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Loading... The Process of Government: A Study of Social Pressuresby Arthur F. Bentley
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Arthur F. Bentley originally wrote this book over the years 1896-1908 while working as a Chicago newspaper reporter and editor, during which time he had a "sense of tremendous social activity taking place," and a feeling that "all the politics of the country, so to speak, were drifting across [his] desk." This prompted Bentley to develop an analysis of group interests, which he believed to be the true dictators of government decisions.He was hailed on methodological grounds as an early supporter of the "behavioral revolution," which called for the use of natural scientific methods in the social sciences and for offering a group theory of politics. Bentley's implicit critique of narrow empiricism reflects the diverse influences of Dilthey, Simmel, and Dewey. The Process of Government was virtually ignored until the post-World War II period, but is now regarded as a classic in political science. No library descriptions found. |
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The author's main idea is that all government, whether it be by democracy, by limited monarchy or by despotism, is in the end a group activity. People live and act in groups, not alone. Those groups set their own objectives and defend their interests and ideals, disagree, negotiate and compromise in the process of government. Under almost any form of government, some groups will be formally excluded. But even the excluded will have some indirect influence, however weak it may be. Even the actions of a particular presidents or government agencies should be understood as group activities.
This seems like a reasonably good insight, and it alone makes this book worth reading. However, the author's presentation and analysis do have some faults. Firstly, at nearly 500 pages, the book is far too long. The first 160 pages provide an extensive critique of previous works which ends in the conclusion that "activities" should be the central focus of social research. This century-old literature review doesn't hold much interest today, and the author's concept of "activity" is not explicated in a particularly clear manner.
Furthermore, even though the author gives some examples of how the process of government works through group activities, I would have hoped for a little bit more, both in terms of theoretical clarity and practical example. It seems like the author repeatedly returns to the same conclusion: "this is group activity", without either taking a step back toward more general explanation or explaining how these groups actually fight, cooperate and compromise with each other. He must have considered practical matters to be questions of detail which can only be studied on a case-by-case basis, but one or two more steps in the direction of more general explanations could also have facilitated better examples.
Nevertheless, I will certainly return to selected sections of this book in the future just to see what it had to say.