Policy Sciences 35: 285^304, 2002. G 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
285
Structural and functional information * STEVEN R. BROWN Kent State University
Abstract. Fernandes and Simon propose to examine decision making in complex and ambiguous situations by inviting various professionals (architects, doctors, engineers, and lawyers) to contemplate a paradoxical case, but the thoughts which this exercise generates are then summarized in terms of categories proposed a priori (structural information). A functional approach, by way of contrast, endeavors to examine a phenomenon as closely as possible in terms of its intrinsic character. An alternative is presented using Q methodology and factor analysis as a way to reveal functional responses to the same decision making scenario employed by Fernandes and Simon.
Functionalism in science The University of Chicago was a major center of functionalism in the human sciences in the ¢rst decades of the twentieth century, and students Herbert Simon and Harold Lasswell must have received heavy doses of it. In Lasswell’s case, the in£uence took hold and left an indelible mark: As he and Myres McDougal, the prime architects of the policy sciences, made clear, ‘It should be unequivocally stated that our approach is in the functionalist tradition’ (Lasswell and McDougal, 1992: p. 388), a tradition which they sought to improve upon through introduction of procedures designed to facilitate systematic description and comparison, and which was subsequently referred to as ‘dynamic functionalism’ (Holmberg, 1969). Simon, on the other hand, seems to have been inoculated along the way, for one can look largely in vain throughout the titles of his books and papers (on the Internet at http://www.psy.cmu.edu/ psy/faculty/hsimon/hsimon.html) for any sign of interest. One of the few exceptions is a paper on ‘The Functional Equivalence of Problem Solving Skills’ (Simon, 1975), but ‘functional’ in this context turns out simply to mean ‘alternative ways’ (i.e., functionally equivalent ways) of learning a simple task. The same can be said of the early pages of The Sciences of the Arti¢cial (Simon, 1981: p. 15), where it is noted that behavior can adapt to the task environment by following a variety of comparable paths. In their Organizations, however, March and Simon (1958: pp. 7^8) make a signi¢cant distinction between functions in a mathematical vs. a biological or sociological sense, and this is a distinction worth further consideration. In mathematics, the term function refers to a relationship between entities such that the value of one of them is dependent upon the value of the other, as when we say that the area of a circle (A) is a function of the radius (r), such that A = pr 2. Causality is not implied, but outside mathematics it sometimes is, as
286 in causal modeling or when we declare increases in income to be a function of education. In other cases, it may be known or suspected that there is a relationship between variables, but its character is not known. Ekeland (1993: p. 40) provides an illustration: 1; 0; 1; 1; 1; 1; 1; 0; 1; 1; 1; 0 This could be a set of random digits generated by a series of coin £ips (heads = 1, tails = 0), but the mathematician often seeks for underlying order in randomness and chaos. Ekeland makes this particular illustration transparent by beginning with a constitutive law, Xn +1 = 1 ^ mXn 2, in which the parameter m is assigned the value of 1.5 and an arbitrary beginning is made with the initial value of X 0 = 0. Consequently, X1 = 1 ^ (1.5) (02 ) = 1 X2 = 1 ^ (1.5) (12 ) = ^0.5 X3 = 1 ^ (1.5) (^0.52 ) = 0.625 X4 = 1 ^ (1.5) (0.6252 ) = 0.4140625
?1 ?0 ?1 ?1
And so forth. Then, if Xn is replaced by 0 when Xn 5 0 and by 1 if Xn 4 0, the above series of 1s and 0s, previously thought to be random, stands revealed as functionally invariant; i.e., the series is exposed as a rigid transformation based on the function 1 ^ mXn 2 plus the adoption of a few simple and arbitrary rules. Transformations, of course, need not be of a numerical kind. Bion (1965), for instance, provides an example of a tray containing marbles of various diameters, on the basis of which a second tray is composed that has as many red marbles as marbles of 1@ diameter in the ¢rst tray, with as many blue marbles as marbles of 12@ diameter in the ¢rst tray, and so forth. The connection between the two trays is invariant, but this will not be obvious to the observer ignorant of the function. One of the roles of mathematics is to render such functions apparent; i.e., as Devlin (1998: p. 10) has said, to make the invisible visible. If a function in mathematics merely states a relationship, functionalism in the social and life sciences more often implies causality, as when Radcli¡eBrown (1952) states that ‘the function of any recurrent activity, such as the punishment of a crime, or a funeral ceremony, is the part it plays in the social life as a whole and therefore the contribution which it makes to the maintenance of the structural continuity’ (p. 180), or when it is noted that ‘the function of the heart is to circulate the blood’ (March and Simon, 1958: p. 8). Hempel (1959: p. 277) softens the causal edge somewhat by noting that functions do not refer to causes which ‘bring about’ e¡ects so much as ends which determine the course of events, as when Malinowski (1960) states that ‘function means ... always the satisfaction of a need...’ (p. 159). It is in this sense that Almond (1960) refers to the necessary functions of all political systems: socialization and recruitment, interest articulation and aggregation, and communication; i.e., functions in the sense of purposes served.1
