Students of comparative politics have long faced a vexing dilemma: how can social scientists draw broad, applicable principles of political order from specific historical examples? In this text, five senior scholars offer an ambitious methodological response to this question. By employing rational-choice and game theory, the authors propose a way of extracting empirically-testable, general hypotheses from particular cases. The result is both a methodological manifesto and an applied handbook. The individual essays demonstrate the concept of the analytic narrative - a rational choice approach to explain political outcomes - in case studies. They highlight the economic role of political organizations, the rise and deterioration of political communities, and the role of coercion, especially warfare, in political life.
- ISBN10 0691001286
- ISBN13 9780691001289
- Publish Date 6 September 1998
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 13 January 2011
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Princeton University Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 296
- Language English
- URL https://press.princeton.edu/titles/6355.html