Idioms of Inquiry

Terence Ball is Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota. He is the author of Civil Disobedience and Civil Deviance, editor of Political Theory and Praxis, and co-editor of After Marx.

"The essays engage in a conversation with one another, weaving ideas, perspectives, and arguments taken up earlier with those addressed later—not in chorus anvil fashion, but in the form of a dialogue among philosophically sophisticated scholars adopting sometimes complementary, sometimes divergent, readings of overlapping concerns and ideas." — Ernest J. Yanarella

• Preface Introduction Part I. Rationality and Progress in Political Inquiry1. Is There Progress in Political Science?Terence Ball2. Resituating ExplanationJames Farr3. Rational Choice TheoriesRussell Hardin Part II. Interpretation and Critique4. Deadly Hermeneutics; or, Sinn and the Social ScientistTerence Ball5. Toward a Critical Political ScienceStephen K. White6. Interpretation, Genealogy, and Human AgencyMichael T. Gibbons Part III. Beyond Empiricism and Hermeneutics7. Political Inquiry: Beyond Empiricism and HermeneuticsFred Dallmayr8. After Empiricism: The Realist AlternativeJeffrey C. Isaac Part IV. Political Science and Political Discourse9. Male-Ordered Politics: Feminism and Political ScienceKathy E. Ferguson10. Political Science and Political Choice: Opacity, Freedom, and KnowledgeJ. Donald Moon Contributors Index