Conceptual Problems As Obstacles To Progress in Political Science - James Johnson

http://jtp.sagepub.
com
Journal of Theoretical Politics
DOI: 10.1177/0951692803151004
2003; 15; 87 Journal of Theoretical Politics
James Johnson
Four Decades of Political Culture Research
Conceptual Problems as Obstacles to Progress in Political Science:
http://jtp.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/15/1/87
The online version of this article can be found at:
Published by:
http://www.sagepublications.com
can be found at: Journal of Theoretical Politics Additional services and information for
http://jtp.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Email Alerts:
http://jtp.sagepub.com/subscriptions Subscriptions:
http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Reprints:
http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav Permissions:
http://jtp.sagepub.com/cgi/content/refs/15/1/87
SAGE Journals Online and HighWire Press platforms):
(this article cites 52 articles hosted on the Citations
by Juan Grandinetti on October 3, 2008 http://jtp.sagepub.com Downloaded from
CONCEPTUAL PROBLEMS AS OBSTACLES TO
PROGRESS IN POLITICAL SCIENCE
FOUR DECADES OF POLITICAL CULTURE RESEARCH
James Johnson
ABSTRACT
When they assess competing theories political scientists typically rely exclu-
sively and naively on criteria of empirical performance. They have correspond-
ingly little to say about conceptual problems and seem generally unaware of
the extent to which their assessments of empirical performance are parasitic
on conceptual commitments. This, in turn, hinders their ability to both persua-
sively conduct and critically assess substantive research. I use four decades of
research on political culture as a vehicle for demonstrating how conceptual
problems pose obstacles to progress in political science.
KEY WORDS . Political culture . social capital . scientic progress . con-
ceptual problems
1. Introduction
It would be an enormous mistake . . . to imagine that scientic progress and rationality
consist entirely of solving empirical problems. There is a second type of problem-solving
activity which has been at least as important in the development of science as empirical
problem solving. This latter type of problem, which I call a conceptual problem, has
been largely ignored . . . presumably because it does not comport well with those empiri-
cist philosophies of science which have been the reigning fashion for more than a century.
(Laudan, 1977: 45 emphasis in original)
Political scientists make just this error. We make it regularly. And we make it
enthusiastically. We rarely recognize the importance of conceptual problems
in our work and, thereby, we subvert the possibility of progress in the
discipline.
Journal of Theoretical Politics 15(1): 87115 Copyright & 2003 Sage Publications
09516928[2003/01]15:1; 87115; 029402 London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi
I presented an earlier, quite different version of this article to Third Annual St Louis Philo-
sophy of Social Science Roundtable, Washington University, April 2001. I am grateful to the
participants for their comments. As always, my thinking has benetted from ongoing conversa-
tions with Jack Knight. I thank David Laitin who generously provided detailed written remarks
on an earlier draft. I thank three anonymous referees for their pointed comments. Most espe-
cially I thank Keith Dowding for guiding the manuscript through the review process and for
his editing skills. All remaining errors and infelicities are my own.
Consider, in this respect, two recent, extended and quite prominent treat-
ments of political inquiry. Green and Shapiro (1994) notoriously rest their
indictment of rational choice theory exclusively on issues of empirical perfor-
mance. They insist that, when assessing social and political research, èmpiri-
cal testing cannot be escaped . . . a theory of politics has no payoff if its
hypotheses do not survive empirical scrutiny' (Green and Shapiro, 1994:
32; emphasis added). Defenders of rational choice for their part largely
capitulated and allowed Green and Shapiro to set the terms of debate (e.g.
Cox, 1999). As a result, this dispute largely misidenties the scope and
limits of rational choice theories (Johnson, 1996).
Likewise, if only slightly less polemically, King et al. (1994) announce early
on that èvery theory, to be worthwhile, must have implications about the
observations we expect to nd if the theory is correct' (p. 28, emphasis
added). And they subsequently insist `that the standard for explanation in
any empirical science like ours must be empirical verication or falsication'
(King et al., 1994: 110; emphasis in original). They, therefore, identify
descriptive and causal inference as the central, perhaps even exclusive,
criterion for judging sound social science and devote only the most cursory
attention to conceptual and theoretical issues (Laitin, 1995b: 4556; Brady,
1995: 1516; King et al., 1995: 4756).
These are not merely esoteric `methodological' controversies. Indeed, they
illuminate the unquestioned, unwarranted consensus of a discipline that
takes empirical performance not simply as the primary but, more often
than not, as the sole criterion by which we assess substantive research.
Even explicit discussions of conceptual difculties tend to focus on the rela-
tively narrow issue of how we risk distorting concepts when we extend them
to cases outside their initial range of application. There too, conceptual
matters typically attract attention primarily because of methodological con-
cerns about how to generalize across empirical cases (Sartori, 1970; Collier
and Mahoney, 1993; Collier and Levitsky, 1997). Political scientists simply
do not grant conceptual problems the same status or importance that they
routinely accord empirical performance. As a result our capacity to assess
either conceptual or empirical progress in the discipline is quite severely
impaired.
A number of questions naturally arise at this point. What is a conceptual
problem? What is scientic progress? How are the two related? Beyond that
there is the issue of implications. If these three questions are answered, what
consequences for substantive social and political inquiry follow from an
explicit awareness that conceptual problems play an important, recurrent
role in scientic practice and progress? The rst three questions are answered
in a constructive, if abstract way in Sections 24. The nal question is
addressed more concretely in Sections 5 and 6 by examining in detail the
difculties that arise when conceptual problems are neglected.
88 JOURNAL OF THEORETICAL POLITICS 15(1)
My response to the rst three questions draws heavily on Larry Laudan's
work. On Laudan's pragmatist account of scientic practice as a discipline at
any given time typically encompasses several contending, often mutually
incompatible, research traditions. Moreover, in his account proponents of
these alternative research traditions more or less continuously criticize the
empirical performance and conceptual foundations of their competitors.
In both respects Laudan offers a plausible portrait of intellectual disputes
in political science over at least the last quarter century (Almond, 1990).
In the remainder of this article, I focus on a single robust research tradition
I will call Political Culture Research (PCR). This tradition spans at least four
decades from the early 1960s to the present of sustained inquiry. Its pro-
ponents include highly prominent and inuential political scientists Gabriel
Almond, Sidney Verba, Ronald Inglehart, Harry Eckstein and Robert
Putnam who self-identify through mutual acknowledgement and citation
and, more importantly, by explicitly articulating a distinctive approach
to the social scientic tasks of explaining and predicting observable
phenomena. Specically, PCR endeavors to advance an empirically success-
ful, methodologically sophisticated, comparative analysis of the relations
between culture and politics. I argue that advocates of PCR have been
frustrated in this task by their inattention to conceptual problems. As a con-
sequence of this neglect, their claims to advance `cultural' explanations of
politics remain largely unpersuasive. PCR affords one case of how concep-
tual problems present obstacles to progress in political science.
I do not intend to rehearse stale criticisms of PCR. The aws I identify in
this research tradition are not unique to it. Other research traditions are
susceptible to much the same criticism leveled here at PCR (Johnson,
2002). I focus on PCR because it is prominent and widely respected and,
more especially, because that prominence and respect derive from the per-
ception that PCR has had sustained empirical success in addressing a set
of questions of clear substantive importance. In that sense PCR illustrates
much broader, recurrent problems that beset political scientists when they
neglect conceptual issues. I hope to show how persistent, unresolved concep-
tual problems make it very difcult to render reliable judgements about
empirical performance and disciplinary progress.
Neither is my primary intent to discuss Laudan. His views are not
thoroughly explicated nor defended against competing conceptions of science
(see Ball, 1987; Johnson, 1996, 2002; cf. Dryzek, 1986; Gundersen, 1994;
Levey, 1996). Rather, I sketch Laudan's position and identify some implica-
tions of his views for thinking about social and political research. I then use
that sketch to argue that conceptual problems actively hinder not only PCR
analyses of the relations of culture and politics but, by implication, research
among political scientists more generally.
JOHNSON: CONCEPTUAL PROBLEMS 89
2. Conceptual Problems, Theoretical Progress, and How They
are Related
a broad range of empirical and conceptual checks are of equal importance in theory test-
ing. (Laudan, 1996: 80)
When asked, most political scientists embrace something like the `barefoot
positivist, anti-obscurantist viewpoint' that one recent methodological
primer recommends (Van Evera, 1997: 3). If pressed they likely claim that
in their research they contribute to one or another aspect by which social
scientists formulate and test hypotheses and so they practice a brand of
falsicationism. Alternatively, they might depict their research as contribut-
ing to the sort of `normal science' that occupies the longish stretches between
fundamental transitions between paradigms. If pressed still further, they
probably insist that the fundamental criteria for testing theories are empirical
and that attention to conceptual issues, where it is not actively distracting, is
of subsidiary importance. And, in any case, they very likely claim that scien-
tic progress typically consists in the more or less gradual and cumulative
growth of empirical knowledge.
