Can political science emulate the natural sciences? the problem of self-disconfirming analysis

Polity

Volumn 38, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 72-100

  Oren, Ido ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA   (United States)

Author keywords

Robert Putnam; Self disconfirming analysis; Unity of science doctrine

Indexed keywords

EID: 31144433648     PISSN: 00323497     EISSN: 17441684     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1057/palgrave.polity.2300039     Document Type: Review

References (115)

1. Quoted in Leslie P. Thiele, Thinking Politics: Perspectives in Ancient, Modern and Postmodern Political Theory (Chatham House, NJ: Chatham House Publishers, 1997), 9.
2. Quoted in Thiele, Thinking Politics, 9.
3. Quoted in Bent Flyvbjerg, Making Social Science Matter: Why Social Inquiry Fails and How It Can Succeed Again (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 26; emphasis original.
4. Lawrence A. Lowell, "The Physiology of Politics," American Political Science Review 4 (February 1910): 1-15.
5. See also Dorothy Ross, The Origins of American Social Science (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 290-93.
6. Charles Merriam, "Progress in Political Research" American Political Science Review 20 (February 1926): 1-13; quotation from 12.
7. William Bennett Munro, "Physics and Politics-An Old Analogy Revised" American Political Science Review 22 (February 1928): 1-11; quotation from 10.
8. See, for example, Herbert J. Storing, ed., Essays on the Scientific Study of Politics (New York: Holt, Rinehart, 1962);
9. Norman Jacobson, "Political Science and Political Education," American Political Science Review 57 (September 1963): 561-69;
10. John G. Gunnell, "Deduction, Explanation, and Social Scientific Inquiry" American Political Science Review 63 (December1969): 1233-46;
11. Alasdair MacIntyre, "Ideology, Social Science, and Revolution," Comparative Politics 5 (April 1973): 321-42.
12. Richard K. Ashley, "The Poverty of Neorealism," International Organization 38 (Spring 1984): 225-86;
13. Friedrich V. Kratochwil, Rules, Norms, and Decisions: On the Conditions of Practical and Legal Reasoning in International Relations and Domestic Affairs (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989);
14. Yosef Lapid, "The Third Debate: On the Prospects of International Theory in a Post-Positivist Era," International Studies Quarterly 33 (September 1989): 235-54;
15. R. B. J. Walker, Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
16. Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 372.
17. For similar, if milder, epistemological stances see Peter Katzenstein, ed., The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 65,
18. and Ted Hopf, Social Construction of International Politics: Identities and Foreign Policies, Moscow, 1955 and 1999 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002).
19. Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics, 90; emphasis added. Explaining the repeated failures of the critics to upset the naturalistic hegemony is beyond the scope of this essay A full explanation will have to delve into the politics and sociology of the profession as much as into the intellectual shortcomings of the anti-naturalist critiques. Still, it may be said that the failure of these critiques to gain greater resonance in the profession is attributable in some part to their largely philosophical and abstract nature-they were often jargon-laden and they rarely supplemented their philosophical arguments with detailed analyses of "actually existing" political science. My essay attempts to redress this shortcoming by providing a concrete, detailed account of how the career of an important contemporary scholar appears to belie in practice the naturalistic presuppositions to which he is committed in principle.
20. Mark Neufeld, "Reflexivity and International Relations Theory," in Beyond Positivism: Critical Reflections on International Relations, ed. Clare T. Sjolander and Wayne S. Cox (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1994), 11-35.
21. Karl Pearson, The Grammar of Science (London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1892), 16,
22. quoted approvingly in Gary King, Robert Keohane, and Sidney Verba, Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 9.
23. Robert D. Putnam, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 7.
24. David Lowery and Virginia Gray, "The Population Ecology of Gucci Gulch, or the Natural Regulation of Interest Group Numbers in the American States," American Journal of Political Science 39 (February 1995): 1-29;
25. quotation from 2; see also Virginia Gray and David Lowery, The Population Ecology of Interest Representation (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996).
