Behaviora

l Analysis
“Why do people behave in the way they do? “
What differentiates behaviouralists from other
social scientists?
• is their insistence that :
(1) observable behaviour, whether it is at the level
of the individual or the social aggregate, should be
the focus of analysis; and
(2) any explanation of that behaviour should be
susceptible to empirical testing.
Behavioural scholars take the view that:
• whatever theoretical categories any analysis uses,
social enquiry is fundamentally about trying to
understand what it is that (some) people do,think
or say.
 Some Political behaviors already
studied:
1. Voting
2. demonstrations, strikes and even riots
3. Leadership behavior
4. Actions of interest groups and political
parties
5. Actions/behavior of nation states and non-
state actors
Most important questions for
6. Actions and behaviour of multinational
behaviorists:
1. what do the actors involved actually
corporations, international terrorist groups
do?
and supranational organisations such as the
2. How can we best explain why they European Union
do it?
The rise of the behavioural
movement and its core
characteristics
• 1950s and 1960s.
• Its philosophical origins were in
the writings of Auguste Comte
in the nineteenth century and in Karl Hempel Alfred Ayer
the logical positivism of the
‘Vienna Circle’ in the 1920s.
• Karl Hempel and Alfred Ayer
Auguste
• Owed a lot from the Comte
philosophical foundations of
positivism
Positivism asserted that analytic statements made about
the physical or social world fell into one of three
categories.
• First, such statements could be useful tautologies; they
could be purely definitional statements that assigned a
specific meaning to a particular phenomenon or
concept.
• Second, statements could be empirical, that is to say,
they could be tested against observation in order to see
if they were true or false.
• Third, statements that fell into neither of the first two
categories were devoid of analytic meaning.
*Meaningful analysis could proceed only on the basis of
useful tautologies and empirical statements; metaphysics,
theology, aesthetics and even ethics merely introduced
meaningless obfuscation into the process of enquiry.
Behaviouralism’s view of the nature of empirical theory and of explanation
was strongly influenced by the positivist tradition.
• An empirical theory is a set of interconnected abstract statements,
consisting of assumptions, definitions and empirically testable
hypotheses, which purports to describe and explain the occurrence of a
given phenomenon or set of phenomena.
• An explanation is a causal account of the occurrence of some
phenomenon or set of phenomena. An explanation of a particular (class of)
event(s) consists in the specification of the minimum non‑tautological set of
antecedent necessary and sufficient conditions required for its (their)
occurrence.
• For positivists,the crucial question that should always be asked about any
purportedlyexplanatorytheory is: How would we know if this theory were
incorrect?
For both positivists and behaviouralists there are three main ways in which
explanatory theories can be evaluated:
• 1. A ‘good’ theory must be internally consistent; it must not make
statements such that both the presence and the absence of a given set of
antecedent conditions are deemed to ‘cause’ the occurrence of the
phenomenon that is purportedly being explained.
• 2. A ‘good’ theory relating to a specific class of phenomena should, as far as
possible, be consistent with other theories that seek to explain related
phenomena.
• 3. And, crucially, genuinely explanatory theories must be capable of
generating empirical predictions that can be tested against observation.
*The only meaningful way of deciding between competing theories (which
might appear to be equally plausible in other respects) is by empirical testing.
Two characteristic features of the behavioural
approach to social enquiry:
1. Systematic use of all the relevant empirical
evidence rather than a limited set of
illustrative supporting examples
- Not anecdotal
- Use of statistical techniques
- Could be qualitative or quantitative
- Must evaluate theoretical positions
- Systematic rather than illustratively
2. “Scientific” theories and/or explanations
must, in principle, be capable of being falsified.
- Falsifiability instead of verifiability
- Line of demarcation between ‘scientific’ and
‘pseudo‑scientific’ enquiry
 What is meant by a theory or an explanation
being ‘falsifiable?
Theories can only be regarded as ‘scientific’
if they generate empirical predictions that
are capable of being falsified.
• Behaviorists are unequivocally committed to
the principle of falsifiability.
• A genuinely explanatory theory must
engender falsifiable propositions of the form
‘If A, then B; if not A, then not B’; and it must
specify causal antecedents that are defined
independently of the phenomenon that is
supposedly being explained.

