lasswell on Political Sociology, pp. 245–57.Google Scholar (Henceforth described as ‘Style in Political Communication’.)

60 ‘Style in Political Communication’.

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65 World Politics and Personal Insecurity, and The Changing Language.

66 World Politics and Personal Insecurity, Chap. VI.

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68 For elucidation, see Eulau, Heinz, ‘Elite Analysis and Democratic Theory: The Contribution of Harold D. Lasswell’, in Eulau, Heinz and Czudnowski, Moshe, eds., Elite Recruitment in Democratic Politics (New York: Wiley, 1976), pp. 7–29.Google Scholar

69 Lasswell, Harold D., ‘Introduction: The Study of Political Elites’, in Lasswell, and Lerner, , eds., World Revolutionary Elites (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1965), p. 4.Google Scholar (Henceforth described as World Revolutionary Elites.)

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86 Veblen, Thorstein, The Engineers and the Price System (New York: Viking, 1954).Google Scholar I have been much influenced in this attempt to tie Lasswell to Progressivism by Featherstone, Joseph, ‘John Dewey and David Reisman: From the Lost Individual to the Lonely Crowd’, in Gans, Herbert et al. , eds., On the Making of Americans: Essays in Honor of David Reisman (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1979), pp. 3–41.Google Scholar Others have noted Lasswell's intellectual indebtedness to pragmatism and to the philosophy of Whitehead, but my essay differs in its attention to Progressivism and the ‘myth’ of social science. See Eulau, , ‘The Maddening Methods’Google Scholar and Marvick, , ‘Introduction’Google Scholar, in Marvick, , ed., Harold D. Lasswell on Political Sociology.Google Scholar

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91 Lasswell, Harold D., Propaganda Technique in the World War (New York: Knopf, 1927), p. 222.Google Scholar (Henceforth described as Propaganda Technique.)

92 y Gasset, Jose Ortega, The Revolt of the Masses (New York: Norton, 1957)Google Scholar; Durkheim, Emile, The Division of Labor in Society (New York: Free Press, 1964), pp. 353–74.Google Scholar

93 Arora, Satish K. and Lasswell, Harold D., Political Communication: The Public Language of Political Elites in India and the United States (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969), p. 227.Google Scholar

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98 Perhaps it is this tone – more than substance – that so influenced Robert Horwitz's attack in ‘Scientific Propaganda: Harold D. Lasswell’, in Storing, Herbert, ed., Essays on the Scientific Study of Politics (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1962), pp. 225–305.Google Scholar

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103 World Revolutionary Propaganda, Chap. 9.

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125 I will not spend much time discussing the programmatic statements on the policy sciences, but simply refer the reader to the following sources: Lerner, Daniel and Lasswell, Harold D., eds., The Policy Sciences (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1951)Google Scholar; Lasswell, Harold D., The Future of Political Science (New York: Atherton, 1963)Google Scholar; and Lasswell, Harold D., A Pre-View of Policy Sciences (New York: Elsevier, 1971).Google Scholar (Henceforth described as A Pre- View of Policy Sciences.) Of these statements, the last is clearly the most difficult and abstract.

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135 Dobyns, Henry, Doughty, Paul and Lasswell, Harold D., eds., Peasants, Power and Applied Social Change (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1964).Google Scholar Lasswell's contributions are Chaps. 7 and 8. (Henceforth described as Peasants.)

136 Rubenstein, Robert and Lasswell, Harold, The Sharing of Power in a Psychiatric Hospital (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966).Google Scholar Henceforth described as The Sharing of Power in a Psychiatric Hospital.

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138 The RADIR series with Daniel Lerner incorporates this work, but the idea had germinated in the 1930s. See World Politics and Personal Insecurity, pp. 153–4.Google Scholar

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140 Russett, Bruce et al. , World Handbook of Political and Social Indicators (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1964).Google Scholar

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142 Peasants, Chap. 7.

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144 Peasants, Chap. 3.

145 Jones, Maxwell, The Therapeutic Community: A New Treatment Method in Psychiatry (New York: Basic Books, 1953).Google Scholar Jones's work had considerable impact in Britain as well as America. In Britain it laid the theoretical foundations for R. D. Laing's innovative therapeutic techniques.

146 The Sharing of Power in a Psychiatric Hospital, p. 201.Google Scholar

147 The Sharing of Power in a Psychiatric Hospital, Chap. 11.

148 Lasswell himself notes this in The Sharing of Power in a Psychiatric Hospital, p. 280.Google Scholar

149 Featherstone, , ‘John Dewey and David Reisman’.Google Scholar

150 Edelman, Murray, Politics as Symbolic Action (Chicago: Markham, 1971)Google Scholar, and Bennett, W. Lance, The Political Mind and the Political Environment (Lexington, Mass.: Heath, 1975).Google Scholar

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