Chapter Nine Ecologism
Introduction: Ecologism (related terms include ecological politics, political
ecology, green politics, and environmental politics) is an ideology that gives
moral consideration to all living creatures and the systems in which they live.
Although humans are a central concern, proponents of ecologism view all life in
contextual terms, assessing human socioeconomic-political perspectives within
the greater framework of the ecosphere.
The meaning of ecologism and that of environmentalism are overlapped.
Both are concerned with environmental conservation, represented with the
color green. Environmentalism belongs to the shallow green, which is a broad
philosophy and social movement regarding concerns for environmental
conservation. Environmentalism can also be defined as a social movement that
seeks to influence the political process by lobbying, activism, and education. In
recognition of humanity as a participant in ecosystems, the environmental
movement is centered on ecology, health, and human rights.
There are conservation movements, ecology movements, peace movements,
green parties, green- and eco-anarchists who often subscribe to very different
ideologies, while supporting the same goals as those who call themselves
“environmentalists”.
The most conspicuous is Green politics, which is a political ideology placing a
high importance on environmental goals, and on achieving these goals through
broad-based, grassroots, participatory democracy. Green politics is associated
with the Green movement, which has been active through Green parties in
many nations since the early 1980s.
Section One
Green Movement and Ecologism
Ernst Haeckel (厄恩斯特·海克尔,德)
French
French
Jonathon Porritt (UK) Rachel Carson (US) Edward Goldsmith E. F. Schumacher Albert Schweitzer Aldo Leopold (US)
乔纳森·波瑞特 雷切尔·卡森 爱德华·戈德斯密 恩斯特·舒马赫(UK) 阿尔伯特·史怀泽 奥尔多·利奥波德
I. The rising of environmentalism and development of green politics: 1. Early
philosophical and political responses toward the negative effects of
industrialization: The philosophical roots of environmentalism can be traced
back to enlightenment thinkers such as Rousseau (1712-1778) and, later, the
naturalist Thoreau (1817-1862) in America. Organized environmentalism
began in late 19th Century Europe and the United States as a reaction to the
Industrial Revolution with its emphasis on unbridled economic expansion.
“Green politics” first began as conservation movements. In far-right and fascist
parties, nationalism has demonstratively been tied into a sort of green politics.
2. The Cold War, the predicted Nuclear Winter and the continuous
deterioration of environment in the 1960s evoked fears in intellect and politics.
The most notable is the Club of Roman’s 1972 book, The Limits to Growth. In
politics, left-green platforms that make up the green parties drew on the science
of ecology, environmentalism, deep ecology, feminism, pacifism, anti-nuclear
movement, anarchism, libertarian socialism, social democracy, eco-socialism,
and social ecology. In the 1970s, as these movements grew in influence, green
politics arose.
3. The growth of green parties: In March 1972 the world’s first green party,
the United Tasmania Group, was formed in Australia. In May 1972, in New
Zealand, a meeting launched the Values Party, the world’s first countrywide
green party. In 1973, Europe’s first green party, the UK’s Ecology Party, came
into existence. After contesting the 1979 Euro elections German Greens
identified Four Pillars of the Green Party as the basis of a platform, and first
coined the term “Green”. The German Greens contended in their first national
election in 1980, and won 27 seats in the Bundestag in 1983.
The first Canadian foray (突袭) into green politics took place in the
Maritimes (滨海诸省) when 11 independent candidates ran in the 1980
federal election under the banner of the Small Party. In Finland, in
1995, the Green League became the first European Green party to
form part of a state-level Cabinet. The German Greens followed,
forming a government with the Social Democratic Party of Germany
(the “Red-Green Alliance”) from 1998 to 2005.
Green ideology emphasizes participatory democracy and the
principle of “thinking globally, acting locally”. As such, the ideal
Green Party is thought to grow from the bottom up. The first Planetary
Meeting of Greens was held May 30-31st,1992 in Rio de Janeiro,
immediately preceding the United Nations Conference on
Environment and Development held there. More than 200 Greens
from 28 nations attended. The first formal Global Greens Gathering
took place in Canberra(澳大利亚首都), in 2001, with more than 800 Greens
from 72 countries in attendance. The second Global Green Congress
was held in Sao Paolo, Brazil, in May 2008, when 75 parties were
represented. Separately from the Global Green Gatherings, Global
Green Meetings take place. The member parties of the Global Greens
are organized into four continental federations: Federation of Green
Parties of Africa, Federation of the Green Parties of the Americas,
Asia-Pacific Green Network, European Federation of Green Parties.
4. Responses of the United Nations and nation states: In 1971, the
UN Conference on the Human Environment commissioned a report
on the state of the planet. Entitled “Only One Earth”, the report
summarized the findings of 152 leading experts from 58 countries in
preparation for the first UN meeting on the environment, held in
Stockholm from 5 to 16 June 1972. The meeting issued the UN
Stockholm Declaration on the Human Environment, and established
the UN Environment Programme.
In 1987, the United Nations released the Brundtland Report (Our
Common Future from the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) published in
1987in recognition of former Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland's role as Chair of the WCED
),
which defines sustainable development as “development which meets
the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future
generations to meet their own needs.” The United Nations 2005 World
Summit Outcome Document refers to the “interdependent and
mutually reinforcing pillars” of sustainable development as economic
development, social development, and environmental protection.
Around the turn of the century, the United Nations held a series of
meetings on environmental protection and issued UN Rio Declaration
on Environment and Development (1992), UN Declaration of
Barbados (1994), UN Nairobi Declaration on the Role and Mandate of
the United Nations Environment Program.(1997) and UN Malmö
Ministerial Declarations (2000).
The Kyoto Protocol linked to the United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC or FCCC), aimed at
combating global warming, was initially adopted on 11 December
1997 in Kyoto, Japan and entered into force on 16 February 2005. As
of November 2009, 187 states have signed and ratified the protocol.
The most notable non-member of the Protocol is the United States,
which is a signatory of UNFCCC and was responsible for 36.1% of
the 1990 emission levels.
The Millennium Development Goals: At the Millennium Summit in
September 2000 the largest gathering of world leaders in history
adopted the UN Millennium Declaration, committing their nations to a
new global partnership to reduce extreme poverty and setting out a
series of targets, with a deadline of 2015, that have become known as
the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which set out eight
Millennium Development Goals, the seventh of which is Ensure
Environmental Sustainability.
II. Basic characteristics of ecologism: The German Greens drafted
the earliest statement of this kind, called the Four Pillars of the Green
Party, which have been repeated by many green parties worldwide as
a foundational statement of the green ideology: Ecological wisdom,
Social justice, Grassroots democracy, Nonviolence.
In 1984, the Green Committees of Correspondence in the United
States expanded the Four Pillars into Ten Key Values which, in
addition to the Four Pillars mentioned above, include:
Decentralization, Community-based economics,Post-patriarchal
values, Respect for diversity, Global responsibility, Future focus.
In 2001, the Global Greens Charter identified six guiding principles:
Ecological wisdom, Social justice, Participatory democracy,
Nonviolence, Sustainability, Respect for diversity.
1. Ideological pluralism, compromising with all kinds of political
factions.
2. Neo-radicalism or neo-utopianism.
3. Holism opposed to the analysis-induction methodology of
western modern sciences, especially the mechanical linear thinking
method, emphasizing cosmic wholeness and interdependence among
the parts and between the parts and the whole.
4. Postmaterialism, a priority to non-material values: quality of life,
culture, the preservation of the environment, opposed to reckless
pursuit of materials and hedonism.
Jonathon Porritt (乔纳森·波瑞特, 1950-) is an English
environmentalist. He appears frequently in the media, writing in
magazines, newspapers and books.
III. Theoretical sources and schools of ecologism: 1. Naturalistic philosophies:
Rousseau looked to a hypothetical State of Nature as a normative guide. In
Discourse on the Arts and Sciences Rousseau argues that the arts and sciences
arose not from authentic human needs but rather as a result of pride and vanity.
Moreover, the opportunities they create for idleness and luxury have
contributed to the corruption of man. He proposed that the progress of
knowledge had made governments more powerful and had crushed individual
liberty.
In Daybreak (朝霞) Nietzsche harshly criticizes the prominent moral schemes
of his day: Christianity, Kantianism, and utilitarianism. He indicates his desire
to bring about a new, more naturalistic source of value in the vital impulses of
life itself.
Many anarchists are vegetarian or vegan (known as veganarchists) and have
played a role in combating perceived injustices against animals. They usually
describe the struggle for the liberation of non-human animals as a natural
outgrowth of the struggle for human freedom.
Systems theory is an interdisciplinary theory about the nature of complex
systems in nature, society, and science, and is a framework by which one can
investigate and/or describe any group of objects that work together to produce
some result. Systems theory first originated in biology in the 1920s out of the
need to explain the interrelatedness of organisms in ecosystems.
Taoist “Harmonization of the Sky and the Human Beings” (天人合一).
Confucian and American Indian “Telepathic Outlook Between Man and
Heaven” (天人感应). Buddhist “no killing” (不杀生).
2. Ecologist theories: Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919) was an eminent
German biologist, naturalist, philosopher, physician, professor and
artist who discovered, described and named thousands of new species,
mapped a genealogical tree relating all life forms, and coined many
terms in biology, including phylum (门), phylogeny (系), ecology and
the kingdom Protista (原生生物界).
Rachel Louise Carson (雷切尔·卡森, 1907–1964) was an
American marine biologist and nature writer whose writings are
credited with advancing the global environmental movement. In the
late 1950s, Carson turned her attention to conservation and the
environmental problems caused by synthetic pesticides. The result
was Silent Spring (1962). Silent Spring spurred a reversal in national
pesticide policy—leading to a nationwide ban on DDT and other
pesticides—and the grassroots environmental movement the book
inspired led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency.
Edward Goldsmith (爱德华·戈德斯密, 1928–2009) was an AngloFrench environmentalist, writer and philosopher. He co-authored the
influential Blueprint for Survival with Robert Prescott-Allen,
becoming a founding member of the political party “People” (later
renamed the Green Party). A Blueprint for Survival recommended
that people live in small, decentralized and largely de-industrialized
communities.
