This document outlines three theoretical paradigms in political science: traditionalism, behavioralism, and post-behavioralism. Traditionalism examines the formal rules and institutions of politics through historical and normative analysis. Behavioralism stresses empirical observation and data collection over historical analysis. Post-behavioralism emerged as a reaction against behavioralism, arguing that political science should be both empirically reliable and relevant, and that the topics studied can have real-world ethical implications related to issues like war and human rights.

1. Theoretical Paradigm in
POLITICS
(Ellen Grigsby ,2011)
Prepared by Raizza Corpuz

2. Theoretical Paradigm in POLITICS
Fig.1.4 Levels of conceptual analysis

3. Theory:
A systematic explanation of empirical data, usually (unlike a hypothesis)
presented as reliable knowledge.
• Examples: power, social class, rights, law
• Examples: systems analysis, public choice, game theory
• Examples: pluralism, elitism, functionalism
• Examples: liberalism, Marxism, feminism

4. Approach in Studying POLITICS
1. TRADITIONALISM In its early years, political science
generally involved the analysis of formal, legal, and
official sides of political life.
Traditionalists tried to understand politics by
examining laws, governmental offices, constitutions,
and other official institutions associated with politics;
they tried to describe how institutions operated by
formal rules and publicly sanctioned procedures.

5. •Traditionalist approaches were often both
historical and normative: historical in outlining the
processes by which the formal rules of politics
were modified over time through court decisions,
laws, executive orders, and the like, and normative
in the sense of hoping to provide information for
improving these rules.

6. 2. BEHAVIORALISM synonymous to empiricism
(collecting data based on observation)
Behavioralist approaches stress the
importance of empirical analysis. Behavioralists
ask how better to study behavior than through
careful observation of specific actions

7. •tends to reject historical analysis, finding
little reason to explore the past (for
interpretations, insights, and opinions on
matters of politics) when observation is
viewed as the most reliable route to
knowledge

8. 3. POST BEHAVIORALIST
an alternative to both traditionalism and
behavioralism
emerged as a reaction against the empirical
orientation of behavioralism by political scientists who
found such an orientation excessive and irresponsible

9. • Postbehavioralists argue that political science should be relevant as well as
empirically reliable, and that the information produced by political science
has ethical implications.
that political phenomena were often matters of life and death—
matters pertaining to war, population growth, environmental degradation,
and racial and ethnic conflict.
Political scientists have a responsibility to acknowledge that what they choose
to investigate through the empirical methods of political science and what
they discover by means of these methods affect the lives of women and men.

10. THANK YOU!
References
Ellen Grigsby-Analyzing Politics _ An Introduction to Political Science ,
Fifth Edition -Wadsworth Publishing (2011)