Blog #1

Human beings have an innate tendency to simplify and categorize the world around them. According to the Lave and March article on modeling, “Man is capable of producing more complex behavior than he is capable of understanding” (9). So, not only do we as humans have this yearning to break things down to make them more easily digestible, it appears that we don’t have a choice in the matter, because we couldn’t fully understand our behavior anyway. Is this because of limitations in understanding the human psyche? Is this because of the impossibility of dissecting infinite causal chain preceding our actions as well as following them? Regardless of why our behavior is impossible to fully comprehend, according to Professor King, specifics are not favored in political science. Instead, the generality of a theory is more valuable than a more accurate, more specific model. This isn’t to say details aren’t important, just that they need to be sacrificed in certain situations in order to understand patterns in states’ and citizens’ behavior.

This process of simplification is demonstrated in Weber’s article. In introducing the three “pure” types of legitimate leaders, Weber states “the pure types are rarely found in reality” (32). This is to say that the article describes phenomena that hold true generally, but do not completely describe any leaders that exist in actuality. It seems then, in our study of models and real life examples, we will have to learn to balance the two, as well as use each side to shed light on one another.