Some Comments on "The Empirical Classification of Formal Groups"

Abstract

but not even the authors of Toward a General Theory of Action identified this bias with scientific procedure in general. third question to which the volumes under review fail to give a satisfactory answer is perhaps the most serious one. Behavioralists are prone to talk very much more about their discipline, and about the encyclopaedia of social sciences than they are to deal with specific problems. clearest illustration of this shift of interest is provided by Professor Kirkpatrick's somewhat pompous essay on The Impact of the Behavioral Approach on Traditional Political Science (Ranney, pp. 1 ff.). But are disciplines and their interrelations really so important? Is it not much more important to get down to particular problems, explain puzzling observations, without worrying about the nationality of the theories? It is this third question which grows into a suspicion if we survey the 19 essays assembled in the two volumes edited by Marvick and Ranney. Some of these essays are very informative, e.g. those by Dogan and Guttsman in the former, or that by Stein Rokkan in the latter volume. But it is hard to escape the conclusion that they are fruitful because their authors are unconcerned (and, probably, ignorant) of behavioralism and other approaches, but deal with their problems employing all tools, behavioral, institutional, or otherwise, which they find available. This is not to say that deliberate behavioralism cannot lead to useful results. essay by Eulau and others on Career Perspectives of American State Legislators is unusually interesting (although the confessed behavioralist would probably ask whether a competitive party system is a variable). But it seems that the contributions to these volumes are useful to the extent to which they abstain from either programmatic declarations or a deliberate restriction to what is acceptable to the behavioral school. Much could be said about the essays in these volumes in their substantive context. Thus, Marvick's volume, while it has stimulated the study of political elites, stops short of some of the more difficult questions of elite circulation, or of the relation of elites to their social mother groups. In general, the volume edited by Marvick is by far the more useful of the two. But if we confine ourselves here to the merits of the behavioral approach, one final remark must be made. Politics is one of the most exciting subjects of study for the social scientist. It would be a great shame indeed, if by an undue concern with methods of limited applicability we managed to dampen this excitement for our students, our public, and for ourselves.