Harold Dwight Lasswell Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

American political scientist Harold Dwight Lasswell (1902– 1978) was considered a great scholar and a terrific mentor, but his name was never a well-known one in his field. Lasswell joined the American Society of International Law in 1948. He was vice president of the organization from 1966 to 1970 and then held the office of president until 1972. While part of the society he created the Board of Review and Development, was a chair on the Panel on Communications and Linguistics, and served as a member of the Panel on Self-Determination.

In his first book, Propaganda Techniques in the World War (1927), Lasswell creates what he calls propaganda analysis to understand the complexities of collective communication flows. This later bloomed into the fields of content analysis and communications theory. Another of Lasswell’s most remembered contributions is to the idea of modern democratic theory. He mentioned four points that new democratic systems would have to take into account: flawed personality structures, man’s predisposition to self-defeating symbolism, the rise of precarious elites of ability, and the surfacing of contemporary propaganda.

One of Lasswell’s more interesting studies was of political symbolism, one of the four parts of his democratic theory. He put forth the idea that symbols are used to exemplify power. An example of this can be found in barriers used to separate political power from intruders. In medieval times this would be a moat. In the contemporary world this could mean walls or gateways. Lasswell also originated the term policy sciences, which are an approach to understanding and solving problems, contributed to multidisciplinary inquiry about man in society, and created a structure of inquiry about worldwide social processes.

In his 1939 work World Revolutionary Propaganda: A Chicago Study, Lasswell stated that propaganda is “the control of attitudes by the manipulation of symbols.” Since the advent of world wars, Lasswell argues, democracies have needed to bring their entire nation’s focus on the single effort of winning the war. To achieve this, the government must turn to propaganda to keep the citizenry in agreement with the government’s cause. Lasswell gives an example of this as the war bonds issued during World War II (1939–1945). He goes on to show that propaganda is used extensively in circumstances other than war and uses its expansion in the United States during the Great Depression as an example. He claims that propaganda has become a part of the democratic process and observes that elites see world politics as only a competition where the most deceitful image maker wins.

Lasswell is also well known for his use of psychoanalysis to explain political behavior. He argued that applying Freudian theory to politics would reveal deep knowledge of politicians and political systems themselves. Lasswell believed that to survive in the future political realm, such analysis was pressing and necessary.

Bibliography:

Lasswell, Harold Dwight. World Revolutionary Propaganda: A Chicago Study. New York: Knopf, 1939.
Marvick, Dwaine. “The Work of Harold D. Lasswell: His Approach, Concerns, and Influence.” Political Behavior 2 (1980): 219–229.
McDougal, Myres, and Michael Reisman. “Harold Dwight Lasswell (1902–1978).” The American Journal of International Law 73 (October 1979): 665–660.
Merelman, Richard. “Harold D. Lasswell’s Political World: Weak Tea for Hard Times.” British Journal of Political Science 11 (October 1981): 471–497.

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