Ernst Friedrich Schumacher (舒马赫, 1911–1977) was an internationally
influential economic thinker in Britain. He is best known for his critique of
western economies and his proposals for human-scale, decentralized and
appropriate technologies. His 1973 book Small Is Beautiful is among the 100
most influential books published since World War II.
Albert Schweitzer (史怀泽, 1875–1965) was an Alsatian German-French
theologian, musician, philosopher, and physician. He received the 1952 Nobel
Peace Prize in 1953 for his philosophy of “Reverence for Life”.
Aldo Leopold (利奥波德, 1887–1948) was an American ecologist, forester, and
environmentalist. He was influential in the development of modern
environmental ethics and in the movement for wilderness conservation.
Leopold is considered to be the father of wildlife management in the United
States. In “The Land Ethic”(大地倫理), a chapter of A Sand County Almanac,
Leopold delves into conservation in “The Ecological Conscience” section. He
wrote: “Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land.”
3. Factions of green politics: Deep ecology is an ecological philosophy
(ecosophy) that considers humankind as an integral part of its environment,
emphasizes the equal value of human and non-human life as well as the
importance of the ecosystem and natural processes. It provides a foundation for
the environmental and green movements and has led to a new system of
environmental ethics.
Hard green refers to a branch of the environmentalism movement that
considers humans solely as a polluting influence on the environment. These
people typically oppose any industrial, agricultural, or resource extraction
activity at all, as well as consumerism and shopping. These views fall under
vaguely developed philosophies such as “biocentrism”, which views all life as a
whole as central to the planet, claiming “equal rights for all species”, and
opposes viewing human society as central. This kind of group includes the
Voluntary Human Extinction Movement and ecoterrorism.
Shallow Ecology movement: Fight against resource depletion. Central
objective: the health and affluence of people in the developed countries.
Eco-socialism, Green socialism or Socialist ecology is an ideology merging
aspects of Marxism, socialism, Green politics, ecology and alter-globalization.
Eco-socialists generally believe that the expansion of the capitalist system is the
cause of social exclusion, poverty and environmental degradation through
globalization and imperialism, under the supervision of repressive states and
transstatal structures; they advocate the non-violent dismantling of capitalism
and the state, focusing on collective ownership of the means of production by
freely associated producers and restoration of the Commons.
Green liberalism is a term used to refer to liberals who have incorporated
green concerns into their ideology. Green liberalism values the earth very
highly, and this philosophy highly values the planet being passed down to the
next generation unharmed. Green liberalism accepts that the natural world is a
system in a state of flux, and does not seek to conserve the natural world as it is.
However, it does seek to minimize the damage done by the human species on
the natural world, and to aid the regeneration of damaged areas.
Green anarchism is a school of thought within anarchism which puts an
emphasis on environmental issues. An important early influence was the
thought of the American individualist anarchist Henry David Thoreau (梭罗)
and his book Walden (simple living). In the late XIX century there emerged an
anarchist naturist current within individualist anarchist circles in France,
Spain and Portugal. There is a strong critique of modern technology among
green anarchists, though not all reject it entirely. Important contemporary
currents are anarcho-primitivism and social ecology.
Ecofeminism is a social and political movement which points to the existence
of considerable common ground between environmentalism and feminism, with
some currents linking deep ecology and feminism. Ecofeminists argue that a
strong parallel exists between the oppression and subordination of women in
families and society and the degradation of nature through the construction of
differences into conceptual binaries and ideological hierarchies that allow a
systematic justification of domination (“power-over power”) by subjects classed
into higher-ranking categories over objects classed into lower-ranking
categories (e.g. man over woman, culture over nature, white over black). They
also explore the intersectionality (交互作用) between sexism, the domination of
nature, racism, speciesism, and other characteristics of social inequality. In
some of their current work, ecofeminists argue that the capitalist and
patriarchal systems that predominate throughout the world reveal a triple
domination of the Global South, women, and nature.
Ecofascism can be used positively for some radical environmentalism which
are openly affiliated with neo-fascism, or which share conceptual similarities
with fascist theories, including various white nationalist and third positionist.
Section Two
Political Ecology and Green Economy
I. Political ecology and ecological science: 1. Definition: Political ecology is
the study of the relationships of political, economic and social factors with
environmental issues and changes. Political ecology differs from apolitical
ecological studies by politicizing environmental issues and phenomena.
The academic discipline offers wide-ranging studies conflating ecological
social sciences with political economy in topics such as degradation and
marginalization, environmental conflict, conservation and control, and
environmental identities and social movements.
The term “political ecology” was first coined by the Vienna-born Jewish
American anthropologist Eric R. Wolf (艾立克·沃尔夫) in 1972 in an article
titled “Ownership and Political Ecology,” in which he discusses how local rules
of ownership and inheritance “mediate between the pressures emanating from
the larger society and the exigencies of the local ecosystem”.
Historically, political ecology has focused on phenomena in and affecting the
developing world. Scholars in political ecology are drawn from a variety of
academic disciplines, including geography, anthropology, development studies,
political science, sociology, forestry, and environmental history.
2. The scope of political ecology: First, costs and benefits associated with
environmental change are distributed unequally. Changes in the environment
do not affect society in a homogenous way: political, social, and economic
differences account for uneven distribution of costs and benefits.
Second, political ecology runs into inherent political economies as “any
change in environmental conditions must affect the political and economic
status quo.”
Third, the unequal distribution of costs and benefits and the reinforcing or
reducing of pre-existing inequalities holds political implications in terms of the
altered power relationships that now result.
Fourth, political ecology attempts to provide critiques as well as alternatives
in the interplay of the environment and political, economic and social factors.
3. The role of political ecology: political ecology can be used to: inform
policymakers and organizations of the complexities surrounding environment
and development, thereby contributing to better environmental governance.
Understand the decisions that communities make about the natural
environment in the context of their political environment, economic pressure,
and societal regulations
Look at how unequal relations in and among societies affect the natural
environment, especially in context of government policy
4. Ecology or science of ecology is the interdisciplinary scientific study of the
interactions between organisms and the interactions of these organisms with
their environment. Its’ scope includes life processes explaining adaptations,
distribution and abundance of organisms, the flux of materials and energy
through living communities, the successional development of ecosystems, and
the abundance and distribution of biodiversity in context of the environment.
5. Ecosystems are real places or they can be conceptually abstract
schemes showing the direction and quantified amounts of energy and
resources flowing through a system or network of relations.
Ecosystems exist practically in conservation biology, wetland
management, natural resource management (agriculture, forestry ,
fisheries), city planning (urban ecology), community health,
economics, basic & applied science and it provides a conceptual
framework for understanding and researching human social
interaction (human ecology).
6. Biocentrism and biocentric, an opposite of anthtopocentrism,
are terms implying a centrality of life, nature, or biology. Biocentrism
is a scientific theory that posits that life creates the universe rather
than the other way around.
The biocentric theory proposed by American scientist Robert Lanza
(兰扎) places biology before the other sciences.
Anthropocentrism or anthrocentrism is the belief that humans
must be considered at the center of, and above any other aspect of,
reality. This concept is sometimes known as humanocentrism or
human supremacy. It is especially strong in certain religious cultures,
such as the Old Testament stating that God gave man dominion over
all other earthly creatures.
II. Green economics focuses on the importance of the health of the
biosphere to human well-being. Consequently, most Greens distrust
conventional capitalism, as it tends to emphasize economic growth while
ignoring ecological health; the “full cost” of economic growth often includes
damage to the biosphere, which is unacceptable according to green politics.
Green economics considers such growth to be “uneconomic growth”— material
increase that nonetheless lowers overall quality of life.
Some Greens refer to productivism, consumerism and scientism as “grey”, as
contrasted with “green”, economic views. “Grey” implies age, concrete, and
lifelessness.
Therefore, adherents to green politics advocate economic policies designed to
safeguard the environment. Greens want governments to stop subsidizing
companies that waste resources or pollute the natural world, subsidies that
Greens refer to as “dirty subsidies”. Some currents of green politics place
automobile and agribusiness subsidies in this category.
Green economics is on the whole anti-globalist. Economic globalization is
considered a threat to well-being, which will replace natural environments and
local cultures with a single trade economy, termed the global economic
monoculture. Greens on the Left are often identified as Eco-socialists, who
merge ecology and environmentalism with socialism and Marxism and blame
the capitalist system for environmental degradation, social injustice, inequality
and conflict. Eco-capitalists, on the other hand, believe that the free market
system, with some modification, is capable of addressing ecological problems.
Section Three
The Ecological Society and Politics
I. The green social relations: Green politics is usually said to
include the green anarchism, eco-anarchism, anti-nuclear, peace
movements, pacifism, feminism, and the animal rights movements.
Most Greens support special policy measures to empower women,
especially mothers; to oppose war and de-escalate conflicts, and such
radical measures as Great Ape personhood.
Greens on the Left adhere to eco-socialism. This has led some on
the right to refer to Greens as “watermelons” – green on the outside,
red in the middle. Some centrist Greens follow more geo-libertarian
views which emphasize natural capitalism – and shifting taxes away
from value created by labor and charging instead for human
consumption of the wealth created by the natural world.
Green politics on the whole is opposed to nuclear power and the
buildup of persistent organic pollutants, supporting adherence to the
precautionary principle, by which technologies are rejected unless
they can be proven to not cause significant harm to the health of living
things or the biosphere.
In the spirit of nonviolence, Green politics opposes the War on
Terrorism and the curtailment of civil rights, focusing instead on
nurturing deliberative democracy in war-torn regions and the
construction of a civil society with an increased role for women.
Although Greens in the United States “call for an end to the ‘War on
Drugs’” and “for decriminalization of victimless crimes”, they also
call for developing “a firm approach to law enforcement that directly
addresses violent crime, including trafficking in hard drugs”.
