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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 January 2025
Why do many postpositivists caricature contemporary social science? Why make incorrect claims, for instance about social scientists avoiding values? Why discuss features that often no longer matter, such as seeking laws or predictions? Why reject extreme forms of social science without discussing more sensible forms? Why say little or nothing about scientific methodology, which is a great strength of recent social science? To explain such oversights and caricatures, philosophical analysis will not suffice. These are not isolated intellectual errors, but systematic ones, made by numerous scholars and fostered by social practices and institutional conventions. We thus need ideological analysis, which specializes in explaining institutionalized systems of belief. Speculative explanations are offered for postpositivist caricatures, including not only psychological factors, but also external ones (for example, the arrogance of many social scientists), limitations of language (for example, the ambiguity of the term ‘methodology’), rhetorical strategies (for example, genealogical approaches), and conventions (for example, bad citation practices).
1 I examined American Political Science Review 117, no. 1 (2023), excluding research notes and political theory articles. I thank Anna Kananen for research assistance on this matter.
2 E.g., Hay, Colin, Political Analysis: A Critical Introduction (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 1, 12–13, 37, 80CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Johnson, James, “Consequences of Positivism: A Pragmatist Assessment,” Comparative Political Studies 39, no. 2 (2006): 224–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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4 King et al., Designing Social Inquiry, 7–9.
5 King et al., Designing Social Inquiry, 12, 15, 20, 102–3, 169–70, 209.
6 King et al., Designing Social Inquiry, e.g., 15–16.
7 E.g., King et al., Designing Social Inquiry, 3, 6–7, 9; cf. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2nd ed., trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald Marshall (London: Continuum, 2004), 114, 212.
8 E.g., King et al., Designing Social Inquiry, 6–7, esp. 8–9; cf. Gadamer, Truth and Method, 484.
9 E.g., King et al., Designing Social Inquiry, 3–4.
10 E.g., King et al., Designing Social Inquiry, 3–4, 11–12; cf. Schram, Sanford, “Phronetic Social Science: An Idea Whose Time Has Come,” in Real Social Science: Applied Phronesis, ed. Flyvbjerg, Bent, Landman, Todd, and Schram, Sanford (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 23 Google Scholar.
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35 A particularly clear example is Griffiths, “Worldviews,” 5–7. See also, to some extent, Fischer, “Beyond Empiricism,” 129–30, 142–43; Flyvbjerg, Making Social Science Matter, 1–4, 166–68; and Bevir and Blakely, Interpretive Social Science, 1–14, 201–2.
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42 Bevir and Blakely, Interpretive Social Science, 6–8.
43 Bevir and Blakely, Interpretive Social Science.
44 Leader Maynard, “A Map,” 302, 309–10, but cf. 305.
45 Teun van Dijk, Ideology: A Multidisciplinary Approach (London: SAGE Publications, 1998), 26; see also Maynard, Jonathan Leader, “Ideological Analysis,” in Methods in Analytical Political Theory, ed. Blau, Adrian (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 300–302.Google Scholar
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48 Blau, “Detective-Work,” 1180–81, 1183, 1185–86, 1188.
49 Bevir and Blakely, Interpretive Social Science, 33–40. A much better referenced account of naturalism, which alas does not discuss prediction, is Bevir and Blakely, “Naturalism,” 31–39.
50 Bevir and Blakely, Interpretive Social Science, 36.
51 Bevir and Blakely, Interpretive Social Science, 36, 39.
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53 Friedman, Essays, 8–9; emphasis removed.
54 Friedman, Essays, 9. On prediction being past-oriented, not just future-oriented, see also Dowding, Philosophy and Methods, 44, and esp. Dowding and Miller, “Prediction.”
55 E.g., Hempel, Carl, Philosophy of Natural Science (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1966), 6–9 Google Scholar; van Evera, Guide to Methods, 35–36; Elster, Explaining Social Behavior, 16–20.
56 Elster, Explaining Social Behavior, 17. King et al., Designing Social Inquiry, 32–33, make the same point about questioning data, in a similar example about thinking against oneself.
57 Elster, Explaining Social Behavior, 16–20. However, Elster’s “hypothetico-deductive” approach is surely “hypothetico-inductive”; the implications are plausible inferences, not deductively necessary ones. See Blau, “Detective-Work,” 1187–88. Hypothetico-deductive models may be the textbook ideal, but the real world is messier. Van Evera implies something similar. Van Evera, Guide to Methods, 36; so did the great physicist Hermann von Helmholtz, Science and Culture: Popular and Philosophical Essays, ed. David Cahan (1862; repr., Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 84.
58 Elster, Explaining Social Behavior, 20.
59 Friedman, Essays, 10.
60 Hollis, Philosophy of Social Science, 64.
61 Shram, “Phronetic Social Science,” 15; emphasis added.
62 Blau, “Irrelevance,” 44–47.
63 Kurki and Wight, “International Relations,” 22.
64 Kurki and Wight, “International Relations,” 30–31.
65 Kurki and Wight, “International Relations,” 15; see also 22.
66 Kurki and Wight, “International Relations,” 17–18.
67 Kurki and Wight, “International Relations,” 22.
68 Kurki and Wight, “International Relations,” 24–26, but see 30–31, although this too hardly scratches the surface of scientific methodology.
69 Bevir and Blakely, “Naturalism,” 31–32.
70 Flyvbjerg, Making Social Science Matter, 7.
71 Leader Maynard, “Ideological Analysis,” 315–16.
72 Aviva Philipp-Muller, Spike Lee, and Richard Petty, “Why Are People Antiscience, and What Can We Do About It?” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 119, no. 30 (2022), https://www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10.1073/pnas.2120755119.
73 Philipp-Muller, Lee, and Petty, “Why Are People Antiscience?” 4.
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77 Bevir and Blakely, Interpretive Social Science, 188–92. For social-science analysis of deliberation, see esp. André Bächtiger’s work, some of which is with postpositivist John Dryzek, e.g., Bächtiger, André et al., “How Deliberation Happens: Enabling Deliberative Reason,” American Political Science Review 118, no. 1 (2023): 345–62.Google Scholar
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79 E.g., van Peer et al., Scientific Methods, 53–56; Kurki and Wight, “International Relations,” 15, 25.
80 Bevir and Blakely, Interpretive Social Science, 18, chap. 5.
81 Jonathan Leader Maynard and Matthew Longo, “Method and Methodology in Political Theory” (presentation, European Consortium of Political Research Conference, University of Innsbruck, August 23, 2022), 6.
82 McGrath, Joseph and Johnson, Bettina, “Methodology Makes Meaning: How Both Qualitative and Quantitative Paradigms Shape Evidence and Interpretation,” in Qualitative Research in Psychology: Expanding Perspectives in Methodology and Design, ed. Camic, Paul, Rhodes, Jean, and Yardley, Lucy (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2003)Google Scholar; Dowding, Philosophy and Methods, 70, 72.
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107 E.g., Flyvbjerg, Making Social Science Matter, 148–54; Bevir and Blakely, Interpretive Social Science, 180–92. The drought example is from Bevir and Blakely, Interpretive Social Science, 187–88.
108 Bevir and Blakely, Interpretive Social Science, 189–92. I have praised the work of Judith Innes and collaborators before; see Blau, Adrian, “Rationality and Deliberative Democracy: A Constructive Critique of John Dryzek’s Democratic Theory,” Contemporary Political Theory 10, no. 1 (2011): 51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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