26. Bruce Russett and John Oneal, Triangulating Peace: Democracy, Interdependence, and International Organizations (New York: W.W. Norton, 2001), 82.
27. Lowell, "The Physiology of Politics," 15.
28. Merriam, "Progress in Political Research," 13.
29. Russett and Oneal, Triangulating Peace, 84-85.
30. "Recent Council Actions," PS: Political Science and Politics 35 (December 2002): 779;
31. Bahram Rajaee, "APSA Ramps up Public Presence Activities in 2004," PS: Political Science and Politics 38 (January 2005): 148.
32. Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970).
33. Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (New York: Random House, 1979), 18.
34. Jack Levy, "Explaining Events and Developing Theories: History, Political Science, and the Analysis of International Relations," in Bridges and Boundaries: Historians, Political Scientists and the Study of International Relations, ed. Colin Elman and Miriam Fendius Elman (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001), 39-83; quotation from 82.
35. Stephen K. White, "Review of Making Social Science Matter, by Bent Flyvbjerg," American Political Science Review 96 (March 2002): 179-80.
36. Charles Taylor, "Interpretation and the Sciences of Man," in Understanding and Social Inquiry, ed., Fred Dallmayr and Thomas McCarthy (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1977), 101-31; quotation from 106.
37. Peter Winch similarly remarked: "That the social sciences are in their infancy has come to be a platitude amongst writers of textbooks on the subject." See Winch, The Idea of a Social Science and its Relation to Philosophy 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 1990), 1.
38. For example, by Kim Quaile Hill, "Myths About the Physical Sciences and Their Implications for Teaching Political Science," PS: Political Science and Politics 37 (July 2004): 467-71.
39. Edward H. Carr, The Twenty Years' Crisis, 1919-1939: An Introduction to the Study of International Relations (New York: Harper Torchbook, 1964), 3-4.
40. See Flyvbjerg, Making Social Science Matter, chapter 3.
41. Taylor, "Interpretation and the Science of Man," 128; Richard Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics and Praxis (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983), 236.
42. Thiele, Thinking Politics, 11.
43. Anthony Giddens, "Hermeneutics and Social Theory," in Profiles and Critiques in Social Theory, ed. Anthony Giddens and Fred Dallmayr (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982),
44. quoted in Flyvbjerg, Making Social Science Matter, 32.
45. James Sterngold, "Stanford Expert Says Iraq Spinning Out of Control."San Francisco Chronicle, April 25, 2004.
46. Alan Gewirth, "Can Man Change Laws of Social Science?" Philosophy of Science 21 (July 1954): 229-41; quotation from 230.
47. Gewirth, "Can Man Change Laws of Social Science?" 234.
48. Gewirth, "Can Man Change Laws of Social Science?" 241.
49. Gewirth, "Can Man Change Laws of Social Science?" 235.
50. See also H. Hanalka, "Is It Possible to Change the Laws of the Social Sciences: Lebensnswelt and Critical Reflection in Habermas' Theorie des Kommunikativen Handelns," Philosophy and Social Criticism 9 (March 1982): 191-226, for a lucid statement of Gewirth's position.
51. Gewirth, "Can Man Change Laws of Social Science?" 230.
52. For other discussions of reflexive predictions, which basically agree with Gewirth's position, see Cecil Miller, "The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: A Reappraisal," Ethics 72 (October 1961): 46-51,
53. and Daya Krishna, "The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy and the Nature of Society," American Sociological Review 36 (December 1971): 1104-07.
54. On the other hand, Roger C. Buck, "Reflexive Predictions," Philosophy of Science 30 (October 1963): 359-69, though he acknowledged that reflexive predictions are peculiar to human affairs, argued that they do not pose a very serious problem for social science because social scientists can restrict the dissemination of their predictions. But Buck failed to mention, let alone contend with, Gewirth's analysis. Moreover, even if Buck's arguments were right in principle, in practice political scientists often do want their analyses to be widely disseminated and have a practical impact.
55. Bruce Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace: Principles for a Post-Cold War World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 136.
56. 2 occur, and that these actions have the result that the contrary of consequence C occurs."
57. See Gewirth, "Can Man Change Laws of Social Science?" 230. Gewirth's hypothetical example corresponds to the second type.
58. See M.E. Hawkesworth, Theoretical Issues in Policy Analysis (Albany: SUNY Press, 1988), chapter 3;
