Routledge Handbook of Interpretive Political Science

Mark Bevir, R. A. W. Rhodes

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317533610
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Interpretive political science focuses on the meanings that shape actions and institutions, and the ways in which they do so. This Handbook explores the implications of interpretive theory for the study of politics. It provides the first definitive survey of the field edited by two of its pioneers. Written by leading scholars from a range of disciplinary backgrounds, the Handbook's 32 chapters are split into five parts which explore:

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• the contrast between interpretive theory and mainstream political science;

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• the main forms of interpretive theory and the theoretical concepts associated with interpretive political science;

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• the methods used by interpretive political scientists;

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• the insights provided by interpretive political science on empirical topics;

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• the implications of interpretive political science for professional practices such as policy analysis, planning, accountancy, and public health.

With an emphasis on the applications of interpretive political science to a range of topics and disciplines, this Handbook is an invaluable resource for students, scholars, and practitioners in the areas of international relations, comparative politics, political sociology, political psychology, and public administration.

Part I Introduction

1 Interpretive Political Science Mapping the field

Mark Bevir and R. A. W. Rhodes

DOI: 10.4324/9781315725314-1

Introduction

Interpretive political science focuses on the meanings that shape actions and institutions, and the ways in which they do so.¹ Of course, all sorts of political scientists show an interest in meanings. Behaviouralists, institutionalists, and rational choice theorists sometimes study the role of ideas in politics. Interpretive political science differs from these alternatives in its theoretical agenda.

So, this Handbook is not only about the role of ideas in politics; it is also about interpretive theory and its implications for the study of politics. Interpretive theory claims that meanings are constitutive of actions. Political scientists can discuss actions and institutions properly only by evoking the intentionality of the actors. People act on their beliefs, so a social scientist can explain people’s actions only by appealing to their beliefs. Any other supposed cause can influence the way people act only indirectly through their beliefs and desires. Thus, to grasp the reasons for which someone acted is not just to understand their action but also to give a proper explanation of their action. Interpretive theorists do not assume that reasons for action are always conscious and rational. On the contrary, they sometimes talk of meanings, discourses, and languages, rather than beliefs and reasons, precisely to suggest that people are not always aware of the reasons for their action, let alone in control of them. Nonetheless, almost all interpretive political scientists believe that political life consists of actions laden with meanings.

Political science had its origins in history, law, and philosophy, in all of which interpretation played a prominent role. Historians focused on particular events as they unfolded chronologically. They told narratives that explained events by appealing to the beliefs and motives of the actors in their narratives (see Chapter 5). Lawyers looked at the formal nature of institutions. They sought to unearth the intentions of lawmakers to decide how to apply the law (see Chapter 23). Philosophers explored the normative side of politics, seeking to discover the ideals by which others had lived as a guide to how we should do so (see Chapter 3). During the twentieth century, however, modernists and positivists increasingly tried to model political science on their view of the natural sciences. They were concerned to uncover the laws and regularities that governed social life irrespective of the beliefs of individuals and the meanings found in a society. Today, the most loudly proclaimed approaches to political science– behaviouralism, much institutionalism and rational choice theory– ape such scientism. Interpretive political science provides a clear alternative (see Chapter 2).

This general introduction contains five sections. The first section contrasts interpretive theory and positivism to locate the interpretive approach in the broader discipline of political science. The second section introduces the main forms of interpretive theory and describes some of the theoretical concepts associated with interpretive political science. The third section looks at the methods that many interpretive political scientists use. The fourth section considers the insights interpretive political science provides on empirical topics, using the example of the state. The fifth section looks at the implications of interpretive political science for public policy and other professional practices.

Interpretation and positivism

Epistemology poses the question: how do we know what we know about politics? Interpretive theories constitute one set of answers to that question. Behind the different types of interpretive theory, there lies the shared assumption that we cannot understand political phenomena unless we grasp the relevant meanings. Different interpretive theories conceive of meaning in different ways, including, for example, as a product of intentionality or as a system of signs. Different interpretive theories also explain meanings in different ways using notions such as logical progression, the dispositions of individuals, and the structural links between concepts. However, because interpretive theorists emphasize meanings, they oppose scientism and positivism.