In contrast, Laudan defends a pragmatist account of science as a `problem-
solving' enterprise and a view of scientic progress that, accordingly, assesses
competing research traditions in terms of their relative problem-solving
capacities (Laudan, 1977, 1990: 2431, 1996: 7787). In his view:
The problem solving model . . . suggests that the coexistence of rival research traditions is
the rule rather than the exception. It stresses the centrality of debates about conceptual
foundations and argues that the neglect of conceptual issues (a neglect which Kuhn
sees as central to the `normal' progress of science) is undesirable. That the actual devel-
opment of science is closer to the picture of permanent coexistence of rivals and the omni-
presence of conceptual debate than to the picture of normal science seems clear. It is
difcult, for instance, to nd any lengthy period in the history of science in the last 300
years when the Kuhnian picture of `normal science' prevails. What seems far more
common is for scientic disciplines to involve a variety of co-present research approaches
(traditions). At any given time, one or another of these may have the competitive edge,
but there is continuous and persistent struggle taking place, with partisans of one view
or another pointing to the empirical and conceptual weaknesses of rival points of view
and to the problem-solving progressiveness of their own approach. (Laudan, 1996: 85)
On this account, competing research traditions play a crucial role in the prac-
tice and progress of science. Research traditions consist of general assump-
tions that loosely unite various component theories. They dene the object
domain of component theories and identify the sorts of entity that populate
that domain, specify the sorts of problems that component theories can be
expected to solve and designate the methods appropriate for so doing
(Laudan, 1977: 812, 97, 1996: 834).
A research tradition will, at any given time, encompass several competing
possibly outright inconsistent theories. Unlike these component theories,
which aim to explain and predict events in the world, research traditions
are not directly testable. We assess the value of a research tradition by how
successfully its component theories solve a range of problems (Laudan, 1977:
10614, 11920). And here, Laudan claims, relative success at solving con-
ceptual as well as empirical problems is germane to assessing the perfor-
mance of a theory.
Laudan recognizes that judgements about relative empirical performance
are important to theory assessment. Indeed, he discusses the role of empirical
problems in scientic practice at considerable length (Laudan, 1977: 1145).
He simply argues (based on his own reading of the history of various
sciences) that the evaluation of theories is based on assessments of how
well they settle both conceptual and empirical problems. And he insists, as
noted in the epigram to this section, that the two sorts of problem play
equally important roles in our assessment of theories.
For Laudan, empirical problems are `rst order problems . . . substantive
questions about the objects which constitute the domain of a given science'.
Put otherwise, literally anything that `strikes us as odd, or otherwise in need
of explanation' about some relevant portion of the world is an empirical
problem (Laudan, 1977: 15; emphasis in original). He distinguishes between
`potential', ànomalous' and `solved' problems and suggests that empirical
progress consists just in the resolution of potential and anomalous problems
(Laudan, 1996: 79, 1977: 1731).
Conceptual problems, by contrast, àre higher order questions about the
well-foundedness of the conceptual structures (e.g., theories) which have
been devised to answer rst-order questions' (Laudan, 1977: 48). He distin-
guishes here between internal and external problems. A theory encounters
internal conceptual problems to the extent that it is self-contradictory or
that it invokes implausible, unclear or vague mechanisms. It encounters
external conceptual problems, for instance, to the extent it makes assump-
tions about the world and the entities it contains which cannot be sustained
in the face of current well-founded metaphysical or epistemic doctrines, that
it disregards basic precepts of the more encompassing research tradition in
which it is situated or that it neglects conceptual resources or innovations
available within rival traditions (Laudan, 1996: 79, 1977: 4964). Particular
conceptual problems `have no existence independent of the theories which
exhibit them'. A `conceptual problem is a problem exhibited by some
theory or other' and so is unlike potential empirical problems which are
more or less independent of any given theory (Laudan, 1977: 48; emphasis
in original).
We make progress insofar as we resolve empirical and conceptual
problems. We make progress, for example, not just to the extent that our
theories survive empirical tests but also to the extent that our theories are
`well-founded' in the sense that we specify more clearly the mechanisms
that animate them or that we productively incorporate conceptual resources
available from sources outside of our own research tradition. It remains for
me to show what consequences follow once we recognize conceptual prob-
lems and the ways that they enter into a plausible account of theoretical
progress.
3. A `Moribund' Enterprise
The systematic study of culture and politics is moribund. (Laitin 1986: 171)
David Laitin issued this mildly impolitic but quite accurate judgement a
decade and a half ago now. His assessment still holds. Although his remarks
do not apply only to champions of PCR, they surely do apply to them.
1
This
is so in large measure because they neglect conceptual problems that hinder
their efforts to analyze the relations between culture and politics. In this
section I examine two particular conceptual problems that contribute to
the state Laitin identies.
Laudandifferentiatesbetweenèxternal' andìnternal' conceptual problems.
PCR exhibits both. It generates external conceptual problems to the extent
it explicitly ignores conceptual advances in related, relevant disciplines in
particular, anthropology. It generates internal conceptual problems because
it fails clearly to specify explanatory mechanisms. Consequently, PCR
currently does not offer what, following Laudan (1977: 100), we might call
a `conceptually well-founded' analysis of the relation of culture and politics.
Anthropologist Clifford Geertz (1973) provides a useful point of departure
from which to explore this claim. His work provides an apt contrast to PCR
for several reasons (Johnson, (1997a, b; 2000). First, Geertz has been widely
inuential not just among anthropologists but also across social science as a
whole. Second, Geertz and PCR share a similar intellectual genealogy and
specically a common debt to Talcott Parsons. Third, the rst installments
of PCR (Eckstein, 1966; Almond and Verba, 1963) appeared at roughly
the same time as Geertz's inuential early essays, many of which were pre-
occupied with the interaction of culture and politics (Geertz, 1973: 193
344). Fourth, both Geertz and the proponents of PCR were reformers
hoping to rehabilitate `culture' as an object of inquiry in their respective dis-
ciplines. Finally, despite these commonalities Geertz and the PCR tradition
pursued widely divergent paths. In particular, Geertz's research was driven
1. One might, for example, explore the so-called `cultural theory' that Aaron Wildavsky
(1987) and his co-authors borrowed more or less wholesale from anthropologist Mary Douglas.
I set this and other approaches aside here because I think PCR has been both more inuential in
and more central to the discipline.
by conceptual as well as empirical problems. And while he never persuasively
addressed all of those conceptual problems, his work highlights the conse-
quences that follow on the PCR tradition's more or less complete failure
to confront them.
Geertz rightly insists that culture and politics are intimately related.
`Culture', on his account, consists of symbols and practices (ritual, tradition,
etc.) that embody the sorts of `meaning through which men give shape to
their experience'. Politics, by contrast, ìs . . . one of the principal arenas in
which such structures publicly unfold' (Geertz, 1973: 312). The task was to
conceptualize more clearly how culture and politics interact. Geertz con-
sidered this task ìmmodest' because, on his account, `there is almost no
theoretical apparatus with which to conduct it' (Geertz, 1973: 312, 24).
This observation still resonates as both description and diagnosis. Geertz
provided crucial elements of the sort of `theoretical apparatus' required to
analyze the relation of culture and politics in a systematic way. He offered
a revisionist conception of culture as embodied in publicly shared symbols
and the cultural practices that social and political actors deploy in the con-
tested effort to impose conceptual order on otherwise indeterminate experi-
ence. This conceptual revision had profound inuence upon anthropologists
and other social scientists because it `gave the hitherto elusive concept of
culture a relatively xed focus, and a degree of objectivity, that it did not
have before' (Ortner, 1984: 129; Swidler, 1996: 299). In this way Geertz
enabled social scientists to reject conceptions of culture that either reify it
as a rather mysterious, larger-than-life, independent source of purpose and
activity or reduce it to an essentially psychological, and therefore unobserv-
able and very nearly inaccessible, subjective category (Geertz, 1973: 1013).
PCR largely ignored this conceptual innovation hence generating an
èxternal' conceptual problem. This neglect was animated by narrowly
`methodological' differences. On the one hand, advocates of PCR are pre-
occupied with particular research techniques. On the other, Geertz himself
invited neglect with his rather notorious pronouncements on interpretive
social inquiry. His claims on that score have been misconstrued and exagger-
ated and are, in any case, only contingently related to the conception of
culture that he defends (Swidler, 1996). I consequently set them aside.
Instead, I wish to call attention to a theoretical difculty that haunts Geertz's
conception of culture because it prompts us to consider, in turn, the second,
ìnternal', conceptual problem that plagues PCR.
Geertz insists that `the central theoretical problem' for the conception of
culture he endorses is how to understand the way that symbols and other
cultural practices inuence social and political interaction (Geertz, 1973:
250). That said, neither Geertz nor his intellectual progeny persuasively
address this problem. They do not offer a plausible account of `symbolic
action'. This, indeed, remains an outstanding issue for anthropological
theory more generally (Ortner, 1984: 130, 1990: 87). What anthropologists
require and what they lack is à comprehensible mechanism', one that
accounts for how symbols inuence social and political action while, at the
same time, allowing sufcient `distance' between symbols and relevant actors
to enable observers to construe the latter as intentional agents rather than as
more or less passive vehicles of cultural patterns (Ortner, 1990: 8490). This,
as I make clear in what follows, is a difculty that pervades PCR.
4. The More General Demand for Mechanisms
The central explanatory task for social scientists is to uncover causal mechanisms . . .
(Little, 1993: 185)
The demand that explanations specify comprehensible mechanisms is not
peculiar to analyses of the relations between culture and politics (Boudon,
1986; Elster, 1989, 1993; Hoover, 1990; Little, 1991; Stinchcombe, 1991;
Brady, 1995; Knight, 1995, 2001; Johnson, 1996; Hedstro m and Swedberg,
1998, 2002a; Schelling, 1998; Sorenson, 1998; Petersen, 1999; Tilly, 2001).
