Main trends of research in the social and human ... - unesdoc - Unesco

Political science 21 I
effort has been spent on elections and assemblies. But research is attracted
partly because events concerning elections and assemblies are of personal and
dramatic interest to politicians and the public; partly because these are eminent-
ly ‘researchable’ topics, producing ample data which are suitable for statistical
analysis and raise no problems about access. It is quite likely that the resources
available for such research could not have been secured for the study of less
exciting but more fruitful topics.
The regulation ofprocedure. It is obvious that voting (including public voting
on issues, as well as in elections) and assemblies are both subject to detailed regu-
lation; and that these regulations, often tedious in detail, may be of great im-
portance in the political battle. The power to regulate elections, the power to
control the procedure of an assembly, may decide the issue; therefore, the sub-
stantive issue hangs on a procedural issue, and that in turn on a constitutional
issue, about the procedure for changing procedure. Not much can be said of
this paradox, which might lead to an infinite regress, except that in fact in con-
stitutional regimes - this is one mark of such regimes - the argument is at some
point halted by consensus. Factional struggles for office should stop short of
the point at which they endanger the regime. Many constitutional regimes have
collapsed through breach of this basic norm.
Within the limit thus set, electoral practice and legislative procedure have
been and remain central topics in political science. To some extent these are
lawyers’ questions, but the intricacy of the political ‘engineering’ involved is
more a matter of cause and effect in politics than of skill in legal interpretation.64
One would expect any well-trained empirical political scientist under a constitu-
tional regime to know a good deal about elections and a good deal about assem-
blies, to be able to make useful comparisons with comparable practice else-
where, and to have some advice to offer about the practical consequences of
choosing one device rather than another. As in the study of executives, the
generalizations offered are short-range ones and the skill involved is diagnostic
rather than nomothetic. But much is known, and the knowledge can be drawn
into the practical service of politics.
Voting andparties. But these procedural matters, important though they are,
are not felt to touch the substance of electoral politics. How are electors organ-
ized? how are issues shaped for presentation to electors ? how do electors choose
between the possibilities offered? A first answer is that in all existing consitu-
tional regimes the choice of the electorate is mediated through political parties.
But this in turn throws up questions about the rise and fall of political parties,
about their organization and iinance, about their relation to the economic,
social and cultural conditions of society.
Serious academic work on parties and elections began in the last quarter of
the nineteenth century, at the time when many countries had reached or were
approaching universal suffrage, and the hopeful or gloomy prophecies of earlier
scholars were being put to the test. The field lies open both to techniques of
history and observation and to statistical analysis based on the language of
variables; the literature is enormous and continues to grow rapidly.
A large literature is needed merely to keep pace with events; but there is also