¹ The history of the first two discovery-reaction sequences is reviewed in the Introduction to Bentley, Arthur F., The Process of Government (Bloomington, 1949), esp. pp. xvii–xviii.Google Scholar The volume was published a half century ago (Chicago, 1908) and reprinted some years later (Bloomington, 1935). All quotations below from Bentley are from the 1949 reissue.

The recent critical literature is large. Selected references cited below are: Odegard, Peter H., “A Group Basis of Politics: A New Name for an Old Myth,” Western Political Quarterly, Vol. 11 (September, 1958), pp. 689–702 Google Scholar; Crick, Bernard, The American Science of Politics (Berkeley, 1959), pp. 118–30Google Scholar; Palombara, Joseph La, “The Utility and Limitations of Interest Group Theory in Non-American Field Situations,” Journal of Politics, Vol. 22 (February, 1960), pp. 29–49 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Rothman, Stanley, “Systematic Political Theory: Observations on the Group Approach,” this Review, Vol. 54 (March, 1960), pp. 15–33.Google Scholar

² Rothman, op. cit., p. 33.

³ Op. cit., p. 20.

⁴ Barker, Ernest, The Study of Political Science and Its Relation to Cognate Studies (Cambridge, England, 1928), p. 42.Google Scholar

⁵ Odegard, op. cit., p. 701.

⁶ Oliver Garceau, for example, stressed the conflict of the study of behavioral uniformities and the “liberal, democratic faith” in man's capacities as an individual; see his “Research in the Political Process,” this Review, Vol. 45 (March, 1951), p. 69.

⁷ Odegard, op. cit., p. 701.

⁸ Op. cit., p. 195.

⁹ Ibid., p. 443.

¹⁰ Ibid., p. 484.

¹¹ Ibid., p. 177.

¹² Ibid., pp. 218–19.

¹³ Crick, op. cit., for example, stresses the former position; and Odegard, op. cit., pp. 694–95, stresses the latter.

¹⁴ Bentley distinguished: “activity”; “tendencies toward activity”; and “tendencies which have no clearly evident action following after them” because they are “suppressed, blocked, postponed, or inhibited.” The latter two types are necessary, e.g., to explain the emergence of new groups. But the necessity had its price. Thus “tendencies to activity” were proffered as a “stage of activity” and the same as, although different from “activity.” “Suppressed tendencies,” as Bentley acknowledged, defied even such audacity. The Process of Government, pp. 186–89.

¹⁵ Ibid., p. 199. On the apparent pointlessness of his ire, see the discussion of definition below.

¹⁶ Ibid., pp. 330–31n.

¹⁷ Ibid., p. 482.

¹⁸ Ibid., pp. 197, 447. (my emphases)

¹⁹ For ample evidence of the state of the literature, see Allport, Gordon W., “The Historical Background of Modern Social Psychology,” in Lindzey, Gardner, ed., Handbook of Social Psychology (Cambridge, Mass., 1954), Vol. I, pp. 3–56.Google Scholar

²⁰ For one of the early experiments, see Festinger, Leon, “The Role of Group Belongingness in a Voting Situation,” Human Relations, Vol. 1 (1947), pp. 154–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²¹ The Economics of Collective Action (New York, 1950).

²² Bales, Robert F., Interaction Process Analysis (Cambridge, Mass., 1951).Google Scholar

²³ The Process of Government, pp. 434–36. The “underlying group” is patently similar to the “primary group” concept developed at about the same time by Cooley, Charles H. in his Social Organization: A Study of the Larger Social Mind (New York, 1909).CrossRefGoogle Scholar Cooley's seminal role in the development of the modern study of social or ganization is often stressed.

²⁴ Allport, op. cit., p. 26, notes that: “Perhaps the most influential book ever written in social psychology is Le Bon's The Crowd (1895).” Le Bon's “crowd” concept, however, was applied indiscriminately to juries, legislatures, electorates, and so on (that is, when they behaved in the inelegant way Le Bon said crowds behaved). Moreover, the “crowd” was a “condition” for Le Bon rather than a conceptual entity whose properties required description.