What, then, is a mechanism? For present purposes a mechanism m is an
ingredient of some more encompassing theory T, where m typically operates
at an analytical level below that which T seeks to explain, and makes T more
credible in the sense that m renders the explanations that T generates more
ne-grained. Perhaps the most obvious example in contemporary political
science of such a mechanism is the way that rational choice theories account
for aggregate patterns as the (often unintended) outcome of interdependent
decisions taken by individual agents. In this instance m consists of actions
taken by strategically rational agents while T offers explanations of such
aggregate phenomena as collective action, electoral outcomes or social
institutions.
It is important to highlight briey several aspects of this account. First,
in any theory the mechanisms identify those `places where kinds of causal
forces . . . are connected to their effects' (Stinchcombe, 1991: 3712). Because
social and political research largely is concerned with aggregate patterns, the
mechanisms that it invokes typically operate at the individual level (Stinch-
combe, 1991: 367, 372). This does not imply that social entities do not
exist or that they lack causal inuence. It instead implies that `the only
form of causal inuence that social entities have is through their effects on
individual action' by, for example, altering the incentives that agents face,
the options or information available to them or the powers at their command
(Little, 1993: 186, 193).
Second, as Laudan notes, in natural science, contests over explanatory
mechanisms commonly provide a source of continuing, often heated, concep-
tual controversy. It is easy to locate similar disputes among social scientists.
Thus even the portrait of rational choice explanation I just offered is con-
tested. Some theorists defend the standard view that individual choices
caused by reasons (beliefs and desires) represent the basic mechanism in
rational choice theories (Elster, 1986). Others reject this ìnternalist' view
and instead endorse an èxternalist' view on which various sorts of environ-
mental constraint actually animate rational choice accounts (Satz and
Ferejohn, 1994). Still others respond that the èxternalist' position verges on
incoherence as an explanatory strategy (Hausman, 1995). A second example
that, as will become clear, is especially germane to the present discussion
involves whether and how `values' provide a plausible explanatory mechan-
ism in social and political research (Swidler, 1986; Hechter, 1992; Hechter
and Kanasawa, 1993; Chong, 1996). It is unsurprising that most political
scientists treat the issues raised in such debates as subsidiary. Indeed, if we
examine actual social scientic practice, Little's claim that the search for
mechanisms is a `central task' of social science is more normative than
descriptive.
Finally, in any given instance, our assessment of a mechanism depends
neither on whether it is literally true nor on whether it proves useful in
terms of the predictions that it generates. Consider again rational choice
theories. On the one hand, it is easy to show that experimental subjects
regularly violate the axioms of utility theory (Stinchcombe, 1991: 368,
36970). Yet, while literally false, those axioms provide structure to the
mechanism of individual choice that generates plausible explanations of
large-scale social and political phenomena. On the other hand, a narrowly
instrumental view of mechanisms presupposes that we have (or might
have) the capacity to specify in advance the necessary and sufcient condi-
tions under which given mechanisms operate. There are ample grounds for
skepticism here. Little, for example, argues that whatever regularities
social science establishes derive from the specication of underlying causal
mechanisms. Such `phenomenal' regularities differ from `covering laws' in
the sense that any such regularity trades upon some antecedently recognized
causal mechanism, rather than being itself an antecedent general pattern that
a particular causal account instantiates. The predictions that such phenom-
enal regularities sustain are, as a result, notoriously unreliable (Little, 1993).
It is not that social science is unconcerned with regularities. Rather, those
regularities it does manage to establish will rarely furnish necessary or suf-
cient conditions under which we might expect a given mechanism to operate.
A mechanism simply enables the theory of which it is a component to
generate more ne-grained explanations and so enhances `the precision or
suppleness or fruitfulness of the theory' (Stinchcombe, 1991: 374). PCR not
only neglects conceptual resources on offer in other research traditions, it
also trades upon poorly specied explanatory mechanisms. Progress on the
substantively important topic of how culture and politics interact has been
impaired by systematic failure to address these conceptual problems.
5. Problems of PCR (I)
What really is important is not that one deals with political culture, but howone deals with
it and how it is used to further our understanding of politics. (Verba, 1965: 515; emphasis
added)
The problem of testing the theory against experience obviously remains, as do the
problems of operationalizing concepts for that purpose. But obviously theory comes
rst. (Eckstein, 1988: 801; emphasis added)
Over the past 40 years advocates of PCRhave promoted what they depict as a
`well-developed theory of political culture based on cross-national empirical
data' (Inglehart, 1988: 1204). They insist that `the political culture approach
today constitutes the leading alternative to rational choice theory as a general
explanatory framework for political behavior' (Inglehart, 1990: 19, 1988:
1204; Eckstein, 1988: 789, 1996). It, nevertheless, remains difcult to recon-
struct PCR in ways that afford warrant for such claims.
PCR has a distinctly Parsonian intellectual heritage. It emerged from and
continues to be primarily concerned with the effort to trace empirically the
emergence and gradual change of aggregate patterns of enduring `cultural'
orientations (values, beliefs, attitudes and so on) and demonstrate the effects
of divergent cultures both on the stability and effectiveness of democratic
polities and on trajectories of economic development. As a result, it focuses
on functional features of `whole societies' and specically `with a particular
kind of question: how does this system manage to maintain itself in existence,
in spite of constant threats from its environment?' (Barry, 1978: 67, 16573).
Despite this theoretical lineage and the sentiments expressed in the epi-
grams to this section, it is not plausible to see PCR as theory-driven. Eckstein
concedes `the fundamental assumptions' of PCR, ìts `àxiomatic'' basis, so to
speak . . . have been left implicit' (Eckstein, 1988: 790; Barry, 1978: 1658).
To the extent that proponents of PCR have not elaborated the foundations
of their work it is difcult to see how they offer a theoretical programme at
all. Indeed, some insist their work does not constitute a theory in any relevant
sense. Almond explicitly seeks to deect expectations from conceptual or
theoretical to empirical issues. He insists that PCR represents `not a
theory' but à set of variables which may be used in the construction of the-
ories'. He further insists that the èxplanatory power of political culture vari-
ables is an empirical question, open to hypothesis and testing' (Almond,
1982: 26). However, this position is difcult to defend because, while PCR
advocates regularly lament deciencies in empirical evidence, their research
is not obviously driven primarily by empirical data. Thus Inglehart simul-
taneously announces that Almond and Verba ([1963] 1989) pushed cultural
analysis of politics `from the realm of literary impression to that of testable
propositions' and concedes that in the subsequent quarter century `very little
empirical evidence [had] been presented to support' the basic premises of
political culture research (Inglehart, 1988: 1204, 1205). Indeed, he repeatedly
bemoans problems with the available data and continues to complain that
limitations in available data mean he is unable to `sort out the causal
linkages' between political culture, economic development and political
democracy (Inglehart, 1988: 1216, 121819, 1221, 1990: 18, 432, 1997: 174,
236).
PCR is driven primarily by neither theory nor data. It is driven by tech-
nique. Although he identies an expansive set of intellectual antecedents
(liberal political thought, European social theory, social psychology and
psycho-cultural studies of `National Character') Almond is clear that as a
distinctive enterprise PCR is dened by its methodological commitments.
He variously describes improved survey methods as the `catalytic agent'
behind and the `most important' stimulus to, PCR during the early 1960s
(Almond, 1982: 1516, 22). They continue to serve as the primary instrument
for both advocates and critics of PCR (Inglehart, 1990, 1997; Gibson et al.,
1992; Granato et al., 1996a, b; cf. Muller and Seligson, 1994; Reisinger, 1995;
Seligson, 2002). However, by allowing methodological techniques to drive
research, PCR generates implicit but disquieting conceptual problems.
PCR embraces a `psychological or subjective' conception of culture
(Almond, 1982: 26).
2
It denes political culture as the aggregate distribution
within a population of àttitudes', `beliefs', òrientations' or `values' toward
or about politics. There is an irony here. Early practitioners of PCR in
hopes of establishing a `behavioral' science of politics that would be driven
by careful empirical study dened political culture in terms that render it
unobservable just at the point that anthropologists re-conceptualized culture
in ways that render it public and observable. From the vantage point of
PCR, however, this `psychological or subjective' conception of culture never-
theless seems convenient. It denes political culture in such a way that it is
susceptible to analysis via survey methods. Indeed, although this conception
renders culture unobservable, it creates the appearance that the research
method animating PCR is necessary to empirical study of the relation
2. Inglehart (1997: 15, 55) denes culture as `the beliefs, values, knowledge, and skills that
have been internalized by the people in a given society'. This allows him to reduce it to `what
goes on inside people's heads'. See also Almond and Verba ([1963] 1989: 13), Verba (1965:
513), Inglehart (1990: 19) and Eckstein (1992: 288).
between culture and politics (Inglehart, 1997: 15).
3
Moreover, it allows advo-
cates of PCR to deect attention from properly conceptual problems onto
the more narrowly methodological or technical difculties that their concep-
tion of political culture generates (Eckstein, 1992).
The difculties here are not narrowly methodological. In the rush to
employ survey methods as a tool for casting the relation of culture and
politics as an èmpirical question, open to hypothesis and testing', those
who initiated PCR unwittingly generated daunting conceptual problems.
Recall that Geertz offers his revised conception of culture as an alternative
to extant views that either reduce or reify it. Because PCR both endorses a
subjective conception of culture and relies upon a vaguely functionalist
account of how political culture the aggregate distribution of òrientations'
in some country sustains or subverts political structure or economic devel-
opment, they simultaneously manage to both reduce and reify culture. This
unhappy result reects the external and internal conceptual problems that
account for the moribund state of research into the relation of culture and
politics.
