Revision summary
Post-behaviouralism is Easton’s 1969 turn from technique-first behaviouralism to a science of public problems. The Credo of Relevance puts substance before technique and accepts professional responsibility for the use of knowledge. Action science means inquiry organised to change problems, joining data to explicit values. The turn corrects value-neutrality as evasion; it fails if it drops method for slogans. Indian policy and rights research is action science when it evaluates institutions, not only when it reports attitudes.
Model answer
Introduction
Post-behaviouralism is David Easton’s 1969 correction of the behavioural revolution. The Credo of Relevance says that political science must speak to the urgent problems of the time and must become an applied, problem-solving science of action, not only a value-neutral catalogue of regularities.
Body
From behaviouralism to the credo
- Behaviouralism, which Easton had promoted, sought observable attitudes, systems of demand and support, and cumulative theory.
- Robert Dahl’s decision studies and Almond and Verba’s civic culture were products of that programme.
- By 1969, war, racial conflict, and urban crisis in the United States made a purely technical science look evasive.
- Easton’s American Political Science Association address stated a credo: substance must precede technique; the needs of the day must set the agenda; science should not hide behind facts when the facts are of suffering.
- Relevance meant that the profession accepts responsibility for the use of knowledge.
Action science
- Action science, in this setting, is inquiry organised to change a public problem, not only to describe it.
- It joins empirical tools to explicit values: peace, racial equality, poverty, and later environment and gender.
- The analyst is not a spectator. She designs institutions, evaluates policy, and accepts that intervention is part of the knowledge process.
- This is closer to Marx’s thesis on changing the world, and to policy analysis, than to a laboratory model of detached observation.
- Foucault would later warn that sciences of action also govern; Easton’s credo still assumed that relevant science could serve human ends.
Analysis of the advocacy
- The credo correctly ended the pretence that Easton’s own systems theory had no value premises.
- It risked turning the discipline into short-term advocacy without the very methods that make action competent.
- A balanced post-behaviouralism therefore keeps measurement and comparison, and then asks, with Rawls, which action is just, and with Mill, which action leaves liberty standing.
- Indian political science that studies implementation of Parts III and IV, panchayats, and welfare statutes is action science in Easton’s sense when it evaluates and proposes, not only when it counts votes.
- The credo does not abolish theory. It forbids a theory that will not meet the world in which allocation, in Easton’s own definition, already happens.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD B[Behavioural science] --> E[Easton 1969] E --> CR[Credo of Relevance] CR --> AS[Action science] AS --> P[Problem-solving] AS --> V[Explicit values]
Conclusion
- The Credo of Relevance made post-behavioural political science an action science: empirically informed, value-explicit, and responsible for public problems. Easton corrected his own behavioural programme. The analysis holds if action remains disciplined by method and by a public theory of justice, not if relevance becomes only a slogan.
Quick related
Students also ask
-
"The legal subordination of one sex to another is wrong in itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human development." (J. S. Mill). Comment
Next question on this syllabus topic (2023 · Q4(b)). View answer →
-
Did post-behaviouralism reject data?
No. It rejected the claim that technique and value-neutrality come before the problems of the time.
-
Is action science the same as activism?
It is disciplined intervention and evaluation. Activism without method is not what Easton’s credo asked the profession to become.
PYQ trend
When UPSC asked this
Related PYQs from other years, newest first. Open a question to read it.
-
2023 · Q1(a) · PSIR GS 1 · 10 marks
Normative approach in Political Science. -
2023 · Q1(b) · PSIR GS 1 · 10 marks
Multicultural perspective on rights. -
2023 · Q1(c) · PSIR GS 1 · 10 marks
State of Nature as State of War (Hobbes). -
2023 · Q1(e) · PSIR GS 1 · 10 marks
Decline of political theory. -
2023 · Q2(a) · PSIR GS 1 · 20 marks
Success of contemporary democracies lies in the State limiting its own power. Explain -
2023 · Q4(b) · PSIR GS 1 · 15 marks
"The legal subordination of one sex to another is wrong in itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human development." (J. S. Mill). Comment -
2022 · Q1(a) · PSIR GS 1 · 10 marks
Systems Approach. -
2022 · Q1(b) · PSIR GS 1 · 10 marks
Cultural Relativism.
More from this topic
Q8(b) · UPSC Mains 2025 · PSIR GS 1 · 15 marks
With reference to Peruvian experience of planning and economic development, examine how the early phase of economic planning in India has laid the foundation for future development
Political Theory
Peru’s mid-century development mixed export oligarchy with a radical military-planning interlude under Velasco, then crisis and neoliberal reversal. Indian early planning under the Planning Commission and the Mahalanobis strategy built public industry, technical education, and a durable idea of state-led structural change. India’s process was parliamentary and federally argued; Peru’s surge was corporatist and more easily dismantled. Critiques of the Hindu rate of growth and of controls do not cancel the foundational industrial and administrative capacity. The comparison shows that planning founds future development when institutions outlast a single regime, which India did more than Peru.
Q8(a) · UPSC Mains 2025 · PSIR GS 1 · 20 marks
The decision to conduct Population Census-2027 has reopened the debate on consultation in India. Discuss its various aspects
Political Theory
Census 2027 is a political institution because it will affect delimitation, finance, and recognition after a delayed 2021 count. Federal consultation is required in spirit even though Census is a Union subject, especially for southern states that fear seat and fund losses. Caste enumeration and the NPR reopen debates on identity, privacy, and citizenship trust. Women’s parliamentary reservation is legally tied to post-census delimitation, so consultation on the formula is part of the census debate. A digital method needs consultation on exclusion and data security, or legibility will be mistaken for consent.
Q8(c) · UPSC Mains 2025 · PSIR GS 1 · 15 marks
Illustrate with examples how regional parties in India have played a crucial role in drawing the historically disadvantaged groups into the mainstream political system
Political Theory
Regional parties have been decisive vehicles for bringing historically disadvantaged groups into governing politics, not only into vote banks. The BSP made Dalit bahujan power executive in Uttar Pradesh; the DMK mainstreamed non-Brahmin and Tamil publics through Dravidian organisation and welfare. TMC incorporated rural poor, women, and minorities as the decisive Bengal coalition after the Left. TRS/BRS turned a backward region’s dignity claim into a state elite; AAP incorporated urban and agrarian users of public services; JMM brought Adivasi demands into Jharkhand’s party government. Jaffrelot’s silent revolution and Yadav’s democratic upsurges describe this incorporation, which creates new elites even as it opens the system.
Toppers' copies
Toppers' copies for this question will be uploaded soon.