The Introduction and Structure of Political Science

Author(s): William Parente and Mickey McCleery

Source: The Western Political Quarterly , Jun., 1969, Vol. 22, No. 2 (Jun., 1969), pp.
350-364
Published by: University of Utah on behalf of the Western Political Science Association

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 THE INTRODUCTION AND STRUCTURE
OF POLITICAL SCIENCE

WILLIAM PARENTE and MICKEY MCCLEERY

Antioch College

T HIS ESSAY is concerned specifically with the introductory course in politi-

cal science. Its assumptions, however, speak to the more general question
of an approach to the study of politics and alternately to the nature of
political science as a discipline. Our intention here is to introduce political science
to the undergraduate on the same terms that we ourselves as professionals under-
stand and practice it. We are concerned with a vision of the structure of political
science as well as with the proper thrust for the introductory course.

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

In introducing political science to undergraduates, we have sensed a dual prob-

lem: first, an inability on the part of student and professor to deal with the infor-
mation explosion; second, a sense on the part of both student and professor of the
irrelevance of much of what we study to what is going on outside the classroom,
to the felt interests of the students, to the political needs of the larger society.
A few remarks might be in order on the nature of the first of these problems,
the information explosion. The American Political Science Review notes as received
over one thousand volumes each year.' This is a formidable body of literature to
be assimilated annually and does not include the proliferating learned journals or
the contemporary materials in periodicals and newspapers. The instructor's prob-
lem may be conceived in part as that of choosing, from among the thousand
volumes published that year and the thousands that may remain cogent from
previous years, a suitable assortment that will introduce undergraduates to political
science.

As political scientists we are also part of an academic institution which theo-

retically pays us to teach, but which promotes and rewards as we publish. Recall
the 1963 Somit-Tanenhaus survey in which 430 APSA members indicated their
belief that volume of publication was the principal attribute contributing to a suc-
cessful career. Quality of publication was ranked sixth. Teaching ability, of course,
ranked last.2 Within this context, our society will continue to feel the pressure for
speed-reading courses and the discipline a pressure to demand more and more read-
ing of our students.
Amid all these texts and lectures, monographs in new and old journals, docu-
mentaries and data banks, how do instructor and students in our introductory

NOTE: Originally presented to the 1967 APSA meeting in Chicago, this paper was revised
at the summer 1968 conference of the Union for Research and Experimentation in
Higher Education. The authors express their appreciation to Professor Lois Pelekoudas
for her assistance in developing and revising the paper.
1 Albert Somit and Joseph Tanenhaus, The Development of American Political Science (Bos-
ton: Allyn and Bacon, 1967), p. 146.
2 Albert Somit and Joseph Tanenhaus, American Political Science (New York: Atherton,
1964), p. 79.
350

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 THE INTRODUCTION AND STRUCTURE OF POLITICAL SCIENCE 351

course avoid losing their way, how much information-acquisition through

method can be imparted, what information will produce the best political
and what rationale is suitable for determining the materials used to intro
student to political science? We conclude that it is no longer useful or
define political science as a "coherent and comprehensible body of kn
The problem is related to all courses, but is most crucial in the introduct
because the approach used here determines what individuals are attrac
discipline.
The second problem of which we have become conscious in our teaching of
the introductory course is a related one: a conviction on the part of students and
professors of the irrelevance of much of what is learned in the introductory course
to what is going on outside the classroom, to the political needs of the society. This
classroom problem is only part of a more profound conflict within the discipline
itself. This conflict centers about two issues: first, the significance of the data;
second, the posture of the discipline towards the social issues of the day.
The questions of the significance of the data and the societal obligations of the
discipline are of course related. The Somit-Tanenhaus survey indicated that 67.5
percent of the political scientists surveyed agreed that "much that passes for schol-
arship in political science is superficial or trivial" and 72.6 percent agreed that
much research in political science is undertaken simply because financial support
can readily be received or "the projects lend themselves to research by a fashionable
tool." 3
If even the practitioners in the discipline hold that our work is insignificant
and ignores the real problems of the day, it is not surprising that so many students
have similar attitudes. They conclude that political scientists have had nothing
distinctive to say about even so important a question as Vietnam, that the views
of those calling themselves "political scientists" do not differ markedly from those
calling themselves theologians, classicists, or zoologists.4 The enormous interest at
the 1968 Washington meeting of the APSA in the Caucus for a New Political Sci-
ence is evidence of the profession's internal frustration.
Student disenchantment with what we have not had to say on racial and
urban problems is just as manifest. The trend toward Free Universities, student-
initiated courses believed more relevant to contemporary problems, and increased
student activity of an anomic nature in the political process reflects in part our
failure to introduce students meaningfully into confrontation with issues they
believe relevant.

