Behavioural approaches in political science became important in post-war America and spread to some university departments in Europe. Technically, a behavioural approach is one that concentrates on explaining overt political or social behaviour in terms of other overt or express phenomena. For example, when considering voting the only part of the process which can be subjected to a behavioural study is the actual casting of the vote, which can be observed externally and objectively; the ideology of the voter cannot be studied as here more subjective matters are involved.
Other objective factors, such as class, religion, region and age can be taken into consideration when describing the voting process, but individual policy preferences or attitudes to issues are much more difficult to study. More generally, however, behaviouralism has come to mean a rather naïve distinction between the more apparently ‘science-like’ part of political science, concerned with measuring and statistical analysis, and the more traditional aspects, like political theory or political history, or institutional/descriptive studies. These barriers are increasingly tending to break down, partly as a result of a revival in political theory, and partly because the skills and techniques used by behaviouralists are coming to be more widely available and to be used by those with no theoretical preference for a behavioural position in general.
This is the complete article, containing 216 words
(approx. 1 page at 300 words per page).