Karl Popper (1902-1994)

Illustration: A Tale of Two Swans
Look at the statement: All swans are white.
• Suppose that we observe a black swan. What
does this tell us about the statement?
Two interpretations:
• First: The statement was in principle capable
of being falsified and it has been falsified.
(falsifiable)
• Second: It follows that the black swan that we
have observed cannot be a swan because it is
not white; the statement, therefore, is not
false. (tautology, hence not falsifiable)
*What is clear from this discussion is that the
status of the statement depends upon whether
or not its constituent terms are independently
defined.
Let us apply it in political analysis! The second interpretation is to
• ‘In general elections people vote against the
regard the statement as an
incumbent government if they are empirical one – but this is possible
dissatisfied with its performance.’ only if we provide a definition of
(1) that every voter who voted for the dissatisfaction with the
government must have been satisfied government that is independent of
with its performance (otherwise s/he the act of voting. By providing
would not have voted for it); and independent definitions of ‘voting’
(2) that every voter who did not vote for the and of ‘dissatisfaction’ we create
government could not have been satisfied the possibility that the ‘statement’
with its performance (otherwise s/he might be empirically incorrect; we
would have voted for it).
render the statement falsifiable –
* we can always ‘believe’ in the statement but even though we might hope that it
we have not demonstrated that it is
empirically correct; we have treated it purely will not be falsified.
as a tautology.
• Behaviouralists, then, emphasise the
twin notions that theories should:
(1) seek to explain something;
(2) be capable, in principle, of being
tested against the world of
observation.

* For behaviouralists, non‑falsifiable

theories are not really theories at all.
They are merely elaborate fantasies –
of varying degrees of complexity – that
scholars can choose to believe or
disbelieve as they wish.

Imre Lakatos (1922-1924)

