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# PSIR: Write and Rise - 01
- URL: https://www.upscprep.com/psir-write-and-rise-01/
- Published: 2026-07-01T13:24:54.000Z
- Updated: 2026-07-04T13:59:13.000Z
- Author: UPSCprep.com
- Tags: PSIR, Write and Rise, UPSC Mains Daily Answer Writing

**Q. Critically examine the behavioural approach to the study of comparative politics. How far has the post-behavioural revolution addressed its limitations? (15 Marks)**

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**How to Approach This Question**

This question has two clear parts:

1. **Critically examine behaviouralism**
  - Discuss both its strengths and weaknesses.
  - For every strength of behaviouralism, show its limitation as well.
2. **Evaluate post-behaviouralism**
  - Explain how post-behaviouralism responded to the limitations of behaviouralism.
  - Do not merely describe post-behaviouralism. Assess whether it fully solved the problems or only partially addressed them.

End the answer with a balanced judgement.

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**Answer**

The behavioural revolution of the 1950s-60s was a direct reaction against  
traditional comparative politics, which focused narrowly on constitutions, legal  
structures and Western governments while ignoring how political systems actually  
worked in practice. Scholars like David Easton, Gabriel Almond, Robert Dahl and  
Sidney Verba argued that politics could be studied scientifically through surveys,  
data, hypothesis testing and cross-national comparison.

**Contributions**

Behaviouralism genuinely expanded the discipline. Almond and Verba's Civic  
Culture showed how citizens' attitudes shape democratic stability. Dahl's Polyarchy  
explained how democracy functions beyond ideal theory. Easton's Systems  
Analysis gave a universal framework applicable across developed and developing  
societies alike. For the first time, political scientists moved beyond Europe and  
North America to study newly independent states in Asia, Africa and Latin  
America.

**Limitations**

However, behaviouralism's obsession with measurement became its biggest  
weakness. Questions of justice, freedom, inequality and ideology were ignored  
simply because they could not be quantified. History, identity and structural  
conditions which shape politics far more than individual behaviour were sidelined.  
The discipline became, as critics noted, methodologically rich but politically blind,  
generating data without addressing the real problems societies faced.

**Post-Behavioural Response**

Easton himself admitted this failure in 1969 and called for relevance alongside  
rigour. Post-behaviouralism restored normative theory and historical context. New  
Institutionalism brought institutions, informal norms and path dependency back  
into analysis. Post-colonial scholars challenged the deep Eurocentric bias that  
behaviouralism had never questioned.

Post-behaviouralism corrected the worst excesses but did not fully solve the  
original problems. The tension between scientific rigour and social relevance  
persists, and mainstream comparative politics remains largely Western in its  
assumptions. A truly global comparative politics, one that takes non-Western  
political experiences seriously on their own terms remains an unfinished project.

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