287 As noted, Lasswell, although a sympathetic observer of Simon’s work, was in£uenced by this school of thought, and there is evidence that he used the term function in a less causal and (dare we say?) more functional way that was swayed by pragmatism (especially that of John Dewey2) and closer in a certain sense to its use in mathematics. In many respects, functionalism provides a set of concepts and operations that are a closer ¢t with reality, and which therefore a¡ord the observer an advantageous alternative to the more conventional concepts in wide circulation within the culture. As Lasswell and McDougal (1971) state: It is of the utmost importance that the scholar create and maintain a functional theory which enables him realistically to perform the indispensable intellectual tasks in reference to the £ow of authoritative decisions and the accompaniment of conventional theories employed to explain and justify decisions. If he permits the perspectives and communicative signs of the participants in legal and social process, which are a part of the data he is observing, to dominate his own perspectives and instruments of inquiry and communication, the consequences can only be intellectual confusion, distortion in perception and report, and loss of the enlightenment toward which his scholarly specialization is directed. (p. 380; Lasswell and McDougal, 1992: p. 22) By avoiding taking an extreme position, Lasswell and McDougal replace contentiousness about functional causality with a view of functionality as a tool; i.e., as a set of concepts that cut nature at the joints, so to speak, so as not to be misled by the approximations to reality typically found in folklore and other conventional theories. This is especially important in the ¢eld of law where scholars must be able to stand above the fray so as to be able to ‘clarify and identify for the di¡erent participants in community process the common interests which they themselves may not have been able to perceive’ (1971: pp. 380^ 381; 1992: p. 23). Aside from its unique regard for the common interest, therefore, the policy science justi¢cation for a functional set of categories seems little di¡erent from Newton’s (1729/1934), who, in de¢ning time, space, place, and motion, stated that... ...I must observe, that the common people conceive those quantities under no other notions but from the relation they bear to sensible objects. And thence arise certain prejudices, for the removing of which it will be convenient to distinguish them into absolute and relative, true and apparent, mathematical and common. (p. 6) Newton therefore distinguished absolute time (functional), which he also called duration, from apparent time (conventional), the latter being expressed in ‘sensible objects’ such as days and months, the imprecision of which astronomers had to remedy so they could ‘measure the celestial motions by a more accurate
288 time’ (p. 8). Incidentally, Lasswell (1963) may have been looking over Newton’s shoulder when, in considering the fundamental energy of the universe, he also recommended ‘ ‘‘duration,’’ an operation that leaves the term ‘‘time’’ free to perform its everyday task of designating perceived [i.e., sensible] sequences’ (p. 222). Illustrative of the functional approach of the policy sciences is Lasswell’s The Decision Process: Seven Categories of Functional Analysis (1956). Ordinary citizens in the U.S. context are accustomed to thinking of policy making in conventional terms, such as the presidency, Congress, the courts, and the bureaucracy, for these are the ‘sensible objects’ with which we come into contact, as mediated by mass communication processes. For instance, we see the President on television, proposing courses of action which members of Congress may then take to the podium to support or oppose, but closer inspection reveals greater complexity, which Lasswell endeavored to encapsulate in a logically comprehensive set of seven functions (each incorporating subfunctions) that are not named or formally provided for within the conventions of the American constitutional system: Intelligence Promotion Prescription Invocation Application
gathering, processing, and distributing information mobilizing support for and recommending policy alternatives enacting general rules provisionally characterizing conduct in terms of prescriptions providing a ¢nal characterization of conduct in terms of prescriptions Termination ending prescriptions Appraisal assessing the successes and failures of policy in light of goals The intelligence function, for instance, requires other subfunctions (such as gathering, processing, and distributing) in order to ful¢ll its purpose. Public agencies often specialize in one or another function. The Central Intelligence Agency, for example, obviously spends most of its time and energy accumulating and evaluating information, but on occasion it has made its preferred course of action known (although prohibited by law from making formal recommendations) and has even taken unauthorized action on its own initiative, and certainly within its ranks it prescribes standards of conduct, discontinues policies, and appraises operations. This serves as a reminder that all decisional functions and subfunctions are apt to appear from time to time in any setting ^ from nation-state to kinship group ^ and that the policy scientist cannot rest content with observing conventional o⁄ces and roles, which may appear in in¢nite variety, but must also monitor functions. This is especially the case when conventional roles assume the status of marionettes, with functions being performed at the other end of the strings. Nor are these functions restricted to the public sphere, but are to be found as well in the civic order. Intelligence is gathered by the press, for instance, and interest groups as well as individual members of the public routinely express
