Politics: Who Gets What, When, How, which was first published in 1936, is the classic analysis of power and manipulation by ruling elites and counter-elites. The themes that occur throughout this essay have become the guideposts for most modern research in techniques of propaganda and political organization. “It is unquestionably one of the most influential treatments of politics published in this century.”—David B. Truman, Prof.of Public Law and Government, Columbia University “This book is a landmark of modern political science.”—Daniel Lerner, Professor of Sociology, M.I.T. “For over three decades the students of politics have had their intellectual horizons constantly broadened by Harold Lasswell. There is probably no man in American political science who has brought to bear as many new approaches to the analysis of political behaviour as he has. There is perhaps no better way to get the essence of Lasswell’s thought than in his book, Politics: Who Gets What, When, How.”—Seymour Martin Lipset, Department of Sociology, U.C. Berkeley
Harold Lasswell is one of America's most distinguished political scientists, a man whose work has had enormous impact both in the United States and abroad upon not only his own field but also those of sociology, psychology and psychiatry, economics, law, anthropology, and communications. This collection of essays is the first full-scale effort to deal with the voluminous writings of Lasswell and explore his at once charming and baffling personality which is perhaps inseparable from the inventiveness, unconventionality, and unusual scope of his work. The authors of these essays, many of whom are former students or collaborators, view their subject from a variety of perspectives. What emerges is a full assessment of Lasswell's many-faceted contribution to the social scholarship of his time.
First published in 1930, this classic study of personality types remains vital for the understanding of contemporary public figures. Lasswell's pioneering application of the concepts of clinical psychology to the understanding of powerbrokers in politics, business, and even the church offers insights into the careers of leaders as diverse as Adolf Hitler and Richard Nixon.
As a classic text of the New Haven School of International Law, this book explores human rights and international law in the broadest sense, taking into account social sciences research while embracing all values secured, or consequently fulfilled, or needed to thus be achieved. The re-issuance of this venerable title, unveils this work to a new generation of scholars, students, and practitioners of international law and human rights.
Harold Lasswell is one of America's most distinguished political scientists, a man whose work has had enormous impact both in the United States and abroad upon not only his own field but also those of sociology, psychology and psychiatry, economics, law, anthropology, and communications. This collection of essays is the first full-scale effort to deal with the voluminous writings of Lasswell and explore his at once charming and baffling personality which is perhaps inseparable from the inventiveness, unconventionality, and unusual scope of his work. The authors of these essays, many of whom are former students or collaborators, view their subject from a variety of perspectives. What emerges is a full assessment of Lasswell's many-faceted contribution to the social scholarship of his time.
The most comprehensive bibliography yet published in the public opinion field." —Journalism Quarterly. Besides a selection of the most significant titles from earlier years, this book contains a comprehensive listing of books, pamphlets, and articles which appeared between 1934 and 1943. Originally published in 1946. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
In Power and Society, Harold D. Lasswell collaborates with a brilliant young philosopher, Abraham Kaplan, to formulate basic theoretical concepts and hypotheses of political science, providing a framework for further inquiry into the political process. This is a classic book of political theory written by two of the most influential social scientists of the twentieth century.The authors find their subject matter in interpersonal relations, not abstract institutions or organizations, and their analysis of power is related to human values. They argue that revolution is a part of the political process, and ideology has a role in political affairs. The importance of class, both as social fact and social symbol, is reflected in their detailed analysis, and emphasis on merit rather than rank, skill rather than status, as keystones of democratic rule.The authors note that power is only one of the values and instruments manifested in interpersonal relations; it cannot be understood in abstraction from other values. Lasswell and Kaplan call for the replacement of "power politics," both in theory and in practice, by a conception in which attention is focused on the human consequences of power as the major concern of both political thought and political action. The basic discussions of core concepts in political science make Power and Society of continuing importance to scholars, government officials, and politicians.
Advanced industrial societies are becoming aware of the impact of what they do to the physical and biological environment, and also what that environment does to individuals. In The Signature of Power, Harold D. Lasswell examines the symbolic use people make of their surroundings and the complexity of the way they interpret an altered environment. Transformed habitats can change experiences and behaviors. All people seek to maximize their preferred events, such as power and wealth, when they use the environment be it through glass skyscrapers or Gothic estates. In all cases, physical structures give expression to the perspectives of influential individuals and groups.This volume considers the complex interplay between the material and the symbolic. Physical changes introduced for political purposes by architects, planners, and engineers are guided by the perspectives of designers. These and other interactions in human society are simultaneous acts of communication and collaboration. Regardless of whether physical resources are used to transmit messages, such interactions nevertheless have a degree of communicative impact.Physical structures may be profoundly affected by the purposes, assumptions, and identities of those people who plan or change them. Environmental design, says Lasswell, is an instrument of political power.