Indeed, it is possible to interpret the present national political polarization on

a solution to our racial and urban problems as prima facie evidence of the failure
of the academy, its institutions, and its bureaucracy to perform its socialization
function successfully. If to many student minds the university in toto seems irrele-
vant and inadequate to contemporary issues, certainly political science must share

3 Ibid., p. 14.
' Their conclusion is confirmed in a survey of faculty members at 17 New England colleges:
there is no statistically significant difference by professional field in attitudes toward
the war. David J. Armor et alia, "Professors' Attitudes toward the Vietnam War,"
Public Opinion Quarterly, 21 (Summer 1967), 159-75.

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352 THE WESTERN POLITICAL QUARTERLY

responsibility to the degree that foreign policy and urban ci

questions and the failure to answer successfully those questio
institutions.

The authors of this paper would suggest that certain elem

of both behavioralists and their opponents may be valid
understood as primarily a legalistic approach or as a techn
will most probably not interest those students most concern
social needs of their time. One might interpret the aliena
from the political science faculties as due to the aforeme
the other hand, we have been left with perhaps more tha
ventional undergraduate, less interested in societal probl
innovative, more easily satisfied with abstract discussions of h
to ingest primarily descriptive materials, or content to man
a course in statistics.

A PROPOSED SOLUTION: A PROBLEM-SOLVING DISCIPLINE

It is our belief that the type of students drawn to the discipline as majors
depends to a degree upon what they meet in the introductory course. If the disci-
pline has until recently been dominated by those historically, legally, or descriptively
oriented in their approach to politics, this is in part because they confronted just
such approaches in their introduction to the discipline, found such approaches
congenial to their talents and interests, and determined to pursue as a career the
study of politics with just such approaches. If the discipline is today becoming
increasingly influenced by the empirically oriented, this is in part because, having
been introduced to this methodology, they have found it congenial to their abilities
and concerns.

Robert E. Lane has remarked: "If we dissent from the descriptive nature of
so much that is taught in political science classes, we must develop alternatives."
It is our belief that the introductory course is the initial area in which the new
alternatives must be tested. It is from this course that the new generation of politi-
cal scientists will issue.

Our purpose here is to bridge some of the conflict between different

approaches to the discipline, to enable student and instructor to manage the infor-
mation explosion by rationally ordering the mass of data available. We should be
striving to enable the student activist and the university to work rewardingly, if
not always harmoniously, together: students to confront societal problems before
graduation, and the university to continue the socialization, maturation, informa-
tive and educative process which student radicalism needs if eventually it is to
produce something constructive.
In the introductory course we would present political science as a question-
answering, problem-solving intellectual discipline relevant to the issues of our time.
This requires an accent on certain dimensions of that body of knowledge and pro-
cedure. In particular we would focus on the discipline's contribution to freedom
of choice, the power of decision, and our capacity to make significant judgments
on political problems.

