Analytic Eclecticism in the Study of World Politics
Reconfiguring Problems and Mechanisms across Research Traditions
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6323391 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Rounak Sil (0000-0001-9502-3122, Goethe University Frankfurt), Rudra Sil, Peter J Katzenstein (Goethe University Frankfurt) |
| Year | 2010 |
| Volume | 8 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 411-431 |
| Publication date | 2010-06-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Perspectives on Politics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1537-5927 • E-ISSN: 1541-0986 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s1537592710001179 |
| OpenAlex | W2157764242 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 170 |
| References cited | 93 |
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
Eclecticism · Epistemology · Ethos · Mainstream · Metaphysics · Political science · Politics · Scholarship · Social science · Sociology · Value (mathematics · International Relations and Foreign Policy · Law · Philosophy · Political Conflict and Governance · Qualitative Comparative Analysis Research
Imagining the Relational Through Speculative Fiction
International Relations Theory and the Evolution of “Peaceful Purposes” in Outer Space
US National Security Interests in Space
The Paradox of Asean Centrality
Transnational Climate Change Governance
Neoclassical Realism and Foreign Policy Analysis – A Possible Way of Integration?
Realism and International Relations
Institutionalism
Geopolitics and Democracy
Organization Theory and Cooperation and Conflict Among International Organizations
Climate Change and National Security
Two Visions of Greatness
The State of the Discipline
Calling for “IR as Becoming-Rhizomatic
Beyond Statist Paradigms
Studying Asian and comparative regionalism through Amitav Acharya's work
Bifurcated Core, Diverse Scholarship
International political thought
The Schools of Thought Problem in International Relations
Contrapuntal Reading” as a Method, an Ethos, and a Metaphor for Global IR
Integrating Strategic Culture and the Operational Code in Foreign Policy Analysis
Pragmatism as Ontology, Not (Just) Epistemology
We Are All Coethnics
Strategic Culture, Domestic Politics, and Foreign Policy
America's Pragmatic Role
The Future of Sino-Russian Relations in the Russian Far East
Changing Norms in Practice
Promoting a Safe Environment in Our Cities
Forum
International Negotiations in the Digital Age
El nuevo orden de seguridad mundial
Ukraine’s foreign policy
Abkhazia and South Ossetia in the foreign and security policy of the Russian Federation
How do smaller countries in the Indo-Pacific region proactively interact with China? An introduction
Introduction to the special issue on the comparative study of Asian countries’ bilateral relations with China
Is conflict prevention a science, craft, or art? Moving beyond technocracy and wishful thinking
Power and theory
Native nation building through the lens of political science
Bilateral defence and security cooperation despite disintegration
Rethinking mechanism and process in the geographical analysis of uneven development
The narrative policy framework’s call for interpretivists
Naval Diplomacy and Strategic Signaling in a Multiplex Rules‐Based Order
Explaining Myanmar’s Policy of Non-Alignment
The Regional Impacts of China’s Belt and Road Initiative
Kazakhstan–China Relations
Intergovernmental organizations and climate security
An Aristotelian Theory of Family
Cruel to care? Investigating the governance of compassion in the humanitarian imaginary
Turning’ everywhere in IR
Why IR scholars should care about quantum theory, part I
The false promise of global IR
From exotic seduction to utter normality
Four Types of Diaspora Mobilization
New Fighter Aircraft Acquisitions in B razil and I ndia
Can International Relations and Comparative Politics Be Policy Relevant? Theory and Methods for Incorporating Political Context
The dragon dithers
Analytic Eclecticism in Practice
Explaining the Russian invasion in Ukraine
Nato and the Russia–Ukraine war
Violent Punjab, quiescent Bengal, and the partition of India
Bridging international political economy and public policy and administration research on central banking
Hegemony and the dynamics of power
EU external policy coherence in the trade-foreign policy nexus
Foreign policy analysis, globalisation and non-state actors
Why Do Comparative Public Policy and Political Economy Scholars Need an Analytic Eclectic View of Structure, Institution and Agency
What Does Comparative Policy Analysis Have to Do with the Structure, Institution and Agency Debate
Post-Brexit EU/UK security cooperation
Glocalized norm interpretations
Winds of change? Neoclassical realism, foreign policy change, and European responses to the Russia-Ukraine War
Utility-based predictions of military escalation
