The Perestroikan Challenge to Social Science

Abstract

Political science faces a challenge from a “Mr. Perestroika,” who decries the hegemony of formal and statistical analysis in the discipline. Although not connected with this movement, Bent Flyvbjerg makes the best case for a renewed dominance for qualitative and case study work throughout the social sciences. This article challenges Flyvbjerg’s call for a phronetic as opposed to an epistemic discipline. It challenges as well the unqualified call for pluralism advocated by many in the perestroika movement. It offers instead an integrated tripartite method in which narrative, statistics, and formal modeling fill in a scientific frame.