Karl Popper and the Social Sciences

UNTANGLING COMPLEX PATTERNS OF INTERACTION

the different values, beliefs, and goals that lead people to cast ballots, rather than explaining the act of voting once these values, beliefs, and goals are assumed. The latter merely amounts to a pedantic restatement of the obvious. In all likelihood, the interesting part of explaining voting will lie in uncovering the factors that lead a person to adopt certain beliefs and norms toward voting —that is, an inquiry into how certain beliefs and normative attitudes regarding voting were formed in the first place and how those norms are sustained . Part of that project would surely lie within the purview of situational analysis. An historical inquiry into a voter’s political development, for instance, might reveal that his beliefs and values regarding voting were rationally grounded, given his situation. But just as surely other aspects of such an inquiry would lie outside the range of situational analysis altogether, insofar as the voter’s beliefs and especially his values were produced and sustained through socialization, which is a largely subconscious and unintentional process. In such situations, explaining voting behavior would largely fall under the purview of political psychology rather than situational analysis. UNTANGLI NG COMP LEX PAT T ERNS OF I NT ERACT ION My claim that situational analysis is of little value in explaining voting behavior is not meant to be a deep criticism of situational analysis. Not all social phenomena are good candidates for explanation by situational models. The proper subjects of situational analysis for social science are relatively complex patterns of interaction between actors and institutions, especially those that produce interesting unintended consequences. As we have seen, this is what Popper identified as the “main task”of the social sciences—to uncover “the less obvious dependencies within the social sphere”and “the unintended social repercussions of intentional human actions,” adding that “action which proceeds precisely according to intention does not create a problem for social science”(OSE II, 94, 95). Situational models lay bare the interaction of actors that produce these unintended consequences. Of course, one can use situational analysis to describe practically any intentional human action, including the most trivial human actions, such as Popper’s example of Richard the pedestrian (MF, 166–168). But Popper’s use of situational analysis to explain Richard’s crossing the street is not intended to show that situational analysis offers some previously lacking insight into why Richard crossed the street. He simply uses this example of a very simple social situation to bring the elements of a situational model into sharp relief. As Popper says,“In so far as [individuals] act in the way in which they want to act, and realize the aims which they intend to realize, no problem arises for the social sciences”(CR, 124). Some good candidates for situational analysis to explore would include Popper’s list of sociological “laws” in The Poverty of Historicism, which I discussed in chapter 3. These “laws” would be better understood as a list of phenomena in need of explanation via situational models. For instance, Popper 76 KARL POPPER AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES cites the law that “You cannot introduce a political reform without strengthening the opposing forces, to a degree roughly in ratio to the scope of the reform” (PH, 62). Popper labels this a “sociological law,” but it lacks the precision needed for genuinely testability and, even given a loose and charitable interpretation , it is surely false anyway. Nonetheless, it describes an identifiable and fairly typical observable pattern associated with political reform. As such, it is a candidate for a situational model that can demonstrate how typical persons acting adequately to reform a political institution tend to strengthen forces opposed to reform. Developing this model entails disentangling the actions of numerous individuals to reveal how the behavior of one group of actors triggers actions in other groups, which in turn triggers certain actions by still other actors or affects the behavior of the original actors, and so forth. The hope is that the model of the interaction that produces this effect will prove general enough to enhance our understanding of reform efforts in a variety of political situations. Presumably included in this model are the various goals of the actors involved, the institutional constraints on actors, and the norms affecting their behavior. The need for situational models that explain unintended consequences provides a clue to why Popper was so impressed by economics. Economics is rife with typical phenomena that are interesting chiefly owing to their unintended consequences. Most...