59. Donald Polkinghorne, Methodology for the Human Sciences: Systems of Inquiry (Albany: SUNY Press, 1983), chapter 1-3.
60. Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism, 32-33.
61. As conceded by Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism, 236.
62. See Flyvbjerg, Making Social Science Matter, 28-30.
63. Putnam, Making Democracy Work, 3; emphasis added.
64. Putnam, Making Democracy Work, 7.
65. Putnam, Making Democracy Work, 115.
66. Putnam, Making Democracy Work, 121.
67. Putnam, Making Democracy Work, 123.
68. Putnam, Making Democracy Work, 124.
69. Putnam, Making Democracy Work, 16.
70. Putnam, Making Democracy Work, 181.
71. Putnam, Making Democracy Work, 183.
72. Putnam, Making Democracy Work, 182; emphasis original.
73. Putnam, Making Democracy Work, 183.
74. Putnam, Making Democracy Work, 183.
75. Putnam, Making Democracy Work, 184; emphasis original.
76. Putnam, Making Democracy Work, 184; emphasis added.
77. Putnam, Making Democracy Work, 184; emphasis original.
78. Putnam, Making Democracy Work, 185.
79. Putnam, Making Democracy Work, 3.
80. Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Touchstone, 2000), 505.
81. Putnam, Making Democracy Work, xiv.
82. Robert D. Putnam, "Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital," Journal of Democracy 6 (January 1995): 65-78.
83. Putnam, Bowling Alone, 506.
84. Putnam, Bowling Alone, 509.
85. Putnam, Bowling Alone, back cover.
86. Putnam, Bowling Alone, 505.
87. Putnam, Bowling Alone, 225.
88. Or consider the following analogy, from Bowling Alone, 184-85: "When seeking to solve a serial crime (or, for that matter, to understand a public health epidemic) investigators typically look for common features among the victims . . . Similarly, social scientists, faced with a trend like declining social participation, look for concentrations of effects. . . Unfortunately for our detective strategy, synergistic effects (rather like an epidemic that has spread beyond its initial carrier) thwart unequivocal verdicts."
89. Putnam, Bowling Alone, 26.
90. Putnam, Bowling Alone, 256.
91. Putnam, Bowling Alone, 274.
92. Putnam, Bowling Alone, 283-84.
93. Putnam, Bowling Alone, 403-04.
94. Putnam Bowling Alone, 404; emphasis original.
95. To generate the frequency data I used the search engine Factiva.com, operated by the Dow Jones Corporation. Factiva.com's category of "major U.S. news and business publications" includes some 40 newspapers and magazines "covering general news and business news that are considered key publications in their region by virtue of circulation or reputation." The list includes, among other publications, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, Miami Herald, Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, and Fortune.
96. Paul Schwartzman, "Kickball's Draw? It's Elementary; The Washington Post, October 19, 2004.
97. Shirley Elder, "A Town's Marketing Effort: Neighbors Rescue their General Store in Center Sandwich," The Boston Globe, February 25, 2001.
98. M. Robyn Jones, "A Plan for Beautiful Days in Dot Neighborhoods: Get Neighborly," The Boston Globe, July 18, 2004.
99. Leslie Norton, "Volunteers-Social Capitalists: After Years of Decline, Volunteerism Is on the Rise," Barron's, December 17, 2001.
100. Dana Milbank, "A Time to be Citizens, Not Spectators," The Washington Post, March 17, 2002.
101. Goldsmith is a participant in Putnam's Saguaro Seminar (www.ksg.harvard.edu/saguaro, accessed on June 1, 2005).
102. Bridgeland explicitly referred to Putnam's ideas in the briefing he gave the press in the White House after being named Director of the U.S.A. Freedom Corps (for a transcript, see http://usinfo.state.gov/usa/volunteer/pb013002.htm, accessed on June 1, 2005).
103. Robert D. Putnam and John M. Bridgeland, "A Nation of Doers Need to Do More," Philadelphia Inquirer, December 3, 2004.
104. Samantha M. Shapiro, "The Dean Connection," The New York Times Sunday Magazine, December 7, 2003.
105. Howard Fineman, "The Ground Game," Newsweek, October 4, 2004.
106. Carr, The Twenty Years Crisis, 4.
107. Carr, The Twenty Years Crisis, 4.
108. Putnam, Bowling Alone, 404.
109. Hans Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method trans. Garrett Barden and John Cumming (New York: Seabury Press, 1975).
110. Harold Garfinkel, Studies in Ethnomethodology (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1967).
111. Flyvbjerg, Making Social Science Matter.
112. Robert Bellah, Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler and Steven M. Tipton, Habits of the Heart (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985);
113. Pierre Bourdieu, On Television (New York: The New Press, 1998);
114. Bent Flyvbjerg, Rationality and Power: Democracy in Practice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998).
115. Flyvbjerg, Making Social Science Matter, 163.