Analytic Eclecticism in the Study of World Politics: Reconfiguring Problems and Mechanisms across Research Traditions
Analytic Eclecticism in the Study of World Politics: Reconfiguring Problems and Mechanisms across Research Traditions
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世界政治研究中的分析折衷主义：跨研究传统重新配置问题和机制
DOI：
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发表时间：
2010
影响因子：
3.8
通讯作者：
P. Katzenstein
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Rudra Sil;P. Katzenstein
本文定义、操作和说明了分析折衷主义在社会科学中的价值，重点放在比较政治和国际关系领域。分析折衷主义不是另一种研究模式，也不是取代或包容现有学术模式的手段。这是一种智力立场，支持努力补充、参与并选择性地利用嵌入竞争研究传统中的理论构建，以建立与学者和实践者都感兴趣的实质性问题有关的复杂论点。兼收并蓄的学术有三个基本特征。首先，它与寻求与政策和实践世界接触的实用主义精神是一致的，淡化了无法解决的形而上学分歧和不可通约的假设，并鼓励以实际接触、包容性对话和犯错精神为标志的探究概念。其次，它提出的问题比研究传统的追随者提出的更狭隘的问题范围更广；因此，折衷的探究所处理的问题更接近于“现实世界”参与者面临的具体困境的混乱和复杂。第三，在探索这些问题时，折中的方法提供了复杂的因果故事，这些故事从相互竞争的研究传统中嵌入的解释性理论、模型和叙述中解脱、转换和选择性地重新组合分析成分--最显著的是因果机制。这篇文章包括了一个简短的研究样本，说明了分析折衷主义作为一种智力练习的组合潜力，以及它在增强学术界内外富有成效的对话和务实接触的可能性方面的价值。
This article defines, operationalizes, and illustrates the value of analytic eclecticism in 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.