289 their preferences to public o⁄cials and participants having no o⁄cial status through lobbying, letters, electronic mail, and other channels. In generalizing the functions, Reisman (1999) demonstrates that social norms (prescriptions) are enforced through the invocation of sanctions, as when faux pas are met with disapproving glares that serve to reimpose community standards. In sum, the decision functions constitute a comprehensive list of activities which are involved in varying degrees in any and all decisional contexts from micro to macro levels, and these ‘multivalued models of the social process,’ as Lasswell (1961) referred to them, ‘are more searching intellectual devices’ (p. 113) than other models, especially those conventional categories which are borne by the culture. Functionalism pervades Lasswell’s writings, and he regarded the confrontation of conventional categories with functional ones as ‘perhaps the most distinctive contribution of political science, jurisprudence, and other social disciplines’ (Lasswell, 1961: p. 114). He identi¢es three such functions in his paper on communication (Lasswell, 1948): Communication provides a surveillance function by keeping track of events impacting community values, a correlational function by organizing responses to events in the environment, and a transmission function by conveying the social heritage to the succeeding generation (for further details, see Cade, 1975). And in his Psychopathology and Politics (1930), he draws a sharp distinction between institutional and functional de¢nitions, the former being associated with conventional terms (e.g., statesman, boss) and the latter with more operational terms (e.g., agitator, administrator, theorist), i.e., with terms applicable in all intra- and extra-state contexts in which ‘ ‘‘wills’’ are in con£ict’ (p. 44). As conventionally understood, statesmen reside in the public realm and emphasize the common good rather than particular interests, and yet businessmen who operate in the private sector and intend to remain commercially viable for long periods of time must be concerned for the good of the community in which they intend to transact business; and whereas private advantage is conventionally thought to motivate captains of industry, political bosses are similarly motivated. The institutional and functional are not coterminous, hence the need to supplement institutional analyses with analyses based on more concrete functions, such as those associated with inciting change (agitation), coordinating activities (administration), and re£ecting at abstract levels (theorizing). It is important for the subsequent demonstration and discussion to note that structures are typically discussed alongside functions, as in the above-mentioned ‘The Structure and Function of Communication in Society,’ in which Lasswell (1948) divides the structure of communication in terms of his wellknown formula: Who says what in which channel to whom with what e¡ect?, in which the key terms are associated, respectively, with control analysis, content analysis, media analysis, audience analysis, and e¡ect analysis. Biologically speaking, structures and performances are inseparable, as Piaget (1970) has also observed, and they are inseparable because structures are governed from within by functional activities of one sort or another: Without functions there
290 would be no structures; or, to repeat Radcli¡e-Brown (1952), functional activity contributes to ‘the maintenance of the structural continuity’ (p. 180). Hence, as Piaget further remarks, ‘if the facts oblige us to attribute cognitive structures to a subject, it is for our purposes su⁄cient to de¢ne this subject as the center of functional activity’ (p. 69), and the same might be said of other structures: They presuppose functions. However, much of contemporary social science serves to obscure functions by imposing structural constraints a priori, as exempli¢ed in the structuring of experiments. As MacKay (1969) has said in this regard: The design of an experiment is essentially the speci¢cation a priori of a pattern, of categories in terms of which alone the result can be described. All the events of the experiment must ¢nd a place in one or other of these... . Since each independent category enables us to introduce a measure of di¡erentiation ^ i.e. of form or structure ^ into our account of a result, we can regard knowledge thereof as providing us with prior or structural information. (p. 178) Modern experimentation, as MacKay reminds us, was introduced by R. A. Fisher, and among its features is the superimposition of categories as constraints on experience (such as providing or withholding sugar for study participants’ co¡ee) and the impact of these constraints on subsequent behavior (e.g., number of cups of co¡ee consumed), the latter necessarily relying on the former for an explanation. It was no doubt something of this concern that prompted Wittgenstein (1921/1971) to state that the categories of a theory are like a net superimposed upon reality and that ‘laws ... are about the net and not about what the net describes’ (prop. 6.35).3 But what is required is functional rather than structural information; i.e., what is required is an understanding of the way in which individuals actually relate to the world from their own standpoint (as best this can be determined) rather than an understanding of their conduct as grasped via conceptual categories imposed on or constraints external to that conduct. As MacKay (1969) earlier noted, any approach to understanding the relation between knowledge and values ‘must start ... by probing the respective goal-hierarchies for the disparity of priorities which has made the conceptual framework of the world turn out so di¡erently for each individual’ (p. 114); or, as Jones (2001) has more recently expressed it, ‘It is not enough to know the objective incentives people face in interacting with their environments. We must know also how [they] think about politics’ (p. ix). And, it might be added, this ‘probing’ into how people think must be in terms that are functional to the understandings of the persons so probed.
