Terms of Inquiry: On the Theory and Practice of Political Science; Logics of History: Social Theory and Social Transformation; and The Politics of Method in the Human Sciences: Positivism and Its Epistemological Others

Extract

Terms of Inquiry: On the Theory and Practice of Political Science. By James W. Davis. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005. 296p. $45.00 cloth, 19.95 paper.

Logics of History: Social Theory and Social Transformation. By William H. Sewell, Jr. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. 376p. $70.00 cloth, $29.00 paper.

The Politics of Method in the Human Sciences: Positivism and Its Epistemological Others. Edited by George Steinmetz. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005. 632p. $94.95 cloth, $25.95 paper.

Heated controversies about the theory and practice of social inquiry seem to come in waves. In political science, one such wave arrived with the advent and aftermath of the so-called behavioral revolution. Roughly a quarter century later, in October 2000, the self-named Perestroika rebellion inspired another wave of intense interest in the proper conduct of political inquiry. Unlike the earlier wave, the Perestroika movement failed initially to generate much compelling discussion of methodological issues. To be sure, it elicited numerous expressions of discontent with the hegemonic influence of rational choice theory and quantitative methods, as well as vocal demands for greater methodological pluralism, problem-driven research, and political “relevance.” In addition, the proponents of Perestroika raised serious questions about the institutional structures and intellectual orthodoxies that have organized academic political inquiry in the United States over the past few decades. Yet these expressions of discontent and demands for reform were rarely accompanied by creative thought about the nature of political inquiry or compelling visions of alternatives to the present hegemony. Consequently, those scholars who hoped that the Perestroika revolt might rejuvenate the increasingly moribund literature on methodologies of political inquiry were sorely disappointed. Instead of providing powerfully articulated defenses of or alternatives to the methodological axioms of our age, the Perestroika controversy all too often issued in amorphous proposals and empty platitudes.