In spite of a cascade of criticism launched against the social sciences, they have brought a qualitative improvement in method and theory to the study of human beings and human relations. In the process of developing now commonplace foundations of social research few individuals have exercised a greater role in justifying and enriching social scientific thought and practice than Harold D. Lasswell. Originally published in 1945 as The Analysis of Political Behaviour, this extraordinary volume has been re-titled Legal Education and Public Policy. The selections acknowledge Lasswell's growing anxieties about a world of revolution, violence, and terror, and the frailties of law in addressing such matters. That he did so without recourse to vague and fatuous appeals to world law and world order is an indication of how close to empirical realities he remained. Lasswell's essays fuse the legal and moral in the conduct of public policy. This did not deter him from arguing the case for and ultimate benefits of democratic values as a ground for legal thought. Lasswell singles out the interviewing technique of the psychiatrist, what he calls -the insight interview- in many of these essays. The Freudian world opened up the possibilities of analysis to political scientists who, prior to Lasswell, viewed neuroses in the leaders they studied but without normative points to measure their own biases. Lasswell's essays serve as a landmark in accelerating rapid advance in social science research. It allowed for the evolution of political behavior that has catapulted the field to a major dimension of political science studies in leadership and mass persuasion.
Harold D. Lasswell is arguably the quintessential face of political science to the larger public of the past century. However, there is a side to Lasswell less well known, but of special importance in this day and age: the place of the profession of politics as an academic activity. This book, written at the start of the culture wars thirty years ago, outlines the basic core position of political science practitioners. It helps to explain why the field kept its collective cool, when other social science professionals veered to more extreme activist positions.The Future of Political Science grew out of the phenomenally rapid expansion of the study of government in the United States and elsewhere. The study of professionalism among physical scientists, lawyers, engineers, etc. was not matched by such internal examination within the social sciences until much later. Lasswell's overview centered on developments in the United States. There unfettered study of government reached unprecedented heights in the final stage of the twentieth century. The key concept of this volume, one that continues to inform discourse, is the relationship of political science as a mechanism for the study and teaching of the political system to the field as a tool of the Establishment. This concern grew in the wake of a variety of scandals and secret support sponsored by both government and non-government organizations alike.The Future of Political Science covers areas ranging from membership size and disparities, intervention scenarios in world events, the nature of creativity in political research collaboration in projects with the other social sciences, and the location of scientific centers of gravity in the study of politics. Because of Lasswell's works we have a field of the political science of knowledge as well as the sociology of knowledge.Harold D. Lasswell served as Ford Foundation Professor of the Social Sciences at Yale University, Distinguished Professor of Policy Sciences at Joh
A classic book on propaganda technique proposes a general theory of the strategy and tactics of propaganda. This classic book on propaganda technique focuses on American, British, French, and German experience in World War I. The book sets forth a simple classification of various psychological materials used to produce certain specific results and proposes a general theory of strategy and tactics for the manipulation of these materials. In an introduction (coauthored by Jackson A. Giddens) written for this edition, Harold Lasswell notes that this study was partially an exercise in the discovery of appropriate theory. It raised the crucial questions of how to classify the content of propaganda—for instance, a distinction is made between "value demands" (war aims, war guilt, and casting the enemy as evil personified) and "expectations" (the illusion of victory)—and how to summarize the procedures employed in organizing and carrying out propaganda operations. Propaganda Technique in World War I deals primarily with problems of internal administration and lateral coordination rather than with the relationship between policymakers and propagandists. However, Jackson Giddens enumerates procedures in the book that illustrate an underlying assumption that decision makers were deeply involved in propaganda and influenced by considerations of public opinion. He takes the study of propaganda further by elaborating on the nature and meaning of the category of "war aims" and its relation to the propagandist, for this, more than any other category of content, "is the catalyst of transnational political action." Giddens's exploration of the development of a comprehensive theory of propaganda adds another dimension to Lasswell's study while confirming its value as outstanding groundwork for continuing research.