Consider rst the external conceptual problem. Eckstein (1996: 495) con-
cludes a recent brief for the fundamental importance of PCR by announcing
as an òverriding fact' that `the use of culture by anthropologists can only
confuse us here'. Proponents of PCR consistently defend this strategy by
claiming that their conception of culture simply is one among a wide variety
on offer. The implication is that since there exists no general social scientic
consensus regarding how to dene culture, their subjective conception is as
defensible as any other (Verba, 1965: 513n; Eckstein, 1988: 801, 803).
This position was implausible in the 1960s and is increasingly so today.
Its premise is correct. Social scientists do not uniformly accept any single
3. For PCR `the critical methodological task . . . is . . . to penetrate reliably and with validity
into the subjective' (Eckstein, 1988: 790). But, as Almond (1982: 16) acknowledges, relying on
survey techniques to meet this imperative raises methodological issues which, though beyond
the scope of this article, remain troubling. For while survey techniques remain `the major quan-
titative research tool in the discipline' pervasive measurement error means `political scientists do
not know what survey responses are measuring'. They have `little or no rigorous understanding
of the effects of question wording, question order and response error' (Achen, 1983: 6970, 80;
Kramer, 1986: 1821). And these difculties, though troubling in studies of American politics,
are compounded in the sort of cross-national studies conducted by PCR. For an indication of
the methodological difculties that this poses for PCR see Eckstein (1992).
Proponents of PCR might suggest advances in political methodology have mitigated these
difculties to a considerable extent (Bartels and Brady, 1993: 1467). For appreciative reviews
developments in of survey research see Brady (2000) and Kinder (1998). But while methodo-
logical advances have mitigated these problems, they have not eliminated them. Moreover, in
order to make this position plausible we would need to know precisely how PCR has incorpo-
rated those relatively recent advances into work the conceptual basics of which emerged in the
1960s and 1970s.
conception of culture. But from that nothing follows. Since at least the early
1960s there has been broad, well-documented skepticism even among those
critical of the sort of interpretive approach Geertz inspired regarding pre-
cisely the sort of `psychological or subjective' conception of culture that PCR
champions (Mintz, 1982; Ortner, 1984; Kuper, 1999). In particular, cultural
anthropologists of various theoretical persuasions have insisted that culture
consists of inter-subjectively shared symbols, deployed in ritual or other cul-
tural practices, which actors invest with meaning in the process of imposing
conceptual order on the social and political world. On this view, culture does
not work, as PCR holds, by directly determining values, attitudes or beliefs.
Rather, actors use cultural resources to establish the focal categories of social
and political interaction, and thereby, to delineate, in partial and typically
contested ways, the realm of social and political possibility for relevant
constituencies.
PCR uniformly ignores or dismisses such conceptual developments. This is
not `merely denitional' (Eckstein, 1988: 801). It raises an important and
escalating series of conceptual difculties. First, consider the issue of analy-
tical purchase. We gain little by treating the distribution of òrientations'
among a population as `political culture' rather than, for example, simply
as a `mass belief system' or, more prosaically still, as `public opinion'.
Cross-national studies of belief systems indeed may be illuminating. But,
once we recognize how methodological commitments drive PCR to engage
in persuasive denition, it is not obvious that the aggregate distribution of
orientations in a population constitutes `culture' in any useful, distinct con-
ceptual sense (Reisinger, 1995: 332). I do not here contest the value of cross-
national studies of what Inglehart (1985) terms `mass belief systems' but only
whether, without further argument, it is defensible to then treat the features
of such systems as evidence of `cultural change' (Inglehart, 1988: 1224;
Abramson and Inglehart, 1995).
Second, proponents of PCR implicitly seek to evade this challenge. They
insist that, though subjective, the components of political culture neverthe-
less are `general' (Eckstein, 1988: 790) in the sense of being `relatively endur-
ing' and `deep-seated' (Inglehart, 1988: 1217, 1203). As such, PCR presumes
that cultural orientations àre . . . so implicit and taken for granted that each
individual holds them and believes all other individuals hold them. They are
the fundamental and usually unstated assumptions or postulates about
politics' (Verba, 1965: 518). By contrast public opinion and belief systems
presumably are more particularistic and transitory. But it is unclear that
this evasive maneuver offers PCR much relief from skeptics. Suppose we
grant that culture is `fundamental' or `primitive' (Verba, 1965: 518). We
can still question whether it is possible to elicit such tacit `typically unstated'
orientations through survey responses (Laitin, 1988: 592; Reisinger, 1995:
342).
Third, even if PCR can dispel skepticism and persuasively establish
political culture (in the sense of fundamental, tacit, enduring assumptions
about politics) is recoverable via survey techniques, a further limitation
appears. James Coleman (1986: 131316) observed that as sociologists
became preoccupied with survey techniques they increasingly focused atten-
tion on the structural causes of behavior systematically neglecting the task of
establishing solid moorings in a theory of intentional action. The result was
an almost exclusive concern with macro-level research with no micro-level
grounding. PCR shares this difculty. From Almond and Verba ([1963]
1989) through Inglehart (1990, 1997) and Putnam (1993) PCR has been
preoccupied with macro-level accounts of the functional relations between
political culture and political structure and/or economic development.
Proponents of PCR, of course, claim that political culture is important
because it explains political action, behavior or events. They claim that
ènduring cross-cultural differences in the basic orientations of the peoples
of different societies . . . have a signicant impact on the attitudes and beha-
vior of these peoples' (Inglehart, 1990: 21). More pointedly they assert that
culture is `something that underlies and provides explanations of observed
behavior' (Eckstein, 1996: 495). Yet they offer no plausible theoretical
account of this relation and so directly suffer from the internal conceptual
problem. The mechanisms that animate their explanatory claims remain
ambiguous.
Inglehart affords an especially instructive example. He defends the view
that culture, understood as à system of basic common values that help
shape the behavior of the people in a given society', is an important factor
in explanations of economic development (Granato et al., 1996a: 608).
This formulation has generated signicant disagreement. The parties to
this disagreement not surprisingly, given my characterization of the prac-
tice of political scientists are preoccupied with various methodological
and empirical concerns (see the exchange between Granato et al. [1996a, b]
and Jackman and Miller [1996a, b]; see also Reisinger [1995] and Seligson
[2002]). They virtually ignore important prior conceptual questions. What
are `values'? How do they motivate social, political, and economic interac-
tion? And how is the relation between values and action best studied? The
answers to these questions may seem obvious. Inglehart, at least, proceeds
as though they are.
Appearances, however, are deceptive here. It seems clear that `few con-
cepts are bandied about more liberally in popular, normative, and explana-
tory scholarly discourse than that of values' (Hechter, 1992: 227). Yet it is
equally clear that social scientists have precious little to say in response to
the questions I raised earlier. Inglehart and other advocates of PCR are no
exception. To that extent, the mechanisms upon which their explanations
trade are remarkably under-specied and, hence, unpersuasive.
Regardless of whether PCR invokes `values' or some other variety of
òrientation' as an explanatory mechanism, it is especially ill-served by its
preferred methodological techniques. The survey methods driving PCR
offer little guidance in specifying the causal mechanisms missing from the
èxplanations' it offers. It is not just that political scientists disagree about
the problems of survey response. A further, commonly recognized, persistent
problem with survey research is `discrepancies between attitudes as expressed
on surveys and behavioral manifestations of attitudes'. And pervasive dis-
crepancies in particular instances underscore the more disturbing lack of a
systematic theoretical account of the relation, whether of convergence or
divergence, between survey response and political action (Niemi, 1986:
237).
4
PCR as typically formulated, then, relies on poorly specied mechan-
isms and so is not convincingly grounded in a theory of action. Moreover, the
standard methodological tools that animate PCR offer an unpromising
means for addressing this difculty.
Eckstein presumably aims to remedy this shortcoming by clarifying the
theory of action implicit in PCR. He sketches a `psychological stimulus
response model' of behavior in which cultural orientations, internalized via
socialization, mediate between experience and behavioral response (Eckstein,
1988: 79091; Verba, 1965: 51617). The consequence of this process is
`patterned action or interactions' (Eckstein, 1988: 796). But the language
Eckstein uses is misleading. The àctors' who populate PCR are not inten-
tional agents. Rather, they passively enact internalized imperatives.
5
This
is especially clear in Eckstein's self-described `culturalist theory of political
change' (Eckstein, 1988: 7946). There àctors' disappear, absorbed into
the functional demands of the cultural system. For Eckstein, culture can
change but under `normal' circumstances at least, òptimally' does so in
4. Inglehart (1997: 512) attributes this difculty to `measurement error'. Others are less sure
that the problem is so narrowly technical. `The disadvantage of survey research is that the con-
text of particular choice situations is uncontrolled. . . . [I]t must be assumed that the values and
expectations at the time of the interview are applicable to past behavioral decisions and future
decision potentials, regardless of variation in the context of the choice situation. This is a well
known and much-debated general problem inherent in survey research on the relationship
between attitudes and behavior, for which there is no satisfactory solution' (Muller and Opp,
1986: 475). After making this candid statement, however, the authors proceed to use survey
results as evidence in a study of collective action. For a provocative recent discussion that
links problems with theories of survey response to the difculties linking responses to surveys
to antecedent or subsequent political action see Sanders (1999).
5. Eckstein's (1988: 791) talk of òrientational variability' obscures this. Orientations are
`variable' not in the sense that actors interpret a situation and act on the basis of the most appro-
priate among a repertoire of orientations. Rather, orientations are `variable' in the sense that dif-
ferent cultures instill different orientations more or less uniformly among their members. This
view also is implicit in Inglehart (1988: 122829; 1990: 19; 1997: 189).
ways that are `pattern-maintaining'.
