Regenerating the APSA with a Focus on Feelings

The Political Science Profession can be re-oriented to strive to make a better world, country by country. Political scientists all over the world can do research and writing which assesses the “Operational Goodness” of any political system.

The well-established definition of the “political system,” by David Easton, can serve as a standard, or norm, by which to assess the “goodness” of a political system, and for comparing the operational goodness of different political systems.

This approach is not a matter of moral approval or approbation, but more like an engineer assessing the operational goodness of a complex machine, like a computer.

One of the main ways for assessing the operational goodness of any political system is to find out how the people living in the system feel about it. That is, look at what Easton calls “politically relevant feelings.”

What is the actual lived experience of a system’s membership? Does that result in anger, alienation, or "political happiness"?

Only interpretive and qualitative methods, not those of positivism, can get at the truth of this. This approach makes the authentic experience of the affected people a key indicator of the system’s goodness.

If this is true, then the old “is/ought” separation can be bridged, and political scientists will have the grounds needed to rise above mere subjectivity when criticizing a political system.

Once the operational goodness of a political system has been assessed, ways to make it better can be sought.

Just as Public Health Science has lead in improving public health, so political science can take the lead in finding ways to upgrade the below par performance of any political system.

For an illustration of how a focus on feelings can be a part of method, using China as an example see,

China: Assessing the Goodness of a Political System with Chinese Characteristics

https://preprints.apsanet.org/engage/apsa/article-details/63056b2e11986c67ce43949e

Learn more about assessing political system operational goodness at,

Normative Political Science – How to Measure the Goodness of a Political System https://doi.org/10.33774/apsa-2021-f9mvn

(Both are free, safe downloads from APSA Preprints and Cambridge University Press.)

Bill Kelleher

@InterpretivePo1

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