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 THE INTRODUCTION AND STRUCTURE OF POLITICAL SCIENCE 353

We are therefore concerned with political analysis - that part o

science which is a process of answering questions and solving probl
defined, the emphasis falls on the processes and concepts of analysis rath
its data or conclusions. We will be more concerned with how men ar
when they engage in problem-solving activity than with how they are go
the customary pursuits of life. We will consider how men devise rule
to govern their behavior when custom and habit fail. This is to accent
of science rather than the details of politics.
There is an obvious, if superficial, distinction among academic discipli
the expectations students bring to them. Mathematics, physics and econom
mit problem-solving concepts and skills. We do not study these to
"answers" or assume that exercises worked for practice will be identical w
lems experienced later. By contrast, political science, history, and social s
often presented and accepted as organized bodies of knowledge, as ans
memorized without question. There is little place in the scheme of
advanced here for information which cannot be related as evidence t
men pose in political life.
Analysis alone is no substitute for facts, and considerable knowledge o
political experience is essential to problem-solving. This paper provid
maps and diagrams by which such information may be located, organ
used in analysis. That aspect of political science which is a science, no
body of data and lore, is a series of processes by which problems are f
evidence is selected, and conclusions are drawn. That process of making ju
and conclusions is what we are talking about here.
In this process a useful analytic tool is the analogy of government as
problem-solving system. That one can walk down a street unarmed in
the practical problems of power, law and order have been solved in so
by an on-going political system as a basic condition of its existence. T
places in our nation and elsewhere in which one dare not go unarmed test
failure of political mechanisms in solving such problems there.
Thus, the maintenance of an organized body of knowledge on how
problems can be solved is a civilizing function of political scholarsh
political culture, however, comes to incorporate ever more complex answe
problems of political life, it requires an ever wider basis of consensus. Co
formal education trains a new generation to accept as well as to perform
requisite to institutional maintenance, to adopt as well as to employ the p
by which society functions. When this useful process of initiation is carr
up the educational ladder, it blurs that aspect of political science which is
problem-solving and leaves the initiates ill-prepared with rational pro
which to confront the distinctive problems of their day.

THE PROBLEM-SOLVING PROCESS

In the introductory course students ought to recognize several roughly distin

guishable steps in any complex process of inquiry - academic or politica
designed to generate publicly communicable judgments. If conclusions are to
accepted as authoritative or legitimate in a developed society (scientific or pol

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354 THE WESTERN POLITICAL QUARTERLY

cal), they must have been arrived at by something appro

process." Adherence to that process of inquiry is what dis
from undisciplined thought.
In Diagram 1, we have characterized political science as a se
lines of inquiry rising from a sense of problems and leading
the process of inquiry to conclusions. We believe that this is
and present our discipline - to convey the relationships am
evidence and conclusions, concepts and things, theory and
and results. In the teaching of political science, we attem
through these steps in the logic of inquiry on some problem
In the diagram we have attempted to summarize in broad
cipal or Basic Problems of Social Life which persist over time

DIAGRAM 1
POLITICAL SCIENCE AS A PROBLEM-SOLVING SYSTEM

CHOICES IN SYSTEMATIC PROBLEM-SOLVING

SOME BASIC PROBLEMS E

OF SOCIAL LIFE

PROBLEMS OF POWER
Mustering resources to
meet public demands.
PROBLEMS OF LAW
AND ORDER 0
Repressing conflict and
regulating conduct in Academic
interest of group life. - - activities - -

PROBLEMS OF FREEDOM &.

Codifying rules permitting
self-government. - - - - institutions O
PROBLEMS OF JUSTICE
Authoritative allocation
of values in dispute. - - -- conventions
PROBLEMS OF SECURITY
Protecting life styles
from external or local 0
forces of disruption. -- - - --
PROBLEMS OF 0
RESPONSIBILITY
Limiting the uses of power
to accepted purposes.-
PROBLEMS OF CHANGE 0
Amending the structures
of social control in view
of new values or events. -
Illustrative lines of inquiry

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 THE INTRODUCTION AND STRUCTURE OF POLITICAL SCIENCE 355

cal systems. The problems which students find relevant (peace, racial
independence) can generally be related to these broader categories: Pr
Power, Law and Order, Freedom, Justice, Security, Responsibility an
We find it helpful to organize class lectures around these categories.

Step A: Surprise, Amazement, or Outrage at finding a factual situatio

society at variance with our expectations.