²⁵ The Process of Government, p. 434. (my emphases)

²⁶ Ibid., pp. 218–22.

²⁷ Ibid., pp. 208–9.

²⁸ Rothman, op. cit., p. 15, for example, does so.

²⁹ See my development of this position in “The Small Group and Public Administration,” Public Administration Review, Vol. 19 (Summer, 1959), pp. 149–56.

³⁰ Hare, A. Paul, Borgatta, Edgar F. and Bales, Robert F., Small Groups: Studies in Social Interaction (New York, 1955), pp. v–vi.Google Scholar

³¹ Rothman, op. cit., p. 19, for example, scored Truman's use of the “status-role” concepts. He noted that “status-role” and the “group” are on different analytical levels. The latter is an “abstraction from action”; the former, a “type of actor.” In addition, the “traditional definition” of the dual concept requires: “(1) its application throughout any social system, and (2) its use as a variable which is at least as important if not more important than group membership for explaining individual attitudes.”

The position is curious. For the “group” is an “abstraction from action,” as all concepts are. By the same reasoning Rothman would preclude the existence in the same theory of electron and valence, which are in his terminology an “actor” and an “abstraction from action,” respectively. In addition, “status-role” is defined only in terms of group membership. Weighing the importance of the concepts and group membership, then, is fatuous. Finally, the concepts are inextricably of “the group approach.” They have proved useful, for example, in the study of small groups as well as of the broader “social system.” Indeed, Bentley himself emphasized the importance of status and role in specifying the properties of various groups in his typology. The Process of Government, p. 228.

³² For Bentley's vigorous denial of paternity of the “pressure group” literature, see his “Kennetic Inquiry,” Science, Vol. 112 (December 29, 1950), pp. 775–83.

³³ The Process of Government, p. 202.

³⁴ Monypenny, Philip, “Political Science and the Study of Groups: Notes to Guide a Research Project,” Western Political Quarterly, Vol. 7 (June, 1954), pp. 184–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁵ Latham, Earl, The Group Basis of Politics (Ithaca 1952), p. 36.Google Scholar

³⁶ The Process of Government, p. 482.

³⁷ Ibid., pp. 209–11.

³⁸ Ibid., p. 202.

³⁹ See, for example, Allport, Floyd H., Institutional Behavior: Essays toward a Reorienting of Contemporary Social Organization (Chapel Hill, 1933).Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Ibid., p. 15.

⁴¹ Horowitz, Milton W. and Perlmutter, Howard V., “The Concept of the Social Group,” Journal of Social Psychology, Vol. 37 (February, 1953), p. 80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴² Quoted, ibid., p. 80.

⁴³ The Process of Government, p. 188.

⁴⁴ Ibid., pp. 204–5, 207.

⁴⁵ Ibid., pp. 210–11.

⁴⁶ La Palombara, op. cit., p. 30, has proposed the comparative examination of some middle-range propositions to determine whether or not the “interest group” focus is a useful one in the “construction of a general [empirical?] theory of politics.”

⁴⁷ In general, see Goode, William J. and Hatt, Paul K., Methods in Social Research (New York, 1952), esp. pp. 41–53.Google Scholar Bentley's, later work also bears on these problems, particularly his Inquiry into Inquiries: Essays in Social Theory (Boston, 1954), pp. 113–40.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ The Process of Government, p. 194.

⁴⁹ Ibid., p. 202.

⁵⁰ He was interested in “certain special activities of men, which can be stated, environment and all. That is our raw material. Our … fertile land ready for immediate use … is a good illustration. Given no increasing population, no im proving transportation, that land would have little meaning…. Given a population of different activities, it would have a different meaning.” Ibid., p. 202. (my emphases)

⁵¹ Generally, consult Hempel, Carl G., Fundamentals of Concept Formation, Vol. II, No. 7, of the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science (Chicago, 1952).Google Scholar

⁵² For an analysis in depth of one concept, see my “Management Science and Behavior: Work-Unit Cohesiveness.” (Unpublished Ms.)