Situational Analysis: Explanation in Political Science

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
This essay forwards situational analysis as the model of explanation most appropriate for an adequate reflective understanding of political science. It keeps centermost our concerns with intentionality, rationality, contextuality, and meaning. It promises to be as general a model of explanation as we can expect because it forges an underlying unity amongst diverse explanatory practices, including substantive models, law-like generalizations, idiographic explanations, and textual interpretations. After a development of situational analysis roughly along Popperian lines, three different sorts of explanations in political science are surveyed in light of it. Its limits are explored, and a brief agenda for further methodological reflection is suggested.

This publication has 15 references indexed in Scilit: