3.2 The Next Big Thing: a Job Description


When scanning the horizon for the next big thing, it behooves us to recall thedistinctive features of things that have formerly risen to become “big things.”

3.2.1 Simplicity

“Big things” are, first and foremost, fundamentally simple ideas. They are capable of being expressed succinctly—stated in just a few words—yet they have wide ramifications.Think of the catchcry of the behavioral revolutionaries: “don’t just look at the formal rules, look at what people actually do.” Think of the catchcry of structural-functionalists: “form fits function.”Think of the catchcry of systems theorists: “everything is connected; feedback matters.” Think of the catchcry of the rational choice revolutionaries: “always remember, people pursue power and interest.”Think of the catchcry of new institutionalists:“institutions matter.” Simple ideas, all.

3.2.2 Broad Application

“Big things” must have wide application to politics, across the board. That is why “consolidation” of medium-sized projects into “one big thing” is so important. To travel far, however, “big things” need to travel light: They need to be easily adaptable to the wide variety of circumstances and settings to which they aspire to apply. The same basic idea can, and should, play out differently in different contexts, without sacrificing its claim to simplicity and parsimony at some more fundamental level.

3.2.3 Formalizable

“Big things” must also admit of formalization of some sort or another.That need not necessarily take the form of propositional logic or higher mathematics, as with rational choice theory. In the case of structural-functionalism, formalization amounted to little more than an elaborate conceptual schema and a few diagrammatic techniques borrowed from structural anthropology (Merton 1968, ch. 3). Proper input–output analysis and linear programming came later (Forrester 1971; Meadowset al. 1972; cf. Shubik 1971b; Cole et al. 1973), but the early application of systems theory to political science consisted just in boxes connected by arrows (Easton 1957; 1965). So too with the early behavioral revolutionaries: Fancier techniques came later, but their initial formalism amounted to little more than cross-tabulations and chi- squares (Miller 1996, 301). Still, a “big thing” must always admit of formalization, be it heavy or light.

3.2.4 Familiarity

Like stars of the cinema, things that have subsequently become “big things” have generally been around for quite a while before they hit it big.The raw materials of any “big thing”—what will subsequently come to be seen as its “classic texts”— were published long before it became big. Rational choice theory became a “big thing” in the mid-1970s (Sigelman 2006b, 469), but by then its seminal texts were all a decade or two old (Arrow 1951; Black 1958; Downs 1957; Riker 1962; Olson 1965). Likewise, by the time the behavioral revolution became a “big thing” in the 1950s (Dahl 1961a, 766; Sigelman 2006b, 469), its seminal texts were similarly antiquated (Merriam and Gosnell 1924; Tingsten 1937; Lazarsfeld, Berelson, and Gaudet 1944), and the intellectual materials out of which behavioralists built their models of politics were drawn from psychology of several decades previously (Lipset et al. 1954).⁴⁹ Similarly, the materials out of which post-Second World War structural-functionalists built their models were drawn from interwar anthropologists (Radcliffe-Brown 1935; Malinowski 1936/1976). And the materials out of which the new institutionalists of the 1980s built their models were drawn from decades-old organization theory and behavioral theories of the firm (Simon 1947; March and Simon 1958; March 1962; 1996; Cyert and March 1963).

3.2.5 Marginality

Finally, the materials out of which political science constructs its own “next big thing” tend to be leftover fragments from other disciplines.⁵⁰ From the point of view of political scientists, that makes it look like a takeover bid by some other discipline. But from the point of view of that other discipline, the raiders more often look like renegade bands operating at the margins of their home discipline.⁵¹ The rational choice revolution in political science was spearheaded by scholars of social choice and of public finance, both far from the center of gravity of mainstreameconomics.The behavioral revolution in political science drew on social psychology, which again is a somewhat marginalized subfield within psychology proper. And political science borrowed the structural-functionalist model from sociology and anthropology at just the time those disciplines were repudiating it (Radcliffe-Brown 1949; Davis 1959; cf. Merton 1968, ch. 3).