291 A functional solution to the Fernandes-Simon Problem What to do about Hungeria Fernandes and Simon (1999) are interested in how professionals who have been subject to di¡erent intellectual training (doctors, engineers, architects, and lawyers) reach understandings and make decisions in complex and ambiguous situations. To illustrate their point, they selected two persons each from these four professions and invited them to take the following role: As a senior policy maker in your country you are called upon to advise an international organization about what is needed to solve a speci¢c policy problem in a country called Hungeria. Please explain what other information you might need to solve this problem and then what your recommendations would be. (p. 231) And the hypothetical problem was as follows: Hungeria, with a population of 26 million, has nearly four million people who exist below the poverty line and around one million people who are undernourished and hungry because they do not have su⁄cient food to eat. In estimating the numbers of people going hungry the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) uses as its criterion the energy intake level at which a person can barely survive which is a daily calorie intake below 1.2 basal metabolic rate (around 2100 calories). Hungeria has a gross domestic product (GDP) of $638 billion and is a net food exporting country. The birth rate in Hungeria is 15 per thousand and the death rate is 8 per thousand. (pp. 231^232) The authors purposely built ambiguities and contradictions into the situation ^ How could a food-exporting country with a GDP of $638 billion also have 15% of its population in poverty? ^ and these ambiguities were designed to stimulate problem-solving and evidence-seeking activities. Fernandes and Simon give only a few examples of their participants’ reactions, which were duplicated to some extent when the same protocol was administered in the present study. The following comments, for example, were among those expressed by one of this study’s participants: How can this country have insu⁄cient food when it is exporting food?... . What kind of food is it exporting?... . Under what conditions are people not having access to food?... . What kinds of jobs are the people doing that are not allowing them access to food? Are they not earning enough money?... . Is there a problem of transportation?... . I would like to know the UN criteria for proper nourishment... . The country has a fairly high GDP... . What is the role of the government, and how is it structured? ... . What is the
292 role of the private sector?... . Can the FAO help us, for example, technically and in the distribution of food?... . Are these 4 million people an ethnic minority? If so, are they denied access, either intentionally or indirectly? Are they like the gypsies, roaming minorities who tend not to have access to food by virtue of their lifestyle?... . What is the nature of the ruling elite, or establishment?... . The wealthy in the country may be enjoying the bene¢ts of an economic upswing, but this doesn’t mean that it trickles down... . I would study the situation and get the ¢gures... . I would seek help from the FAO... . In the interim, I would try to generate some self-help schemes. And so on in large volumes, including questions (‘What kind of food is it exporting?’), observations and assertions (‘The country has a fairly high GDP’), and occasional recommendations (‘I would seek help from the FAO’). Fernandes and Simon used a set of nine actions and nine meta-actions (e.g., recall, read, assume, infer, evaluate, etc.) 4 as a way to inject order into the rambling jumble of free associations which their participants produced, and the transcripts were then encoded using a software package (Protocol Analyst’s Workbench) which calculated percentages and frequencies associated with the various categories. Correlations were then calculated among the eight professionals, who generally cohered as a presumed consequence of their similar training. Among the conclusions reached were that professionals use actions more often than meta-actions, that lawyers and engineers are more inclined to issue recommendations, that architects tend to rely more on queries and evaluations, and the like ^ all in terms of the a priori categories asserted initially, i.e., in terms of structural information.
A functional alternative Q methodology refers to a conceptual framework and set of measurement procedures specialized to the study of subjectivity (Brown, 1980; Stephenson, 1953), and it begins much as Fernandes and Simon did, namely, at the phenomenological level of raw verbiage engendered under relatively unconstrained conditions. And just as Fernandes and Simon ¢nd it necessary to organize their verbal assemblage (into categories of actions and meta-actions), so too in Q methodology are the pristine verbalizations placed in categories as a preliminary step; i.e., without the further assumption, never abandoned by Fernandes and Simon, that these a priori structural categories will also provide leverage at the analytic stage. There is an additional step in Q methodology, absent in the FernandesSimon strategy, and it is one that brings observation into closer proximity of participants’ actual functioning. In order to prepare for this step, a sample is taken from the population of verbalizations generated, and this is done by proposing ‘e¡ects’ (much like the Fernandes-Simon e¡ects of inferring, reading, recommending, etc.) which serve as criteria for selecting elements for
293 Table 1. Q-sample structure. Values
Power Enlightenment Wealth Well-being Skill A¡ection Respect Rectitude
Actions Query
Assertion, Assumption
Recommendation
16 26 10 22 17 36 4 40 14 32 1 25 13 29 7 41
9 23 19 30 2 27 12 38 6 21
3 39 5 31 11 20 18 24 15 34 8 37 28
33 35
Numbers in the cells refer to statements; e.g., 16: ‘What is the political situation?’ (value = power, action = query). Statements appear in the Appendix.
further experimentation. Such a design is shown in Table 1, which utilizes some of Fernandes and Simon’s categories, which are given more breadth by inclusion (through cross-classi¢cation) of Lasswell’s value categories (Lasswell and Kaplan, 1950: pp. 55^56). In other words, each of the hundreds of statements about Hungeria that were generated during the interviews was initially placed in one of the 8 (values) 6 3 (actions) = 24 cells in Table 1, of which the following are examples: 26. Are the demographics of the elites di¡erent from those of the hungry population? (power/query) 19. There is a need to verify the existing numbers for accuracy. (enlightenment/assertion) 15. There is a need for job training programs. (skill/recommendation) For brevity of demonstration, not all of Fernandes and Simon’s thought elements were used since the intent was not to replicate their ¢ndings; rather, to reveal the value added consequent to adopting a functional strategy. Ultimately, a sample of statements was selected (N = 41), the intent of which was an equitable representation of all the e¡ect combinations in Table 1; however, no statements were found that expressed the value of a¡ection in the mode of an assumption or assertion, nor were there any recommendations that implicated rectitude. This phase of statement categorization is of considerable importance to Fernandes and Simon, hence their reliance on coding reliability (p. 233). In Q methodology, by way of contrast, there is little interest in the meanings with which the investigator endows the statements, and consequently little interest in
