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This article defines, operationalizes, and illustrates the value ofanalytic eclecticismin the social sciences, with a focus on the fields of comparative politics and international relations. Analytic eclecticism is not an alternative model of research or a means to displace or subsume existing modes of scholarship. It is an intellectual stance that supports efforts to complement, engage, and selectively utilize theoretical constructs embedded in contending research traditions to build complex arguments that bear on substantive problems of interest to both scholars and practitioners. Eclectic scholarship is marked by three general features. First, it is consistent with an ethos of pragmatism in seeking engagement with the world of policy and practice, downplaying unresolvable metaphysical divides and presumptions of incommensurability and encouraging a conception of inquiry marked by practical engagement, inclusive dialogue, and a spirit of fallibilism. Second, it formulates problems that are wider in scope than the more narrowly delimited problems posed by adherents of research traditions; as such, eclectic inquiry takes on problems that more closely approximate the messiness and complexity of concrete dilemmas facing "real world" actors. Third, in exploring these problems, eclectic approaches offer complex causal stories that extricate, translate, and selectively recombine analytic components—most notably, causal mechanisms—from explanatory theories, models, and narratives embedded in competing research traditions. The article includes a brief sampling of studies that illustrate the combinatorial potential of analytic eclecticism as an intellectual exercise as well as its value in enhancing the possibilities of fruitful dialogue and pragmatic engagement within and beyond the academe.

Area studies scholarship has been indispensable for the development of social scientific knowledge. However, it risks becoming marginalized without more concerted efforts to demonstrate its relevance for contemporary social science. This volume showcases comparative area studies (CAS).

Introduction,Ken Jowitt's universe /Rudra Sil and Marc Morjé Howard --Lenin's century : Bolshevism, Marxism, and the Russian tradition /Vladimir Tismaneanu --Leninist legacy revisited /Marc Morjé Howard --Transition to what? : legacies and reform trajectories after communism /Grigore Pop-Eleches --Institutions and the development of individualism : the case of western Poland after World War II /Tomek Grabowski --Soviet Union as a reign of virtue : Aristotelian and Christian influences on modern Russian ethics and politics /Oleg Kharkhordin --Slobodan Milošević : charismatic leader or plebiscitarian demagogue /Veljko Vujačić --Social dimensions of collectivization : fomenting class struggle in Transylvania /Gail Kligman and Katherine Verdery --Stages of development in authoritarian regimes /Barbara Geddes --From neotraditionalism to neofamilism : responses to "national dependency" in newly industrialized countries /Yong-Chool Ha --Leninism, developmental stages, and transformation : understanding social and institutional change in contemporary China /Calvin Chen --Weber, Jowitt, and the dilemma of social science prediction /Stephen E. Hanson --Evolving significance of Leninism in comparative historical analysis : theorizing the general and the particular /Rudra Sil --Conjuring up a battlefront in the war on terror /Stephen Holmes --Power of imaginative analogy : communism, faith, and leadership /Daniel Chirot.

Editor Gunther Hellmann opens a forum on "Pragmatism & International Relations" with a discussion of the idea that "beliefs are rules for action." He also considers the debate among pragmatists about differences between methods/methodology rather than ontology/epistemology. Helen Rytovuori-Apunen offers her interpretation of proposing a hypothesis as a way to understand the "primacy of practice" & examines the relevance of ionic, indexical, & symbolic dimensions of sign relations to international relations (IR). Jorg Friedrichs' contribution investigates three varieties of pragmatist methodology in IR scholarship: theory synthesis, analytic eclecticism, & abduction & discusses his personal preference for abduction. Rudra Sil focuses on analytic eclecticism as a pragmatist alternative to scholarship embedded in existing research traditions while Marcus Kornprobst explores the positive potential of rhetorical pragmatism for shaping rhetorical dimensions of IR. In the final forum contribution Patrick Thaddeus Jackson argues that pragmatism holds its most profound implications for IR scholarship through philosophical ontology, which consists of "the conjunction of two basic commitments or wagers about the relationship between the mind & the world.". Adapted from the source document.