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Two Methodological Worlds Apart? Praises and Critiques from a European Comparativist

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2017

Benoît Rihoux*
Affiliation:
Centre de Politique Comparée (CPC) and COMPASSS, Université Catholique de Louvain, 1/7 Place Montesquieu, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium. e-mail: rihoux@spri.ucl.ac.be

Extract

Social scientists who strive to reflect on their research “while they're doing it” (Becker 1998) live in very fortunate times. On the one hand, it seems as if an increasing number of scholars want to do a little more than simply apply ready-made recipes. On the other hand, a few key volumes have recently been published that move beyond ready-made recipes. In my personal top three, I would most probably place Mahoney and Rueschemeyer (2003), George and Bennett (2005), and—last but not least—the volume discussed in this symposium. What distinguishes Rethinking Social Inquiry (RSI) from the two other volumes, in my view, is that it has a broader agenda and hence a broader ambition.

Type
Symposium on Rethinking Social Inquiry
Copyright
Copyright © The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Political Methodology 

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