There are a variety of ways to introduce the undergraduate into a

problem which needs solution. It seems to us important both in terms of
motivation and in terms of the sense of felt purpose needed to control an
analysis that the student confront a factual situation in his society which
square with his rational expectations or with his values. He should confron
of political life which conflicts with an ideal. He should sense surpris
ment, and, in some cases, outrage at the factual situation. As is obvious, t
direct the confrontation, the more immediate the experience, the more p
is this sense of surprise which the student undergoes. The motivati
stronger.
To the extent that the institution - not to mention the department - allows
flexibility, we believe that direct confrontation beween student and the political
realities of field situation social problems is beneficial to both student and the logic
of inquiry. The potential confrontations may be conceived as lying on a con-
tinuum. At one extreme is total immersion in the problem area. For example,
mainland students have been engaged over the last two years in a project, directed
by McCleery, on the most remote and least developed island in the Hawaiian chain,
Kauai. The student from a middle-class background comes face to face with
political and social realities in an underdeveloped society and confronts situations
at variance with his previous experiences and expectations as to the rationality of
civil society and the universality of his own values. During the student's tenure on
the island, his task is to effect social and political change, utilizing the discipline
and faculty resource people, and determining what elements of political science are
useful in effectuating this change. What political science data that has been learned
is useless? What data is needed? This type of total immersion is obviously not
limited to underdeveloped islands. It is more feasible in inner-city situations or in
Appalachia.
Nor is total immersion necessary. At another position on the continuum, one
can make use of a partial immersion situation that is just as tightly tied into the
particular discipline. The Outreach Program of the Department of Psychology at
the University of Michigan has successfully demonstrated that involvement in such
field experiences is not limited to liberal arts colleges. Six hundred students at
Michigan currently enrolled in the Introdutory Psychology course spend one of
their four weekly class periods away from the classroom, working at one of several
projects in the core area of the city. Projects such as the Disturbed Children Insti-
tute or the Psychology and the Law project at City Hall are chosen to confront
students with real situations which raise real issues and problems of psychology
and which send students back to the classroom seeking the techniques, the con-

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356 THE WESTERN POLITICAL QUARTERLY

cepts and the acquired data of the discipline as well as the adv
practitioner.5
At the other end of the immersion continuum, the proble
can be pursued more theoretically in the classroom itself
documentary on Dachau or on the fate of the kulak clas
duplicate the confrontation of actual experience with the irra
and present the student with his problem. Whatever mean
frontation, it would seem most important that the student b
for himself what is the problem that needs solution. This
to textbook-chosen problems presented in case books. The
editor rather than the interests of the individual student; th
the significant work the student should do for himself.

Step B: Survey of Information and Values.

Having found a situation in civil society at variance with h
student must then survey the information and values availabl
ately relevant to the problem. The student should ask him
raged by the situation he has found. Are their values differen
does the instructor react to his amazement or outrage? How d
react to the situation? Do others have more data or more a
haps they were not surprised by what surprised the stud
available on the conditions of this particular group in the cor
serves as a resource person here. Obviously, the data banks pr
scholars are another important resource to a student seeking
lem. Likewise, the classic writings of political science, anc
important resources - both for value positions and as exce
concept formation and political analysis. In our Introducto
dent must read the work of two classic "political scientists
contemporary. The student chooses his own classic according
the problem he is working on. The "classic" is of value not
problems of the past but because it illustrates how one attem
problem making use of the best values, data and conceptual ap

Step C: Formulation of Problem.

Having surveyed the range of values and information
must formulate the problem and factor out questions subject
inquiry. A single problem may reduce to several normative an
The myths of popular democracy that imply the abil
ordinary intelligence and good will to solve its problems i
confusion, preposterous discussions and a backlog of probl

"The student in the introductory course who does not want the in
choose a section in which he gets his four regular class periods
few students opt for such a section because of the campus repu
Outreach Program. It is also interesting to note that the latter
significantly higher on the various objective examinations that tes
lated. Significantly, the number of psychology majors coming o
course has doubled in two years.

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 THE INTRODUCTION AND STRUCTURE OF POLITICAL SCIENCE 357

significant political problems are vastly more complex (Vietnam, poverty, r

than those of college algebra and as apt to contain "unknown" factors in
solutions we can achieve. As in algebra, the problems cannot be solved u
can be reduced, or factored out into a set of questions to which standard pr
of inquiry apply and for which resources of data are at hand.

Step D: Construction of an Explanatory Theory.

