State Return

Political Science: Recent Trends Return of the State

Introduction to State Return

From the 19th century to the 1940s many political scientists regarded the state as a unified, organic entity that integrated government, society, and political organizations. During the behavioral revolution, this concept of a unified, goal-directed state was discredited, in favor of a looser and more open concept of the political system. Behaviorists contended that the idea of the state was unscientific and mocked it as mystical. They claimed that political systems, in contrast, are real and observable, composed of various inputs and outputs. According to the behaviorists, the inputs in a political system include influences such as lobbying by interest groups and bargaining between the executive and legislative branches, and the outputs are public policies.

The concept of the state, now more precisely defined as the set of officials legally authorized to make binding decisions for a society, made a comeback in the 1980s. States are viewed as having certain functions or imperatives that they must perform-for example, maintaining the confidence of financial markets-regardless of the desires of their political leaders, the wishes of voters, pressure from interest groups, or bargaining within government. ” (1)

Resources

Notes and References

• Information about State Return in the Encarta Online Encyclopedia

Guide to State Return