Methodology of political science

The methodology of political science. Thus, political science is an organized body of knowledge, the facts of which have been scientifically and systematically observed, collected, and classified. These facts are formulated and proved a series of propositions or principles that form the scientific basis. These principles are used as a groundwork for further investigation.

It was not until the nineteenth century that the State’s phenomena came to be regarded as a proper field for scientific investigation. Since then, many methods and approaches have been suggested and employed. Auguste Comte suggested three principal methods of investigation, VIZ, observation experiment, and comparison.

Bluntschli considered philosophical and historical as the only two methods, which need to be used for investigation and correct conclusions.

John Stuart Mill recognized four methods:

1. The chemical or experimental,
2. The geometrical or abstract,
3. The physical or concrete deductive, and
4. The historical method.

Mill held the first two methods of false and emphasized the deductive and historical methods only. James Bryce held that observational, experimental historical, and comparative methods were the only correct and proper methods to give conclusive results.

Deslandres, a French scholar, recognizes six methods:

• The sociological,
• The comparative,
• The dogmatic,
• The juridical,
• The method of good sense, and
• The historical method.

Some recent writers have emphasized the importance of sociological, biological, psychological, and statistical investigation methods. Contemporary political scientists significantly recognize and practice the psychological method with close ties to Economies. Great importance is also given to comparative and statistical methods, the latter, especially in the study of public opinion. In the United Kingdom, seven different methods are in use:

• Historical,
• Juridical,
• Philosophical,
• Institutional,
• Analytical,
• Observational and
• Sociological.

The sociological method endeavors to relate the political system to the community’s social structure, habits, ideas, psychology, and Customs. Robson advocates the analytical method.

The Marxist dialectical method is followed in Communist countries. According to Schaff and Eurlich, the basic principles of the Marxist dialectical method lies in postulating the examination of problems in their integrity, that is, in examining phenomena in their interdependence and mutual relations.

They observe that to attain knowledge of political reality, the Marxist dialectical method uses sociology, which is built on a consistent material basis and resorts in turn to an analysis of the social process in terms of the property relations in any given society.

There is, therefore, no single method that can come to the rescue of a political scientist and help him to unfold the phenomena of the State and government with some degree of precision. The generally accepted methods of political investigation are:

1. The Observational Method,
2. The Experimental Method,
3. The Historical Method,
4. The Comparative Method,
5. The Method of Analogy, and
6. The Philosophical Method To these may be added the Statistical or Quantitative Method.

The Observational Method:

The older generation of political scientists discounted the observational method and based their theories on a priori assumptions, that is, the drawing of specific conclusions from premises per-assumed to be infallible. This was the method of deductive logic. Political thinkers grounded their theories upon premises taken from the Holy Scriptures, from the works of Aristotle, or from other authorities who were supposed to be eminent.

It was only during the Renaissance, and particularly as a result of discoveries, that the search for reality motivated political thinkers to observe, collect, and analyses facts about the actual workings of governments and their institution’s Observational method is one of the Ways of empirical studies and James Bryce was its great advocate He attached great importance to the study of the problems and institutions on the spot to investigate their operations and form conclusions therefrom.

He visited the United States of America, Canada, France, Switzerland, Australia, and New Zealand, studied the people and their countries, closely observed their institutions’ workings, and formed his own conclusions. He wrote: “The best way to get a genuine and exact first-hand knowledge of the data is to mix in practical politics. In such a country as France or the United States, a capable man can, in a dozen years, acquire a comprehension of the realities of popular government ampler and more definite than any which books supply. The political investigator, James Bryce asserted, must not confine his observations to one single country.

His hold of investigation should be so wide as to include all countries’ political phenomena, for the fundamentals of human nature are the same everywhere, except for the differences in their political habits and temperaments. The first desideratum for a political scientist,  he said, “is to get the fact and then make sure of it. Get it clear, Polish it till it sparkles and shines like a gem. Then connect it with other facts. Examine it in its relation to them, for in that lies its worth and its significance. It is of little use alone.

