SoA Summary 2 PDF

Behavioralism Why do individuals/actors/groups behave the way they do? → the focus is observable behavior Three categories for analytical statements according to positivism: 1. purely definitional statements 2. empirical, tested against observation to see if they were true or false 3. not...

Behavioralism Why do individuals/actors/groups behave the way they do? → the focus is observable behavior Three categories for analytical statements according to positivism: 1. purely definitional statements 2. empirical, tested against observation to see if they were true or false 3. not one of these two categories, so they were devoid of analytical meaning empirical theory = a set of interconnected abstract statements explanation = causal account of the occurrence of some phenomenon or set of phenomena three evaluative ways for explanatory theories according to positivists and behavioralists: 1. a good theory must be internally consistent 2. a good theory about a specific case should be consistent with other theories that seek to explain related phenomena 3. explanatory theories must be capable of generating empirical predictions that can be tested against observation Political science should, could, and very shortly would be a scientific discipline → hard facts should be found (empirical) and should be summarized in formal propositions (theory building) institutions for behavioralists are simply the aggregation of individual roles, statuses and learned responses Rational Choice Rational choice involves the application of the methods of economics to the study of politics Two key assumption in rational choice: 1. rationality 2. self-interest Beginning criticisms rational choice: - shallowness of its assumptions - political biases - poor predictive record Rational choice theorists think deductively → they start with assuming that people are self-interested and rational and then they try to work out how that influenced their particular situation. people are able to identify the course of action which is most likely to allow them to achieve their goals collective action problem = no one person has an incentive to act in a way in which it would be best for everyone to act → luggage at an airport A group seeking a collective benefit requires the participation of its members. This could be active participation or passive compliance. individuals need to engage in action which is costly to themselves individually in order to secure a benefit for the group they’re apart of Free ride = when individuals attempt to enjoy the benefits of the collective good without contributing to its production → if too many people free ride the group benefit is not produced three broad groups in collective action: 1. privileged. those in which at least one member is willing to pay the full cost of providing the collective good themselves regardless of whether anyone else contributes to it. → will produce collective good because there are no collective action problems 2. intermediate groups. these lack any individual willing to provide the collective good unilaterally but the contribution of each individual has a significant effect on the provision of the collective good → no general prediction about if they will be successful, it depends on coordination 3. latent group. no single individual’s action has any perceptible effect on others. → will not produce collective goods except through the use of selective incentives, rewards, or punishments that are tied to individual contributions conditional cooperators = if they cooperate only when others are also cooperating people are more likely to cooperate if: - they know they are going to be playing the same game over a prolonged period - they expect to have to interact with each other time and again - people can relatively easily monitor whether other people are abiding by any agreements that have been made - they are in situations in which they believe others are cooperating because they will want to do the right thing objections rational choice theory:  - people are not rational and do not always have perfect information so don’t know the consequences of their actions → people make the best possible use of the information they do have, and poor decision-making can sometimes actually be a rational choice because of the costs involved in decision-making - people are not selfish, at least not consistently → rational choice theorists can always impute a self-interest motive - ignores individual agency and ideas, agents do not always act the same when placed in the same situation - very poor empirical record - depends upon equilibrium explanations in a world which consistently demonstrates non-equilibrium properties. → equilibrium (for rational choice) = when individuals interact in such a way that no individual has any reason to change their actions - the idea that rational choice is a political project which uses the assumption of self-interest to venerate competitive markets and denigrate government the most sophisticated rational choice models of collective action assume that people have mixed motives and they operate in an uncertain world in which it is costly to acquire information institutions for rational choice theorists are no more than an accumulation of individual choices based on utility-maximizing preferences → institutions provide the rules of the game Institutionalism behavioralism and rational choice theory had dismissed institutions as no more than the simple aggregation of individual preferences → a new institutionalism emerged as a reaction to this, asserting that the organization of political life does make a difference an institution is a stable, recurring pattern of behavior traditional institutionalism = the intelligent observer attempting to describe and understand the political world around them in non-abstract terms the emergence of the new institutionalism started with an observation that political institutions had receded in importance from the position they held in the earlier theories of political scientists new institutionalists have a commitment to