hello, welcome to online class. I'm Dr. S. Thianlalmuan Ngaihte, Assistant
Professor of political science,
University and Higher Education
Department, Government of Manipur, India.
Presently posted at C.I. College, Bishnupur District, Manipur. The
target audiences of my class is primarily
Undergraduate students taking
political science as one of the subject. 
I am really happy to interact with you
all through this online class. In this
class, we will talks about behaviorism in
political science. First, we will discuss what is
behaviorism or what is political
behavior, and then we'll see the factors
responsible for the emergence of
behavioral revolutions in political
science. On the questions of, what is behaviouralism or what is political behavior?
Behaviouralism is an approach in political science that emerged in the nineteen
thirties in the United States. It
advocates the view that the subject
matter of political science should be
limited to phenomena that are
independently observable and quantifiable.
Under behavioural revolution, relevance has
become the primary concern and the primary
focus of social science research.
Behaviouralism is a renewed and reinforced efforts political scientists to take the
science in politics seriously on the
lines of the physical and biological sciences in
line with the new development in the
field of other social sciences. That is,
interdisciplinary approach lies at the core
of behavioral political science. It is an
approach which goes beyond an analysis of
political institutions. That is, political
institutions was no longer considered as the basic unit of analysis, or political
institutions was no longer considered as
basic unit for social science research. Rather, the political behaviour of individuals
or a group of individuals
has become the primary concern of social
science research. In contrast to
traditional approach, bahaviouralism in
portable science advances the case of
value-free pure science. They attempted
to discard intuitions or at least to
support it with empirical observations. A
traditionalist,
in contrast, might attempt to support intuition with reason alone.. Behaviouralsim is
also belief which insists that social
theory can be constructed or should be
constructed only on the basis of
observable behavior because only such
behaviour provides measurable and
quantifiable data.for research. The exponents of
behavioralism have the conviction that by
neglecting the political behavior of
individuals who are the real actors of
social and political events, a
plausible social or political theory
cannot be constructed. Behaviouralism calls
for new unit of analysis, new method, new data, procedures and for the
development of a system theory. They questioned and challenged "hyper-factualism"
the habit of collecting fact without any
relationship with theory. In contrast to
the deductive methods of politics and to
the historical and comparative methods,
there was a greater tendency towards observation, survey, and measurement.
Greater focus or attention was given to
look for better assumptions,
premises, and hypothesis. Collection of facts or data came to be linked
with the social reality, that is, to
unravel the pattern of things which lay
behind them. Under the influence of
behavioral revolution, social and political
scientists began to pay more greater
attentions to study individual's
attitudes, motivations, and perceptions.  Political scientists place greater emphasis
on the use of statistical and
quantifiable,  especially on the
technique of content
analysis. Using the method of survey techniques
and interviews as a source of data
enabled researchers to verify facts. They
could also deal with the problems in hand,
problems of attitude measurement, scale
construction, tests of validity and
reliability.  With all the new development
and changes that had taken place in the
field of political science, with the new
method, technique and analysis and the
influences that the subject had, and because of the transformation that the subject had experienced, and the contribution of the
leading
political scientists, the subject and scope of political science
has been
considerably refined.
I will end my class here for today and I'll see you in the
next class where we shall discuss about
the factors responsible for the
emergence of behaviouralism in political
science and also we'll see in brief some
of the contributions of prominent
behaviouralists political thinkers.
thank you