Criticisms against Behaviorism (On the meaninglessness of definitions and non-
empirical statements)
The large class of statements that positivism labels as ‘meaningless’ in fact contains
many ideas that can add very significantly to our understanding of social behaviour
and the human condition.
In strict positivist terms, there can be no role for normative theory for the
investigation of what ought to be – because normative discourses are not restricted
to definitional and empirical statements.
No role for aesthetic or moral arguments, for the same reason.
there can be no role for the sort of hermeneutic analysis that seeks to understand
social behaviour through deep reflection about the nature of human perceptions,
thought processes and motivations.
Modern behaviorists however will most likely argue that different approaches yield
a different form of knowledge or understanding – not that they are ‘meaningless.
Scholars working in non‑empirical traditions are never able to provide a satisfactory
answer to the crucial question: How would you know if you were wrong?
The tendency towards mindless empiricism
3 undesirable tendencies
• Early positivists claim that theoretical  tendency to emphasise what can be
understanding could be obtained only easily measured rather than what
through a process of enquiry that began
might be theoretically important.
with theory‑free observation of ‘all the  tendency to concentrate on readily
facts up to now’ and which then derived
observed phenomena (e.g focus on
law-like generalisations inductively from the
voting and not on political change,
empirical regularities that were observed.
structures and interests – proved to
From the 50’s to 70’s mosts behaviorists be difficult to study without a
scholars upheld an inductive approach to theoretical a priori approach)
research  tendency towards what can best be
• Emphasis on data and the concomitant described as ‘statistical correctness’.
downgrading of a priori theoretical (focus on the precision of statistical
reasoning in turn produced three estimates and their standard errors
undesirable tendencies in behavioural at the expense of providing and
research. assessing explanations of the
behaviours of interest.)
• Hempel and Popper, strongly rejected
the ‘narrow inductivist’ view of the
nature of scientific enquiry (held by the
early positivists) , arguing that enquiry
could only proceed if the researcher’s
efforts to observe ‘relevant facts’ were
guided either by clear theoretical
expectations or, at a minimum, by some
kind of explanatory ‘hunch’.
• Popper and Hempel emphasized the
deductive nature of doing inquiry which
starts from a theory or a hypothesis
which is then used to focus the lens of
the inquiry in order to have a more
productive appreciation of the data.
 “[A narrow inductivist investigation] … could never get off the ground. Even
its first [fact gathering] phase could never be carried out, for a collection of all the
facts would have to await the end of the world, so to speak; and even all the facts
up to now cannot be collected since there are an infinite number and variety of
them. Are we to examine for example, all the grains of sand in all the deserts and
on all the beaches, andn are we to record their shapes, their weights, their
chemical composition, their distances from each other, their constantly changing
temperature, and their equally changing distance from the centre of the moon?
Are we to record the floating thoughts that cross our minds in the tedious
process? The shapes of the clouds overhead, the changing color of the sky? The
construction and the trade name of our writing equipment? Our own life histories
and those of our fellow investigators? All these, and untold other things, are,
after all, among ‘all the facts up to now”. (Hempel, 1966)
The assumed independence of theory and  Behavioralists are also criticized
observation
for for failing to comprehend the
• Early behaviourists claim that social enquiry ‘big picture’ of social and political
is‘scientific’ and ‘value-free’. transformation.
• Modern behaviorists are more inclined to follow  underestimate the importance of
Popper and Hempel. ‘more profound’ social and
• Yet they propose that theory and observation are political changes that might be
not independent. taking place. (e.g impact of
• Most post-behaviouralists would now accept the capitalism to political and social
relativist view that what is observed is in part a behavior)
consequence of the theoretical position that the  Behavioralists will argue that there
analyst adopts in the first place. (observations are has to be an empirical referent of
coloured by the theory) a grand theory, otherwise they are
• Yet they are also different from relativists. They are just assertions not grounded on
not saying that one theory is as good as another. empirical data.
*Observations must be used in order to conduct a
systematic empirical test of the theory that is being
posited.
The strengths of the behavioural approach Example
• behavioural research at its best can make a  Study of the effects of inequality and
considerable theoretical and empirical grievances on civil war (Cederman et
contribution to the understanding and al., 2013)
explanation of social behaviour. RQ: to what extent is inequality
responsible for generating
• pursue forms of analysis that are capable the sort of grievances that lead to
of replication. conflict and civil war?
And so behavioralists must be clear in the - Looks at group (ethnic) level
specification of: inequalities (access that different
ethnic groups have to economic and
(1) what it is that they are trying to explain;
political state power)
(2) the precise theoretical explanation that is Theory: Horizontal Inequality- Group
being advanced; Identification-Intergroup comparison -
(3) the way in which they are using empirical Evaluation of Injustice –Framing and
evidence in order to evaluate that Blaming – Grievance-Mobilisation-Rebel
theoretical explanation. Claims and State repression – Civil War
The behavioural legacy in the twenty-first century
• Theoretical analysis must almost always be the starting point for serious empirical
enquiry.
• Abstract deductions are made about the connections between different
phenomena
• Theory plays an indispensable role in post-behavioural empirical analysis.
• Possibility that different theoretical perspectives might generate different
observations
• A theory must generate falsifiable predictions that are not contradicted by the
available empirical evidence
• All social enquiry is by definition about what people do, think or say.
• Unless a theory makes some sort of causal statement, it cannot be deemed to
explain anything.
• Believable explanatory theories must be capable of receiving, and must receive,
empirical support.
 “Post-behaviouralists argue,
with considerable justification, that
nearly all social researchers who
work with empirical materials
subscribe broadly to this view. In
this sense, the legacy of
behaviouralism among empirical
researchers is enormous.

In many respects, we are all

post-behaviouralists now!!!

Reference: Lowndes, V., Marsh, D., & Stoker, G. (Eds.). (2017). Theory and
methods in political science (4th ed.). Red Globe Press.