(.)La mayoría de las universidades ofrecen cursos sobre los textos clásicos de teoría política al menos desde Platón a Marx. Los teóricos políticos por lo general justifican esos cursos sobre la base de que estos textos abordan problemas perennes; problemas tales como "¿Por qué debemos obedecer al gobierno?", "¿qué es un Estado justo?", y "¿cuáles son los fundamentos de la moral política?". Recientemente, sin embargo, contextualistas lingüísticos, con Quentin Skinner y J. G. A. Pocock a la cabeza, se han manifestado en contra de la existencia misma de los problemas perennes. Ellos sostienen que textos escritos en diferentes lugares y en diferentes momentos abordan pro¬blemas inconmensurables porque, por ejemplo, los significados lingüísticos, las intenciones de los autores, o la condición humana, dependen por completo de contextos históricos específicos (.)
This book explores philosophical, sociological, and democratic approaches to organization. Bevir offers a humanist and historicist perspective, arguing that people creatively make and remake organizations in particular contexts. By highlighting the meaningful and contingent nature of action, he reexamines the concepts of state, nation, network, and market, and he calls for democratic innovations.
Foucault introduced the concept "governmentality" to refer to the conduct of conduct, and the technologies that govern individuals. While he adopted the concept after his shift from archaeological to genealogical studies, commentators argue his work on governmentality and that of his followers appears to remain entangled with structuralist themes more redolent of his archaeologies. This paper thus offers a type of conceptual clarification. The paper provides a resolutely genealogical approach to govermentality that: echoes Foucault on genealogy, power/knowledge, and technologies of power; suggests ways of resolving problems in Foucault's work; introduces concepts that are clearly historicist, not structuralist; and opens new areas of empirical research.
(…)La mayoría de las universidades ofrecen cursos sobre los textos clásicos de teoría política al menos desde Platón a Marx. Los teóricos políticos por lo general justifican esos cursos sobre la base de que estos textos abordan problemas perennes; problemas tales como "¿Por qué debemos obedecer al gobierno?", "¿qué es un Estado justo?", y "¿cuáles son los fundamentos de la moral política?". Recientemente, sin embargo, contextualistas lingüísticos, con Quentin Skinner y J. G. A. Pocock a la cabeza, se han manifestado en contra de la existencia misma de los problemas perennes. Ellos sostienen que textos escritos en diferentes lugares y en diferentes momentos abordan pro¬blemas inconmensurables porque, por ejemplo, los significados lingüísticos, las intenciones de los autores, o la condición humana, dependen por completo de contextos históricos específicos (…)
How might we think about democratic governance? This paper distinguishes between system governance and radical democracy. Systems governance borrows the language of radical democracy while missing its spirit. It advocates increased participation through networks because new institutionalists suggest networks are an efficient means of service delivery. It advocates increased consultation to build consensus because communitarians suggest consensus is needed for effective political institutions. System governance is, then, a top-down discourse based on the alleged expertise of social scientists. Radical democrats concentrate instead upon the self-government of citizens. Instead of the incorporation of established groups in networks, they promote a pluralism within which aspects of governance are handed over to associations in civil society. And instead of consultation prior to decision-making, they promote a dialogue in which citizens play an active role in making and implementing public policy.
This paper has two aims. First, in contrast to the modernist empiricism of mainstream political science, we provide brief introductions to several interpretive approaches to the study of political science and British government and politics: idealism, social humanism, post-structuralism, and ideational institutionalism. Second, we identify the distinctive research agendas that arise from this family of approaches: namely, critique, decentring governance, ethnographic studies of British politics, and policy analysis as storytelling.
Today we are often skeptical of the role played by representations of the nation state in constructing and legitimating ways of life and public policies. We portray what once appeared to be neutral, scientific representations of our practices and our heritages as contingent historical objects. How did we become so skeptical? The answer has several parts: developmental historicism dominated the human sciences in the latter half of the nineteenth century; the turn of the century witnessed an epistemic rupture and the rise of a modernist empiricism that came to dominate the social sciences; modernist empiricists reformulated their approach during the latter half of the twentieth century in response to alternative visions of social science; and, finally, the close of the twentieth century also saw the rise of a radical historicism that spread from philosophy and literature to history and even social science. In short, we have become skeptical as we have moved towards a radical historicism that challenges scientism and decenters the grand narratives of yore.
This paper asks 'how do practitioners understand the relationship between the prime minister, ministers and the rest of Westminster and Whitehall?' We focus on three topics. First, we review tales of a Blair Presidency. Second, we explore the governance paradox in which people tell tales of a Blair presidency as they recount stories of British governance that portray it as fragmented with several decision makers. Finally, we argue this paradox reveals the distorting influence the Westminster Model still exerts on many accounts of British politics. It acts as a smokescreen for the changes in executive politics.
Qualitative methods are, more or less by definition, used when political scientists want to acquire a thicker understanding of some phenomena. They are used to generate a more detailed, more textured, more contextualised account of an action, practice, or even institution. No doubt political scientists might have all kinds of reasons for wanting to acquire such textured accounts–it would be nice (but, alas, probably false) to assume the various reasons derived from distinct philosophical analyses of their discipline. Still, one reason for seeking textured accounts might be a concern to understand the reasons actors had for doing what they did. One rationale for qualitative methods is precisely that they can help us to recover the meanings or concepts with which those involved imbued actions and practices.
