¹ The observation that the panel was not advertised in the Spring 1973 issue of PS, in combination with the other indicia just noted, suggests that the arrangements were hastily made late in the planning process for the New Orleans meeting. This may help to explain in part why the panel failed so badly to accomplish its supposed purpose; but such lack of foresight then is no excuse for us to fail to exercise better hindsight now.

² What can only be described as an official commentary on the Reports — published in the official periodical of the parent organization, written at the request of its president, and authored by the co-author of the Reports (who was also both the chairman of the later of the two committees and the chairman of the panel discussion in New Orleans) — is appropriately unrestrained in its enthusiasm for both the Reports and the good work wrought by the efforts of the subject committees: see Ranney, Austin, “The Committee on Political Behavior, 1949–64, and the Committee on Governmental and Legal Processes, 1964–72,” Social Science Research Council Items, Vol. 28, No. 3 (September, 1974), pp. 37–41.Google Scholar

³ Even the data included in the Reports challenge some of the rosy conclusions that have been drawn in the interpretation of them. As Truman said twenty years ago (ftn. 4, infra, at pp. 203, 210–212, 216; and related discussion in the text to which ftn. 4 appertains here, below) — and he was the incumbent chairman of the Committee on Political Behavior at the time, so his views must be deemed authoritative, on that subject in this context — political behavioralism then meant to reorient the discipline from the base of a continuing traditional set of cognate disciplines (history, law, philosophy, and economics), toward the more “scientific” cognates in a “behavioral” set featuring psychology, sociology, and anthropology.

At pp. 86 and 101 of the Reports, participants in conferences sponsored by the two committees are apportioned among the fields represented by the participants. Of the 205 persons who took part in these conferences, 150 are classified as political scientists, there are four others whom I have forborne to categorize (two from journalism, and two from public administration), and the remaining 51 divide as follows;

To quiet any suspicions of hanky-panky that might arise, let me hasten to point out that contrary to what one might plausibly have assumed, most of those thirteen persons in the G&LP/Traditional cell were not representatives of the legal profession; they were economists. (The lawyers came on strongly in the PB/Traditional cell!) Converted to percentages, the same data show:

The evident orientation of the conferences sponsored by each committee, as well as by both committees, was more traditional than behavioral, by a 2 to 1 margin overall and even more strikingly so in the case of the first committee. It may be that these data, therefore, show “progress”; and it may be that a more rigorous examination of other data in the files of SSRC would demonstrate the opposite of the conclusion one is impelled to reach on the basis of these aggregated frequencies; but my point is that these are among the very few data reported that one can do anything with to test the conclusion that “The earlier committee played a seminal role in the discipline's ‘behavioral revolution’ in research philosophy and methods” (op. cit. ftn. 2, supra, at p. 37.) These data are not prima facie supportive of that kind of generalization; instead they suggest the possibility that the Committee on Political Behavior slowed down a movement toward behavioralism that was responsive for its thrust — to say nothing of momentum! — to causes quite independent of that Committee's efforts. The data demand, that is to say, explanation beyond what one can get out of these Reports.

⁴ Truman, David B., “The Impact on Political Science of the Revolution in the Behavioral Sciences,” in Research Frontiers in Politics and Government; Brookings Lectures, 1955 (Washington: The Brookings Institution, 1955), pp. 202–231.Google Scholar

⁵ Political scientists, of all shades of sympathy and antipathy toward behavioralism as an approach to the study of politics, have been shouting “…long live the King!” since the early sixties: Dahl, Robert A., “The Behavioral Approach in Political Science: Epitaph for a Monument to a Successful Protest,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 55, pp. 763–772 - (1961)CrossRefGoogle Scholar/ Easton, David, “The New Revolution in Political Science,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 63, pp. 1051–1061 (1969)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Spragens, Thomas A. Jr., The Dilemma of Contemporary Political Theory: Toward a Post-Behavioral Science of Politics (New York: Dunellen, 1973).Google Scholar If these ideological morticians are correct, then we should join together to at least assure that the spirit of political behavioralism is given a decent burial; and no doubt a sufficient reason for so doing will be so that one of our most celebrated professional ghosts may slumber less fitfully in the years to come.

⁶ For operationalization and discussion of the concept, see my “Academic Ideology and the Study of Adjudication,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 61, pp. 106–129 (1967).

⁷ For examples of contemporary literature aimed at our undergraduates, see Smith, Grahame J. C., Steck, Henry J., and Surette, Gerald, Our Ecological Crisis: Its Biological Economic, and Political Dimensions (New York: Macmillan, 1974)Google Scholar; and Pirages, Dennis and Ehrlich, Paul R., Ark II: Social Response to Environmental Imperatives (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1974).Google Scholar

⁸ Caldwell, Lynton K., “Biopolitics: Science, Ethics, and Public Policy,” The Yale Review, Vol. 54, pp. 1–16 (1964)Google Scholar; Somit, Albert, “Review Article: Biopolitics,” British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 2, pp. 209–238 (1972)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and my “Biopolitical Behavior: The Nature of the Political Animal,” Polity, Vol. 6, pp. 240–275 (1973).