6
Thus, political modernization, in part,
amounts to the development of `cultural exibility' at the system level in
anticipation of the potentially `dysfunctional' impact of social change.
There are no intentional agents here; the àction', such as it is, occurs at
the system level. Instead of grounding its conception of culture and of
cultural change in a theory of action that is sustained by plausible explana-
tory mechanisms PCR resorts to a rather suspect functionalism. The result
is that it consistently is extremely difcult to specify the causal relations
that, according to PCR, obtain between political culture and either political
arrangements or economic development.
The disagreement between advocates and critics of political culture
research consequently has been disjointed because neither side explicitly
recognizes and assesses the basically functionalist nature of the PCR explana-
tory schema. Critics of various persuasions consistently question the relation
that PCR posits between political culture and political structure (Elkins and
Simeon, 1979; Muller and Seligson, 1994; Reisinger, 1995; Przeworski, 1998;
Seligson, 2002). They often claim that high levels of `civic' orientations (such
as interpersonal trust) are generated by, rather than serving as the pre-
condition for, democratic arrangements (Pateman, 1971: 2923; Barry,
1978: 512). In response to such challenges proponents of PCR embrace
what they term `causal ambiguity' (Inglehart, 1988: 1204) in which causality
runs in both directions (Verba, 1965: 514; Almond, 1982: 29, 1990: 144;
Inglehart, 1988: 1215, 1220, 1221, 1997: 15, 50, 174, 236; Putnam, 1993:
1801; Granato et al., 1996a: 613).
The problem here is conceptual. Defenders of PCR never squarely address
the difculties involved in formulating a persuasive functional explanation.
This is not a complicated or overly broad demand. My complaint is not
that social scientists cannot formulate persuasive functional explanations.
There is room for skepticism on that score (Elster, 1979; Little, 1991). How-
ever, as is the case with straightforward causal accounts, the task comes
down to specifying the relevant explanatory mechanisms. Stinchcombe
(1968: 80101), for instance, offers a lucid account of the logic of functional
explanation. The most direct, effective way for those who advocate PCR to
dispel skepticism about their functionalist proclivities is to demonstrate in
detail how that logic or some suitably amended and defended version of
it informs the specic explanations they advance.
Moreover, defenders of PCR cannot simply respond here by casual
analogy to the functionalist-cum-evolutionary accounts that biologists offer.
6. Inglehart (1990: 19) explicitly endorses Eckstein's view of cultural change. On his account
culture changes not for endogenous reasons but in response exogenous factors. He explains that
`culture is not a constant. It is a system through which a society adapts to its environment. Given
a changing environment, in the long run it is likely to change' (Inglehart, 1990: 55).
This is what Inglehart, for instance does, when he speculates about `natural
selection' of cultural patterns unless one can persuasively suggest how
`random mutations' actually `spread' to produce not only `variation' but
superiority in cultural patterns (Inglehart, 1997: 1516, 66, 105). The very
point of contention here is whether the social sciences are sufciently like
the biological sciences to sustain that analogy (Elster, 1979). Consequently,
the task for PCR is to specify how such evolutionary mechnisms actually
animate the relations of culture and politics (Elster, 1989: 7188). Otherwise,
claims that `some ways of running a society are better than others' in an
evolutionary sense (Inglehart, 1997: 105) provide at best the basis for an
argument rather than a conclusion from inquiry.
In this section I have been critical of how proponents of PCR analyze poli-
tical culture, of the way their research is driven by methodological commit-
ments and of the conceptual problems to which that gives rise. These scholars
have proven adept at conducting ever more extensive, elaborate cross-
national surveys and at analyzing the data those surveys yield. At the same
time, they have lost sight of admonitions like those that Verba and Eckstein
offer in the epigrams to this section. As a result they remain heedless of the
conceptual problems their xation with survey techniques generates. They
endorse a conception of political culture that (1) forthrightly rejects concep-
tual innovations adopted in related elds; and (2) trades upon woefully
imprecise explanatory mechanisms. These conceptual problems become
clear as soon we try to specify the explanatory claims that advocates of
PCR make. Moreover, these conceptual problems largely vitiate any claims
to empirical success that PCR might garner from extant survey data no
matter how sophisticated. Of what, precisely, does the survey data provide
evidence? When we examine the ne grain of PCR, the answer to that ques-
tion remains startlingly unclear.
Proponents of PCR offer no plausible account causal, functional or
otherwise of how political culture `works', of how it motivates individual
action or generates persistence or change in aggregate political or economic
behavior. While they repeatedly claim that this or that cultural pattern is
`linked' to varying aggregate political and economic patterns, and even
that those postulated cultural patterns are linked to political or economic
patterns `closely', `strongly' or ìntimately', they never establish the nature
of those connections (Inglehart, 1997: 67, 69, 103, 164, 236, 329).
Advocates of PCR confront a large but unavoidable task. They must
specify clearly the functional (or other) mechanisms that, in their view,
relate culture and politics. Otherwise, while they rightly claim to have gener-
ated more and even perhaps better empirical data, it is unclear that they
might claim to explain political or economic phenomena or how they can
claim their work over the years constitutes empirical progress.
6. Problems of PCR (II)
Putnam's work makes an important contribution to sorting out the causal linkages
between economic and cultural factors . . . (Inglehart, 1997: 1889, 225)
Through what mechanisms might the norms and networks of the civic community
contribute to economic prosperity? (Putnam, 1993: 159)
A defender of PCR might object that the conclusion to the last section is too
hasty. She might, point to the work of Putnam (1993) as an indication that
this research tradition has, in fact, followed a trajectory far more progressive
theoretically than the one that I allow.
7
Indeed, even those who work in
competing research traditions have greeted Putnam's work with superlatives
(Levi, 1993; Laitin, 1995a). This appraisal of Putnam is deeply awed. The
primary difculty is that despite Inglehart's estimation, Putnam never
adequately responds to the question he himself poses in the second epigram
to this section.
Putnam does not depart in any signicant way from the concerns that pre-
occupy earlier PCR. Indeed, he locates his work in the lineage descending
from Almond and Verba to Inglehart both tacitly by focusing on one of
the original cases included in The Civic Culture and explicitly by direct
citation (Putnam, 1993: 22 n. 14, 237 n. 146). First, with his reliance on
historical data Putnam only partially escapes the narrow methodological
xations of earlier PCR. He continues their preoccupation with survey
methods. And he consequently embraces their corollary, simultaneously rei-
ed and reductionist conception of culture. Second, Putnam's substantive
concern is continuous with prior PCR. His task is to identify the cultural pre-
requisites (especially levels `social trust') of stable, effective democratic insti-
tutions (Almond and Verba, 1963; Inglehart, 1997: 1724, 1823). Like
Inglehart, Putnam extends this to a concern for the cultural requisites of
economic development (Granato et al., 1996a, b). Third, like other propo-
nents of PCR, he treats cultural patterns as inherited and virtually inert.
7. Putnam's work affords a prodigious foil for my argument in at least two ways. First, his
study of Italy is perhaps the most systematic recent attempt to treat political culture as an expla-
natory factor that generates testable hypotheses. He thus proceeds on what, for PCR, is highly
favorable terrain. Second, his study is widely admired. So it relieves me of the burden of defend-
ing my decision to subject PCR to sustained critical scrutiny. Thus, we nd the author of an
introductory primer on political research claiming `Putnam comes about as close to developing
elegant theory as one can commonly do in the social sciences' (Shively, 1998). King et al. (1994: 5)
include it among the èxcellent' works, mainly by their Harvard colleagues, that exemplify the
methodological advice they proffer. And in the agship journal of the discipline we nd critics
announcing òne of the great merits of Putnam's book is that since the theory is well specied,
it can serve as a serious contender in theoretical debate about democracy' (Laitin, 1995a:
172). I nd such remarks mystifying and hope to show that whatever empirical claims Putnam
advances are vitiated by abiding conceptual problems.
His account is populated not by intentional agents but by populations who
passively enact and re-enact culturally determined patterns of behavior.
Again like other PCR accounts, the traditions inducing such behavior
change only gradually in response to exogenous factors. Finally, while
Putnam identies a correlation between civic traditions and institutional per-
formance he does not identify a plausible underlying causal mechanism.
Instead he relies on the notion of `social capital' which `lubricates' social
cooperation and thereby `bolsters' political and economic performance.
What Putnam offers, in the end, is a poorly specied functional account of
how, under some circumstances an ìnherited . . . stock of social capital in
the form of norms of reciprocity and networks of civic engagement' evolves
to enhance levels of social trust thereby reducing transaction costs and facili-
tating social cooperation in ways that promote `good government' (Putnam,
1993: 16781).
Is this criticism of Putnam unfair? Putnam seems to address the conceptual
problems I have found in PCR. He turns for conceptual resources to scholars
in other disciplines, and in the notion of `social capital' he apparently iden-
ties just the sort of `comprehensible mechanism' needed to persuasively
analyze relations between culture and politics. Does Putnam not therefore
address my complaints effectively?
This line of defense too is seriously awed. Putnam indeed draws upon
other disciplines but the resources he borrows from them specically
`social capital' provide little if any remedy for the conceptual problems
that beset PCR. Simply borrowing from other disciplines or competing
research traditions may well highlight or even exacerbate conceptual
problems within one's own work. It is not enough to borrow conceptual
resources. One must do so productively if one hopes to avert or resolve
conceptual problems (Johnson, 2002).
