Hilliard Charles. Lasswell’s Political Psychology Revisited

It can be argued that the political psychology approach of Harold D. Lasswell has either been forgotten, devalued, or assumed to have been supplanted by his policy science approach by the current social sciences, especially by political psychologists. This does violence to the social sciences in general insofar as its exclusion from the canon of theoretical paradigms robs the social sciences of a useful and efficacious tool to explain much political behavior. It can be argued that Lasswell's policy science theory is not properly seen as a separate and distinct theoretical construct but, rather, as a logical extension of his political psychology. It can be further contended that it is this very melding of the two that makes Lasswell's policy science an appropriate, and superior, lens with which to understand much political behavior during the 20th century and beyond and which can be arguably seen as a logical answer to the Perestroika debate of recent years.