investigating the way in which institutions shape political behavior and outcomes and can be shaped by human action → experiment with deductive approaches about the way institutions shape politics normative institutionalism = political institutions influence actors’ behavior by shaping their values, norms, interests, identities, and beliefs rational choice institutionalism = political institutions are seen as influencing behavior by affecting the structure of a situation in which individuals select strategies for the pursuit of their preferences. historical institutionalism = how the structures of the state reflected and reinforced power relationships between different social and economic groups. shows how the institutional organization of the polity works to privilege some interests while demobilizing others. other types of institutionalism: - empirical = classifies different institutional types and analyzes their practical impact upon government performance - international = the behavior of states is steered by the structural constraints of international political life - sociological = study the way in which institutions create meaning for individuals → provide important building blocks for normative institutionalism - network = how regularized, but often informal, patterns of interaction between individuals and groups shape political behavior - constructivist/discursive = institutions as shaping behavior through frames of meaning, the ideas and narratives that are used to explain political action - feminist = how gender norms operate within institutions and how institutional processes construct and maintain gendered power dynamics political institutions are no longer equated with political organizations, but are seen as a set of rules that guide and constrain the behavior of individual actors normative: rules work by determining appropriate behavior rational choice: rules determine the basis of exchanges between utility-maximizing actors → institutions provide the rules of the game while organizations are players within that game new institutionalism focuses upon informal conventions as well as formal rules institutions are best seen as creating and sustaining islands of imperfect and temporary organization in potentially inchoate political worlds, institutional stability is only accomplished through human action new institutionalists seek to identify the various ways in which institutions embody societal values political institutions are not independent entities, existing out of space and time, they do not stand alone but are connected to a range of other institutions which may reinforce or undermine its effects Marxism marxist analyses of capitalism highlight the exploitation and hierarchy that exists within global capitalism capitalism was a mode of production in which the bourgeoisie exploited the proletariat. this was the essence of the capitalist mode of production and this basic division would become starker as capitalism further developed and would eventually lead to socialist revolution mode of production = the technologies and instruments, or forces of production, and the social class relations which characterize the way in which goods are produced Marx believed that social analysis needed to first focus on the way in which production is organized, because the production of goods and wealth is necessary for societies to exist. if we do not produce things, we cannot exist → this is why Marx is called a materialist thinker, because his starting point is material social relations the state is seen as an instrument of the powerful interests that dominate the economic base The welfare state can be explained away by saying that it was in the interests of the capitalist class to expand welfare so capitalists could exploit a healthy and more productive workforce. more recent attempts to roll back the welfare state is also in the interest of the capitalist class because they no longer deem the welfare state as necessary or affordable → the origins of demands for welfare originated with the labor movement not with the capitalist class We need a more nuanced account of politics, one which rejects simplistic economism or structuralism and which gives greater space to superstructural phenomena such as political movements and mobilization simplistic economism = in which dominant interests at the base supposedly determine the superstructure structuralism = in which agents are reduced to simply following a logic of the structure of capitalism capitalism is progressive for socialism because:  - it is based on the exploitation of the working class, which is unique in its capacity to overthrow a mode of production based on exploitation - The competition between capitalist companies led to the development of productive forces, which increased total wealth in society (social surplus product). this created enough so everyone could live off it but because the capitalist class owned the means of production not everyone profited off the social surplus product evenly capitalism progressively expands beyond nation states and creates a world market → nationalism will gradually diminish because the working men have no country globalization is the spread of capitalist social relations beyond its core heartlands → this will hasten the social revolution Feminism Feminist approaches are: - corrective, they have sought to rectify the gendered blinkers and biases of mainstream political science - transformative, they aim not only to expose gender power inequalities, but also to change them feminism has its origins as the ideology of a critical and disruptive social movement First-wave feminism: movements focused on legal and constitutional rights and suffrage in the 19th and early 20th centuries Second-wave feminism: brought attention to broader issues of equality, including in the workplace and the family in relation to domestic violence and reproductive rights Third-wave feminism: used in different ways, including as a response to the perceived failure to address diversity and women of color in the second-wave feminism Political science