How to Map Arguments in Political Science

This book maps the explanatory landscape of political science. Even advanced students and established scholars often have difficulty charting their explanatory options: what kinds of explanations can we choose from? We confront a bewildering terrain of multiple uses of terms, overlapping typologies, and debate over what counts as an explanation. Parsons reorganizes our major terms and debates into the most fundamental, systematic, and exhaustive map the field has yet seen. In so doing he also challenges prevailing views on philosophy of science and research design. Graduate students seeking a sophisticated introduction to theorizing will find no other surveys of comparable scope and precision. Scholars of all theoretical inclinations will encounter a provocative rethinking of their basic questions, terms, and methods.