To venture into explanation of political action we need some map of
our basic options: what kinds of explanations are out there? Even
advanced students and scholars can find the landscape difficult to
chart. We confront a bewildering maze of partial typologies,
contrasting uses of terms, and debate over what counts as
explanation. This book makes an argument about the most useful
first cut into explanations of action. It illustrates the map with
reference to political examples and a
wide range of political science literature, but the scheme applies
even more broadly across the social sciences and history.
Common terms form the sectors of the map: structural,
institutional, ideational, and psychological logics. This
book's novelties lie in arguments about how to best define
these terms. It narrows them into distinct mechanisms, arriving at
basic segments of causal logic into which all explanations of
action can be broken down. It also makes them compatible, however,
such that we could imagine a world in which all operated while
debating how much each caused any given action. Four benefits
follow.
The typology directs our attention to the most basic debates about
what causes what. Its framework is systematic and exhaustive,
bounding our explanatory universe. It defines our main approaches
in ways that facilitate both competition and combination. Lastly,
it leads to revisions of prevailing views on philosophy of science
and research design to encourage more open and rigorous
debates.
Graduate students will find no other overviews of comparable scope
and precision. Scholars of all theoretical inclinations will
encounter provocative challenges to their views of theorizing and
use of terms.
As essential and accessible introduction and critique of the main
types of explantion in political science. Essential reading for
students and scholars alike.