Green platforms generally favor tariffs on fossil fuels, restricting
genetically modified organisms, and protections for ecoregions or
communities. In keeping with their commitment to the preservation of
diversity, greens are often committed to the maintenance and
protection of indigenous communities, languages, and traditions.
II. The green political structure---participatory democracy: Green
politics emphasizes local, grassroots-level political activity and
decision-making. Therefore, green politics seeks to increase the role
of deliberative democracy, based on direct citizen involvement and
consensus decision making, wherever it is feasible.
Many Greens believe that governments should not levy taxes
against strictly local production and trade. Some Greens advocate new
ways of organizing authority to increase local control, including urban
secession (autonomy) and bioregional democracy.
Green politics also encourages political action on the individual level, such as
ethical consumerism, or buying things that are made according to
environmentally ethical standards. Indeed, many green parties emphasize
individual and grassroots action at the local and regional levels over electoral
politics. Historically, green parties have grown at the local level, only entering
the national arena when there is a strong network of local support.
III. The green diplomacy: Four pillars of the German Green Party:
Ecological wisdom,Social justice, Grassroots democracy, Nonviolence
Ten Key Values of the US Green Party ratified in 2000: Grassroots
Democracy, Social Justice and Equal Opportunity, Ecological wisdom, NonViolence, Decentralization, Community-Based Economics and Economic
Justice, Feminism and Gender Equality, Respect for Diversity, Personal and
Global Responsibility, Future Focus and Sustainability.
Non-Violence: Demilitarize and eliminate weapons of mass destruction,
without being naive about the intentions of other governments. Recognize the
need for self-defense and the defense of others. Promote non-violent methods,
and will guide our actions toward lasting personal, community and global
peace.
Personal and Global Responsibility: We encourage individuals to act to
improve their personal well-being and to enhance ecological balance and social
harmony. We seek to join with people and organizations around the world to
foster peace, economic justice, and the health of the planet.
Green Party of Canada: We declare our commitment to non-violence and
strive for a culture of peace and cooperation between states.
Interpretation: Social Justice (sometimes “Social and Global
Equality and Economic Justice”) is one of the Four Pillars of the
Green Party and is sometimes referred to as “Social and Global
Equality” or “Economic Justice”. The Canadian party defines the
principle as the “equitable distribution of resources to ensure that all
have full opportunities for personal and social development”.
The Charter of the European Greens: Justice is also our yardstick
on the international level. Worldwide sustainable development and
universal human rights are at the core of our concept of global justice.
These must be underpinned by an independent institutional
monitoring framework for corporate social responsibility and fair
trade.
The prerogative (特权) to respect diversity, often said to “begin
with biodiversity” of non-human life, is basic to some 20th century
studies such as cultural ecology, Queer studies, and anthropological
linguistics. In various forms it is promoted by many political
movements, most notably feminism, gay rights, green politics and the
anti-globalization movement.
Paul Driessen (保罗·德里森,American author and lobbyist): EcoImperialism is a shocking, profound, and desperately needed account
of what happens when the privileged Western world decides the fate
of millions of people whom they never have to see or hear.
Section Four
Eco-Socialism
Rudolf Bahro Adam Schaff William Leiss
Andre Gorz
Georges Labica Reiner Grundmann David Pepper
巴罗(德)
沙夫(波兰) 莱易斯(加拿大) 高兹(法) 乔治·拉比卡(法) 瑞尼尔·格伦德曼(德) 戴维·佩珀(英)
Introduction: Eco-socialism, Green socialism or Socialist ecology
is an ideology merging aspects of Marxism, socialism, Green politics,
ecology and alter-globalization (global justice movement, global cooperation
and interaction, but which opposes the negative effects of economic globalization).
Eco-socialists generally believe that the expansion of the capitalist
system is the cause of social exclusion, poverty and environmental
degradation through globalization and imperialism, under the
supervision of repressive states and transstatal structures; they
advocate the non-violent dismantling of capitalism and the state,
focusing on collective ownership of the means of production by freely
associated producers and restoration of the Commons (平民国家).
I. Formation and development of eco-socialism: 1. The first phase: Marx,
Morris and influence of the Russian Revolution (1880s-1930s): Eco-socialists
have revisited Marx’s writings and believe that he “was a main originator of
the ecological world-view”. Some eco-socialist authors point to Marx’s
discussion of a “metabolic rift” (代谢断层) between man and nature, his
observation that a society must “hand it [the planet] down to succeeding
generations in an improved condition”. Nonetheless, other eco-socialists feel
that Marx overlooked a “recognition of nature in and for itself”, ignoring its
“receptivity” and treating nature as “subjected to labor from the start” in an
“entirely active relationship”.
Therefore William Morris (威廉·莫里斯), the English novelist, poet and
designer, is largely credited with developing key principles of what was later
called eco-socialism. During the 1880s and 1890s, Morris promoted his ecosocialist ideas within the Social Democratic Federation and Socialist League.
Following the Russian Revolution, some environmentalists and
environmental scientists attempted to integrate ecological consciousness into
Bolshevism, although many such people were later purged by the Communist
Party. The “pre-revolutionary environmental movement”, encouraged by
revolutionary scientist Aleksandr Bogdanov (波格丹诺夫) and the organization,
made efforts to “integrate production with natural laws and limits” in the first
decade of Soviet rule, before Joseph Stalin attacked ecologists and the science
of ecology and the Soviet Union fell into the pseudo-science of the state biologist
Trofim Lysenko (特罗菲姆·李森科, vernalization), who “set about to
rearrange the Russian map” in ignorance of environmental limits.
2. the second phase: Rise of environmentalism and engagement
with Marxism and socialism (1970s-1990s): In the 1970s, Barry
Commoner (巴里·康门勒,1917-, an American biologist, college
professor, and eco-socialist) suggested a left-wing response to the
Limits to Growth model that predicted catastrophic resource depletion
and spurred environmentalism, and postulated that capitalist
technologies were chiefly responsible for environmental degradation,
as opposed to population pressures.
East German dissident writer and activist Rudolf Bahro (鲁道夫·巴
罗) published books addressing the relationship between socialism and
ecology - Socialism and Survival (1984) and From Red To Green
(1984) - which promoted a ‘new party’ and led to his arrest, for which
he gained international notoriety.
At around the same time, Australian Ted Trainer (泰德·特瑞纳) called
upon socialists to develop a system that met human needs, in contrast
to the capitalist system of created wants. A key development in the
1980s, was the creation of the journal “Capitalism, Nature, Socialism”
in short CNS and the first issue in 1988. The debates ensued led to a
host of theoretical works.
Adam Schaff (沙夫,1913-2006) was a Polish Marxist philosopher
and a member of the Club of Roman. He was considered the official
ideologue of the Polish United Workers’ Party.
William Leiss (莱易斯,1939-) was a New York-born President of the Royal
Society of Canada from 1999-2001. In The Domination of Nature (对自然的统
治,1972), William Leiss argues that the global predicament must be understood
in terms of deeply rooted attitudes towards nature: the idea of the domination
of nature. He traces the idea of the domination of nature from the Renaissance
to the nineteenth century. Francis Bacon’s seminal work’s momentous
ambiguities in the idea were incorporated into modern thought. By the
beginning of the twentieth century the concept had become firmly identified
with scientific and technological progress. He puts the idea of mastery over
nature into historical perspective and explores a new approach, based on the
possibilities of the “liberation of nature”.
The Limits to Satisfaction (满足的极限,1976): Consumerism and capitalist
and socialist industry have reached the point where state power is legitimatized
by its ability to increase the number of commodities. A unique culture has been
created in which marketing is the main social bond. Leiss critically examines
the bogus issue of false vs. true needs and shows that Critical Theory, Western
Marxism and most radical sociology have been misguided in posing the
question in this fashion.
Ben Agger (本·阿格尔) is Professor of sociology and humanities at University
of Texas at Arlington. His works include Western Marxism: An Introduction
(1979).
André Gorz (高兹,1923-2007) was an Austrian French social philosopher. A
supporter of Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialist version of Marxism after World
War Two, in the aftermath of the May’68 student riots, he became more
concerned with political ecology. His book Ecology As Politics (1979,1975) offers
a connection between the political and the ecological.
3. The third phase: Engagement with the anti-globalization movement (1990s
onwards): The 1990s saw the socialist feminists address environmental issues
within an eco-socialist paradigm. With the rising profile of the antiglobalization movement in the Global South, an “environmentalism of the
poor”, combining ecological awareness and social justice, has also become
prominent. David Pepper released his work, Ecosocialism: From Deep Ecology
to Social Justice (生态社会主义:从深生态学到社会正义), in 1994, which
critiques the approach of many within Green politics, particularly Deep
Ecologists. In October 2007, the International Ecosocialist Network was
founded in Paris.
Georges Labica (拉比卡,1930 – 2009), one of France’s most important
independent Marxist writers and theorists.
Reiner Grundmann (格伦德曼) is a German sociologist, whose research is in
the field of global environmental problems, especially global climate change. In
Marxism and Ecology (1991), Grundmann argues that Marx’s theory of human
nature and his evolutionary thinking are cogent tools for understanding basic
traits of industrial countries and the ecological problems they produce. He
challenges the widespread belief that the development of productive forces is by
itself a threat to the environment. He concludes that the pursuit of productivity
and the development of a healthy environment need not be mutually exclusive.
David Pepper (佩珀,1948-) was the director of the British intelligence agency
Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) from 2003 to 2008. He
was knighted as a KCMG (二等男勋爵士) in 2005.
The Roots of Modern Environmentalism (现代环境主义的根源) by David
Pepper (1984) offers an interpretation of the mass of information on the
historical, philosophical and ideological background to environmentalism.
Eco-Socialism: From Deep Ecology to Social Justice (1993) presents a
provocatively anthropocentric analysis of the way forward for green politics
and environmental movements. The author posited that the roots of ecological
crisis lied in the capitalist institution, and suggested transformation of the
capitalist institution, and establishing an eco-socialism characterized with
anthropocentricism.
