Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- Preface
- 1 Methodology’s Problem, and Democracy’s Too
- Part I Rationalism and Constructivism
- 2 Where Democracy Is To Be Found and Why
- 3 When Causality Is To Be Found and How
- 4 Two Western Dreams
- Part II State-Society and Contentious Politics
- Part III Conclusions: Three Chapters, Five Themes, and Twelve Theses
- References
- Index
3 - When Causality Is To Be Found and How
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- Preface
- 1 Methodology’s Problem, and Democracy’s Too
- Part I Rationalism and Constructivism
- 2 Where Democracy Is To Be Found and Why
- 3 When Causality Is To Be Found and How
- 4 Two Western Dreams
- Part II State-Society and Contentious Politics
- Part III Conclusions: Three Chapters, Five Themes, and Twelve Theses
- References
- Index
Summary
To recapitulate: while Acemoglu and Robinson are concerned with procedural democracy as a grand bargain aggregated among market interests, Wedeen cares about discursive democracy as a performative local consensus tied to national identity. Now consider the tough social-scientific question of how these theorists turn invisible principles of political order into causal methodologies that hold observable implications. In gist, rationalists and constructivists generate observable implications in five similar ways: weaving problem situations into core problems, shaping concepts into observations, fashioning hypotheses into causal mechanisms, turning cases into units of analysis, and converting environments into contexts. Although they address the same problems of research design, rationalists and constructivists adopt different causal methodologies.
COMPARATIVE STATICS
Acemoglu and Robinson mold Moore’s problem situation of distributional struggles over competing grand strategies and alternative paths of development into a core problem of democracy and dictatorship. Their democracy is a grand balance-of-power, a compositional collectivity in which contracting parties share sovereignty. What brings the bargainers together? How does a bargain become self-regulating and self-reproducing, thereby persisting against the available alternatives? And what is the source of the partial adjustments needed to prevent revolution?
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- Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2013