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Harold D. Lasswell's Political World: Weak Tea for Hard Times
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 January 2009
Extract
I first encountered the work of Harold Lasswell in the late 1950s, when I was a barely awake undergraduate at a university whose reputation for mediocrity was richly deserved. I opened Politics: Who Gets What, When, How to the first paragraph: ‘The study of politics is the study of influence and the influential. The science of politics states conditions; the philosophy of politics justifies preferences. This book, restricted to political analysis, declares no preferences. It states conditions.’ I had never heard of Lasswell, for my political science courses limited themselves to subjects like Congressional seniority and Cabinet responsibility in Britain. One course discussed the law of piracy, a subject I had trouble linking to international politics in the 1950s. Some enterprising instructors occasionally discussed the balance of power, and one even assigned David Truman. But Lasswell was terra incognita to me, as he no doubt was to most undergraduates in those years.
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References
1 Lasswell, Harold, Politics: Who Gets What, When, How (Cleveland, Ohio: Meridian, 1958: first published, 1936), p. 7.Google Scholar (Henceforth described as Politics: Who Gets What.)
2 Brodbeck, Arthur J., ‘Scientific Heroism from a Standpoint within Social Psychology’ in Rogow, Arnold, ed., Politics, Personality, and Social Science in the Twentieth Century: Essays in Honor of Harold D. Lasswell (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969), pp. 225–61, at p. 233.Google Scholar
3 See the bibliography arranged chronologically in Marvick, Dwaine, ed., Harold D. Lasswell on Political Sociology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977).Google Scholar
4 In particular, I intend largely to ignore Lasswell, Harold D. and Kaplan, Abraham, Power and Society (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1950)Google Scholar, and Rogow, Arnold A. and Lasswell, Harold D., Power, Corruption and Rectitude (Engelwood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1963).Google Scholar Although the former is a fascinating presentation of an analytic system and the latter a useful examination of a general proposition about power, neither contributes markedly to the line of Lasswell's analysis I pursue in this paper.
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91 Lasswell, Harold D., Propaganda Technique in the World War (New York: Knopf, 1927), p. 222.Google Scholar (Henceforth described as Propaganda Technique.)
92 y Gasset, Jose Ortega, The Revolt of the Masses (New York: Norton, 1957)Google Scholar; Durkheim, Emile, The Division of Labor in Society (New York: Free Press, 1964), pp. 353–74.Google Scholar
93 Arora, Satish K. and Lasswell, Harold D., Political Communication: The Public Language of Political Elites in India and the United States (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969), p. 227.Google Scholar
94 Democracy Through Public Opinion, pp. 86–7.Google Scholar
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97 Propaganda Technique, Chap. II.
98 Perhaps it is this tone – more than substance – that so influenced Robert Horwitz's attack in ‘Scientific Propaganda: Harold D. Lasswell’, in Storing, Herbert, ed., Essays on the Scientific Study of Politics (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1962), pp. 225–305.Google Scholar
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102 World Revolutionary Propaganda, Chaps. 6–7.
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104 World Revolutionary Propaganda, Part 4.
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125 I will not spend much time discussing the programmatic statements on the policy sciences, but simply refer the reader to the following sources: Lerner, Daniel and Lasswell, Harold D., eds., The Policy Sciences (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1951)Google Scholar; Lasswell, Harold D., The Future of Political Science (New York: Atherton, 1963)Google Scholar; and Lasswell, Harold D., A Pre-View of Policy Sciences (New York: Elsevier, 1971).Google Scholar (Henceforth described as A Pre- View of Policy Sciences.) Of these statements, the last is clearly the most difficult and abstract.
126 Power and Personality, Chap. 6.
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130 A Pre-View of Policy Sciences and Lasswell, Harold, The Decision Process: Seven Categories of Functional Analysis (College Park, Md.: University of Maryland Press, 1956).Google Scholar
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134 The Future of Political Science, Chap. 5.
135 Dobyns, Henry, Doughty, Paul and Lasswell, Harold D., eds., Peasants, Power and Applied Social Change (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1964).Google Scholar Lasswell's contributions are Chaps. 7 and 8. (Henceforth described as Peasants.)
136 Rubenstein, Robert and Lasswell, Harold, The Sharing of Power in a Psychiatric Hospital (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966).Google Scholar Henceforth described as The Sharing of Power in a Psychiatric Hospital.
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138 The RADIR series with Daniel Lerner incorporates this work, but the idea had germinated in the 1930s. See World Politics and Personal Insecurity, pp. 153–4.Google Scholar
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