II. Major theoretical points of eco-socialism: 1. The cause for the ecological
issue: Merging aspects of Marxism, socialism, environmentalism and ecology,
eco-socialists generally believe that the capitalist system is the cause of social
exclusion, inequality and environmental degradation through globalization and
imperialism under the supervision of repressive states and transstatal
structures.
2. In terms of philosophical and value orientation, eco-socialism advocates
anthropocentricism, in contrast with the ecocentricism of the deep green.
3. A vision for the future society: Most eco-socialists blame ecological
degradation on the inclination to short-term, profit-inspired decisions inherent
within a market system. For them, privatization of land strips people of their
local communal resources in the name of creating markets for neo-liberal
globalisation, which benefits a minority. In their view, successful commons
systems have been set up around the world throughout history to manage areas
cooperatively, based on long-term needs and sustainability instead of shortterm profit.
4. Means to solving the ecological crisis: To get to an eco-socialist society, ecosocialists advocate working-class anti-capitalist resistance but also believe that
there is potential for agency in autonomous, grassroots individuals and groups
across the world who can build “prefigurative” projects for non-violent radical
social change. These prefigurative steps go “beyond the market and the state”
and base production on the enhancement of use values, leading to the
internationalization of resistance communities in an ‘Eco-socialist Party’ or
network of grassroots groups focused on non-violent, radical social
transformation. An ‘Eco-socialist revolution’ is then carried out.
5. The way to the future: Eco-socialists also criticize bureaucratic and elite
theories of socialism in the socialist states, and what other critics have termed
Bureaucratic Collectivism or State Capitalism. Instead, eco-socialists focus on
imbuing socialism with ecology while keeping the emancipative goals of ‘firstepoch’ socialism. Eco-socialists aim for a world of communal ownership of the
means of production by “freely associated producers” with all forms of
domination eclipsed, especially gender inequality and racism.
III. Implications for eco-socialism: 1. Differences between red green parties
and green parties: (1) In terms of political basis, the difference is between
socialism and anarchism. (2) In terms of philosophical theory, the difference is
between anthropocentricism and ecocentricism. (3) In terms of value, the
difference is between modernism and postmodernism. (4) In terms of social and
political practice, the difference is between radicalism and reformism.
2. Criticism against eco-socialism: Some socialists see ecosocialism as “classless ecology”, wherein eco-socialists have “given
up on the working class” as the privileged agent of struggle by
“borrowing bits from Marx but missing the locus of Marxist politics”.
Some criticize eco-socialists for a deterministic “catastrophism” that
overlooks “the countervailing tendencies of both popular struggles
and the efforts of capitalist governments to rationalize the system” and
the “accomplishments of the labor movement” that “demonstrate that
despite the interests and desires of capitalists, progress toward social
justice is possible”.
Some environmentalists and conservationists have criticized ecosocialism from within the Green movement. David M. Johns (Adjunct
Assistant Professor of Political Science at Portland State University) criticizes ecosocialism for not offering “suggestions about near term conservation
policy” and focusing exclusively on long-term societal transformation.
Johns believes that species extinction “started much earlier” than
capitalism and suggests that eco-socialism neglects the fact that an
ecological society will need to transcend the destructiveness found in
“all large-scale societies”. Johns questions whether non-hierarchical
social systems can provide for billions of people, and criticizes ecosocialists for neglecting issues of population pressure.
Chapter Ten Political Science
Introduction: Political science is a social science concerned with the theory and
practice of politics and the description and analysis of political systems and
political behavior. It is often described as the pragmatic application of the art
and science of politics defined as “who gets what, when and how”, leaving out
of the picture most of the “why”. Political science has several subfields,
including: political theory, public policy, national politics, international
relations, and comparative politics.
Political science is methodologically diverse, to the discipline include classical
political philosophy, interpretivism, structuralism, and behavioralism, realism,
pluralism, and institutionalism. Political science, as one of the social sciences,
uses methods and techniques that relate to the kinds of inquiries sought:
primary sources such as historical documents and official records, secondary
sources such as scholarly journal articles, survey research, statistical analysis,
case studies and model building.
“As a discipline” political science, possibly like the social sciences as a whole,
“lives on the fault line between the ‘two cultures’ in the academy, the sciences
and the humanities.” Thus, in some American colleges where there is no
separate School or College of Arts and Sciences per se, political science may be
a separate department housed as part of a division or school of Humanities or
Liberal Arts.
Political scientists study the allocation and transfer of power in decision
making, the roles and systems of governance including governments and
international organizations, political behavior and public policies.
Section One
The Emergence and Development of the
Behaviorist Political Science
Sidney Webb Beatrice Webb
Graham Wallas
David Easton
悉尼·韦伯(英) 贝阿特丽丝·韦伯 格雷汉姆·沃拉斯 (英) 大卫·伊斯顿
Harold Lasswell
哈罗德·拉斯维尔
David Truman
大卫·杜鲁门
Herbert Simon
赫伯特·西蒙
Arthur F. Bentley
阿瑟·本特利
Charles E. Merriam
查尔斯·梅里安
Gabriel Almond Karl Deutsch
加布里埃尔·阿尔蒙德 卡尔·多伊奇
Samuel Huntington
塞缪·享廷顿
I. Traditional political science and its methodology: 1. Antecedents: Political
science is a late arrival in terms of social sciences. However, the discipline has a
clear set of antecedents such as moral philosophy, political philosophy, political
economy, political theology, history, and other fields. The antecedents of
Western politics can trace their roots back to Plato and Aristotle, particularly
in the works of Homer (荷马,900-800 BC), Hesiod (赫西奥德,800 BC),
Thucydides (修昔底德, 460-400 BC), Xenophon (色诺芬,430-355 B. C., An
Athenian historian), and Euripides (欧里屁得斯,478-406 B. C., a Greek writer
of tragedy). Plato analyzed political systems, and applied an approach closer to
philosophy. Aristotle built upon Plato’s analysis to include historical empirical
evidence. Plato wrote The Republic and Aristotle wrote the Politics.
During the Roman Empire, historians documented the rise of the Roman
Republic, and the organization and histories of other nations, while statesmen
like Julius Caesar and Cicero provided examples of the politics of the republic
and Rome’s empire. The Greek gods become Romans and Greek philosophy
turns into Roman law as in Stoicism.
During the Middle Ages, works such as Augustine’s The City of God
synthesized philosophies and political traditions with Christianity. Most of the
political questions were clarified and contested surrounding the relationship
between church and state. The Arabs continued to study Plato’s Republic which
became the basic text of Judeo-Islamic political philosophy as in the works of
Averroes; in the Christian world, Aristotle’s Politics was translated in the 13th
century and became the basic text as in the works of Saint Thomas Aquinas.
During the Renaissance, Machiavelli established the emphasis of modern
political science on direct empirical observation of political institutions and
actors.
For Machiavelli, nothing seems to be too good nor too evil if it helps to attain
and preserve political power. Machiavelli shatters political illusions, reveals the
harsh reality of politics and could be considered the father of the politics model.
Thomas Hobbes, well-known for his theory of the social contract, believed that
a strong central power, such as a monarchy, was necessary to rule the innate
selfishness. John Locke accepted Aristotle’s dictum that man seeks to be happy
in a state of social harmony as a social animal. All three of them did not believe
in the divine right of kings. During the Enlightenment, Religion would no
longer play a dominant role in politics. Principles similar to those that
dominated the material sciences could be applied to society as a whole,
originating the social sciences.
2. The advent of political science as a university discipline was marked by the
creation of university departments and chairs with the title of political science
arising in the late 19th century. In fact, the designation “political scientist” is
typically reserved for those with a doctorate in the field. Integrating political
studies of the past into a unified discipline is ongoing, and the history of
political science has provided a rich field for the growth of both normative and
positive political science. In 1857, in the United States, Francis Liebe became
the first person who was conferred the title of professorship of history and
political science. The first separate school of political science was established in
1872 in France. In 1880, John W. Burgess founded the first American college of
political science. He then founded the first political science journal, Political
Science Quarterly, in 1886. In 1895 the London School of Economics and
Political Science was founded in England.
The American Political Science Association was founded in 1903, the
Canadian Political Science Association in 1913 and UK Political Studies
Association in 1950.
3. Historical figures: Sidney James Webb (悉尼·韦伯,1859–1947) was a British
socialist, economist and reformer. He was one of the early members of the
Fabian Society in 1884, and helped turn the Fabian Society into the preeminent
political-intellectual society of England in the Edwardian era and beyond. He
wrote the original Clause IV for the British Labour Party. In 1895 he helped to
establish the London School of Economics, using a bequest left to the Fabian
Society. Sidney became Member of Parliament in 1922.
In 1929, he was created Baron Passfield. As Colonial Secretary he issued the
Passfield White Paper revising the government’s policy in Palestine, previously
set by the Churchill White Paper of 1922.
Martha Beatrice Webb (1858–1943) was an English sociologist, economist,
socialist and reformer, usually referred to in association with her husband,
Sidney Webb. Although her husband became Baron Passfield in 1929, she
refused to be known as Lady Passfield. Beatrice was an active partner in all
Sidney's political and professional activities, including the organization of the
Fabian Society and the establishment of the London School of Economics. She
co-authored books such as the History of Trade Unionism (1894), and was cofounder of the New Statesman magazine (1913). The Webbs were supporters of
the Soviet Union until their deaths.
Graham Wallas (格雷汉姆·沃拉斯,1858-1932) was an English socialist, social
psychologist, educationalist, and a leader of the Fabian Society. It was at
Oxford that Wallas abandoned his religion. He joined the Fabian Society in
April 1886. He lectured at the newly-founded London School of Economics
from 1895.
Human Nature in Politics (1908)
II. The rise of the behaviorist political science: 1. The behaviorist revolution:
In the 1950s and the 1960s, a behavioral revolution stressing the systematic and
rigorously scientific study of individual and group behavior swept the discipline.
