Excerpt from Behavioral Persuasion in Politics New ways of saying and doing things have always tempted some and terrified others. The citizens of Athens once put to death a sage named Socrates, charging "corruption of the young," and "neglect of the gods when the city worships, and the practice of religious novelties." Both charges were, and remain, somewhat obscure. It seems that Socrates, among other crimes, had introduced a new, critical method into philosophical speculation. And politics was among the topics he considered. In politics, methods of study and objectives of inquiry are particularly subject to controversy. The stakes are probably higher in politics than in any other field of human effort, and today that even includes religion. New approaches and objectives are likely to arouse passions. Indeed, so much so that some people believe disinterested political inquiry to be impossible. Of course, the innovator is no longer forced to drink hemlock, at least not in societies that take pride in free investigation. Instead he becomes involved in interminable debate with his critics. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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Changes in the thinking of science are usually accompanied by lively intellectual conflicts between opposing or divergent points of view. The clash of ideas is a major ingredient in the stimulation of the life of the mind in human culture. Such arguments and counter-arguments, of proofs and disproofs, permit changes in the arts and sciences to take place. Political science is not exempt from these conflicts. Since the middle of the twentieth century, the study of politics has been rocked by disagreements over its scope, theories, and methods. These disagreements were somewhat less frequent than in most sciences, natural or behavioral, but they have been at times bitter and persuasive. The subject matter of political science politics and all that is involved in politics has a halo effect. The stakes of politics make people fight and sometimes die for what they claim as their due. Political scientists seem to confuse academic with political stakes, behaving as if the victories and defeats on the battleground of the intellect resemble those on the battleground of political life. Three issues seem critical to political science at the time this volume first appeared in the 1960s: First, disagreement over the nature of the knowledge of political things is a science of politics possible, or is the study of politics a matter of philosophy? Second, controversy over the place of values in the study of politics a controversy that makes for a great deal of confusion. Third, disagreements over the basic units of analysis in the study of politics‘should the political scientist study individual and collective behavior, or limit the work to the study of institutions and large-scale processes? This collection brings together the most persuasive writings on these topics in the mid-1960s.