The Political Science Interpretivist

Two of the major leaders in the political science interpretivist movement are Dvora Yanow and Peregrine Schwartz-Shea. They hold occasional chautauquas in which issues related to interpretivism are discussed. On one occasion, it was said that interpretivism is often accused of being little more than a glorified form of journalism, and not worthy of any claims to being “scientific.” I will contest that claim in this post. I will use three well received books concerning American politics. These are: Wildland , by Even Osnos, which uses a journalistic approach. This will be compared with two exemplary applications of the methods used in interpretive political science: On the Run , by Alice Goffman and Evicted , by Matt Desmond. [1] One major difference here, in my view, is that political science writing, if it is to make a claim to being “scientific,” contains a causal theme within its narrative. Journalism is generally narrative without disciplining itself to formulating any causal expl...

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 be...

In a recent paper, published online by the American Political Science Association preprint service and Cambridge University Press [1], I showed that there are three key standards for assessing the goodness of any political system. The first is that the social interactions under consideration fit the definition of a “political system,” as defined by David Easton. That is, behavior undertaken in relation to the authoritative allocation of values. The second standard is that of the system’s operational goodness. That is, its efficiency and effectiveness at the allocation of values. The third standard is the way people living in the system feel about their experience in it. That is, population affect. Assessing that affect requires the political scientist to focus on the politically relevant feelings of the people, especially what Easton means by the term “political happiness.” [2] The paper shows why, within this interpretive framework, population affect is the most important index of a p...

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 w hat 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...

APSA This year's APSA conference theme is “Promoting Pluralism.” [1] The APSA wants the profession to be seen as a home for a multitude of methods for studying politics. Whether political actors are understood as individual mechanical actors in a chain of causation, or as self-initiating, meaning creating persons engaged in a collective enterprise, the APSA pretends all viewpoints are equal.    One effect of such propaganda is to preserve the privileged position of the profession’s positivist elites – both schools and individuals – while inhibiting the humanistic growth of the field. As I have argued in prior posts, this APSA strategy reduces political science to an academic field with little relevance either to real public policy making, or to the improvement of society. [2] One urgently needed public policy improvement concerns the way in which our hi-tech society interacts with its natural environment. Toxic gases causing global warming, clear cutting oxygen produci...

Introduction In a 2014 New York Times op ed, columnist Nicholas Kristof drew numerous defensive responses when he criticized political science for having very little “practical impact” in “the real world of politics.” [1] Rather than exercising civic leadership, political science has been most noticeably AWOL from public policy debates since WWII, he claims. And, in his view, there are “fewer public intellectuals on American university campuses today than a generation ago.” How does he account for this absence? Primarily, it is due to the academic interest in pursuing the quantitative approach in political science research. This kind of research is too often unintelligible to both the politically interested general public and the policy making community. Also, the “value neutrality” required for such studies prohibits advocacy. The pattern persists, in part, because graduate students must conform to the expectations of their professors, as a requirement for a successful academic...

For the positivist paradigm to sustain itself in political science, it must dehumanize both the political scientist and the subject matter of political science – human beings engaged in political behavior. Positivism is saturated throughout with dehumanization. Its theory of causation is mechanical. Its theory of knowledge as “objective,” tries to remove the human knower. Observation and description, too, are supposed to be “objective;” that is, free of the messy personal characteristics of the human political scientist. Indeed, the ideal political scientist, for positivism, is a kind of robotic Artificial Intelligence, producing studies that any other machine … that is, political scientist … can replicate. Perhaps no greater conflict exists between Positivism and Interpretivism than the requirement of dehumanization in the former, and the struggle to re-humanize in the latter. This dichotomy will be a recurring theme on this blog. To “personalize” the differences, I will post a dial...