Beyond positivism

Positivism was subjected to forceful philosophical criticism as early as the 1950s (Bernstein 1976). Today, few philosophers and perhaps few political scientists would describe themselves as positivists. However, even if political scientists repudiate positivism, they often continue to study politics in ways that make sense only if they make positivist assumptions. Positivist assumptions bedevil behaviouralism, institutionalism, and rational choice. No doubt institutionalists, behaviouralists, and rational choice theorists sometimes avoid the objectifying tendency of positivism. Nonetheless, the more exponents of these approaches to political science disentangle themselves from positivist assumptions, the further they depart from the principles that inform their approaches.

Positivism often refers to a vision of a unified science based on pure and atomized facts. For our purposes, however, positivism refers to two theses that draw support from this vision of a unified science.

• The first positivist thesis is that we can explain actions by allegedly objective social facts about people. Meanings are largely irrelevant to political science. Beliefs are, at most, intervening variables. Actions can be correlated with, and explained by, social categories such as class, economic interest or institutional position.
• The second positivist thesis is that the relation between antecedent and consequent in political explanation is a necessary causal one– that is, it is law as in the natural sciences. Political science seeks psychological or social laws, rather than historical narratives or understanding webs of meaning.

These two theses still dominate much political science. Interpretive theory rejects them. Crucially, once we accept there are no pure experiences, we no longer can adhere to the two positivist theses that inform so much political science.

The first positivist thesis is that we can explain behaviour by allegedly objective social facts. Here, political scientists typically try to avoid direct appeals to beliefs by reducing them to intervening variables. For example, political scientists explain why people vote for the Labour Party not by referring to their beliefs, but by saying they are working class. Political scientists then deal with the anomaly of working-class people who vote Conservative not by examining beliefs but by reference to, for example, their religious affiliation, gender or housing occupancy. No doubt few political scientists want to claim that social class and the like generate actions without passing through consciousness. They want to imply only that statistical correlations between social class and a particular action allow us to bypass beliefs. They suggest that belonging to a particular social class gives one a set of beliefs and desires that cause people to act in a given way. For example, the working class believe in redistributive policies so they support the Labour Party.

The impossibility of pure experience undermines this first positivist thesis. It implies that we cannot reduce beliefs to intervening variables. When we say that someone X in a position Y has given interests Z, we use our particular theories to derive their interests from their position. Someone with a different set of theories may believe that someone in that position has different interests. For example, when we say that a permanent secretary managing a government department has an interest in preserving the staffing and spending levels of that department, we have used a particular theory that deduces his interests from his position. People with different theories might believe that this top civil servant has different interests; that is, she is a political and policy adviser not a manager, and so has different interests– for example, protecting the minister and firefighting policy disasters.

The important point is that how people see their position and interests depends on their theories, not our theories. X may possess theories that lead her to see her position as A, not Y, and her interests as B, not Z. For example, some working-class voters consider themselves to be middle class with an interest in preventing further redistributive measures. Others consider themselves to be working class but believe that redistributive measures are contrary to the true interests of the workers. Likewise, political scientists cannot reduce people’s beliefs about their social class and interests to something such as their religious affiliation, gender or housing occupancy because such ideas are not simply given to people. Rather, people construct their notions of social class using particular theories.

The second positivist thesis is that the concept of laws or necessary causation found in the natural sciences fits political science. Sometimes, this positivist thesis represents an attempt to claim the prestige of the natural sciences for a favoured approach. Talk of explaining actions by causal laws can sound impressively rigorous compared with avowedly interpretive approaches. At other times, this second positivist thesis springs from lax thinking. Political scientists recognize correctly that there is a universal feature of explanation; that is, to explain something is to relate it to other things. Then, they assume, wrongly, that the relationship between explanans and explanandum is also universal. And the prestige of natural science ensures they, again wrongly, identify this universal relationship with the scientific concept of causation. The main attractions of the second positivist thesis thus derive from the prestige of the natural sciences. But we should not take the success of natural science to preclude other forms of explanation.

The scientific concept of causation is inappropriate for political science because we cannot reduce beliefs to intervening variables. We can explain actions and practices properly only if we appeal to the reasons that inform them. When we explain actions as products of reasons, we imply that the actors could have reasoned and acted differently. Because actions and practices depend on the reasoned choices of people, they are the products of decisions, not the determined outcomes of laws or given processes. After all, choices would not be choices if causal laws fixed their content. Political science has to recognize the inherent contingency of the objects it studies.

