The Political Science Interpretivist

David Easton (1952) understood that a clearly defined interpretive framework can serve the normative function of guiding research. He intended his concept of the “political system” to provide that service. He said more than he knew. For, when combined with the Formal Axiology of Robert S. Hartman, Easton’s interpretive framework can provide a service he did not quite envision.  Easton’s concept of the political system can also serve as a standard, or conceptual norm, for assessing the  goodness  of political systems, and for comparing the goodness of systems. This is not a matter of moral approval or approbation, but more like the taxonomist assessing the goodness of a specimen, as to both its categorical fit and its health, i.e., a scientific goodness. Thus Easton’s interpretive framework provides political science with a way to move beyond its traditional explanatory function into the new realm of evaluating the scientific goodness of political systems. Once a set of behaviors on the