Pragmatism, pluralism, and eclecticism: Sil and Katzenstein’s “Analytic eclecticism” in Beyond Paradigms
| DOI | 10.1177/0020702020961360 |
| Author | Fred Chernoff |
| Published date | 01 September 2020 |
| Date | 01 September 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Scholarly Essay |
Scholarly Essay
International Journal
Pragmatism, pluralism,
2020, Vol. 75(3) 392–403
! The Author(s) 2020
and eclecticism: Sil and
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DOI: 10.1177/0020702020961360
Katzenstein’s “Analytic
journals.sagepub.com/home/ijx
eclecticism” in Beyond
Paradigms
Fred Chernoff
Department of Political Science, Colgate University,
Hamilton, New York, USA
Abstract
This paper seeks to show ways in which analytic eclecticism can be strengthened to
encourage hybrid theorizing capable of yielding more practically useful principles for
foreign policy decision-makers. The paper also seeks to show that some of the advan-
tages of analytic eclecticism are overstated, notably the ability to sidestep difficult
questions in the philosophy of social science. Nevertheless, with a proper deepening
of their discussion of pragmatism, the core of the practical consequences of analytic
eclecticism can be advanced with greater force and with a strengthened methodological
rationale.
Keywords
Analytic eclecticism, pragmatism, paradigms, philosophy of social science, intellectual
progress, practical application of theory, International Relations theory
Corresponding author:
Fred Chernoff, Colgate University, Department of Political Science, 13 Oak Drive, Hamilton, New York,
13346-1338, USA.
Email: fchernoff@colgate.edu
Chernoff
393
Sil and Katzenstein argue in Beyond Paradigms that International Relations (IR)
scholars should produce useful knowledge.1 Many of us who believe that IR and
comparative politics research should at least be capable of contributing to policy-
making wholeheartedly endorse the spirit of Sil and Katzenstein’s project. Their
recommended path to reach the goal is their strategy of analytic eclecticism, which
they define as:
Any approach that seeks to extricate, translate, and selectively integrate analytic
elements—concepts, logics, mechanisms, and interpretations—of theories or narra-
tives that have been developed within separate paradigms but that address related
aspects of substantive problems that have both scholarly and practical significance.2
Research that does this must (a) allow open-ended formulations of questions
that expand scope and complexity, (b) develop middle-range theories, and (c)
develop “findings and arguments that pragmatically engage both academic debates
and practical dilemmas of policymakers/practitioners.”3
Sil and Katzenstein say, “analytic eclectic research will typically produce neither
universal theories nor ideographic narrative” but will yield middle-range theories
that “shed light on specific sets of empirical phenomena . . . across a limited set of
comparable contexts.”4 Analytic eclecticism is not a substitute for paradigm-
bound research; rather, it is a complement to it, enhancing the production of
knowledge that may be useful to practitioners. Thus, Sil and Katzenstein’s support
for analytic eclecticism is driven by their worry that scholars’ paradigm-bound
theorizing and focus on metatheory impede the production of practically useful
theories.
Sil and Katzenstein’s advocacy of analytic eclecticism has exercised a healthy
influence on methodology debates in IR and, in important ways, points research in
a fruitful direction. The authors argue that in order “for intellectual progress to be
made in the study and practice of international politics, it is as important to engage
the full menu of intellectual possibilities as it is to refine existing theories concern-
ing subsets of those possibilities.”5 The full menu will enhance the practical
1.
Rudra Sil and Peter J. Katzenstein, Beyond Paradigms: Analytic Eclecticism in the Study of World
Politics (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). See also Rudra Sil and Peter J. Katzenstein,
“Analytic eclecticism in the study of world politics: Reconfiguring problems and mechanisms
across research traditions,” Perspectives on Politics 8, no. 2 (June 2010): 411–431; Rudra Sil and
Peter J. Katzenstein, “Eclectic theorizing in the study and practice of International Relations,” in
Christian Reus-Smit and Duncan Snidal, eds., Oxford Handbook of International Relations (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2008); and Rudra Sil, “The foundations of eclecticism: The epistemolog-
ical status of agency, culture, and structure in social theory,” The Journal of Theoretical Politics 12,
no. 3 (2000): 353–387.
2.
Sil and Katzenstein, Beyond Paradigms, 10.
3.
Sil and Katzenstein, Beyond Paradigms, 19.
4.
Sil and Katzenstein, Beyond Paradigms, 21–22.
5.
Sil and Katzenstein, Beyond Paradigms, 219.
394
International Journal 75(3)
applicability of scholarship over what they see as common practice today, espe-
cially by stimulating scholars to combine variables identified with divergent theo-
ries and paradigms. But their support for those conclusions goes astray at some
points. Sil and Katzenstein are right to deny the supposed restrictions on scholars’
efforts to move outside of sometimes incommensurable “research traditions” or
paradigms. Nevertheless, several of the arguments they offer for that conclusion do
not hit their target.
This paper considers what Sil and Katzenstein mean by the term “paradigm.”
The paper then asks whom the analytic eclecticism argument is intended to per-
suade and proceeds to argue that Sil and Katzenstein overestimate the population
of IR researchers who see themselves as bound by borders of paradigms or
research traditions. While Sil and Katzenstein hold that IR, especially policy-
relevant work, can and should dispense with considerations of metatheory, the
paper shows that this is simply not possible. Finally, the paper acknowledges that
the authors’ impulse to endorse pragmatism is well taken but argues that our
understanding of the practical value of empirical research can be deepened by a
fuller and more rigorous idea of pragmatism.
Sil and Katzenstein’s concept of the “paradigm”
In order to assess the argument that Sil and Katzenstein develop in Beyond
Paradigms, it is worth trying to clarify precisely what they mean by the concept
of a “paradigm.” Because of the enormous influence that Kuhn’s paradigm-based
analysis of the history of science has had on the study of international politics, and
the social sciences generally, many readers will presume that the authors use the
term in Kuhn’s sense. Indeed, much of the text of Beyond Paradigms appears to
confirm this. The frequent occurrences of the locution “paradigm-bound research”
further the impression that they are referring to Kuhnian paradigms, which are
indeed very “bound.” But Sil and Katzenstein are not using “paradigm” in the
Kuhnian sense.
In the introduction to Beyond Paradigms the authors describe what they mean
by the term “paradigm.”6 They say that they do not follow Kuhn’s notion of
paradigm, but mean the term to convey Larry Laudan’s notion of a “research
tradition.” An author is always free to use terms any way desired, as long as the
author provides a definition and adheres consistently to that definition. (There can,
though, be a cost in terms of confusion, if an author uses a familiar term in an
unfamiliar way.) In IR debates the term “paradigm” is understood in different
ways by different people. Some read it in a strict...
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