The late 1960’s and early 1970’s witnessed a take off in the use of deductive,
game theoretic formal modeling techniques aimed at generating a more
analytical corpus of knowledge in the discipline. At the same time, political
science also moved towards a closer working relationship with other disciplines,
especially sociology, economics, history, anthropology, psychology, public
administration, law, and statistics without losing its own identity. Increasingly,
political scientists have used the scientific method to create an intellectual
discipline based on the generation of formal models used to derive testable
hypotheses followed by empirical verification. Over the past generations, the
discipline placed an increasing emphasis on relevance (相关性), or the use of new
approaches to increase scientific knowledge in the field and provide
explanations for empirical outcomes.
2. Historical figures: David Easton (1917-) is a Canadian American political
scientist, and is currently Distinguished Research Professor in the Department
of Political Science at the University of California, Irvine.
He is a former President of the American Political Science Association, a past
President of the International Committee on Social Science Documentation. At
the forefront of both the behavioralist and post-behavioralist revolutions in the
discipline of political science during the 1950s and 1970s, Easton provided the
discipline’s most widely used definition of politics and is renowned for his
application of systems theory to the study of political science. During his career
he has served as a consultant to many prominent organizations.
Arthur Bentley (1870-1957) was an American political scientist and
philosopher who worked in the fields of epistemology, logic and linguistics and
who contributed to the development of a behavioral methodology of political
science. His influential book is The Process of Government: A Study of Social
Pressures (1908), which is of an early study on interest group politics.
Charles Edward Merriam (1874–1953) was a professor of political science at
the University of Chicago and founder of the behavioralistic approach to
political science. Merriam served as an advisor to Herbert Hoover and
Franklin Roosevelt. He was a pioneer in American positive political study and
founder of the Chicago school. His book New Aspects of Politics (1925) argued
for a reconstruction of method in political analysis, urged the greater use of
statistics in the aid of empirical observation and measurement.
Harold Lasswell (1902-1978) was a leading American political scientist and
communications theorist. He was a member of the Chicago school of sociology.
He was President of the World Academy of Art and Science and the American
Political Science Association. He argued that democracies needed propaganda
to keep the uninformed citizenry in agreement with what the specialized class
had determined was in their best interests. He wrote that we must put aside
“democratic dogmatisms about men being the best judges of their own interests”
since “men are often poor judges of their own interests, flitting from one
alternative to the next without solid reason”.
David Truman (1913-2003) was an American academic who served. He is
known for his role as a Columbia University administrator during the
Columbia University protests of 1968. His best known book is The
Governmental Process (1951), which represented pluralist study on interest
group.
Herbert Simon (1916–2001) was an American political scientist, economist,
and psychologist, whose research ranged across the fields of cognitive
psychology, computer science, public administration, economics, management,
philosophy of science, sociology, and political science. With almost a thousand
very highly cited publications, he is one of the most influential social scientists
of the 20th century.
Simon was a polymath, among the founding fathers of several of important
scientific domains, including artificial Intelligence, information processing,
decision-making, problem-solving, attention economics, organization theory,
complex systems, and computer simulation of scientific discovery. He coined the
terms bounded rationality and satisficing, and was the first to propose a
preferential attachment mechanism to explain power law distributions.
Gabriel Almond (1911–2002) was an American political scientist best known
for his pioneering work on comparative politics, political development, and
political culture.
Karl Deutsch (1912 – 1992) was a Czech American of German ancestry, social
and political scientist. His work focused on the study of war and peace,
nationalism, co-operation and communication. He is well known for his interest
in introducing quantitative methods and formal system analysis, and is one of
the most well known social scientists of the 20th century. In The Nerves of
Government: Models of Political Communication and Control, he applied system
analysis onto the study of government.
Samuel Huntington (1927–2008) was an American political scientist who
gained prominence through his Clash of Civilizations (1993, 1996) thesis of a
post-Cold War new world order.
III. The methodological characteristics of behaviorist research: 1. The
theoretical antecedents: Auguste Comte’s positive philosophy: “The law is this:
that each of our leading conceptions, each branch of our knowledge, passes
successively through three different theoretical conditions: the Theological, or
fictitious; the Metaphysical, or abstract; and the Scientific, or positive.”
Logical positivism is a school of philosophy that combines empiricism, the
idea that observational evidence is indispensable for knowledge, with a version
of rationalism incorporating mathematical and logico-linguistic constructs and
deductions in epistemology. Logical positivism grew from the discussions of a
group called the “First Vienna Circle” before World War I. A 1929 pamphlet
summarized the doctrines. These included: the opposition to all metaphysics,
especially ontology and synthetic apriori (先验) propositions; the rejection of
metaphysics not as wrong but as having no meaning; the idea that all
knowledge should be codifiable in a single standard language of science; and
above all the project of “rational reconstruction”, in which ordinary-language
concepts were gradually to be replaced by more precise equivalents in that
standard language. The most prominent proponents of logical positivism
emigrated to United Kingdom and United States, where they considerably
influenced American philosophy.
Behavioral psychology is a theory of learning based upon the idea that all
behaviors are acquired through conditioning. Conditioning occurs through
interaction with the environment. According to behaviorism, behavior can be
studied in a systematic and observable manner with no consideration of
internal mental states. From early psychology in the 19th century, the
behaviorist school of thought ran concurrently and shared commonalities with
the psychoanalytic and Gestalt (完形,格式塔) movements.
2. The Value-free or value-neutral methodology: (1) Base the
research on observable and dynamic empirical facts, with a focus on
group and individual behavior instead of political institutions,
incorporating the theories, methods, discoveries and approaches of
psychology, sociology, anthropology and economics.
(2) Use various techniques, including polling, sampling, case
studies, and digitalization.
(3) Emphasize empirical studies instead of normal studies.
Sir George Edward Gordon Catlin (乔治·卡特林,1896–1979) was an
English political scientist and philosopher. A strong proponent of
Anglo-America cooperation, he worked for many years as a professor
at Cornell University and other universities and colleges in the US and
Canada. He preached the use of a natural science model for political
science.
Robert Dahl (1915-) is the Sterling Professor emeritus of political
science at Yale University, where he earned his Ph.D. in political
science in 1940. He is past president of the American Political Science
Association and one of the most distinguished political scientists
writing today. Dahl has often been described as “the Dean” of
American political scientists. He earned this title by his prolific
writing output and the fact that scores of prominent political scientists
studied under him.
Section Two
Research Fields of Behaviorist Political Science
James David Barber Charles Austin Beard V. O. Key
大卫·巴伯
查尔斯·比尔德
凯伊
Sidney Verba
Frederick Taylor Chester Irving Barnard
悉尼·维尔巴
弗雷德里克·泰勒 切斯特·巴纳德
Charles Lindblom Yehezkel Dror G. Bingham Powell, Jr. Morton Kaplan Peter B. Evans Dietrich Rueschemeyer
查尔斯·林德布洛姆 叶海卡·德罗尔(以色列) G. 宾厄姆·鲍威尔 默顿·卡普兰 彼得·埃文斯 迪特里希·鲁谢梅耶(社会
学)
Lucian W. Pye Ronald Inglehart Aaron Wildavsky Barrington Moore Michel Crozier Theda Skocpol James Coleman
I. Political psychology: In Human Nature in Politics (1908), Graham Wallas
argued that irrational forces, such as prejudice, custom, and accident,
inevitably affect political decisions, often much more than rational calculations.
He thus warned politicians of the need to study psychology. He rejected the
popular application of Darwinism to social sciences. Wallas’ work provided a
useful counterbalance to rationalist utilitarianism.
Psycho-pathology and Politics (1930) was Lasswell’s pioneering application of
the concepts of clinical psychology to the understanding of powerbrokers in
politics, business, and even the church that offered insights into the careers of
leaders as diverse as Adolf Hitler and Richard Nixon. He argued that leaders
are driven primarily by psychological motivations rooted in childhood.
Understanding politics, therefore, required a psychoanalytic approach to
individual leaders, whose motivations could be deciphered and actions
predicted. Lasswell pursued this direction of inquiry further in World Politics
and Insecurity ( 1935 ). Together, these studies laid the groundwork for much of
the field of political psychology.
In Politics: Who Gets What, When, How (1935), Lasswell stated “one skill of
the politician is calculating probable changes in influence and the
influential…the study of politics is the study of influence and the
influential…the influential are those who get the most of what there is to get”.
Lasswell called this group the “elite”. In discussing the methods by which an
elite preserves its position he stated that they defend and assert their position
by the use of symbols of a common destiny to create common values.
Paramount among politicians are: agitators and organizers. The former are
favored in crisis, and the latter during those periods between crises.
David Barber (1930-2004) was an American political scientist who was a
professor of political science at Duke University from 1977 to 1995.
Barber’s four types of presidential character
Active/Positive: Active and enjoys it.
High self-esteem and success in
relating. Values productivity.
Developing toward personal goals.
Rational.
Summary: Want to achieve results.
Activity/Enjoyment: Well adapted.
Passive/Positive: Receptive,
compliant, other directed, seeking
affection as reward for being
agreeable. Contradiction between
low self-esteem and superficial
optimism. Hopeful attitude but
likely to be disappointed in politics.
Summary: Seek love.
Activity/Enjoyment: Compliant.
Active/Negative: Intense effort
with low emotional reward,
compulsive. Ambitious, seeking
power. Vague self-image. Life is a
hard struggle to seize and hold
power.
Summary: Get and keep power.
Activity/Enjoyment: Compulsive
Passive/Negative: Does little in
politics and enjoys it less. Why in
politics? Character-rooted toward
dutiful service to compensate for low
self-esteem. Lack experience and
flexibility. Tend to withdraw and
escape by emphasizing vague
principles, especially prohibitions.
Summary: Civic duty.
Activity/Enjoyment: Withdrawn.
II. Group theories: Arthur Bentley (1870-1957) was an American political
scientist and philosopher who worked in the fields of epistemology, logic and
linguistics and who contributed to the development of a behavioral
methodology of political science. Bentley took a lectureship at the University of
Chicago, and then went to work as a newspaperman. Bentley used his spare
time to write “The Process of Government.” His closest intellectual companion
was John Dewey.