was about politics and public life, but women were part of the private life and low politics (social and culture) and thus ignored. the question of where are the woman changed into the question which women, due to intersectionality ex. women are overlooked/excluded in the measurement of democracy. countries can transition to democracy without women having the right to vote. gender can be understood as a constitutive element of social relations based upon perceived differences between women and men gender is a primary way of signifying relationships of power, intersecting with race, class, and other structural power relations the understandings of gender have shifted the focus from women at the individual level to an increasing interest in institutional level analysis. an institution is gendered = means that constructions of masculinity and femininity are intertwined in the daily culture or logic of political institutions → institutions rely on particular ideas about gender in order to function, but they are also producers of ideas about appropriate masculinities and femininities descriptive representation of women = the presence of women ‘standing for’ women substantive representation of women = ‘acting for’ women, and promoting women’s interests there has been a shift in empirical research from what difference the presence of women representatives makes to questions of how the substantive representation of women occurs gender politics scholarship faces criticisms from a feminist perspective for not being bold enough Politics is, at its heart, the study of power. feminist approaches illuminate gender power and gendered institutions. failing to engage with issues of women and gender therefore limits the ability of the discipline to understand and explain the political world. Constructivism constructivism claims that people do one thing and not another due to certain social constructs According to constructivists, if our world is socially constructed, there is little real world for political scientists to study. the social sciences thus amount to an interpretive search for meanings rather than a scientific search for causal relations. → however many constructivists say that social construction actually does not eliminate the possibility of fruitful debate over why certain people do certain things. Emile Durkheim: societies are held together by the social facts of culture The core distinctiveness of constructivism lies in its attention to the role of interpretation in action. Max Weber, two modes of argument about action: 1. explanation, concerned with an argument’s adequacy on a causal level, how well it shows that someone's actions followed predictably from certain conditions 2. understanding, concerns an argument’s adequacy on the level of meaning, how well it captures how the actor interpreted what she was doing → according to weber a valid causal interpretation of action always covers both later scholars developed the explanation/understanding line into two views: 1. one hardens Weber’s line into two valid but unsimilar modes of argument, each persuasive but not readily combined, there are always two stories to tell 2. a more aggressive view draws the same line but argues that only understanding arguments apply to action. people always act through meanings, and have some free will to choose, so we don’t explain actions. all scholars can do is offer interpretations of actors’ interpretations. non-Humean explanation = B does intend to follow A but it also offers a plausible mechanism by which A produces B the deepest point of constructivism is that the natural world is meaningless and indeterminate for human action until we begin to socially construct some shared meanings about it. debate between constructivist and non-constructivist theories: whether people arrived at these ideas or norms as a roughly rational reaction to objective conditions or through a process of social construction criticism: many constructivists who focus on a late stage of social construction are often criticized for exaggerating how tightly our ideas, norms, and cultures lock us into certain words. there is no single constructivist orthodoxy Political Psychology political psychologists examine (among other things) the connection between elite and mass political behavior. two key assertions about importing psychological concepts and theories into political science: 1. political processes and outcomes are shaped at least in part by the preferences, choices, and actions of individuals and groups  2. to explain the political preferences, choices, and actions of individuals and groups, we need to study their characteristics and relationships empirically, with due attention for context-specific group dynamics. political psychologists are interested in things that are difficult to explain with models assuming self-interested utility maximizing behavior. WWII and the Holocaust would form the catalyst for systematic empirical research into the origins of intergroup conflict and mass atrocities → started with studies about the idea that intergroup hostility is the result of conflict over scarce resources (realistic conflict theory) → then changed into the minimal group experiment theory, in-group and out-group ideas political psychologists ache a long-standing interest in the psychological make-up of those that occupy political offices → with an extra interest in the the study of need for power strengths and weaknesses of statistical analysis becoming the method of choice: - strength: claims can be tested rigorously and if needed dismissed - strength: possible to accrue robust evidence for certain correlations - weakness: pernicious methodological individualism, what can individual-level responses tell us about real life settings? three types of antecedents likely to trigger groupthink: 1. the group is highly cohesive 2. there are structural faults in the organization in which the group is embedded, no checks and balances 3. the group is acting in a provocative situational context generating a high degree of stress in the members of the group