An interpretive approach to political science provides accounts of actions and practices that are interpretations of interpretations. We develop this argument using the idea of 'situated agency'. There are many common criticisms of such an approach. This paper focuses on nine: that an interpretive approach is mere common sense; that it focuses on beliefs or discourses, not actions or practices; that it ignores concepts of social structure; that it seeks to understand actions and practices, not to explain them; that it is concerned exclusively with qualitative techniques of data generation; that it must accept actors' own accounts of their beliefs; that it is insensitive to the ways in which power constitutes beliefs; that it is incapable of producing policy relevant knowledge; and that it is incapable of producing objective knowledge. We show the criticisms rest on both misconceptions about an interpretive approach and misplaced beliefs in the false idols of hard data and rigorous methods.
Interpretive approaches to governance include poststructuralism, constructivist institutionalism, practical philosophy, and democratic pluralism. All of these interpretive approaches share a focus on meanings, sympathy for bottom-up studies, and an emphasis on contingency. All of them also confront theoretical issues that have arisen from the postfoundational turn within philosophy. They face questions about the nature of the meanings we study, the possibilities for recentring given an emphasis on diversity, and the normative and policy implications of their approach. Although poststructuralists have made the running in addressing these questions, their answers are ambiguous or even misleading. They often appear, in particular, mistakenly to renounce situated agency along with autonomy. This essay seeks to provide alternative answers to these theoretical questions and thereby to provide a more robust theoretical framework for interpretive approaches to governance.
All political scientists offer us their interpretations of the world. Interpretive approaches differ from many others in that they offer us interpretations of interpretations; they concentrate on meanings, beliefs, languages, discourses, and signs, as opposed to, say, laws and rules, correlations between social categories, or deductive models. Of course, this distinction between interpretive approaches and others is not an all or nothing affair: sensible interpretivists allow that the study of laws, correlations, and models can play a role in our exploration of practices; and sensible institutionalists, behavioralists, and rational choice theorists allow that their typologies, correlations, and models can do explanatory work only in so far as they can be unpacked in terms of the actual beliefs and desires of actors. Nonetheless, we can distinguish a family of interpretive approaches to political science that stand out in that they focus on meanings and beliefs – a family that includes decentred theory, ethnography, poststructuralism, practical philosophy, and social constructivism, and that overlaps with other approaches such as the constructivist and ideational forms of institutionalism.
A study of the role of theosophy in the formation of the Indian National Congress enhances our understanding of the relationship between neo-Hinduism and political nationalism. Theosophy, and neo-Hinduism more generally, provided western-educated Hindus with a discourse within which to develop their political aspirations in a way that met western notions of legitimacy. It gave them confidence in themselves, experience of organisation, and clear intellectual commitments, and it brought them together with liberal Britons within an all-India framework. It provided the background against which A. O. Hume worked with younger nationalists to found the Congress.
"On Tradition". Tradition plays a vital role as an ontological and explanatory concept quite apart from its frequent use as a moral and political one. Human scientists often explain features of actions, practices or works by locating them in a tradition, and even scholars who explicitly reject the concept of tradition often adopt related concepts to describe the impact of context upon human activity. It appears, then, that a concept such as tradition, structure, heritage, or paradigm has an important role to play in our understanding of the human condition. This paper analyses this ontological and explanatory concept of tradition. It asks, why do we need such a concept? What content we should give to it? What role does it play in our accounts of human affairs? The analysis takes us away from essentialist accounts of traditions as defined by fixed features toward one that sees them as composed of conceptual and historical connections. It thus seeks to allow for the contingent and fluid nature of social life. ; La tradición juega un papel vital como concepto ontológico y explicativo, además de su frecuente uso como concepto moral o político. Los humanistas suelen explicar las características de las acciones, las prácticas o las labores ubicándolas en una tradición. Incluso los académicos que rechazan explícitamente el concepto de tradición, adoptan con frecuencia conceptos afines para describir el impacto del contexto sobre la actividad humana. Al parecer, pues, un concepto como el de la tradición, la estructura, la herencia o el paradigma, cumple un importante papel en nuestra comprensión de la condición humana. Este artículo analiza ese concepto ontológico y explicativo de la tradición. Se pregunta, ¿por qué necesitamos de tal concepto? ¿Qué contenido deberíamos darle? ¿Qué papel cumple en nuestras consideraciones de los asuntos humanos? El análisis nos conduce, lejos de las posturas esencialistas en torno a las tradiciones que las definen como rasgos dados, hacia una postura que las considera compuestas de conexiones conceptuales e históricas. Busca, de este modo, tener en cuenta la naturaleza contingente y fluida de la vida social.
Sidney Webb is often represented as a descendent of the utilitarians. Social democracy and the welfare state thus stand as the continuing development of Enlightenment rationalism. Alternatively, Webb appears as the representative of a new managerial and administrative class. Social democracy and the welfare state here stand as the elitist and bureaucratic expressions of the power of this class. In contrast to these conventional views, this paper locates Webb in the context of a radicalism, peculiar to the 1870s, composed of ethical positivism and evolutionary sociology. He became a socialist because of his positivist ethic. He defined his socialism in relation to an evolutionary philosophy. And he later adopted collectivism as a result of turning to positivist sociology. Webb's collectivism, however, provided little assistance in dealing with the dilemmas of the inter-war years. His ethical positivism and evolutionary sociology led him to turn to solutions apparently offered by the Soviet Union. This reinterpretation of Webb suggests a new view of social democracy and the welfare state. We should see them as the changing products of particular ideational and political contexts such as those of the 1870s and 1930s