So make it a diamond in the necklace, a stone, perhaps a cornerstone in your building.” Bryce’s two famous books, The American Commonwealth and Modern Democracies (two volumes) are his labors’ results in pursuit Of the observational method.

The observational method is based on direct observation and reflection. It is practical, and its utility is obvious. It helps in arriving at certain political principles in the light of the observations made and information obtained. But as Sait has said, “A science of  Politics can be developed only through observation, which is more laborious and far more open to error; than an experiment.”

Authentication of the facts observed is a long and arduous process, and what appears to be a fact may not be so, or facts may partially bear it. Laski has correctly remarked that the processes of government are very like an iceberg. What appears on the surface may be but a small part of the reality beneath. Next, the human factor intervenes. The facts analyses may smack, and they very often do, of the prejudices of the investigator. Whether he acknowledges the fact or not, he will look at some people and policies as good and on others as evil.

Moreover, what We observe is a comparison of contemporary political institutions. It gives no clue to the past and provides no wisdom for the future unless other investigation methods are coupled with it. However, it must be noted that increasing use is now being made of this method, particularly in India.

The Experimental Method:

The experimental method is best where a given phenomenon can be studied under conditions favorable to the investigation by excluding disturbing agencies. It is observed under conditions arranged by ourselves Bat such scientific experimentation is not possible in Political Science for it deals with man and his political institutions. We cannot do in Politics, says Lewis, “what the experimenter does in Chemistry.

We cannot take a portion of the community in our hand as the King of Brobdigang took Gulliver, view it in different aspects and place it in different positions to solve social problems and satisfy our speculative curiosity.”

Experiments in Physical Sciences can be tried repeatedly till the fin and the required result is obtained. Experiments in Political Science, on the other hand, can never be repeated. No ingenuity of man can reproduce identical conditions. Bryce has aptly said that conditions can never be reproduced as Heraclitus says that one cannot step twice into the same river.

Moreover, political institutions in every country are the logic of its own people and their requirements. We cannot transplant them to other lands. For example, we cannot have a replica of British institutions in India. Even if we have them, their success cannot be guaranteed. Analyzing the causes of direct legislation in Switzerland, James Bryce said the institution is racy of the soil. There are institutions “which, like plants, flourish only on their hillside and uncle their own sunshine.”

There is, however, some truth in the oft-quoted saying that man is wiser after the experience. We may not experiment in Political Science as we do in Physical Science, but practical experimenter political institutions are constantly made conscious or unconscious.

Every government does experiments when it adopts a new policy or enacts a new law. Governmental policy changes and laws are amended or repealed if their public utility is not abundantly proved. All this amounts to experiments for testing and improvement.

For example, Dyarchy was experimented with in the Provinces of India under the Government of India Act 1919. Still, it’s working soon disclosed the inherent defects in the system, and it was discarded in the Provinces under the Government of India Act, 1935.

India’s Constitution is committed to prohibition, and some State Governments experimented with it, total or partial. The Government of India appointed Tek Chand Committee to recommend a uniform policy based upon a rational evaluation of such an-experiment.

The Government of India enacted the Gold Control Order, which now stands more or less repealed because the experiment did not fulfill the desired purpose underlying it. The various States adopted the scheme of separation of executive and judicial functions. The experiment proved a success, and the two wings of government are now separated in almost all the States.

Munro describes the British Constitution as the mother of constitutions and Parliament as the mother of parliaments. It means that other countries borrowed from Britain parliamentary institutions what she was the first to experiment with.

By experimental method is, thus, implied that it is based on observation and experience. Its laboratory consists of sovereign and independent States into which the world is divided. For the political researcher, every change in the governmental structure, law, or policy, has significance as it results from the experiment.