If, as suggested above, a problem is experienced when the structure
and expectations fails to correspond to events experienced, then the pr
solved when those leaks in the roof of our preconceptions are repaired with
idea. If men could approach problems without preconceptions, prejudice
need for self-justifying rationalizations, there would be little need for theo
men are not angels. Hence, the solution of problems involves identifyi
assumptions and raising them to a level of consciousness at which their imp
can be tested. "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today," and
slogans will not substitute for thought in solving complex problems. It wou
important that students become conscious of the distinction.
Here again one can do worse than to begin with classical political t
A student should not, however, select a theory; he should construct a th
can do this only with reference to something he feels to be a problem
generalizations about the construction of theory may be derived from, and
to, analysis of classical works.

Step E: Analysis of Implications as Hypotheses.

The essential test of a theory is that it solve the problem that generated
by producing expectations corresponding to experience. If the theory is
usefully high level of generality, there will be several logical steps between i
tions and the prediction of specific relationships among events in a given si
Hypotheses bridge that gap between theory and fact.
The institutions of government may be thought of as hypotheses deriv
theories of what will work to solve political problems. If one can make his
tions articulate, data on the operations of a law, a prison, or a school may p
evidence on which to base conclusions. The function of an hypothesis in
is to identify information critical to analysis and transmute that into the s
evidence. The capacity to derive testable implications from a structure o
especially vital to problem solving in circumstances where the chances of de
experimentation are as limited as in political life.

Step F: Collection of Data to Test Hypotheses.

The fact that every step in the cycle of inquiry involves informed
contains the cycle in miniature, underlines the analytic quality of these "st
tinctions. Information guides the choice of distinctions made, question
theory used, hypotheses derived and procedures selected to test them. None
the resolution to reserve the discussion of data for a late point in the analy
calculated, if perverse, reaction against hyperfactual, barefoot empiric
inhibits the asking of questions until an encyclopedic store of informat

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358 THE WESTERN POLITICAL QUARTERLY

hand. The thesis here is that one can find evidence more effe
what to look for and where to seek it in advance. We mig
between information and evidence. Information is plent
which conclusions can be based is scarce. Much of what p
meaningless and inconclusive because the distinction between
dence is not clearly made.

Step G: Judgments on Adequacy of Theory Tested.

The conclusion reached is not an assertion about the facts. Conclusions are
statements about the accuracy of our hypotheses and the adequacy of our theory.
Nine times out of ten, integrity requires us to report that our hypotheses have
failed to stand the test of evidence and that we emerge with more uncertainties than
we had at the start.

Step H: Applying the Rules Constructed to the Governing of Conduct.

In those instances in which the student or scholar is satisfied with his hypothe-
ses and theory, he is then confronted with the task of implementation. At a mini-
mum, one seeks to make a decision by which he may govern his own behavior.
As an ideal, the scholar hopes to reach a conclusion so compelling that others will
accept it as authoritative in governing their reaction to the problem at hand.
It is arbitrary and partial to lead a student through just one line of inquiry -
some horizontal line across Diagram 1. However, it is no less arbitrary than the
course of providing a mass of descriptive data on governmental institutions apart
from the problems those serve to solve or the questions to which the data stand as
evidence.
Our arbitrary resolve to take our students through the logic of disciplined
inquiry from problem to conclusion rests on three major premises: (1) the process
of problem solving is the most basic and general skill we have to offer in an age of
institutional change; (2) the nature of the political good is such that analysis of
any one major problem (freedom, justice, or power) invariably involves some
consideration of others; and (3) the stage of outrage or amazement at political
conditions of our day (not 1787) is "where our students are."

THE DISCIPLINE: ANALOGIES AND MODELS

We have been concerned above with specific suggestions about the Introdu
tory Course in Political Science. Most of our assumptions and some of the implica
tions have been suggested. We might now turn to a more explicit statement
broader disciplinary issues.
In the same sense that ideas of freedom and justice dictate what we feel to be
problems in politics, the analogies, models and other conceptual machinery us
in analysis largely determine the solutions we reach. To say, as textbooks often d
that political science is the study of the state is to abbreviate matters in a way th
risks confusion. Men retain a primitive disposition to attribute metaphysical sub-
stance or truth to notions that are useful to them - to reify or deify the machiner
of the mind. Because the idea of the state is useful, many people imagine the stat
to be a brooding, omnipresent spirit permeating all human relationships. Beca