Recall the broad contours of Putnam's analysis of Italian political culture.
He rst establishes a relation between a composite measure of differences
among the political culture of various regions and a composite measure of
the differential efcacy of government in those regions (Putnam, 1993: 91
116). He concludes `that the performance of a regional government is some-
how very closely related to the civic character of social and political life within
the region' (Putnam, 1993: 99; emphasis added). Putnam purports to clarify
what `somehow' means by posing two crucial questions: `How did the civic
regions get that way?' and `How do norms and networks of civic engagement
undergird good government?' (Putnam, 1993: 116). His efforts to answer
these questions constitute roughly the nal third of the book.
Putnam devotes considerable attention to the rst question (Putnam, 1993:
12062). He traces differences in civic culture across regions back to the 12th
century. He suggests that despite what on the surface appears to be `massive
economic, social, political and demographic change', in reality historically
established, `virtually unchanging patterns of civic engagement' continue,
like a `powerful magnetic eld', to shape, in indirect and differential ways,
political performance and economic development across regions of Italy
(Putnam, 1993: 162, 153, 121).
8
As Putnam notes, however, he has not
indicated `why' this is the case (Putnam, 1993: 162). He thus turns, in the
nal 20 or so pages of his book, to the second, analytically prior, of his
two questions.
How, according to Putnam, do norms and networks affect governmental
and economic performance? Despite its crucial importance to his argument,
he accords relatively little attention to this question (Putnam, 1993: 16385).
The attention he does devote to it mostly underscores the way that his work,
like other PCR, generates deep, persistent conceptual problems.
It is at this juncture that Putnam introduces the notion of social capital.
It is less frequently noticed that he also, at just this juncture, modies his
stated explanatory ambitions. His aim is no longer to identify explanatory
`mechanisms', to èstablish . . . ne grained linkages' or to respond to `linear
causal questions'. He insists instead `we must think not merely in terms of
cause and effect, but in terms of social equilibria' (Putnam, 1993: 116, 148,
181, 162).
9
He subsequently ascribes differential political and economic per-
formance across regions of Italy to differences between the `civic equilibrium'
obtaining in the North, and the `Hobbesian equilibrium' prevailing in the
South. He attributes these equilibria to `virtuous' and `vicious' circles
characterizing the cultures of the respective regions (Putnam, 1993: 181,
177, 162). The difculty is that it is not especially clear that Putnam has
done anything more than re-describe the problem he set out to analyze.
How do norms and networks affect governmental and economic perfor-
mance? Putnam never actually answers his own question.
8. He thus concludes that civic traditions `have remarkable staying power' and they display
àstonishing tensile strength' that `testies to the power of the past' (Putnam, 1993: 157, 162).
Likewise, Inglehart repeatedly explains that in any given instance cultural factors `reect the
entire historical experience of given societies' (Inglehart, 1997: 99, 206; Inglehart, 1990: 31).
On the inconsistencies that Putnam and Inglehart subsequently confront on this score see Jack-
man and Miller (1998: 578).
9. One fairly obvious question here is just what Putnamhas in mind when he refers to a `social
equilibrium'. He might mean the sort of functionalist equilibrium captured in my earlier discus-
sion of Eckstein in which change, when it occurs, does so in ways that are `pattern-maintaining'.
This is a plausible interpretation of Putnam. But, more charitably, he might have in mind some-
thing like the game theoretic notion of equilibrium as a state of affairs where, once attained, no
relevant actor has any reason to act otherwise given her/his expectations regarding how others
will proceed. Unfortunately, this more charitable interpretation presents problems namely
that it vitiates any need to invoke `social capital'. Barry (1978: 16873) nicely contrasts these
two conceptions of equilibrium. At a minimum Putnam is under some pressure to specify
which conception he has in mind.
It certainly is possible to reconstruct concisely how Putnam understands
the ways that the èssential' components of social capital interact. Robust
horizontal networks among citizens `foster' norms of reciprocity. These
norms, in turn, èncourage' relatively high levels of social trust. Such trust,
in turn, `lubricates' various forms of social cooperation that, in turn, generate
as a `by-product' what Putnam calls `good government' (Putnam, 1993:
16777). All of this is self-reinforcing. So too is its opposite. These processes
constitute the virtuous, or vicious, circles that sustain the two social equili-
bria toward which all societies tend (Putnam, 1993: 177, 181).
It turns out to be remarkably difcult to move beyond such vague asser-
tions and specify what Putnam might mean. Even sympathetic critics suggest
that the notion of social capital as Putnam deploys it remains sufciently ill-
specied that it provides scant analytical leverage (Levi, 1996; Newton, 1997;
Boix and Posner, 1998; Jackman and Miller, 1998). The difculties he con-
fronts here are conceptual. He remains under considerable pressure to specify
how in terms of what mechanism or mechanisms social capital `somehow'
generates good economic and political performance.
Putnam has two options. First, he might try to specify how his conception
of social capital itself affords explanatory leverage. Second, he might concede
that `social capital' is a rhetorical rather than an explanatory concept.
Because each of these options generates signicant conceptual difculties,
neither provides an especially auspicious avenue for answering the question
that Putnam himself has posed.
Consider the rst option. Putnam might portray `social capital' as an
explanatory concept and try to state just what special explanatory leverage
it offers. Here, however, conceptual problems not only proliferate but do
so in ways that highlight the problematic functionalist character of Putnam's
account. Elster (1997: 74952) briey explores the ways that social scientists
have extended the concept of `capital' in recent years. He identies three key
features of the standard economic conception of capital. It consists of (1) a
stock of assets produced by a deliberate investment strategy, where this
means (2) that an actor intentionally incurs costs in the present in anticipa-
tion that she will derive direct, personal future benets and where (3) any
stock of assets so produced depreciates with use. Elster points out that as
we extend the concept of capital from its original use in economics to incor-
porate `human' and, ultimately, `social' capital, we progressively divest the
resulting conceptions of these original features (see also Portes, 1998).
Social capital, as it generally is used, and, in particular, as Putnam invokes
it, incorporates none of the criteria central to the denition of economic
capital. Putnam acknowledges as much. He explicitly depicts social capital
as a public good that emerges as the unintended by-product of social inter-
actions and that appreciates rather than depreciates with use (Putnam,
1993: 16970). This is not merely a problem of competing denitions.
Rather, the way that Putnam conceives of social capital underscores his con-
tinuing reliance on a functionalist conception of how political culture inter-
acts with political and economic institutions. Like his predecessors in the
PCR tradition, Putnam never squarely addresses the demands of successful
functionalist explanation. Yet, if he hopes to defend his particular concep-
tion of `social capital' as a viable explanatory concept, he clearly must do so.
Putnam might, of course, pursue the second option. He might admit that
social capital is not itself an explanatory concept. As Coleman (1990: 3045)
suggests:
[T]he concept of social capital will uncover no processes that are different in fundamental
ways from [such concepts as rights, authority, trust and norms]. . . This concept groups
some of those processes together and blurs distinctions between types of social relations
that are important for other purposes. The value of the concept lies primarily in the fact
that it identies certain aspects of social structure by their function.
Taking this remark as a cue Putnam might portray social capital as a label.
On this view `social capital' is a name for a `family of mechanisms' that
allows us to perform not an explanatory but a persuasive or rhetorical task
in the sense that it helps us to see that some group of mechanisms operates
in similar ways (Schelling, 1978: 8791, 1998: 38). This is an attractive inter-
pretation not least because it focuses inquiry back on the particular mechan-
isms, the components of social capital that might perform explanatory work
in Putnam's account. Yet there is a conceptual problem here as well. As
Coleman suggests, the notion of social capital ìdenties certain aspects of
social structure by their function' and, at least in part, the appeal of this
second option is that it might allow Putnam to specify a non-functionalist
account of how the components of social capital (i.e. norms of reciprocity,
social trust and networks) facilitate cooperation and, thereby, promote
good government.
Here Putnam might try to elaborate the causal account toward which he
gestures and that holds that the components of social capital encourage
cooperative solutions to collective action problems because they `reduce
incentives to defect, reduce uncertainty, and provide models for future co-
operation' (Putnam, 1993: 177). This sort of argument, however, may well
be self-defeating insofar as it simply does not require any reference to
either social capital or its components as explanatory categories. We have,
for instance, quite persuasive rational choice accounts of cooperation
generated by community-based strategic reciprocity (Taylor, 1987), of the
emergence of norms as equilibria in repeated games (Calvert, 1995a, b;
Ensminger and Knight, 1997) and of social trust (Hardin, 1991, 1993) that
explain both social cooperation and the components of social capital as out-
comes of strategic interaction. One may not nd such accounts wholly
persuasive (Taylor, 1996). Yet, if Putnam wishes to elaborate the causal
sketch that he offers, he would, as a rst step, have to indicate just how,
on his view, the components of social capital afford explanatory leverage that
such rational choice accounts lack. Otherwise, it simply is not at all clear why
`voluntary cooperation' and, in its turn, good government, `depends on social
capital' (Putnam, 1993: 177; emphasis added).
It is difcult to see how Putnam simultaneously can avoid the temptation
of functionalism and meet the challenge that rational choice theories pose to
his claims regarding `social capital'. Without pursuing this matter further we
can see that Putnam magnies rather than remedies the conceptual dif-
culties plaguing PCR. His work leaves the questions I posed at the end of
Section 5 unanswered. Of what, precisely, does Putnam's empirical research
provide evidence? When we examine the ne grain of his account, the answer
to that question remains remarkably unclear. We are left, still, without any-
thing like a tenable account of how political culture `works', of how it moti-
vates individual action or generates persistence or change in aggregate
political or economic behavior. It is especially unclear how Putnam might
remedy the conceptual problems aficting his work.
