Crises and Sequences in Collective Theory Development†

Robert T. Holt and John E. Turner

American Political Science Review, 1975, vol. 69, issue 3, 979-994

Abstract: Since 1954, the Committee on Comparative Politics has provided leadership in the comparative field, and one of its central objectives has been to construct a theory of political development. The books in the series that were published in the 1960s lacked rigorous design, although they did provide data and low-level generalizations which could be used in the theory-building task. This essay focuses primarily on Crises and Sequences in Political Development, which is authored solely by Committee members and reports on the results of their theoretical work thus far. The Committee takes the “intuitive empirical generalization” approach to theory development—in contrast with systematic empirical generalization and the analytic-deductive procedure. It is unlikely, however, that the Committee's approach will lead to the formulation of a coherent set of interrelated propositions within which empirical phenomena can be explained. But the Committee's work is not atypical of the theoretical literature in political science, which reflects the reward structure of the discipline. The building of powerful theories will be facilitated when emphasis is placed on the development of clearly falsifiable propositions rather than on the development of loose conceptual frameworks.

Date: 1975
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