Political Analysis Contemporary Controversies

by Hay, Colin

• ISBN13: 9780333750032
• ISBN10: 0333750039
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-09-06
• Publisher: SPRINGER - VERLAG

Summary

Following an innovative introduction to the main approaches and concepts in political analysis, the text focuses thematically on the key issues which currently concern and divide political analysts, including the boundaries of the political; the question of structure, agency and power; the dynamics of political change; the relative significance of ideas and material factors; and the challenge posed by postmodernism which the author argues the discipline can strengthen itself by addressing without allowing it to become a recipe for paralysis.

Author Biography

Colin Hay is Professor of Political Analysis, University of Birmingham.

Table of Contents

List of Figures, Tables and Boxes	x
Preface and Acknowledgements	xiii
Analytical Perspectives, Analytical Controversies	1	(58)
The scope and limits of political analysis	2	(4)
Analytical perspectives, analytical choices, analytical controversies	6	(1)
Mapping the political science mainstream	7	(6)
Mapping the mainstream in international relations	13	(14)
Analytical strategies in contemporary political science and international relations	27	(2)
The parsimony versus complexity trade-off	29	(8)
The role for and the nature of theory in political analysis	37	(13)
Context and conduct: dealing with the `problem' of agency	50	(4)
The structure of the book	54	(5)
What's `Political' About Political Science?	59	(30)
Ontology and epistemology: the `political question' and the `science' question	61	(5)
Specifying and respecifying the political	66	(3)
The nature of politics, the nature of the political	69	(6)
Science, politics and ethics	75	(6)
The retreat from positivism	81	(5)
Conclusion: the limits of political science and the ethics of political analysis	86	(3)
Beyond Structure versus Agency, Context versus Conduct	89	(46)
What is - and what is not - at stake in the structure- agency debate?	90	(3)
Conceptualising structure and agency	93	(3)
Operationalising structure and agency: the rise of fascism in Germany in the 1930s	96	(5)
Positions in the structure-agency debate	101	(12)
The centrality of structure and agency to political explanation	113	(2)
Beyond structure versus agency	115	(20)
Continuity and Discontinuity in the Analysis of Political Change	135	(33)
Time for change?	136	(7)
Analytical strategies for conceptualising change	143	(7)
Time, timing and temporality	150	(13)
Conclusion: structural, agential and ideational factors in the analysis of political change	163	(5)
Divided by a Common Language? Conceptualising Power	168	(26)
The `faces of power' controversy	171	(11)
Power: analytical and critical perspectives	182	(5)
Foucault and the `microphysics of power'	187	(7)
The Discursive and the Ideational in Contemporary Political Analysis: Beyond Materialism and Idealism	194	(22)
The space for ideas in political analysis	195	(2)
Constructivism in and beyond international relations theory	197	(8)
The difference that ideas (can) make	205	(4)
Structure, agency and ideas	209	(4)
Conclusion: paradigms and paradigm shifts	213	(3)
The Challenge of Postmodernism	216	(35)
Modernism and postmodernism as aesthetic sensibilities	218	(7)
Postmodernism as an intellectual sensibility	225	(9)
The contribution of postmodernism to political analysis	234	(5)
The postmodernist challenge to (critical) political analysis	239	(6)
In defence of critical political analysis: resisting postmodernism's vow of silence	245	(6)
Conclusion: Critical-Political-Analytical	251	(10)
Empirical but not empiricist	252	(1)
Structure and agency	253	(3)
An inclusive and post-disciplinary conception of political analysis	256	(1)
The causal and constitutive role of ideas	257	(2)
The contingency of political processes	259	(2)
Notes	261	(12)
Bibliography	273	(32)
Index	305