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 THE INTRODUCTION AND STRUCTURE OF POLITICAL SCIENCE 359

the concept of power is useful, some people assume that power must be a su
with tangible properties. A basic precondition of intellectual craftsmanship
ability to distinguish between concepts and things, between tools of ana
the data on which those are employed. As the examples above suggest
knowledge of the field without that ability can produce certain ponderous n
from which unschooled commonsense is relatively immune.
It is a meaningless question to ask what an atom or a state looks like, fo
activity of seeing - so basic to comprehension of familar things - is ina
to those concepts. However, it is not meaningless to ask how such concepts
visualized. Many disciplines involve operations analogous to that of st
material on a microscopic slide to make it visible. At the risk of embod
stantial distortions, one may represent the relationship among elements of
by a construct of Tinkertoys; the idea of a state may be represented by a p
of building blocks. In these paragraphs, we liken the production of conclusi
analysis to the craftsmanship involved in manufacturing material go
constructs are useful if they serve to order evidence and useless or mis
they do not. In understanding any intellectual discipline, it is importa
aware of the processes, assumptions, and risks involved in reducing its subs
visible dimensions.
Analysis begins with analogies. When the usefulness of primitive concepts is
exhausted, one must use more refined theoretical models, but the useful model
remains an analogue of certain relationships abstracted from the whole of a subject
matter. It may be similar to a wiring diagram or a mathematical formula, repre-
senting functions within a system without regard to physical appearance, and the
use of such tools requires extensive special training to exploit their potential or
avoid their hazards.
We are emphasizing both in undergraduate education and in the discipline
generally, the necessity for conceptual tools and their skillful use in the making of
judgments. Scholars are marked by their command of a body of information, but
that command is neither the basis nor an adequate measure of their scholarship.
Instead, their store of information is largely based on their use of concepts which
give order and meaning to events which escape the attention of others.
The most fundamental working assumptions of this study are those which
treat political science as a special, if imperfect, case of a problem-solving system
with the act of decision as its nucleus or core. To review the essential arbitrariness
of visualizing the discipline in this way, we grant that the bulk of material in the
field consists of information. Although others can and do take the body of knowl-
edge itself as the object of scholarship, our approach is to treat information as raw
material for the process of making judgments. There is no basis for our resolution
other than the purpose of focusing analysis on man's problems rather than his
accomplishments. There is no justification for looking at the matter in this way
except as to do so accents the contribution of political science to our power and
freedom to improve our lot rather than to adjust to it. There is no test of the "right-
ness" of any conceptual tools beyond their capacity to further our ends.6

SVernon Van Dyke, Political Science: A Philosophical Analysis (Stanford: Stanford U.

Press, 1960). For the suggestion of question-answering and rational choice as concepts

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360 THE WESTERN POLITICAL QUARTERLY

Rational decision may be viewed as a process of choice

range of plausible principles of action on a problem made
lating costs and consequences for values held within a sy
rational choice is an ideal beyond probable achievement by
significant issue. The concept serves as a yardstick for measuri
not as a description of political science or public institutio
tion, it measures the degree of approximation represented by
from taking auspices through drawing straws to accepting an
into a body of scientific knowledge. However, the uses of the
to a measurement of particular acts of choice. The develo
one to consider what some institutional structure, a state or l
tributes to the capacity for rational decision available to its m
differ in providing an environment for distinctively human
they distribute prerequisites of self-government, just as they
distribute material goods. They can be measured against th
assuming that either standard represents the highest ethical cr
An immediate purpose of Diagram 1 is to order politi
prevent a student from being lost in the maze of mater
field. It enables one to "map"' particular items with refe
inquiry and to the conclusions of analysis. It indicates the
of literature to the goals of scholarly activity.
The literature of political science includes protests advocat
tions of problems and general theories of politics, article
hypotheses or a methodology by which hypotheses may be te
forth the conclusions of a lifetime of scholarship. However, m
describes the institutions and decisions by which political pro
tice. It includes information on governmental agencies a
records of decisions, historical studies of political institutions
periods of development, and biographies of statesmen. All
information explosion discussed in our original statement
as cast in some context of goals, the growth of that mass of
the cultivated lines of inquiry in the garden of our thoughts
level of abstraction, this way of looking at the discipline will
of representing a relationship between political science and th
between analysis and the evidence which constitutes its found
In developing the model of a problem-solving system w
are facilitated, it may also be useful to consider other acad
offer contrasts and comparisons with political science as,
with more tangible objects, stand at various levels of devel
deductive systems, illustrate sharper distinctions between con
gest applicable techniques, or are more or less hag-ridden w
matic theology. However, we think it preferable to avoid any

central to understanding political analysis, this study is most i

Vernon Van Dyke, a generous scholar whose advice and encou
in this paper.

