Political Theory and the Theory of Action

Abstract

T HHE PURPOSE of this essay is to present the basic elements of a theory of human action and to suggest their relevance for claims about political phenomena. Although it would be desirable to offer the analysis of action without an introduction and justification, there are at least two reasons why such a move might be problematical. First, this type of analysis, and even the idea of what is referred to here as "theory," does not have an accepted place within the disciplinary matrix of contemporary political science. Although my principal concern in this essay is neither to demonstrate the need for such a theory in political science nor to explore its possible implications for prevailing forms of research,1 a summary statement of the arguments and assumptions relating to such matters is required. Second, although the theory is in certain respects related to accounts of social scientific explanation that advocate what has been variously described as an interpretative, hermeneutical, or phenomenological mode of inquiry, there is a fundamental logical difference. It is a claim about action as a kind of phenomenon rather than about the explanation of action. This is a crucial distinction which, along with several other issues raised by this analysis, will be discussed briefly in Sections I and III. Section II presents the substance of the theory, but the argument is necessarily very compressed in this context.2