When South Korea was invaded in June 1950, politicians and political commentators urged that the mistake made in 1938  should not be repeated. But while doing so, they were not drawing exact parallels nor claiming any infallibility in their predictions. They were simply pointing out the existence of certain facts, which seemed to them to Warrant the assumption that the pattern of 1938 might be repeated and warned of the consequences of their analysis was correct.

We deal with tendencies, says Harold Laski, “we can predict based on experience. But I our predictions are limited by the necessity of recognizing that the facts are not within our control. We can influence and attempt and hope the certainty and precision of the chemist, or even the physiologist, can never be ours.”

The Historical Method:

The historical method supplements the experimental method. Gilchrist remarks, “The source of experiments of Political Science is the history they rest on observation and experience. Every change in the form of government, every law passed; every war fought is an experiment in Political Science.” The study of Political Science, according to Laski, must be an effort to codify the results of experience in the history of states.” Political institutions grow instead of beings-made.

They are the product of history, and to know them as they really are, we must grasp the evolution of all those forces which have molded and shaped them in their present form. Our conclusions remain uncertain if they are not built upon historical analysis. Nor can we become wiser for the future. It is only by knowing the past and the present that we can plan for tomorrow’s ideal institutions. Laski has succinctly said, “What it is and why it is, it is because of its history.

Its becoming is the clue of its being, and it is from that being that we must wrest its secret; in brief, our traditions and institutions are determined for us by our past. We are the consequences of these traditions and institutions that we did not make and can only partially alter. Appeal to history, therefore, is an invaluable aid to students of Political Science.

Montesquieu, Savigny, Seeley, Maine, Freeman, and Laski are eminent exponents of the historical method. Karl Marx found it an exclusive method. He explained the origin of the capitalist society in history and gave it the Materialistic Conception Of History. But Sidgwick and other followers of the Philosophical School give the historical method a secondary place for two reasons.

First, they maintain that the historical method serves no useful purpose in solving our present and future needs as it refers only to the experience. What the political institutions had been. It is argued every age has its own problems, and every problem requires a solution relative to the time in which it occurs.

Secondly, history is a mere narration of events, and it is not concerned with the goodness or badness of such events. Ethical or philosophical standards only determine goodness or badness, and, accordingly, the philosophical method must precede the historical method.

Sidgwick’s s arguments are quite convincing. In the historical method, superficial resemblances, usually fascinating but generally misleading, are very often made much of In the opinion of James Bryce, the historical investigator is more Susceptible to emotional influences, and he very often confuses the personal or accidental factor with the general cause at work.

Ernest Barker, too, criticized the historical method and said, the State is concerned less with the historical processes than with the fundamental realities-l-essence, purposes and value-which transcend the category of time spite of these Well reasoned objections, the utility of the historical method cannot be discounted History has now become much more objective. It also justifies the goodness and badness of political actions, provided the investigator proceeds with an impartial mind free from prejudices and presuppositions, correlating economic, geographical, or other Scientific approaches.

Seeley has rightly said, We must think, reason, generalize, define, and distinguish. We must also collect, authenticate, and investigate. If we neglect the first process, We shall accumulate facts to little purpose, because We shall have no test by Which to distinguish facts which are important from those which are unimportant and, of course, if we neglect the second process, our reasoning will be baseless and we shall but weave scholastic cobwebs.

The Comparative Method:

The comparative method of investigation is as old as Aristotle. He is said to have studied as many as 158 constitutions. After analyzing and comparing them, he arrived at certain definite conclusions. In modern times the comparative method has been used by Montesquieu. De Tocqueville, Bryce, and many other  Recently, the comparison method has come under intensified discussion. A report by a research panel in Comparative Government was published in 1944.

The UNESCO project and the handbook is published, Contemporary Political Science,e at least touched on the question. It was discussed to a considerable extent at the round table on the teaching of Political Science organized by the Intentional Political Science Association in 1952 and the subsequent report by W.A. Robson.