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 THE INTRODUCTION AND STRUCTURE OF POLITICAL SCIENCE 361

physics and mathematics as a model for all science, emphasizing the necessit
any discipline adapt to the characteristics of its subject matter and problem
The uniqueness of political objects and problems limits the use of ana
other disciplines of inquiry. It is the limitation that dictates the choice of p
institutions as material for purposes of contrast and comparison.

Political Science and Political Life.

By superimposing our diagram of a system on events and looking a
through the lens thus constructed, an otherwise bewildering mass of politic
nomena may be seen as having the characteristics of a system. In many
the purposeful activities and institutions of politics lend themselves to this
view, but the safest assumption may be that a political system is constitute
way of looking at it. In Diagram 2 and in more detailed fashion in 3, we
to present political science and political life as analogous, problem-solving sy
To define the polity as a problem-solving system involves the same abstract
certain aspects from experience demonstrated in the definition of political
It raises the further questions of what and whose problems are thus solved.

DIAGRAM 2
POLITICAL SCIENCE AND A POLITICAL SYSTEM

lines of inquiry
in political 0

patterns of 4
activities in

political life

It may be argued that political science and political activity emerge from the
same facts of life and interrelated problems in experience. They deal with conflicts
that arise in social life and with the same recalcitrant human materials. Both go
through long periods of development and differentiation from religious ideas and
institutions. Both rely on arbitrary definitions and manipulation of symbols. Both
are characterized by procedures of choice, decision and judgment, and their level of
development may be measured by the rigor with which those procedures are
observed. Both involve elements of discipline and appeal to authority. The out-
come of each is largely shaped by the institutional structure within which they are
conducted. Both political science and politics attempt to formulate "law," or rules
by which men may govern themselves in problematic situation.
The usual approach is to emphasize a difference between empirical and politi-
cal - descriptive and prescriptive - laws, and that distinction is appropriate for

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362 THE WESTERN POLITICAL QUARTERLY

certain purposes. However, the present approach accents their

istics as principles by which prudent men govern their be
ends. Much has been made of the idea that scientific law
fact appear in nature while legislation reflects our desire
assert that neither type of law comes into existence until men
ate on a problem or gains acceptance until it seems to pro
problem posed. Neither the law of gravity nor the Mann Act
by the evidence of everyday experience, but reasonable me
their steps with reference to the consequences of action asser
laws describing gunpowder and public regulations governing i
in different language, may both be read as guides to behavior
consequences of certain operations with that substance.
To take the act of judgment as central to the process of an
the parallel between statesmanship and scholarship - between
science as systems emerging to resolve certain problems o
making is so central to political life that some scholars propo
which all of politics may be understood. Participation in
taken as the crucial distinction between citizens and subjec
of the state. The topics of citizenship and scholarship in a
introductory course are joined by that focus on acts of d
make effective decisions on political issues is what we see
matters of daily life, acts of decision are so simple as to
Choice, if it can be called that, is largely governed by wh
and the force of useful habits. But in the face of complex
consequences of choice are substantial for values held, it is
make any decision. One must make decisions that work and ch
ate his values. In such problematic situations, the logic and
science may provide a useful model for personal decisions in p
It must be acknowledged that political science and polit
fall short of the ideal, public, problem-solving systems ou
will hold if they depart from that model in similar ways
cumbersome, grossly inefficient enterprises marked by large
error. Both facilitate the solution of problems but leave a
sion on individuals who would retain their freedom of ch
political science and politics harbor substantial elements o
serving, featherbedding, outright fraud, exploitation and
lescence. Where such elements depart from the ideal, the mod
of what might be rather than a description of what is.
The construct outlined in Diagram 3 provides a way of
events as well as a device for visualizing political science. T
but does not exhaust the range of problems posed, the goa
guage employed to describe those in political life. Some wi
directed toward honor, glory, independence, peace, or wel
subsumed under the terms employed here. Others may insist
are byproducts of a harmony among other goods and not the

