Modern politics : an introduction to behaviour and institutions

This book is intended to introduce the reader to the
dy of politics. No book, however, can cover the whole
field of study and selection is necessary. What is selected
depends on the preferences or the interest of the author
and the needs of those to whom the work is directed.
Here the emphasis is on politics as a study in which
the work particularly of sociologists and psychologists
is increasingly relevant. It is not a book on politics by
a sociologist or a psychologist but one written by (to
coin a word) a 'politicologist'. As a consequence there
is a mixture of the old and the new. It therefore reflects
the transfer of interest of many teachers of politics away
from politics as the description and evaluation of legal
(as opposed to private) governments, and their policies
towards politics as the study of the behaviour of those
men and groups (whoever and wherever they may be)
who participate in the making and the execution of
public policy. This difference of emphasis (for it is that,
and not a revolution in the study as some of the pro-
tagonists claim) makes the subject matter of interest to
students of many 'disciplines'. With all its limitations, it
is offered to students in the hope that they will be
encouraged to take a wider view and to others as an
indication of how contributions from their disciplines are
valued by those of us who, as the phrase goes, teach
politics'.
Like all human groups teachers of politics include pessi-
mists and optimists, those overconfident of what cannot be
done and others overconfident of what can be achieved.
Both groups (and the realists if such there be) agree that the
Subject has rarely, if ever, been so stimulating -traditional
barriers between disciplines are dissolving and 'the winds of
change' are upon us. What better time than this for the
reader to join in the enquiry which engages the minds of
those who study politics.