1 Chapter 3: An Institutional View of Politics
Learning Objectives
In this chapter we will look more closely at a view of politics through institutions. In doing so, we will clarify a key divide in the discipline of political science.
The traditional approach to the study of political science was both normative and institutionally focused. This approach would, for example, consider the best arrangements for legislative, executive, and judicial powers of government. This view of politics is very old in Western political theory, at least as far back as the Ancient Greeks. Plato and Aristotle were both normative philosophers in the sense that they were concerned with what forms of government best achieved justice. This normative and institutional view generally dominated politics for centuries. What are the advantages of a republican form of divided government? What best brings security to a political community: democracy or more authoritarian rule? What sorts of disadvantages come from a judiciary with the power to strike down legislative law? These are all questions that come from a traditional view of politics that is institutional and normative.
Beginning in the 1930s, however, the discipline experiences a behavioralist revolution that emerged in American academia in particular. This revolution sought to explain politics in a very different way—by using objective quantitative data to explain political behavior. One of the goals of this change was to make the study of politics more scientific. Or, in other words, behavioralists sought to rigorously update the discipline using scientific methods to understand why individuals behave certain ways when it comes to political belief and action. In the sense that a scientific approach seeks objectivity—what is as opposed to what ought to be—it is clear that this is a major turn from the more normative understanding of politics in the past. Likewise, this new turn in the study of politics focuses on the behavior of individuals or groups, not on the structure of institutions or forms of government.
Exercise 3.1
Reflect for a moment on what kind of political science work you are most interested in—normative or objective? Political behavior or political institutions?
Let’s take an example: how do democracies emerge out of non-democratic political communities? Answering such a question may take a behavioralist approach, focusing on actors, such as democratic activists or social movements, politicians or bureaucrats. Or it may take an institutional focus, such as looking at the structures of government or economic systems conducive to democratic development. There is clearly an objective approach to answering this question—simply explaining when democracies arise out of non-democracies—but it may also have a normative component to it: how should democracy develop out of non-democratic political communities?
Since the behavioralist turn in the 20th century, there have been a few more significant turns in the d