The Future of Political Science

By Harold Lasswell

Transaction Publishers 2005 Paperback Buy here

Book Review
Reviewed by Daniel DiSalvo

Harold D. Lasswell was one of the most well known figures of American political science in the 20^th century.  The author of numerous books and articles, Lasswell began his career at the University of Chicago in the 1920s, where he studied sociology, psychology, philosophy, and economics, in addition to political science.  His exposure to the leading exponent of a more scientific political science, Charles E. Merriam, profoundly marked his intellectual development.  After continued study in London, Paris, Geneva, and Berlin he returned to Chicago to serve on the political science faculty before becoming a professor at Yale University Law School in 1946, where he served until retirement.

Today, students of political science, psychology, and law may find references to the quotable title of Lasswell’s 1936 book, Politics: Who Gets What, When, How, but he is otherwise no longer a major intellectual presence.  Few of his works are on contemporary comprehensive exam reading lists for political science graduate students.  Yet, the reissue of The Future of Political Science by Transaction Publishers is a reminder why Lasswell exercised such influence and why his work has receded from view.  It shows the early 1960s optimism that political science could transform society for the better.  Subsequent developments in global events and social science practice have moderated such hopes, but Laswell’s overview of the discipline – a few exceptions to which will be detailed later – remains relevant today.

The Future of Political Science is a book, as we would say today, on the “state of the discipline.”  It assesses the past, present, and potential future of the political science of the early 1960s. In it, Lasswell raises the important question of political science’s role in society by describing the methodological approaches, character of graduate education, and different roles political scientists play.  He persuasively argues that political science is a powerful force in society, educating hundreds of thousands of students each year and shaping the public policy debate at all levels of government.  Political scientists’ social prestige and influence meant that they should be included as objects of study in the “power elite”—despite their uneasiness at being placed in a category they invented for corporate executives. 

Lasswell’s examination of political science poses two fundamental questions.  One is epistemological: Should political science adopt the empiricist approach that tries to discover cause-effect relationships in order to establish “laws” governing political behavior or should it adopt the interpretivist position that aims to analyze the meanings of human action in a given society?  The other is normative: For what ends or purposes is knowledge of politics is sought?  

In response to the first question, Lasswell sides with empiricism.  He argues for the increased use of surveys, statistics, and quantitative techniques in political analysis.  Lasswell’s writing was published on the cusp of the positivist or “behavioral revolution” in political science (which according to its critics became the “behaviorist dogma”).  Under this view, the observable comportment of individuals—who are the “data”—is the central object of study.  The discipline’s previous focus on political ideas, governing institutions, and constitutional interpretation had to shove over to make room for the new approach.  On the basis of the view that it was possible and desirable to establish a real science of politics, Lasswell helped undermine the validity of traditional or “humanistic” political science.  His book is a testament to the optimism inspired by the possibility of reforming society on the basis of scientific truth. 

In response to the second question, Lasswell, unlike other social scientists, does not shy away from positing the ends political science should serve.  The purposes of the knowledge acquired by political science were to promote world peace and defend “human dignity.”  Lasswell believed that political science properly practiced could guide and shape society for the better.  He did not explicitly argue that political science should defend or support a particular political regime—say, liberal democracy—or cultural civilization.  However, his definition of human dignity as “an opportunity for mobility on the basis of merit” and human indignity as assuming “the blind immobility of caste” suggested a liberal regime, broadly construed.  The notion of human dignity itself obviously had its roots in the tradition of Western liberal thought and Lasswell strongly implies a link between political science and liberal values.

Guided by this rough humanistic standard, political scientists should collect, categorize, and analyze data on local, national, and international political phenomenon to develop maxims that could be injected into society’s complicated decision-making process, which he painstakingly dissects.  Political scientists could, in Lasswell’s somewhat naïve view, easily get involved in the hard-edged world of politics without threatening their reputations or integrity.  Political science could be the “problem-solving” discipline that, with the help of modern technology, would engineer a better society.

The discipline heeded Lasswell’s call for greater positivist empiricism but his normative positions did not withstand scrutiny.  Lasswell was accused of committing a social science crime: violating the “fact-value” distinction.  He had egregiously adopted values uncorroborated by the facts.  Based on the view that empirical social science could only establish cause-effect relationships, many political scientists insisted that it could not be employed in support of any political regime or set of values, such as peace and human dignity.  Practitioners were thus forced to choose between a political science that was unreflective about the effect of its discoveries and its role in society or a “partisan” practice that to different degrees promoted a form of government or cultural civilization.  This conundrum split the discipline.  Many pressed for an even more “scientific” approach (rational choice), while a minority called for different versions of a more normative and historical approach. 

Despite today’s fashionable appeal to “methodological pluralism” to demonstrate one’s open-mindedness, vigorous debate persists over what political scientists should study and how they should study it.  This methodological contest pits defenders of “qualitative” approaches against “quantitative” ones.  Who wins these often esoteric debates is highly consequential, since to the victor go the spoils of setting the discipline’s research agenda as well as influence in hiring, tenure, and publication decisions.  Today, quantitative approaches clearly hold the edge.

It is interesting to speculate how Lasswell, a man of broad learning with a voracious intellectual appetite, would evaluate the current state of the discipline, especially in light of the widely shared conclusion that political science cannot play nearly as large a role in guiding and shaping society as he once hoped.  Indeed, Lasswell’s research interests at the end of his life moved away from topics easily studied using behavioral techniques.  His last book, The Signature of Power, was a study of the relation between architecture and politics. His, at times, bizarre discussions of topics such as mutants, robots, and aliens reveal an eclectic, open, and creative mind at work; not one wedded to any methodological approach or research agenda.

Lasswell’s book concludes by considering the conditions for intellectual creativity.  He analyzes graduate study and calls for the establishment of centers for political research inside and outside universities.  He recommended a broadly liberal graduate education much longer in duration than the current six-year doctoral program.  At the end of the PhD period, if a graduate student has shown “reasonable competence” and managed to “stay out of jail,” they should be given five-year fellowships for research and study.  This incubation period would enable students to develop independent judgment and freedom of thought, which can be constrained during doctoral study by a student’s advisors and the parochialism of their university milieu.  In a similar vein, Lasswell argued that advanced research centers would foster a true intellectual community that the modern university with its large size and emphasis on research specialization had undermined.

To some extent, many of Lasswell’s predictions and recommendations for the future of political science have been borne out.  Behavioral research approaches dominated the discipline in the 1970s and 1980s, political science research has informed countless public policy decisions (for better and worse), and there has been a proliferation of post-doctoral positions for graduate students and academic research centers.  But these developments have not achieved the high-minded results of preventing war or increasing human dignity.  Nor has his view that political science could be employed on behalf of such ideals stood the test of time.  Yet, rereading his book allows the reader to compare the trajectory of the discipline to the hopes of one of its leading practitioners forty years ago.  This book will primarily be of interest to students in the social sciences, especially those concerned with the history of methodology.