On this occasion, the interest shown encouraged the International Political Science Association to devote a particular round table on the study of “Comparative Government,” which was held in Florence from April 5-10, 1954,  followed by a report of Professor Gunnar Heckscher.  There was agreement amongst the forty participants in the round table on the importance of studying the Comparative Governments and why such a study was regarded as profitable.

In his report, Professor Gunnar Heckscher writes: “Comparative Studies are the core of any study of foreign governments. They are of pedagogical importance, especially if we gain a reasonably realistic and relativistic view of our own government. Because of the growth of international contacts, scientific, political or economic comparisons between different countries, as well as a knowledge of foreign institutions; are of great political value”. Then, he beautifully sunrise up the comparative method’s contribution to the development of Political Science itself.

He says, “If we regard our field of study as mainly descriptive, comparisons are required to help us refine our tools of description. If we have hopes of establishing a general theory on an inductive basis, We can do so only through comparison. If we attempt to test specific hypotheses, this is possible only if we bring in a sufficient number of examples, to be investigated by the comparative method”

The comparative method aims to study existing political institutions or those that have existed in the past to assemble a definite body of material from which the investigator, by the selection, comparison, and elimination, may discover the ideal types and progressive forces of political history. By comparison, we accumulate material, arrange and classify it, and by the process of co-ordination and elimination, deduce certain results therefrom.

It enables us to determine common causes and effects by comparing the past and the existing political institutions. Bryce compared the working of democracy in different countries and then accounted for its merits and defects as a government form. The Indian Constituent Assembly amply benefited from this method.

But the use of the comparative method needs great care. The comparative analysis does not have as its guiding principle the assumption that there is one best way of government, which, when discovered, is to be adopted everywhere. There is limited practicability of transferring the fruits of political ingenuity from one country to another. When we compare political institutions to find out general principles underlying them, we must consider the differences in the social, moral, intellectual, temperamental, political, and economic conditions of the counties Concerned or the communities compared.

Comparison is most advantageous between counties and peoples with more or less similar conditions, as, for example, India and Pakistan. It is now generally believed that the parliamentary government system, as obtainable in Britain, cannot work in India and Pakistan on the same lines and With the same ease and facility.

This is primarily due to the differences in the temperament and genius Of the people belonging to both the countries, their economic and social conditions, their moral and legal standards, and their political training and experience in administration. Does comparative study succeed? Only when due prominence is given to the human element; their manners, customs, habits, and environments.

It, then, lessens the dangers of meaningless comparison of empty form and ossified rituals. Merriam correctly said that like all social sciences, Political Science could be truly Scientific only to the degree to which it contributes to creating a science of man.

It is also necessary to stress the sociological study’s enormously growing importance to the comparative method study. One of the great contributions of contemporary Political Science is that it is proving the extent to which cooperation with sociology is possible and indispensable to political science in general and especially to comparative studies.

As a result of the work of D. Easton, GA, Almond, and D. Apter, the discipline of comparative politics has virtually been reoriented by the influence of structure-function analysis. In an article published in 1957, An Approach to the Analysis of Political System’s Easton suggested that a solution to comparing governments could be found by examining political life in terms of a system receiving certain inputs from the society and converting them into outputs affecting the society.

He said that all governments processed inputs and transformed them into outputs. General comparisons, therefore, could be made, and they would amount to a detailed examination of the content of both sides of the operation. Taking Easton  analysis as a starting point, Gabriel Almond looked for the functions which could be included among the inputs and outputs of all political system Looking at the conversion process which takes place within the political system, and he showed that six such functions could be separated First, on the input side, demands are

1. Formulated (or articulated) and
2. Combined (or aggregated) Second on the output side, rules are,
3. Formulated (rule-making),
4. Applied (rule-application) and
5. Adjudicated in individual cases (rule-adjudication). These various activities are
6. Communicated within the system and outside, Almond also showed that, apart from converting inputs into outputs, the system has also to be defined in terms of its ability to maintain and adapt itself (through a process of political socialization) and in terms of the character of its achievements (capability).

