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Governments conveniently blame social problems on their citizens, placing too much emphasis on personal responsibility. This book shows that 'nudging' citizens to better behaviour simply isn't good enough and explains why we should hold our politicians responsible for social problems.

Acknowledgements -- Contents -- List of Figures -- List of Tables -- Chapter 1: Introduction -- Providing a Systematic Account of the Australian Policy Agenda -- Contributions to Australian and Comparative Politics -- The Policy Agendas Project -- The Coding Exercise -- Theory and Explanations of Policy Processes -- Bridging the Quantitative-Qualitative Divide -- Road Map for Readers -- The Aims of the Australian Policy Agendas Project -- References -- Part I: Theory and Measurement of the Policy Agendas Project -- Chapter 2: The Policy Agenda: Attention, Content, and Style

Floyd defends normative behaviourism against 'mentalism'. His characterization of political philosophy as mentalism is uncharitable, and it is not clear that normative behaviourism provides greater evidence of convergence that we find in liberal political philosophy. To interpret behaviour, one must theorize the effects of institutions on that behaviour, it is therefore problematic to defend institutions on behavioural grounds alone without 'mentalistic' theory. Normative behaviourism uses a 'contingent imperative'; however, this leaves the behaviour normatively undefended. A potential response by Floyd to these criticisms depends upon misinterpreting Cohen's argument that fact-free principles underlie all policy recommendations. Floyd's own recommendations require at least one fact-free principle in Cohen's sense. Floyd is correct that behavioural evidence is important to political philosophy.

AbstractThis in memoriam article celebrates the life and work of Geoffrey Brennan.

This article responds to the comments on my book The Philosophy and Methods of Political Science. It clarifies my attitudes to isms, explains why I do not think causal explanation is the only type of scientific explanation and suggests that type-level explanation of background structural conditions is explanatory although not what we ordinarily think of as causal explanations; in doing so, it defends formal models. It clarifies what I mean by prediction and why this is necessary, although not sufficient for explanation, and discusses the relationship of type and token explanation to large- and small-N research. It also discusses bias, case selection, big data, the qualitative-quantitative distinction and replicability. It concludes by arguing that interpretative approaches are spot on when they claim that the nature of language is important for understanding society but only over looped terms and not all scientific discourse.

This article responds to the comments on my book The Philosophy and Methods of Political Science. It clarifies my attitudes to isms, explains why I do not think causal explanation is the only type of scientific explanation and suggests that type-level explanation of background structural conditions is explanatory although not what we ordinarily think of as causal explanations; in doing so, it defends formal models. It clarifies what I mean by prediction and why this is necessary, although not sufficient for explanation, and discusses the relationship of type and token explanation to large- and small-N research. It also discusses bias, case selection, big data, the qualitative–quantitative distinction and replicability. It concludes by arguing that interpretative approaches are spot on when they claim that the nature of language is important for understanding society but only over looped terms and not all scientific discourse.