International Relations’ Scientific Imagination: A Pluralist’s Manifesto

Abstract

The Conduct of Inquiry in International Relations: Philosophy of Science and Its Implications for the Study of World Politics. By Patrick Thaddeus Jackson. New York: Routledge, 2010. 268 pp., $42.95 paperback (ISBN-13: 978-0-415-77627-1). Patrick Jackson has written the most important methodological book in political science since King, Keohane, and Verba's Designing Social Inquiry (1994). It is fueled by palpable frustration with the current terms of methodological debate in International Relations (IR), in particular a view of “science” that sees it as “vague and general sensibility” (p. 3), typically defined as the search for law-like generalizations through formalist or quantitative methods, played as a trump card from positions of authority, rather than a clearly specified philosophical account of the form of scientific inquiry used in a given instance and a rigorous argument in its favor. Conduct of Inquiry consequently defines a broader view of science, draws out its implications for current debates like that between quantitative and qualitative approaches, and defends methodological pluralism against those that would seek methodological hegemony in its stead. Although a contribution to the philosophy of IR, the book is neither esoteric nor estranged from the concerns of the practicing scholar. Clearly written and presented, it both contributes to existing debates while reorienting them in fresh and exciting directions. It is a major achievement, one that merits the widest possible audience among scholars and students of social science in general and IR in particular. Conduct of Inquiry presents a new vocabulary for scholars to use in order to get a handle on the complex …