294 reliability. What is of interest, however, are the meanings and signi¢cance which participants attribute to the statements. The experimental step missing in Fernandes and Simon is rendered explicit through Q sorting, which consists of instructing participants to rank the statements along a continuum from +4 to ”4 so as to indicate which of the statements were very much on their minds (when cogitating about Hungeria) and which couldn’t have been farther from their minds. The selection of responders was left to members of a graduate seminar, who served as interviewers, hence was less focused than Fernandes and Simon’s; nevertheless, interviewers were encouraged to ¢nd doctors, lawyers, engineers, or architects if they could, and some of these professions were included in the n = 37 participants who responded. Most, however, were policy analysts, in fact or in training. As in the Fernandes-Simon study, each participant’s response pattern was correlated with those of all other participants, but there is a major di¡erence in the entities undergoing correlational analysis. In Fernandes and Simon’s case, the elements were ‘cognitive chunks’ categorized a priori in terms of their status as actions and meta-actions, which were conceived as objective characteristics with proven reliability and connected to human thought by way of postulation. In the extant case, by way of contrast, the scores undergoing statistical treatment are those assigned directly by the persons themselves, from their own subjective points of view as they are cogitating upon the hypothetical situation; accordingly, the scores re£ect actual thought as it is occurring, i.e., not by postulation, but by direct representation. Fernandes and Simon’s event categories are therefore unequivocally structural in character (in MacKay’s sense, supra), whereas the event categories in this study originate from re£ective thought itself and are therefore unequivocally functional in character. It is unnecessary to report the particulars of the statistical analysis. Su⁄ce it to say that the Q-sort responses were factor analyzed, and that the analysis revealed four distinct perspectives, which are referred to below as factors A, B, C, and D; i.e., although a beginning was made with 37 individual responses, it turned out that the participants distributed the statements in only four basically di¡erent patterns, each indicative of a distinctly di¡erent mode of relating to the problem of Hungeria. These four perspectives are displayed in the Appendix, but before attending to them it is important to note that one of the features of factor analysis is that it permits the analyst (through the process of factor rotation) to search for a theoretically meaningful solution (Thompson, 1962), and in the instant case an e¡ort was made to position the factors in such a way as to align them with speci¢c professions, so as to bring the results of this study into conformity with Fernandes and Simon’s study ^ i.e., an e¡ort was made to ¢nd a factor solution that would place doctors in one group, architects in another, and so forth. This venture failed miserably. The ¢rst factor, for instance, was populated with (among others) medical personnel, an engineer, and lawyers, and this serves to verify the assertions made previously ^ that these ‘goal-hierarchies’ (MacKay), or perspectives (Lasswell), are functions of the participants’ own priorities in trying to cope with the complexity and ambiguity
295 of the Hungeria problem, and that conventional categories (such as lawyers, engineers, etc.) are apt to ¢t the contours only imperfectly, if at all, and must give way to demonstrably-functional categories such as factors A, B, C, and D. The internal organizations of the factors are of only passing interest, save that they reveal the intentionalities which account for the factor structure; mere thumbnail sketches will therefore be presented. The data upon which the following interpretations are based are contained in the factor scores (see Appendix), and in the case of factor A, it is clear from the pattern of scores ^ which, recall, range from +4 (important) to ”4 (unimportant) ^ that the individuals comprising this group (including the medical and legal participants) are concerned mainly with advancing possible solutions to Hungeria’s apparent problem (scores to the left are for factors A to D, respectively, A in boldface): +4 +2 ”2 +1 (28) I would recommend giving temporary aid to the poor, then provide work programs with incentives toward self-su⁄ciency. +3 ”1
+3
0 ”2 (1)
Have e¡orts been made to contact local food distributors to donate excess foods?
0 ”4 ”3 (3)
I would seek help from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
+1 ”3 ”3 ”3 (31) There is a need to improve their knowledge of nutrition through the various state services. Factor A participants are the Promoters in that they are predisposed to read the situation, to accept the problems described as real, to begin making suggestions about how to alleviate them, and where possible to link up with allies (such as the FAO in this case) who might be similarly disposed. Even statement 31, which hardly registers any importance for the Promoters (at +1), stands in stark contrast to its strong rejection by factors B, C, and D (at ”3). Participants comprising factor B view the world somewhat di¡erently ^ as governed by elites and such structural factors as social class and economics (B’s scores in boldface): ”2 +4
0 +1 (36) What is the distribution of wealth in the country?
”3 +3
0 ”1 (29) What are the class levels in the economy, and how many people are in each one?
”3 +3 +1 +2 (26) Are the demographics of the elites di¡erent from those of the hungry population?
296 These are the Macro-Structuralists (or perhaps modern-day social constructionists), who have a top-down view of society and of the individual ‘as a fragment of a (derived) culture pattern, as a marionette dancing on the strings of (rei¢ed) culture forms,’ as Dollard (1935: p. 5) might have hyperbolized the situation. It is likely more than coincidence that several of the individuals comprising factor B are students of international relations and/or are students from Asia and the Middle East, hence are more apt to approach problems such as Hungeria from a systemic standpoint. If factor A has its shirt sleeves rolled up and is prepared to try to solve Hungeria’s problems, factor B’s queries reveal a desire to resolve paradoxes and to understand the genesis of these problems. Factor C, like B, also asks many questions (which contrasts with factor A’s promotion of solutions), but whereas B’s questions were designed to unmask behind-the-scenes elite, class, and other sinister in£uences responsible for Hungeria’s ostensible misery, factor C’s questions revolve around the veracity of the surface evidence itself. These participants are consequently referred to as the Veri¢cationists: 0 ”2 +4
0 (19) There is a need to verify the existing numbers for accuracy.
