Provide a comparative analysis of behavioural and institutional approach to the study of Political theory. (2025, 20 Marks)
The two approaches disagree about where politics happens. The institutional approach of James Bryce, K. C. Wheare and Herman Finer located it in formal structures — constitutions, legislatures, courts. Unlike its philosophical, historical and legal cousins, it gave the discipline a subject of its own. The behavioural approach of Charles E. Merriam, Harold D. Lasswell, David Easton and Robert A. Dahl relocated it in the observable conduct of individuals and groups, a mid-century reaction against normative and legal-institutional study alike. Compared criterion by criterion, each one’s blind spot is the other’s strength, and the rivalry ended in a synthesis.
Criteria-wise Comparison
| Criterion | Institutional | Behavioural |
|---|---|---|
| Unit of analysis | Formal structures: offices, organs, constitutions | Individuals and groups: attitudes, votes, participation |
| Level | Macro: institutional design, laws, governance structure | Micro: how attitudes form; social and psychological drivers of choice |
| Core claim | Rules constrain conduct and explain stability, change and outcomes | Behaviour drives outcomes and, once patterned, can be predicted |
| Guiding question | How is government organised, and by what rules? | How do people actually act, and why? |
| Method | Legal, historical, descriptive, comparative-constitutional | Surveys, statistics, quantification, verification |
| Facts and values | Openly prescriptive: what is a good constitution? | Fact–value separation; value-neutral science |
| Theoretical ambition | Description, little generalisation | Law-like regularities; grand theory (Easton’s systems model) |
| Blind spot | Informal power, culture, why identical constitutions diverge | Institutional context, history, the state as actor |
What the Comparison Reveals
- The real quarrel is about causation. Arthur F. Bentley (The Process of Government, 1908) treated institutions as shells for group pressure: behaviour makes rules. Institutionalists answer that behaviour happens inside rules — a vote means something only within an electoral system.
- The exemplars show the contrast. Easton defined politics as the authoritative allocation of values (The Political System, 1953) and later (1957, 1965) modelled it as inputs of demands and supports converted into outputs, with feedback closing the loop — a scheme built from conduct, not statutes. Maurice Duverger (Political Parties, 1951) supplied the institutional counter-case: plurality elections tend towards two-party competition, so the same voters behave differently under proportional representation.
- Each was right about the other. Institutionalism could not explain why Westminster-style constitutions worked in Britain and failed in several post-colonial states. That puzzle drew Gabriel A. Almond towards political culture. Behaviouralism dissolved the state into a “system”, and so could not see state autonomy until Theda Skocpol (Bringing the State Back In, 1985) restored it.
- Neither was value-free. Institutionalism’s normativity was open. Behaviouralism’s was hidden: Almond and Sidney Verba’s The Civic Culture (1963) treated stability as health. Easton conceded as much in “The New Revolution in Political Science” (1969).
Synthesis: New Institutionalism
The two are better read as a division of labour: rules explain variation across polities, behaviour explains variation within one rulebook — why two legislators under the same Tenth Schedule choose differently. James G. March and Johan P. Olsen, in “The New Institutionalism: Organizational Factors in Political Life” (American Political Science Review, 1984), widened institutions to include informal norms and routines. They argued that institutions shape preferences rather than merely aggregating them, since — as their Rediscovering Institutions (1989) put it — actors follow a logic of appropriateness as often as a logic of consequences. Peter A. Hall and Rosemary C. R. Taylor (1996) mapped three variants:
- Historical: path dependence and critical junctures; early choices lock in later ones.
- Rational-choice: institutions as rules of the game (Douglass C. North) that structure strategic calculation.
- Sociological: institutions as cultural scripts; forms spread because they are legitimate, not efficient.
It keeps behavioural rigour while restoring institutions to the centre.
An Indian Illustration
India’s anti-defection law (Tenth Schedule, 1985) shows why both lenses are needed. The institutional reading expects floor-crossing to end, especially after the 2003 amendment deleted the “split” exception. The behavioural reading sees ambitious legislators adapting: Eknath Shinde’s 2022 revolt in the Shiv Sena moved a legislature party rather than individuals. In Subhash Desai v. Principal Secretary (11 May 2023) a five-judge bench held that the political party, not the legislature party, appoints the whip, and that the Speaker must decide disqualification within a reasonable time. Yet in January 2024 the Speaker recognised the Shinde faction as the real Shiv Sena. The outcome came from formal rule, informal discretion and strategic behaviour together — exactly the terrain new institutionalism maps.
Conclusion
The comparison shows complementarity, not rivalry. Institutions without behaviour are empty shells; behaviour without institutions is motion without meaning. The field’s own slogan — we are all institutionalists now — is accurate only because today’s institutionalists count, survey and model like behaviouralists.