Abstract
John Finch’s paper is a comprehensive discussion of the methodological status of the interrelated concepts of Verstehen, ideal types and situational analysis in the context of the debates on the methodological underpinnings of institutional economics. While I basically agree with most of his conclusions, I strongly disagree with him when he argues that ”we cannot easily adopt the technique [of situational analysis] to explain the transformation of institutional customs and conventions, and cannot easily provide explanations of the functional significance and role of these customs and conventions”(Finch 26f.). I think the relationship between situational analysis and standard models of explanation in the social sciences deserves further, and a more thorough discussion. In what follows, first I am going to offer a brief conceptual analysis of two types of deductive-nomological explanations, and then, by way of an illustration, I will proceed to highlight the role of situational logic in supplementing these types of explanatory arguments.
Published Version
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