In The Process of Government: A Study of Social Pressures (1908), Bentley
held that interactions of groups are the basis of political life. In his opinion,
group activity determined legislation, administration and adjudication. These
ideas of process-based behavioralism later became central to political science.
His tenet that “social movements are brought about by group interaction” is a
basic feature of contemporary pluralist and interest-group approaches.
Charles Beard (1874-1948) was one of the most influential American
historians of the first half of the 20th century. As a leader of the “progressive
historians,” or “progressive historiography”, he introduced themes of economic
self-interest and economic conflict regarding the adoption of the Constitution
and the transformations caused by the Civil War. Thus he emphasized the longterm conflict among industrialists in the Northeast, farmers in the Midwest,
and planters in the South that he saw as the cause of the Civil War.
In his study of the financial interests of the drafters of the United States
Constitution, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution (1913), he
proposed that the U.S. Constitution was a product of economically determinist,
land-holding founding fathers. He saw ideology as a product of economic
interests. His work was taken as radical, but many scholars, however,
eventually adopted this thesis and by 1950 it had become the standard
interpretation of the era.
Valdimer Orlando Key, Jr. (1908-1963), usually known simply as V. O. Key
was an influential American political scientist known for his empirical study of
elections and voting behavior. He taught at UCLA, Johns Hopkins University,
and Yale University and Harvard University. He also served with the Social
Science Research Council and the National Resources Planning Board, and at
the Bureau of the Budget.
In Politics, Parties, and Pressure Groups, V. O. Key emphasized that politics
was a contest and the main players were organized interest groups. The book
decisively shaped the teaching of political science by introducing realism in
analysis of politics, the “interest group” model and behavioral methods based
on statistical analysis of election returns.
David Truman (1913-2003) was a prominent American scholar of political
parties, lobbying, and interest groups, as well as one of the early and most
influential promoters of behavioralism in political science. He served as
president of Mount Holyoke College, and also worked as Columbia University
administrator.
Truman’s The Governmental Process ( 1951 ) largely invented the “group
behavioral” approach to American politics. He argued that public policy is not
an expression of a neutral “public good” but the product of diverse groups
acting in their own interests. The American political system, Truman argued, is
basically open to contestation and competition among groups; moreover, group
interactions, rather than individual politicians, are the determining factors in
policymaking. For Truman, the United States is thus a predominantly pluralist
political system, in which no group can dominate policy completely for its own
ends or ignore public opinion for long.
Sidney Verba (1932- ) is a political scientist specializing in American and
comparative politics. He was a Professor and director of the library at Harvard
University.
In Small Groups and Political Behavior: A Study of Leadership, Verba shows
that the intermediate groups are intermediate units between the individual and
the mass, in which he finds emotional nurture and cognitive sustenance, and
discusses the advantages and disadvantages of attempting to apply sociological
and social-psychological materials and methods to the political process.
III. Decision-making theory: Herbert Simon (1916-2001) was an American
political scientist, economist, and psychologist, whose research ranged across
the fields of cognitive psychology, computer science, public administration,
economics, management, philosophy of science, sociology, and political science.
Simon was a polymath, among the founding fathers of several of today’s
important scientific domains, including artificial Intelligence, information
processing, decision-making, problem-solving, attention economics,
organization theory, complex systems, and computer simulation of scientific
discovery. He coined the terms bounded rationality and satisficing, and was the
first to to propose a preferential attachment mechanism to explain power law
distributions.
In Administrative Behavior (1947), Simon thinks that any decision involves a
choice selected from a number of alternatives, directed toward an
organizational goal or subgoal. Realistic options will have real consequences
consisting of personnel actions or non-actions modified by environmental facts
and values. In actual practice, some of the alternatives may be conscious or
unconscious; some of the consequences may be unintended or intended.
In Models of Man (1957) Simon points out that most people are only partly
rational, and are in fact emotional/irrational in the remaining part of their
actions.
Organizations (1958) by James March and Herbert Simon provides the
original and definitive treatments of such fundamental concepts as bounded
rationality, attention focus, and problem solving.
Chester Irving Barnard (1886–1961) was an American business executive,
public administrator, and author of pioneering work in management and
organizational studies.
Barnard’s book, Functions of the Executive (1938) sets out a theory of
organization and of the functions of executives in organizations. Barnard
summarized the functions of the executive as follows: Establishing and
maintaining a system of communication; Securing essential services from other
members; Formulating organizational purposes and objectives.
The policy sciences; recent developments in scope and method (1951), edited by
Daniel Lerner and Harold D. Lasswell.
Charles Lindblom (1917-) is a Professor of Political Science and Economics at
Yale University. He is a former president of the American Political Science
Association.
In The Policy-Making Process (1993), Lindblom & Woodhouse think that
policy can arise from compromise, as a byproduct, emerge gradually, or even
come into being through inaction and precedent. The balance that keeps elected
officials in check is the bureaucratic system and special interest groups. The
most important extra-governmental obstruction is the business sector’s
influence. Educational and social conditioning tends to favor the elite.
Yehezkel Dror (叶海卡·德罗尔) is a professor of political science
at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His fields of interest include
policy planning and strategic issues. He is a member of the
International Institute of Strategic Studies and of the Club of Rome.
He was a consultant of the Israeli Cabinet Office and advised several
Israeli Prime Ministers. In Public Policymaking
Reexamined,Yehezkel Dror postulated certain factors necessary for
supplementing present policymaking systems; discussed the existence
of organizational capabilities and the policymaking system, the
alternative policies, modern techniques of systematic rational analysis,
and the training and development of policymakers. He measures
Congress and policymaking systems of the U.S. as well as systems of
developing countries. Among his long-range recommendations is a
proposal to develop a new discipline of policy sciences. Policymaking
Under Adversity (1986-) systematically treats recent policymaking
trends. In order to gain an understanding of pressing predicaments, he
believes that policymakers need to examine the foundations of
contemporary practices of present assumptions, and that they need a
multiplicity of approaches to policymaking.
Yehezkel Dror, “Policy-Gambling: A Preliminary Exploration,”
Policy Studies Journal 12. (1, September 1983), p.9. 26.
IV. Systems theory of politics: Talcott Parsons (19021979) was an American sociologist who served on the
faculty of Harvard University from 1927–1973. Parsons
developed a general theory for the study of society called
action theory, based on the methodological principle of
voluntarism and the epistemological principle of analytical
realism. In using systems thinking, he postulated that the
relevant systems treated in social and behavioral science
were “open”, meaning that they were embedded in an
environment consisting of other systems.
David Easton’s book The Political System: An Inquiry
into the State of Political Science (1953) defined political
behavior as the “authoritative allocation of values,” or the
distribution of rewards in wealth, power, and status that the
system may provide, which drove home the failure of 1950s
political science to build anything resembling coherent
theories of politics or to develop systematic techniques for
gathering and analyzing data, with which such theories
might be constructed.
A Systems Analysis of Political Life (1965) proposed that a
political system could be seen as a delimited (boundaries) and fluid
system of steps in decision making. Changes in the social or physical
environment surrounding a political system produce “demands” and
“supports” for action or the status quo directed as “inputs” towards the
political system, through political behavior. These demands and
supporting groups stimulate competition in a political system, leading
to decisions or “outputs”. After a decision or output is made (e.g., a
specific policy), it interacts with its environment, and if it produces
change in the environment, there are “outcomes”. Outcomes may
generate new demands or supports and groups in support or against
the policy (“feedback”) or a new policy on some related matter.
Feedback leads back to Step 1, it is a never ending story.
Comparative Politics: A Developmental Approach (1966) by
Gabriel Almond and G. Bingham Powell, Jr. proposed a variety of
cultural and functional ways to measure the development of societies.
Morton Kaplan (默顿·卡普兰,1921-) was Distinguished
Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. Kaplan
introduced a new analytical tool to the study of international relations,
systems analysis. His view is his test in principle attempts to
circumvent the limitations of an egocentric or culturally narrow
perspective.
Nicos Poulantzas (1936-1979) was a Greek Marxist political
sociologist. In the 1970s, Poulantzas was known, along with Louis
Althusser, as a leading Structural Marxist. Borrowing from Antonio
Gramsci’s notion of cultural hegemony, Poulantzas argued that
repressing movements of the oppressed is not the sole function of the
state. Rather state power must also obtain the consent of the oppressed.
Poulantzas analysed the role of what he termed the ‘new petty
bourgeoisie’ in both consolidating the ruling classes hegemony and
undermining the proletariat’s ability to organize itself. Political Power
and Social Classes (1973).
Theda Skocpol (西达·斯考切波,1947-) is an American sociologist
and political scientist at Harvard University, influential in sociology as
an advocate of the historical-institutional and comparative approaches,
and in political science for her “state autonomy theory”. Bringing the
State Back In (1985, edited with Peter B. Evans and Dietrich
Rueschemeyer) views the state as an agent which, although influenced
by the society that surrounds it, also shapes social and political
processes. Peter B. Evans (1944–), Professor of Sociology at the
University of California, Berkeley, is a political sociologist whose
work focuses on the comparative political economy of national
development in developing countries.
Dietrich Rueschemeyer (迪特里希·鲁谢梅耶) was an American
professor of sociology at Brown University.
V. Comparative politics is a subfield of political science,
characterized by an empirical approach based on the comparative
method. Comparative politics is defined by a combination of a
substantive focus on the study of countries’ political systems and a
method of identifying and explaining similarities and differences
between these countries using common concepts.
VI. Political culture: James Smoot Coleman (詹姆斯·科尔曼,
1919-1985) is an eminent American political science, who worked at
UCLA’s African Studies Center. He worked in Africa from 1965 to
1978, and also for the Rockefeller Foundation.
The Politics of the Developing Areas (1960) edited by Gabriel
Almond and James S. Coleman.
The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five
Nations (1963 ) by Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba popularized the
idea of a political culture. Almond and Verba distinguished different
political cultures according to their level and type of political
participation and the nature of people’s attitudes toward politics. It
was one of the first large-scale cross-national survey studies
undertaken in political science and greatly stimulated comparative
studies of democracy.
