Analytic Narratives

Description

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.

Robert H. Bates is the Eaton Professor of the Science of Government and Faculty Fellow of the Institute of International Development at Harvard University. Avner Greif is Associate Professor of Economics at Stanford University. Margaret Levi is Professor of Political Science and the Harry Bridges Chair in Labor Studies at the University of Washington, Seattle. Jean-Laurent Rosenthal is Professor of Economics at the University of California, Los Angeles. Barry R. Weingast is Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and Ward C. Krebs Family Professor of Political Science at Stanford University.

"Analytic Narratives showcases cutting-edge work in the comparative and historical application of rational-choice theory."-Mark Lichbach, University of Colorado at Boulder