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Theoretical Malnutrition and the Realist Therapy in Political Science

Publication date: 11.05.2017

Teoria Polityki, 2017, No. 1/2017, pp. 203 - 221

https://doi.org/10.4467/00000000TP.17.011.6590

Authors

Stephen Welch
Durham University, The Palatine Centre Durham University, Stockton Road, Durham, DH1 3LE, UK
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Titles

Theoretical Malnutrition and the Realist Therapy in Political Science

Abstract

David Easton’s 1953 complaint of political science’s ‘theoretical malnutrition and surfeit of facts’ has been echoed numerous times, recently for instance in the ‘Perestroika’ movement in American political science. Proposals for rectifying the theoretical deficit have been numerous, but one line of argument has come to predominate: the realist critique of political science’s positivism. This essay examines that critique and finds fault both with its characterization of positivism and its proposed remedy for the theoretical deficit. Its diagnosis and therapy are both philosophically inflated, with a dangerous promotion of a transcendental or speculative ontology and concomitant neglect of empirical constraints on theorizing. Yet with a restored but deeper emphasis on the empirical basis of theory, taking the question of the nature and causal mechanisms of ‘political culture’ as illustrative, and disregarding the inhibitions created by disciplinary boundaries, progress beyond theoretical malnutrition remains possible.

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Information

Information: Teoria Polityki, 2017, No. 1/2017, pp. 203 - 221

Article type: Original article

Titles:

Polish:

Theoretical Malnutrition and the Realist Therapy in Political Science

English:

Theoretical Malnutrition and the Realist Therapy in Political Science

Authors

Durham University, The Palatine Centre Durham University, Stockton Road, Durham, DH1 3LE, UK

Published at: 11.05.2017

Article status: Open

Licence: CC BY-NC-ND  licence icon

Percentage share of authors:

Stephen Welch (Author) - 100%

Article corrections:

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Publication languages:

English