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 THE INTRODUCTION AND STRUCTURE OF POLITICAL SCIENCE 363

lines of activity. In using the construct of a problem-solving system in

student or scholar may adapt its terms to the institutions examined
problems he considers most significant.
DIAGRAM 3

POLITICAL SCIENCE AND A POLITICAL SYSTEM

STEPS IN SYSTEMATIC PROBLEM-SOLVING

I ts

BASIC PROBLEMS

OF SOCIAL LIFE '-

POWER O
O
Academic
LAW AND ORDER Activies
activities

FREEDOM institutions

JUSTICECIVIC O
ACTIVITIES conventions m

SECURITY INSTITUTIONS " 4

RESPONSIBILITY PROCEDURES 0 Em

CHANGE Lines of political inquiry

PATTERNS OF CIVIC ACTIVITY

No static snapshot of political science or political life can

the dynamic, continuous processes of problem-solving represente
of external forces influencing these. A frog dissected is no l
Political science is one of a family of academic disciplines in w
techniques are widely shared. There is an artificiality in any abst
from related lines of social, economic, or religious activity. The m
tortion in our construct, however, is its presentation of the cyc
straight line and the implication of finality to its conclusion. In
changed in part by the process of problem-solving itself, conclus
violated by new experience. The ends of inquiry are expectat
the cycle of preblom-solving, not objects to be treasured und
terms justice and freedom stand for the problems which generat
for the goals sought. In science as in politics, the solution of one
to the next. It should also be noted that the conception of th
subject matter on two planes sharpens the distinction between co
(See Diagram 2.) Freedom and justice can be distinguished as
to the solution - or the very conception - of a problem. The
tiated from the facts of life and restored to a position of crucial
mental tools of inquiry in the discipline.

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364 THE WESTERN POLITICAL QUARTERLY

As is the case of any tool, the construct advanced here has

which must be discovered in its application. Does it serve
political sicence? Does it distinguish processes of analysis f
employed? Does it sort out concepts and conclusions of an
political life? Does it provide some degree of coherence f
political events or some standard for their judgment? Those a
any construct must be subjected by those who would make ju

CONCLUSION

This paper has attempted to state the nature of certain problems facing under-
graduate instruction in political sicence. We have attempted to state a suggested
solution to these difficulties by a re-orientation or shift in emphasis in the intro-
ductory course in political science. We have indicated the theoretical assumptions
which underlie such an approach: political science conceived as a question-answer-
ing, problem-solving discipline analogous to political life itself. We are conscious
of having scarcely begun to develop such a theory and hope that others in the
profession would partake of the labor.
We have been preoccupied in this paper with the bearing of political science
on the questions yet unanswered and the problems still unsolved in our society.
This is not to imply that the answers imbedded in our heritage are wrong, for
the American political system has been one of the most creative problem-solving
systems in human experience. We may expect and - more to the point - we may
act in ways which will insure, that it will remain that. Our emphasis has implied,
however, a belief that this generation of Americans confronts a new and more chal-
lenging generation of problems in politics - just as is the case in physics, chemistry
or engineering - that will demand a new outburst of creative energy for their
solution.

However, if we take it as the primary function of instruction in politics to

transmit the settled body of answers and conclusions imbedded in our political
culture, that explains the substantive content of the discipline and also the disposi-
tion to define the discipline in terms of substantive content. It explains the con-
siderable body of literature advertised as both an introduction to political science
and a study of American government and politics. It explains the emphasis on
information and the disregard of methodology in undergraduate instruction and
production. It explains the Graduate Record Examination as a measure of how
much a student knows and its total disregard of what he can do in the way of
formulating problems or solving them.
We have perhaps idealized political sicence by treating it as a problem-solving,
question-answering discipline. Perhaps the rites of initiation take longer and are
increasingly difficult under conditions of the present. Nonetheless, such is our ideal
and such is our hope: that the problem-solving approach and its implications for
theory and method not be reserved for graduate school, that we delegate in major
proportions the function of indoctrination to the secondary school and begin college
instruction with the problem-solving commitment.

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