The Scholarly Process
| Date | 01 September 2011 |
| Published date | 01 September 2011 |
| Author | John P. Heinz |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6478.2011.00551.x |
JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY
VOLUME 38, NUMBER 3, SEPTEMBER 2011
ISSN: 0263-323X, pp. 428±48
The Scholarly Process
John P. Heinz*
This article is a contribution to the occasional series dealing with a
major book that influenced the author. Previous contributors include
Stewart Macaulay, John Griffith, William Twining, Carol Harlow,
Geoffrey Bindman, Harry Arthurs, Andre
Â-Jean Arnaud, Alan Hunt,
Michael Adler, and Lawrence O. Gostin.
The publication page in my copy of David Truman's The Governmental
Process includes these three lines: `Published 1951;' `Reprinted Thirteen
Times;' `Fifteenth Printing, May 1968.'
1
Now, if we count the initial press
run as one printing and it was reprinted thirteen times, would that not make
this the fourteenth printing? Perhaps they meant that it had previously been
reprinted thirteen times. (This is what is known as a close reading. The
remainder of the book will not be given equivalent scrutiny.) In any event,
how many scholarly monographs are printed fifteen times, or fourteen, or
thirteen? Truman's work was not revised for each new wave of students in
order to inhibit resale. It was not intended for the classroom. Rather, it is a
work of political theory, a set of propositions about how politics works, and
it was a foundation of the so-called `behavioural revolution' in political
science.
428
ß2011 The Author. Journal of Law and Society ß2011 Cardiff University Law School. Published by Blackwell Publishing
Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
*American Bar Foundation, 750 North Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, IL
60611-4403, and Institute for Policy Research, Northwestern University,
2040 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60208-4100, United States of America
jheinz@abfn.org
The author acknowledges, with gratitude, the support of the American Bar Foundation
and the Institute for Policy Research of Northwestern University, and the generous advice
and assistance of Scott Ainsworth, Harry Arthurs, Anne Godden-Segard, John Hagan,
Anne Heinz, Bonnie Honig, Edward Laumann, Marcia Lehr, Anthony Paik, Rebecca
Sandefur, Susan Shapiro, Irvin Slate, Ann Southworth, and Philip Thomas.
1 D.B. Truman, The Governmental Process: Political Interests and Public Opinion
(1951).
When asked to write an essay about the influence of a book on the course
of my career, I was sceptical. It seemed to me that the essay would be
fanciful. In the process of reconstructing our scholarly choices and account-
ing for them, we amend, edit, distort, and transform personal history. Samuel
Clemens said `The man has yet to be born who could write the truth about
himself.' (He wrote an autobiography and knew whereof he spoke.) Even
given keen self-awareness and basic honesty, the story will be selective. But
other scholars had accepted this assignment and produced persuasive
accounts, and fiction can, of course, be instructive, especially if the reader is
not overeager to suspend disbelief.
The Governmental Process revived interest in group theory, notably the
version formulated by Arthur Bentley in 1908. Bentley's book was called
The Process of Government, and Truman's title was not happenstance. His
preface says:
As the title of the present volume suggests, Bentley's `attempt to fashion a
tool' has been the principal bench mark for my thinking. In fact, my plans for
this study grew out of my experience in teaching from Bentley's work.
2
Although Truman had taught Bentley's theory of politics, few other political
scientists focused on it before Truman updated, revised, and extended the
concepts. At mid-twentieth century, American political science was still
formalistic, still studying the framing of the US Constitution, the normative
implications of decisions of the Supreme Court, and the writings of Locke,
Mill, and Bentham. Bentley was not in fashion. (He was still alive, working
as an independent scholar in a bucolic setting near a small town in Indiana.
3
)
Even in the late 1950s, when Truman chaired the political science faculty at
Columbia University, the department was still called `public law and
government'.
I was introduced to Truman's work when I was an undergraduate at
Washington University in St. Louis. My principal mentor there was a young
assistant professor, Robert Salisbury, who called himself a `Bentleyan.' He
directed me to The Governmental Process, and this was, pretty clearly, the
beginning of my serious engagement with the study of politics. Bob
Salisbury set me on the path I am still following. He was a close friend for
more than five decades, until his death last year, and we co-authored a book
and several articles (of which, more later). Had he been around to read this
manuscript, it would be better.
One of Truman's contributions was his emphasis on the importance of
`potential' interest groups. Before, political scientists who focused on groups
had devoted their attention to organized `lobbies' such as the AFL-CIO, the
429
2 id., p. ix.
3 While living in rural Indiana, Bentley collaborated with John Dewey, with whom he
had studied at the University of Chicago in the 1890s; see J. Dewey and A. Bentley,
Knowing and the Known (1949).
ß2011 The Author. Journal of Law and Society ß2011 Cardiff University Law School
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