Behavioralism (not to be confused with the learning theory, behaviorism) is a political science discipline associated with the rise of the behavioral sciences, modeled after the natural sciences, which seeks to provide a "value free", quantified approach to understanding and predicting political behavior. Behaviorism or behaviourism (not to be confused with behavioralism in political science) is an approach to psychology based on the proposition that behavior can be researched scientifically without recourse to inner mental states. ... Political science is a social science discipline that deals with the theory and practice of politics and the description and analysis of political systems and political behavior. ... Behavioural sciences (or Behavioral science) is a term that encompasses all the disciplines that explores the behaviour and strategies within and between organisms in the natural world. ...

Prior to the "Behavioralist revolution", the field of political science, was being disputed as just that. Critics saw the study of politics as being primarily qualitative and normative, and claimed that it lacked a scientific method necessary to be deemed a science. Behavioralists would use strict methodology and empirical research to validate their study as a social science.

Behavioralism is perhaps best defined by the man who is infamous for first distinguishing it from behaviorism - David Easton:

"behavioralism was not a clearly defined movement for those who were thought to be behavioralists. It was more clearly definable by those who were opposed to it, because they were describing it in terms of the things within the newer trends that they found objectionable. So some would define behavioralism as an attempt to apply the methods of natural sciences to human behavior. Others would define it as an excessive emphasis upon quantification. Others as individualistic reductionism. From the inside, the practioners were of different minds as what it was that constituted behavioralism...few of us were in agreement."(David Easton in Baer et al., eds. 1991: 207)

A journal in this field is Political Behavior, is described this way by its publisher, Springer: "Political Behavior publishes original research in the general fields of political behavior, institutions, processes, and policies. Approaches include economic (preference structuring, bargaining), psychological (attitude formation and change, motivations, perceptions), sociological (roles, group, class), or political (decision making, coalitions, influence). Articles focus on the political behavior (conventional or unconventional) of the individual person or small group (microanalysis), or of large organizations that participate in the political process such as parties, interest groups, political action committees, governmental agencies, and mass media (macroanalysis). As an interdisciplinary journal, Political Behavior integrates various approaches across different levels of theoretical abstraction and empirical domain (contextual analysis)."

References: Baer, Michael A., Jewell, Malcolm E. and Sigelman, Lee (eds.) (1991): Political Science in America. Oral Histories of a Discipline. The University Press of Kentucky, Lexington. Politics, sometimes defined as the art and science of government. ...

External links

• Cornell paper on Behavioralism