Positivism has been widely criticized for its faith in pure experience. Political scientists recognize that we cannot approach objects from a theory-neutral position. They seem far less aware that the impossibility of pure experience also undermines the two positivist theses just discussed. First, because people do not have pure experiences, they always construct their identities, interests, and beliefs in part through their particular theories. Thus, political scientists cannot explain behaviour by reference to given interests or objective social facts. Second, because social facts do not fix people’s identities, interests, and beliefs, we have to explain actions by referring to the intentionality of the actors. Thus, political scientists cannot appeal to causal laws (for a more detailed discussion see Chapter 2).

Institutionalism, behaviouralism, and rational choice

Interpretive theory stands in contrast to institutionalism, behaviouralism, and rational choice, all of which fall foul of the preceding critique of positivism. That said, these approaches to political science are neither monolithic nor explicitly committed to positivism. Rather, they are entangled with our two positivist theses in ways that raise several problems for them. Then, when their exponents grapple with these problems, they introduce interpretive themes into their approach.

Institutionalism

Institutional approaches to political science focus on constitutions, legal systems, the formal organizations of government, and the comparison of these objects across space and time. The new institutionalism relaxes the concept of an institution to include less formal and more dynamic organizations based on norms as well as, or even instead of, laws. Institutionalism could be a purely descriptive approach, but if it were, it would offer little more than the trite observation that there are continuities in politics. Institutionalism becomes interesting only if it makes the explanatory claim that institutions ‘cause’ actions. Institutionalism implies that laws or norms have explanatory power because they constitute or structure practices. March and Olsen (1984: 738) argue that institutions are ‘collections of standard operating procedures and structures that define and defend interest’ and even constitute ‘political actors in their own right’. Hall (1986: 20) defines institutions as ‘formal rules, compliance procedures, and standard operating practices that structure relationships between individuals in various units of the polity and the economy’.

Unfortunately, institutionalists remain ambiguous on how we should conceive of institutions. On the one hand, institutions often appear to have an unacceptably reified form. They are defined as fixed rules or procedures that limit, and perhaps even determine, the actions of individuals. Political scientists are thus able to ignore the contingency, inner conflicts, and construction of institutions. On the other hand, however, institutions sometimes are opened to include beliefs in a way that implies they cannot constitute the beliefs and so actions of individuals. If we open institutions in this way, we cannot treat norms and rules as if they were given. Instead, we have to ask how people create, recreate, and change their beliefs and actions in ways that produce and modify institutions (see for example Chapter 20).

Institutionalists like to take institutions for granted. They like to treat them as if the people in them are bound to follow the relevant norms. Norms, not contingent agency, produce path dependency. However, to reify institutions in this way is to rely on positivist theses. Institutionalism, so conceived, assumes that allegedly objective rules prescribe or cause behaviour. This assumption ignores the obvious point that people can wilfully choose to disobey a rule. More importantly, it ignores the point that political scientists cannot read off people’s beliefs and desires from social facts about them. Further, we cannot resolve this problem by examining the intentions that are implicit in the rules or norms because we have no reason to assume the intentions, beliefs, and desires of those in an institution in any way resemble, let alone are identical to, those of the founders of the institution. Political scientists have to disaggregate institutions, exploring the contingent beliefs that lead people to maintain and modify them.

Faced with such considerations, institutionalists may open the concept of an institution to incorporate meanings. They may conceive of an institution as a product of actions informed by the varied and contingent beliefs and desires of the relevant people. Interpretivists will welcome such a disaggregation of instit...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Notes on Contributors
• Part I Introduction
• 1 Interpretive Political Science Mapping the field
• Part II Theories
• 2 Naturalism And Anti-Naturalism
• 3 Idealist Legacies
• 4 Hermeneutics
• 5 Historicism
• 6 Pragmatist Interpretivism
• 7 Social Constructivism
• 8 Cultural Studies
• 9 Post-Marxism
• 10 Governmentality
• Part III Methods
• 11 Quantitative Analysis As Narrative
• 12 Ethnography
• 13 Textual Analysis
• 14 Historical Methods
• 15 Storytelling
• Part IV Empirical disciplines
• 16 International Relations
• 17 Comparative Politics
• 18 American Politics
• 19 European Politics
• 20 Organizational Sociology
• 21 Political Sociology
• 22 Political Psychology
• 23 Public Law
• 24 Public Administration
• 25 Gender And Politics
• 26 Race And Politics
• Part V Professional practices
• 27 Policy Analysis
• 28 Planning
• 29 Management And Foucault
• 30 Accountancy
• 31 Social Welfare
• 32 Public Health
• Index