‘What is the nature of these assumptions and objectives, the intellec- tual foundation stones on which this movement has been constructed? No single way of characterizing them is satisfactory to everyone, but the following itemized list provides a tolerably accurate and reasonably exhaustive account of them.* 1. Regularities: There are discoverable uniformities in political behavior. ‘These can be expressed in generalizations or theories with explanatory and predictive value. 2. Verification: The validity of such generalizations must be testable, in principle, by reference to relevant behavior. 3. Techniques: Means for acquiring and interpreting data cannot be taken for granted. They are problematic and need to be examined self-consciously, refined, and validated so that rigorous means can be found for observing, re- cording, and analyzing behavior. 4. Quantification: Precision in the recording of data and the statement of findings requires measurement and quantification, not for their own sake, but only where possible, relevant, and meaningful in the light of other objectives. '5. Values: Ethical evaluation and empirical explanation involve two dif- ferent kinds of propositions that, for the sake of clarity, should be kept analyt- ically distinct. However, a student of political behavior is not prohibited from asserting propositions of either kind separately or in combination as long as he does not mistake one for the other. 6. Systematization: Research ought to be systematic: that is to say, theory and research are to be seen as closely intertwined parts of a coherent and orderly body of knowledge. Research untutored by theory may prove trivial, and theory unsupportable by data, futile. 'T. Pure science: The application of knowledge is as much a part of the scientific enterprise as theoretica] understanding. But the understanding and explanation of political behavior logically precede and provide the basis for efforts to utilize political knowledge in the solution of urgent practical prob: lems of society. 5. Most of the items can be distilled from what is said about the behavioral approach in the following sources: B. Crick, The American Science of Politics, Tts Origins and Conditions (London: Routledge, 1959); R.A. Dabl, op. cit.) M. Duverger, Méthodes de la Science Politique (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1939); D. Easton, The Political System (New York: Knopf, 1953); and “Traditional and Behavioral Research in American Political Science” in Administrative Science ‘Quarterly, Vol. 2 (1957), pp. 110-115; C. 8, Hyneman, The Study of Politics (Urbana:’U. of Illinois Press, 1959); D. B. Truman, “The Impact on Political Sci- ‘ence of the Revolution in the Behavioral Sciences” in Research Frontiers in Politics ‘and Government (Washington: Brookings Institution, 1955), pp. 202-232, and “The Implications of Political Behavior Research,” Items, Vol. 5 (1951), pp. 37-39: V. ‘Van Dyke, Political Science, A Philosophical Analysis (Stanford: Stanford U., 1960’ D, Waldo, Political Science’in the United States of America (Paris: Unesco, 1958); ‘A Report of the Behavioral Sciences at the University of Chicago, (Chicago: Self- Study Committee, 1954); Editorial—“What Is Political Behavior,” PROD, Vol. 1 (1958), pp. 42-43; and papers presented at the panels on “The Contribution of Studies’ of Political Behavior” at the Fifth World Congress of the International Political Science Association, Paris, September 26-30, 1961.The Current Meaning of “Behavioralism” 7 8. Integration: Because the social sciences deal with the whole human situation, political research can ignore the findings of other disciplines only at the peril of weakening the validity and undermining the generality of its own. results. Recogultion of this interrelationship will help to bring political science back to its status of earlier centuries and return it to the main fold of the social sciences. This list probably includes all the major tenets of the behavioral credo and represents the major differences between the behavioral and traditional modes of research. As such, we have a purely formal state- ment of the meaning of behavioralism, one that helps us less in under- standing its meaning than in appreciating the nature of the kind of questions we must begin to ask, For even if we were to have little diff- culty in obtaining formal agreement to this list, there can be no doubt, that major differences would immediately well to the surface, not nec- essarily about the composition of the behavioral credo itself but about eect