Cumulativeness in the Social Sciences: Some Counter-Prescriptions

In every social science, there tends to be a recurrent and cyclical preoccupation with the lack of cumulativeness. Some attribute this to the familiar “absence of theory,” and lay it at the doorstep of “barefooted empiricism.” Others might see the culprit lurking in the conceptual morass that often passes for theory, and would suggest that grand schemata that are not — and usually cannot — be tested will hardly make for greater cumulativeness.

There seems to be more than a germ of truth in both of these suspicions, but let me suggest a third possible source of our disappointment. I refer to certain norms and practices found among both the theorizers and the empiricists: those folkways that we pick up in college and graduate school, and are seldom able to shake in the postdoctoral years. On the assumption that an awareness of them and their implications may lead to their gradual extinction, I itemize here a few of what may be our less attractive foibles. While some of them may be peculiar to the field of world politics, most seem to be found all across the discipline.