Lucian W. Pye (白鲁恂,1921-2008) was a political scientist,
sinologist and comparative politics expert considered one of the
leading China scholars in the United States, and was regarded as one
of the foremost contemporary practitioners and proponents of the
concept of political culture. Pye was a teacher at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology for 35 years and served on several Asia-related
research and policy organizations. Pye served as a leader, and
eventually acting chairman, with the National Committee on United
States-China Relations, where he helped lay the groundwork for the
American table tennis team that visited China in 1971. In Political
culture and political development (1966) edited by Lucian W. Pye
and Sidney Verba, area specialists analyze the relationship between
political culture and political development in ten nations: Japan, Egypt,
Italy, India, England, Ethiopia, Germany, Turkey, Mexico & Russia.
Politics, Personality, and Nation Building: Burma’s search for
identity (1962) by Lucian W. Pye. The Spirit of Chinese Politics: A
Psychocultural Study of the Authority (1968) by Lucian W. Pye
emphasizes the roles long played by authority, order, hierarchy, and
emotional quietism in Chinese political culture as shaped by the
Confucian tradition and the institution of filial piety, and the resulting
confusions brought about by the displacements of these traditions in
the face of political change and modernization.
China: An Introduction (1972) by Lucian W. Pye.
Mao Tse-Tung: The Man in the Leader (1976) by Lucian W. Pye.
The Mandarin and the Cadre: China’s Political Cultures (1988)
by Lucian W. Pye.
Ronald F. Inglehart (1934-) is a political scientist at the
University of Michigan. He is director of the World Values Survey, a
global network of social scientists who have carried out representative
national surveys of the publics of over 80 societies on all six inhabited
continents, containing 85 percent of the world’s population.
Culture Shift in Advanced Industrial Society (1990) by Ronald
Inglehart uses a large body of time-series survey data from twenty-six
nations gathered from 1970 through 1988 to analyze the cultural
changes that are occurring as younger generations gradually replace
older ones in the adult population. These changes seem to be
transforming the economic growth rates of societies and the kind of
economic development that is pursued. Economic, technological, and
sociopolitical changes have been changing the cultures of advanced
industrial societies during the past several decades. Inglehart examines
changes in religious beliefs, work motivation, political conflict,
attitudes toward children and families, and attitudes toward divorce,
abortion, and homosexuality.
Michael Thompson (汤姆森) is director of the Musgrave Institute
in London and honorary research fellow at the Department of
Geography at University College London.
Richard Ellis (艾利斯) is an American Professor of Politics at
Willamette University.
Aaron Wildavsky (阿隆· 维达夫斯基, 1930-1993) was an
American political scientist known for his pioneering work in public
policy, government budgeting, and risk management. He taught at
Oberlin College and the University of California at Berkeley, and was
president of the American Political Science Association for 1985-86.
Cultural Theory (1990) by Michael Thompson, Richa Ellis and
Aaron Wildavsky et al. (1990) claims that distinctive sets of values,
beliefs and habits (in nations, neighborhoods, tribes and races) are
reducible to only a few cultural biases and preferences. Cultural-free
self-interested maximation governs the social interaction of human
beings, making choices between alternative opportunities.
VII. Political development: Barrington Moore Jr. (1913-2005)
was an American political sociologist, who was based at Harvard’s
Russian research center.
In Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and
Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (1966), Barrington
Moore posits a bold thesis that the particular relationship between
peasants and landowners in a given country, more than any other
factor, determines whether that country will eventually become
democratic, communist, or fascist. And more specifically still, Moore
argues that in countries where landowners were able to secure
political power independent of the crown, and become bourgeois
managers of commercial agriculture in a way that created minimal
political grievance among those who worked the land, then the result
was capitalist democracy. However, in countries like Russia, China,
Germany and Japan where this process was halted, forced, abortive, or
out of sequence, then the result was dictatorship. Moore surveys
modern societies from England to Japan comparing social and
economic structures with emphasis on class stratification. Moore finds
some common factors to successful transition to include a need for
social change to accompany technological change, the strength of a
“middle class” and the need to address the concerns of agrarian
society.
Samuel Huntington (1927–2008) was an American political
scientist who gained wider prominence through his Clash of
Civilizations thesis.
Michel Crozier (克罗齐,1922-) is a French sociologist and member
of the Académie des sciences morales et politiques (Academy of
Moral and Political Sciences). The Crisis of Democracy: Report on
the Governability of Democracies to the Trilateral Commission by
Michel Crozier, Samuel P. Huntington, Joji Watanuki (绵贯让治, a
Japanese political scientist).
Joan M. Nelson (纳尔逊) is a senior scholar at the Woodrow
Wilson International Center for Scholars and a scholar at the School
of International Service at American University.
Political Order in Changing Societies (1968) by Samuel P.
Huntington deals with changes in the political systems and political
institutions. Huntington argues that those changes that are caused by
tensions within the political and social system. In contrast to the
modernization theory which suggest that economic change and
development are catalysts in the creation of stable, democratic
political systems, Huntington argues that such factors as urbanization,
increased literacy, social mobilization, and economic growth do not go
hand in hand with political development; the processes are related but
distinct. Huntington argues that order itself was an important goal of
developing societies, independent of the question of whether that
order was democratic, authoritarian, socialist, or free-market.
The Crisis of Democracy: On the Governability of
Democracies (1976) by Michel Crozier, Samuel P. Huntington and
Joji Watanuki posits that “the 1960s witnessed a dramatic renewal
of the democratic spirit in America.” “Previously passive or
unorganized groups in the population now embarked on concerted
efforts to establish their claims to opportunities, positions, rewards,
and privileges, which they had not considered themselves entitled
to before.” The danger posed by democratic renewal -- a
legitimation and governability crisis stemming from a loss of trust
in government and in major nongovernmental institutions.
Increased political participation leads to increased policy
polarization within society; Increased policy polarization leads to
increasing distrust and a sense of decreasing political efficacy
among individuals; A sense of decreasing political efficacy lead to
decreased political participation.”
The ‘moderation’ comes in two forms: reassertion of
undemocratic authority and cultivation of political apathy and
noninvolvement.
No Easy Choice: Political Participation in Developing Countries
(1976) by Samuel P Huntington and Joan M. Nelson grows out of a
research program conducted from 1969 to 1973 at the Center for
International Affairs of Harvard University. It posits a model of
political failure as a result of economic growth in the developing
countries. That is, “Technocratic Model” and its failure starts with
economic growth, followed by political suppression, rising inequality
and political instability, and then end with Social explosion!!!
The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century
(1991) by Samuel P. Huntington outlines the significance of a third
wave of democratization to describe the global trend that has seen
more than 60 countries throughout Europe, Latin America, Asia, and
Africa undergo some form of democratic transitions since Portugal’s
“Carnation Revolution” in 1974. The catch-phrase “the third wave”
has been widely used among scholars studying what is considered by
some to be democratic transitions and democratization throughout
much of the developing world. The phrase however, has come under
criticism, largely by those who stress that so called democratic
transitions are little more than transitions to semi-authoritarian rule, as
demanded by the international realities of a post-cold war world.
Section Three
The Decline of Behaviorist Political Science and
Rise of the New Research Fields
Lévi-Strauss
列维-斯特劳斯
Kristen Monroe
克里斯滕·门罗
Eric Voegelin
埃里克·沃格林
William Harrison Riker
威廉·瑞克
Hannah Arendt
汉娜•阿伦特
Theodor Adorno
西奥多•阿多诺
Heinz Eulau
海因茨·尤劳
Peter C. Ordeshook
彼得·奥德舒克
Anthony Downs Joe Oppenheimer
安东尼·唐斯 乔·奥本海默
I. Post-behaviorism: The behavioral movement was informed by the
logical positivist philosophy of Karl R. Popper, Hans Reichenbach
(莱辛巴赫,德国哲学家), and Bertrand Russell (罗素), who
emphasized cumulative scientific knowledge based on empirical
testing of hypotheses. Although the method still exists in political
science, it dissipated as a distinct intellectual movement in the early
1970s as Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962,
popularized the terms paradigm and paradigm shift) signaled a defeat
for logical positivism by questioning its assumption of cumulative,
fact-based scientific knowledge. As well, the social unrest over the
war in Vietnam raised consciousness among political scientists that
behaviorism could be perceived as amoral and irrelevant to the
normative concerns governing human lives.
During the Cold War period, the study of political theory continued
to include the great books of Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Thomas
Hobbes, John Locke, and Karl Marx, but it was reshaped by the influx
of European émigrés. Leo Strauss, Herbert Marcuse, Hannah Arendt
(汉娜·阿伦特), and Theodore Adorno stirred the imagination of
American theorists through their perspectives developed under the
duress (强迫) of the Nazi occupation of much of Europe.
Political theory, with its emphasis on timeless works and its input
from European theorists, became international in scope during the
Cold War period. Thus, European scholars such as Jürgen Habermas
and J. G. A. Pocock (British American) were as germane to scholarly
discussions as were the American theorists John Rawls and Robert
Nozick. Emigrant scholars published in Social Research, and
newfound interest in political theory among indigenous scholars was
reflected in the more recently established journals Philosophy and
Public Affairs (1971) and Political Theory (1973). Whereas much
American political science saw the world from the perspective of the
United States, political theory retained a critical edge: it was skeptical
of social science methods boasting of objectivity, and of what might
be regarded as a collusion between American political science and
American democracy and capitalism.
Robert Dahl (1961), ‘The Behavioural Approach in Political
Science’, American Political Science Review, Vol. 55 (4), 763-772)
(also available on-line at http-//uk.jstor.org/view/00030554/di960923/96p0003r/0/ )
Modern Political Analysis (1961) by Robert Alan Dahl and Bruce
Stinebrickner
David Easton’s APSA Presidential Address at the 1968 annual
meeting, “The New Revolution in Political Science,” argued that the
discipline’s focus on pure theory had distracted it from many of the
political and social problems facing the United States, and the world
as well, for that matter. With an unpopular war conducted in Vietnam,
continued racism, racial violence and segregation, the rapid decay of
urban areas, to mention only some of the problems Easton identified,
the urgency of America’s political situation called for social scientists
to focus on examining policy alternatives that would address these
issues. This “post-behavorial revolution” would not, however,
abandon the methodological foundations of empirical political science,
but would simply turn the study of politics to practical, urgent issues.
