The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Political Science

The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Political Science contains twenty-seven freshly written chapters to give the reader a panoramic introduction to philosophical issues in the practice of political science. Simultaneously, it advances the field of Philosophy of Political Science by creating a fruitful meeting place where both philosophers and practicing political scientists contribute and discuss. These philosophical discussions are close to and informed by actual developments in political science, making philosophy of science continuous with the sciences, another aspiration that motivates this volume. The chapters fall under four headings: (1) evaluating theoretical frameworks in political science; (2) methodological challenges and reconciliations; (3) the purposes and uses of political science; and, (4) the interactions between political science and society. Specific topics discussed include the biology of political attitudes, intra-agent mechanisms, rational choice explanations, theories of collective action, explaining institutional change, conceptualizing and measuring democracy, process tracing, qualitative comparative analysis, interpretivism and positivism, mixed methods, within-cause causal inference, evidential pluralism, lab and field experiments, external validity, contextualization, prediction, expertise, clientelism, feminism, values, and progress in political science.

Harold Kincaid is Professor in the School of Economics at the University of Cape Town. His research concerns issues in the philosophy of science and philosophy of social and behavioral science as well as experimental work in economics on, among other things, risk and time attitudes, trust and addiction. He is the author or editor of 13 books starting with The Philosophical Foundations of the Social Sciences: Analyzing Controversies in Social Research (1996) and many journal articles and book chapters. Recent or forthcoming work includes the Elgar Companion to Philosophy of Economics with Don Ross (2021) and articles or book chapters on objectivity in the social sciences, improving causal inference in economics, the role of mechanisms in the social sciences, agent-based models, classifying mental disorders, the risk-trust confound, and prospect theory. He has been associate editor of the Journal of Economic Methodology and Chair of the International Network for Economic Methodology.

Jeroen Van Bouwel is a Senior Researcher at the Centre for Logic and Philosophy of Science and a Visiting Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Moral Science at Ghent University, Belgium. His research areas include philosophy of the social sciences, social epistemology and the relations between science and democracy. His work has appeared in, inter alia, Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Economics & Philosophy, Social Epistemology, Perspectives on Science, History and Theory, Journal for General Philosophy of Science as well as in numerous collected volumes, handbooks and encyclopaedias. His books include The Social Sciences and Democracy (2009, editor) and Scientific Explanation (2013, co-authored with Erik Weber and Leen De Vreese).