In the 1940s the deep dissatisfaction with the narrow scope and unscientific methods of traditional political science (Historical, Philosophical and Legal-Institutional methods) turned into a revolution against it.
A large number of political scientists, particularly in the USA began advocating a rejection of traditional Political Science and the need for building a new empirical and behavioural science of Politics.
This revolution came to be identified as the Behavioural Revolution in Politics. It advocated the uses of empirical and scientific methods in the study of human political behaviour in each society. It fully recognized the importance and utility of interdisciplinary approach in the study of Politics.
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Several behavioural scholars advocated the use of knowledge and concepts of Psychology, Sociology and Cultural Anthropology for the study of Politics. Arthur Bentley strongly advocated the study of group behaviour in Politics.
Within the broad ambit of Behavioural Revolution, there came to be developed several scientific-behavioural-empirical approaches and methods of study of Politics.
Like an umbrella, it covered all the approaches which rejected the traditional normative approach and advocated an empirical-scientific study of politics as an aspect of human behaviour in society.
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It advocated an inter-disciplinary focus which focused on the study of politics with the help of knowledge of other social sciences like Psychology, Sociology, Economics, Anthropology and others.
In 1950s Behaviouralism got transformed into Post-Behaviouralism. The post- behaviouralists now placed emphasis on making study of politics relevant to society involving the study of brute realities of politics and social change.
They advocated that research and theory-building in Politics must be relevant to actual social conditions and the actual realities of Politics. The whole exercise was to be guided by the objective of building a scientific theory of politics capable of explaining and analysing all aspects of Politics.
With the above objective in mind, most of the American political scientists came forward to undertake empirical research on various political issues with a touch of sociology in it. As the research expanded, the need for the study of politics in the social context came to be bigger and bigger.
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This set the stage for the origin of Political Sociology as a major sub-field of Politics After sometime some theories of Political Sociology came to the fore and this helped this field of study to acquire more and more popularity and a status of its own.