Arthur F. Bentley

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Arthur Fisher Bentley (October 16, 1870 - May 21, 1957) was an American political scientist and philosopher who worked in the fields of epistemology, logic and linguistics and who contributed to the development of a behavioral methodology of political science.

[edit] Work

His work The Process of Government, published in 1908, had much influence on political science from the 1930s to the 1950s. Although initially not of consequence, it influenced other groups such as the Chicago School who also tried to develop objective, value-free analyses of the political field.

Bentley held interactions of groups are the basis of political life, and rejected statist abstractions. In his opinion, group activity determined legislation, administration and adjudication. These ideas of process-based behavioralism later became central to political science. Especially his tenet that "social movements are brought about by group interaction" is a basic feature of contemporary pluralist and interest-group approaches.

[edit] Biography

Bentley was born in 1870 in Freeport, Illinois. He received his B.A. in 1892 and his Ph.D. in 1895 from Johns Hopkins University. He died in 1957 in Paoli, Indiana.