Almond’s analysis is known as structural-functionalism. The yardstick with which political systems are measured consists of the functions performed by the political system. The units that are being compared are the various structures that compose individual political systems.

Once the functions of a political system are defined operationally and the structures categorized with precision, it will become, Almond, asserts, possible to write an equation of each political system which will show how much of each function is fulfilled by a particular structure. This Almond describes as the probabilistic theory of the polity.

Whatever be the merits of structural functionalism and the possibilities of major advances likely to emerge from this analysis, there is no denying the fact that the study of comparative government has grown during recent years and has, indeed, become a major branch of study with scholars working on detailed problems and theorists attempting grand syntheses. It may not achieve a great deal, but this should not be allowed to obscure its potentiality. The student may find it one of the most rewarding and stimulating parts of Political Science.

The Method of Analogy:

Prof. Gilchrist suggests one more inductive method, that of analogy. This method has been made use of by Herbert Spencer. He says that both the State and an organism possess the sustaining, distributary, and regulating systems, and both exhibit the same process of development. From this analogy, he concludes that the State is an organism. The analogy method is, no doubt, good, and it serves a useful purpose, But the analogy is not proof. What analogy leads to is merely a hypothesis.

It gives probability and not a certainty, and the farther the analogy is carried, the more misleading it becomes. The difficulty of its application in Political Science is all the more marked because of the vast number of circumstances surrounding any given instance.

The Statistical or the Quantitative Method:

Another method that has recently become increasingly important and widely used in studying political phenomena is the Statistical or Quantitative method. It attempts to describe and measure in quantitative terms and is especially applied to the study of political parties and public opinion. The statistical technique has also been extended to the study of comparative government and international relations.

David Thomson of the Opinion that until some such statistical and sociological technique is applied to international relations, the science of studying international relations will make little further progress in the method.

The analysis of pubic opinion is as old as Plato, but as a scientific investigation field with the aid of statistical tools, it is only a generation old. In the immediate background are such writers as Tonnies, Trade, Le Bon, Wallas, and Bryce. Still, two books, Lawrence Lowell’s Public Opinion and Popular Government and Walter Lipmann  Public Opinion, did much to delineate the field in terms meaningful to American political science. Especially following Lipman’s work, public opinion has become a field of specialization in American Universities.

The application of statistical techniques to analyze various types of political and governmental data has been advanced by Stuart Rice, Louis Bean, Harold F Gosnell, and others. H. Dewey Anderson and Percy B. Davidson have applied the statistical technique to such widely varied fields as voting motivation, occupational mobility as it affects state-governmental operations, occupational trends upon a national and local basis, and concentration of economic power and its effect on political power. In some of the Western countries, public opinion polls or  Gallup polls are held. If skillfully framed and conducted, such polls have shown themselves, in Britain as in America, capable of a high degree of accuracy.

It is, however, necessary to exercise great care in the collection and use of the statistics. Lowell has aptly said that statistics, like real pies, are good if you know the person who made them and is sure of the ingredients as, by themselves, they are strangely likely to mislead because unless the subject is understood in all its bearings, some element can easily be left out of the account which wholly falsifies the result.

To put it rather bluntly, there are three kinds of lies, white, black, and statistics, and it is the last kind which is so difficult to nail or counteract. Statistics are manipulated to suit the party’s purposes and explained to distort the facts for electoral gains and political maneuvering. However, it cannot be denied that knowledge of Statistical principles and sampling method is often useful to political scientists.

The Philosophical Method:

The methods of the investigation so far considered are inductive. These methods start with certain historical facts in their character or result from the experiment, comparison, or observation. Then, certain conclusions regarding the political phenomena are arrived at. On the other hand, the philosophical method is deductive or, a prior and its prominent exponents are Plato, Rousseau, Hegel, Bradley, Kant, Bosanquet, and Sidgwick. The deductive method implies reasoning from or developing particular conclusions from many general principles or propositions that are admitted or assumed to be true.