The politics of climate security in France
Differentiated cooperation as the mode of governance in EU foreign policy
(Re)Setting the boundaries of peacebuilding in a changing global order
A paradigmatic study of strategic partnerships in international relations
Using Analytical Eclecticism for Improved Policy Relevance
Natural Allies? External Governance and Environmental Civil Society Organizations in the EU’s Eastern Partnership
Simply another practice among others? Analysing the rise of strategic partnerships in the Asia-Pacific region
Company colonies and historical layering
States and new markets
Progress, pluralism and science
Quantum technology hype and national security
Small states and the ‘throughput’ legitimacy of international organizations
In error we trust
The structure-identity nexus
(Re-)conceptualising the international
Economics
Reflection and implication
Sitting in silence or standing in protests
Asean’s role expectations and the diffusion of common but differentiated responsibilities principle in the climate change context
The Ukraine war and the emergence of the European commission as a geopolitical actor
Meaningful yet useless? Factors behind the retention of questionable concepts in human geography
Theory-Pluralism in Public Administration
Struggling over meanings
From trust to trusting
Pragmatist Power Europe
Varieties of neutrality
Dialogue instead of mutual neglect? International political economy meets foreign policy analysis
Ideology and Mass Killing
Finding Faith in Foreign Policy
The Wartime Origins of Democratization
The flight from reality in the human sciences
Pragmatism and social theory
The Rational Choice Controversy
The Social Sources of Financial Power
Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge
How to Map Arguments in Political Science
Making Social Science Matter
Reconstruction in philosophy.
The Political Economy of International Relations
Theories of Political Protest and Social Movements
The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory
A plea for mechanisms
The structure of scientific revolutions
Rules for the World
Politics in Time
Dynamics of Contention
Democracy and Knowledge
Eclectic Theorizing in the Study and Practice of International Relations
On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme
Economic Interdependence and International Conflict
How Institutions Evolve
On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme
Progress in International Relations Theory
How Institutions Evolve
Social Theory of International Politics
Reason, Truth and History
Institutional change and globalization
Social mechanisms
Politics and Paradigms
Theory and Progress in Social Science
Managing "Modernity"
Foundations of Multimethod Research
Man, the State, and War
Collective Action and the Civil Rights Movement
Great Transformations
Multiple Dialogues, Layered Syntheses, and the Limits of Expansive Cumulation
Theory Synthesis in International Relations
In conclusion
Globalising Democracy Without a State
Re-orienting International Relations
Pragmatic Constructivism and the Study of International Institutions
Theorizing the Mechanisms of Conceptual and Semiotic Space
The Conditions of Fruitfulness of Theorizing About Mechanisms in Social Science
Dependency or Institutions? Economic Geography, Causal Mechanisms, and Logic in the Understanding of Development
Pragmatism & the lessons of experience
Beyond Paradigms
The Role of Theory in Comparative Politics
Mechanisms in the Analysis of Social Macro-Phenomena
Social Theory and Social Structure
Theory and progress in social science
The Search for Paradigms as a Hindrance to Understanding
The Foundations of Eclecticism
Paradigmatic Faults in International-Relations Theory
On Acting and Knowing
Is the Revival of Pragmatism Practical, or What are the Consequences of Pragmatism
What You See and What You Get
The Strategy of Paired Comparison
Inquiry into Democracy
Democracy as Inquiry, Inquiry as Democratic
Mechanisms in Political Processes
Howconceptualproblemsmigrate
States and Social Revolutions
Discursive Institutionalism
How Does It Work
Including Mechanisms in Our Models of Ascriptive Inequality
A Pragmatist Theory of Social Mechanisms
A Theory of Endogenous Institutional Change
History, Historiography, and Political Science
Bridging the Quantitative-Qualitative Divide in Political Science
The Progressive Power of Realism
The Realist Paradigm and Degenerative versus Progressive Research Programs
Nested Analysis as a Mixed-Method Strategy for Comparative Research
Political Science and the Three New Institutionalisms
Framing Processes and Social Movements
Culture and Cognition
States and Social Revolutions
| Unique citing works | 170 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 10,63 |
| Citation span | 2010 - 2026 (17) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | Yes |
| Citation types | Neutral: 169 |