BehaviouralismThe behaviouralism is the main political theory. To study and understand the main aims of behaviouralism we should answer on a simple question ??“ Why do individuals, institutional actors and nation states behave the way they do Behaviouralists insistence that the individual or the social aggregate should be the focus of analysis and that behaviour should be susceptible to empirical testing. Behaviouralists have extensively analyzed the reasons that underline the main form of mass political participation in democratic countries: voting.
They even observe origins of other forms of political activity such as demonstrations and strikes. Beside of that scholars have analyzed leadership behaviour, their attitudes, values and the particular actions that they take. In terms of social agreements, behavioural analyses has examined the actions of interest groups, political parties.
At the international level it also focused on the actions of nation states, on the behaviour of non-state actors such as multinational corporations, international terrorist groups and supranational organizations like the EU. In this case the central question that behaviouralists seek to answer is: What do the actors involved actually do and how can we best explain why they do it in this connection would not be the only questions that can be asked about individual and social actors but in any case behaviouralists simply believe that they are the most important ones. The main characteristic of the behavioural movement was that behavioural movement assumed an important position in the social science in the 50s and 60s years of the previous century. It would not be coorect to assume that behaviouralism accepted all the philosophical precepts of positivism. There are many definition of these two critical term, most behaviouralists would probably accept: An empirical theory is a set of interconnected abstract statements, consisting of assumptions, definitions and empirically restable hypotheses, which purports to describe and explain the occurrence of some phenomenon or set of phenomena. An explanation of particular events consists in the specification of the minimum non-tautological set of antecedent necessary and sufficient conditions required for it??™s occurrence.
It is his emphasis empirical observation and testing that produces the two characteristic features of the behavioural approach to social inquiry. The first of this is behaviouralism??™s commitment to the systematic use of all the relevant empirical evidence rather than a limited set of illustrative supporting examples. This commitment simply means that, when a particular theoretical statement in being investigated, researchers must not limit themselves to a consideration of only those observed cases that provide ??? anecdotal??? support for the theoreticalclaim that are being made. Rather the researcher must consider all the cases or at least a representative sample of them that are encompassed by the theoretical statement that is being evaluated. The second characteristic feature of behavioural analysis slightly more subtle in it??™s implications, but no less important. It is simply that scientific theories must in principle, be capable of being falsified.
This usage reflects behaviouralism??™s commitment to Karl Popper??™s revision of traditional positivism in which he substituted the principle of falsifiability for that of verification, and simultaneously identified the falsifiability criterion as a line of demarcation between ??? scientific??? and ??? pseudo-scientific??? enquiry. Behaviouralists, emphasis the twin notion that the theories should ??“ seek to explain something and be capable, in principle, of being tested against the world observation. For behaviouralists, non-falsifiable theories are not really theories at all, they are merely elaborate fantasies varying degrees of complexity that scholars can choose to believe as they wish.
For them, theory evaluation must proceed beyond merely examining a theory in order to asses to resolve: theory evaluation must also involve subjecting, theoretical propositions to empirical test. It is important to say that