”1 +1 +3 ”1 (4)
”2 ”3 +3
How does Hungeria compare on poverty rates with other countries?
0 (10) Are these statistics accurate or are they being fudged? What is the reliability of the statistics?
The Veri¢cationists can scarcely believe their eyes as they read the Hungeria pro¢le and, unlike the Promoters and Macro-Structuralists, are inclined not to take the data as presented at face value. Data fabrication may be suspected, and the Veri¢cationists want to know how Hungeria compares to other countries. In contrast to the Promoters, therefore, the Veri¢cationists are reluctant to deploy resources, as the scores for the following statements indicate: +3 +2 ”3
0 (11) There needs to be a combination of education, loans, technical help, and dollars.
+2 ”1 ”3
0 (18) Subsidize school breakfast and lunch programs for children.
Among the participants associated with factor C were the only social worker in the study and the only representative of the ¢eld of criminal justice, both of whom must often deal with evidence designed to be misleading; however, policy analysts and practitioners from the ¢eld of education also populated this perspective. The suspiciousness implied in the Veri¢cationist stance may therefore re£ect a personal predisposition rather than being the result of pro-
297 fessional training, a possibility not entertained by Fernandes and Simon and not recoverable via their method. To assert that structure and function may not coincide does not imply that they are necessarily out of kilter either, and before going on to a consideration of factor D it may be instructive in this regard to reexamine functional factors A, B, and C in light of the structural categories displayed in Table 1. Again skipping unnecessary statistical details, analysis a⁄rms that the Promoters of factor A gave signi¢cantly more emphasis to policy statements than to statements of assertion or assumption; that the Macro-Structuralists of factor B assigned signi¢cantly higher scores to query statements than to policy statements, and also higher scores to power than to enlightenment propositions; and that the Veri¢cationists of factor C, like B, also gave higher scores to queries than to policies.5 Such is the logic of hypothesis testing, which begins with causes conjectured a priori and ends with structural information that can be explained in no other terms than those self-same causes. What this logic fails to anticipate in this instance is that participants sharing the factor B perspective, in giving query statements substantially higher scores, do so as a way to implicate the suspected in£uences of elites and social class in Hungeria; and that those persons comprising factor C, in also giving query statements signi¢cantly higher scores, do so as a way to question the authenticity of the facts themselves. These e¡ects were not postulated in advance; indeed, they were not even envisioned. Rather, they were inadvertently brought to light by permitting the natural decisionmaking processes to operate, and are therefore functional to those processes. As shown above, the structural categories in Table 1 manifested themselves to varying degrees in factors A, B, and C, but none of those a priori categories operated within factor D; i.e., participants comprising factor D displayed no more reliance on queries than on policy statements, nor on one set of value statements than on any other. These participants therefore stand revealed as a functional group that cannot be explained by drawing upon the available structural terms, and yet the factor D way of thinking about Hungeria demonstrably exists, hence requires explanation in its own terms. A feature of group D, like C, is that it is not sure that it can take the available data at face value, but D’s incredulity has a di¡erent origin: +1 +1 +2 +4 (9)
I worry that immediate aid and food, if funneled through ruling elites, might not reach those in need. If this is a diplomatic problem, then we need to make sure help ends up in the right hands.
”3
0 ”3 +4 (35) Four million people is too many people to be poor.
”2
0
0 +3 (2)
The GDP indicates that this is not a poor country, especially given the size of the population.
”3 +1 ”1 +3 (27) 15% below the poverty line seems high.
298 Like the Veri¢cationists, persons constituting factor D can’t quite believe their eyes ^ note the disbelief in nos. 2, 27, and 35 ^ and are entertaining the hypothesis that there may be some insidious or otherwise obscure forces at work within Hungeria that might be misleading us as to what is really occurring. On this account, we might tentatively refer to this group as the Thematicists, in Holton’s (1973) sense; i.e., as those who are examining the facts before them, who experience these facts as opaque or at least ambiguous, and who are endeavoring to penetrate surface impressions in order to gain access to ‘what’s really going on.’ Holton paraphrases Freud, who, ‘after surveying the overwhelmingly unfavorable evidence standing against the central thesis in his book, would say in e¡ect, ‘‘But one must not be misled by the evidence’’ ’ (p. 60), and factor D’s stance has something of this skepticism in it. Factor D is important in another way, not matched by Fernandes and Simon, in that my own position is substantially correlated with it (r = 0.52). Einstein made us aware that there is no location anywhere in the universe from which to secure an unencumbered view of the whole, and that it is therefore imperative to specify the coordinates of the observer within the observational ¢eld. This is analogous to the cardinal directive of the policy sciences to clarify perspective, including taking into account ‘the intention of the communicator ... in applying our distinction between ‘‘conventional’’ and ‘‘functional’’ usage’ (Lasswell and McDougal, 1992: p. 760). Scientists agree that the appraisal of propositions requires comparison, and the value-added by functionalism is in instituting the principle that stabilization of reference frame has to be established ¢rst (Holmberg, 1969: p. 264). Incorporating one’s own vantagepoint into the mix is not all there is to value clari¢cation, of course, but it does have the advantage of alerting the investigator to the diversity of reference frames, to the scienti¢c and normative value of clarifying one’s standpoint, and to the potential hazards of over- and under-interpretation.
