History, Social Science, and Public Policy

This article examines aspects of Hugh Stretton's thought, challenging an exclusively historical reading of his work and defending his importance as a theoretically engaged thinker on a wide range of issues in the social, political, and economic sciences. While Stretton distanced himself from strong theoretical claims in his work, this paper argues that he did articulate and defend a general framework for social, political, and economic thought and analysis, which needs to be better understood. This is examined through engagement with some of Stretton's contributions on cities, social democratic reform, economic rationalist and neoliberal thought, and public policy. Some concluding arguments are made linking Stretton's thought to that of other thinkers and theorists in the social, political, and economic sciences. In making these connections it is argued that his work is best viewed as an exercise in intellectual trespassing and interpretive social science, and as a normative defence of social democracy

Democracy · Economics · Epistemology · Normative · Political science · Politics · Positive economics · Reading (process) · Social science · Social thought · Sociology · Work (physics) · Law · Philosophy · Political and Economic history of UK and US