Thus, the philosophical or a prior method is reasoning from cause to effect, from a general principle to its consequences. In Political Science, this method of investigation starts from some abstract original idea about human nature. It draws deduction from that idea as to the nature of the State, its aims, its fractions, and its future. It then attempts to harmonize its theories with the facts of history.

Attempts have recently been made to differentiate between a political scientist and a political philosopher. It is maintained that net all students of Political Science confine themselves to the quest for factual knowledge of the discipline. Some are mainly concerned with the search for moral knowledge.

These political philosophers are interested in how people and governments behave as they are in how they ought to behave. If the political scientist studies reality and tries to explain various political phenomena and the working of the institutions, the political philosopher essentially studies ideas and tries to discover which have the greatest validity.

Plato, Aristotle St. Thomas Aquinas, Niccolo Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Edmund Burke, Jeremy Bentham, GW. F. Hegel, Karl Marx, and John Swan Mill all deal with the perennial questions of justice, equality, freedom, why should a citizen obey the State? Is man good or evil by nature? is the society or the individual prior? And a host of other similar questions. These are moral questions, and there is more than one answer to each of them.

Rousseau says that men are equal, and Burke would deny that proposition. Hegel asserts that society is more important than the individual, and Mill replies that the individual is before society. We read all these political thinkers’ works because they provide the best starting point for the study of the moral aspects of political life.

Ronald Pennock and David Smith maintain that political scientists Often debate the relative merits of various political values, such as liberty and order. In doing so, they are philosophizing rather than practicing. Accordingly, it is asserted that their field of study should properly be denominated “Government” or “Politics” rather than by the more restricted term “Political Science.” As it is, Pennock and Smith conclude, We must recognize that we have scientific, political scientists, and philosophical, political scientists. There is an important place in the profession for those who leave political ethics questions to others and strive for the greatest possible detachment in judging trends and seeking to determine cause and effect in political matters.

In other words, some division of labor is desirable between those who consider what goals should be pursued and those who concentrate on discovering the best ways of attaining particular goals, or Who merely try to chart the course we are following and predict whither we are bound.

According to Talcott Parsons,  the basic functions of every social system are four. It must maintain its own basic patterns, particularly those of its own governing and control. It must adapt itself to changing conditions in both its physical environment in nature and its human environment in terms of other systems; it must integrate its different tasks and functions, and if it has specific goals beyond mere adaptation, integration and the maintenance of its patterns, it must move to attain its goals.

From Parson’s approach, Karl W. Deutsch derives a way of looking at “Politics” and the sub-systems of society in the context of these basic functions. Referring to the integrative~sub-system of every society, he says that it consists mainly of its cultural sector, including education, religion, philosophy, and art Religion and philosophy, like education, teach the people the long-run nature of the universe, the long-run values of humanity, and, perhaps the Long-run purpose for which humanity still exists.

According to Deutsch, the Government, or more generally the political sector, is the typical goal-attaining sub-system. “I  the government that organizes the society for the pursuit of whatever goals the society may have chosen. Pursuing a goal involves forming an image of it, which we may call an intention, and then finding the means to implement the intention or a course toward the goal.”

In any political activity where means and ends are involved ought to be cannot be altogether ruled out, no matter how we look at our study’s subject. Therefore, ethical considerations become imperative, and some precepts of political conduct are necessary to be prescribed. Philosophy, then, intervenes in the study of Political Science, But the pitfall to be avoided in applying the philosophical method is attempting to defend one’s own personal opinion.

The Philosophical method, like other methods in the study of Political Science, demands a detached and objective point of view. Though none can be completely objective, it is the desideratum, and we must strive for as best as we can

Then, the goal to be attained must not be utopian. Philosophers, swayed by their idealism, create their imagination conditions and weave a web of ideas devoid of facts and realities of life. In his Utopia, Sir Thomas More conceived of that ideal State, contrary to the facts of history and human nature. Such a philosophy degenerates into a mere ideology with dangerous results.

