The Political System: An Inquiry into the State of Political Science

by David Easton

Publication date 1971 ISBN 0394315367 9780394315362

Genres: Nonfiction

Paperback

First published January 1, 1953

Reviews

[Marcelo Maciel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wish this book had been assigned to me years ago. Despite studying political science for over a decade (undergraduate, master's, and now at the PhD candidacy stage), I've never encountered a thorough discussion of what "political" truly means. What is the object of political science?
Alongside my formal studies, I've grappled with this question independently. When I've posed it to professors and fellow students, their responses often default to vague notions like "the study of power" or "the study of the state and its relationship to society." It took inheriting 90 books from Easton's personal library to discover his perspective on this fundamental question.
Easton addresses these common definitions and ultimately rejects them. While I don't fully agree with his concept of "authoritative allocation of values for a society," it's a more nuanced approach than the alternatives I've encountered.
This book offers much more than just a definition. It highlights the ongoing split in our discipline between abstract, elitist normative theorizing and technique-focused, theoretically vacuous empirical research. Political science must overcome its suboptimal scientific conventionalism and embrace the development of systematic, socio-scientific political theory. Until then, this book remains an essential read for anyone seeking to understand the foundations of our field.

[Bancin]

i've never read this book