This book concerns the wanting, getting, and giving ofpower. Recent advances in medicine, sociology, and psychologyhave deepened our understanding of the motives,skills, and experience that operate between leaders andthose who are led. Since power is about decision-making,it figures not only in offi cial institutions but in otherorganizations, including political parties, pressure groups,trade associations, business enterprises, trade unions, andmany other types of organizations. A general theory of the political personality is set forthhere. Lasswell describes the process by which power becomesa value of fi rst importance and the way appropriateskills in exercising power are acquired. He shows thatspecial political types such as agitators or administratorsare related to basic types of character that contribute tohow they lead. Finally, his analysis off ers original perspectivesto understand democratic leadership. Lasswell offers definite suggestions for perfecting"self-observatories" in national and world affairs and forforming democratic personalities, selecting and trainingdemocratic leaders, and reducing destructive conflicts inhuman relationships. Power and Personality followed theauthor's 1930 work Psychopathology and Politics, whichwas widely hailed for its pioneering approach. Power andPersonality reevaluated the entire issue of the relationshipbetween psychology and politics in the light of subsequentexperience and scientifi c developments since publicationof that earlier work. Lasswell's ideas continue to carrygreat weight and persuasiveness. Harold D. Lasswell served as FordFoundation Professor of the Social Sciencesat Yale University, DistinguishedProfessor of Policy Sciences at John JayCollege of the City University of NewYork, and as professor of political scienceat the University of Chicago. He was apast president of the American PoliticalScience Association and author of manybooks covering the full range of political and policy research. Peter deLeon is director of the doctorate program and professorat the School of Public Aff airs, University of Colorado, Denver.In 2000 he received the distinguished Harold D. Lasswell Awardfrom the Policy Studies Organization. He is the author ofThinking about Political Corruption, Democracy and the PolicySciences, and Advice and Consent.
The policy-oriented approach of the New Haven School is widely recognized as a major contribution to the legal and jurisprudential debate on interpretation. Eschewing mechanical textual methods, on the one hand, and anti-textual, solipsistic methods, on the other, the New Haven School has developed a comprehensive and systematic approach to the interpretation of human communication. Drawing upon psychology, legal experience, and communications theory, of which Lasswell was a founder, the authors have developed a theoretically cogent and practical method of interpretation. In the course of doing it, they survey the existing literature, showing its problems. In addition to the original text of The Interpretation of Agreements, this edition includes a new introduction, in which developments since the appearance of the book are examined and appraised, and three important papers which elaborate the theory developed here, including Professor McDougal's scathing critique of the last major international conference on the law of treaties.
This book concerns the wanting, getting, and giving of power. Recent advances in medicine, sociology, and psychology have deepened our understanding of the motives, skills, and experience that operate between leaders and those who are led. Since power is about decision-making, it figures not only in offi cial institutions but in other organizations, including political parties, pressure groups, trade associations, business enterprises, trade unions, and many other types of organizations.A general theory of the political personality is set forth here. Lasswell describes the process by which power becomes a value of first importance and the way appropriate skills in exercising power are acquired. He shows that special political types such as agitators or administrators are related to basic types of character that contribute to how they lead. Finally, his analysis offers original perspectives to understand democratic leadership.Lasswell offers definite suggestions for perfecting self-observatories in national and world affairs and for forming democratic personalities, selecting and training democratic leaders, and reducing destructive conflicts in human relationships. Power and Personality followed the author's 1930 work Psychopathology and Politics, which was widely hailed for its pioneering approach. Power and Personality reevaluated the entire issue of the relationship between psychology and politics in the light of subsequent experience and scientific developments since publication of that earlier work. Lasswell's ideas continue to carry great weight and persuasiveness.
First published in 1930, this classic study of personality types remains vital for the understanding of contemporary public figures. Lasswell's pioneering application of the concepts of clinical psychology to the understanding of powerbrokers in politics, business, and even the church offers insights into the careers of leaders as diverse as Adolf Hitler and Richard Nixon.
Lasswell introduced the developmental construct of the garrison state as an antithesis of the civilian state more than fifty years ago, suggesting it would evolve from the industrial state in response to technical achievement. His original thoughts on the garrison state construct remain applicable today. This important volume brings together four major essays written by Lasswell.
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