Moreover, this was not a call to abandon the pure science that
behavioralism pursued, but rather a call for a new balance between the
two foci.
Apolitical Politics: A Critique Of Behavioralism (1968) Edited By
Charles A. McCoy (麦考伊) and John Playford. (普累福德,1920 1995)
Modern Political Economy (1978) by Norman Fröhlich and Joe
Oppenheimer.
Norman Frohlich (弗罗利) is a Professor in the I. H. Asper
School of Business at the University of Manitobam, Canada. He has
conducted experimental research (some of it international) in areas of
interest to political scientists, economists, psychologists, philosophers
and scholars of business. He has also conducted studies in population
health policy.
Joe Oppenheimer (奥本海默) is an American political scientist,
professor at Department of Government & Politics, University of
Maryland.
Presidential Popularity and the Economy (1984) by Kristen
Monroe （门罗）.
An introduction to positive political theory by W. H. Riker （里克）
and Peter C. Ordeshook （奥德舒克）.
William Harrison Riker (1920–1993) was an American political
scientist who applied game theory and mathematics to political
science. He took on a professorship at Lawrence University in
Appleton, Wisconsin and the chair of the Political Science at the
University of Rochester.
Peter Ordeshook is currently a Professor of Political Science at the
California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA. He has authored
many influential papers and books, such as “The Calculus of Voting”
(co-authored with William H. Riker). He is also a Fellow of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
In the 1990s, disciplinary divisions existed over the efficacy and
merits of the rational choice approach to politics, with many American
political science departments divided into camps for and against. In
leading centers for rational choice, as many as half of the faculty
adopted this method of study. Whereas the future of this disciplinary
strife remains unclear, it is clear that the rational choice theory has an
ascendant position across the social sciences and in the spheres of
business, law, and public policy.
American political science continues to question its identity, and to
reflect on appropriate research methodology; methodological
pluralism continues to reign. The field’s continued self-examination
reflects three independent axes. One embodies the two extremes of
particular and localized studies versus universalizing analyses; a
second is defined by the extremes of considering either groups or
individuals as the key to analysis; and a third is represented by the
belief that a normative stance is unavoidable at one extreme, and by a
firm commitment to the possibility of objectivity at the other extreme.
John G. Gunnell （冈内尔）, Distinguished Professor of Political
Science at State University of New York at Albany, specializes in
Political Theory with particular emphases on the philosophy of social
science, the history of political science, and the history of political
theory.
Michael B. Stein （斯坦恩）is Professor of Political Science,
McMaster University, Canada.
II. Rational choice: Rational choice theory, also known as
rational action theory, is a framework for understanding and often
formally modeling social and economic behavior. It is the dominant
theoretical paradigm in microeconomics. It is also central to modern
political science and is used by scholars in other disciplines such as
sociology and philosophy.
The “rationality” described by rational choice theory is different
from the colloquial and most philosophical uses of rationality.
“Rationality” means in colloquial language “sane” or “in a thoughtful
clear headed manner”. In Rational Choice Theory “rationality” simply
means that a person reasons before taking an action. A person
balances costs against benefits before taking any action, be it kissing
someone, lighting up a cigarette or murdering an old man. In rational
choice theory all decisions, crazy or sane, are arrived at by a “rational”
process of weighing costs against benefits.
Although models used in rational choice theory are diverse, all
assume individuals choose the best action according to stable
preference functions and constraints facing them. Successful
hypotheses are those that survive empirical tests. Over the last decades
rational choice theory has also become increasingly employed in
social sciences other than economics, such as sociology and political
science. It has had far-reaching impacts on the study of political
science, especially in fields like the study of interest groups, elections,
behaviour in legislatures, coalitions, and bureaucracy.
Where economic theories have been concerned with goods and
services organised through money and the market mechanism, rational
choice theorists have argued that the same general principles can be
used to understand interactions in which such resources as time,
information, approval, and prestige are involved. Rational choice
theories hold that individuals must anticipate the outcomes of
alternative courses of action and calculate that which will be best for
them. While pigeons will do almost anything for grain, humans are
more likely to seek approval, recognition, love, or, of course, money.
Economic action involves an exchange of goods and services; social
interaction involves the exchange of approval and certain other valued
behaviours. Those who experience a loss will withdraw and will seek
out alternative interactions where they are more likely to earn a profit.
The basic idea of rational choice theory is that patterns of behavior
in societies reflect the choices made by individuals as they try to
maximize their benefits and minimize their costs. As a result, patterns
of behavior will develop within the society that result from those
choices.Often preferences are described by their utility function or
payoff function.
The basic formula for determining whether someone will vote is
PB + D > C
Here, P is the probability that an individual’s vote will affect the
outcome of an election, and B is the perceived benefit of that person’s
favored political party or candidate being elected. D originally stood
for democracy or civic duty, but today represents any social or
personal gratification an individual gets from voting. C is the time,
effort, and financial cost involved in voting. Since P is virtually zero
in most elections, PB is also near zero, and D is thus the most
important element in motivating people to vote. For a person to vote,
these factors must outweigh C.
Anthony Downs is a noted scholar in public policy and public
administration, and a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution.
Downs has served as a consultant to many of the nation’s largest
corporations and public officials, including the Department of
Housing and Urban Development.
Downs received a B.A. from Carleton College and later a Ph.D. in
economics from Stanford University. He is the author or co-author of
24 books and over 500 articles. His most influential books are An
Economic Theory of Democracy (1957) and Inside Bureaucracy
(1967); widely translated, both are His book Stuck in Traffic (1992),
which detailed the economic disadvantages of traffic congestion and
proposed road pricing as the only effective means of alleviating it,
was denounced by traffic engineers for its insistence on the futility of
congestion relief measures. However, enough of his gloomy
predictions about congestion were proven right that he successfully
published a second edition, Still Stuck in Traffic (2004).
III. Neoinstitutionalism: 1. History (old institutionalismbehaviorism-new institutionalism): In all ways, institutionalism and
the analysis of the way institutions affect our society are as old as the
Greek Philosophers. Thinkers for thousands of years have recognized
that institutions interact with one another in ways that can be studied
and understood. Sociologists in the late 19th century and early 20th
century began to systematize this study. Economist and Social theorist
Max Weber focused on the ways bureaucracy and institutions were
coming to dominate our society with his notion of the iron cage that
rampant institutionalization created.
In Britain and America, the study of political institutions dominated
political science until after the post-war period. This approach,
sometimes called ‘old’ institutionalism, focused on analysing the
formal institutions of government and the state in comparative
perspective. After the behavioural revolution brought new
perspectives to analysing politics such as positivism, rational choice
theory and behaviouralism, the focus on institutions was ditched since
it saw politics as too narrow. The focus moved to analysing the
individual rather than the institutions which surrounded him/her.
In the 1980s however, new institutionalism, sometimes called ‘neoinstitutionalism’, has seen a revived focus on the study of institutions
as a lens for viewing work in a number of disciplines including
economics, sociology, international relations and political science.
John W. Meyer proposed an early influential formulation. Some
authors consciously revisited Weber’s iron cage in the early 1980s
(DiMaggio and Powell 1983, 1991). The following decade saw an
explosion of literature on the topic across disciplines. In economics,
the new institutionalism is most closely associated with Washington
University in St. Louis, Missouri, where Douglass North, who won a
Nobel Prize in 1993 for his work in new institutionalism, currently
teaches.
2. Neoinstitutionalism recognizes that institutions operate in an
environment consisting of other institutions, called the institutional
environment. Every institution is influenced by the broader
environment (or in simpler terms institutional peer pressure). In this
environment, the main goal of organizations is to survive. In order to
do so, they need to do more than succeed economically, they need to
establish legitimacy within the world of institutions.
Much of the research within New Institutionalism deals with the
pervasive influence of institutions on human behavior through rules,
norms, and other frameworks. Previous theories held that institutions
can influence individuals to act in one of two ways: they can cause
individuals within institutions to maximize benefits (regulative
institutions), similar to rational choice theory or to act out of duty or
an awareness of what one is “supposed” to do (normative institutions).
An important contribution of new institutionalism was to add a
cognitive type influence. This perspective adds that, instead of acting
under rules or based on obligation, individuals act because of
conceptions. “Compliance occurs in many circumstances because
other types of behavior are inconceivable; routines are followed
because they are taken for granted as ‘the way we do these things’”.
New institutionalism was born out of a reaction to the behavioural
revolution. In viewing institutions more widely as social constructs,
and by taking into account the influence that institutions have on
individual preferences and actions, new institutionalism has moved
away from its institutional (formal legal descriptive historical) roots
and become a more explanatory discipline within politics.
The concept of logic generally refers to broader cultural beliefs and
rules that structure cognition and guide decision-making in a field. At
the organization level, logics can focus the attention of key decisionmakers on a delimited set of issues and solutions, leading to logicconsistent decisions that reinforce extant organizational identities and
strategies.
James Gardner March (马奇，1928-) is Professor Emeritus at
Stanford University, best known for his research on organizations and
organizational decision making.
Johan P. Olsen（奥尔森，1939-) is the Research Director of
ARENA (Advanced Research on the Europeanization of the Nation
State). He has held the position since the programme began in 1994.
Olsen is one of the developers of the systemic-anarchic
perspective of organizational decision making known as the
Garbage Can Model. He is a prominent thinker and writer
on a wide variety of topics, such as new institutionalism and
Europeanization. Olsen is also Fellow at the Center for
Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford,
member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.
He holds an honorary doctorate at the University of
Copenhagen and Åbo Academy. From APSA he received
John Gaus award in 2003 and the Aaron Wildavsky award
in 2004.
James G. March and Johan P. Olsen, “The New
Institutionalism: Organizational Factors in Political Life”,
American Political Science Review, 78 (1984) 734-749.