Concluding Remarks A goal of science is to see the world as clearly as possible so as to be able to take the surest steps toward the realization of intentions, and one aspect of this striving is to create and maintain a clear and constantly-updated map of the ¢eld of activity. Functionalism in part emerged from this desire and from dissatisfactions that arose from reliance on concepts that may have had currency in the culture but which often served ends other than clarity of vision. In this respect, structural categories run the risk of producing information that is misleading due to the imposition of a priori meaning which they entail. If the observer has been fortunate enough to have imposed a classi¢cation that happens to coincide with Nature’s ways, few problems may arise. On the other hand, if the imposed classi¢cation injects distortions into the analysis due to the across-category averaging involved ^ e.g., by bunching architects in one group and doctors in another, if profession and decision-making style happen
299 not to be wholly synchronous ^ this could easily lead to unstable and ambiguous results (due to a reduction in the signal/noise ratio) and to the inevitable search for more adequate indices and measurement strategies, from both intensive and extensive standpoints.6 As Zizek (1913) long ago recognized, If masses of items, which have evidently been variously in£uenced by quite independent causes, are taken together in a series the average so computed has little scienti¢c value, since it does not express the activity of a uni¢ed complex of natural or social causes and is, as a rule, poorly adapted to purposes of comparison. (p. 65) He then went on to advance the postulate that averages only be calculated from observations of ‘the greatest possible homogeneity,’ i.e., from observations which more closely approximate functional unity. The human and life sciences generally, and not just Fernandes and Simon alone, would be well advised to attend to Zizek’s postulate. The authors of an undergraduate political science textbook recently expressed good riddance to the ‘mistaken’ theory of functionalism which they claimed had died decades previously, but later in the text they displayed unmistakable traces of functionalism in their own thinking. This inconsistency re£ects an incomplete assimilation of changes in scienti¢c outlook signaled by Galileo and other early moderns who replaced the Aristotelian emphasis on categories based on common characteristics with a more detailed speci¢cation of ¢eld conditions: Once the context of each situation was taken into account, the outward diversity of rising smoke, birds in £ight, falling leaves, and solid objects dropped from towers no longer provided the basis for placing these objects in separate categories; rather, they were homogenized under the suzerainty of a single law of gravitation (Lewin, 1931). Herbert Simon and Harold Lasswell were alert to signi¢cant philosophical developments such as this and encouraged adoption of a more thorough scienti¢c perspective. To the former we are indebted for making us aware of the boundedness of our rationality; to the latter we owe gratitude for demonstrating how a functionalist approach enables us to enhance clarity within those limitations.
300 Appendix: Hungeria Q sample Statements
Factor arrays A
B
C
D
1
Have efforts been made to contact local food distributors to donate excess foods?
^3
^1
0
^2
2
The GDP indicates that this is not a poor country, especially given the size of the population.
^2
0
0
3
3
I would seek help from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
3
0
^4
^3
4
How does Hungeria compare on poverty rates with other countries?
^1
1
3
^1
5
There needs to be education (new techniques, etc.) geared toward local areas hardest hit.
3
1
^1
3
6
I am assuming some lack of capacity which needs first to be identified.
0
^3
^1
^4
7
What are local and church organizations doing currently?
2
^2
^1
^1
8
In the short run, aid can be used to establish paths for food and aid to travel from those who have to those who do not.
2
^1
0
2
9
I worry that immediate aid and food, if funneled through ruling elites, might not reach those in need. If this is a diplomatic problem, then we need to make sure help ends up in the right hands.
1
1
2
4
10
Are these statistics accurate or are they being fudged? What is the reliability of the statistics?
^2
^3
3
0
11
There needs to be a combination of education, loans, technical help, and dollars.
3
2
^3
0
12
Poor children and poor nutrition for children will have other costs later, like poor growth, poor education, and poor future prospects.
2
2
0
2
13
I would like to know the demographics of these people. Are they an older population?
^1
0
2
^4
14
Is there massive but benign mismanagement of available resources?
1
2
3
1
15
There is a need for job training programs.
1
^1
^1
^3
16
What is the political situation?
0
3
4
0
17
What type of economy does Hungeria have?
1
2
3
0
18
Subsidize school breakfast and lunch programs for children.
2
^1
^3
0
19
There is a need to verify the existing numbers for accuracy.
0
^2
4
0
20
Investigate the feasibility of bringing in other industries to Hungeria.
0
^1
^2
^2
21
They obviously know how to grow something.
^4
^2
0
0
22
What is the average educational level of its citizens? Is it generally available, i.e., affordable or free?
^1
1
1
^1
23
I think we are looking at a political problem.
^4
3
2
^1
301 24
Get information out to physicians to do nutritional screenings and direct patients to assistance programs.
0
^4
^2
^2
25
Are humanitarian organizations present (like the Peace Corps)?
1
0
^2
^3
26
Are the demographics of the elites different from those of the hungry population?
