The Interpretive Approach in Political Science: a Symposium

Abstract

One might perhaps expect to find interpretive methodology occupying a strong and secure place in British political science. With its origins in philosophy and history (see Kavanagh 2003) British political studies never fully or exclusively embraced behaviourism or subsequent positivist methodologies. Interpretivism represents the major alternative for social science in which, as Weber declared, ‘we are concerned with mental phenomena the empathic “understanding” of which is naturally a task of a specifically different type from those which the schemes of the exact natural sciences in general can seek to solve’ (quoted in Giddens 1971, 146). But interpretivism does not have a secure footing in British political studies. 2 The systematic explication of political phenomena through interpretive concepts and methods, despite some notable attempts and a growing intensity of focus, is still at an early stage of development (see Carver and Hyvarinen 1997; ECPR 2002). In the academic study of contemporary British government interpretivism is not at all widespread. Are things about to change? Recent methodological disputes in British political science map on to broader debates about how the structure and process of British government might or might not be changing (see, for example, Marsh and Smith 2001; Dowding 2001; Hay 2002). If we are in the midst of a shift from top-down ‘command and control’ to a looser framework of ‘governance’, then the time of interpretivism may well have arrived. But methodological arguments are always about more than method. They map on to and can define broader debates concerning what government is, how it works and whether or not it is changing. The publication of Mark Bevir and Rod Rhodes’ Interpreting British Governance (2003), which advocates and demonstrates the analysis of governance using interpretive theories and methods, is a significant development in these debates. Interpreting British Governance is an attempt to bring together some philosophically derived themes about context, agency and tradition with political science research into the conduct of governance in Britain today. As such it presents an opportunity to review the questions raised by interpretivism, put them into the broader contexts of methodological argument and assess the contribution this all makes to the analysis of British politics. In what follows Bevir and Rhodes begin by laying out the basics of their post-foundational approach to studying governance. They stress the significance of traditions in shaping actions, even as those traditions are reshaped by the ways in which people act. They use this to help make sense of a shift from government to governance: a revision of the ‘Westminster model’. BJPIR: 2004 VOL 6, 129‐164