And here we encounter the primary lesson of this article. Conceptual
problems can and do pose substantial obstacles to progress in political
science. What we witness in PCR is not discernable progress but more or
less its complete absence. Putnam's work is, as Laitin (1995a) announced
without irony, quite literally `The Civic Culture at Thirty'. And absent
sustained attention to the deep, abiding conceptual problems that plague
PCR no amount of methodological wizardry or additional empirical research
will alter that conclusion.
7. Conclusion: Pragmatist Progress
[T]he problem solving model argues that the elimination of conceptual difculties is as
much constitutive of progress as increasing empirical support. Indeed, on this model,
it is possible that a change from an empirically well-supported theory to a less well
supported one could be progressive, provided that the latter resolved signicant concep-
tual difculties confronting the former. (Laudan, 1996: 80; emphasis in original)
Rather than summarize I will anticipate two defences of PCR. Both challenge
the `philosophical' nature of my criticisms. A philosophically inclined reader
might reply that my criticisms of PCR are misguided. She rst might claim
that PCR embraces a positivist philosophy of science that puts a premium
on the instrumental performance of a theory, on the generalizations, infer-
ences or predictions it sustains. She might reiterate the claims to predictive
success that proponents of PCR make (e.g. Inglehart, 1997: 457, 51). She
might then characterize my preoccupation with causal mechanisms as a
realist criterion for assessing theories concluding that my criticisms are
unfair insofar as I hold PCR up to standards its practitioners do not embrace.
There are at least two problems with this line of argument. First, PCR
explicitly claims to offer causal explanations not just to advance generaliza-
tions and test predictions. So any gesture toward positivist inspired criteria of
instrumental performance would seem quite opportunistic. Insofar as PCR
advances cultural explanations, it must specify underlying causal mechan-
isms. The mere fact that PCR, in whole or in part, is informed (if it is) by
positivist philosophical commitments surely does not count as a defense
against that demand.
Second, following Laudan the view of social and political inquiry I endorse
is pragmatist not realist. The concern for mechanisms differentiates pragma-
tists from positivists who tend to adopt an instrumentalist view of theory.
But it does not imply that pragmatism reduces to realism (Hacking, 1983:
5864). The differences between pragmatism and realism on matters of scien-
tic inquiry lie elsewhere (Laudan, 1990). I cannot pursue them further here.
At this juncture a second sort of reader perhaps the brand of `barefoot
positivist' no-nonsense empirical political scientist would be impatient with
all of this philosophical disputation. He might insist that in philosophical
terms my argument is pragmatist while the bulk of political science research
is more or less self-consciously positivist. He might offer as exemplars of this
orientation King et al. (1994: 41) who wonder `how are we to know if we
cannot see?'. He might point out that proponents of PCR too adopt this
orientation when, for example, they approach the problem of establishing
`causal linkages' between culture and democratic stability or economic per-
formance without fanfare as an empirical task (Inglehart, 1997: 174, 236).
He might assert that since political inquiry proceeds well on just these
terms this sort of vaguely positivist orientation is all the justication prac-
ticing social scientists need. This reader might impatiently conclude that
`philosophical' criticisms are simply beside the point and that proponents
of PCR are warranted in pursuing their more practical concerns.
This response is one that a pragmatist should nd disconcerting. The
problem does not reside in the rst instance in the fact that those who
might articulate this sort of response appear unable or unwilling to engage
critics. It resides instead in the pragmatist impulse to assess ideas by their
consequences. For if criticism has no practical consequence it is, in pragma-
tist terms, meaningless.
This problem calls for a forceful response. Culture and politics intersect in
ubiquitous, interesting and important ways (Kertzer, 1988, 1996; Verdery,
1999). In that, advocates of PCR are absolutely correct. This does not require
that we endorse PCR or anything remotely like it. Moreover, from the
perspective of our imaginary impatient reader, the only claim that PCR
has on our attention is its purported empirical success. But that is to miss
the primary point of my argument. Given the persistent, unresolved concep-
tual problems that pervade PCR it is nearly impossible to make sense of
claims its defenders make regarding its empirical performance. We are left
with little sense of what precisely PCR data provides evidence. This is true
of the large-scale quantitative studies Inglehart conducts and of Putnam's
more particularistic case study approach. The problems with both sorts of
study are conceptual. Unless and until defenders of PCR persuasively can
defend their work as conceptually well-founded the mere assertion of empiri-
cal success and concomitant claims on our attention carry little force.
As Laudan suggests in the epigram to this section, PCR offers us no
compelling reason why we might favor it over competing types of analysis
of culture and politics. That is a consequence of considerable moment for
this (or any other) research tradition. And among political scientists, regard-
less of the research tradition to which they belong, recognition of this conse-
quence would constitute progress.
REFERENCES
Abramson, Paul and Ronald Inglehart (1995) Value Change in Global Perspective. Ann Arbor,
MI: University of Michigan Press.
Achen, Christopher (1983) `Toward Theories of Data', in A. Finifter (ed.) Political Science.
Washington, D.C.: American Political Science Association.
Almond, Gabriel (1982) `The Intellectual History of the Civic Culture Concept', in G. Almond
and S. Verba (eds) The Civic Culture Revisited. Boston: Little Brown.
Almond, Gabriel (1990) A Discipline Divided. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Almond, Gabriel and Sidney Verba (1963) The Civic Culture, reprinted in 1989. Beverly Hills,
CA: Sage.
Ball, Terence (1987) Ìs There Progress in Political Science?', in T. Ball (ed.) Idioms of Inquiry.
New York: SUNY Press.
Barry, Brian [1970] (1978) Sociologists, Economists and Democracy. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Bartels, Larry and Henry Brady (1993) `The State of Quantitative Methodology', in Ada Finifter
(ed.) Political Science: The State of the Discipline, II. Washington, D.C.: American Political
Science Association.
Boix, Charles and Daniel Posner (1998) `Social Capital: Explaining Its Origins and Effects on
Government Performance', British Journal of Political Science 28: 68693.
Boudon, Raymond (1986) Theories of Social Change. Berkeley, CA: University of California
Press.
Brady, Henry (1995) `Doing Good and Doing Better', The Political Methodologist 6: 1119.
Brady, Henry (2000) `Contributions of Survey Research to Political Science', PS: Political
Science and Politics XXXIII: 4757.
Calvert, Randall (1995a) `The Rational Choice Theory of Social Institutions: Cooperation,
Coordination, and Communication', in J. Banks and E. Hanushek (eds) Modern Political
Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Calvert, Randall (1995b) `Rational Actors, Equilibrium, and Social Institutions', in J. Knight
and I. Sened (eds) Explaining Social Institutions,. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan
Press.
Chong, Dennis (1996) Ìnterests Versus Values in the Explanation of Social Conict', University
of Pennsylvania Law Review 144: 2079134.
Coleman, James (1986) `Social Theory, Social Research and a Theory of Action', American
Journal of Sociology 91: 130935.
Coleman, James (1990) Foundations of Social Theory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press.
Collier, David and James Mahoney (1993) `Conceptual ``Stretching'' Revisited: Adapting
Categories in Comparative Analysis', American Political Science Review 87: 84555.
Collier, David and Steven Levitsky (1997) `Democracy With Adjectives: Conceptual Innovation
in Comparative Research', World Politics 49: 43051.
Cox, Gary (1999) `The Empirical Content of Rational Choice Theories', Journal of Theoretical
Politics 11:14769.
Dryzek, John (1986) `The Progress of Political Science', Journal of Politics 48: 30120.
Eckstein, Harry (1966) Division and Cohesion in a Democracy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univer-
sity Press.
Eckstein, Harry (1988) À Culturalist Theory of Political Change', American Political Science
Review 82: 789804.
Eckstein, Harry (1992) Òbserving Political Culture', Regarding Politics. Berkeley, CA: Univer-
sity of California Press.
Eckstein, Harry (1996) `Culture as a Foundation Concept for the Social Sciences', Journal of
Theoretical Politics 8: 47198.
Elkins, David and Richard Simeon (1979) À Cause in Search of Its Effect, or What Does
Political Culture Explain?', Comparative Politics 11: 12745.
Elster, Jon (1979) Ulysses and the Sirens. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Elster, Jon (1986) `The Nature and Scope of Rational Choice Explanation', in E. LePore and
B. McLaughlin (ed.) Actions and Events. Oxford: Blackwell.
Elster, Jon (1989) Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Elster, Jon (1993) Political Psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Elster, Jon (1997) `More Than Enough', University of Chicago Law Review 64: 74964.
Ensminger, Jean and Jack Knight (1997) `Changing Social Norms: Common Property, Bride-
wealth and Clan Exogamy', Current Anthropology 38: 124.
Geertz, Clifford (1973) The Interpretation of Cultures. London: Basic Books.
Geertz, Clifford (1983) Local Knowledge. London: Basic Books.
Gibson, James, Raymond Duch and Kent Tedlin (1992) `Democratic Values and the Trans-
formation of the Soviet Union', Journal of Politics 54: 32971.
Granato, Jim, Ronald Inglehart and David LeBlang (1996a) `The Effect of Cultural Values on
Economic Development', American Journal of Political Science 40: 60731.
Granato, Jim, Ronald Inglehart and David LeBlang (1996b) `Cultural Values, Stable Democ-
racy and Economic Development', American Journal of Political Science 40: 68096.