^3
3
1
2
27
15% below the poverty line seems high.
^3
1
^1
3
28
I would recommend giving temporary aid to the poor, then provide work programs with incentives toward self-sufficiency.
4
2
^2
1
29
What are the class levels in the economy, and how many people are in each one?
^3
3
0
^1
30
The problem is not apparent. It is ill-defined and needs to be better defined.
^2
^4
2
3
31
There is a need to improve their knowledge of nutrition through the various state services.
1
^3
^3
^3
32
What kinds of occupations do people in Hungeria have?
^1
0
1
^1
33
I would not want to create a dependency situation.
^1
^2
1
2
34
I would try to generate some self-help schemes.
2
^1
1
1
35
Four million people is too many people to be poor.
^3
0
^3
4
36
What is the distribution of wealth in the country?
^2
4
0
1
37
Wealthy families could sponsor families that are in need.
^2
^3
^4
^2
38
It looks like the population is growing, and that will continue to increase the hunger problem.
0
1
^2
0
39
If empowerment is not a problem, then something might be done to help this population, e.g., establishing soup kitchens.
0
0
^1
1
40
How long has this country had a hunger problem ^ throughout its history, or is this a relatively new phenomenon?
4
4
2
2
41
Are there drug problems? Corruption? What are the crime rates?
^1
^2
1
^2
Notes *
Revised from a paper read at the annual meeting of the Society for the Policy Sciences, School of Law,Yale University, 19^21 October 2001. Author’s address: Department of Political Science, Kent State University, Kent, OH 44242-0001 (
[email protected]). Review of this manuscript was supervised by an Associate Editor. Appreciation is expressed for insightful comments by Ronald Brunner and Andrew Willard. 1. Cause in the sense of purpose has a lineage that traces to Aristotle’s ¢nal cause, as in the purpose of a house being to provide shelter, its material cause being the bricks and mortar comprising it, its formal cause being the blueprints that guided its construction, and its e⁄cient cause being the workers without whose e¡orts the house would not have been erected (Aristotle, Metaphysics, Bk. D2). 2. According to Shook (2000), ‘This functionalist view of thought as essentially learning through practical problem-solving united the philosophies of the Chicago pragmatists’ (p. xv), who,
302 however, ‘rarely referred to themselves as pragmatists... . [T]he preferred term was usually ‘‘instrumentalist’’ ’ (p. xiv; see also Shook, 2001). An engaging summary of Dewey’s connection to pragmatists William James and Charles Peirce is provided by Menand (2001). 3. Kantor (1947) expressed essentially the same view in stronger terms: ‘On the whole, constructions derived from events are likely to be legitimate, whereas those imposed upon events will only by the merest chance be anything but illegitimate and useless. When astronomers construct their descriptions on the basis of star and comet movements they are more likely to assert that their orbits are oblong or elliptical instead of circular, as they do when they start with the tradition of the perfect ¢gure. When the physicist begins with falling bodies he is more likely to develop a law of the interaction of bodies in a ¢eld than when he simply applies to them the principle that bodies always act as they do because it is their inner or teleological nature to attain a prescribed goal. When psychologists construct their descriptions and theories from their observations of organisms interacting with objects they will hardly have a basis for the illegitimate concepts of psychic or physiological forces’ (p. 121). 4. The nine actions (recall, read, assume, know, infer, evaluate, calculate, query, and recommend) are, for Fernandes and Simon (1999: p. 228), the cognitive atoms that comprise the thinking of decision makers; e.g., ‘The people of Hungeria are undernourished’ (infer), ‘The infrastructure should be increased’ (recommend), ‘That would make the per capita income $24,000’ (calculate), etc. Meta-actions refer to comments about the nine actions when contemplating the problem-solving process itself; e.g., ‘There’s not enough data to make a recommendation’ (M-recommend). There are therefore 18 categories (9 actions and 9 meta-actions), according to this scheme, into which participants’ comments can be categorized. 5. Speci¢cally, the statements were organized factorially in a two-way design, as shown in Table 1, with 3 (Actions) 6 8 (Values) = 24 possible combinations.Variance analysis was then applied to the scores in each of the four factors (Appendix), and the sum of squared deviations (d 2) was decomposed into the three potential ‘causes’ (of the statement scores) plus experimental error, viz.: = SA 2 + SV 2 + SAV 2 + Se 2 Sd 2 df (40) = (2) + (7) + (12) + (19), where A stands for the three actions which were represented, V the eight values, AV their interaction, and e the error term. Pending signi¢cant F-ratios for the above e¡ects, Tukey’s HSD test (p 5 0.05) was used for the a posteriori testing of mean di¡erences. The strategy of modern experimentation is the epitome of the hypothetico-deductive method, which begins with categories to which it must return in order to explain the results obtained. By way of contrast, the equations of factor analysis permit emergence of unanticipated e¡ects (Stephenson, 1980: pp. 12, 20^21). 6. Sylvan (1991) misunderstood the purpose of this oscillation between aggregate and individual, referring to it as ‘the tragedy of Harold Lasswell,’ but it really only amounts to keeping tabs on the writ large and writ small ^ e.g., on macrolaw and microlaw (Reisman, 1999) ^ so as to improve chances of avoiding unexpected hazards.
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