Karl Popper says that the speculative or utopian method which chooses an ideal state of society as the aim, which all our political actions should serve, is likely to produce violence and that the utopian engineers who design and execute the utopian blueprint must become omniscient as well as omnipotent.

They become gods. Even Oakshott does not spare those seeking to turn a private dream into a public and compulsory manner of living. Political Philosophy must rise above an ideology. Ought to be must, as far as possible, coincide with what it can be.

Conclusion:

The real method of Political Science is an evaluative analysis uniting I description with theory. People do not stop with analysis. They also pass judgment on the political process in terms of abstract ideas, many of which have ethical content.

For example, suppose a political scientist studies an institution like the British Parliament. In that case, he will, of course, collect all pertinent factual data about that body about its historical growth, its functions, membership organization, relations With other branches of government. So on-and, he will present his information in a systematic form. But this much does not exhaust his task. He may have to give answers to a host of additional questions connected with his inquiry. Are the functions of Parliament clear-cut and appropriate ?

Does Parliament find sufficient time to do its job efficiently and satisfactorily?  Are the members as competent as their responsibilities demand? Are the members well informed, and do they adequately perform their duties? Do they place special interests before the public good?

What is the position of the private members? Such questions cannot be avoided in Parliament’s analysis, and they cannot be adequately answered without reference to certain ideal objectives and criteria. The attempt at answering them is an evaluation, and here analytical method combines with the philosophical method.

Similarly, a political philosopher does not and cannot altogether exclude a concern for institutions, however ethereal his end and celestial his aspiration. Since political achievement is for men and through men, says. Herman Finer “political achievement is through institutions, which are nothing but men acting more or less deliberately in a fairly durable concert for the attainment of a considered complex of  ends.”

The political philosopher begins with an end and then finds ways and means, that is, institutions. Plato started with his ideal of Justice and established a systematic philosophy of social relationships ordered by the government. Hobbes was mortally afraid of strife, disorder, and death, and he believed that monarchy was the most stable and orderly kind of government which could ensure peace and order. He used the doctrine of Social Contract as a weapon of defense for absolute government and as a justification of Stuart despotism.

John Locke proceeded from the pursuit of happiness and tolerance and justified the need for government by consent. The happiness and the security of the individual, explains Dunning, figure (in Locke’s Thesis) not as essential to the perpetuity of a government, but as the end for which alone government is ever called into existence.

The study of Political Science, therefore, springs from both inductive and deductive methods. Induction and deduction are not incompatible methods; they supplement each other. Realism must be blended with idealism. If realism does not partake of idealism, we cannot march towards an ideal political organization. The experiences and phenomena of political life should illumine the light of ideas.

However, it must be remembered that no methodology of Political Science can lead to true conclusions unless we take human nature into account. After all, the State exists for man, and it endeavors to cater to his needs to make his life happy. Man is the central subject of our study, and we must go to his psychology to find out the really correct-solution to his problems.

Hitherto political thinkers had regarded man as a rational being and accepted this nature of man as a dogmatic truth and consequently the starting point of their investigations. Recently, Graham Wallas, in his book Human Nature in Politics, has revolted against this traditional assumption of human nature.

Man, according to Graham Wallas, is hardly rational in his behavior. If indeed, a man was followed he writes, through one ordinary day, Without his knowing it, by a cinematographic camera and photographer and if all his acts and saying were produced before him next day, he would be astonished to find how few of them were the result of a deliberate search for the means attaining ends.

Whether we agree with Graham Wallas or not, psychology’s importance as a clue to political behavior cannot be denied. Nor must the institutions of government be regarded as eternal or petrified. As Finer says, institutions are nothing but useful or useless habits, they were acquired for a purpose, and purpose changes.

The world of political reality is not the printed world of books, statutes, or administrative tubs and Orders. The cut and dried is not political. Institutions are really how they are worked. Their actual work is subject to man’s political behavior, that is, what men really do When faced with situations rather than their alleged opinions or feelings.