FUNCTIONALISM AND ITS CRITICS - Intercollegiate Studies Institute

262 THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER
and others that functionalism does not involve casual explanation. 89
Rather, he now argues, its major purpose is hueristic. It is designed
to throw light on relationships which scholars might otherwise have
ignored or misread.
Almond ' s response to his self-criticism is to seek " the historical
cure "
and to attempt to use the functional model in combination
with other models to examine particular developmental episodes in
a variety of countries. The attempt is to combine analytic efforts
with in depth studies of particular historical events.
His conclusion is that any political analysis must draw upon
four major approaches to the study of politics, which complement
each other: the functional, social mobilization, decision making and
leadership models. Any political analysis must also take into account
both the domestic and international environment. Thus the study
of a given system involves an analysis of system-environmental
properties, structural functional properties, decision coalition properties
and leadership properties.
The analysis of change will involve the examination of coalition
and policy outcomes and linkages between these and the system
which is emerging. Part of the job of comparative political history is
to write alternative scenarios in an attempt to clarify the impact of
particular choices. For example, to clarify the development of English
history in the nineteenth century the analyst might ask what
would have happened if Whigs and Tories in 1831 had organized
a coalition based on a policy of repression, or the Social Democratic
Party in 1918 had moved toward the left rather than toward
the " discredited military-bureaucratic establishment. "
Almond is hopeful that the analyses of a series of case studies
will help scholars integrate these various approaches into a more
sophisticated general theory. The nature of this theory is not as
yet clear. For example, Almond seems less taken with an evolutionary
approach, but has not discarded it. He also seems more willing
to accept the possibility of considerable indeterminancy in political
change involving, for example, " accidents, " such as the appearance
of a particular charismatic leader. However, it is far from
certain how this would affect his attempts at conceptualization.
69
The classic critique is that of Carl G. Hempel,
" The Logic of Func-
tional Analysis, " in Llewellyn Gross (ed.), Symposium on Sociological Theory
( Evanston, 1959).