Green, Donald and Ian Shapiro (1994) Pathologies of Rational Choice Theory. New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press.
Gundersen, Adolf (1994) `Research Traditions and the Evolution of Cold-War Nuclear
Strategy', Philosophy of the Social Sciences 42: 291319.
Hacking, Ian (1983) Representing and Intervening. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hacking, Ian (1989) Representing and Intervening. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hardin, Russell (1991) `Trusting Persons, Trusting Institutions', in R. Zeckhauser (ed.) Strategy
and Choice. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Hardin, Russell (1993) `The Street-Level Epistemology of Trust', Politics and Society 21: 50531.
Hausman, Daniel (1995) `Rational Choice and Social Theory: A Comment', Journal of
Philosophy 92: 96102.
Hechter, Michael (1992) `Should Values Be Written Out of the Social Scientist's Lexicon?',
Sociological Theory 10: 21430.
Hechter, Michael and Satoshi Kanazawa (1993) `Group Solidarity and Social Order in Japan',
Journal of Theoretical Politics 5: 45593.
Hedstro m, Peter and Richard Swedberg, eds (1998) Social Mechanisms. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Hoover, Kevin (1990) `The Logic of Causal Inference', Economics and Philosophy 6: 20734.
Inglehart, Ronald (1985) Àggregate Stability and Individual Level Flux in Mass Belief Systems',
American Political Science Review 79: 97116.
Inglehart, Ronald (1988) `The Renaissance of Political Culture', American Political Science
Review 82: 120330.
Inglehart, Ronald (1990) Culture Shift. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Inglehart, Ronald (1997) Modernization and Postmodernization. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.
Jackman, Robert and Ross Miller (1996a) À Renaissance of Political Culture?', American
Journal of Political Science 40: 63259.
Jackman, Robert and Ross Miller (1996b) `The Poverty of Political Culture', American Journal
of Political Science 40: 697716.
Jackman, Robert and Ross Miller (1998) `Social Capital and Politics', Annual Review of Political
Science 1: 4773.
Johnson, James (1996) `How Not to Criticize Rational Choice Theory: The Pathologies of
``Commonsense'' ', Philosophy of the Social Sciences 26: 7791.
Johnson, James (1997a) `Comment', Current Anthropology 38: 1617.
Johnson, James (1997b) `Symbol and Strategy in Comparative Political Analysis', APSA-CP:
Newsletter of the APSA Organized Section in Comparative Politics (Summer): 69.
Johnson, James (2000) `Why Respect Culture?', American Journal of Political Science 44: 40518.
Johnson, James (2002) `How Conceptual Problems Migrate: Rational Choice, Interpretation,
and Cultural Explanation of Politics', Annual Review of Political Science 5: 22348.
Kertzer, David (1988) Ritual, Politics and Power. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Kertzer, David (1996) Politics and Symbols. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Kinder, Donald (1998) Òpinion and Action in the Realm of Politics', in D. Gilbert et al. (eds)
The Handbook of Social Psychology, Vol. II, 4th edn. New York: McGraw-Hill.
King, Gary, Robert Keohane and Sidney Verba (1994) Designing Social Inquiry. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
King, Gary, Robert Keohane and Sidney Verba (1995) `The Importance of Research Design in
Political Science', American Political Science Review 89: 47581.
Knight, Jack (1995) `Models, Interpretations and Theories: Constructing Explanations of Insti-
tutional Emergence and Change', in J. Knight and I. Sened (eds) Explaining Social Institutions.
Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
Knight, Jack (2001) Èxplaining the Rise of Neoliberalism', in J. Campbell and O. Pedersen (eds)
The Rise of Neoliberalismand Institutional Analysis. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Kramer, Gerald (1986) `Political Science as Science', in H. Weisberg (ed.) Political Science: The
Science of Politics. New York: Agathon Press.
Kuper, Adam (1999) Culture: The Anthropologists' Account. Cambridge, MA: Harvard.
Laitin, David (1986) Hegemony and Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Laitin, David (1988) `Political Culture and Political Preferences', American Political Science
Review 82: 58993.
Laitin, David (1995a) `The Civic Culture at Thirty', American Political Science Review 89:
16873.
Laitin, David (1995b) `Disciplining Political Science', American Political Science Review 89:
4546.
Laudan, Larry (1977) Progress and Its Problems. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Laudan, Larry (1990) Science and Relativism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Laudan, Larry (1996) Beyond Positivism and Relativism. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Levey, G. (1996) `Theory Choice and the Comparison of Rival Theoretical Perspectives in
Political Sociology', Philosophy of the Social Sciences 26: 2660.
Levi, Margaret (1993) `Book Review: Robert Putnam's, Making Democracy Work', Comparative
Political Studies 26: 3759.
Levi, Margaret (1996) `Social and Unsocial Capital', Politics and Society 24: 4555.
Little, Daniel (1991) Varieties of Social Explanation. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Little, Daniel (1993) Òn the Scope and Limits of Generalizations in the Social Sciences',
Synthese 97: 183207.
Mintz, Sidney (1982) `Culture: An Anthropological View', Yale Review 17: 499512.
Muller, Edward and Karl-Dieter Opp (1986) `Rational Choice and Rebellious Collective
Action', American Political Science Review 80: 47187.
Muller, Edward and Mitchell Seligson (1994) `Civic Culture and Democracy: The Question of
Causal Relationships', American Political Science Review 88: 63552.
Newton, Kenneth (1997) `Social Capital and Democracy', American Behavioral Scientist 40:
57586.
Niemi, Richard (1986) `The Dynamics of Public Opinion', in H. Weisberg (ed.) Political Science:
The Science of Politics. New York: Agathon Press.
Ortner, Sherry (1984) `Theory in Anthropology Since the Sixties', Comparative Studies in Society
and History 26: 12666.
Ortner, Sherry (1990) `Patterns of History', in E. Ohnuki-Tierney (ed.) Culture Through Time.
Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Pateman, Carole (1971) `Political Culture, Political Structure and Political Change', British
Journal of Political Science 1: 291305.
Petersen, Roger (1999) `Mechanisms and Structures in Comparison', in J. Bowen and R. Petersen
(eds) Critical Comparisons in Politics and Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Portes, Alejandro (1998) `Social Capital', Annual Review of Sociology 24: 124.
Przeworski, Adam (1998) `Culture and Democracy', Culture, Creativity and Markets: World
Culture Report, 1998. Paris: UNESCO.
Putnam, Robert (1993) Making Democracy Work. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Reisinger, William (1995) `The Renaissance of a Rubric: Political Culture as Concept and
Theory', International Journal of Public Opinion Research 7: 32852.
Sanders, Lynn (1999) `Democratic Politics and Survey Research', Philosophy of the Social
Sciences 29: 24880.
Sartori, Giovanni (1970) `Concept Misformation in Comparative Politics', American Political
Science Review 64: 102253.
Satz, Debra and John Ferejohn (1994) `Rational Choice and Social Theory', Journal of
Philosophy 91: 7187.
Schelling, Thomas (1978) Micromotives and Macrobehavior. New York: W.W. Norton.
Schelling, Thomas (1998) `Social Mechanisms and Social Dynamics', in Peter Hedstro m and
Richard Swedberg (eds) Social Mechanisms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Seligson, Mitchell (2002) `The Renaissance of Political Culture or the Renaissance of the
Ecological Fallacy?', Comparative Politics 34: 27393.
Shively, W. Phillips (1998) The Craft of Political Research, 4th edn. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice Hall.
Srensen, Aage (1998) `Theoretical Mechanisms and the Empirical Study of Social Processes',
in Peter Hedstro m and Richard Swedberg (eds) Social Mechanisms. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Stinchcombe, Arthur (1968) Constructing Social Theories. New York: Harcourt, Brace and
World.
Stinchcombe, Arthur (1991) `The Conditions of Fruitfulness of Theorizing About Mechanisms
in Social Science', Philosophy of the Social Sciences 21: 36788.
Swidler, Ann (1986) `Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies', American Sociological Review
51: 27386.
Swidler, Ann (1996) `Geertz's Ambiguous Legacy', Contemporary Sociology 25: 299302.
Taylor, Michael (1987) The Possibility of Cooperation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Taylor, Michael (1996) `Good Government', Journal of Political Philosophy 4: 128.
Tilly, Charles (2001) `Mechanisms in Political Processes', Annual Review of Political Science 4:
2141.
Van Evera, Stephen (1997) Guide to Methods for Students of Political Science. Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press.
Verba, Sidney (1965) `Comparative Political Culture', in L. Pye and S. Verba (eds) Political
Culture and Political Development. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Verdery, Katherine (1999) The Political Lives of Dead Bodies. New York: Columbia University
Press.
Wildavsky, Aaron (1987) `Choosing Preferences by Constructing Institutions: A Cultural
Theory of Preference Formation', American Political Science Review 81: 321.
JAMES JOHNSON is co-editor of the Journal of Theoretical Politics. He is
Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Rochester where
he teaches social and political theory. His recent papers on culture and politics
have appeared in the Annual Review of Political Science, The American Journal
of Political Science and Politics, Philosophy & Economics. He is visiting scholar
at the Russell Sage Foundation for 20022003. ADDRESS: Department of
Political Science, University or Rochester, Harkness Hall, Rochester NY
14637, USA [email: jjsn@troi.cc.rochester.edu].

Conceptual Problems As Obstacles To Progress in Political Science - James Johnson

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Conceptual Problems As Obstacles To Progress in Political Science - James Johnson

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

http://jtp.sagepub.

You might also like