<論説>米国における政治学の方法をめぐる一論争 : ヤング=ラセット論争を中心として

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This paper deals with a controversy on the methodology for political inquiry between Oran R. Young and Bruce M. Russett in 1969,which began with the former's critique to the latter's International Regions and the International System : A Study in Political Ecology, 1967,and ended with the latter's reply. Since it forcused upon Russett's research method, I add Young's own methodology for research discussed in "Appendix" of his Politics of Force, 1969,in order to understand clearly the distinctions. Thus, in this paper, Young's critique, Russett's reply, and Young's methodological standpoint are discussed respectively. In his reply, Russett calls him an inductivist, and regards Young as a deductivist. As a rule, inductivists are engaged in inductive inference, that is to say, based upon individual speciflc propositions or facts, they lead to universal propositions or laws, while deductivists are concerned with deductive inference, that is to say, they treat individual specific propositions or facts as logically deduced from universal laws or axioms. Unfortunately, in the context of the Young-Russett controversy, we are not sure of the difference between induction and deduction because they neither define the meanings of induction and deduction in their usage nor discuss the difference in practical researches. Furthermore, it seems necessary to give some methodological remarks for entering into this kind of controversy. For instance, in advance, they have to define the nature of law in political world. What is law in political world? Is it the same as natural law? Or, are there any special limit and condition in theory-construction in political science? These basic questions are not discussed in the controversy. In spite of some ambiguities, this is a very interesting discussion in the contemporary political science. Whereas Russett insists on collecting data and then achieving hypotheses, Young wants to find out hypotheses, at first, and then substantiate them with empirical data or observations. Russett gives much attention to hypothesis-making by gathering data in empirical political research, while young stands for the so-called hypothetico-deductive explanation which has widely prevailed in natural and physical sciences. As is well-known, this type of explanation has mainly been established as a scientific method by Karl R. Popper and Carl G. Hempel. On the other hand, Rnssett shows his loyalty to a long tradition of inductive inference which was philosophically founded by David Hume. I want to point out another implication of this controversy in terms of behavioralism in the contemporaly political science. Nobody denies that behavioralism has greatly contributed to developing empirical researches and advancing quatitative analyses in the discipline. At the same time, we are obliged to note that behavioralism has little suceeded in theory-construction which is the fundamental purpose in any kind of academic enterprise. I guess that Young wants to point out the weakness of theory in the contemporaly political science, in which behavioralism has obtained much popularity. Warning the danger of the so-called puristic induction, he emphasizes the role of intuition or imagination for making hypotheses. He says, "there is emphatically no substitute for good ideas."
関西学院大学の論文
1976-03-20

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森脇俊雅
関西学院大学法学部

<論説>米国における政治学の方法をめぐる一論争 : ヤング=ラセット論争を中心として

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