The Political Science Interpretivist

Introduction In a 2014 New York Times op ed, columnist Nicholas Kristof drew numerous defensive responses when he criticized political science for having very little “practical impact” in “the real world of politics.” [1] Rather than exercising civic leadership, political science has been most noticeably AWOL from public policy debates since WWII, he claims. And, in his view, there are “fewer public intellectuals on American university campuses today than a generation ago.” How does he account for this absence? Primarily, it is due to the academic interest in pursuing the quantitative approach in political science research. This kind of research is too often unintelligible to both the politically interested general public and the policy making community. Also, the “value neutrality” required for such studies prohibits advocacy. The pattern persists, in part, because graduate students must conform to the expectations of their professors, as a requirement for a successful academic...

For the positivist paradigm to sustain itself in political science, it must dehumanize both the political scientist and the subject matter of political science – human beings engaged in political behavior. Positivism is saturated throughout with dehumanization. Its theory of causation is mechanical. Its theory of knowledge as “objective,” tries to remove the human knower. Observation and description, too, are supposed to be “objective;” that is, free of the messy personal characteristics of the human political scientist. Indeed, the ideal political scientist, for positivism, is a kind of robotic Artificial Intelligence, producing studies that any other machine … that is, political scientist … can replicate. Perhaps no greater conflict exists between Positivism and Interpretivism than the requirement of dehumanization in the former, and the struggle to re-humanize in the latter. This dichotomy will be a recurring theme on this blog. To “personalize” the differences, I will post a dial...

Steven Lubet, a trial lawyer, has given some useful advice for improving validation techniques in Interpretivism; and he has given some awful, self-destructive advice, which, if followed, would ruin the practice.  The Good Advice In a blog post, [1] as well as a book,[2] Lubet has offered his counsel on ethnography as a social science practice. Generally, he is concerned that not enough is known in the social sciences about the principles for testing truth claims as used in the Law of Evidence. (43) I agree. The Common Law, as practiced in Great Britain and the US, has a long and honorable history of formulating principles by which to settle disputes between litigants and to test the veracity of their allegations and testimony. Law is a substitute for settling disputes through violence. It is the collective product of some of the most practical minded, educated, fair, and intelligent men and women in history. As a set of such principles, it is an amazing, invaluable contribu...

Introduction If positivists had a mantra, it would be “validation demands transparency and replication.” The ideal is that if all the data from a study is posted online, and a thorough account given as to how that data was acquired, then other political scientists can examine everything, and determine how valid the method and its conclusions really are. This mimicking of natural science methods may seem reasonable, at first, but in this, and succeeding, posts I will discusses its disastrous consequences for the political science profession. I will examine each element of the ideology. In general, my position is that this is the Wrong Conceptual Framework for the subject matter of political science – human beings engaged in political behavior. Why this paradigm persists in political science is another worthy matter of analysis. This post will consider the replication myth. Is Replication Possible? For natural science, replication is one of the keys to validation. Suppose an anim...

In the early years of this century, the adherents to the positivistic paradigm, among them the elites of political science, were becoming concerned. The aging protestors from the 1960s revolt against the profession’s silence on the Vietnam War, racism, gender and economic inequality, and other social issues, were attracting too much attention from younger grad students and new PhDs. Fidelity to positivism was fragmenting. There was a rise in the usage of mixed methods and interpretivism.  Criticisms continued about the profession’s fawning efforts to imitate the methods of natural science, like physics, even as awareness grew that human beings and their political behavior are not analogous to either atomic particles or billiard balls in motion. Indeed, one spur of the 60s protests was that, under the guise of “scientific value neutrality,” members of the political science profession were hiring out as strategy consultants to the war mongers and corporate profiteers.* As the found...

Political Science today is a methodological free for all – well, not quite. The center of power in the profession is the editorial boards of the major journals. They determine what ideas will represent the profession. The research papers articulating that viewpoint are favored for publication in the prominent journals. From those journals, hiring committees at the leading university political science departments take their cues. New Ph.Ds. that comply with its constraints have an advantage for hiring, and later tenure, in the prominent universities. Awards for books and papers primarily go to the methodologically correct. Research grant funds also favor the Alpha methodology. Thus, the dominant paradigm persists because the power centers are committed to its persistence. The filigree of the profession are free to do as they please. Two unifying principles of the controlling conceptual framework in political science are 1) imitate the methods of positivistic natural science; and 2...