Political scientists strive to be “real” scientists. This ambition to imitate the natural sciences, however, has its limitations. Politics has its own dynamic, one that is not really captured once and for all in a single theory. Instead, theories come and go. Comparativists cannot sit back and enjoy more than a moment of “normal science”. Their search for fresh knowledge is open-ended and as reliant on new theoretical insights as it is on already established theory. The temptation to formalize theory into a single construct, however, has increased with the availability of standardized meta data sets. It is in this context that countries that are structurally and culturally different from the mainstream Western model of politics lose their position as entities of interest for their own sake. This book reluctantly acknowledges this reality of the field and uses Africa as an example to highlight the limits of comparisons based on theories derived from the political experience of already developed and democratic societies. The premise that democracy is “the only game in town” is a case in point. It has made Comparative Politics turn almost exclusively into comparative democratization – at the expense of attention to how and why countries change. This final chapter is meant to highlight the many significant omissions that follow from relying primarily on a democratic theory lens. African politics, like that of other developing and democratizing regions, is much more varied and complex. Above all, the social forces that drive it are foremost local. The interesting issue, therefore, is not how well countries score on a global democracy scale but how existing structures accommodate the presence of democratic values and norms. Democracy is no longer the independent variable that best explains politics on a global scale. Today it is best approached as dependent variable.

Normal science is one of the core concepts in Kuhn’s philosophy, and its implications have been the target of both critical approaches and friendly attempts at analytic elucidation. This chapter aims to clarify the role of normal science in Kuhn’s philosophy, showing that some basic features of normal science, such as problem solving and the lack of criticism toward basic commitments, lead to a successful explanation of scientific progress. To do this, the chapter examines normal science, emphasizing the main features of the concept, the role it plays in the notion of science defended by Kuhn, and how it allows us to articulate the social and cognitive dimensions of scientific practice.

Theory in the social sciences is not written in stone and undergoes change as it is continuously being tested in new research. This allows for an appreciation of the dynamic but also volatile nature of our subject matter, politics. While physicists have plenty of time to solve puzzles within a single and common theoretical frame, political scientists keep encountering anomalies that challenge their dominant theory. This tension between constancy and renewal has been and still is a prominent feature of Comparative Politics. Its challenges become especially evident in an Africanist perspective. Theory is generated in already “developed” or “democratic” societies, making Africa a poor fit. The main issue there is not the backsliding experience of countries with a democratic tradition. Instead, it is how to build democracy in a context where its benefits were denied the local population by the colonial administrators. This chapter is devoted to reviewing the theoretical constructs that political scientists have used to advance the comparative analysis of politics. It points to three main breakthroughs that have shaped Comparative Politics since its inception sixty years ago: structural functionalism, rational choice theory, and, in recent decades, democratic theory.

Kuhn’s notion of normal science seemingly advocated doctrinaire science education. This chapter documents this in Kuhn’s writings, and considers the argument from Popper, Feyerabend, and others that Kuhnian normal science would encourage dogmatism and stifle innovation. The chapter argues that it is possible to ameliorate the dogmatism in science education while respecting the necessities of professional training. Modern science can afford to maintain multiple paradigms within a field, producing the benefits of toleration while maintaining the advantages of Kuhnian normal science within each paradigm. Moreover, it is possible to educate each scientist in a pluralist way, fostering innovative thinking. The chapter argues that such pluralism is already present in physics education to a surprising extent and that it can plausibly be extended further.

Scientific specialties are the key unit of analysis in Kuhn’s theory of scientific change. Kuhn believed that scientific specialties, in their normal phases, are characterized by theoretical monism. This is what makes scientists so efficient in realizing their epistemic goals. Recent work in the philosophy of scientific practice raises questions about the extent to which there is or needs to be consensus in science, thus challenging a key dimension of Kuhn’s view. Hasok Chang has been a leader in this project, focusing attention on the benefits of pluralism. I argue that Chang and other pluralists are overcorrecting. I argue that a variety of types of pluralism can be reconciled with theoretical monism, and that theoretical monism serves significant functions, aiding scientists in the effective pursuit of their epistemic goals. Thus, I aim to set limits to pluralism. I argue that Kuhn’s theoretical monism not only has room for the sort of pluralism that Chang and others aims to defend, I also show that it presupposes such forms of pluralism.

Popper and the logical empiricists focused on the logical status of the products of research and made scientific discovery and invention, the processes of achieving creative breakthroughs, exogenous to the logic of science. Creative insights were the result of happy but accidental psychological experiences, of minimal cognitive interest. Kuhn, in Structure, attempted to endogenize discovery, to provide an account of the practice of scientific problem-solving but without employing traditional logic of discovery or justification. Key to his account of normal science was the role of exemplars (standardized problem solutions) and acquired resemblance relations (analogies, metaphors, similes). Kuhn’s account was insightful in suggesting that puzzle solving amounts to rhetoric-based problem reduction to existing exemplars, largely independent of theory reduction. While Kuhn helped to resurrect philosophical interest in the process of research, he was only partially successful. By taming discovery in normal science, he exacerbated his problem of understanding how revolutionary breaks are conceived. And he left us with several questions about exemplars. What, exactly, are exemplars and where do they come from? Can exemplars carry across revolutionary breaks? I employ examples from early quantum theory.

Thomas Kuhn conceived of himself, in the project most notably realized in the Structure of Scientific Revolutions, as presenting and supporting a novel image of science grounded in both its history and practice. Central to Kuhn’s new image of science is the idea that there are two distinct modes of scientific inquiry, its normal mode and its extraordinary mode. These modes show up along several dimensions of Kuhn’s image, including, but not limited to, the historical development of science, the cognitive strategies appropriate for its success, its social organization, and in the ‘location’ and nature of its content. This chapter attempts to capture and convey Kuhn’s notion of normal science by analyzing the three metaphors that he uses to introduce and explain the significance of the normal mode in his novel image of science.I will then introduce a metaphor of my own for understanding Kuhn’s importance, particularly by way of the notion of normal science, for contemporary work in the philosophy of science.